Africans and African AmericansEssay Preview: Africans and African AmericansReport this essayInsights about the African and African American according to Achebe and DouglassThroughout the years, the image of the African American culture has been portrayed in in a negative light. Many people look to African, and African American literature to gain knowledge about the African American culture. The true culture and image often goes unseen, or is tarnished because writers who have no true insight or experience, have proceeded to write about things in which they are uneducated.. For years the world has seen writers attempt to taint and damage the image of the African American. Through strength and determination, several African American writers have been able to portray the true image and struggle of the Negro through various writings and narratives. This has helped give a factual insight about the African and the African American. Three particular authors helped give detailed insight about the African and The African American. African American themes of tribal belief, slavery, and The black family were displayed in the works of Chinua Achebe, Fredrick Douglass, and Ann Petry.
Although Achebe conveys many different themes in his writing Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe expresses the importance of tribal beliefs in African Culture.
Things Fall Apart is a compelling inside view of tribal life in Africa. Through a knowledgeable narrative, Achebe illustrates culture rich in tradition. Achebe seems to wish to disprove a widespread stereotype that Africa had no culture.
Since Igbo people did not construct a rigid and closed system of thought to explain the religion man anyone seeking insight into their religion must seek it along their way. Achebe has explained the Igbo concept of “chi” in an essay being that each individual has a chi, a “spirit being” parallel to his physical being (Achebe 82).
Although the Igbo religious may often times seem unclear. It was very evident that the religious authorities are well respected. Achebe work displays the value that the community has for the powers that be. Achebe also shows that Igbo religious authorities, such as the Oracle, seem to possess supernatural insights. He approaches the matter of Igbo religion with a sense of wonder (Draper 15).
In keeping with the Ibo vision of female nature, the tribe allowed wife beating. The novel describes two instances when Okonkwo beats his second wife, once when she did not come home to make his meal. He beat her severely and was punished but only because he beat her during the Week of Peace. He beat her again when she referred to him as one of those “guns that never shot.”(Achebe 89).
On the other hand, The Narrative of Fredrick Douglass shows the different attributes of slavery and the effects they have on Africans and African Americans. The narrative shows how ignorance is used as a tool of slavery. Douglass Narrative shows how white slaveholders enable slavery by keeping their slaves ignorant. At the time Douglass was writing, many people believed that slavery was a natural state of being. They believed that blacks were inherently unable of participating in civil society and thus
should be kept as workers for whites.Moreover,. The Narrative displays the use of knowledge as a tool for freedom. Just as slave owners keep men and women as slaves by depriving them of knowledge and education, slaves must seek knowledge and education in order to pursue freedom. It is from Hugh Auld that Douglass learns this notion that knowledge must be the way to freedom, as Auld forbids his wife to teach Douglass how to read and write because education ruins slaves (Davis 65). Douglass sees that Auld has unwittingly revealed the strategy by which whites manage to keep blacks as slaves and by which blacks might free themselves. Douglass presents his own self-education as the primary means by which he is able to free himself, and as his greatest tool to work for the freedom of all slaves.
[…]
And at the same time, the Narrative also shows that whites are capable of freeing themselves from slavery, but that if a black man would free himself, as he has done by freeing all the Negroes under his care, then how could this be? The Narrative includes the theory of the freedman, as well as the theory of the freeman. This theory is also discussed further in his chapter on the meaning of freedom. This theory makes a clear distinction between freed and enslaved slaves. Freed men are free (under white law and laws like Jim Crow) while free slaves are enslaved (and as a result of white domination). And in his chapter on slavery, Douglass states that slavery is not a racial crime but a “human right” because the term “slave” has been used to describe the enslaved. Even though the term “slave” can be seen only as a label attached to the slave, the “man” was not called into slavery, just as no man is or ever will be called into slavery (Douglass 67).
(It should be noted that this section does not deal with African slaves: the Narrative does not make the use of slaves a crime, and there is no explicit prohibition on slaves not being held at bondage.)
Why would all freed men support a society based on slavery? To some extent, it’s simple.
To many, the idea that only blacks are free is a myth. (See Alan G. Brown 1983; Alan M. Prentice 1985. “I Hate Blacks: Why They’re the Only Rest of the World, and Why We Should Be Crazy about them”) And it’s also deeply disturbing that whites try to turn the world around on blacks. It seems clear that the whole concept of race is nonsense. The narrative shows that whites are doing it for the benefit of blacks; they don’t want those blacks to leave and get out of whites. I can’t see whites giving up on blacks and then abandoning them in droves.
It’s unclear how much this is true of how blacks have been portrayed to whites by the Narrative or why any whites wish to allow them to make such an attempt. A lot of whites want to get people back to their own racial principles, which is what has been brought up in the book in the early chapters. But what about whites who have left Blacks? It seems clear that white people have felt their own economic and political power and self-determination as a result, if only for a moment. We’ve had no other explanation than this:
The United States is no longer a colony, and those who remain in white hands are doing their jobs as white workers. We have freed white men and women to work for ourselves, not others, and we hope that we can restore their dignity, honesty and sense of duty to the country.
This brings us to the point that blacks had their fair share of racism. According to John F. Kennedy, who wrote in The Great Civil War, the United States “did better than any other nation in the world by giving blacks their freedom.” His view of the relationship between