she kind of picked a bad example with agriculture, because nobody's going to argue that agriculture originated in africa. excluding the nile valley, which is in africa but is geographically separated from the rest of africa, africa doesn't really have the right climate for this. it's generally understood that hunter-gatherer societies carried on in africa because it made more sense to continue that way of life in the region. agriculture developed for reasons that weren't applicable to most of africa, and didn't make sense in the terrain. now, it's hard to be sure about things that happened thousands of years before written history, but the widely held consensus is that agriculture developed in the near east about 10,000 years ago. there's some evidence that it may have developed independently in china. but, nobody argues against the idea that the agriculture that took root in the nile and moved south to ethiopia migrated into africa from the "fertile crescent".
that being said, there's some evidence that some of the earliest egyptian civilization may have been black. very contentious topic. you're arguing over the shapes of noses in carvings and wall paintings. but, i think the evidence actually does lean in that direction, indicating that one of the earliest advanced cultures was probably a black culture. the idea is that it probably developed around the modern sudan and moved north up the nile. over time, it would have converted itself into a white culture through migration and integration into a series of asian and european empires. now, here's the twist on this: the same evidence that suggests that the civilization was black in it's earliest stages suggests that they had white slaves. so, you've got to swallow a poison pill, there.
i don't want to trivialize the african slave trade, but the idea that it was about race is sort of a half-truth. it was actually mostly about religion. i can't write an essay here, so i'll do it in point form. this is the historical timeline...
1) arabs declared non-muslims slaves. arabs didn't invent slavery, and they probably weren't the first to racialize it, but racial based slavery was not common in the roman world that they took over, so this was a relatively novel development. but, it was really about religion, not race. the arabs enslaved africa thousands of years before westerners did. but, they also enslaved white slavs in eastern europe (slave and slav are, in fact, etymologically identical - the english word for slave is ethnic, but it refers to eastern europeans, rather than blacks), indians and anybody else that wouldn't convert. this was the result of the systemic slavery of eastern europeans in the muslim world.
2) the catholic church copied this with a papal bull in 1452 that declared anybody that wasn't a christian a slave. and, in fact, when catholic europeans sailed to ethiopia and found christians there, they could not legally enslave them and consequently did not. the ethiopian state survived as an independent african kingdom deep into the colonial period, before finally being conquered.
3) the reformation happened, which made northern europe independent from southern europe for the first time since charlemagne (how's that for an over-simplification?). this took countries like england outside of papal authority. but, the same basic idea of religion being the dominant reason for slavery continued to apply, and was often inverted. rather than catholics enslaving non-catholics, you had protestants enslaving catholics. hence the enslavement of ireland. meanwhile, countries like spain continued to follow the papal bull and enslave the non-christian cultures they could conquer.
4) the slave trade was commercialized, which is when it got really brutal. and plenty people in africa of multiple ethnicities - blacks, whites, arabs - made a lot of money from it. america was built on top of this slavery, but it still wasn't fully racialized. a plantation in the period would have had a mix of african, irish and native american slaves. many black americans have significant irish ancestry as the result of slave owners trying to "cross-breed" them for traits the way you'd cross-breed dogs.
5) there was always a contradiction in puritanical christians building a country on top of slavery based on non-conversion. the idea doesn't really jive well with utopian christian virtue, and the white american settlers were in many ways all about that. it wasn't until after slavery had become institutionalized in the united states (and this is relatively late - the early 1800s), and people started questioning the increasing brutality of it (partly due to their puritanical upbringing...) that religious justifications were converted into racial ones. all of a sudden, you had the church arguing for racialized slavery using biblical quotes. even as the civil war was happening and rights were being won, this hierarchical idea of race-based labour was institutionalized.
6) over the last few generations, the dominant enslaved group in the united states has actually shifted from purchased black slaves in the southeast to migrant workers in the southwest. black slavery didn't end so much as it took on the form of incarceration over trivial laws.
what i'm getting at with this is that the entire narrative revolves around casting the african out as the other - and the bulk of the justification came from religion first, and race second.
so, what is black culture, then? well, if you're going to tell me i shouldn't listen to hip-hop because i'm white, you're just enforcing the separation and upholding the hierarchy. the premise of music belonging to a culture at all strikes me as kind of ridiculous. i'm not going to tell a black guy he can't listen to rachmaninov (i'm skipping over beethoven for a specific reason) or play romantic piano music because he's black. i'd rather listen to the tunes than get weirded out by somebody's skin tone. and i don't understand why anybody would want to tell me i can't listen to or perform hip-hop because i'm white, or that it ought to be "pop" instead.
that kind of integration ought to be viewed positively. and, i get that the history here kind of sucks, given that blacks have largely lost the last few forms they pioneered. but, i think it's a complex question as to whether it was truly lost/stolen or if it was abandoned.
i just don't see how we're moving forwards with this separation of music and art into colours, when we live in such proximity with each other and share so many experiences....