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All of these observations are something i can relate to. Of late i am consumed by melancholy and jolted by the relentless thud of another one biting the dust. As A.E. Housman so succinctly put it; With rue my heart is laden, for golden friends i had, for many a rose-lipped maiden, and many a light-foot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping, the light-foot lads are laid, And the rose-lipped maids are sleeping in fields where roses fade...

@Cynique I’m over here trying hard to think of where else in nature is there nappy hair and I got nothing! Oh snap! Is it really just us and the sheep? 😂😂😂

Information comes from many sources. Knowledge is simply tweaked information.

@Mel Hopkins the are many writren by both Black and white scholars. One of the most accessible would be by Anthony Browder, Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization But you can also read anything by John G. Jackson. The work of folks like Cheikh Anta Diop and John Herik Clark are worth checking out too. Hey @Delano at the 16:20 mark Browder discusses the African Origin of the Horusscope (my term). @Mel Hopkins at the 21:25 minute mark Browder talks about the Adrican origin of the Holy Trinity.

A.E.'s powm is nice. @Cynique this line: Is foreboding and a bit misanthropic. Growing old is not for the faint of heart huh? My recently deceased sister in law leaves behind her mother, who has already buried two husbands. I can't image what she must be feeling...

@Delano LOL! Now, that caught me off guard! WHEW! Hilarious. Okay, you got me there. Yes, so it seems, I am one tracked!!--in my mind. I'm thinking from the perspective of the slave yard system. So now, I am trying to think about just what kind of traditions, that can be something that actually has been passed on from Africa, specifically that is a part of us today... I will take a look back at your list! @Mel Hopkins WOW!!! I learned something new today! Thank you! Buck dancing looks like STEPPING to me. It looks like the South African Boot Dancers too.

@Cynique I hear ya. I'm too old and too male to be moved by this public exchange of platitudes myself. I did not consider that they were endeavoring to be role models. It seems a bit self serving.... i mean we all have friends that we are proud of, but who goes on twitter to praise them... i dunno. Again, this is for the kids I guess. Maybe if Ms. Obama praised someone unknown but doing great work...

AfroAmericans (I rarely use the term "African" American) invented Break Dancing and I believe the Turn Table. I think we also invented Hot Water Corn bread and Cracklin' Bread as well as Hoe Cakes. But we don't really have an actual CULTURE. In my opinion a TRUE culture means having your own language (not merely a corrupted form of English or a mere dialect of it which is what most AfroAmericans speak); and your OWN set of social customs like marriage and family structure rather than a modified version of the Western nuclear family which most AfroAmericans TRY to practice but fail at which is one of the reasons broken and dysfunctional families as well as divorce is so high in the AfroAmerican community. Because instead of OUR OWN culture most of our people have been trying to IMITATE White culture and haven't succeeded. One of the reasons AfroAmerican sub-culture is so confusing is because it seems to change with each generation. It works like this...... White culture...whether it's food, dance, music, or just the way people talk and greet eachother.... is usually too weak and watered down for most AfroAmericans, so we develop OUR OWN food, music, dances, and forms of greeting eachother. This makes us feel more comfortable and gives us an identity....now we're cool. But when White people see it- some of them find it repulsive and try to make it illegal or stamp it out; but most of them find it different and attractive and try to imitate it. Once THEY get the hang of it and start imitating it whether it's music, dance, slang, etc.....it loses it's flavor and NO LONGER becomes cool. So the next generation of AfroAmerican youth invents ANOTHER form of music, dance, greetings, ect.....to separate themselves and give themselves an identity to be cool again....and when Whites latch on to THAT then the process starts all over again. But I do believe AfroAmericans need to STABILIZE themselves and establish a solid CULTURE of our own, because a lot of the garbage you see in the music and entertainment industries today being passed off as "Black culture" is actual degeneracy. They have made weed smoking part of Black culture today through the music and now the media is actually trying to normalize OPEN homosexuality and queerness as a part of "Black culture" by making sure nearly all Black programs in America include it.

Oiling your freshly washed hair and using a hot comb to straighten the kinks out of it so as to make it more manageable. An Ebonic dialect of which unique colorful slang is a spinoff. . A cuisine known as soul food (that has become demonized because it is a guilty pleasure whose sapience stems from ingredients purportedly bad for your health.) Music genres made up of Jazz, Blues, R&B and negro spirituals. An innovative version of the card game whist which is referred to as "bid-whist", a popular pass time which was originated by and is played exclusively by black people.

Chris Rock gets credit for this... really? I skimmed the last video. It was so much work -- wow! I'm so glad I'm a guy and don't have hair issues to deal with 🙂 The Maasi women of modern day Kenya and Tanzania don't either... By the way Chizi is cute. She could sport a baseball cap and still be foine 😉 If those videos are making her money, God bless her.

😄 buck dancing is ours ... which all popular dances flowed - my Nana used to buck dance like nobody’s business and my mom said the real skill is when you kept a bottle between your knees while doing it...

@Chevdove I don't know what this means either, or rather, where it actually comes from. I've used the term to describe Black people who degrade themselves to entertain white folks. I guess that is no different than people who use "uncle tom" to describe Black people who who sell out other Blacks to white people for personal benefit, without understanding the origin of the phrase. I will look up buck dancing... maybe it should nit be used as a derogatory term. @Mel Hopkins i was actually going back much farther than Christianity itself. There is evidence that Mary, Jesus, and Joseph are based upon the the Egyptians Asar, Auset, and Heru. Of course there is proof many other stories from the bible including the virgin birth, the flood, etc are derived from much older sources.

@Chevdove I’m happy to have the answers go in any direction they need too! This is extremely interesting to me. My primary query is about Africans in America - specifically African American culture and cultural traditions colonial and post colonial America. Some of us arrived here in colonial America because we chose to - “Free Negro is the British legal term. Some of us were enslaved in the post colonial America brought from West Africa to the United States. Some of us arrived in the north and lived there for generations. Some later joined the northerners after enslavement ... We came from different parts of Africa bringing with us a lot of traditions from our native countries that were passed on and remain with us today... So this is why I mention African (ascendants) in America... and what did we bring to America such as teaching the inhabitants how to diversify their crops and farm the land.