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It has been suggested that this article be merged with Afrocentricity. (Discuss)

Afrocentrism is a worldview and historical paradigm that emphasizes the concerns, culture, values, and contributions of black African peoples and the African diaspora.

Mainstream Afrocentric theory is based on the proposition that Western accounts of world history and civilization have neglected or systematically denied the contributions of Africa's original peoples. The term "Afrocentrism" is thus often mistaken to mean a perspective in diametric opposition to that of Eurocentrism; however, this is not the case. Eurocentricm is not the root cause of Afrocentricity. The scholarly study of history without the presumed racial and cultural biases of mainstream white scholarship is the aim of Afrocentric study. More broadly, Afrocentrism is concerned with distinguishing the influence of Arab, European and Asian peoples from indigenous African achievements. While Afrocentrism as a scholarly approach is actually an ancient endeavor, most recently, developments are tied to black civil rights movements and anti-imperialist ideologies in the United States and the Caribbean. In modern America, Afrocentrism is associated with Africa-centred educational policies that purport to be anti-racist.

Central to Afrocentrism is the fundamental review and analysis of existing historical scholarship. It focuses on the study and evaluation of findings and conclusions regarding mainstream accounts of world history and civilization examined through the prism of a traditionally Western, Eurocentric perspective—that is, one which treats primarily white or European contributions and posits a Greco-Roman origin for Western civilization. Instead, inherent to the Afrocentrist approach is a paradigm shift that focuses on black Africa and black contributions and posits black, Nilotic origins for Western civilization.

Egypt and the argument of African cultural unity

Afrocentrists claim that early dynastic Egypt was a black civilization. Modern geopolitics generally place Egypt in the Middle East; however, geographically, the entirety of dynastic Egypt, as well as the modern-day nation (except for the Sinai peninsula, fall within the African continent.

Afrocentrists argue that the salient, cultural characteristics of ancient Egypt are indigenous to Africa and that these features are present in other African civilizations. Critical of mainstream Egyptology, they are of the opinoin that the study of ancient Egyptian culture artificially disconnects it from other early African civilizations, such as Kerma and the Meroitic civilizations of Nubia— particularly in light of the fact that archaeological evidence clearly indicates a confluence among this cultural triad. This perspective, championed by the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, is known formally as the Cultural Unity Theory. This theory has proponents outside Afrocentric circles, among them Bruce Williams of the Oriental Institute of Chicago. Afrocentrists claim that these civilizations made significant contributions to ancient Greece and Rome during their formative periods.

The more conventional belief among mainstream archaeologists and historians is that the ancient Egyptian civilization was more closely related, in terms of culture and language, to the Semitic civilizations of the Fertile Crescent than to the rest of Africa. Somewhat curiously, however, this assumption does not recognize any significant similarities between a puportedly Semitic dynastic Egypt and other Mediterranean cultures beyond the Crescent. In addition, the conventional belief has been challenged by scholars who believe the cultural similarities between Egypt and the Levant are due to the exportation of cultural elements from the Nilotic civilizations, rather than the reverse. As the predynastic period of Egypt, as well as all three dynastic periods had origins in the non-Semitic south (Naqada, Nubian C, Upper Egypt), Afrocentricists argue it is illogical to insist on a non-African, Semitic of dynastic Egyptian civilization.

This Afrocentrist view finds itself in direct opposition to the conclusions of mainstream scholars such as British historian Arnold Toynbee, who regarded the ancient Egyptian cultural sphere as having died out without leaving a successor, and who derided as "myth" the idea that Egypt was the "origin of Western civilization." However, there are numerous accounts in the historical record dating back several centuries wherein scholars have written of a black Egypt and its contributions to Mediterranean civilizations. The Greek historian Herodotus described the ancient Egyptians as "black-skinned with woolly hair" (Histories Book 2:104). Francois Champollion described in his book L'Egypte the characteristics of the Egyptian people and their similarities to Nubians. More recently, Afrocentrism has found sympathetic readings from mainstream scholars such as Martin Bernal. In addition, Afrocentrism has growing popular support in academia. Increasingly, American colleges are treating Afrocentrism as a rigorous discipline of study open to peer review.

One of Afrocentrism's most prominent critics, Mary Lefkowitz, has characterised Afrocentrism as "a mythology that is racist, reactionary, and essentially therapeutic." Afrocentrists, however, level similar charges at what they charge is a pronounced Eurocentrism in mainstream historical scholarship, and argue that the Afrocentrist approach merely attempts to set the historical record straight by overturning a false, racially skewed paradigm.

