Cultural Norms of African Americans, Thesis Paper Example

No investigation of the African American experience can escape slavery. One hundred fifty years ago, most of the Africans who lived in the United States either came here involuntarily or were born into the institution of slavery. Even after emancipation, the social progress of African Americans grew weakly because of racial discriminations that flourished under practices of segregation.

One of the positive by products of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as orchestrated by Martin Luther King Jr., was the revival of African American pride in culture. A resurgent interest in all things African exploded in America. Blacks reflected African culture in their literature, art, music, fashion, and forms of political activism and protest; however, these categories represent only a portion of the things that interested African Americans about themselves. As they discovered more about their roots, they began to define themselves less tentatively in US culture as a whole. Perceptions of beauty among Blacks tend to favor models that look different from their White model counterparts. Many Black homes celebrate festivals that ground in African traditions. Many African Americans still speak with lingering language patterns that emerged from years of mixing various African languages into one American Black voice.

Religion is a strong force within the African American community. Mostly Protestant, church-going Blacks find the church to be the center of their religious and social lives (Haight). Through long-held African heritage practices, such as story-telling, African Americans find that the church is a place where they can inculcate their faith and sense of community and belonging to their children in significant ways.

Obama’s election as President was a major, unprecedented occasion in the history of the United States. The most forward thinking leaders in social progress could not have imagined a person of African descent as President a century ago (Pearson). With the elimination of Jim Crow laws and public school segregation, perhaps America has learned that separate cannot be equal in any present or future domestic policy and agenda.

We see African Americans who are highly visible and prominent in all sectors of American society. Blacks are media figures, just like Whites. Blacks hold public offices, star in numerous entertainment industries, and star on fields and courts of athletic competition. Black leaders caution that an attitude of “anyone Black and famous will save us… [this] isn’t going to happen” (Powell, 81). Blacks continue to struggle.

Three final issues –trends—are worthy of notice as this brief essay reaches its conclusion. First, the achievement gap is widening in schools between Blacks and Whites. Now, more than fifty years since the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Blacks score worse than Whites on standardized tests about 75% of the time (Barlow). Second, the Black definition of home has changed drastically over the past thirty years, as out of wedlock births from among Blacks has risen from about 20% to about 40% nationally (Currie). Third, the number of Blacks in prison is more than three times the number of Blacks in college (Ohlemacher).

Works Cited

Barlow, Dudley. The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time. Education Digest 75, 8 (2010): 69-70.

Currie, Duncan. Five Decades of Crisis. National Review 61,15 (2009): 35-37.

Haight, Wendy. Gathering the Spirit at First Baptist Church: Spirituality as a Protective Factor in the Lives of African American Children. Social Work 43, 3 (1998): 213-221.

Ohlemacher, Stephen. Census Study Eyes Blacks in Prison. Associated Press 26 Sep 2007. retrieved April 7, 2010 from http://www.sheldonsays.com/census_study_of_blacks_in_prison

Pearson, Keith. From a usable past to a collaborative future: African American culture in the age of computational thinking. Black History Bulletin 72, 1 (2009): 41-44.

Powell, Kevin. Open letter to Black America: A case for pushing beyond just surviving.  Ebony, 65, 6 (2010): 80-81.