It’s the result of several different avenues.
During life in slavery, religion would be presented as the place where the little morals slavers displayed came from. “Sure, this asshole has you enslaved, forces you to work most of the day, whips you and will possibly rape your daughter, but the reason he [small act of generosity] is because he’s Christian”. The same religious ideology ultimately condoned slavery, but it wasn’t presented to them that way.
If a slave wanted to learn to read and the means were presented to them, the Bible would be present in some way or another.
During the early decades after emancipation, Christianity was already somewhat entrenched among black people, so the place where they’d gather together in community would be religious rituals.
From that point onwards, black communities being Christian was a self-perpetuating dynamic.
It wasn’t something born out of rationality with all options and perspectives being presented to them, but rather due to circumstance, lesser evils and lack of better alternatives. There are black people who see things the way you have explained it to them - but only after the process of deconversion, which tends to get one alienated from their community.
first: there are no black (or white (or yellow!)) people. It’s a colonial and racist heritage to talk about “black people”.
2nd: There were christian communities (or kingdoms) in africa before anybody in europe (let alone americas) heard about jesus
We acknowledge that the way we divide ethnic genetic variety into different races is a social construct, entirely invented by humans. But denying that race exists at all does no favors to the victims of racism.
I’m pretty sure Europeans heard about Jesus when Peter became Bishop of Rome in the first century.
yes, you’re right. Looks like it was simultaneous.
I was thinking of a more gradual expansion towards Europe through Syria, Anatolia, Byzantium &c. They don’t need to establish their religion to run to Rome and tell people there about Jesus. Thank you for taking the time to correct what i wrote and what i had in mind.
This is patently untrue and a form erasure.
There are black Americans. If you talk to them, and ask if they are African American they will tell you no, because they are not African. They are just Americans. Same as the are white Americans.
You don’t get to choose.
i know that in “America”, still to day, people who are “imported” from Africa during colonialism are called “black”. Racial theories of the past are banalized today.
