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Exchanging Our Marks Essay Brown Whitney
Exchanging Our Marks Essay Brown Whitney
Michael A. Gomez is tasked with pursuing the study of the direct correlations between
the African American community and its African origin. Chronologically, he goes through a re-
tracing of the slave trade because that is where the true beginning of stirring pot, specifically the
one influenced by American ideologies. From Gomez’s studies I see there are so many
continents the salve trade effected, but it was in North America where you can see the evident
differences in the multitude of how African populations mix their individual ethnic identities that
and Antebellum South1, Gomes provides explanation of the making of the African American
identity through the reflections of slave and multiple historical sources. The correlation between
what Africans used to know as the difference in ethnicity and America’s generality of race is due
to all the slave trade provided. More than forced labor, more than a destruction of culture, but
Gomez describes the movement from time period to time period to influence the identities of a
people. Within this new realm of blacks as one race, later on emerged a division of class.
Classism based on African born vs. American born slaves, the region of captivity, and also
‘colorism’.
A larger topic that brought a lot of knew knowledge on the slave culture to me was
religion. The existence of a significant Islamic population that was brought to the America’s by
slaves that already held the religion. He argues that a lot of the relations between slaves from
1
Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and
Antebellum South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
distant lands had a part to play when it came to them coming to a common ground. He had a lot
to say about the modern influences we can still see today in the black church can be rooted from
the traditions of African spirituality. Though it went through era after era of destruction by
conformity, oppression, and racism there are so many hymns and ways we worship that Gomez
Gomez also brings up the very profound points that West African culture, before we
began to “embrace those who look nothing like us, assuming that all life honors life, but we were
wrong. In the end we fed and strengthened our own captors”, there was pride and value in having
African blood.2 We were much more than what came at face value to our oppressors. This called
for the lost, but ‘free’ slaves that did not live through the entirety of the journey across the
waters. The free slaves who gained spiritual life through losing their own showed the power of
freedom and self-ownership. Gomez furthers his point through true stories and folkloric tales.
The cultural background of who black people were before we were branded as ‘blacks’, held
weight in Gomez’s point. The historical context of a people was lost in transition. Though it was
There then came the reconstruction of the black identity as a whole. The conditions of the
New World and what it wanted blacks to be played a role, but there was independence in what
we chose to believe, how we chose to worship, and who really owned who we are. The context
of our African ancestors was instilled in us intellectually and spiritually so much that we as a
people are no longer in state of racist hostage, for the most part. It is still evident into today’s
2
“Daniel Black Reads and Excerpt from his new book: The Coming.” YouTube video, 10:02. Posted by “MIST
Harlem,” December 10, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npLkboi7MNI
time that institutions built against us still stand, but where we were 2,000 years ago is not where
we are today.
Gomez describes religious institutions, African based historical context, and identity after slave
systems that allowed black people to come to a common identifier of who we are. In my review,
I am going to put Gomez into conversation with great thinkers on the subject of the African
diaspora. I hope to shed light on all of the new found correlations I have discovered through
The Coming is a novel by Daniel Black. It ultimately serves as deeper look into the oral
storytelling and the tradition of literature within the African culture that then matriculated into
the African American experience. Written in three parts, the story follows Africans from
different parts of the continent. He narrates life before the Middle Passage as they fight to
maintain so that their stories can one day be told. Black is purposed with reflecting the pure need
to sustain life under the conditions forced on our ancestors. He read aloud an excerpt from the
“With open arms we embrace those who look nothing like us, assuming that all life
honors life, but we were wrong. In the end we fed and strengthened our own captors. We
cannot claim naiveté, we cannot say we were people undeveloped, we cannot say there
were not signs. We can say only we did not heed them. Sounds of wisdom was as
common to us as the evening breeze. We scoffed and shrugged at the elders forewarning
Only shame to bear, and pity. Great pity that a people so strong missed so many clues.
The forest whispered it, the birds chirped it, the tree waved it, the antelopes danced it, the
tall grass swayed it, the lions roared it, and the elders said it over and over, ‘Beware!
