Robert Huck Illinois State University April 2, 1994

The Europeans have an advantage over the Americans. From this side of the Atlantic, it seems that whenever a European ethnic minority wants special consideration, they create their own country. The Czechs and Slovaks couldn't get along so they made two new countries. The Czechs considered the Slovaks to be Central Europe's version of poor white trash. The Slovaks viewed the Czechs as elitist and arrogant. This is analogous to the opinions downstate Illinoisans have toward Chicagoans (and vice-versa). The Czechs and Slovaks could split up. Downstate Illinois and Chicago are stuck with each other.

Just as downstaters and Chicagoans are stuck with each other, we Americans, for the most part, do not feel that we can split up as the Europeans do. Southern plantation owners tried that once and it didn't work. For better or worse, we Americans cannot file for a "velvet divorce."

Since we cannot create new countries, our racial and ethnic tensions have created other forms of separatism. Arthur Schlesinger outlines these forms in THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA. As a confirmed believer in the American Creed, Schlesinger starts by giving an eloquent, yet idyllic view of American history. He cites Alexis de Tocqueville's 1837 DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA as evidence that democracy was the unifying factor for Americans. Tocqueville's observations are a rather curious choice to defend Schlesinger's views. Tocqueville was writing at a time when the bulk of the electorate was comprised of white, male, property owners. This is obviously a definition of democracy with which I am not familiar. Schlesinger completely missed the two factors that really unite Americans - economic opportunity and language. Democracy is a relatively recent phenomenon for many Americans. Women, one-half of our population, did not get the franchise until 1920. African-Americans did not have legal protection for their voting rights until 1965. For more than one-half of our history, democracy was limited to a minority of the population. Despite this, we Americans stayed together. Why? Economics and language.

Despite Schlesinger's view of America as a beacon of freedom and democracy, most immigrants came to this country for its economic opportunities. No one ever said "there's votes in them thar hills." There were some groups (such as Jews, Vietnamese, and English Catholics) who immigrated to escape religious or political oppression, however, the overriding incentive for American immigrants was economic not political.

If you think about it, language is really the only thing that all Americans could have in common. We certainly did not have a common ethnic background. We certainly did not want a common religion. However, we could have a common language. The United States is impossible without one. Schlesinger mentions this in his comments on bi-lingual education, however he fails to recognize the importance of language in keeping the states united.

Despite these two oversights, Schlesinger's book is superb analysis of how Americans seem intent on separatism. This is an ironic phenomenon. We have passed from the industrial to the information age. This discussion group is proof of that. Communication among people becomes easier every day. Just a few years ago, the founder of CNN was named as Time Magazine's Man of the Year. This is evidence of the importance that instantaneous communication plays in our lives. Who among us did not watch the Gulf War on television? Defense Secretary Dick Cheney himself said that the best information coming out of Baghdad during the war was on CNN. Fax machines were vital weapons in the Chinese student revolt of 1989. In an age when the walls are literally being torn down, Americans are trying to put them right back up again. Why? Schlesinger offers a few answers.

The information explosion has given media access to many groups previously, and unjustly, excluded. It has also given historians the ability to look into our past without prejudice. What many historians have found contradicts with what we wanted to believe about our history. The Civil Rights movement forced white America to face up to its past. For the first time, white Americans saw that our country was not "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all."

Just as white America was admitting to the crimes of their grandfathers, black Americans found that they had been largely written out of American history. Renowned historian Frederick Jackson Turner viewed slavery as a "mere incident" (58). "Charles and Mary Beard in their famous THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION," describ[ed] blacks as passive in slavery and ludicrous in Reconstruction and acknowledg[ed] only one black achievement - the invention of ragtime" (59).

To correct an obvious injustice, black academics, according to Schlesinger, went too far. Blacks viewed the white academic establishment as elitist, classist and irredeemably racist. "Black students, one scholar writes, 'succumb to a sort of brainwashing which denies them to ego-strength that comes from self-awareness, self-knowledge, and the security of group identity'" (63). Since whites and their culture were beyond redemption, radical black academics decided to go their own way, rejecting all that white culture had to offer.

