A CASE STUDY OF GUN VIOLENCE IN PHILADELPHIA: AN AFROCENTRIC ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL FACTORS

Abstract

This is study is grounded in an Africological cultural analysis of the imposition of western culture, its fixation on gun violence and its role in the dislocation of African American minds to perpetrate violent tendencies. I also want to do a synopsis of the current conditions in Philadelphia including current trends in gun violence, areas of concern in the city, and preventive measures that are in the works. I will incorporate afrocentric theories of cultural reorientation to suggest a restoration of an African identity and sanity through African humanity. Gun violence is the result of a misorientation of Black consciousness and the value of manhood. The narrative of white supremacy is to normalize the pathology of genocidal behavior and pathologize Africans’ response to the inherent trauma. Cheikh Ante Diop has been foundational in the works of the leading scholars of Afrocentricity. His work simply states that there are two cradles of civilization, the Southern cradle, represented by Africa, and the Northern cradle, represented by Europe. In their cultural analysis Molefi Kete Asante, Nah Dove, Ama Mazama, and Marimba Ani recognize culture as the return to an African framework for human development. The other tool of my research includes the psycho-analysis of scholars such as Wade Nobles, Amos Wilson, Na’im Akbar, and Francis Crest Welsing. Arab and European colonization and enslavement sought to destroy African values, self-images and self-concepts. The long and continuing history of the Maafa in the form of enslavement, racial terrorism, debt peonage, Jim Crow and state sanctioned violence has caused a distortion in the behavior of African Americans who have been dislocated from African origins and engage in anti-black criminal behavior. The violent black criminal associates with white criminal behavior and tries to emulate it on a smaller scale. The code of the street and street culture is a result of the violet climate that Philadelphia has exhibited throughout its history, that has become common practice in African American communities. Self-hatred and self-alienation are a feature of dislocation, which calls for a culturally restorative therapeutic process. House of Umoja’s history of curbing gun violence utilizing African-centered principles have met with success in the past and is being utilized to work in future intervention models. Cultural socialization involves messages and practices that coincide with a racial identity and starts with the family. Aside from being a provider in a family, the mother is the primary family member for socializing the child. The need for a violence intervention that includes Afrocentricity is paramount to cultural reorientation and spiritual renewal. From a cultural paradigm racial identity divides human beings in to categories based on melanin content with a hierarchy of lighter skin on the top and darker skin on the bottom and everyone else in between. This work hopes to advance that culture defines humanity, and that a cultural orientation can direct organizations to produce more culture oriented ideas and processes that reconnects humanity to historically African values and beliefs before subjugation. Africology as a discipline seeks to reclaim classical African culture to educate future generations and for organizations to practice culture enriching activities. White nationalism has projected a false image of their superiority and African inferiority. This has impacted African families which is often the central model for the community.