Final ROP Essay

This year I have learned a lot of things from Rites of Passage. It has benefited me in several ways. One way Rites of Passage has benefited me was I learned that you can't always believe what you hear the media. The second thing I learned was that my ancestors stood up and fought for their freedom. The last thing I learned from was that music began in Africa and other cultures tried to duplicate our music by imitating it but never really.

The first thing I learned was that you always can't trust the media because the media doesn't always tell the truth. The media tells a story in a way that makes them look like a perfect nation but in all actuality they are not. Americans and other countries are taking advantage of the Somalian country by killing them by way of starvation. Even though that's the truth you don't hear that from the over exaggerating media. They killed teenagers, not men but boys and they don't feel remorse for it but you don't hear that in the media either.

The second thing I learned was that my ancestors were fighters. This includes my ancestor John Garang. He was at first fighting against his country but then he was given a wake up call to what the government was doing to his people. Then he became enraged and retaliated. He was not alone people like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and many others contributed to this free land we now live on.

The last thing I learned from Rites of Passage was that music originated in Africa. It originated in Africa before Africans had field music. African People sung songs in their native language with the drums as instruments. The drums of Africa gave us our rhythm and the step we have now. Our dance moves are made to mimic their African dances.

In conclusion, I learned a lot this year.I have learned more about .This class has given me my place in history. It has opened me to things in life that I have never questioned. It made me think twice about what I am listening to because music plays a role in how I think as a young female and a young African-American.

To Be African

To me being African means being respectful of your self and respecting others. It also means that you embody Africa because being Africa is not have to mean that you are born in Africa but it means that Africa is born in you; culture, rhythm and ancestry stories. To Marimba Ani being African means that you understand African culture as an African, it means being responsible for our faults and it means recognizing that we are great as African people.

To understand being African you have to have knowledge about where you come from. You have to be socially aware of what is going on in Africa because what ever happens to Africans, happens to you because it is destroying your homelands greatness. It is taking the power away from your African ancestors. Marimba Ani states " The members of a culture are bonded together by their shared culture, which gives them a sense of collective identity. Without a culture to be bonded to you are not bonded.

We are not taking responsibility for we we are doing wrong. We are letting our families get torn apart by drug and alcohol abuse. We do not take responsibility for that because the addiction takes over the love for our family, the love that helps us have a loving home. We don't take responsibility for the faults that we do to our young Americans. We put them in foster care to abandon them and some of them get leaded down to the road of nowhere because that's all they know. That's how they grew up to nothing to some of them can only achieved nothing.

To Ms. Ani being African means recognizing that you come from greatness so you can achieve greatness."We are awakening to the need to claim our cultural legacy". She is says we need to step up and claim our heritage because it makes us who we are. Our culture makes every culture who they are because it all originated in Africa.

To be African means recognizing that you are good because your skin is black, but to be excellent you have to achieve more. You have to look deep within yourself and find the answer to how you can achieve greatness. You have to be your own person and not be what you think people want you to be.