African Diaspora Essay Examples

The history of the Africans and the people of African descent is a complex story within itself, which lies at the centre of the history all humanity. Diaspora refers to migrants who settle in distant lands and produce new generations, all the while maintaining ties of affection and making occasional visits to their homeland. The African diaspora refers to the vast dispersal of the Africans across the African continent, the Americas, the European and Asian continents, and the islands of the great seas. As societies and civilizations grew, the Africans continued to migrate and settle overseas, which brought them close to Egypt, northern Africa and Arabia. Further settlements across the waters of the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean brought the Africans to Asia, Europe and the Americas. From the fifteenth century through the nineteenth century, the Africans forcefully travelled to other continents to serve as slaves.
With the steady flow of culture and commerce, the Africans have been able to establish and maintain ties of personal attachment with their homeland. an interest in African diaspora grew in an era when African and Caribbean countries were gaining independence and when movements of civil rights in those nations and the United States brought the black people to the political forefront, a renewed interest grew in tracing the historical contacts among Africans and the people of African descent outside the continent. The history of the African diaspora explores four overlapping types of connections in the history of the black people, which include interactions among black communities at home and abroad, relations with hegemonic powers, relations with non-African communities, and the mixing of blacks with other communities. The African diaspora in the Americas includes over 150 million people and over a billion people trace their ancestry to the black population of Africa.
The African continent appears not only as an ancestral homeland, but also as a region developing and participating in global processes at every stage. The exploitive actions of the slave masters and corporate hierarchies appear as a major force in history, but so do the linkages among the black communities. The African heritage shows itself not only being able to retain the old traditions, but also innovating and incorporating new practices through mixing, intermarriage, and cultural exchange of blacks with whites, Native Americans, Arabs and South Asians. The slave trade brought a great number of settlers to the Caribbean. The involuntary settlers interacted with the Americans, Indians and Europeans, and developed new cultures based on their old ones. In the Americas, the African slaves worked in mines for silver, gold and emeralds. They worked on plantations for sugar, wheat, indigo, tobacco, cotton and coffee.
The black people experienced substantial oppression and struggle both within the continent as well as abroad. The forces of oppression and transformation against which the black people struggled include slavery and empire, racial categorization and discriminatory beliefs and global influence of industrialization. The world discriminated the black communities based on their color, class, culture, ethnicity, wealth, political and economic powers. In the nineteenth century, the processes of industrialization and emancipation transformed the life in the African diaspora. Industrialization brought railroads, steamships, telegraphs, electric power, automobiles, radio, air transport and new types of work to the blacks. On the other hand, the emancipation of slavery allowed the blacks of the diaspora to move into the industrial life. The most remarkable change for Africa was the sudden and complete conquest of the continent by several European powers between 1885 and 1900. The conquerors abolished slave trade almost everywhere on the continent, but rarely emancipated the slaves, thereby resulting in the African era of slavery without slave trade from 1900 to 1930.
In the era of large scale slave trade, African families came under all sorts of pressure. The export of males from West and Central Africa to the Americas and the European continent led to numerous captive females in the continent. The women became servants and concubines for their owners. Children of such relationships belonged to the owner and the slave mother had no right over them. In the Old World, most of the migrants were female and many had children with their masters. In spite of numerous migrations, black women and men found each other and found ways to reaffirm or reinvent patterns of family life drawn from their African origins. Large number of Africans in the Atlantic world took active participation in Christianity, while those in the Old World incorporated themselves into the Islamic community. In almost all parts of the world, the principles and practices of the African religious beliefs, values and traditions retained their significance.
It was only after the Second World War that the political movements and independence came to Africa leading to urbanization, widespread literacy and improved healthcare to the Africans both at home and abroad. As black people gained their legal freedom, they started a struggle for equality in education, earning power, and political representation within national societies and on a transnational and global level. As racism decried in social and scientific circles, the number of black people rising to wealth and social prominence started to increase all over the world. New contact and cultural exchange among the blacks produced various forms of music, dance and literature befitting a life increasingly based in cities. The history of the African diaspora suggests certainties and rising possibilities for the future identity of the black people and the future of racism in the society. Even today, the migrations continue for the Africans and the people of the African descent, and so do the interactions of the communities throughout the continent as well as the world.