There is a tendency to apply hard science principles to the study of culture, leading inquiry down a road of misunderstandings. Statements about culture are not like statements of scientific laws. In the hard sciences, laws apply under the same conditions without fail. In the social sciences, there are almost never absolutes because social science is the study of variation. Take, for example, the statement that African American males disproportionately identify themselves as religious or spiritual while being underrepresented as atheists, compared to American males of other racial groups. Interpreting a cultural statement through a hard science lens may prompt a response such as “So is that saying that all Black men are religious, because I know some Black men who are not?” Religiosity is a major component of African American culture. However, the fact some African Americans do not self-identify as religious does not mean that religiosity isn’t prevalent. This is because claims about culture are not claims of absolutes. Just because an African American is not religious doesn’t mean he or she is not a part of African American culture; atheism, although underrepresented, is still present among African Americans. Just as, a person who is Irish but doesn’t speak the Gaelic language, is still Irish. This also means that statements about cultural groups, in this work, are not claims about individual personalities.
Personalities are another level of variation within cultural groups. Personality is defined as individual-level patterns of thoughts and behaviors. Claims about culture relate to patterns of group-level behavior and thus cannot be applied to individuals—even though people are heavily influenced by cultural patterns. For example, one cannot identify a characteristic of Italian culture and assume that an individual who is Italian will embody that characteristic. The same is true for African American males. Individuals within cultural groups embrace difference characteristics of their cultural groups to varying levels.
Worldview and Performance
Too much focus on race as a biological or political category can take the focus away from culture’s shaping force. As a concept, culture is both simple and complex. We live our cultures on a daily basis, yet explaining how they work can be difficult and challenging. At its core, culture is made of patterns of thinking and acting. It involves deep-structural core aspects like values and beliefs as well as surface-structural aspects like material objects, expressions, and products that can be seen, touched, heard and tasted. As important as they are, focusing on objects and cultural expressions limits culture to the stylistic peculiarities and performances of a people. The process of examining worldview, the invisible elements of culture that people use to interpret the world and navigate through life, ushers us into a conversation about the deep structure of culture. According to Ani (1994) worldview or utamawazo represents culturally structured patterns of thinking or the most commonly held values, beliefs, concepts, and ethics possessed among a people. It is the organizational grid in our minds that we use to make sense out of what we observe or encounter.
Common tenets of the African worldview are summarized by Mbiti (1970) in the proverb, I am because we are; and because we are, therefore, I am. African societies had social structures that passed down basic dogma of their worldviews, often consisting of spirituality, communalism, rhythm, and orality. Spirituality represents African people’s belief in a spiritual vital force that empowers and enlivens all elements in the universe, making them inherently interrelated, mutually dependent, and complimentary. Communalism refers to African ethnic groups’ tendencies to place emphasis on mutual aid, collective survival, and well-being over individualism, competition, and materialism (White & Cones, 1999). Rhythm is a concept that represents African societies’ belief in the cyclical pace and harmony of the universe, also expressed culturally in the value placed on liveliness, intensity, and bodily rhythm ←2 | 3→in dance, song, spiritual expression, and gestures. Orality refers to African cultures’ emphasis on the bonding and empowering quality of the spoken word in the form of songs, epics, and poems.
African males generally emerged from cultures in which they did not have to justify their humanity; instead, their humanity was affirmed (White & Cones, 1999). African American males are an extension of this culture. Ultimately, cultures are not stagnant, but they shift and change slowly at their core. Cultural change and exchange happen much faster on the surface. For example, clothing styles (surface) change much faster than beliefs and values (core). In this way, African American culture represents the unfolding of African culture in the American context.
Culture and Conflict
Initially, the concept of culture may seem to be a neutral and harmless feature of humanity. But, why is it both an object of admiration and a target for destruction and exploitation? While cultures are distributed across the earth’s human groups evenly, political and economic power are not. Just as the biosphere is being compromised, so too is the ethnosphere. Just as rare plants and animals are disappearing due to climate change and human behavior, an acceleration in globalization and the loss of cultural diversity is taking place. Customs, rituals, beliefs, and practices are not being passed down from generation to generation. To cite an example, on average, every two weeks an elder person dies and carries with them the last known vestiges (syllables) of a dying language (Davis, Harrison, Howell, & National Geographic Society (U.S.), 2007).
Climate change is a natural phenomenon. The earth is currently in a warming phase, but certain human activities such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels unnecessarily increase the amount of change. Just like climate change, cultural change is a natural phenomenon—no culture is a frozen entity. But cultures are not disappearing or changing simply due to people choosing to assume and create better ones. Yes, cultures survive because they adapt. However, forces such as cultural suppression, cultural oppression, and annihilation very often push cultures out of existence via political decisions and social forces that people have no control over (Davis et al., 2007). Oftentimes these cultures are not suffering because of their failure to address modern challenges. Their failure is an inability to assimilate or imitate the characteristics of a more powerful ethnic group or social class (or both), or some other population with a disproportionate share of power.
Cultures can disappear due to cultural intolerance. Loss of food diversity and extreme weather are the costs of environmental degradation, and the costs of cultural imposition and homogeneity are the loss of human potential. One of the first steps in solving this problem is developing a newfound respect for human diversity and Black male culture in particular—to see it as a resource instead of something to fear or be blind to. Political leaders can use national identity to forge unity and social integration. But sometimes this is done by diminishing the importance of cultural uniqueness. To secure power and privilege, some ethnic groups project their own culture as a human standard by which all other thought and behavior should be judged. In the projection of power and domination, the same cultural diversity that people appreciate for its beauty is transformed into a detested enemy.
Many White people have viewed cultural differences as a threat to America’s imagined community and their racist efforts to maintain power. When uniqueness is seen as a threat, states respond with suppression because cultural differences can be corralled as a source of strength and resistance. Many African Americans are descendants of a people who did not arrive as immigrants seeking economic or political opportunity. They were enslaved and defined by their labor, while their cultures were not respected and sometimes purposefully suppressed. In the long run, this lack of openness can hold back progress and cross-cultural creativity. Culture is not always at the root of the conflicts that Black males face; however, ethnic/racial differences often intensify conflicts (UNDP, 2004). For example, conflict over neighborhood resources and voting rights are often divided over ethnic lines. Many times, conflict ←3 | 4→occurs due to unequal access to social services, employment, income, and political opportunities. Some research mistakenly focuses on the political and economic nature of conflict to the exclusion of the role of culture.
Globalization and Culture
The world is more economically and socially interconnected than at any other time in human history. The empowerment of people of African descent does not occur in a vacuum. Far from neutral, it is an act of
