I keep seeing this idea

I keep seeing this idea circulating that Black Americans don’t have culture, that we’re somehow just loud, entitled, or self-centered. And that tells me people are not speaking from history. Black American culture is not a theory. It is lived, documented, fought for, and passed down through struggle, organizing, creativity, and vision.

Black American culture lives in resistance. It lives in the Civil Rights Movement. It lives in Martin Luther King Jr. and the marches, the walks, the sit-ins, the boycotts that required discipline, planning, and collective sacrifice. It lives in Malcolm X, who spoke truths that unsettled people because he refused to soften the reality of Black life in America. It lives in communities that showed up knowing dogs would be released, hoses turned on, jobs lost, and lives threatened, and still chose to walk anyway.

It lives in Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old Black girl who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus before Rosa Parks ever became a household name. She was arrested, jailed, and dismissed because she was young, outspoken, and didn’t fit the image respectability politics demanded. Her courage still mattered. Her resistance still counted. She later became one of the plaintiffs in the court case that helped end bus segregation altogether.

And it lives in Rosa Parks, whose refusal was intentional and strategic, and whose arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That boycott was not symbolic. It was thousands of Black people walking miles to work, organizing carpools, losing income, and still holding the line. These moments were not accidents. They were part of a long tradition of Black Americans choosing dignity over fear.

Black American culture also lives in what we built when we were locked out. HBCUs created because we were denied education elsewhere. Churches doubling as organizing hubs. Mutual aid before it had a name. Systems of care born out of necessity, not trend.

And yes, it lives in our music, with clarity and truth. African cultures had music long before us. Rhythm, drums, movement, ceremony, storytelling. That is ancestral and sacred. What Black Americans did was transform those roots under the conditions of enslavement and survival in America. Blues emerged from field songs and sorrow. Jazz from improvisation and community. Gospel from faith forged under terror. Hip-hop from poverty, policing, and brilliance in the Bronx. Bounce, soul, R&B, rock. These are Black American creations shaped by our specific experience on this land. That distinction matters.

Our culture lives in our food, recipes passed down without measurements. In how we gather, how we talk, how we mourn, how we praise, how we laugh, how we survive. In language, style, movement, and innovation created under pressure.

Our ancestors have been here for centuries. Some enslaved. Some Native. Some both. Stripped of language, tribe, and nation, and still they created identity. They didn’t arrive with a country to return to. They built culture in the middle of displacement.

This is not a competition with anyone else’s culture. This is not erasing African roots or anyone else’s history. This is naming Black American culture as real, rich, and worthy of respect. We can honor where we come from without pretending we didn’t also create something entirely new here.

Black American culture is resistance turned into structure. Survival turned into art. History that still breathes.

And it does not need permission to be acknowledged.