History of Afrocentrism

The beginnings of modern Afrocentric scholarship can be found in the work of African-American and Caribbean intellectuals early in the twentieth century. Publications such as The Crisis and the Journal of Negro History sought to counter the prevailing view in the West that Africa had contributed nothing of value to human history that was not the result of incursions by Europeans and Arabs. These journals asserted the fundamental blackness of ancient Egypt and investigated the history of black Africa. Editor of The Crisis W.E.B. DuBois researched West African culture and attempted to construct a pan-Africanist value system based on West African traditions. DuBois later envisioned and received funding from then Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to produce an Encyclopedia Africana that would chronicle the history and cultures of black Africa, but he died before the work could be completed. Some aspects of DuBois's approach are evidenct in the work of Cheikh Anta Diop, who claimed to have identified a pan-African protolanguage and to have proven that ancient Egyptians were, indeed, black Africans.

Diop also drew from the ideas of George M. James, a follower of black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who emphasised the importance of Ethiopia as a great, black civilization, and who argued that black peoples should develop pride in African history. James's book, Stolen Legacy (1954) is often cited as one of the foundational texts of modern Afrocentrism. James claimed that Greek philosophy was "stolen" from ancient Egyptian traditions and that these had developed from distinctively African cultural roots. For James, the works of Aristotle and other Greek thinkers were, in fact, poor synopses of aspects of ancient Egyptian wisdom. According to James, the Greeks were a violent and quarrelsome people, unlike the Egyptians, and were not naturally capable of philosophy. This conclusion may have been based on the fact that the period of Egyptian history regarded as the most prominent (14th B.C.E.) was considered the early dark age of Greek culture. The early sculptural and artistic achievements of pre-classical Greece had strong similiarity to Egyptian sculptural style and artistic design.

These ideas were not wholly new. 18th-century Masonic texts referenced ancient writings that claimed Greek philosophers had studied in Egypt. The poet William Blake had also attacked "the stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero," asserting that they were copies of more ancient Semitic texts. Such views were associated with radical and Romantic thought that rejected classical Greco-Roman culture as the model for civilization. James's distinct contribution was to tie these claims to an opposition between white European and black African identity, associating these alleged ancient appropriations of black wisdom with white, imperialist exploitation of black peoples and the theft of artifacts from black African cultures. By claiming that the Greeks were barbaric and innately incapable of philosophy, he inverted normative imperialist racial hierarchies, which made the same claims about black Africans.

Other writers copied James's approach, which led to claims that black Africans originated intellectual or technological achievements that later were claimed by whites. Today, most of these writings are not considered serious scholarship, and modern Afrocentrist writers have abandoned James's more extreme claims to concentrate on the notion that modern black peoples should center their understanding of culture and history on Africa. Molefi Kete Asante's book Afrocentricity (1988) directly connected Afrocentrism to radical black civil-rights politics, arguing that African Americans should look to African cultures "as a critical corrective to a displaced agency among Africans."

Other authors have adapted James's assertion that Egyptian culture's influence on the Greeks has been underestimated. Among such scholars, the most influential is Martin Bernal, whose book Black Athena stressed influence of Afro-Asiatic and Semitic civilizations on Classical Greece. Other writers simply have focused on the study of indigenous African civilizations and peoples, with the aim of counteracting the emphasis placed on European and Arab influence on the continent. These Afrocentric scholars believe that historians must shift their attention away from European accomplishments and Europe-derived racist assumptions and, instead, emphasize the black origins of mankind and black contributions to world history. They maintain that such a paradigm shift would result in significant attitudinal shifts in the West and elsewhere. Indeed, many claim that a dramatic shift already has occurred. As educational opportunities have broadened for peoples of color over the years, non-white scholars from many cultures increasingly have begun to examine anew the historical and archaeological record. Some of their findings challenge the Eurocentric view of world history which for so many centuries devalued and appropriated, or simply ignored achievements by blacks and other non Europeans.

