Week 4: Culture & The New World

Written By Jemm Stone

Block One

Session Theme: Our inner dialogue and its impact on how we exist in the world.

Learning Goals:

  • Participants will be able to identify their inner dialogue

  • Participants will identify whether their internal dialogue is assisting them in uplifting themselves or hurting them and bringing them down.

Meditative Questions:

  • How do you speak to yourself? 

  • If you had to evaluate the quality and nourishment of your thoughts, how would you rate them on a scale from 1- 5, where one represents not at all nourishing and five very nourishing

  • How often do you compliment yourself? 

  • How often do you insult yourself?

Block Two

Theme: a general overview of how culture was impacted post-slavery and colonization.

Learning Goals:

  • Participants will be able to identify significant factors that impacted and adapted African culture, post-colonization

  • Participants will learn the difference between the abolition of slavery and a country gaining independence (i.e. Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil)

  • Participants will learn notable acts of resistance

  • Participants will be introduced to the concept of double consciousness and how it relates to identity, which is in preparation for a future workshop

Major Takeaways

  • Slavery is now abolished

  • The European colonizers established their colonies worldwide and destroyed the majority of previously established African empires.

  • Acts of resistance against the colonies in Africa and the Caribbean have significantly increased, along with the start and end of the civil rights movement in America.

  • Several African countries and Caribbean islands gained their independence and established sovereign nations.

  • The state of America led to a rise of Black leaders challenging the social construct of race, creating concepts like double consciousness and exploring terms like African American as opposed to Black or coloured.

Key Words

Abolishment: to officially end or stop (something, such as a law): to completely do away with (something) abolish slavery/apartheid. (Google Definition)

Sovereign state: sovereign state (plural sovereign states) A state (country) with sovereignty over a defined geographic area, independent of any other country, and has a government. (Google Definition)

Double consciousness: Originally, double consciousness was specifically the psychological challenge African Americans experienced, "always looking at one's self through the eyes" of a racist white society and "measuring oneself using a nation that looked back in contempt.” The term also referred to WEB Du Bois's experiences reconciling his African heritage with an upbringing in a European-dominated society.

 

More Resources

 

Jemm Stone
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Week 5: Intergenerational Trauma & Confidence

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Week 3: Culture & Colonization