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As a Ghanaian, I know a woman without kids is seen as less than. It's important to note that in traditional Akan culture, which is the dominant culture of Ghana, inheritance and familial lines flow through the maternal line. So a woman that has no kids is seen as contributing to the decline of the family.
This is unfortunate because in 1968 a Ghanaian woman that didn't have kids, didn't have them because of medical issues not out of choice.
Now that you mention it, I do remember reading that about Akan culture...Now that you explained it, I
can see the cultural logic behind the statements.
And I did agree with the American teens that what they were seeing was slavery.
I also agree that even to this day people ignore the fact that African tribes had a major role in the existence of the African slave trade. It is a reason why I, as a black American, never claim I don't have a culture and why I never see any African culture/society/tribe as in any way better than my own.
I noted above I have done a DNA test and I have African ancestry from a variety of places on the continent (every part of the continent except Madagascar it seems lol).
When my long ago ancestors were sold off for trinkets or weapons or liquor, for me, my desire for Africa left and my people have created a beautiful history and culture for me here that I am grateful for. I am especially grateful, as I noted above, that we as a "tribe" in America, really have always been dedicated to ensuring the freedom of each other and other Americans. Of course there will be outliers but in America I think we were too busy trying to fight the ridiculousness of white supremacy to be bothered to try to enslave our own people for our own benefit to any wide degree, especially not after the Civil War.
There is a book that is just out of an interview recorded in the 1930s with a survivor of from the last slave
ship ( which was recently discovered) by a black anthropologist. In a nutshell there was a guy who lived in
a Yoruba town which was raided by Amazons from the Kingdom of Dahomey, the survivors were taken to
Ouidah, penned for a time, then put on a ship bound for Alabama, sold, then freed and they founded
Africa Town which is near Mobile. He is the great-great-great grandfather of one of the current rappers.
Dahomey made its fortunes from raiding for slaves and was in frequent conflict with the Yoruba kingdoms.
The area where all of this took place in now the nation of Benin (formerly Dahomey).
The book is "Baracoon" by Zora Neal Hurston.
I've read it recently and it was a great read. We also discussed it in college in regards to the role of the African in the slave trade.
The Dahomey actually beheaded the tribe members of Kudjoe Lewis, the subject of the book. He stated his village was raided in the middle of the night and nearly everyone was killed and beheaded, including his chief. Those who were not killed were taken and sold as slaves on the coast.
In college, we mostly discussed this work over the fact that many members of the black bourgeoisie in America didn't want the work to be published in the late 1920s/early1930s when it was initially completed because they didn't want the focus on the grievances of black Americans against white Americans to be thrown off course whereas whites would try to blame the Africans (similar to what people do today now that this is more commonly known).
Even though I can understand their POV, I feel it did a disservice to the idea that we, as black Americans are somehow lacking in some way in comparison to Africans.
I've never thought this personally but I have known and stilll know many black Americans who believe that they are "culture-less" that they are powerless, that they have nothing that their actual, single "culture" was stolen from them. They also want to argue and act like Africans were too dumb for 400 years to know that the slavery in the Americas was different than their own. IMO they just did not care - those Africans. Also many 20th century black authors, some with an Afrocentrist spin, attempted to paint these...evils of Africans in a not so evil light IMO. Many 19th century black Americans who either were transported themselves to the Americans or whose parents/grandparents were and who knew of African involvement - they did not overwhelmingly want to go back to Africa at all as a result of their knowledge. Even Frederick Douglass spoke on this:
Quote:
The African role in the slave trade was fully understood and openly acknowledged by many African-Americans even before the Civil War. For Frederick Douglass, it was an argument against repatriation schemes for the freed slaves. “The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia,” he warned. “We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.”
The blue were Douglass' words in regards to ideas that free black people should move to Liberia via the schemes of the American Colonization Society.
Will note on the ship the "Clotilda" that test show that the ship recently found was not the "Clotilda" which was the ship that Lewis and about 100 other Africans were on when they were brought from the Western coast of Africa to Mobile, AL in 1859.
There also seems to be a "water grab". I was just watching a little documentary where they showed how fishing companies from all over the world (various European countries, Russia, China etc.) bribe West African governments so that they allow them to basically empty their waters of fish, using illegal fishing methods like dragging a giant net between two ships. At the same time African fishers are in despair as they hardly catch anything anymore and there are no other jobs, let alone money to buy imported food.
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