Using Cultural Artifacts, Positions, and Titles as Retentions of Cultural Attachments to Original Homelands: African Immigrants in the Diaspora

The things to which we are connected benefit us to characterize who we are, who we were, and who we hope to become. These meanings are likely to be especially salient to those in identity transitions and play an important roles in the (re) construction of identities of immigrants like the African immigrants in the diaspora. In this paper, using critical race theory as our theoretical framework, we examine cultural artifacts like, traditional cloths, drums, sculptures, paintings as retentions of cultural attachments to the original homelands. You can take an African out of Africa, but you can never take Africa out of an African.