The Origin of the Concept of African American essay

Speaking about the Origin of the Concept of African American it should be noted that the term “African” was formed due the acknowledgement to African origins and late 1700s-e.g., AME Church. The word “negro” used according to African Americans is direct translation of the Spanish and means black. It deal with the skin color and race. It should be noted that the word “negro” was widely in used until the end of the first half of the 20th century. Also the white majority used term “colored”, also referenced to skin and race and it was in use from the mid 1800-s till 1950-s. The term “black” was used to oppose to offensive “colored” or “negro” and be different from the white majority, oppressing Afro-Americans. Since 1960, it evolved to promote racial pride. Martin Luther King was the one who did not supported the term considering it calling to racism
The following files perfectly illustrate the life, traditions, hard work and position of Afro-American minority in the United States. There was no word about tolerance towards them. The offensive treatment was officially supported by the government, calling Afro-Americans, even after the slavery abolition “negroes” and “colored people”. The slides illustrate the life of Afro-Americans, their villages, craft and treatment to them and certainly the attitude of the “white masters”, who organized auctions and slave market in the Southern States of the United States.
The origin of the “Afro-American” term dates back to late 1700s with African and supported by black intellectuals and writers in early 1900s. It reflects African roots of the nation and illustrates the current place of dwelling comparing it to Italian Americans, Irish Americans and others. This could be perfectly illustrated by Jesse Jackson (1988) ideas: “Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical, cultural base. African-Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity”.
The contemporary American government uses Afro-American term to signify the certain nation dwelling in the United States and describe it as “A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as “Black, African Am., or Negro,” or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian”.
The roots of Afro-American are mainly lying in the Western coast of Sub-Saharan Africa and it is a well known fact that they have arrived to the American continent as the product of the slave industry from early 16th century to the late 19th century. The new colonies needed hard working hands and the slave traders provided them. According to the approximate encounters from 10 to 12 million Africans died during slave raids, wars, and Trans-Atlantic transport. The maps within the slide perfectly illustrate the main slave routes and a number of them went ahead from the African Continent to the Caribbean and Southern States of the U. S.
The political map of Africa would help to signify the origins of the vast majority, which arrived and survived in America during this period.
The following are the statistics of the African origin African Slave Source Regions
9.6% Senegambia and Upper Guinea Coast
12.2% Windward and Gold Coasts
20.2% Bight of Benin
14.6% Bight of Biafra
39.4% West Central Africa
4.7% Southeastern Africa
And if we take into consideration the lower statistics 10 million the following would perfectly illustrate the number of people arrived to the American countries
• 5.5 Brazil and rest of South America
• 3.5 million Caribbean
• 500,000 Mexico and Central America
• 500,000 to U.S.,
According to the data of US census Bureau in 2008 in the United States dwelled approximately 38 million of Afro-Americans.
The following slides illustrate the most noticeable groups taken to America and the map gives perfect description of their settlement within the African Continent. The following pictures illustrate the lifestyle of the traders and hard working of Afro-American women on the plantations, where they gathered cotton. They also illustrate the life of Afro-American communities and the hard work of the people in American lands. The maps illustrate the slave settlement in the US. It is seen that they were mainly living in the south-eastern part of the country. And current residency of Afro-Americans nation remain the same.
It goes without saying that the course dealing with Afro-American anthropology is a part of historical nature. It focuses on Afro-Americans as on the separate national entity and it won’t be a secret that peoples culture could not be understood without people’s history. This course represented the history of African Americans in the American continent, with all its hardships and constant struggle for equality. The culture, the nature and the history of this nation is their heritage, which make them unique and different from the other people. Anthropology of Afro-Americans investigated major social institutions, culture as the sum of learned and shared beliefs and behaviors of the separately taken group, in our case Afro-Americans.