The Social Construction of Reality through Mythmaking and Legitimating
Social discourse between different groups in societies lead to the formation of new concepts and mental representations. When societies adopted these new concepts or mental representations they then became institutionalized and intrinsic to the functioning of those societies. Russell T. McCutcheon asserted ‘(1) that myths “are not special (or ‘sacred’) but ordinary humans means of fashioning and authorizing their lived-in and believed-in worlds,’ (2), that myths as an ordinary rhetorical device in social construction and maintenance makes this rather than that social identity possible in the first place and (3) that a people’s use of the label ‘myth’ reflects, expresses, explores and legitimizes their own self-image” (McCutcheon 200). However, Paul L. Berger affirmed that legitimation, the process whereby "knowledge" is socially objectified and is used to justify social order, “serves to support the swaying edifice of social order” (Berger pg 3) and that legitimation “takes the form of proverbs, moral maxims, and traditional wisdom” which in turn “may be further developed and transmitted in the form of myths” (Berger pg 4). In African Americans, Exodus, and The American Israel and God’s New Israel Berger and McCutcheon‘s theories, described the processes that the different groups
used to construct their mythology and dogma through a social dialectic. In African Americans, Exodus, and The American Israel, Albert J. Raboteau (explains) how the African slaves internalized the myth of Exodus written in the Bible and viewed themselves to be Old Israel. African slaves could apply Exodus to their own experiences of slavery because it “functioned as an arche...
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...kpiling the past in plain sight. Berger proposed that legitimation was the process where knowledge was socially objectified to maintain socially defined realities. In the texts mentioned above, each group was vicariously living through the Hebrew experience of Exodus. They were utilizing their past experiences, the Hebrew experiences and beliefs along with their own personal beliefs to rewrite their identity, reality, and their overall history. Our historical mainstream thought never addressed the mechanisms and processes that groups undertake to create their self-identity only the general facts, but these two theories both helps us understand the facts and the mechanisms and processes in how the African slaves and the US and their American civil religion utilized mythmaking and legitimation to produce a new worldview and new history that was waiting to be unfolded.
The origin tale of the African American population in the American soil reveals a narrative of a diasporic faction that endeavored brutal sufferings to attain fundamental human rights. Captured and forcefully transported in unbearable conditions over the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, a staggering number of Africans were destined to barbaric slavery as a result of the increasing demand of labor in Brazil and the Caribbean. African slaves endured abominable conditions, merged various cultures to construct a blended society that pillared them through the physical and psychological hardships, and hungered for their freedom and recognition.
African American slavery was used to grow economies in the North and South before the Civil War. Although the North and South had different styles of slavery, they still had an owner/slave relationship that remained demeaning when a person owns a person. Narratives of interviews with Charlie Smith and Fountain Hughes are discussed as the slaves share their memories of their life as a slave.
Slavery is a sensitive topic that most would say evil and bad. Martin states that “some African-Americans claimed that Jews were the dominant figures in the trading of black slaves. (Martin 1993). Research by Mintz and McNeil support that “After making contact with the West Africans, the Portuguese est...
Through the Old Testament we begin to understand and learn that Exodus is a book written by Moses a descendent of Abraham. Exodus paints the reader a picture and describes a chain of successions and Gods requests and responses from his people. Approximately, four hundred years had passed since Joseph made the profound decision to pick up his life and move his family to Egypt. Every one of Abraham’s descendants had matured and grown immensely becoming essentially over two million strong. In Egypt there was a new pharaoh ruling, one in which believed the Hebrews to be foreigners with numbers tremendously frightening. The pharaoh decided to take all of the Hebrew people and force them into slavery, hence they wouldn’t upset his balance of power.
insights into what the narratives can tell about slavery as well as what they omit,
African Americans’ ancestors were chained, shrouded in death and pain they were dragged on long journeys across the sea from their home to work till their very last breath on fields run by colonists. With slavery being the foundation for African Americans, what circumstanc...
During a most dark and dismal time in our nations history, we find that the Africans who endured horrible circumstances during slavery, found ways of peace and hope in their religious beliefs. During slavery, Africans where able to survive unbearable conditions by focusing on their spirituality.
