African American culture if you step back objectively is essentially Afro-Anglo-Saxon-Celtic
History does not stop and history is an evolutionary chronicle of human development. We often make the mistake of treating “race” and “ethnicity” as static non-evolutionary (unchanging) concepts, typically since race as we see it, is a modernist construct that arose alongside European colonialism over other groups of humans.
But, we often make the mistake of seeing race as concrete in my opinion, because of the now debated thesis of neolibieral capitalist thinker, Francis Fukuyama, with his “End of History” idea, which relating to concepts of race/ethnicity and culture, makes the mistake of turning culture into commodities or “brand names” of post-Treaty of Westhpahlian nation-states, when in fact culture is always shifting and will contiue to evolve. Note: The Treaty of Westphalia is often agreed to be the beginning of modern nation-states.
For example, as we debate race in the modern world, we often forget fascinating historical events such as the fact that Asians from as far as Mongolia left a genetic and culture imprint on Europe. We often don’t talk about how the very language in which I’m writing this in, i.e., English, is a type of Indo-European language, falling under a family of languages that includes distant tongues as far as India. We forget the fact that Germanic warriors set up a Vandal Kingdom in North Africa in modern day Algeria and Libya. Or, we forget the fact that sub-saharan “black” Africans sometimes found themselves in Europe as far back as the Roman Period and even further back with the Greeks making note of black Africans with figures such as Memnon (likely from ancient Ethiopia).
We often never talk about how there was a dynasty of Roman Emperors were from North Africa and the Middle East. We never talk about what we consider to be modern German, British, etc., are fairly new concepts in the span of history and are based on a confluence of diverse factors, groups, tribes, migrations, etc. We even forget to acknowledge that Iron Age settlers from the Middle East with more advanced farming techniques settled in Europe as ice-sheets thawed and these settlers merged this “old Europeans” of the Ice Age period, and later Central Asian and Iranian peoples invaded.
Meghan Markle marrying Prince Harry is in a way an acknowledgement of an open secret that’s always been staring us in the face, which is that African Americans (similar to other black diaspora peoples under the yoke of English culture, e.g. Black Canadians, African Americans, Jamaicans, etc.) are a Western peoples branching strongly from English Anglo-Saxon “Western” culture.
For example, the Jamaican dialect is noted for being influenced by Irish settlers alongside African slaves. If we hear “ebonics” or African American Vernacular English and compare it to Cockney accents of London, there’s many similarities in the sound.
These Black English Diaspora groups often have varying levels of European DNA to do sexual relationships between Africans and Europeans in the colonial period and onward. A big reason why we still have such a discernible visibly black population is because colonial governments such as those of Virginia noticed an uptick in “yellow” people, i.e., bi-racial people, and put bans on the practice of interracial relationships, but also after the invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney, a new group of black Africans were imported into the United States, sustaining slavery as an institution for another 80 years until the Civil War, and slowing down racial mixing. For example in Spanish or French countries (Latin) you had categories of White with Native American, White with African, etc., but in the English colonies, such large mixed groups were hidden or discouraged.
In theory, the same way how Mestizo in Spanish culture is often the dominate ethnic group (Iberian European mixed with Native American), the English colonial-based “mulatto” culture was limited by law, thus creating a more entrenched racial binary between white and black, which was essential in maintain a divide-and-conquer system that benefited the merchant and owner classes.
The marriage of Meghan to Harry might be looked back on with history as a strategic marriage that brought black diaspora culture/peoples together with European culture, by ordaining it with the aesthetics of western nobility. Such strategic marriages have been common throughout aristocratic history, where leaders often marry into group that were subjugated as a means of including said groups into the existing power structures, e.g., a Frankish prince marrying a Bavarian or a Saxon princess, etc.
Meghan and Harry’s marriage represents in part an attempt at reconciliation and unity between white European culture and Westernized African Diaspora culture, and….in perfect fashion, there are powers at be who cannot get over the manufactured racial dialectic.
Prince Archie not only represents the unique sub-culture of black culture within Western Civilization, but he also literally represents the West, since he is a descendant of Charlemagne himself, as well as William The Conqueror, Rollo the Viking, Henry the Lion, etc.
