quote: Well and good, the observation of ethno-centrism as a norm in human societies across the globe, but the difference is that not every human group goes around frequently claiming historical cultural complexes in various geographical locations and their noteworthy accomplishments therein. For instance, I have yet to come across any organized and/or persistent effort by the Japanese to claim AE, with their "Nipponocentrism", and likewise, the Chinese in their "Sinocentrism".
This may be true about Egypt, but Chinese do suggest a Chinese origin for the Olmecs.
As I suspected, the central point always flies over someone's head, which in this case was:
Well and good, the observation of ethno-centrism as a norm in human societies across the globe, but the difference is that not every human group goes around frequently claiming historical cultural complexes in various geographical locations and their noteworthy accomplishments therein.
Having said that, addressing your post, I've observed this:
It is of note that the site you provided, is one from a university in Texas.
The author does make some interesting pictographic comparisons in *some* cases, however tentative and tenuous any real connection may be. Do you have websites [emphasis being, "multiple", to suggest a popular tendency] produced *in China*, where the Chinese-Olmec connections are professed?
I ask, because "diasporan" groups sometimes look for connections, which may not be the norm in the "homeland" regions. For instance, continental Africans themselves rarely speak of West African-Olmec connections, as much as "diasporan" Afrocentric groups.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Interesting post re the China and Olemc civilisation. I guess there's always something new--whether valid or not--to learn.
ONTHE QUESTION OF AFROCENTRISM
Matters are not as simple as some posters seem to argue. There seems to have been evident intra-group intellectual exchange on the matter of what I would call "the agencies of people designated as black and/or African by those who who argued that such populations were of a lesser biological or cultural humanity". For example, Molefi Asante, to whom the term "Afroentrism" is attributed has often claimed that he was first inspired by Cheikh Anta Diop--and in that regard sees himself, as he put it, as a "Diopian".
I also believe the Marcus Garvey--best decribed as a Pan Africanist--claimed that his inspiration came from a Moslem Sudanese he encountered while travelling. And Kwame Nkrumah himself claimed to have been influenced by Garvey--who movement had a number of branches in Euro-dominated South Africa.
Tne Negritude movement--which could be seen as a kind of Afrocentric validating of a supposed African affectivity--was founded by Senghor, Cesaire and Damas, all from both sides of the Atlantic.
"Afrocentrism"[like "Feminism" which was a reaction to Western patriarchal structuralism]could be best understood as intellectual reactions to a suffocating anti-African Eurocentrism, but Eurocentrism has struck back by reducing the term to not much more than a negative epithet. But in general it should be seen as a reaction to the denial of "human agency" to persons of African background --by most of Europe's most prominent intellectuals.
Even the Greek scholar Aristotle got the ball rolling with his comment "Too black a hue as an Egyptian or Kushite marks a coward....similarly, too white a hue as we see with women. The best colour is the intermediate colour as we see with lions"(Physiognomica, Problemata, Chp. 6, 812a).
Immanuel Kant claimed that he once saw a black man from afar talking to someone, but he was certain that he was talking nonsense since he was black. David Hume, the master philosopher, claimed that only the white races have ever produced civilisation.
Hegel also argued in his "Philosophy of History" that world history and the human quest for freedom had completely bypassed Africa. So Ancient Egypt was,therefore,a great puzzle.
The prominent British historian Arnold Toynbee argued too that only Africans of all the world's peoples have never produced civilisation. And Regius Professor of History, Hugh Trevor Roper of Oxford University claimed that Africans entered human history only with "the coming of the European". And French scholar Comte de Gobineau also argued that Africans were naturally inferior and that no civilisation could be attributed to them. His well-known text was titled "On the Inequality of the Human Races".
The question then is: what label or characterisation should one use to cover the natural African reaction to the European claim that Africans belonged to a lesser kind of humanity and therefore deserve their assigned status and treatment among humanity's groups? If not the term "Afrocentrism" then what? Or is it that the term itself is just a deliberate distraction.
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The question then is: what label or characterisation should one use to cover the natural African reaction to the European claim that Africans belonged to a lesser kind of humanity and therefore deserve their assigned status and treatment among humanity's groups? If not the term "Afrocentrism" then what? Or is it that the term itself is just a deliberate distraction.
