All cultures change over time or they and their adherent people die. Despite the massive differences between what was native Sub-Saharan African and what was forced by slavery, descendants of America’s slave class evolved a unique, defining culture, or African American Subculture, that was not “purely” African or American. Initially, it was an amalgamation of the best features from both cultures.
One of the most difficult concepts for many African Americans to accept, or even discuss objectively, is that no significant aspect in the development of our Subculture has taken place without some influence from the dominant American – whether rejection or adoption.
A People’s culture transcends and links generations and includes the values, vision, beliefs and proscriptions that define morality, character, and standards of excellence. It sets the aspirational intention, the mission, of the grouping; and establishes criteria for judging the behavior of individuals, families, and entire communities. Specifically, the Subculture states how each individual must behave to achieve dignity and respect in the community and in the external world.
The major tenets of our Subculture were: deepest respect for black women and the traditional family; educational superiority; workplace excellence; financial conservativism; open honesty about Black crime and personal morality; self/community-reliance.
“It is impossible to pretend that you aren’t heir to, and, therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that gave you life without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.” (James Baldwin)
If more Black people knew, believed, understood, accepted, inculcated and acted on the lessons of our intrepid ancestors, more of us would respect ourselves and each other; would be practically impossible to deceive; and would continue the legacy of achievement.
The historic, almost vertical, progress we achieved from 1865-75 until about 1965 resulted from the interplay of the components within the cultural combination of African and American. The components were adapted for relevance for the times, places and reality of Black existence. The components consisted of Black culture; isolated Black communities; the manner by which the tenets were taught; and the knowledge of what success required. That cultural combination touched the entire range of educational, social, spiritual and economic conditions in the Black communities, where the Talented Tenth lived directly alongside our lowliest.
It was during the progression of the first two post-slavery generations that direct, brutal, physical racism grew in America, and was tolerated and supported by America’s national, state and local governments, as well as by white churches. But the African American Subculture prevailed until the mid-sixties and created pathways to first-class American citizenship for thousands of us.
After the mid-sixties, the national culture began to intrude into our Subculture and our psycho-social dimension, and moved us to act in ways that were preferred by the nation’s “ruling elite.” America’s intrusion dominated, destroyed or distorted African America’s Defining Subculture, using duplicity, Eminent Domain and Urban Renewal, as well as other legal and illegal tactics driven by the special creativity of hypocritical, unscrupulous leaders, broke our connection with our most powerful developmental assets, and separated our most successful people from our least successful.
The closer we tried to imitate the mainstream American tenets, or the tighter we tried to hold on to the pre-1965 cultural tenets without modification vis-à-vis extant circumstance as we had done before the mid-sixties, the less effective we became for large numbers of our people. We were not able to determine how to continue to be both African American and American in ways that mitigated those aspects of American society that negatively affected African-Americans in disproportionate ways, especially in education, and, thus, our children.
Nevertheless: “Old myths, old gods, old heroes (pre-1965) have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.” (Stanley Kunitz)
To call them, however, requires an understanding about their derivation and their transformative power in times past; as well as a recognition that old wisdoms and eternal truths no matter how positive in the past are neither wise nor true if not updated in new eras and new circumstances.
Stressing OUR responsibility for using OUR cultural power to improve OUR condition in America does not make one a traitor to the RACE. Quite to the contrary: one is most harmful to OUR People if she/he does not tell the whole truth about both the oppressors and the oppressed — irrespective of race.
Seeking progress — redemption, vindication, success, vengeance, and Reparations — through Self-Reliance, a major tenet of our original subculture, does not preclude laying accurate blame for crimes committed against our people, so long as clear remedies and actionable goals and strategies are specified for both sides – what THEY must do and what WE must do. Nothing else is in the least way defensible.
