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Blacks' imprint on AmericaFrom pain and gain, African Americans shape U.S. culture
By Greg Botelho
(CNN) -- African-American music, writing and innovations have been forged in struggle -- filled with pain and elation, self-consciousness and self-realization, hurt and healing. It is a true American experience -- manifest in a profound, groundbreaking and influential culture. "African-American culture has defined American culture," says Craig Werner, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Noting blacks' fight to realize all-American ideals such as equality and liberty, and their many expressions of courage and creativity, Werner adds, "People who had the most reason to reject the whole game, ironically enough, tend to be the deepest, purest expression of what America is about." America has embraced black music, with blues, jazz, rap and rock 'n' roll making their way into the mainstream. Radio play lists reflect this fusion, and even the pop yardstick MTV nowadays is BET's cousin, with its abundance of black artists, says Tamara Brown, a historian at the Anacostia Museum, the Smithsonian's black history center. African-American authors like Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison belong to the nation's pantheon of great writers. Black artists, scientists, engineers, chefs, religious and political leaders have profoundly shaped America's day-to-day existence.
The African-American experience is about ideals, and testing those ideals -- detailed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution -- to see whether those high standards extend to all Americans, and working to make sure they do. One hundred years after W.E.B. Du Bois, in "The Souls of Black Folk," said race would be the defining problem of the 20th century, academics, artists and everyday people are still struggling with gauging black Americans' role and the impact of slavery on American society. "For blacks, coming here was a nightmare experience, being taken into slavery and thrown into bondage," says Bill Ferris, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities now at the University of North Carolina. "That long struggle of freedom continues today. When we talk about the black experience, it raises questions about the American dream." Sounds of struggle, joyWhen the first Africans were forcibly taken to the New World, they were stripped of their freedom, family, languages -- their fundamental identities. Even so, elements of their culture endured. "You have had your language and your culture taken away from you," Werner says. "So how do you express that? You sing. You moan. You say it however you can say it." "Music is part and parcel of every act in African-American life," says Portia Maultsby, director of the Archives of African-American Music and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington. "It serves as a unifying force, but also as a communication vehicle and one of resistance." Today's African-American music still brims with emotion and speaks for the disenfranchised, says Ferris.
The creativity that's so evident in black music -- its many genres, and also the great variation within each one -- is characteristic of African-American culture as a whole, say scholars. Black inventors, writers, artists and athletes have brought a unique sensibility, style and substance to American society, experts say. And they have often done so with less money, education and resources than many more privileged Americans. "You don't have to be educated, you have to be creative," says Portia James, the Anacostia Museum's curator. "You just have to have initiative to solve the problem, to do something." 'Audacious hope'Legendary author James Baldwin said being African American is about attitude, not skin color -- always experimenting and tackling challenges in the quest for success and self-discovery, according to Werner. That sentiment, he notes, is also distinctly American. "What's fascinating about America is that we do accept risk, we do accept diversity, we do accept the idea that we're inventing ourselves over and over and over again," says Werner. Yet black innovations have not always been welcomed or properly recognized. Maultsby points to jazz, which was "considered primitive and barbaric when it was introduced" but later became defined as quintessentially American. Similar progressions -- abhorrence giving way to absorption -- hold true for rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll and rap, she notes. "When the minority culture moves into the mainstream, it becomes a mainstream tradition. We tend not to do that from the dominant end," says Maultsby. "Once they become commodities, the African-American roots become more invisible and less acknowledged."
But absorption also suggests admiration, and with it an acknowledgement of the creativity and quality of African-American artists. "Even though society may have frowned upon relations between whites and blacks, music was one thing that they shared in common," says Brown. The pain in the songs of Billie Holiday, angry lyrics of Public Enemy or raw literary works by Ellison or Richard Wright turn the obstacles and troubles confronting many African Americans into art. But black culture -- and its impact on American society -- is also defined by joy and spirit, says Ferris. "Each generation of Americans can relate to black music and dance as a fresh new connection to life," he says. "It's the ultimate celebration of life, and it's always pushing us to new levels of experience." Underlying African-Americans' struggles and creations is what scholar Cornell West calls "audacious hope," says Werner. The black experience, much like that of the New World's first settlers and the West's pioneers, is a constant test of will and strength, in which faith is a prime component. "Life is tragic, life is blues, life has its hard times. But you've got to find a way to wrestle that hope out of it, or else you can't go on," says Werner. Much of black culture "is profoundly therapeutic, although it doesn't come to easy answers. Then again, most therapy never does."
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