African History

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RESPONSE:

1-Highlight and explain one example for each of the following terms: cultural interaction, integration, assimilation; with illustrations from the material covered in chapter 1 reading.

Generally, cultural interaction is communication between two or more cultures where there is a transmission of ideas, norms and values, For example, cultural interaction occurred between different cultures of Africans when they came to America. Through interaction and cultural integration, a new culture emerged with new languages, arts, religions, food, and music, etc. (Dodson, attached). In chapter 1, Herskovits argued that Africans retained aspects of African culture In North America with the most direct remnants of African culture are found in a number of isolated communities, mainly in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Cultural assimilation is when an individual or individuals adopts some or all aspects of a dominant culture (such as its religion, language, norms, values etc.). Cultural assimilation is a process of socialization. It can be a voluntary process, but can also sometimes be the result of involuntary political decisions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_culture). For example, when American slaves came over to America, they assimilated some aspects of Christianity, but report that the new religion was qualitatively different from the Christianity of the Western world. (Dodson, attached). Frazier argued, however, that the African culture was totally lost through the process of capture and stripped of the African heritage and, consequently, assimilated completely into the dominant American society (chapter 1).

Herskovits's the Myth of the Negro Past by?confirmed that African traditions had survived in black cultures in the Americas but also revealed the presence of a distinctive African American culture in the United States. And the Herskovits Frazier debate, though an old one, is still central to an understanding of developments in the field of New World Africanisms.

2-West African ...