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Around Thanksgiving, many American families serve some iteration of yams with dinner – candied, mashed, or baked into a pie. Yams are an American staple, but in reality, they’re hardly American at all. What we call yams are sweet potatoes – related to, but not truly a yam – which were brought North from South America. The name “yam” comes from the African word “nyami”, which are the real, original yams. When slaves were stolen from Africa, they used the closest available ingredients to recreate meals from their homelands, thus the “yam” – with African and Hispanic origins – became part of America’s story.

We usually associate the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the U.S. Much of our history and success as a country is founded on slavery. But something we misunderstand, in America and abroad, is just how many enslaved Africans ended up elsewhere. The U.K., for example, actually had more slaves than the U.S. did. We don’t associate slavery with England because they were sent to work outside of the country in colonies like Jamaica. Enslaved people were sent mostly to Spanish-speaking countries – don’t forget that Christopher Columbus was from Spain. Spain colonized a number of native lands, erased their culture, and brought in slaves to build their empire. Today, most descendants of enslaved people live in formerly colonized countries. America, along with Haiti, Brazil, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic have the largest populations of slave descendants in the world. These descendants make up the African Diaspora.

My anecdote about the history of yams is an example of how the African Diaspora is manifested in the U.S. As we know, African culture is the basis for much of American culture – food, music, dance, vernacular, fashion. Africa makes up a large part of our country’s DNA, but because Black culture has been dismissed for most of our history, the Diaspora’s influence is not always recognized. By now, we understand how slavery shaped America, but we may not realize how much it has shaped the rest of the world.

In places like the Caribbean and Haiti, Africa’s influence is more easily felt than in the U.S. Haiti was able to revolt against France and break free from their colonial rule, making Haiti the first country to be founded by former slaves. Their freedom is perhaps why Haitians are more readily connected to their African roots than other people within the Diaspora. In fact, many Black Americans and followers of the Pan-African movement traveled to Haiti during the Harlem renaissance to feel connected to their heritage. While distinct, in the languages, food, cultural celebrations, and everyday practices, Caribbeans and Haitians share a lot of similarities with Africa. In these places, they are not minorities – most of the people they have grown up with or work with are also Black and share in their culture – but being Black in other African Diasporic countries makes you different, no matter how long African descendants have lived there.

African culture has found ways to survive in every place Africans landed. For example, like hip-hop and reggae music in America, Colombia’s most popular music genres, Cumbia and Vallenato, have African origins. As do many of their signature ingredients and dishes. The Dominican Republic has a handful of African words and unique dialects embedded in their language. Alongside influences in food and music, the DR also has religious influences from Africa. Voodoo (or Vudú as it’s called in the country) is practiced in the DR, and African spiritualism plays a role in a variety of cultural celebrations. But unlike Haiti, the Caribbean Islands, or even the U.S., African ancestry in Latin countries is understood in a complicated way. African culture is undoubtedly there, but it’s rife with misunderstanding and falsehoods.

In Colombia, although officially Afro-Colombians make up 10.6% of the population according to the census, around 20% of Colombians identify as being an African descendant. In the Dominican Republic, the percent of the public that is Afro-descendant is a more complicated question. Answers can vary from 7.8% of the population to 70 or 90% of people having at least some African heritage. Although both countries are heavily populated by people with Afro-lineage, Blackness is shunned and disregarded.

As the article “How the African Diaspora Left Its Mark on the DR” describes, Blackness is so embedded in Dominican culture, it’s practically inseparable from their national identity. Because of an influx of Hatian and Black American immigrants to the country in the 1800s, and the large slave descendant population already existent in the country, most Dominicans have African heritage, but are so racially and ethnically mixed, they may not realize it.

Someone we would consider Black in America may not be viewed in the same way in the Dominican Republic. They focus on skin tone as the basis for Blackness rather than ancestry. According to the blog Dominican Abroad, many Dominicans see themselves on a color spectrum. From decades of ethnic cleansing, eugenics, and genocide, Black Dominicans and Haitians were not only murdered, but Dominicans, most of whom are certainly mixed race, have been trained to see themselves as either “Dominican” or “Black” – “part of the country” or an “outsider”. Partly out of survival, partly out of racism, many Dominicans deny their African roots. The Dominican Republic, while almost invisible on the surface, is part of the African Diaspora. Like other countries in the Spanish-speaking world, their racial makeup is a bit uncertain, but likely includes African.

The DR has been shaped by Africa – so has the U.S. – so has the rest of the world. Countries outside of the diaspora, even those untouched by the Transatlantic slave trade, have touches of Africa within them. Africa was the center of the mathematical and philosophical worlds before slavery. It was common for Greek philosophers to travel to African countries to study and broaden their understanding of the world. Medicine and astronomy have roots in Africa. Today, the U.S. and many European countries have a large population of African doctors and nurses, recruited specifically for their expertise. While arguments can be made about pulling these brilliant healthcare workers from their countries, many of which deal with a variety of health crises, they too make up the worldwide diaspora – they have had an impact on countries outside of Africa.

The Haitian Revolution had a ripple effect across the world, so much so that Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolivar sought support and guidance from Haiti’s president Alexandre Pétion in their war for independence as well as Colombia’s. An estimated 60% of Bolivar’s army in Colombia were of African descent. African descendants played a huge role in both world wars: Black people from all European colonies were recruited to fight in the first world war, thousands of African descendants were recruited for France in the second, many of whom were captured by the Nazis and tortured. The basis for practically every social movement in America and worldwide is the Civil Rights Movement, which were fought by people primarily of African descent. The African Diaspora then, in many ways, can be credited with our freedom.

Science tells us that human evolution began in Africa. Although changed by environmental forces and separated by the artifice that is racism, we all share a common ancestral root. What connects many of our cultures together is one continent. For many members of the African diaspora, their ancestry only goes to a certain point. They (myself included) can only trace their lineage back so far before slavery interrupts. The African Diaspora has its own distinctive cultures in each of the places it exists – it has adapted to bring the spirit of the homeland to its place of imprisonment. Though these Diasporic cultures are truly amazing, it’s still sad to know many of those with enslaved ancestors will never know the breadth of their family ties. But there is one comforting silver lining in all of this – everywhere we look has a bit of Africa in it. Through math, religion, music, or even yams, we can see how the influence of Africa is all across the world. We may never know what slavery took – just how much it truly cost – but we can know that Africa was the birthplace of many of the things we hold sacred. Africa can never be erased because it is part of everything. So long as we exist, Africa will too.

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