I try to make a point to the maximum possible extent, not to prescribe to labels, because labels ultimately tend to box people into fixed ideas. Should I feel the need to label myself at any rate, then I'd simply refer to myself as an 'Africanist', because 'centrism' in any ethnic term comes with the baggage of connoting subjective dogma, devoid of objective substance.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Lamin: Eurocentrism has struck back by reducing the term to not much more than a negative epithet.
Eurocentrism didn't struck back as much as afrocentricsm took suicide, through making redicoulas claims such as these:
quote:Clyde winters: since Sumerian times when the Sumerians called themselves "Black heads" to differentiate themselves from the Gutians who were neither Kushite/Black/African people.
quote:Clyde winters: The presence of African Olmecs is also supported by epigraphic, genetic and skeletal evidence, not just iconographic material.
In addition to black vikings, celts, beethoven, china, dravidian etc, etc.
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Yonis said once that he considers Noam Chomsky "hero". Then why are you surprised his despise for his people?
Yonis is a helpless case--lost son-- brainwashed by leftists (fascist) people, also known as "humanists".
Nayaa learn your spot, sifiican bad u kibirte.
Just because i think he makes sense doesn't mean i'm a "leftist (fascist)" or what ever you want to call it.
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quote:Originally posted by Mackandal: Its a well known fact that people who attack Afrocentrism don't know what they're attacking or they make some weak strawman attack against some layman to discredit Afrocentrism. I challenge Yonis to do at least three things:
1) Give a definition of Afrocentrism according to *HIS* POV
2) State whom he's attacking specifically and the views they espouse and post counter-evidence to support his side.
3) State why is he making silly personal attacks of Afro-Americans. Is he jealous or just plain trolling when he made this thread.
1) Afrocentrism is the idea of making everything valuble around the world as african derived.Atleast that's the impression it conveys. Also why its the laughing stock of the academic circles, most don't even bother countering these claims since it doesn't live up to the standards, and don't deserve it.
2) Everyone who propagates these ideas, in particular clyde winters and his crew, but there are much more out there with preposterous claims, which makes them look pathetic.
3)I never attacked Afroamericans so i don't know what the hell you are talking about.
Posts: 1420 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mackandal: Its a well known fact that people who attack Afrocentrism don't know what they're attacking or they make some weak strawman attack against some layman to discredit Afrocentrism. I challenge Yonis to do at least three things:
1) Give a definition of Afrocentrism according to *HIS* POV
2) State whom he's attacking specifically and the views they espouse and post counter-evidence to support his side.
3) State why is he making silly personal attacks of Afro-Americans. Is he jealous or just plain trolling when he made this thread.
1) Afrocentrism is the idea of making everything valuble around the world as african derived.Atleast that's the impression it conveys. Also why its the laughing stock of the academic circles, most don't even bother countering these claims since it doesn't live up to the standards, and don't deserve it.
2) Everyone who propagates these ideas, in particular clyde winters and his crew, but there are much more out there with preposterous claims, which makes them look pathetic.
3)I never attacked Afroamericans so i don't know what the hell you are talking about.
So do you apply the Afrocentric label to all African scholars of the diaspora? You cannot discount all research done by all people on the contribution of Africa to world history as being laughing stocks.
The word Afrocentrism and the sometimes faulty claims by those who claim to be Afrocentric cannot and should not be used to deny the facts of African influence on world history and real scholarship to that effect.
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quote:rasol: Yonis hates on Southern Sudanese too. And Bantu. Even this thread is really and attempt rationalise hate. Just stating a fact. Let the denials fly then.
I hate on southern sudanese?? as always you make up your own bs. i think you are saying this because i disagreed with "Africa" that Afar and somalis were the same ethnicity as dinka and shiluk, telling him that he's wrong dosn't imply hatred. And i don't know where you got the bantu from.
Posts: 1420 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mackandal: Its a well known fact that people who attack Afrocentrism don't know what they're attacking or they make some weak strawman attack against some layman to discredit Afrocentrism. I challenge Yonis to do at least three things:
1) Give a definition of Afrocentrism according to *HIS* POV
2) State whom he's attacking specifically and the views they espouse and post counter-evidence to support his side.
3) State why is he making silly personal attacks of Afro-Americans. Is he jealous or just plain trolling when he made this thread.
