African American: an Identity Crisis Essay

For centuries Afri prat Ameri whoremongers give way been indoctrinated to subsist in a ethnic and diachronic vacuum-clean by their oppressors who would sample to bar them from invariably making the affiliation to their illuminating past. This magisterial agenda of mis-education and lies by omission has make possible the oppression and enslavement, in consistence and mind, of the Afri canister American by his oppressors. In his essay The grow of the total darkness, Dr. Carter G. Woodson sets out to speculate on wherefore the African American has been misled in his ascension to human equating and dignity and how he can lighten the dismal posit of his affairs.A thoroughgoing reading of Woodsons pioneering work indicates that we should tuition the experiences of African-descended people to brighten knowledge some ourselves and opposite cultures as well as to retire assside accurate traditions and histories that beget all exclusively been discredited or misrepre sented. Furtherto a greater extent, only finished this arrogant keep back of their important contributions to account can African Americans elevate themselves to empower enlightenment. One actor to hire the experiences of the African American is to bestow in him a sense of usage and place in a humankind that otherwise intends to slip by him perpetually in the dark.Undoubtedly the cypher of his oppressors has been to convince him that his snitty-gritty is unimportant so as to take him of the sense of reservefulness that is so needful to feel alone human. By espousing that he has no worthwile past, that his ply has done secret code significant since the begin of time, and that there is no evidence that he pull up stakes invariably achieve everything ample (Woodson 6), his oppressors can be sure that the African American will continue squander the path of mis-education that so allows for his subservience to a system that c bes secret code for him.However, if you teach the lightlessness that he has constituted as a good deal good as any other track d aver he will aspire to equality and rightness without regard to race. (Woodson 6) The core purpose of African American studies is to take back from obscurity that piece of the historical puzzle without which the African American would be amidst an endless indistinguishability crisis. By studying the origin of his people, the African American, who has non to that extent learned to moot and plan for himself as others do for themselves (Woodson 7), can take determine of his own essential rather than pickings as rightfulness an abundance of study which others afford make accessible to the oppressed. (Woodson 7).The culture of indoctrination cultivated by the oppressor would have that the blackness should cease to call that he was erstwhile held a slave, that he has been oppressed, and even that he is a negro. (Woodson 7) Thus, it is discernible to see that the African Amer icans oppressors have to a fault much to recur by promoting the truth. Indeed, it would pray them to admit their transgressions and to grant the countless meaningful contributions made by the African American to modern society.Without a serious interrogative sentence of the fundamentals of education, religion, literature, and school of thought as they have been expounded to him (Woodson 7) by his oppressors, the Negro joins the opposition with the remonstrance that the study of the Negro keeps alive questions which should be forgotten. (Woodson 7) Perhaps the roughly essential lesson to be learned from an effective, systematic study of African American narrative is that the contributions made by African Americans are far more numerous than any oppressor could ever know.It is with a pig-headed pride that they disguise the fact that the floor of the modern valet de chambre was made, in the main, by what was taken from African people. (Clarke) Without knowledge such(preno minal) as this, it would be impossible for the African American to take pride in himself and to seek the truthful identity he has been in chase of for centuries. A race is like a man. Until it uses its own talents, takes pride in its own accounting, and loves its own memories, it can never effect itself completely. (Clarke) African American studies can friend in sympathy other cultures as well as our own by challenging and correcting the misrepresentations of Africa and westerly Europe and their heathenish legacies. What has been laid aground as history by the oppressor does not serve to good the African American but alternatively to keep him dependant on a system prevalent with underlying loss against his people.History is written in the movie of the writer so, consequently, the African American moldiness take up the reins of authorship himself and reach his own destiny. That is on the nose why we should study the African American experience, to produce a platform o n which he can take back what is innately his. by and by all, to be alert of where one is going, it is inevitable to be mindful of where one has been.