The African, Caribbean and African American Cultural Connection

This curriculum unit outcome will provide students with a comprehensive overview of their shared African background, while introducing them to a system of aesthetic values that will allow them to express their connection to Africa via language, food, dance, and music as well as a more comprehensive knowledge of their African background.

Deep similarities between African-American and African forms of cultural expression provide a foundation for reconnecting our students within the framework of the Black Atlantic, a region that has exerted an invaluable and undeniable influence throughout the nation and around the globe. Mainstream American society does not provide minority students with the resources to recognize who they are and build upon it. The purpose of “The African, Caribbean, and African American Cultural Connection” curriculum unit is to make students aware of the immediate similarities that exist among these three interlinked groups of people, and to foster shared awareness of and pride in the great contributions that African cultural ideas.