Encyclopedia of Sociology

AFRICAN STUDIES

to the Americas produced a people represented by
black Chinese in Mississippi, Jamaica, and Trini-
dad; black Amerindians in Florida (Seminoles),
Oklahoma (Cherokee), and Surinam (Arawaks);
black Irish in Virginia, black English in Barbados,
black Portuguese in Brazil; and black East Indians
in Guyana, black French Canadians in Montreal;
and black Mexicans in Vera Cruz. A veritable
human rainbow resulted from the transplantation
of Africans to the ‘‘New World’’ and points be-
yond. Yet throughout the diaspora, Social Darwin-
ism assigned Africans the lowest position on the
evolutionary hierarchy and laid the foundation for
elaborate ideology and pseudoscience that offered
justifications for the continued subjugation of Af-
ricans. Ideologies founded upon the rationaliza-
tion that lent credence to this travesty persist
today, further plaguing Africans throughout the
diaspora.

THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL

INSTITUTIONS OF AFRICA

We have seen the complexity that underlies the
seemingly simple questions of ‘‘Where is Africa’’
and ‘‘Who is African.’’ The task of defining for
sociological study a people who are both geo-
graphically and genetically dispersed is extremely
challenging. Additional complication results when
we ask the next question, ‘‘What is African?’’ Here
we simply raise the logical question of which insti-
tutions, customs, values, institutions, cultural fea-
tures, and social forms can be characterized or
labeled as distinctively African.

The survival (albeit in evolved form) of indige-
nous African customs, values, and institutions is
remarkable, especially considering the abundance
of historical barriers and complications. First among
these is the reality of African conquest and domi-
nation by other cultures, most notably European,
but also including cultures from the Islamic world.
The experience of conquest and domination by
external powers, often designed to annihilate Afri-
can civilization, makes the myriad existing retentions
all the more amazing. One of the best examples of
these retentions is what Africa and people of
African ancestry have done with the abundance of
nonindigenous languages that were imposed up-
on them during colonization.

Language plays a vital role in the process of

cultural and personal affirmation. Therefore, it is

not surprising to note that the conquest experi-

ence of Africa and Africans in the diaspora was

commonly associated with systematic attempts to

suppress or eliminate indigenous languages. The

African continent can be divided into Europe-

an language communities that parallel the geo-

graphic regions associated with European domi-

nation and partition of Africa (e.g., Anglophone,

Francophone). In a similar fashion, members of

the African diaspora have adopted the dominant

languages of the cultures and regions where they

found themselves, speaking Arabic, Portuguese,

Spanish, English, French, or Dutch. However, be-

fore European languages were introduced, there

were well over 800 languages spoken by various

African ethnic groups, most of which can be classi-

fied between three of the principal language fami-

lies—Niger-Kordofian, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisian.

Numerically, these African-selected language groups

incorporate approximately 300 million people.

Many if not most Africans are minimally bilin-

gual, routinely speaking several languages in addi-

tion to their own. However, colonial tongues are

generally recognized as the country’s ‘‘official’’

language. Part of the devastation of colonization is

the demise of original languages as the primary

means of communication. These languages are

forgotten, ignored, and sometimes even mocked

by those who would assimilate into Westernized

ideals. Strikingly, many independent African na-

tions have embarked on programs aimed at the

regeneration of indigenous languages, often creat-

ing written forms for languages that were previ-

ously solely oral. Other African nations have sub-

stituted indigenous languages for European languages

(derived from the country’s colonial experience)

as the country’s ‘‘official’’ language. South Africa

is an example of a country where multiple national

languages were officially established in a process

that validated the myriad of mother tongues as

well as the colonizers’ language.

Attempting to strip Africans of their languag-

es was an essential feature of the move to supple-

ment military, economic, and political domination

with cultural domination. However, understand-

ing the essential connection between language,

worldview, personal identity, and cultural survival,