Schlesinger delivers his greatest invectives against Leonard Jeffries, Asa Hilliard, and Molefe Asante. In commenting on Jeffries' work on a 1987 revision of the New York state history curriculum, Schelsinger said "The report views division into racial groups as the basic analytical framework for an understanding of American history. Its interest in history is not as an intellectual discipline but rather as social and psychological therapy whose primary purpose is to raise the self-esteem of children from minority groups" (68).

Schlesinger's greatest strength is the method he uses in his criticisms. Instead of paraphrasing Jeffries, Hilliard, or Asanti he freely quotes from them, allowing them to shoot themselves in the feet. He uses Hilliard's own words in his baseline essays on black history to show how Hilliard believes that Africans brought science and the arts to Europe and that Beethoven himself was an Afro-European (69).

Schlesinger goes to great pains to show that his defense of Western ideas is not a rejection of multiculturalism. "Cultural pluralism is not the issue. Nor is the teaching of Afro-American or African history . . . The issue is the teaching of bad history under whatever ethnic banner" (75). Afrocentrists like Asante claim that black Africa is the source of Western civilization by claiming that Egypt was a black country. Schlesinger uses the work of prominent Egyptologists and black historians to refute this, and then puts this issue in its true context. "[A]ny relationship between Egyptians, whatever color they may have been, and black Americans is exceedingly tenuous. Black Americans do not trace their roots to Egypt. The great majority of their ancestors came from West Africa, especially the Guinea coast. . . . Any homogeneity among slaves derived not from the African tribe but from the American plantation" (81).

The whole Afrocentric idea is based on the fallacy that black Americans have much in common with contemporary Africans. Three hundred years after the slaves first arrived, just how much can a black American have in common with a citizen of Ghana or the Ivory Coast? I have spent much time with my relatives in Germany. Although we share a common religion, our histories and our cultures have affected us in very different ways. And this is after just 100 years of separation from Germany. How much can 300 years of separation affect us?

In the final analysis, Afrocentrists like Asante and Jeffries are easy to criticize. Their theories are flawed, their ideas are racist, their views of history are based on anything but the facts, and their anti-Semitism is disturbing. Schlesinger's main thesis is not his critique of Afrocentrism, but his defense of European culture. His most controversial idea is his belief that Europe is the unique source of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Whatever the particular crimes of Europe, that continent is also the source - the unique source - of those liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and cultural freedom that constitute our most precious legacy and to which most of the world today aspires. These are European ideas, not Asian, nor African, nor Middle Eastern ideas, except by adoption. (127)

According to this theory, the Third World liberation movements were really prompted by a desire to imitate the European democratic model. This completely ignores attempts to preserve local cultures against Western influence. It also ignores liberation movements prompted as a response to European abuses of "political democracy, human rights, and cultural freedom." But the key question is whether Europe is the unique source of these values. Admittedly Europeans invented the modern form of political democracy, but are concepts such as the rule of law or human rights unique to European culture? Certainly not. The Chinese had firmly-established legal systems while Europe was still stuck in the Dark Ages. The Muslim Arabs were often credited with respecting the religious liberties of non-Muslims as long as they paid their taxes. Without getting into a discussion on the history of human rights in non-Western cultures, I think that Schlesinger could have found examples of "Western" ideals in non-Western societies.

Schlesinger may fail in his claim that Europe is the unique source of human rights and the rule of law, however he succeeds in his defense of modern Western culture. He points out that Afrocentrists (who are usually politically left-of-center) often find themselves defending non-Western cultures that trample on the rights of women, gays, the handicapped, and other "disempowered" groups. He also reminds us that most of the recent advances in human rights have come because of pressure of Western culture on non-Western cultures. Finally he reminds us that if those who are disenchanted with how the West treats the "disempowered", they should turn their attention to the societies they admire. If American women think they have it bad, they should go to the Middle East (where many women cannot even drive much less vote), Japan (where sexual harrassment is the norm, not the exception), or China (where abortions and sterilization are often compulsory). If African-Americans feel mistreated here, they should place themselves in the chaos of Zaire, the slavery of Mauritania, or the hopelessness of East Africa. We all admit that European culture has its flaws, but that is our strength not our weakness. Europe has created a mechanism whereby mistakes can be corrected without resort to violence. How many Third World cultures can make that claim? Tragically for the women of the Middle East and the people of Zaire, the answer is precious few. Back to top...

