Liberatory Consequences of Literacy: A Case of Culturally Relevant Instruction for African American Students

Abstract

Richards further asserts that culture is amazingly resilient. In spite of the most culturally destructive forces in history, it has not disappeared (p. 229). Indeed, Africans and their culture are a pervasive force throughout the world. Diaspora, a term most often attributed to the Jewish people and the Jewish community outside of Palestine, also refers to the dispersion of African descent peoples throughout the world. The African Diaspora is readily apparent in North, South, and Central America as well as the Caribbean. Despite the cruel Middle Passage, the barbaric process of seasoning in the Caribbean, and the experience of slavery, distinctive features of African culture persist among members of the African Diaspora. Boykin and Tom (1985) have identified nine dimensions of African American cultural expression that have parallel referents throughout Africa and the Diaspora. These cultural expressions include the dimensions of spirituality, harmony, movement, verve, affect, orality, communalism, expressive individualism, and social time perspective. However, there is a persistent ethos in U.S. culture that attempts to dismiss these cultural connections in an effort to move African Americans toward some mythical, homogenized American identity that is solely formed on this side of the Atlantic (Schlesinger, 1991). Evidence of this lack of cultural continuity, Schlesinger notes, is the alleged rejection of

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