African American Cultural Literacy

by SEvans

2/2024

African-American Cultural Literacy and the TEA-ASK Project is an effort to preserve African-American centered perspectives and truths.  This project came from the urgency to respond to the frightening truth and concern that (our) written cultural truths and history could be rewritten or wiped away in a matter of a few keystrokes, if a mental record and physical documentation are not taught, passed down or held sacred. 

I remember an online discussion about Eli Whitney and the cotton gin.  Most of us of an older generation may remember being taught in school that Eli Whitney was a Black man who invented the cotton gin.  Now in our internet searches, what appears next to the name is a White man!  

In preparing this work, one of the many books I read was Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  It’s an old American classic, abolitionist novel.  It is a book that was sometimes part of high school English or Historic literary curriculum, even before I entered grade school.  Anyway. . .it was in this reading that I understood the Eli Whitney situation: apparently, many of us had been given historic information that wasn’t clear.  Taken from Stowe’s novel, I realized that Eli Whitney was indeed a White man, but the inventor of ‘the cotton gin’ was an enslaved Black man. 

As custom of the day, a ‘slave’ had no claims to inventions and therefore such things go down in history under the names of the White ‘owner’ who was in their charge—as Stowe pointed out in her novel written over 150 years ago! So today, when one researches the name, what appears is a White man and his inventions–including the cotton gin*. There is no more mentioning of the Black man on any of these internet sources. So which story is correct?

In that online discussion, it was shocking for most of us who remember learning it differently and there is little information to clear up this mis-take. This brought up a very real concern: could this technology, though rapidly searching and answering, be used to distort or to give outright false information posing as fact?

In this day of technology, where research is reduced to Google searches on the internet, he who holds the best position in the algorithm holds the key to what is viewed as truth and correct–whether that be definitively or historically–often without question. If one knows no better, all he/she can account for is what is presented. This is the scary reality of our day. Before our very eyes we can see terms, concepts and even people redefined with little hint as to what once was. 

Where it concerns the African American and Black people, my initial concern was the “white-washing” of Black history. Today, that concern has grown multi-directional. History could be and now often is both sanitized AND debased all by the subjectification of a new breed of critics.  These critiques come from those carrying the beliefs or those subjecting themselves to the ideals of not only ‘white-washing’, but now the Woke, the feminist, the ultra-liberal and any number of appeals that lean history towards a perspective rather than facts and truth.  And so algorithms post images, articles and research at the top of search engines resulting in the overshadowing and even deletion of historic narratives if they don’t fit into “our” new perspectives of history and its players. 

So what’s the problem? The problem is. . .If our children don’t have a working, living knowledge of who they are (as a collective), who and what their people have done, the sacrifices and contributions of their people, they may never know who they are. That is the pain, shame and horror of chattel slavery, Black Codes and Jim Crow. They may never know that there has also been Many Blessings–the Gift of Black folk–as W.E.B. Dubois entitles it.  They would never know the many blessings that our presence has bestowed upon this nation called “the land of the free. . .” and land of prosperity.  They would never know that aside from all of the monuments, governmental structures and historic buildings our people built with their hands, and all of the roadways and forests Black hands cleared to make room for civilization to grow and commerce to thrive, that it was the Black man/woman who set the groundwork for all of the pop and popular music forms that we know here and across the globe.  The world would never know Rock & Roll, and all other Rocks (hard rock, soft rock, etc.)  that came from it;  the world would never have been introduced to the American classical music, known as Jazz!  Nor would there ever have been Hip Hop or Rap! 

But even bigger than that is our beloved Democracy! Yes, the Black man and woman has shaped Democracy in the modern world! 

Had it not been for the Black man and woman, it is questionable if this nation, known as the poster child for Democracy, would have ever become the global advocate that it is.  There is the little known fact that it was, and still is, the Black man/woman’s insistence to push the envelope–to never be content with his place as servant nor as second class citizen, that has created the Democracy that is common place in the US–that so many of us take for granted.  Historically, the Black man and woman in this nation continued to push for his/her place, push for his/her square on this land.  It was a push so hard that even non landholding, White males and females alike, were able to eventually join in the pleasures that were intended for only the wealthy, Anglo males of the time. 

And later–the Black man and woman still fighting–gave basic rights, Civil Rights, to all other  people of many labels and titles over the decades.  

Without this knowledge, generations to come would believe that the Black man and woman are the descendants of slaves, accursed with dreams deferred, giving nothing, broken and ashamed people–rather than knowing the Truth. The truth that his/her nature to fight and push the envelope has Blessed this nation to truly become a land of freedom, a place where the cries of injustice can be heard and a place where wealth can be made; and as such, natives and foreigners alike owe a great deal of gratitude to the Black man and woman for the “Gift” that he/she is and has been to this nation! 

Notes: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney

For more about the Gifts of the Black man & woman, see: The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America, by W.E.B. Dubois