Historical Overview of Alcohol in the African American Community

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide a historical overview of the use of alcohol in the African American community. To address the issue of alcoholism in the African American community, four dimensions of the issue will be addressed: the use of alcohol in Africa, views of Africans on drunken behavior, involvement of alcohol in the enslavement of Africans, and the establishment of drinking patterns in the United States among African Americans. Prior to beginning the discussion on the historical overview of alcohol in the African American community, it is necessary to make an assumption about the African American community that places the discussion on alcohol in a historical context. This assumption enhances the understanding of the dimensions of drinking in the African American community. The assumption for this discussion is that to understand the nuances of African American life it is imperative to begin in Africa. Knowledge of African culture leads to increased understanding of Black life in the United States. Nobles (1978) wrote that the Black culture has evolved from a special admixture of continued African worldview, operating within the cultural milieu of a European American culture. Thus he maintained that any theoretical and empirical framework for defining Black social reality must therefore be based on African cultural residuals as reflected in the worldview, normative assumptions, and frame of reference of Black people.