Do We As African Americans Have A Culture?

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by CrimsonTide4

Soror can you list some titles that would be helpful in this area for us to read? I would be interested in reading more. I took some sociology courses in undergrad but none that dealt specifically with US.

I am just an observer in this thread, although I wholeheartedly believe that African Americans/Blacks have a strong cultural identity in several facets.

This is not an exhaustive list b/c this is just from the "top of my head" so I encourage people to add to it:

1. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2001) White Supremacy and Racism
2. Cultural deficiency theory which believes that the "lower social status" of blacks and Hispanics signifies the cultural inferiority of these groups (who are disproportionately involved in criminality and poverty). This would mean that these groups actually HAVE a culture or practices that are common enough to be called a (deficient) "culture."
You can read more about this in Bonilla-Silva Racism Without Racists (2003) and Reed (1990) "The Underclass as Myth and Symbol." Radical America. 24: 21-40.
3. Any of John Hope Franklin's work, including "Ethnicity in American Life: The Historical Perspective." in John Hope Franklin, ed., Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988.
4. Milton Gordon "Assimilation in America: Theory and Reality" Daedalus.
5. W.E.B. DuBois (1973) The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960 Edited by Herbert Aptheker.
6. David Levering Lewis (1993). W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919.