The debate over Afrocentrism

Critics of Afrocentrism counter that much historical Afrocentric research simply lacks scientific merit and that it actually seeks to supplant and counter one form of racism with another, rather than attempt to arrive at the truth. Among scholarly critics, Mary Lefkowitz's Not out of Africa is widely regarded as the foremost critical work. In it, she contends Afrocentric historical claims are grounded in identity politics and myth rather than sound scholarship. Like most other classical scholars, she rejects James's views on the ground that his sources predate the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Actual ancient Egyptian texts show little similarity to Greek philosophy. She also contends that Bernal underestimates the distinctiveness of Greek intellectual culture. Asante, however, disputes her conclusions.

Afrocentrists tend to emphasise the racial and cultural unity of Africa as a whole as the home of black, or Africoid, peoples. However, critics assert that Afrocentrism relies on a projection of modern racial and geographical categories onto ancient cultures in which they simply did not exist. It is argued that in ancient Western culture, the distinction between Europe and Africa was not as important as the notion that civilized peoples encircled the Mediterranean sea. The farther from the Mediterranean they were, the more alien they were considered to be. This applied to all peoples. The equation of "African" with black identity has also been criticized, partly because movement of populations around the Mediterranean in ancient times makes any rigid distinctions among North African, Asian, and European peoples of the area problematic; and partly because the notion of a unified "black" or Negroid race is itself considered to be unsustainable by many modern geneticists. Further, Diop's claim to have discovered a pan-African proto-language is rejected by almost all linguists. Ironically the "bantu" language theory is still considered valid, if not in agreement with Diop's own.

However, the concept of race is not based on genetics, which is a far more modern discipline, but on phenotypes. "Caucasians" range from Norway to India and from blond hair and fair skin to dark skin. Black people range from West Africa, to India, to Australia, with a wider range of brown and wavy haired people to the darkest skinned people with the curliest hair. Similarly, the Afrocentrist concept of a "global Africa community" has been reinforced by findings by numerous anthropologists, historians and others, who claim the blacks of New Guinea, Menalesia, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia are no less "Negroid" than the blacks of North and sub-Saharan Africa. The issue with the more respected mainstream viewpoint is that the definition of a Negroid phenotype begins to take a back seat to the genetic origins of those having negroid features. In addition, those people who fall in the extreme range of "Caucasian" furthest from the blond, and who also fall in the extreme range of Black, furthest from the darkest, are contentiously placed in either one group or another. Afrocentricsts contend, by pointing out that White society excluded mixed people from being Caucasian, should not therefore lay historical claims to those who in history share identical phenotypes and mixture with modern Black people. Espeically when they live within the continent of Africa, and routinely intermarried with the darker skinned and more overtly Black people of the region. Therefore for the Afrocentricist, the Ancient Egyptian, (which mainstream scholars insist made little contribution to western society) who shares this characteristic of intermarrying with more obviously Black Africans, would socially fit within the Black sphere, even though they may genetically share less in common with West African Black people than Afrocentricists are willing to admit. It is important to note, this Afrocentric viewpoint had developed while mainstream scholarship was seriously wrestling with the Eurocentric idea that Nordic or contiental Europeans had founded Egyptian royalty and established the dynastic leadership of Egypt. In addition, mainstream scholarship tends to automatically categorize any Ancient Egyptian with overtly negroid phenotype as a Nubian or non-Egyptian, thus creating a cirucular arguement.

People generally think of themselves and others as belonging to races defined by skin color and physiognomy and link this to ancestry. One of the impacts of this is that historical achievements are ascribed to races with which modern peoples identify themselves. Some insist that this approach violates the fundamental demand of history as a discipline, which should aspire to understand events as they occurred, not as they affect the self-esteem of modern people.

Afrocentrists, however, contend that race still exists as a social and political construct. They argue that racist conventions propounded for centuries– that blacks had no civilization, no written language, no culture, and no history of any note before coming into contact with Europeans– make the racial identity of ancient Egypt an important issue. Moreover, they point out that these misconceptions have been consistently applied to a particular, broad category of humanity based on the same "racial" phenotype and lineages used by Afrocentrists in refuting such myths. However artificial and discredited a construct, the matter of race became an important and enduring issue, Afrocentrists argue, when whites and others pronounced an entire segment of humanity inherently inferior on the basis of it. Further, such biases persist today. As a result, Afrocentrists contend, it is important to set the historical record straight within the context in which the history of human civilizations heretofore has been framed, taught and studied— and that is the context of race.

Crucial to this aspect of the debate are arguments about whether the ancient Egyptians reasonably can be considered to have been black and the extent of significant cultural links between the blacks of sub-Saharan and North Africa.

