Essay - Question 1 Briefly Connect the African Cultural Roots and the...

Question 1 Briefly connect the African cultural roots and the Black experience in America. What ***** would you gain from viewing a traditional ***** community in modern ***** that retains strong cultural roots? (South Carolina!)

***** view a tr*****ditional African community, such as exists in ***** Carolina, within ***** context of an America environment, is not simply to see a remn*****t in what is, to many African Americans, a lost part of their past or a foreign culture. Rather it is a illustration to the culture at large, given the pr*****ound cultural differences of this commun*****y, that 'black' that is experience of color ***** not a seamless cloth. The African American experience of slavery is a unique *****nd profound one, of history and ***** overcom*****g of struggle. However, unlike, for instance, the experience ***** American Jews, or **********, as illustrated at ***** Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, the experience ***** a cohesive immigrant group, however oppressed, is profoundly different than that of an enslaved, transported minority that is merged and stripped ***** its culture and linguistic coherence and must create a new one, through music ***** as jazz, ***** ***** foods and words and dialects in comb*****ation with Africans they would never have encountered, had ***** not occurred.

Question 2. Compare and contrast the modern African ***** modern ***** American experience/perspective. Where can a student find this in*****mation first-hand and connect ***** the modern African ***** experience?

The ***** African experience is one of nation building. As witnessed at the ***** American Museum ***** Philadelphia Exploring Africa at a temporary Exhibit during February 2004, it ***** one of overcoming ***** legacy of colonialism, and occasional tribal warfare in the face ***** regional conflicts. But he modern African ***** experience, as noted by Ralph Ellison in his novel Invisible Man, is how to define one's selfhood in a n*****ion that constantly attempts ***** er*****e ***** identity as anything positive. The colonialism upon the African American psyche is psychological as well ***** physical, ***** one must be of the oppressing nation as well as resist it, ***** in post-colonial l*****erature and art of the African subcont*****ent.

Question 3. Compare and contrast the *****torical African and historical ***** American experience/perspective. Where can a student ***** this information first-hand and connect with ***** ***** African ***** experience?

***** museum exhibits one may physically connect ***** artifacts from various periods of American history. Through narratives ***** great Black Americans such as Equiano, Douglass, ***** Dubois one ***** draw not a seamless line, but does an intellectual legacy of experience and thought of the ***** of slavery for the reader and student. And ***** African Americans haven gone so far as to retrace the infamous 'middle passage' ***** see what it was like, to experience slavery, giving ********** a physical sense ***** what ***** ***** like.

Do not see "Gone with the Wind," in other words, or even digest the experience of slavery through fictionalized prose or television, such as "Roots." Instead, go to the preserved