Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on Africana consciousness, past and present. It reflects ideas probing schema of culture, race, and class, within the interdisciplinary matrix of Africana Studies. Unfortunately, African people in the United States still have some prevailing misconceptions about their education and education in general. The book provides an insightful psychoanalysis on Black consciousness and Pan-Africanism. It outlines a cultural model, which presents Blacks usage of the rodeo, as an expressive behavior of agrarian life and history. The book provides a narrative historical account of the role, purpose, and function of gender in the historical unfolding of the Nation of Islam. It applies instruments from existentialism, phenomenology, essentialism, and reflexivity to describe and evaluate modalities of traditional and modern Africana culture.