Whitney Brown

Professor Releford

Writing, Literacy, & Discourse

12 November 2017

Why Do We Sing

Though the African Americas diaspora, I have learned that communicating our history

through oral story-telling isnt as strong as it used to be in the early 20th century. A great thinker,

Michael A. Gomez is tasked with pursuing the study of the direct correlations between the

African American community and its African origin. Chronologically, he goes through a re-

tracing of the slave trade because that is where the true beginning of stirring pot, specifically the

one influenced by American ideologies. From Gomezs studies I see there are so many

continents the salve trade effected, but it was in North America where you can see the evident

differences in the multitude of how African populations mix their individual ethnic identities that

then evolved into what our race is defined as now. I would like to use his work to prove that the

traditions and practices we had pre-slavery are currently shown through literary practices of

blacks today. Tradition is a type of literacy.

In Exchanging Our Country Marks: Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial

and Antebellum South1, Gomes provides explanation of the making of the African American

identity through the reflections of slave and multiple historical sources. The correlation between

what Africans used to know as the difference in ethnicity and Americas generality of race is due

to all the slave trade provided. More than forced labor, more than a destruction of culture, but

1
Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and
Antebellum South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
Gomez describes the movement from time period to time period to influence the identities of a

people. Within this new realm of blacks as one race, later on emerged a division of class.

Classism based on African born vs. American born slaves, the region of captivity, and also

colorism.

A larger topic that brought a lot of knew knowledge on the slave culture to me was

religion. The existence of a significant Islamic population that was brought to the Americas by

slaves that already held the religion. He argues that a lot of the relations between slaves from

distant lands had a part to play when it came to them coming to a common ground. He had a lot

to say about the modern influences we can still see today in the black church can be rooted from

the traditions of African spirituality. Though it went through era after era of destruction by

conformity, oppression, and racism there are so many hymns and ways we worship that Gomez

proves has deeper meaning.

Gomez also brings up the very profound points that West African culture, before we

began to embrace those who look nothing like us, assuming that all life honors life, but we were

wrong. In the end we fed and strengthened our own captors, there was pride and value in having

African blood.2 We were much more than what came at face value to our oppressors. This called

for the lost, but free slaves that did not live through the entirety of the journey across the

waters. The free slaves who gained spiritual life through losing their own showed the power of

freedom and self-ownership. Gomez furthers his point through true stories and folkloric tales.

The cultural background of who black people were before we were branded as blacks, held

2
Daniel Black Reads and Excerpt from his new book: The Coming. YouTube video, 10:02. Posted by MIST
Harlem, December 10, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npLkboi7MNI
weight in Gomezs point. The historical context of a people was lost in transition. Though it was

showed through their resistance and resilient attitude towards liberation.

There then came the reconstruction of the black identity as a whole. The conditions of the

New World and what it wanted blacks to be played a role, but there was independence in what

we chose to believe, how we chose to worship, and who really owned who we are. The context

of our African ancestors was instilled in us intellectually and spiritually so much that we as a

people are no longer in state of racist hostage, for the most part. It is still evident into todays

time that institutions built against us still stand, but where we were 2,000 years ago is not where

we are today.

In arguing in a position of solidarity and confidence in who we identify as a people,

Gomez describes religious institutions, African based historical context, and identity after slave

systems that allowed black people to come to a common identifier of who we are. In my review,

I am going to put Gomez into conversation with great thinkers on the subject of the African

diaspora. I hope to shed light on all of the new found correlations I have discovered through

Gomezs work while analyzing his ideological messages.

The Coming is a novel by Daniel Black. It ultimately serves as deeper look into the oral

storytelling and the tradition of literature within the African culture that then matriculated into

the African American experience. Written in three parts, the story follows Africans from

different parts of the continent. He narrates life before the Middle Passage as they fight to

maintain so that their stories can one day be told. Black is purposed with reflecting the pure need

to sustain life under the conditions forced on our ancestors. He read aloud an excerpt from the

first part of the novel:

 With open arms we embrace those who look nothing like us, assuming that all life

honors life, but we were wrong. In the end we fed and strengthened our own captors. We

cannot claim naivet, we cannot say we were people undeveloped, we cannot say there

were not signs. We can say only we did not heed them. Sounds of wisdom was as

common to us as the evening breeze. We scoffed and shrugged at the elders forewarning

of a time of great tragedy and chaos. We did not believe them.

