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Our late, great ancestor, Dr. Asa G. Hilliard’s book, The Maroon Within Us: Selected,
once again reminds us of a major problem that we, as African people in
America, are besieged by. Dr. Hilliard described this problem as
cultural surrender. In explaining the problem, Dr. Hilliard wrote,
“African Americans remain one of the very few groups in the United
States who do not honor their own cultural traditions, sometimes even
when they are honored by others.”
Continuing on this point, Dr. Hilliard states that, “If there is a
major illness among African American people it is that we unceasingly
honor and utilize our culture less. All great nations and people do the
opposite.”
As Dr. Hilliard further explains, “Cultural surrender is more than a
matter of rejecting one’s father and mother culture. It means that one
accepts a new definition as a person. The culturally dependent person
is a mere spectator, a receptacle for the creativities of others. To
demand freedom from slavery only to use that freedom to commit one’s
self to a voluntary cultural servitude is to lose the chance to be
human.”
The erosion of many of our African cultural traditions and foundations
are most evidenced in our family and community life. Far too many
African people in America are getting away from the essence of family
life. The cultural tradition of African family life is that of the
extended family that centers itself on the rearing of children and
caring for the elders.
Family life is the basis for which a people maintain their cultural
traditions, traditions that are important to the survival of a people.
The way we raise our children in the context of extended family life
for African people was always connected to the overall development of
the larger community.
Dr. Hilliard writes, “There have always been Africans or Black people
in America who have been both physically and mentally free. We have
also had far too many of those who have yielded their bodies - and
worse, their souls - to people and systems whose purpose was to exploit
to take all and give nothing.”
It is in this context that Dr. Hilliard provides several reasons why
this devastating trend of cultural surrender is taking place. He says,
“…we have tended to accept certain false dichotomies,” such as the
following:
1. We have tended to equate sophisticated technology with culture,
believing that such technology is exclusively European and that to
affirm African culture is to reject technology.
2. We have tended to equate modern with technology, and to valuemodern
as if it were cultural progress. At the same time, we have seen the
affirmation of African/African American culture as a matterof
retrogression. Further, we have seen African/African American culture
as static rather than dynamic and adaptive.
3. We have tended to equate European culture with wealth and African/African American culture with poverty.
4. We have tended to associate education with the acquisition of all
the cultural forms of Europeans, and find it hard to conceive of
educated persons who live the African/African American culture.
5. We have tended to equate self-affirmation with the hatred of others.
6. We have tended to equate religion with particular forms of European
interpretations of Christianity and have not seen our people as
religious or spiritual.
7. Generally we have failed to study ourselves and to know our culture.”
The challenges that African people face in American, and throughout the
world, as we enter twenty-first-century is to create programs,
strategies, and institutions that will reclaim and preserve our rich
culture.
One such program that has emerged as one approach to preserving our culture and traditions aimed at our youth is the growing Rites of Passage Movement. This Movement seeks to place African and African people at the center of independently working with our young people.
Children in Rites of Passage Programs are generally taught aspects of
our history that included our literary accomplishments, our
accomplishments in music, science and technology, and the spiritual
concepts of African people that direct our moral and ethical behavior
and treatment of others.
As we look out and observe the African World Community, we can see a
common set of problems that all African people face, as a result of
hundred of years of exploitation by Europeans and others against
African people. This exploitation has developed into a worldwide system
of white supremacy and white domination aimed at wiping out African
culture. We must resist and refuse any efforts to wipe out our culture.
Finally, Dr. Hilliard writes, “Cultural
surrender or cultural destruction leads inevitably to the loss of any
possibility for a group to mobilize on its behalf. There can be no
African/African American family in the absence of a cultural base.”
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BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Contact Dr. Worrill and BC.
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 is published every Thursday |
Executive Editor:
David A. Love, JD |
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield, MBA |
Publisher:
Peter Gamble |
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