AHC/WI: More African Influence In USA Culture

Now don't get me wrong Africa Americans have had a BIG influence on US culture especially in music and food. However unlike their counterparts in Latin America they don't seem retain the more traditional elements of their culture like clothing and traditional music (For example lots of African Braziliains still use traditional instruments they eventually evolved into modern music genres like samba) since the European influence has been strong on them. How can more traditional African influence seep into the U.S. and what could be the effects?
 
Now don't get me wrong Africa Americans have had a BIG influence on US culture especially in music and food. However unlike their counterparts in Latin America they don't seem retain the more traditional elements of their culture like clothing and traditional music (For example lots of African Braziliains still use traditional instruments they eventually evolved into modern music genres like samba) since the European influence has been strong on them. How can more traditional African influence seep into the U.S. and what could be the effects?

Slavery in Brazil worked differently from slavery in the United States. In Brazil, slaves of the same ethnic group were typically kept together because it was believed they would work better that way. There were also large communities of freed slaves from early on and some legal sanction for slave families - for instance, slaves in Brazil could legally marry. All this made cultural transmission much easier.

In the parts of the United States where slavery worked most like Brazil, much more of African culture was preserved - the Gullah/Geechee people of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands are the most culturally African of any African-American society. So if you want more traditional African influence, the way to do it would probably be for British colonists to decide that the Brazilian system is the most efficient way to keep slaves. It would help if they had a more Portuguese attitude toward race, but that may not be necessary if they reach the same decision for economic reasons.
 
Oh yes how does this affect religion on African Americans? They don't have high of a mortality rate as their Latino counterparts so they're much more assimilated. But if the way they're grouped is much like in Latin America how is religion affected?
 
Oh yes how does this affect religion on African Americans? They don't have high of a mortality rate as their Latino counterparts so they're much more assimilated. But if the way they're grouped is much like in Latin America how is religion affected?

Well, if they are able to retain much of their original culture, I imagine religion would be a part of that too, whether whole or syncretized to varying degrees with Christianity.
 

Benevolent

Banned
Just make it so the slave holding society does not try to assimilate black americans or even more easily just have certain regions and states select populations from Africa that are more or less from the same socio-linguistic cultures and make christening them less important maybe by making Christian slaves illegal to hold and have actually implementation of the law.
67 views and nothing?

Well I mean look at the topics and threads on this forum, most mention of blacks is in passing usually as slaves during Civil War ATLs

The Male Rebellion ATL is excellent though.

Contrary to others on the thread Gullah are one of many populations that retained African cultural traits more visibly, there were many maroon societies in the South.
 

Benevolent

Banned
Oh yes how does this affect religion on African Americans? They don't have high of a mortality rate as their Latino counterparts so they're much more assimilated. But if the way they're grouped is much like in Latin America how is religion affected?

Our Christianity is already influenced by African interpretations of Islam (ring shouts are African Islamic for example) and up until relatively recently Hoodoo was quite common as well. Hell I still see people fuck with goopher dust and grisgris in NYC.
 
Slavery in Brazil worked differently from slavery in the United States. In Brazil, slaves of the same ethnic group were typically kept together because it was believed they would work better that way. There were also large communities of freed slaves from early on and some legal sanction for slave families - for instance, slaves in Brazil could legally marry. All this made cultural transmission much easier.

In the parts of the United States where slavery worked most like Brazil, much more of African culture was preserved - the Gullah/Geechee people of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands are the most culturally African of any African-American society. So if you want more traditional African influence, the way to do it would probably be for British colonists to decide that the Brazilian system is the most efficient way to keep slaves. It would help if they had a more Portuguese attitude toward race, but that may not be necessary if they reach the same decision for economic reasons.

This is the correct answer. But to add a bit more detail, there was actually a reason why they believed they worked better together. In the USA, the main crop was cotton, where you would have ~50 slaves on a plantation. You would try to get no more then two or three from any ethno-linguistic group so you prevented a sense of unity or them being able to communicate in anything other than English. This reduced the chance of insurrection.

In places like Brazil and the Caribbean the sugar plantations had hundreds of slaves working together on a plantation, so it was pointless even attempting to try this strategy, so you ended up with several ethnic groups on each plantation having dozens of slaves. They could thus keep their tribe's cultural traditions alive.

The reason the Gullah culture survives on the coast of the Carolina is because the crop there was not cotton but rice. Rice farming required skilled ability on the "task system" (unlike the "gang system" for cotton and suger), so you need each slave to be skilled in these tasks. Rather than training them up, it was often easiest just to buy slaves that already had these skills, which certain ethnic groups in coastal Africa had. So you'd buy all your slaves from these rice-farming groups for the benefit of their skills. As these slaves were thus from just two or three groups, they could also keep their traditions alive.
 

Benevolent

Banned
This is the correct answer. But to add a bit more detail, there was actually a reason why they believed they worked better together. In the USA, the main crop was cotton, where you would have ~50 slaves on a plantation. You would try to get no more then two or three from any ethno-linguistic group so you prevented a sense of unity or them being able to communicate in anything other than English. This reduced the chance of insurrection.

In places like Brazil and the Caribbean the sugar plantations had hundreds of slaves working together on a plantation, so it was pointless even attempting to try this strategy, so you ended up with several ethnic groups on each plantation having dozens of slaves. They could thus keep their tribe's cultural traditions alive.

The reason the Gullah culture survives on the coast of the Carolina is because the crop there was not cotton but rice. Rice farming required skilled ability on the "task system" (unlike the "gang system" for cotton and suger), so you need each slave to be skilled in these tasks. Rather than training them up, it was often easiest just to buy slaves that already had these skills, which certain ethnic groups in coastal Africa had. So you'd buy all your slaves from these rice-farming groups for the benefit of their skills. As these slaves were thus from just two or three groups, they could also keep their traditions alive.

So this is simplified on many levels.

1.cotton was independently domesticated in Africa and had a wider spread of cultivation than African rice which lowered the need to seek out specific ethnic groups with that knowledge.

It was still specialized as all crops are and infact Prince Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori greatly improved conditions in the plantation he was sent to while enslaved.


2. Sugar plantations in Louisiana, Haiti and Brazil were the most intensive in the New World with high death rates. The cultural survival comes largely from the fact that these places had continuous flows of African born labor as well as resilient communities in urban, peri-urban and Maroon communities that lived much longer.

3. Using Haiti as an example while there were arguably hundreds of ethnic groups on the island, eventually Dahomey and to a much smaller degree KiKongo people left cultural influences.

The reality is no African culture exists in some universal level, when the context of enslaved African communities eventually particular African groups culturally dominate. Having 50 slaves doesn't guarantee anything unless it's composition allows for a particular group to take hold, arguably by having particular groups being in places of power in plantation settings and having #4 come into play

4. Sick Season. The time of Malarial airs and sweltering heat left entire regions nearly white free. While there were black drivers the reality was their literal and cultural survival came from limited interference from white planters and over all influences. Leading fellow Africans in positions of authority and autonomy for a significant part of the year.
 
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