Afrocentrism: Difference between revisions

Afrocentrism is an outlook or worldview centered on Africa and the descendants of African peoples, much the way Eurocentrism is centered on Europe and Europeans. It often includes a revisionist history that recasts world history from a traditionally Eurocentric paradigm to an African one, focusing on black civilizations that predate those of ancient Rome and Greece, such the Meroitic civilizations of Nubia and early dynastic Egypt, and on the contributions of people of black African descent through the ages. In its more radical form, Afrocentrism is often associated with the notion of black supremacy.

Afrocentric history traces African contributions of the people in ancient Africa (particularly Egypt and Kush), the North African Islamic people of the Middle Ages, and the descendants of African peoples throughout the world, including in Mesopotamia, Greece, China, and the Americas.

Because Afrocentric history approaches the study of history in the context of a radically different paradigm, it is a revisionist history in that it is an inversion of the perceived racial hierarchies of Eurocentric history, which have dominated the field of academic history in Europe, its colonies, and elsewhere since the Renaissance.

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A more radical form of Afrocentrism is often associated with black supremacy, and has been sometimes been labeled pseudohistory. Radical Afrocentrism claims Africa to be the predominant source of world culture. In addition, the most radical Afrocentric histories view all African peoples as a distinct race with superior genetic features that they carry with them as they colonize other continents.

According to this radical Afrocentric view, the Ancient Egyptians are grouped with the numerous distinct sub-Saharan african peoples as a single dark-skinned race. Radical Afrocentrists often refer to Egypt as Kemet, the indigenous term for the country, which means "black land" (although traditionally this term has been understood to refer to the dark fertile soil beside the Nile, in contrast to the desert, or "red land" beyond, rather than skin color).

According to radical Afrocentrism, Africans were responsible for all the great innovations in ancient philosophy, science and technology. These were later 'stolen' by the Greeks and other European peoples. This argument is found in the book Stolen Legacy by George G. M. James, who derives many of his ideas from 18th century Masonic assumptions about Egyptian wisdom. Such views are copied in many other later books. Radical Afrocentrists have also claimed that Africans discovered America. The academic Molefi Kete Asante is the best known exponent of Radical Afrocentrism.

Afrocentrism is viewed with skepticism or contempt by many, including some descendants of African peoples educated in, and accustomed to, a traditionally Eurocentric historical framework. The dramatic paradigmatic shift from a view of world history centered around European contributions and arguably deeply racist assumptions about other peoples and cultures to one which emphasizes the black beginnings of humankind and high civilizations is difficult for Eurocentrists to accept. multiculturalists, on the other hand, welcome historical Afrocentrism because it re-emphasizes the history and culture of a long-neglected continent and breaks what they see as a Eurocentric view of world history that has devalued, appropriated, or simply ignored contributions to world history by people of color. They do, however, resist treating all African cultures as a monolithic whole, or being the product of a single "black race." They also oppose any suggestion that any one culture is somehow superior to another, which is a contention of so-called "radical" Afrocentrism.

Some critics assert that Afrocentrism is myth presented as history, and that it is a projection of modern American racial and geographical categories onto ancient cultures in which they did not exist. 'Europe' and 'Africa' were not oppositional categories to the Greeks or Egyptians, for whom civilisation encircled the Mediterranean. Moreover, the concept of race as a biological category has fallen out of favor among many academics since the mid-20th Century. In academic circles, Africans are rarely viewed as a distinct and monolithic people or race, but as a number of diverse cultures with complex and varied genetic histories.

While the debate over Afrocentrism often involves disputes over the factuality of certain claims, writers such as Prof. Mary Lefkowitz (Not Out of Africa, 1997) are more concerned with their methods of inquiry. Readers are referred to Prof. Lefkowitz’s book for a discussion of this issue.