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I know many Africans that have made the opposite observation. African Americans generally don't look very African at all. 9 times out of 10 even I can tell the difference. I used to have a relationship with a guy from Uganda and there is no way in hell he would be mistaken for African American.
I also see very few similarities culturally between my West African friends and my African American friends. African Americans have been here for hundreds of years, the first few hundred in slavery where any kind of Africaness was more or less beaten out of people. I just find it so unlikely that anything significant, if anything at all, has survived that. In the case of immigrants you normally see complete assimilation by the third generation and the conditions for them to maintain their cultures were far more favorable.
You don't seem to realize that African Americans are descendents of West Africans, and Central Africans. Those were the main regions where the Africans were taken from. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to sit here and go back and forth with someone about the heritage of African Americans. We know where our family members who were brought here on those ships came from. Africa is imprinted in out DNA. As I mentioned before, my Congolese boyfriend at that time saw clear elements that survived. Also, Africans were still being illigally shipped in to the U.S. directly from the Continent clear up to the 1860's, around the time of the Civil War. LOL at 'African Americans generally don't look African at all". Thats like saying 'Chinese-Americans don't look Asian at all'. After all, they have been in the U.S. for over a century. Their Asianess was more or less beaten out of them as they bulit those railroads. I am going to belive that you are much smarter than those riducuous sentiments you posted.
African-Americans are predominantly descendants of Africans people who were brought to the Americas mostly as slaves, indentured servants, these people were mainly from the part of Africa which faces the Americas the western African coastline from Mauritania to Angola mainly. Africans brought to the Americas, their rich cultures and knowledge as well, despite the fact that they were slaves, minimized, put down by their European masters, they had such a strong influence on the American culture as a whole to this day. Planting techniques that European masters learned from them, the most obvious also the musical genious brought by them. I'm not an African, but I surely know that. Black American culture has a lot of "Africaness" in it. What craziness is that, when you say African-Americans don't look African? Are you O.K.?
I'll give an example:
Oprah African-American celebrity
Aissa Maiga, Senegalese-born French actress;
There's obviously no difference between them, maybe one might be younger than the other! Senegal is in the very west of Africa. Most likely Oprah ancestors hailed from areas near Senegal/Gambia/Sierra Leone, etc.... The only difference is that Africans have retained more of their culture, customs.
I don't umderstamd how African Americans don't look African.
They do look the same to me.
Despite all this talk about AA being mixed,well,a majority are not.
Even if they are,its 80% African genes.
Everyone talks about Beyonce being mixed,and she is of course,but I'm 100% sure you can find an african woman who looks similiar to Beyonce without the mixture.
There are some AA you could plop in any African country and no one would take a second look.
Edit: there is one slight thing I forgot.
AA tend to have bigger frames than Africans,but again,that may be due to the tribal mixtures,or due to slavery when blacks were bred to be stronger.
I'm not sure.
Also,I have read conflicting things on where in Africa slaves were taken from.
Most sources say the West Coast of Africa,which would make a majority of AA have roots in West Africa.
However,I've also read sources that said they were taken from Central Africa.
Also,I have read conflicting things on where in Africa slaves were taken from.
Most sources say the West Coast of Africa,which would make a majority of AA have roots in West Africa.
However,I've also read sources that said they were taken from Central Africa.
The slaves brought to the Americas came from Senegal down to Angola. I've read that the Portugues brought some slaves from Mozambique in east Africa but that was probably a small number of slaves coming from there.
Nothing in Keith Richburg’s long and respected journalistic career at the Washington Post prepared him for what he would encounter as the paper’s correspondent in Africa. He found a continent where brutal murder had become routine, where dictators and warlords silenced dissent with machine guns and machetes, and where starvation had become depressingly common. With a great deal of personal anguish, Richburg faced a difficult question: If this is Africa, what does it mean to be an African American?
In this provocative and unvarnished account of his three years on the continent of his ancestors, Richburg takes us on a extraordinary journey that sweeps from Somalia to South Africa, showing how he confronted the divide between his African racial heritage and his American cultural identity.
The notion that African-Americans are African is preposterous. There is more to a people than skin color and DNA. After 400 years in North America living in close contact with Europeans the cultural mores, values and outlooks of your average African-American are different from that of an African. That's not a bad or good thing, it's just a thing. Folks need to stop romanticizing Africa.
I don't umderstamd how African Americans don't look African.
They do look the same to me.
Despite all this talk about AA being mixed,well,a majority are not.
Even if they are,its 80% African genes.
Everyone talks about Beyonce being mixed,and she is of course,but I'm 100% sure you can find an african woman who looks similiar to Beyonce without the mixture.
There are some AA you could plop in any African country and no one would take a second look.
Edit: there is one slight thing I forgot.
AA tend to have bigger frames than Africans,but again,that may be due to the tribal mixtures,or due to slavery when blacks were bred to be stronger.
I'm not sure.
Also,I have read conflicting things on where in Africa slaves were taken from.
Most sources say the West Coast of Africa,which would make a majority of AA have roots in West Africa.
However,I've also read sources that said they were taken from Central Africa.
If slaves were sourced from Central Africa they probably ended up in East African slave markets not Trans- Atlantic. There really was no need for Europeans to source slaves from Central Africa when they could get them easier from the Slave Coast.
Most slaves to the New World were sourced from Angola. However relatively few Angolans ended up in the USA. The very first Africans to land in Jamestown were probably Angolan though and may have already been Christian, some even mixed. This maybe one reason why the first Africans in colonial Virginia weren't enslaved outright but indentured. More here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3.html
The African ancestry of most African Americans is Nigerian/Cameroon, then Senegambia and then the Gold Coast.
The dominant African ancestry of British Caribbean Blacks is the Gold Coast. Many of the maroon Jamaican societies are definitively Akan. Accompong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The dominant African ancestry of those from the French Caribbean is Senegambia.
Spanish possessions sourced most slaves from Nigeria that's why Yoruba based religions are strong in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Haiti/DR (Haiti was colonized by Christopher Columbus for Spain).
The Portuguese sourced their slaves from Angola and to a degree Mozambique.
How is it determined which Africans came to the U.S? Where do the gullah people of the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia come from?
There is a prison in Lusiana called Angola prison. They say it was named Angola because many of the slaves brought to that area came from Angola.
DNA tests, slave ship manifests and known zone of controls. Slave ships were insured so firms like Lloyds of London still have records but because of folks trying to sue them unfortunately keep them under wraps.
There was a method to the madness, the Europeans didn't just pluck any Blacks they could find and ship them to America. Treaties were signed, forts were built.
Rice and indigo were dominant crops in the Sea Islands. Europeans didn't have much if any experience growing rice but Africans from Senegambia did and it is theorized they brought rice with them. At any rate slaves from this part of Africa were specifically brought to the Sea Islands to cultivate these crops. Linguists have been able to determine that the Gullah language uses African words from that part of Africa.
The notion that African-Americans are African is preposterous. There is more to a people than skin color and DNA. After 400 years in North America living in close contact with Europeans the cultural mores, values and outlooks of your average African-American are different from that of an African. That's not a bad or good thing, it's just a thing. Folks need to stop romanticizing Africa.
It's like I said in an earlier post, we are today, a western people in every aspect. I completely agree that there is more to a people than skin color. A white person born and raised in one of the many countries in Africa is better suited to that environment than I would be as a Black American.
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