1) Afrocentrism is the idea of making everything valuble around the world as african derived.Atleast that's the impression it conveys. Also why its the laughing stock of the academic circles, most don't even bother countering these claims since it doesn't live up to the standards, and don't deserve it.
2) Everyone who propagates these ideas, in particular clyde winters and his crew, but there are much more out there with preposterous claims, which makes them look pathetic.
3)I never attacked Afroamericans so i don't know what the hell you are talking about.
So do you apply the Afrocentric label to all African scholars of the diaspora? You cannot discount all research done by all people on the contribution of Africa to world history as being laughing stocks.
The word Afrocentrism and the sometimes faulty claims by those who claim to be Afrocentric cannot and should not be used to deny the facts of African influence on world history and real scholarship to that effect.
No, i don't consider for instance people like keita or Bernal afrocentric, since they are intelligent and produce very convincing points.
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quote:i think you are saying this because i disagreed with "Africa" that Afar and somalis were the same ethnicity as dinka and shiluk
Nope, didn't know about that one, but it does sound like one of your rants.
Your mistake in this thread, was in not recognising how transparent you are.
Thus, your thread backfired.
Continue your folly then.....
quote:Yonis: Seriously if this is what "new world blacks" want to offer as their so called "contrubution
quote:Yonis writes: I never attacked African Americans....
You call that an attack? in that case you have attcked more than dussin groups around the world through the years you've been posting at this forum, besides i said "new world blacks" don't thin African-americans are the only new world blacks.
quote:Nope, didn't know about that one
Then your accusations are baselees, i beleive an apology is in order from you.
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I have looked at the research work of the individual who coined the term "Afrocentrism" and my impression is that he concentrates specifically and almost totally on Africa. I note his strong criticism of scholars like Leftkowiz who tried identify Asante's position with issuessuch as whether Cleopatra was "black".
Regardless of the merit of the reasearch undertaken by Winters and others I doubt that Asante, as originator of the term, has shown any interest in Olmec civilisation and the like. Asante seems more conerned with Afrocentrism as a critical research methodology founded on African agency than with the possibilities of African cultural diffusionism world wide.
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Curiously enough, the term "Africanist" has long been used to describe European(including Americans of European extraction) whose area of research was Africa and operated from within the orthodox parameters of "African Studies" departments in Europe and the U.S. A long standing research school in that area is "The London University School or African and Oriental Studies".
But in the last 40 years or so following the emergence of scholars like C.A. Diop the Africanist approach to Africa has been seen as overly Eurocentric.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
More nonsense again from certain individuals. The logic is soooooo . . .out there. If the EU can be formed with people who have killed millions of each other in the last 200 years why can't the AU be formed. The goals will be to find a common thread and build on that. One common thread is they are mostly E3a. They were/are the first man.
quote:Originally posted by Miguel Antunes: "United we stand, divided we fall"
It's true that the creation of fictional countries and putting different groups together caused problems, but that in itself shows how hard unity is to achieve. I think an whole Africa Union is very hard to achieve, due to how diverse the continent is, perhaps before that regional unions would be better.
Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
There is a feeling that 'Afrocentric' tends to be seen as an extreme like 'Eurocentrism' when in fact the goal should have been truth and veracity in the first place! Oftetimes on both sides, they both want to bamboozle their audience with inane fabrication of self aggrandizement and weird self adoration. Some good things have come out of Afrocentrism but in the main, there is lot of work to be done. Let's do away with the term and give it a more neutral descriptive worthy of true African research and appreciation.
It also does not help with many AA decrying 'I aint no African' mantra!
Posts: 1290 | From: usa | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by yazid904: There is a feeling that 'Afrocentric' tends to be seen as an extreme like 'Eurocentrism' when in fact the goal should have been truth and veracity in the first place! Oftetimes on both sides, they both want to bamboozle their audience with inane fabrication of self aggrandizement and weird self adoration. Some good things have come out of Afrocentrism but in the main, there is lot of work to be done. Let's do away with the term and give it a more neutral descriptive worthy of true African research and appreciation.
It also does not help with many AA decrying 'I aint no African' mantra!
Thats because AAs are *NOT* Africans. There is a difference.
