Frazier argues that African retentionist theories are negligible because enslaved Africans were completely stripped of their culture through the process of the African slave trade and slavery that followed. Therefore, a new, completely different and unique culture was created via slavery, mid-passage, and seasoning – conditioning enslaved people to inhumane treatment. Some of the new cultural traditions included: changing religious practices; the African family broken and scattered across the Americas; and creating new languages ​​while adapting to life during slavery. As Frazier notes, “These traditions were a measure, in one sense, of the degree to which blacks had assimilated America's cultural heritage” (Frazier 388). Frazier also drew on one of the three forms that support Herskovit's retention theory in order to validate his annihilation theory. Frazier believes that syncretism served as evidence of the destruction of natural African, or black, culture. Processes of capture, abuse and surveillance have created an inhospitable climate for clinging to old forms of