128 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the PresentLittlefi eld notes, European planters developed a number
of ethnic preferences based on perceptions of traits that
certain enslaved African groups supposedly had. Th us,
Europeans created shift ing and alternating hierarchies of
ethnic and regional preferences that were employed and
gave some shape to import patterns in locales throughout
the Americas. In colonies such as Jamaica, Barbados, and
South Carolina, Gold Coast Akan-speakers were coveted
by some planters for their alleged propensity for loyalty
and hard work; in other colonies, or even among other
planters in colonies that seemingly coveted Gold Coast
Africans, these slaves were considered unruly and rebel-
lious. Igbos and others from Calabar or the Bight of Biafra
were reviled because of an alleged propensity for suicide.
Angolans were supposedly paradoxically prone to docility
and fl ight.
European preferences for certain African ethnic groups
were likely due to a range of factors—the cost of import-
ing enslaved Africans from certain regions; limited ac-
cess to certain slave markets on the Atlantic African coast;
or the demand for Africans from regions with expertise in
the cultivation of certain crops and other skills. Certainly
among slave traders and plantation owners, there was no
clear consensus on the behavioral characteristics of any
African group. Th is refl ects what seems obvious from the
vantage point of hindsight; the reason African groups do
not fi t into generalized behavioral categories is that, like
the rest of humanity, Africans can and will display a broad
spectrum of behavior. Whether real or imagined, these
perceptions of African behavioral characteristics did con-
tribute to the formation of ethnic enclave communities in
North America as well as elsewhere.
Harvard University’s Du Bois Institute slave trade data-
base bears out this conclusion. Th is important and exhaus-
tive project provides an accurate picture of the Atlantic slave
trade and includes information for roughly 60 percent of all
slave-trading voyages. Th e Du Bois database demonstrates
that of the 101,925 enslaved Africans from identifi able loca-
tions sent to Virginia, 45 percent came from the Bight of Bi-
afra. In South Carolina, enslaved Africans from the Bight of
Biafra accounted for just 10 percent of identifi able imports;
in the United States as a whole, Bight of Biafra exports were
19 percent of the 317,748 enslaved Africans recorded in the
Du Bois database. So we can discuss a Bight of Biafra or
Igbo enclave in Virginia as a circumstance unique in North
America. Not only does this database corroborate manyWhile still clinging to their ethnic identities, enslaved
Africans shaped a new set of cultures in the Americas. As
shown by advocates of the Diasporic school, these new
cultures were not simply a combination of European and
African cultures. Instead, Gomez and others in this school
make convincing claims that the fi rst step toward the birth
of an African American culture was intra-African cultural
mixing. In other words, in the process of becoming Afri-
can American, Igbos, Mandes, Akans, Angolans, and oth-
ers borrowed from each other and, over time, became one
people. In this way, scholars in the Diasporic school can
demonstrate a signifi cant amount of cultural discontinuity.
Because various enslaved African groups borrowed from
each other’s cultures, then clearly these cultures changed
over time and represent a discontinuity and disconnection
with the African past. However, the Diasporic school also
explains cultural continuity and connection, but in ways
slightly diff erent from advocates of the Africanist school.
For example, one signifi cant trend among scholars in
the Diasporic school has been to move away from gener-
alizations about “African” cultural continuities, to empha-
sizing instead the contributions that specifi c African ethnic
groups (e.g., Igbo, Yoruba, Fon, Mande, Akan) made to de-
velopment of African American culture.
Exported from the factories and slave castles along the
Atlantic coast of Africa, enslaved Africans boarded ships
and suff ered through the so-called Middle Passage—one of
the most horrifying experiences in human history. In the
midst of this tragic story, historian Sterling Stuckey con-
tends that the slave ships crossing the Middle Passage were
melting pots that forged a single people out of numerous
African ethnicities. Even if ethnic randomization occurred,
the horrors of the Middle Passage and enslavement helped
forge a cultural, social, and political unity among enslaved
Africans. Th is was an ongoing process, beginning with the
enslavement experience in Atlantic Africa and continuing in
certain regions of the Americas well into the 19th century.
Both Gomez and Douglas Chambers demonstrate that,
throughout the Americas, enslaved Africans created eth-
nic enclave communities and saw themselves as members
of African-derived named groups. Th ey readily identifi ed
themselves as members of separate “nations” initially until
a more unifi ed identity was created as a result of the cir-
cumstances and conditions of enslavement.
Th is initial sense of national identity was a direct result
of import patterns in the Atlantic slave trade. As Daniel