Culture Overview: African American
- African Americans are defined “as people having origins of any Black race in Africa” by the US Census Bureau.
- Most of the African American culture flourishes and becomes more prominent during the time and because of slavery.
- Religion and Culture :As new African immigrants come into America, their culture has blended in with the Americans, thus creating the African American culture. During the time of slavery, many of these slaves adopted the Christian religion but their practice of their religion was much different from an everyday Christian. Some of them mix their native tribe religion with Christianity to form a new religion called voodoo.
- Courtship and Marriage: In the world of slavery, even though they cannot be legally married, they perform rituals as part of their courtship. Their method of courtship is also very different from the whites. A ring of people will be made around male and female as they shout their comments and approval.
- Language: To prevent rebellion, slave owners intentionally mix people who speak different languages together to prevent rebellion. To communicate, slaves join some of their languages together leading to the development of pidgins, a simple mixture of 2 different language.