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Greens, yams, okra, jazz, blues, gospel music, catching the spirit at church, braiding hair, pouring out libations at funerals, poly rhythms and call and response in music, dropping the letter "R" from words such Fo' Do' Ho' etc.... I would say most African American culture is a mixing of about 50% Celtic (The largest groups of Whites in the U.S. south during slavery), 40% African, and 10% native american (five civilized tribes of the U.S. south)
There are some Africanisms that still exist in Black American like teeth sucking, the food, body movements, and music. But our culture is predominantly European based more so than the other African descended people in the Americas. Only strongly Afrocentrics would disagree with this.
I honestly feel that this depends on the individual and what region of the country they're from. It could be said that native Black Americans in California or New York lean more towards European customs, but no one will ever convince me that the same is true down south, in a city like New Orleans or with the Gullah people of the Atlantic Coast.
It can't be denied that blacks in the Western world are indeed influenced by European culture, but the extent to which that is true is being exaggerated a bit here, in my honest opinion.
We do? Why would we assimilate into the African American community? Most of my fellow Africans that live in America just do our own thing. We have our own culture, eat different foods, and have interest in different things. I don't see any sort of Assimilation into the Black American community. Maybe with the Afro Latinos and especially the Caribbeans..Like Jamaicans and others because they have a similar history as African Americans with slavery and everything and you share a common language.
I think that remarks shows a lack of knowledge. Some groups like Somalians pick up and use AAVE in their way of talking. Some are downright ghetto on the outside. However look just under the surface and there's an entirely different culture there.
That's true basically but at the sametime Black-Americans are very different from White-Americans in many ways. Looking at things from the outside you may see the similarities of both groups. But within America it's generally known how blacks and whites are different. Compare a black Baptist church to a white one. Compare a black marching band to a white one. Compare a funk song to a rock song or compare most black singers to white singers. Or whenever blacks get into a sport we do things differently from how whites played it like with basketball. Even black and white attitudes towards fashion can be different.
So I guess we Black-Americans are more European than African but at the sametime we do many things in our own unique way that's different from white-Americans. We express that European culture a little different from whites is what I'm getting at. We can even speak english differently.
basically, if we had white skin, we would be classified as some other European culture.
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