Week 2 Question

I think that all four authors have very distinct viewpoints and opinions when it comes to African American history.

Hall was very concernred with representation of a culture and beleived that it was mostly political. Hall thinks that how one inidividual or member of a culture acts has an effect on everyone of the culture. However, he does not believe that all blacks are completely innocent, unlike Asante. Lastly, Hall believes that African American history is a conglomeration of a various histories or events in history.

Hooks basically thinks that post modern history is dominated clearly by white males. She suggests to look at blacks the same way that we do whites; in classes. If we were to break down the race we could more easily help and target the lower class or poor blacks. I think she makes a valid observation because we do break whites into classes and we do not seem to do that with blacks. So by fixing that, maybe we can better understand that different magnitudes of people that make up that culture.

West's statement and mission is very clear. He feels that we should all have the same, equal rights regardless of race, gender, age, anything really. I completely agree with what he has set to do but it seems to be a very difficult dream to obtain and he obviously still has a logn way to go with that.

Asante first beleives that Africans' history has been tainted from the Eurocentric view of which they have been taught. He believes that they should be able to know and reconnect with their true origin and cutlure: Afrocentricity. He thinks that the history that Africans learn is being rewritten or misconstrude by whites. He also wants Africans to be studied like white Americans more as a subject and just subjects. He feels that white American history gets paid a great amount of attention more than does black history. And I would have to agree. We do not learn African American history as a separate subject in lower grades and high school. We learn subjectively important parts of it as it happens to fall within the context of our American history classes but it is not seen as a separate culture. I can completely agree with Asante's feeling of having African history not given as much attention is white American history and I think that needs to change. Asante also points out how Afrocentricity seems to be feared by most. I would also have to agree with the statement. I think because people do not really know what it means that they fear it or stay away fromt the topic. I do wish that in his piece Asante gave suggestions on how to fix the problems he says in contemporary society in terms of staying away from Afrocentricity or our approach to "American" history.

-Sarah Pergine