African Identity Essay

In the article, Facilitating African Identity Development Critical Literacy Books for African College Students, it discusses the way Africans identify with who they are. The article goes into details about how Africans define culturally, based on their race, environment, personality awareness, and there interest level in learning of there cultural history.

Through the years people development their sense of identity from the lifestyle the lived. This can be attributed to the way the where taught and the environment they grew up in. Students African identity my also be due to the way society perceives them and then how, they themselves see who they are. This leads to two perspectives of identity, European - centered perspective and …show more content…
A African centered view point focuses on uniformity, teamwork, commonality, and interconnections. In an African- centered perspective people are more able to weed out the misrepresentations and find the truth about African cultural. Although it is good those with an African- centered mindset can weed out the truth in European literature, they tend to not be able to explain their perspective. Within the article the text explains the journey to African centered mindset as a tree.A trees roots grow down and out symbolic of our background. As time progresses the trees branches grow up and out much like the way we learn. If the tree is cut the rings of the tree become visible along us to see its growth and age. This is symbolic of our growth completing a African centeredness. With ones view point being African-centered they have a heighten sense of cultural identity. African centered perspectives believe in controlling their human experience compared with European allowing others too. Those with a African- centered perspective have an overall better cultural understanding of the dance, music, language, dress and food of the African