African-Americans, largely descended from the dense rainy forests, river delta, and Sahel peoples of West Africa, experienced a process of assimilation no different than European pagan groups being assimilated such as the Germanic forest peoples such as the Saxons, the Baltic peoples, the Finns, etc.
But, we often don’t see it in this light because the modern USA has such an entrenched and dialectical viewpoint of race, i.e., innocuous racial segregation. “Proper talk” vs “ebonics”. Stiff vs rhythm. Bland vs spicy, etc. Stereotypes policed by the general public.
Black Americans experiencing slavery is similar to German tribes being forced into Christianity and serfdom by the Franks and earlier Romans. On a likely dreary day in the fall time of 782 AD, Charlemagne, the Frankish warrior king who would become Holy Roman Emperor, i.e., the de jure ruler of Western and Central Europe as crowed by the Pope, ordered the beheading of around four thousand & two hundred (4,200 estimate) Saxons.
The Saxons were a Germanic tribe of pagan forest peoples who lived in modern day Northwest Germany, first documented by the earlier Romans who tried but never truly conquered the various Germanic factions (e.g., the Alemanni, Suebi, Bavarii, Thurnigii, Macromanni, Saxons, Frisii, Franks, etc.).
Charlemagne on his blood-thirsty conquest of the pagan Germanic peoples of the dense forests of Central Europe, wanted the covert the Saxons to Christianity and he went so far as to deface sacred objects to the Saxons such as the Irminsul (a sacred tree). Charlemagne’s incentive for conquests was to spread to Christianity, not because he was the best Christian, actually far from it, but since his title of Emperor was ordained by the Pope, Charlemagne had an obligation to conquer to people, i.e., more Christians means more people for him to easily rule over and have the backing of the Papacy.
The irony is these “Earthy German forest peoples” with soul became Westernized into the expansionist ideals of Christian evangelism, and even more ironic these once enslaved Europeans would enslave black Africans.
In other words, Christianity and colonization are often synonymous with each other, and with conquest often comes crimes against humanity such as genocide, but this isn’t merely a Christian issue, but can be found in most major world religions, including Islam.
The Saxons eventually fell and were assimilated into Western culture, i.e., at the time meaning Latin based Roman Catholicism centered around a feudal model of serf-renters (sharecroppers) under a militarily-protected land-owner noble class of Frankish extraction, similar to how the Franks assimilated earlier into Western Roman culture.
Note: Frank eventually meant to go mean “free” and the word Frank influenced the word “Franchise”, i.e., what we today consider the be the right to vote, but also the modern business term of franchise meaning a business who is licensing their name of a smaller organization for a fee (nobles were granted their rank by promising to represent the central leaders and each party in a sort of pact or contract would perform a duty for each other, e.g., the lower noble charged with mustering defense and supervising agricultural production, whereas the central leader promised protection and the settling of disputes. Workers on estates, i.e., everyone else but the ruling class, were seen as “villains” coming from the word “villa”, descended from the Roman plantation system farms of villas where many conquered Celtic and Germanic people’s worked on as …slaves.
Charlemagne’s blood line eventually lost its grip over Imperial power across the empire, and those the Franks had conquered or married into took over, e.g., the Robertians of West Francia based out of Paris would eventually take over what is today France and the Capetian Dynasty arose from this. In Italy, the Uroching Family – related to Charlemagne – took over Italy for a time, yet, in the Germany, the Saxons muscled their way over leadership of the Germanic peoples of present day Germany (first under the Ottonian Dynasty and then later under the Welf Family, whom at a time controlled Saxony in the North and Bavaria in the South near the Alps).
By the late 12th century, the Duke of the Saxons, Henry the Lion (of the House of Welf. Note: The modern British royal family is in part strongly descended from the House of Welf-Este which included an Italian and German line), started to “colonize and settle” the Northeastern part of Germany and Northwest Poland, which were inhabited by a mix of Western Slavic (proto-Polish) Prussians, Obotrites, Sorbs, etc.
This colonization by German settlers lead to the violent Northern Crusades beginning around 1147. The militant and fanatical Christian Teutonic Knights and Knights of the Livonian Order, established what could be considered a “for-profit military contractor outpost” in the Baltic region. The Teutonic Knights shifted their focus from the Crusades of the Levant (in defense of Jerusalem, Acre, etc.), where they were protecting and treating (i.e., hospitalling) Christian pilgrims, to a militant force for Germanic colonization, largely as a means of staying relevant (warriors need war to exist and the fuedal social order relied on second or third sons either joining the clergy or becoming a soldier selling his service on the hopes he’d be eventually alloted his own land to manage or keep to oversee).