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those people on this forum that say the opposite of these crazy people, are usually hated and insulted, but i feel that they're the only ones telling the truth.

congratualtions to AMR1 , SALAMA, and others who have defended the truth and nothing but the whole truth.

those people on this forum that say the opposite of these crazy people, are usually hated and insulted, but i feel that they're the only ones telling the truth.

congratualtions to AMR1 , SALAMA, and others who have defended the truth and nothing but the whole truth.

Salam Fareed,
Never worry about the truth. It always come up, does not matter how long it takes to reveal.
Besides, since when Egyptian girls ever been defeated?

Allah with our Musr, for ever and ever.

I would actually agree with you up until recently. I too would say Black Americans have no business trying to claim any Egyptian heritage. Didn't see the point in it. East Africans like Ethiopians and Somalians have justification to make such claims but not the West Africans. But then came along National Geographic and this Genographic project. Then I find that some of my ancestry (Ethiopian) moved down the Nile into upper Egypt and split into two groups (E3b and E3a). E3b continues down the nile out into the Middle East and Southern Europe. E3a actually goes Westward and South into Africa. 55% of Black Americans have E3a heritage. This means that 55% of Blacks here in the USA can claim some remote Nubian heritage. It is a bit of a stretch for them to claim Egyptian heritage since E3b carriers do not migrate into West Africa in great numbers. The point is that Nubians and Egyptian are closely related (PN2 clades).

Here, you go and checkout the Genographic project. Very interesting.

https://www5.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/

Notice that in Palestine, your E3b crosses the path of your Asiatics. Hebrews (Asiatics like Abraham) and Ethiopians giving rise to the Arab nations. Just like we expect from the Torah and the Quran.

Again, African-Americans ARE NOT, I repeat ARE NOT trying to claim Egypt. The only people trying to claim Egypt are Arabs and Europeans.

I find it interesting how this book review lumps all of Europe together when describing the origins of democracy. How many “White” Americans can trace their roots back to the Greeks or Romans? How come this guy isn’t being accused of trying to steal Greek culture? All of Europe can have kinship, but not Africa.

As I said before, we all know an Egyptian is an Egyptian a Nigerian is a Nigerian, and an African-American is an African-American. Know one is try to make one the other. We all share a kinship, mixed or not. I’m proud to be an American and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, but does that mean I should turn my back on the whole African continent. I’ve never met an Egyptian that didn’t call me his brother, well maybe one, but he was more on the Arab side. Some Africans get it and some don’t. They finally get it when they come to the US and get hit in the face with the dose of reality. If you can’t pass for White, you are not White. You people need to wake up. This is why African countries are at the bottom. Too much fighting amongst yourselves, fighting to kiss either the White man’s ass or Arab’s.

