America has many customs, beliefs, and cultural ways. This country has various ways of teaching, cooking, dressing, music, and more, but these things are not the ways of past Americans. In fact, they were taught to white Americans by Africans that unwillingly were bought to America. While Africans were forced to work, Americans noticed many customs they’d like to learn.
Holloway dissects this idea in his book “What Africa had given America”. He educates readers on how Americans were able to develop their homes practicing the ways of Africans, while continuing to enslave them. He first focuses on how Africa had a teaching and cooking system, dressing style and the Americans began to make it their own. Secondly, he explains that the Bantu people are quite skilled mechanically, which depicts that although Africans were taken from what their used to at home, they used what was around them to stick to what they know. Third, most crops that were sold in America were grown by Africans. Fourth, many of the diseases that has traveled to America from other places were able to get treated using African remedies. This shows that Africans genuinely loved their ways from home, because they even used them to help the Americans who enslaved them. Lastly, along with music selection and preference, many African dances made its way to America and turned into America’s own dances. This reading shed a lot of light on topics many people are not ready to discuss. Holloway makes this an interesting way to tell us that overtime as technology improved, so did the customs of Africans, but Americans only played a part in this improvement. Africa’s practices are the root of everything we have today. One question I have is: “Do white Americas who still continue to mistreat Africans and African Americans realize that without us they would not have more than half of the things they use, love, and enjoy today? If so, how come they fail to accept this fact?”
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