[T]he similarity of African survivals in the New World points not to tribal peculiarities but to the essential oneness of African culture. That culture was the shield which frustrated the efforts of Europeans to dehumanize Africans through servitude. The slave may have appeared in a profit and loss account as an “item,” and “thing,” a piece of “property,” but he faced his new situation as an African, a worker, and a man. At this level of perception, it is quite irrelevant to enquire from which tribe or region a particular African originated.

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making o…, loc. 425