I read a great essay yesterday by Ira Berlin, entitled “Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America.” I read the article on the advice of Hilary Moss (Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America)who recently commented on a draft of my dissertation proposal. She was cautioning me on an assumption that I seemed to be making in my writing that suggested a monolithic African American/Black culture in North America. While this wasn't my intention, I could see that she was correct. In my thinking, I always make the distinction between northern and southern black culture especially since I married a woman who's regional and cultural tendencies are decidedly southern.
In informal conversations I find that most Southerners think that Northerners see them as stereotypically simple and stupid (Here is a Southerner's Response). While it is probably true in many cases that Northerners see Southerners as gullible, charming folk, who speak with a drawl, drive pick up trucks, and prefer fishing to intellectually stimulating conversation; not all Northerners would agree to such stereotypical representations of our southern brothers and sisters. For me, Southerners are just different... from me. My sensibilities, likes, my style, what I am attracted to, reflects my upbringing in the urban centers of northeastern United States. Even down to what I like to experience in worship. This is something I am acutely aware of, so it was strange to think that I would write pages upon pages melding northern and southern black culture together as though they were one.
Berlin's article was helpful as it pointed to 3 distinct African American cultures developing in the 17th and 18th centuries. Distinctions which are probably still relevant today in many ways. These distinctions were mediated by time and space. Berlin suggests that one culture developed amidst a nonplantation culture in the North, a a 2nd was a Southern plantation system in the Chesapeake area, and a 3rd plantation system developed in the South Carolina and Georgia low country. To find out the particulars of the differences, I suggest you read the essay.
There are a number of things that these groups held in common however: a common African lineage, a common racial oppressor, and a common desire to create the richest life possible for themselves and their families amidst intensely difficult circumstances. Black life in the US is mediated by time and space; by social circumstances and local traditions; by cultural distinctions and regional sensibilities; and although African American life has grown immensely in diversity since the antebellum years, one might argue that it is still held together by the same commonalities today.
Written by Frederick A Hanna
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