This course establishes that the process of enslaving African people, which jumpstarted the period of modernity through colonial conquest, had a large
impact on the creation and practice of Black cultures across the African Diaspora. After watching the educational video from CrashCourse titled "Slavery in
the American Colonies,"Links to an external site. write an essay that shows your understanding of how the economic and legal guidelines born within the
institution of slavery allowed for the political, legal, cultural, and physical domination of Black enslaved people by European and Euro-descended colonists
and enabled the resulting accommodation, resistance, and syncretism performed by Black enslaved people as they produced a cultural politics of their own
to survive the horrors and dehumanization of enslavement in the United States.
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This prompt is designed to test your understanding of the processes through which the cultures of enslaved Africans and their descendants were created in
the United States. We expect you to answer the following questions by using the video above, as well as information from lectures and the assigned readings
to formulate your Short Essay.
- What were the conditions under which Black enslaved culture emerged?
What were the environments in which the Black enslaved culture emerged?
Labor and capital investments, political and legal power, policing of time and movement, physical and psychological violence, etc. should be discussed within
this answer
Why it was that Black enslaved people needed to create new cultures?
Here you should consider how the natural, geographic, social, political, and legal environments of the United States isolated the enslaved and made them
victims to violent practices of behavioral coercion and further natal alienation - Which were the cultural materials that acted as the sources of this new Black enslaved culture and how were they combined?
European elements (i.e. language, dress, Christianity, etc.) and African elements (dance, food, art, folklore, language, etc.) should be talked about in order to
answer this question - How did Black enslaved people perform accommodation, resistance, and syncretism through their new form of cultural politics in the United States?
For resistance, make sure to name examples of how Black enslaved people went against the hegemony of white "masters" (i.e. contextual resistance and
structural resistance)
For accommodation, make sure to name examples of how Black enslaved people practiced the same culture of white "masters"
For syncretism, make sure to name examples of how Black enslaved people combined Africanisms retained from the continent and the white European
cultures imposed on them by white "masters"
Sample Solution