Posts: 2595 | From: Vicksburg | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
To answer your topic question, Yonis, I believe there is no low objection to the type of pseudo stuff that Clyde and his follower Marc spew. On the contrary, many people here in the forum object to such content. However, I believe that in the case of Marc (where there is nonsense everyday) it does no good to just "object", and so we usually ignore his rantings.
Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by lamin: To Mystery Solver,
Curiously enough, the term "Africanist" has long been used to describe European(including Americans of European extraction) whose area of research was Africa and operated from within the orthodox parameters of "African Studies" departments in Europe and the U.S. A long standing research school in that area is "The London University School or African and Oriental Studies".
But in the last 40 years or so following the emergence of scholars like C.A. Diop the Africanist approach to Africa has been seen as overly Eurocentric.
Africanist is anyone who studies African studies, be it a white, yellow, brown, black person or what have you.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by lamin: And that's the whole thing about labels and concepts, we often get trappped by them. In the case of "Afrocentrism" it should be noted that it developed as a response to a powerful and pervasive Western Eurocentrism.
Si, senior[/ita].
quote:Thus who isn't "centric" in one way or another. The Chinese are well known for their "Sinocentricity", the Japanese are known for their "Nipponocentrism", the same for all the religious faiths: "our religious way and practices are the only true way, and all others are pagans and idol worshippers-- all lost souls who must be converted to be saved".
posted
Funny thing is, I planned on starting a thread for the sole reason of Marc repeatedly polluting us with the same refuted non-sense - but the threads slowed down and I've never got around to it.
It's really redicoulas how many nonesense debates people engage at this forum, but at the same time ignoring BS rhetorics that circulate around in the name of african studies
quote:Yone-Boner:
Seriously if this is what "new world blacks" want to offer as their so called "contrubution"
Why are you bringing an entire ethnic group into it?
Huh?
Some of whom are far worse than you when it comes to political affiliation. I'm serious, we've got some major Uncle Ruckuses.
quote:Yoner:
then i think it's better if you concetrate on domestic issues and keep your hands out of our continent.
Likewise, atleast when generalizing.
quote:Y-bone:
To be honest we don't need you or your bullshit, it's to much nonsense that we can live without, let me put it officialy WE DON'T NEED YOU, YOU ARE A BURDEN; YOUR THEORIS STINKS! Focus at home, Africa will survive sooner than latter without your nonsense, it will come from inside never from you, so don't elevate yourself to much.
I can never decide when it's uglier, AA anti-African bias, or the other way around.
quote:I never attacked african americans
Now I see how one can say that Yonis "pretends".
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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I have looked at the research work of the individual who coined the term "Afrocentrism" and my impression is that he concentrates specifically and almost totally on Africa. I note his strong criticism of scholars like Leftkowiz who tried identify Asante's position with issuessuch as whether Cleopatra was "black".
Regardless of the merit of the reasearch undertaken by Winters and others I doubt that Asante, as originator of the term, has shown any interest in Olmec civilisation and the like. Asante seems more conerned with Afrocentrism as a critical research methodology founded on African agency than with the possibilities of African cultural diffusionism world wide.
Molefi K. Asante and Mark T. Matson, The Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans NY: Macmillan 1991
p. 15. "In 1311 and 1312, according to Al-Omari, the Malian prince Abubakari II, brother of Emperor Mansa Musa, sent shipping vessels across the west African sea (Atlantic Ocean). The historian and anthropologist, Ivan Van Sertima, in his book They Came Before Columbus, tells us that Abubakari's fishing vessels landed in Mexico where the African settlers impacted on the local culture's language, rituals, myths, religions, and agriculture. Other scholars have argued that Africans came to central America long before the fourteenth century. Indeed, evidence in the Mayan and Mexican forests of pyramids and large African sculptures (the Olmec heads) suggest an early African presence. The Olmec civilization of Mexico, the first complex culture of the Americas, is thought to have been influenced by the classical civilizations of Ethiopia, Kemet and Meroe. ... By 1200 B.C.E., Olmec civilization was fully developed at San Lorenzo, the earliest major ceremonial center. Later around 900 B.C.E. the power center of the civilization shifted to La Venta, where huge African heads of basalt have been found. Weighing several tons and resembling the faces and hairstyles of Africans of the same period of time, these heads support the claims by Ivan Van Sertima and Michael Bradley that the Olmec civilization was the first civilization established by Africans outside the continent of Africa. The inspiration for the massive public works projects--clay buildings platforms and stone drainage systems-- seem to be ancient Egyptian. Actually the large human heads and fine jade carvings suggest African influences at an early period. A further relationship to the classical African civilizations has been established through the similarity of the hieroglyphic systems of writing. The Nile Valley in Africa and the Mesoamerican region share several similarities, including the later development in the Americas of pyramids. Since there are no direct written records of the African origin of Olmec civilization, the arguments for African influences, substantial as they are, have been based on the carved images of africans, the similarity of cultural expressions, and as in the case of the Mali sailors, the presence of African customs, myths, and ceremonies in certain parts of Mexico."
