The Culture of African Americans.

Regardless of what environment humans find themselves in, there is the inevitable jockeying for rank which offers status and rewards relative to the environment. Whether humans find themselves in a prison, in a house of worship, in the inner city or the suburb, there is a culture specific to that environment which offers rank and status to competing members within those circles. Often times these subcultures are the offspring or reaction to actions from the larger culture that encompasses it, yet, different from.

What one must understand about human behavior is that it is guided by biological predispositions known as the prime directives of survival and mating. It is these two biological directives that result in competition to achieve such objectives in whatever environment that one finds him or herself. The desire to survive and to achieve rank, status and privileges is thus part and parcel to human or animal group dynamics. Consequently, one can or should expect the power of environment and culture to play a profound role in human behavior due to the environment or culture setting the value system and means for achieving rank.

When one looks at the African in America, otherwise known as African Americans, one can see the existence of a culture born from, but different than, the larger white culture created and shaped by white America. Of course, the creation of the African American sub culture is the evolution and summation of the experience of African peoples in this land. It is primarily the reaction to the actions imposed upon black people from the white culture, which includes slavery, Apartheid and other forms of discrimination, exploitation and violence targeted at black people throughout the centuries.

Despite the severity in degree and kind of the black experience in America, there has always existed the opportunity for blacks to achieve rank and status among other black peoples, whether in slavery or in an emancipated state of being. Thus, blacks have always competed and achieved rank and status among ourselves, if not among white America, for as long as we have been in this land. In light of this, black America has never been void of the opportunity for rank and status amongst our people, which has created a culture of intra-black competition which offers benefits for our biological prime directives of survival and mating, which just happens to be the same biological prime directives of whites and every other racial group.


It should be expected that those with competitive drive would seek status and rank in the culture. In most inner cities the alpha male, those strong and competitive, will naturally seek to establish rank by emulating and participating in behavior that offers rewards and status in the given environment and culture. In the black culture that is most often sports, entertainment or illegal activities such as drug dealing. If these youths were socialized in a different culture, they would be doctors, lawyers and CEO’s.

All humans, whether consciously or subconsciously, desire positive rank and status. The problem for many African Americans that to achieve success by the normative standards set by white America, they must resist the natural propensity to compete for rank in their immediate environment. This is because achieving rank in the inner city can and does often work against achieving rank by the larger societies normative standards set by whites. Whites are socialized by white expectation and emulation while blacks are socialized by black expectation and emulation.

The black culture of today is characterized by a hyper competition amongst each other, having been conditioned not to compete against whites, which has lead black people to feed off each other in a negative way. The “crabs in a barrel” analogy or syndrome is an example of how this division is helping to keep black people from putting up a good fight for social and economic parity with whites, along with the never ending presence of discrimination from the larger and dominant white culture. However, I must state again that the black culture is the direct creation of mistreatment and discrimination by the dominant white culture as some will surely suggest that black culture is internally created, when it is not. Black people were purposely stripped of their true African culture, which was replaced with a culture engineered by white supremacy to keep black people beneath whites.

Given that we have been conditioned to compete against, as well as disrespect one and other, the system of white supremacy has molded a reality where the frustrations and anger that should be directed outward are thus directed inward. The person looking at you all crazy with a “screw face” is most often another black person as any black male can give testimony to. This is because such a person sees you (another black person) as the primary threat to what they want, whether it is money, women/men or respect. When a black male sees a white male, he does not feel he is in competition with the white male, as a result of historical social conditioning and the decline of overt forms and practices of white racism against blacks. Consequently, when blacks become frustrated and angry, other blacks will likely absorb what should be directed at the “system”, but has been redirected inwards, which is how the white culture socially engineered it to be.

The African American culture is thus what allows drugs to be as devastating to our community as disenfranchised and poor black community it becomes a conduit to achieving social and economic rank through illegal activities. Add to the mix lax gun laws and the easy availability of weapons and you have a destructive mix of intra-black violence as poor blacks compete for a version of the “American dream” by warring with and destroying the lives of other black people. In many ways, we have been conditioned to see other black people as the primary competition and threat, otherwise known as enemy. For the longest time, society penalized blacks who tried to compete with whites or who manifested violence against whites, through the courts and through the intimidation of mobs. The dominate culture rewarded black on black competition and violence, while punishing blacks who attempted to compete with whites or who committed violent acts against whites. Such is an example of how black culture has been socially engineered to be self destructive.

This hyper-intra black competition helps to prevent the primary instrument to our rise, which is unity. Our culture offers status and reward and a means to achieve such by juxtaposition with other black folks, while ignoring the realities of white folks and the role they have played in our conditions. As long as we have something that other black folks don’t have, many of us have achieved rank and status, despite having much less than most white folks have. Consequently, many black folks don’t want to see other black folks rise up because such becomes a threat to their own status as status is only achieved by socioeconomic displacement and separation. In other words, in order to have status and rank, you have to have things other folks don’t have and in this case things other black folks don’t have as they are the primary juxtaposition for rank. This type of attitude is very pervasive and prevents black unity and the collective from moving forward.

These thoughts were inspired by my recent trip back to Michingan and my old neighborhoods. Thanks for reading them.