Free «Africans in the Americas» Essay

In chapter six, “Africans in America,” of the book Encounters in the New World: A History in Documents, Leprose describes the history of America during colonialism. The author portrays the way racism came to an end in order to fight colonialism the actions of the blacks to ensure the abolishment of slavery. This paper reviews the chapter and explains its relation to the documentary film, Black in Latin America.

Brotherly love examines the past 40 years of the country as a new nation basically through the luck of Philadelphia’s black community. The latter was unique since it had freedom fugitive slaves as well as free men who took a step to seek to participate in the democracy of America. Black churches became the community’s fulcrum aiding poor, providing schools as well as agitating for the cancelation of slave law. Meanwhile, cotton gin invention drove slavery into the western border, and a victorious rebellion in Haiti expired revolts of slaves in the south. The threats as well as slave surplus in the east created a colonization movement for sending free black people to Africa. However, many African Americans decided to stay and faced the democracy (Lepore, 2012). This topic is quite important to be learnt in school because it educates students on their past. They have an opportunity to discover their origin, the way America was built based on liberty and equity principles while justifying slavery existence, the existence of American freedom and American slavery side by side in the nation, and the way the history has shaped today’s views on race.

The film Black in Latin America by Henry Louis Gates, in its first part concentrates the viewer’s attention at African descendants’ lives in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The film is very significant since it opens a gate to a vital debate about the highland’s division into nations with different racial identities. The film depicts the two countries’ history; however, some important details of the history are missing, which would have supported it further (Gate, 2011). The documentary shows the relationship between the present day and the past. The Haiti citizens are descendants of the those Africans who were taken to the Americas from the year 1502 to 1866, a time when the superpowers of the world secured their workforce from buying, selling, and kidnapping other people. Haiti became the very first modern country to abolish slavery as well as to assert the holiness of human life. The history of Haiti is an interesting tale of the nation that was led by African descent people struggling for survival in European powers dominated country. Demonized, crushed and isolated by embargoes as well as extortion, the new state of Haiti was denied the chance to thrive by the nations it defeated (Gate, 2011).

Most of the Dominicans do not like the idea of being Africans in the present day. Leaders in the Dominican Republic have gone ahead to use tones of the skin differences as a way of demonstrating that black people are outsiders and that Dominican people are Indio, descendants of a population once wiped out by the Spaniards back in the 1500s. Most people of the Dominican Republic went to learn in order to reject their African ancestry through schooling and political repression. They instead embrace Hispanicity. They consider themselves the Dominicans through speaking Spanish, valuing light skin, and catholic faith practicing (Gate, 2011).

According to the documentary, there is a Dominican organization called “Congo Brotherhood.” However, like Dominicans, there are many Haitians who denied their African ancestry. Black in Latin America allots similar aspects such as Africans in America in showing the history of Americans. It is quite important for people to learn the history so that they know where they came from. This way, they can decide what their true identity is while they possess knowledge about their future.