Riding the wave of Anti-Afrocentrism, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr wrote the book The Disuniting of America. An expert on American Presidencies, Schlesinger Jr promotes the idea of America as an integrationist melting-pot rather than a multiculturalist disaster waiting to happen. Because "Canadians have never developed a strong sense of what it means to be a Canadian" they are not privy to what Americans have enjoyed in e Pluribus Unum. Schlesinger acknowledges that racism is a shameful act and that "white Americans have been racist in [their] laws, in [their] institutions... customs, conditioned reflexes, in [their] souls." But while these unfair conditions still exist, Schlesinger argues that assimilation and integration are the way forward, citing Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. in an attempt to allow the American sentiment to prevail over all others.
Compounding the problems of political correctness, the search for children's self-esteem, individual community development, ethnic separatism and the teaching of history as "filiopietistic commemoration" several internal factors working together in the United States for making this issue a large one are highlighted. The constant ethnocentrism in cultural politics, in Schlesinger's opinion, speaks negatively to educational practises, thereby causing a neo-segregationist cause furthered by Afrocentrism's insistence that there is a specific "Africanity" (to coin Molefi Asante), Afrocentricity and cosmological sensibility that makes blacks fundamentally different from whites. Afrocentrism's insistence that the person of colour is a feeling being whereas the person of non-colour is a reasoning being is, in Schlesinger's opinion, ludicrous. For example, the thespians' world has been dramatically, continuously corrupted by questions of race. Would Shakespeare have wanted Denzel Washington to play his Richard III as he did in New York before he broke into more popular films? Is it more disturbing that Mr. Washington has perfect posture (Richard III was written by Shakespeare to be a deformed-looking creature, a victim of "lookism" if you will) or that Denzel Washington, as he describes himself, is a "bird" (a black person)?

"We have a different way of responding to the world," he said. "We have different ideas about religion, different manners of social intercourse. We have different ideas about style, about language. We have different aesthetics... The job [to be the director of a film about black people] requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of Black Americans... Let's make a rule. Blacks don't direct Italian films. Italians don't direct Jewish films. Jews don't direct black American films."

This quote by the brilliant black playwright August Wilson, insisting on a black director for the film of his play Fences more specifically troubling to Schlesinger: "By the Wilson rule, only Norweigans would be permitted to direct Ibsen, only Danes to play Hamlet." This is of course simplifying the argument, and attributing something wholly unrelated to Afrocentrism to Afrocentrism. The notion that the skin colour or general appearance or sexual orientation of the actor should be somewhat similar to his character so as to convince, appease and comfort the audience is not a new one created and espoused solely by proponents of Afrocentrism. Placing Afrocentrism more directly in his eye-view than D'Souza, Schlesinger is threatened by anything that attacks traditions of the USA as an integrationist melting-pot, especially where it makes race-relations all the more uncomfortable.
Be that as it may, Schlesinger's readings and analyses are narrow. He trivialises the entire 1996 Oakland, California Ebonics scandal just as D'Souza trivialised the University of Michigan race-relations scandal of 1991: black people were acting up and asked for too much to compensate for their deep-rooted sense of paranoia. He also discusses this paranoia as an overarching "susceptibility". He asks: "Considering what we now know about the plots against black Americans conducted by J. Edgar Hoover and executed by his FBI, who can blame blacks for being forever suspicious of white intentions?" Still, he trivialises several members of the black community's insistence that the presence and general use of hard drugs in the ghettos of the United States is the doing of the government, describing it as "a more extreme version of the persecution complex... [present in] a society of jostling and competing groups."

The first response to this is an obvious one. A gram of liquid or powdered cocaine, more expensive and more often available in richer, whiter communities can cost a drug dealer two years in jail according to the law, whereas a gram of solid rock-cocaine, the exact same substance in a different form, cheaper more often available in poorer, blacker communities can send a drug dealer to jail for ten years on charges of possession with intent. So for the exact same crime, your average white drug dealer goes to jail for about half a college career whereas your average black drug dealer goes to jail for about an entire secondary school career. The second response to this comment is not as obvious but more rooted in an historical problem. When J. Edgar Hoover as stated before plotted and planned against black groups in the 1960's, and when from 1932 to 1972 the US Public Health Service conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis in what is now commonly known as the Tuskegee Experiment, all protocol, both scientific and political, had been thrown out in the name of racism.
In 1990, a New York Times-WCBS-TV survey found that 10 percent of African-Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 19 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As outrageous and unreasonable as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched. Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill-conceived experiment? In light of this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans' widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general should not be a surprise to anyone, nor should it be trivialised by the likes of Schlesinger. As previously stated Schlesinger's readings and analyses are narrow and often unthinking, blaming Afrocentrism for such common things as the phenomenon of black paranoia, which threaten academic values of accuracy and objectivity when played out on paper.