Slave’s masters consistently tried to erase African culture from their slave’s memories. They insisted that slavery had rescued blacks form the barbarians from Africa and introduced them to the “superior” white civilization. Some slaves came to believe this propaganda, but the continued influence of African culture in the slave community added slave resistance to the modification of African culture. Some slaves, for example, answered to English name in the fields but use African names in their quarters. The slave’s lives were filled with surviving traits of African culture, and their artwork, music, and other differences reflected this influence.
The purpose of this reflective outline is to demonstrate a thorough understanding of theories, concepts, and/or strategies relating to cultural and social religions. “Whale Rider” (Caro, 2002) , is a depictive representation of a cultural religion that has survived on the belief of male inheritance as their form of guidance; however, history has shown that change is inevitable. For example, throughout history, religion has played a pivotal role in the development of individuals, including the evolution of societies. This shows that because religion/s around the world have practiced their core beliefs in an attempt to guide humanities behaviors, yet , as we can observe with the “Whale Rider,” even the most influential community and cultural leaders can become miscued in their ideologies. Because The Maori of New Zealand have developed deep seated beliefs within natural creatures; Katu is term used to relate to their god (Maori.com, 2014) steaming for their ancestral Polynesian descendants. In addition to what can be observed, such as beliefs, practices, and/or symbolic terminologies, each religion will ensure its presidential knowledge is passed to those who receive it accordingly. The factual concept stands and history has proven is evolution that without guidance and continuous religious and cultural support, decedents of a heritage may become lost and/or miscued within their mislead ideology. Although many religions are centered on the belief of normality’s cultural expectance, often times we can observe drastic changes in the reorganization of a cultural religion.
In “The View from the Bottom Rail”, the authors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle, proposed, “For several reasons, that debased position has made it unusually difficult for historians to recover the freedman’s point of view.” Within the article, Davidson and Lytle cycled through different aspects as to why it is hard for historians to determine the “view from the bottom rail”. They questioned the validity of many sources that, if accurate, would have contained the perspective of an ex-slave. These sources included both white and black testimony.
When slaves were brought to America they were taken from all they had known and forced to live in a land of dark irony that, while promising life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided them with only misery. In a situation such as the one in which the slaves found themselves, many people would rely on their religion to help them survive. But would slaves be able to find spiritual comfort within the parameters of a religion that had been passed on to them from the slaveholders? In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, African-Americans struggle to find a spirituality that is responsive to their needs and that encompasses their experiences in a way that the religion of the dominant culture does not.
From Slavery to Freedom: African in the Americas. (2007). Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Retrieved October 7, 2007 from Web site: http://www.asalh.org/
Slave-owners forced a perverse form of Christianity, one that condoned slavery, upon slaves. According to this false Christianity the enslavement of “black Africans is justified because they are the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons; in one Biblical story, Noah cursed Ham's descendants to be slaves” (Tolson 272). Slavery was further validated by the numerous examples of it within the bible. It was reasoned that these examples were confirmation that God condoned slavery. Douglass’s master...
An examination of the evidence clearly demonstrates that Barnes had identified two major distinctions between biblical law and southern law concerning slave homicide. It would seem, then, that Barnes had dealt a fatal blow to southerner’s use of Exodus 21:20 and ultimately the Bible to sanction slavery as they practiced it. However, an important question needs to be answered in order to determine the validity of Barnes’ argument that the systems of biblical slavery and southern slavery were incongruent. In short, to whom was Exodus 21:20 referring? Did Exodus 21:20 apply to just the murder of Hebrew slaves or to non-Hebrew slaves as well? Since African slaves were likened to non-Hebrew slaves in the South, it must be demonstrated that Exodus
[1] In the movie Sankofa, Haile Gerima does not hesitate to show the audience the horrors of slavery. Not only does he show the brutal and humiliating practices used by slaveholders to subjugate slaves but he also shows how slaveholders used Christianity to control and manipulate slaves. He demonstrates the huge impact of slavery on today’s society and the importance of looking back to slavery to understand the present. Traditionally, history textbooks have hesitated to talk about any of these aspects of slavery. Present history books have begun to describe the brutalities of slavery but still refuse to explain slavery’s impact or to mention Christianity’s role in slavery. There are three main reasons for this hesitance to be truthful about all aspects of slavery when writing history textbooks. These are patriotism for the United States, cultural bias towards the white race, and a bias towards Christianity.