Just wondering…
Do Caribbean cultures view their respective historical African cultures and countries as their ‘ancestral homelands’ or places of symbolic heritage (like an ‘Irish-American’ might feel towards Ireland)? Or, are their feelings more ambivalent; akin, perhaps, to how many Latin American countries view Spain/Portugal? And how about the other way around?
Just one data point.
My black* Caribbean colleagues consider their home Caribbean country (Jamaica, St Lucia, Barbados, etc…) to be their homeland. They understand that they descend from persons, mostly probably slaves, who came from elsewhere but exactly where in Africa their ancestors came from is not known with any certainty.
My Nigerian (born and raised there) colleague does consider Nigeria to be her homeland, of course.
It’s too hard to generalize about such large groups. You’ll have to do with anecdotes. Here’s one: a good friend of mine is African-American. Born and raised in Chicago. His grandparents lived in the south, and he refers to Alabama as “the old country.”
Of course, theRastafari movement, originally Jamaican, regards Africa and specifically Ethiopia as the homeland. However, this has little to do with the actual cultural origins of its adherents, who would have predominantly been from West Africa. It is not really similar to how immigrants from Europe or other areas would regard their homelands.
In Trinidad and Tobago the answer is yes, BUT it is mostly about the level of say St Patricks day in the USA. Meaning some people might wear a dashiki once a year on emancipation day or something. No one could even tell you what African country or area their ancestors came from though, it is fairly superficial. You also will get people who oppose the idea and say this country is their homeland etc. There are some African cultural stores in the larger urban areas.
There are Haitians who practice an animist religion with more or less direct African ties, so some of them have more of a sense f connection in a vague way, but even they think of their religion as “Haitian.”
However, the amount of cultural mixing there has been in Europe over the millennia virtually guarantees that 99% of “white people” are descended from Vikings, 99% are descended from Romans, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar thing happened in Africa.
99+% of Europeans probably have at least one Viking ancestor, but that doesn’t mean that will show up genetically. In any case, what we are talking about here is cultural identity, so that actual ancestry doesn’t have that much to do with it. Being of Irish ancestry, I undoubtedly have some Viking forbears, but I have no cultural link to them.