Sankofa - Addressing the Past to Understand the Present

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“I am not African, I am American. Don’t you recognize me? Mona says. She tries to differentiate herself from them immediately. Is this not what we as black Americans tend to feel? Growing up in a westernized nation has altered the beauty of been an African-American. Like Joe, African-Americans are forgetting to have self-love and to love the skin you are in. Blacks are brain washed to think that a darker skin tone is not valued and to be “good enough” they have to assimilate to white culture. They do this by conforming to White Americans culture and religion and forgetting about theirs. The way blacks straighten the roots of their hair, the way they dress, and even the way they talk has been altered. Like the head masters the black community is unconsciously putting each other down, when they should be building each other up. Sankofa means we must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we can understand why and how we came to be who we are today. The black community must go back to their roots and their culture in order to move forward.

In conclusion, the emptiness that Joe felt, the disgracefulness that Noble Ali felt and the disconnect that Mona felt, is the same feeling that most black Americans possess today; a void that can only be filled with the acknowledgment of our ancestry and the relearning of our culture to understand our identity. Whatever we have lost mentally, forgotten or been stripped of, can be reclaimed, revived, preserved and perpetuated. The Sankofa bird has its feet firmly planted forward, but its head turned backwards, with an egg, symbolizing the future, held tightly in its mouth.

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