Egypt and black identity

Many Afrocentrists insist that ancient Egyptians were black African peoples, often emphasising that this black identity was strongest in early Egyptian history, but waxed and waned over time. This issue is very controversial and is covered in Controversy over race of Ancient Egyptians.

Black-centered history and Africa

The relationship among racial, cultural and continental identities is one of the more difficult problems in Afrocentic thought. Despite the problems with a Eurocentric approach to history, there has been a common European cultural identity for many centuries. It is more difficult to make the same claim for Africa, in which diverse cultures often were unaware of one another's existence. For this reason, some Afrocentrists have been accused of manufacturing "African" cultural values by cherry-picking from wholly different peoples.

In other instances, the concept of black racial identity has been used to include among "African" peoples populations generally thought of as non-Africans, such as the Australoid (sometimes called "Veddoid") peoples of Australia and New Guinea and the Tamils (also called Dravidians) of India and the people of the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Also included in the African diaspora are the "Negritos") of the Far East (Thailand, Java, Borneo, Sumatra and Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia); the Africoid, aboriginal peoples of Melanesia, Micronesia andPolynesia; and, speculatively, the Olmecs of what is now Mexico. Afrocentrists who adopt this approach contend that such peoples are African in a racial sense, just as the white inhabitants of Australia may be said to be European. Critics would argue that such peoples were not recent emigrants from Africa, and the entire population of the world might just as reasonably be considered part of an African race according to the Out of Africa model of human migration. Studies show that some members of these darker-skinned ethic groups— with the exception, of course, of the Olmecs— and "Mongoloid" East Asians are genetically closer to one another than they are to indigenous Africans. However, Afrocentrists point out that such genetic similarities are due to the fact that the aboriginal peoples of Asia were Africoid Negritos and Australoid types, who later miscegnated and developed in isolation with populations of the eventually more dominant Mongoloid phenotype over time. This fact, they contend, does not change the fundamental black racial identity of these peoples based on the traditional metrics of the classic "Negroid" phenotype, physical similarities with other peoples classified as Negroid, presumptive patterns of prehistoric migrations and, in some cases, what they contend are cultural similarities. Arguments advancing the notion of racial similarities between a Nubian and a Dravidian, both classified as Negroid, Afrocentrists contend, are far more credible than those of beween, say, a Swede and a modern-day Turk, both classified as Caucasian. Traditional racial classifications, after all, are not based on genetics, but on phenotype. In such matters, Afrocentrists adopt the pan-Africanist perspective that such people of color are all "African people" or "diasporic Africans." As Afrocentric scholar Runoko Rashidi writes, they are all part of the "global African community."

In 2002, geneticist Spencer Wells completed a study of human out-migrations from Africa utilizing the DNA of San Bushmen of the Kalahari who, according to Wells, have the oldest human DNA on earth. Wells concluded from analysis of DNA specimens that the earliest human emigration from Africa of which there is definitive proof was that of San Bushmen to southern India (the modern Tamils, also known as "Dravidians") and then along coastal routes to Australia (the Aborigines), while shortly afterwards a second migration from Africa, also by San Bushmen, reached Central Asia, and thence covered most of the Eurasian continent.

The single origin hypothesis (also known as the "Out of Africa" hypothesis) posits that the Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, later migrating and populating other continents, out-competing other related species such as that exemplified by Java man.

A different world-view

I am apt to suspect the Negroes...to be naturally inferior to the White. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white.... — David Hume, noted 18th century European historian, philosopher and essayist

When we classify mankind by color, the only one of the primary races...which has not made a creative contribution to any of our twenty-one civilizations is the black race. — Arnold J. Toynbee, respected 20th century scholar, historian and author

A Black skin means membership in a race of men which has never created a civilization of any kind. — John Burgess, 20th century scholar and founder, Political Science Quarterly

Afrocentrists argue that such ignorance and blatant racism were common among mainstream scholars, educators and historians well into the 20th century, and that what they consider to be the attendant appropriation of black history make the study of world history with new eyes an important undertaking. It is in this sense that the Afrocentrist paradigm legitimately may be considered to be "therapeutic." That is not to say, however, that it is necessarily, as Lefkowitz has charged, "an excuse to teach myth as history."

While their findings may be sometimes tentative and often controversial, Afrocentrist scholars do not approach Afrocentrism as artful storytelling, or pseudo social science. In their eyes, Afrocentrism is a critical historiographical approach to history, based on a weltanschauung which is fundamentally and radically different from that of many of their relatively recent, mainstream predecessors; but which harkens back to an earlier view of the history of world civilizations. It is the examination and analysis of existing scholarship, as well as the study of the original historical record itself, grounded in scholarly inquiry and rigorous research.

