https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWB8t7nDnh9/?igsh=cnkxeGx3c3kzZDAx
because you are wrong and don’t understand Black Culturr. American culture is Black American culture. “Culture” comes from Latin cultura, meaning cultivation. You will know Black American culture by the fruits she has produced. You’re primary talking about social infrastructure and not the more visible forms of culture. Culture to you is a living system of values that can be navigated and felt through a network of trust of respecting the social contract (obligation) of that culture which is why you link it to promise. That’s true because real culture promises something and offers orientation it’s what fuels tourism. I can go to Japan and experience the culture. People now believe culture is cosmetic.
Black Americans culture has so much output, thing is much of the institutional and geographic expression of that culture has been disrupted, attacked, dissolved, commodified, or made unstable. Now the thing is just because people “break” that social contract doesn’t mean the culture isn’t there. We are a people whose culture has often been mined for output while our communities have been denied stability or have experience disruption. The foundation exists. The problem is that the promise has been repeatedly interrupted. You don’t judge a culture by the people who break the social contract. You generalize a narrow example and treat it as a universal standard and then commit non sequitur. Weak social or community infrastructure doesn’t equal cultural absence. Multiple interruptions esp post Segregation. Your argument that BAs lack culture is just basically a No True Scotsman on rhetoric and design. You create a purity test or litmus test for what a culture is and then unless a group can offer this ideal community promise in a very visible way, you don’t count it as having “real” culture. You narrow the category until groups you disagree with can be excluded. Black American communities have output so much that is simply American culture but BAs are segregated from this. It’s a tree planted in our yard where the fruit of this tree falls into another and a fence divides the two. After decades, the other neighbor decide to remove the fruit after decades of collecting and selling it. Tell that to the Black Americans of Rosewood and Tulsa or of Harlem. Tell that to the people of the Deep South. In Mississippi, of the Delta and New Orleans. The list goes on and on but absence of evidence to you. If you’re not looking for something you’re not going to see it. I see the community, I see hear about what changed and how it got disrupted. You wouldn’t know because you got here after the fact. Major disruptions to Black America happened all throughout the 60s (COINTELPRO), 70s (dismantling Black Power organizations and War on Drugs), 80s (Reagan) 90 (Clinton and the PIC) and Y2K.
The Government practiced a containment strategy while disrupting the social fabric of the community. People will say well you can go to a black community and leave a pile of crack, guns, liquor etc and nobody will tell the people to use it. They would take the crack and sell it to each other, then take the guns and use it to kill each and other while drunk off the liquor.
The social fabric was destroyed as people became opportunistic. The government didn’t force people to do anything. They increased the likelihood and they created the pipelines, but they didn’t force people to participate in their own self destruction. Nobody has to tell a desperate, isolated, economically cornered population to consume what has been strategically made abundant, lucrative, and culturally reinforced. The question is not whether each individual retained agency. They did. The question is who shaped the field of choices, who benefited from the collapse, and why Black neighborhoods were treated as zones to be managed, criminalized, and contained rather than protected and developed. Freeway Rick Ross and the entire music industry was built in the same environment. Music industry convinced impressionable Black Americans to glorify this via modern minstrel clowns.
Black America has her problems but to reduce culture to just pathologies is erroneous. There’s internal factors that’s ignored and there’s external factors that’s over represented as the sole causes. I see it as a continuous occupation.
Zanu is perceptive but his conclusions are off. He can see the issue but lack the knowledge to interpret what he’s witnessing. I can see how he came to these conclusions as he is outside looking in and sees dysfunction. He is reacting to the Atlantic and comparing and contrasting with other cultures/people groups he’s encountered.
I challenge Zanu to learn more about the culture. To get more in depth to broaden his understanding.
