How many black people in their 20's/30's can tell you anything about the blues? Without people documenting, storing, and studying it, imagine how many artists and genres created by us could be forgotten or even claimed by others. As a fellow African, you should be familiar with the amount of people who deny the very existence and/or sophistication of african cultures because of our own propensity to rely on oral transmission of our knowledge rather than documenting our ways. Were it not for hieroglyphics, who knows what would be said about ancient egyptian civilization today?
ain't none of that gonna save us right now. You're free to worry about that kind of stuff if you want though. Like I said, my opinion is it is foolish to go into debt going to college for stuff like that in this day and age especially being black as you don't have the luxury of graduating and then having someone pay your bills and stuff.
Both of yall make great points, but there isnt an either or to this. While it is important to make the most of opportunities to gain an economic advantage, it's still unwise to neglect history and culture as they play major parts not only in the lives of everyday people, but they comprise parts of a person's identity.
It was the theft and degrading of African history and culture that encouraged European enslavement and disfranchisement of Africans in the first place. Without that component, we don't get scholars like Dubois, Carter G Woodson, John Hope Franklin etc. And if people like that don't come along, then we don't see the Harlem Renaissance, The civil rights movement, Malcolm X,The Black Panthers, the Black Power movement, and the Black Studies Movement to legitimize African history as a serious curriculum.
All of these aspects of scholarship and activist work are vitally important in how we view culture, how we view blackness, and he we view ourselves.
