African American Lives
The “African American lives” is a clear indication of the African Americans attempts to identify their roots and ancestry by engaging in DNA tests to determine the correct combination of their origin. This is explained by the role played by the Gates’ project in taking the African Americans through the entire procedure to determine their ancestry. The lineage is explained in an interesting manner with most participants being unaware of their maternal or paternal origins (Gates, 2006).
This research on the African American ancestry is critical in understanding the African American literature as the context in which the literature is written is dependent on the author’s lineage. The African American ancestry lineage issue was fundamental in elimination of intellectual racism which was attributed to discriminating against the literary work of blacks. According to the Gates’ project and his mission, it is only by studying the black culture that the entire world will be able to appreciate the work written by the African Americans.
Therefore, in order to appreciate and understand the African American literature it is important to understand where the author is coming from. This enables the reader to create solid links between various concepts which are included and it is also the only way to reduce or eliminate racial discrimination (Gates, 2006).
The intersection between the theme of the video and the African American literary studies is essential in evaluating the uniformity of human beings as being equal regardless of their color. This point tends to seek for respect to human beings regardless of their skin color such that the readers should not discriminate against literal work simply because it is written by a black author. Gates, points out clear that mixing of genes and interracial relationships created new African American descendants who are not purely black as most have white genes in their genetic composition (Gates, 2006).
The theme of intersection is relevant to literature as it calls for worldwide acceptance of literary work from blacks. From the class themes, blacks and whites are responsible of writing anything in terms of content but most time intellectual racism is directed towards the blacks. The intersection extends its presence from the point of slavery to the gene combinations that are not necessarily black. This makes the African American experience, as well as, the American experience a unique period in the lineage tracing (Gates, 2006).
Therefore, the whole world gets to know that despite the fact that the black slaves were mistreated, they were also exposed to sexual harassment such as rape by their white owners. This is exhibited by presence of white French genes from some of the participants in the Gates’ project (Gates, 2006).
The interconnection between the African American literature and the Gates’ projects helps us evaluate the content of African American literature. Consequently, it challenges our intellectual racism and disregard for African American literature which makes up a larger percentage of the literature learnt in class (Gates, 2006).
References
Gates Louis Henry, African American lives. Retrieved on October 25, 2010 from: http://www.youtube/africanamericanlives. 2006
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