By June D. Wilhite
State Press
Slavery displaced an entire culture, transplanted them into a foreign place, and left them little room to establish good relationships between each other, said ASU professors Neal Lester and Daina Ramey Wednesday night.
The professors spoke at a meeting that launched a bi-weekly, semester-long series hosted by the ASU Black African Coalition.
"Today we see a lot of African-Americans mistakenly defining beauty and professionalism by dominant, white standards instead of our own," said Vince Nicholes, BAC president and an ASU computer systems engineering senior.
"I would even say that the single largest strain on African-American relationships today stems from the distorted view of self-worth that we have had to contend with since our arrival in this country. This is a strong statement but one that can be factually corroborated with historical and cultural evidence."
Ramey, an assistant professor in American history, agreed.
"Slave masters employed a lot of strategies to change the psyche of Africans, thus affecting the relationships of Black men and women," Ramey said. "Black men and women had to deal with their own survivals, that resulted in them leading separate lives."
Ramey received her Ph.D. in American history at UCLA and has done extensive research on African-Americans in the 19th century, focusing primarily on the relationship between slave labor, family and community in post-civil war America.
Mateo Montano, an ASU junior, said that Africans and Europeans differ in their ideas on masculinity.
"The perpetuated images of masculinity, success and sexual competence taught to men are due to the systematic eradication of African thought by Euro-Centric ideas," said the 20-year-old African-American studies and music major.
Lester, an English professor, commented on personal ads written by African-American men from across the country searching for an African-American female mate.
He said Black men, "have constructed their manhood through what the white man has defined it to be."
He said Black men are using in the ads their professionalism, skin tone and sexual capabilities to measure their worth.
"I found an overwhelming number of Black men who have internalized the 'Mandigo myth' that they have to be buff and stallion-like," Lester said. "I am particularly concerned with the words the Black men were choosing to describe themselves. It seemed like they were trying to equal themselves to white men through money and education."
The statement, however, caused some concerns among the audience.
"It's a scary thought that we don't have a model of who we (African-American men) should be and how we should provide for our Black women," said Shaikh Brown, a 20-year-old theater student.