The Teutonic Order was accused of war crimes such as genocide against these “Wendish”, i.e., West Slavic and Baltic peoples. Dominican Priests such as John of Falkenberg would advocate for genocide against the Western Slavic and Baltic tribes as a means of justifying the war crimes of the Teutonic Order.
Rewind, before the Saxon Conquests by Charlemagne, around 300-500 AD, near the end of the Western Roman Empire, many Saxons migrated into England. This period was the “Great Migration” period where various “barbarian” tribes moved all over the European continent seeing a power vacuum left as the Romans declined. For example, the Goths would sack Rome before half of their confederation staying in Italy while the other half went treasure seeking and land grabbing in modern day Spain.
The Saxons, Angles, Frisians (the closest language to modern English), and Jutes merged with the native Briton populations created, who were influenced in part by Roman rule in Britannia, creating Anglo-Saxons and displacing the Celtic tribes who fled to the North, the West (Wales) and Southwest (modern day Cornwall), etc. Note: this period is speculated as being the origin story of King Arthur, i.e., a supposed Roman-Briton warrior with his Celtic sorcerer teacher in Merlin (representing the old ways before Christianization) fighting against the invading pagan Saxons and Germans.
This Anglo-Saxon culture in the England would go to influence modern English culture (along side, and this culture was eventually forced upon West Africans, whom like Saxons of old, were assimilated into Western “Roman” Germanic culture.
What is an African American?
A person of West African descent assimilated into Christian Anglo-Saxon and Celtic culture resulting a unique branch of Western culture that oscillates between African culture, mostly due to a re-surged interests in indigenous African customs in the Civil Rights Era, and European culture. This ethnogenesis resulting in black people with English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and French surnames, who are overwhelmingly Protestant but with some representation within Catholicism.
African American could be defined as Afro-Celtic, Afro Saxon, Afro Saxon-Celtic, West African Teutonic, etc.
For example, my name Quinton Mitchell where this version of Mitchell comes from Scottish American settlers. Think of Larry Fitzgerald, Donovan McNabb, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc. Before the 1970s, most Black Americans named their children these Germanic Celtic names.
The same process by which the Saxons of old were assimilated into the West, the forest peoples of West African experienced the same thing, ironically from descendants of Saxon influenced culture. Also, the same way that European pagans of the Baltic fought against German (heavily influenced by Saxon culture) and how Saxons fought against the earlier Franks, African-Americans resisted white supremacy.
But, the reason we don’t include African Americans within the iconography of Western Civilization is due to (A) racism by white supremacy, and (B) reactionary movement to that supremacy which is a de-colonial Pan-Africanist mindset espoused by black nationalists, which is often associated with political Left as is as of 2022, considering this ideology could be argued as inspired by Marxist ideology which seeks to flatten hierarchical systems.
Attempts by African Americans to accept their place within Western Civilization as activate participants is often seen as “selling out” by black nationalists and an affront by white supremacists to the status quote. This all seems to be by design in my opinion, i.e., keeping African Americans out of the glory of Western Civilization by convincing us to not want to participate, i.e., encouraging self-determinism and segregation as a means of achieving what white supremacy wanted along, aka, segregation of the races.
In other words, African Americans are Western people but traditionally discriminated against from owning what rightfully belongs to them as well, i.e., a stake in the longevity of Western Civilization. More disturbing, many Black Americans have convinced themselves to disassociate from the West.
Further, due to the rise of black nationalism which often basis itself in opposition to “whiteness”, this ideology too has erased the uniqueness of African Americans with Western Civilization, because so much of Black Nationalism sees no sort of reconciliation process as being possible, and often defines itself, ever-growing with a dialectal mindset, i.e., doing the opposite for opposites sake as a means of defining blackness as separate from “white”.
For example, many extremist black nationalist groups adopting Islamic ideology (which is ironic considering Islam played a big role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, e.g., Muslims couldn’t enslave other Muslims so they enslaved pagan nature-worshiping Africans, similar to how Christians enslaved European pagans)
