I know about structural racism …. Racial oppression through entrenched systems in society through various public bodies, laws, corporations, the prison system, universities...you name it. But when the idea of racial oppression through use of language was introduced to me, I was suddenly taken aback. I had never though about it before-- was there such a thing as a linguistic hierarchy?

It is rather a Herculean task to find a global, all-encompassing
definition of “African music.” Moreover, defining “African music” would
inevitably be in relation to another type of music; rhythm is to
African music as melody is to western music (Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoke).
Consequently, when we try to define “African music” we are
intellectually better served to find certain “commonalities” that
Scholars generally agree to be the representative characteristics of
“African music.” In relation to the diaspora, it is historically
accurate for us to narrow our focus in defining music to West Africa
rather than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. In truth, “the western
world is perhaps most familiar with the cultural activities of African

Much of the change of the “African Diaspora,” into a stubbornly
different culture from their origins is very much illuminated by the
momentary “back to Africa movements” espoused by men like Marcus
Garvey. Many of these movements, starting with the establishment of
Liberia as a free state on West Africa as well as the Rastafarians who
were given refuge in Ethiopia, presupposed an automatic reintegration
into “African culture.” On the contrary, the reintegration of the
members of the “African Diaspora’ associated with the Atlantic Slave
Trade parallels the reintegration of the “Jewish Diaspora” into
orthodox Judaism or simply their “homeland,” Israel; the difficulty of
the latter is similar to the former. This difficulty of reintegration