Matrifocality/Matricentricity:From Africa to Black Americans

Matrifocality/Matricentricity:From Africa to Black Americans

Introduction

This paper will explain the facts and issues related to Matrifocality. Matrifocality is a descriptor of an anthropological term matrifocal, and it literally means “mother focused.” The term most often describes a kinship system that is matriarchal or female-headed in nature, e.g., the matrifocal family. Matrifocal families are characteristic of several cultures, including the Javanese, the Igbo of West Africa, and the Mescalero Apaches. Still, its most mainstream Western use is in describing the families of African Americans and other cultures of the African diaspora, most especially those from lower socioeconomic classes. It has a noted history of being used to describe the so-called social pathologies of these specific communities (Stuart 1996: 170 - 210).

History of African American Culture

Afrocentricity or Afrocentrism is an epistemology prominent in one school of African-American studies. It asserts that Western civilization has its origins in the classical African civilizations, specifically Egypt (or "Kemet"), and that African paradigms, symbols, myths, and values should constitute the starting point or frame of reference for acquiring knowledge of the experience of African peoples wherever they are in the world. Although a number of scholars have contributed to the Afrocentric idea, two of its most influential advocates are Ron Karenga and Molefi K. Asante. Although not the dominant framework or approach in African-American studies, Afrocentrism is used in a number of programs, including the one at San Francisco State University, the birthplace in 1969 of the first modern black-studies department. In addition to its epistemological and pedagogical uses in black scholarship, Afrocentricity is also part of the larger movement of cultural nationalism, which in the United States seeks to accentuate African heritage and culture through the adoption of African names, fashions and dress (kente cloths, kufi hats, African beads), hair styles (braids, dreadlocks, Afros), food, music, and religiosity (Carter & McGoldrick 1999: 12 - 23).

Critics (such as the white liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the liberal black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.) contend that Afrocentricity as a form of multiculturalism threatens to balkanize or divide the United States into distinctive ethnic communities, and that both as a pedagogy and as an expression of cultural nationalism it runs counter to classical liberalism. Schlesinger argues that the pedagogy of Afrocentricity is in effect racist, writing. Meanwhile Asante contends that multiculturalism in education is a nonhierarchical approach to education that respects and celebrates a diversity of cultural perspectives and is a revolutionary challenge to the ideology of white supremacy and the dominance of American culture and education by "Eurocentricity" (Rosaldo & Bamberger 1974: 300 - 370).

The system of slavery and the use of the labor of slaves, which existed in the U.S. in 1619 - one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five years. Most slaves were Africans forcibly exported from places of residence, and their descendants. Life of American African during slavery was miserable and worst situation. African American people spend life as a salve every child was born in slave he must become ...