Only shame to bear, and pity. Great pity that a people so strong missed so many clues.

The forest whispered it, the birds chirped it, the tree waved it, the antelopes danced it, the

tall grass swayed it, the lions roared it, and the elders said it over and over, Beware!

Seek not the thing you do not need. Greed destroys wisdom. Let just enough be

enough!3

Gomez focuses in on this topic when he examines how ethnicity and class are correlated within

the cauldron of the early enslavement experience.4 There are aspects of the African experience

that was blinded with materialism. The idea that we could not protect ourselves from the

inevitable because we saw value in what we did not possess, opposed to all the intangible,

unique, aspects of our culture and tradition that we already held. Black tells a story of depth and

spiritual connection to historical events. Within his use of symbols, he shows how chaos was

foreshadowed. In an in-class lecture, Professor Myers also added to the topic. He said, the

understanding of the slave trade can be seen through the snake-like intent the Europeans held

when they had the chance to interact with Africans. I know this assertion had to have a biblical

3
Daniel Black Reads and Excerpt from his new book: The Coming. YouTube video, 10:02. Posted by MIST
Harlem, December 10, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npLkboi7MNI
4
Myers, Ph. D., Joshua. Tads Query Lecture, Intro to Africana Studies II, Howard University, Washington, D.C.,
November 2nd, 2017
correlation to the ill-minded snake who looked to temp Eve as she ate from the forbidden fruit

tree in the Christian-based anecdote. Temptation, ignorance, and materialism, is said by Black, to

all be factors that could have been avoided if we as a people would have held wisdom to a

higher-standard. Our ignorance as a people is not seen in the lack of knowledge, but the

purposeful disregard. There was a belief that there could be more, and the Europeans held the

key.

The religious correlation between slaves and the Ethiopian people had a strong basis.

Years and years of study have shown that this stigma of black being inferior to any race is a new

ideology. Physical representation of who we are have been studied and used to prove we are

more. As I studied Gomez I saw the reoccurring theme of Africans holding pride in their linage

no matter who they were told to be. Du Bois shares more on the topic:

At the end of the period the empire fell apart into Egyptian and Ethiopian halves, and a

silence of three centuries ensued. It is quite possible that an incursion of conquering black

men from the south poured over the land in these years and dotted Egypt in the next

centuries with monuments on which the full blooded Negro type is strongly and

triumphantly impressed. The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so familiar to the world, the Sphinxes

of Tanis, the statue from the Fayum. The statue of the Esquiline at Rome, and the Colossi

of Bubastis all represent black, full-blooded Negroes and are described by Petrie as

having high cheek bones, flat checks, both in one plane, a massive nose, firm projecting

lips, and thick hair, with an austere and almost savage expression of power.

Blyden, the great modern black leader of West Africa, said of the Sphinx at Gizeh: Her

features are decidedly of the African or Negro type, with expanded nostrils. If, then;, the

sphinx was placed here-looking out in majestic and mysterious silence over the empty
 plain where once stood the great city of Memphis in all its pride and glory, as an

emblematic representation of the king is not the inference clear as to the peculiar type

or race to which that king belonged.5

I couldnt have said it better. From Du Bois I take that history has clearly proven that we were

built to be kings and queens. We prevail and that is some of reason why we are victimized by

oppression. Others look at our strengths within our intellect, physical build, and how we carry

ourselves and choose to attempt to take this. They fail. We use these aspects of who we are to

overcome any type of adversity. This feeds into the identification of self that Gomez pursues. In

Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson, he explains that there soon came a time after many years

between the original, un-touched black settlements in West Africa and a post-slavery culture in

the United States and the Caribbean , [when] Black peoples were no longer conveniently

lodged in or organized by slave systems. The Blacks of the New World could no longer be

casually pinioned by the curious as slaves or-at the margins of such systems-as freemen. And,

inevitably, their societies and subcultures upon which the intelligentsia drew were steadily

becoming less autochthonous. The social patterns, the habits of thought, language, and

custom6 were re-invented within a scene of confinement, but also in the state of having a

freedom.

5
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Negro. Vol. 1915. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, C2001, pg. 19
6
Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Press, 1984.