Virtues and Values: The African and African American Experience

by Peter J. Paris (editor)

This brief volume is excerpted from Peter Paris's popular and influential work The Spirituality of African Peoples on African and African American Spirituality. Paris shows how the religious and moral values of Africa have pervaded African American life and thought. Focusing on six particular virtues, he explores how the African worldview enriched and ennobled African American notions of morality and values, public virtue, and meaningful life.

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taken from a larger work, Paris lays out what he sees as the universal values shared by African and African American communities that shape their ethics and response to their world. He explores each of these shared values through both a general lens as well as through the specific lived examples of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States. I am leary anytime a person claims a universal truth (because I don't believe in absolutes) but in general I can see how the author's claims are present in African American culture...at least in my experience looking from the outside in.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was going to criticize this book for being written in an overly simplistic way, but now that I think about it, the writing is kinda refreshing. It goes against the grain of an academic beating you with technical jargon. I can appreciate that. I think Mr. Paris did a decent job getting his point across in the little space he had.

On the other hand, I think the author's premise is too broad. I don't think I can consider myself an expert or even say that I have a cursory knowledge of African values, but the idea itself that a continent as diverse as Africa has universal values is a little absurd, not to mention the massive cultural differences between northern and Sub-Saharan Africa.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it misrepresented the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and said nothing in regards to Muslim involvement in the slave trade, it brought up much about Nelson Mandela I’ve either forgotten or didn’t know before. Read for class. On the positive, it did give Indigenous African Christianity (as opposed to forms imposed by colonization) a shout- out at the end.