What is African American culture? 2013 re-Post

2013 I wrote this post after attending my first Black Students Union meeting, with a minority group of  students of the university I attended in the USA. The conversation was interesting and issues that the African Americans community are freely and radically  speaking about today, were those we spoke about in enclosed rooms and among ourselves. I decided that I wanted to share this post, untouched and unedited, as it were in 2013 when i first wrote it. With increasing unrest of race and social issues for brown skinned people in America, this post is just as relevant now as it was then. 

Post: 

Today I went to the Black Student Union meeting at Bellarmine University. Today the topic of discussion was "What is Black Culture?" A very intriguing question.  I think no one can really define what black culture is because culture is so diluted, culture is determined by different elements of different places people live in. Culture can never really be definite because of all these elements that contribute to it. It's more like the domino effect, once touched by another element it causes change to the original element. So what can you attribute to culture if you can never really fully define it? Being South African, I find that we have it much easier, because we have the privilege of having African traditions and having African culture. What is the difference? Traditions are practices that belong to your tribe or family and have been part of your ancestral linage, so each African culture/tribe will have their own tradition. Where as in African culture, that is an identity that unites us, influenced by all the different tribe and cultures we have.
I feel like African American still carry around some anger, anger against slavery and against their own. I asked a few questions in the meeting just to find out more about how they feel and how they are treated as citizens. It was interesting to find out that the youth have so much to say, but I don't ever see any youth movements in the US that are highly publicized, but yet they have so much to say and what they are saying are things that need to be heard. The youth have such great ideas and visions for their country and for their communities, but there are so discouraged. The young people I met today are young African American leaders. I feel like they don't believe in themselves enough to think they make a deference and these are the kind of young people the government needs to motivate. If you can get a nation to start thinking of ways to improve their lives and the lives of their people and communities, you get a whole nation of Obamas in every black community in America.

The topic became more elaborate when we went into how African Americans look down on each other or have negative views of each other. That is something that i find common between African American and South Africans, in SA black people have a distorted ideas and images of each other. Jealousy and strife is a common thing. It’s funny how in both cultures you expect the black person (or coloured) to do something wrong and when your expectations are met, you throw around words against them. I feel like you get what you expect. Why can black people never be happy for each other? When one sees someone moving up in life they have to pull them down either with words or crime against them.
It is still horrible how the only people that are portrayed as the most dangerous or bad are black people. I decided to pull out some FBI stats on crime in the USA to see how true it is that the African Americans are the highest in crime in the country: (the table is below this article).

I will not comment on the stats on the table but I would like people to look at them and see how true or not these pre-conceived ideas and images of African American people are.
This is also for African Americans to stop portraying themselves as a culture that is not one hundred true of themselves. What people see on TV and in music videos, is what people expect you them to be. I know coming to the States I had my own idea of African Americans, but these are conceptions put in us by what they allow television to portray about them.

It is so difficult being an African American actor in Hollywood, because most of the movie roles they are cast in portray them in a light they are trying to get away from. In order for this culture to step out of the light they have been pushed in, is by not accepting roles that make mockeries of their culture. There are enough African Americans in American television to make a difference. In fact some of the most powerful women in the world are African American Michelle Obama and Ursula Burns.  I pulled out more woman in media and in business in the USA, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, and Rosalind Brewer. There are so many powerful voice behind the voices of African American people. The most powerful man in the world in an African American man and President of the most powerful country in the world. 

African Americans have so much cultural challenges, from within their own black community and the outside.

"I enjoyed the meeting and i had a lot of fun, thanks guys and great food." 

Table 43 A the table is from:  http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43

Offense charged	Total arrests
	Total	White	Black
TOTAL	9,499,725	6,578,133	2,697,539
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter	8,341	4,000	4,149
Forcible rape	14,611	9,504	4,811
Robbery	82,436	35,443	45,827
Aggravated assault	305,220	194,981	102,597
Burglary	227,899	151,934	72,244
Larceny-theft	977,743	670,768	281,197
Motor vehicle theft	50,902	32,575	17,250
Arson	8,965	6,479	2,302
Violent crime2	410,608	243,928	157,384
Property crime2	1,265,509	861,756	372,993
Other assaults	952,421	625,330	304,083
Forgery and counterfeiting	53,791	35,239	17,695
Fraud	127,664	84,919	40,621
Embezzlement	12,454	8,155	4,032
Stolen property; buying, receiving, possessing	71,727	47,434	23,191
Vandalism	182,482	132,850	45,055
Weapons; carrying, possessing, etc.	117,820	68,453	47,515
Prostitution and commercialized vice	44,090	23,555	19,227
Sex offenses (except forcible rape and prostitution)	52,891	38,422	13,189
Drug abuse violations	1,171,866	783,564	371,248
Gambling	6,507	1,937	4,351
Offenses against the family and children	87,586	56,973	28,183
Driving under the influence	924,210	788,175	111,480
Liquor laws	380,663	312,106	51,446
Disorderly conduct	447,201	281,531	153,840
Vagrancy	22,375	12,989	8,794
All other offenses (except traffic)	2,693,823	1,794,893	837,095
	1,150	634	506
Curfew and loitering law violations1 Because of rounding, the percentages may not add to 100.0.