Seek not the thing you do not need. Greed destroys wisdom. Let just enough be
enough!’”3
Gomez focuses in on this topic when he “examines how ethnicity and class are correlated within
the cauldron of the early enslavement experience.”4 There are aspects of the African experience
that was blinded with materialism. The idea that we could not protect ourselves from the
inevitable because we saw value in what we did not possess, opposed to all the intangible,
unique, aspects of our culture and tradition that we already held. Black tells a story of depth and
spiritual connection to historical events. Within his use of symbols, he shows how “chaos” was
foreshadowed. In an in-class lecture, Professor Myers also added to the topic. He said, “the
understanding of the slave trade can be seen through the ‘snake-like’ intent the Europeans held
when they had the chance to interact with Africans”. I know this assertion had to have a biblical
correlation to the ill-minded snake who looked to temp Eve as she ate from the forbidden fruit
tree in the Christian-based anecdote. Temptation, ignorance, and materialism, is said by Black, to
all be factors that could have been avoided if we as a people would have held wisdom to a
higher-standard. Our ignorance as a people is not seen in the lack of knowledge, but the
purposeful disregard. There was a belief that there could be more, and the Europeans held the
key.
The religious correlation between slaves and the Ethiopian people had a strong basis.
Years and years of study have shown that this stigma of black being inferior to any race is a new
3
“Daniel Black Reads and Excerpt from his new book: The Coming.” YouTube video, 10:02. Posted by “MIST
Harlem,” December 10, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npLkboi7MNI
4
Myers, Ph. D., Joshua. “Tad’s Query” Lecture, Intro to Africana Studies II, Howard University, Washington, D.C.,
November 2nd, 2017
ideology. Physical representation of who we are have been studied and used to prove we are
more. As I studied Gomez I saw the reoccurring theme of Africans holding pride in their linage
no matter who they were told to be. Du Bois shares more on the topic:
“At the end of the period the empire fell apart into Egyptian and Ethiopian halves, and a
silence of three centuries ensued. It is quite possible that an incursion of conquering black
men from the south poured over the land in these years and dotted Egypt in the next
centuries with monuments on which the full blooded Negro type is strongly and
triumphantly impressed. The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so familiar to the world, the Sphinxes
of Tanis, the statue from the Fayum. The statue of the Esquiline at Rome, and the Colossi
of Bubastis all represent black, full-blooded Negroes and are described by Petrie as
‘having high cheek bones, flat checks, both in one plane, a massive nose, firm projecting
lips, and thick hair, with an austere and almost savage expression of power.’
Blyden, the great modern black leader of West Africa, said of the Sphinx at Gizeh: ‘Her
features are decidedly of the African or Negro type, with expanded nostrils.’ If, then;, the
sphinx was placed here-looking out in majestic and mysterious silence over the empty
plain where once stood the great city of Memphis in all its pride and glory, as an
emblematic representation of the king –is not the inference clear as to the peculiar type
I couldn’t have said it better. From Du Bois I take that history has clearly proven that we were
built to be kings and queens. We prevail and that is some of reason why we are victimized by
oppression. Others look at our strengths within our intellect, physical build, and how we carry
ourselves and choose to attempt to take this. They fail. We use these aspects of who we are to
5
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Negro. Vol. 1915. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, C2001, pg. 19
overcome any type of adversity. This feeds into the identification of self that Gomez pursues. In
Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson, he explains that there soon came a time after many years
between the original, un-touched black settlements in West Africa and a post-slavery culture “in
the United States and the Caribbean… , [when] Black peoples were no longer conveniently
lodged in or organized by slave systems. The Blacks of the New World could no longer be
casually pinioned by the curious as slaves or-at the margins of such systems-as freemen. And,
inevitably, their societies and subcultures upon which the intelligentsia drew were steadily
becoming less autochthonous. The social patterns, the habits of thought, language, and
custom…”6 were re-invented within a scene of confinement, but also in the state of having a
freedom.
comes from a great perspective and adds context behind given beliefs of pre-slavery African
culture, the Middle Passage, and post-slavery reconstruction. Exchanging Our Country Marks
allows you to take multiple sources and create your idea of what is to be true and discover the
6
Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Press, 1984.