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"‘It’s traditional,’ they said, ‘and we need to bring it back to our culture. Every Black person should do it.’"

Great article, but I can't stand this type of thinking from modern black peoples. Black != slave descended nor does it mean near african descendants.

Paradoxically, this is a form of cultural erasure that the quoted is rallying against.

That's the most uncharitable view, which is actually discouraged in HN's standards. Lets reasonably assume it was hyperbole, and a rational person would conclude it refers to those with a cultural-historical connection to the practice.
Except I deal with this frequently and in my life I've never experienced it to be hyperbole.

It's a pervasive notion that african-american and black are synonymous, and it's perpetrated by people of all races and cultures in america.

I've been lectured about "my roots" dozens of times by those making comments like this. Out of the potentially hundreds of people that I've confronted that have made passing comments equating blacks and african american slave-related cultural history, zero were saying it without purpose.

Sorry for your suffering!
Grose's A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) mentions the army custom of a marriage over the sword, the officiant, an NCO, pronouncing "Leap rogue, and jump whore/And now you are married forevermore." And somebody in Great Expectations is said to have been "married over the stick".
I don't get how people can write so much about nothing.