Growing up I never had to ask my parents what race they were, I knew they were both black. Not mixed with anything, just black, based on the fact that their parents were just black. Now, I know that somewhere in my family there are Caucasians and Indians, but claiming cultures that I know absolutely nothing about would make me a hypocrite. I use black and African American interchangeably, but ultimately I have no right to call myself African American if I don't know what part of Africa my family is from. I know my ancestors were kidnapped by slave traders and then sold to wealthy merchants and plantation owners (my ancestors on my father's side were purchased by Finns, hence the name Ollison, I am not sure on my mother's side) but I would have to do something like ancestry.com or 23&me to get the detailed history. Even though I know a little about who I am, I don't know who I am on a deeper level. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay While I was researching to learn more about black culture, I came across a CNN article about Justin Simien (the man behind the hit Netflix series Dear White People) and what he learned on black culture. Justin said: "Black culture is the sum of the cultural contributions of black subculture to the mainstream, while 'black culture' is a lifestyle standard made of assumptions about black identity, often used successfully by marketers, studio heads, fashion brands and music labels to make money” (Simien, 2014) which caught my attention. When you think of black culture, you either think of negative things or success stories used against struggling black people, because if Oprah Winfrey can do it, why can't you? Black culture is our music, our food, the way we speak, our hair, our dancing and so much more. It's our unique way of expressing who we are like no one else can, other than the "black culture" that dominates the powers that be, so we are famous basketball players and singers, we are faces attached to welfare and the poor. We're the ones eating chicken and watermelon, we're the ones who are thugs, gangsters and loud people. We are used by the system as puppets to make money, but when we cannot be of use to them, we are the most vindictive, dangerous and evil people there are. When I think of the men of my country, there is a perceptible feeling. their absence, which is due to the fact that a large number of them are in prison. For some it was the wrong place at the wrong time, for some they did bad things to survive, and for others they were just young and stupid. “We weren't necessarily expected to go to jail,” Betts said. “But we lived in a climate and an environment in which these things were happening on a daily basis and no one was confronting what that meant. (Lee and Stasio, 2015). Black men are incarcerated at higher rates than black women, white men, and white women. This leads to fewer male figures to look up to, children growing up with only one mother, men leaving prison unable to get back on their feet due to their criminal records, and the stigma that men don't don't try and are just lazy. because if Obama and LeBron James can do it,so there is no excuse for black men in our culture. Not everyone has a success story, not everyone has a happy ending, not everyone can represent the “good part” of our community. We are human, we are neither magicians nor miracle workers. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is America's first national museum dedicated to the full breadth of the black experience. This museum is so important because for over 150 years after the abolition of slavery, we had no museum representation of all the great things black people did for this country. Mullen reports: "The museum's task is very simple...to use history and culture to create a better America, to give America an opportunity to bridge the chasm between its stated ideals and the reality of life , it is an attempt to say that this history and this culture have profoundly shaped our notions of freedom, of citizenship, of who we are as Americans” (Mullen, 2016). . Black people are not fighting just to celebrate our complexion, we are fighting for representation, we are fighting for respect, we are fighting to be seen as a force to destroy with. We are underdogs and we are fighting to show that we are an important part of how America works and is shaped. I was trying to think of a tradition that my family does and I was perplexed for a moment, but then my dad told me about something that was completely true. men have been educated. My father grew up in the South, where you had a farm, crops and grew your own food. There were no grocery stores nearby, no spraying harsh chemicals on food to preserve it, and no processed and artificial foods/flavors. You got up early, fed the cows, the pigs, the chickens, the horses if you had them, etc. You cleaned their stalls, collected eggs from the chickens, milked the cows, and cleaned their stalls. All this so that you understand the tradition of killing a pig every year. You would get a pig in October, then raise it for a full year, and the following October you would kill it for all it was worth. You would get bacon, sausages, ham, lard, andouille sausages, souse meat, pork jaws and much more from pork. This material could be used for the rest of the year until you can raise another pig meeting these standards for the following year. It was best to do this in October because it was cold and there were no flies or insects to spoil the food. Women did more housework and prepared things like butter and jam, so, according to tradition, all the men in the family learned these methods in the south. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father and my brothers on my father's side all learned this. I think this is an important part of my family history, as it was commonly done before grocery stores, food processing, the spraying of harsh chemicals, and the artificial flavoring of our beloved foods. Although I have never killed a pig myself, it was something that was explained to me and taught me how different the world is today. Machines do everything and half the food we eat contains slime, chemicals and other harmful things, but we are so used to this unnatural food that we can't tell how much harm it causes. damage to our body. mom and her side of the family, their tradition was religious, we would attend the service every.