It always blows my mind when people say there’s no black culture. Maybe it’s because I’ve always lived in areas with large black communities, but black people have always been distinctively “different” from the mainstream community, irrespective of class. Different speech patterns, different ways of disciplining children, different ways of arguing and showing affection, in addition to different foods, styles of dress, and forms of entertainment.
Sure, there are geographical differences, but they are minor compared to the similiarities.
Sometimes it’s as simple as listening to people clapping to a tune. From my experience, black people tend to clap on the 2 and the 4, while whites clap on the 1 and the 3. Neither is superior (though the 2 and 4 feels more natural to me, personally). The fact that I would even notice this indicates that I regularly move through black and “white” cultures and I’m able to pick up on the funny idiosyncracies of both. If beat emphasis isn’t indicative of something, I don’t know what is.
Not sure who you were directing this at, but FTR, I’m not saying blacks have no culture…I’m saying there is no unified black culture. To me, this would be like saying that whites have a unified culture that transcends their origins…which would be equally wrong. Instead, there are white Irish, white Anglo, white Polish, etc etc. And then, even for those well rooted in the US, there is North Eastern culture, Mid-Western, Southern (with several variants there as well), South Western and North Western…with a huge further parsing that can be done in sub-regions. And blacks (as well as whites, hispanics, asians, etc) who live in those regions also tend to develop their own cultures/sub-cultures, irrespective of their original ancestral origins, which also have a huge impact.
I totally disagree. The differences even here in the US are huge. Taking just blacks, think about cultural differences between blacks located in the North East and those living in California, for instance. Or those living in the Mid-West compared to those living in the deep South. What culture do they all have in common, save that which comes from being in the US and part of the constructed culture we all get from movies, music and other media sources?
Hmm, I never realized that “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” was a black spiritual. I’ve always associated it with Peter, Paul, and Mary.
But, yes, I’d say those are artifacts of black culture. Culture always bleeds through, and unlike older cultures, which had time to evolve in relative isolation, African American culture developed in direct contact with the larger American culture, and there’s always been a strong feedback loop between the two. I don’t think that delegitimizes the concept of African American culture, it just means that innovations in black culture have transmitted into the mainstream faster than would have occured between more isolated cultures.
I think it’s inevitable for a group, such as American Blacks, to develop a shared culture when they, as a group, have been oppressed and isolated for such a long time with very few immigrants entering the country to mix things up within that group. Various White ethnicities who immigrated here self segregated or were forcefully segregated, but they fairly quickly assimilated into mainstream culture (or mainstream culture assimilated them). And so, while much of what can be called Black Culture has seeped into the mainstream, much of it hasn’t. I can see this going for a long time to come in this country.
I’ve noticed this as well, though I’m not black (I am a drummer, however). I always found it weird that white people clap on 1 & 3, especially since the accent in all rock music is on the 2 & 4.
However, the discrepancy appears only because we have this separate category of “race” into which we shove the black ethnic group. Just as there is a Polish-American culture and an Italian-American culture and an Irish-American culture, there is an African-American culture. (In fact that was the reason Jesse Jackson and a bunch of his buddies began promoting the use of the phrase “African-America” in the fall of 1989.)
Are there variants within the African-American culture? Sure. Just as there is a difference between Queens Irish and Boston Back Bay Irish or between the Texan German-American culture and the Indiana/Illinois German-American culture. On the other hand, there is still a lot of overlap among the regional black communities because they still tend to have families in other parts of the country. When the Great Migration occurred between 1920 and 1945 (roughly), a lot of folks stayed in the Delta or in Alabama while many moved to Detroit and Cleveland and Chicago, but unlike the European or Asian immigrants who were separated by the long distances, (time and money), from their non-moving families, blacks in the U.S. were only a train ride or car trip away and many contacts have remained strong to this day.
While California is a different world, altogether, of course, and I have no great experience of the black community in the Northeast, the black community I do know near Detroit and Cleveland maintains a very close relationship with families in the South, with cross-country visits a regular part of most families’ experience. This is not to say that the urban folks in the North have not developed their own cultural traits that differ from their (mostly) rural relatives in the South, but in terms of religion, diet, family association, music (to a degree), and attitudes toward social issues, (not just racial Civil Rights, but marriage, child rearing, service to country, homosexuality, and a range of other issues), they have a lot more in common with each other than they do with any generic “American” culture.
The Miss Asian American Pageant is open to white Asians (ie., people from the former Soviet republics) and South Asians too, which makes it somewhat unusual.
It’s really no different than a Miss Black USA that features light-skinned blacks alongside dark-skinned ones. Both are based on the premise that contestants have African/Asian ancestry.
The difference comes in with respect to how race is defined for blacks. One drop rule and all of that.
Hmmm, you must not have attended any black events that are held throughout the country. There is a unified “black” American or “African American” culture, but the history of the culture may not be as long as other cultures. Certainly there are regionalities, but there is a common black American cultural thread through the regions.
Of course now with more recent immigration, we do have other black cultures in America… Dominican, Jamaican, Ugandan etc. etc. that don’t necessarily relate to black American culture.
I agree. A lot of what we associate with different countries’ culture is pretty recent. Those “traditional” Scandanavian costumes are from the 19th century. They weren’t using Paprika in Hungary or peppers in Hunan before Columbus. African American culture began with the introduction of slaves in 1619. I just don’t see how anyone can look at jazz, blues, rock and roll, spirituals, BBQ, and a whole host of other things identified with African Americans and not conclude there is a strong and unifying culture. A lot of what the rest of the world associates with America is derived from African American culture. Even a lot of what we think of as distinctly white culture, such as Elvis, was directly influenced by AA culture.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that dealing with the effects of racism and discrimination is also a part of Black culture. It’s likely that affluent Blacks from Connecticut, newly-arrived Blacks from Sierra Leone, and poor urban Blacks from Chicago have at some point dealt with it, and the combined frustration, pain, humor, and at times, victory is a bonding point.
This point has been made in this thread. Many features common to Black women are not as valued by the majority, so instead of pageants that emphasize a certain body type, shape of lips and nose, hair, etc. perhaps one that gave greater credence to those traits and features. (Having little knowledge of what the winners of these contests look like, I can’t say how faithful they have been to this.)
I know a lot of folks would like to pretend that racism and discrimination aren’t significant and relevant parts of life for Blacks in America, but I think the collective experiences of most Blacks would refute that. If you’ve lived in cities like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, or Boston, it should be clear that this is also true for a lot of Whites of European descent (the aforementioned Irish, Polish, and Italians, f’rex). And as a former Bostonian, I thought it was cool to see people take pride in their cultural heritage.
Not to mention that Black is both a cultural and racial categorization. If you go to a Black family reunion I guarantee you will see Black people who appear phenotypically to be White, or indeed are White. But there is a cultural connection that they link to, in addition (or in some cases, excepting) to their racial connection. The former, I would argue, is much stronger than the latter. A person who is undeniably Black but has little connection to the culture (or is dismissive of it) will probably have less acceptance than someone who is light-skinned, biracial, or perhaps even White who has a strong affiliation with Black culture - which inherently connects to understanding the experience of dealing with racism and discrimination.
Getting off on a tangent, but is there a divide in black American culture between rural Southern blacks and urban Northern blacks? I realize that neither group was a monolith but there were a number of shared experiences within both groups that weren’t necessarily shared between the two groups.
There was a migration from the rural south to urban north that brought southern customs with it. For example Chicago Blues grew out of the music that black southerners brought north.