List of notable Afrocentric historians

• Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, professor, author: Afrocentricity: The theory of Social Change; The Afrocentric Idea; The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten
• Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango, college professor and lecturer; founder, Temple of the Black Messiah, School of History and Religion; co-founder and creative director, Fourth Dynasty Publishing Company, Silver Spring, Maryland
• Dr. Jacob Carruthers, Egyptologist; founding director of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization; founder and director of the Kemetic Institute, Chicago
• Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop,, author: The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality; Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology; Precolonial Black Africa; The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity; The Peopling of Ancient Egypt & the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script
• Dr. H.B. ("Barry") Fell, Harvard professor, linguist, author: Saga America, 1980
• Drusilla Dunjee Houston, lecturer, syndicated columnist, author: Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, 1926.
• Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, author: African Origins of Major "Western Religions"; Black Man of the Nile and His Family; Africa: Mother of Western Civilization; New Dimensions in African History; The Myth of Exodus and Genesis and the Exclusion of Their African Origins; Africa: Mother of Western Civilization; Abu Simbel to Ghizeh: A Guide Book and Manual
• Dr. Runoko Rashidi, author: Introduction to African Civilizations; The global African community: The African presence in Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific
• J.A. Rogers, author: Sex and Race: Negro-Caucasian Mixing in All Ages and All Lands : The Old World; Nature Knows No Color Line; Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas : The New World; 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof: A Short Cut to the World History of the Negro
• Dr. Ivan van Sertima, author: They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient Amerca, African Presence in Early Europe; Blacks in Science Acient and Modern; African Presence in Early Asia; African Presence in Early America; Early America Revisited; Egypt Revisited: Journal of African Civilizations; Nile Valley Civilizations; Egypt: Child of Africa (Journal of African Civilizations, V. 12); The Golden Age of the Moor (Journal of African Civilizations, Vol. 11, Fall 1991); Great Black Leaders: Ancient and Modern; Great African Thinkers: Cheikh Anta Diop
• Dr. Chancellor Williams, author: The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.
• Dr. Théophile Obenga, author: Ancient Egypt and Black Africa : a student's handbook for the study of Ancient Egypt in philosophy, linguistics, and gender relations
• Dr. Asa Hilliard, III, author: SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind; The Teachings of Ptahhotep

Related topics

• Afro-asiatic languages
• Afrocentricity
• Axum
• Black Athena
• Cultural appropriation
• Egyptology
• Eurocentrism
• Great Zimbabwe
• Historiography
• History of Ancient Egypt
• Kush
• Meroe
• Nilotic
• Nubia
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Tutankhamun

External links

• African by Nature Presents Your Eyes, an examination of black African identity vs. Europeanized images of Egypt
• Afrocentrism from The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll
• Ancient Nubia & Egypt Summary of Cheikh Anta Diop's Work (in French) La Nubie et L'Egypte Ancienne dans leurs Contexte Naturel Negro-Africain
• Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having by Ibrahim Sundiata
• Afrocentrism in Rastafari
• Afrocentrist multicultural pseudo-history by The Association for Rational Thought
• Building Bridges to Afrocentrism by Ann Macy Roth, for the University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center
• "The Egyptians: Who Were They?"
• "Egyptology: Hanging in the Hair," by Anu M'bantu and Fari Supia, West Africa Magazine, July 8, 2001
• Ex Africa Lux? by T. A. Schmitz (PDF)
• Fallacies of Afrocentrism by Grover Furr, for the Montclair State University
• "The Global African Presence," by Runoko Rashidi
• "Negro History and The Myth of Ham's Curse," by Babu G. Ranganathan (an East Indian writes of the black identity of ancient Egypt, India, etc.)
• "Not Out Of Africa Excerpt," by Mary Lefkowitz
• Pride and prejudice By Dinesh D'Souza
• "Race in Antiquity: Truly Out of Africa," by Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, a critical assessment of Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa.
• Racism and the Rediscovery of Ancient Nubia
• "Return to Glory," The Freeman Institute
• Safari Scholarship Reinvents History by Ilana Mercer
• UC Davis History Professor Clarence Walker's take on Afrocentrism

References

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• Historiography
• African history