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posted
To Quetz... Thanks for the information but Asante's and Matson's statements seem more descriptive of what some scholars such as Van Sertima have argued than an engaged endorsement. Certainly, if Van Sertima's ideas in "They came before Columbus" have been discussed on university campuses and his book reviewed in a number of places there is nothing wrong with including such ideas in an historical and cultural Atlas.
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posted
Yonis, I hadn't noticed it in your OP, but do not denigrate other peoples; Willing Thinker {What Box}, changing another person's name in quotations can be seen as denigrating unless clearly done as a way of fraternising, which does not seem to be the case in your post.
Posts: 113 | From: Dayr al-Barsha | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Topic: why is there such low objection on people who spread so called "afrocentrism"?
Answer Afrocentrism has the chance to become a very powerful form of scholarship if done correctly really not much different from other forms of African Scholarship.
Note: Cheikh Anta Diop is part of the Afrocentric movement because Dr. John Henrik Clarke help Diop book receive publishing in America so basically Diop became part of the Movement for African Scholarship in the United States
Note: Cheikh Anta Diop is part of the Afrocentric movement because Dr. John Henrik Clarke help Diop book receive publishing in America so basically Diop became part of the Movement for African Scholarship in the United States
Agree or Disagree it’s up to you
In which case, I disagree, because of two points:
1)Unless cited, I've come across nowhere wherein Diop declares himself as an "Afrocentric" scholar. This seems to be a label others pinned on him.
2)He had been publishing his work since long before Molefi K. Asante coined the term.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Note: Cheikh Anta Diop is part of the Afrocentric movement because Dr. John Henrik Clarke help Diop book receive publishing in America so basically Diop became part of the Movement for African Scholarship in the United States
Agree or Disagree it’s up to you
In which case, I disagree, because of two points:
1)Unless cited, I've come across nowhere wherein Diop declares himself as an "Afrocentric" scholar. This seems to be a label others pinned on him.
2)He had been publishing his work since long before Molefi K. Asante coined the term.
And Diop is a better scholar Posts: 447 | From: Somewhere son... | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by xyyman: More nonsense again from certain individuals. The logic is soooooo . . .out there. If the EU can be formed with people who have killed millions of each other in the last 200 years why can't the AU be formed. The goals will be to find a common thread and build on that. One common thread is they are mostly E3a. They were/are the first man.
quote:Originally posted by Miguel Antunes: "United we stand, divided we fall"
It's true that the creation of fictional countries and putting different groups together caused problems, but that in itself shows how hard unity is to achieve. I think an whole Africa Union is very hard to achieve, due to how diverse the continent is, perhaps before that regional unions would be better.
E3a is not the first man..at all! A is. And plenty of Africans aren't E3a. You attack my logic and then you say this? lol
What you say about the EU is true, but still it is starting to have problems (always had them to be fair), and the similarities between Europeans are much bigger (almost everyone is Christian and the Roman/Greek heritage is quite strong for example, and geographically and historically they were close, the small size of the continent certanly contributed to that) than the ones between all kinds of Africans. And I never said that an African Union (a real one, not even the European Union is a real one, as in it is not some sort of United States of Europe) would be impossible, only hard. As far as I know this makes sense. African countries are even having dificulty to maintain union inside themselves, let alone between themselves. Europeans were also more compelled to join because as you said, they killed millions of each other and finally started to understand that it woulnd't lead them anywhere. Have Africans learned that yet? It took a long time and many lifes for Europeans to.. Regional Unions, based on similar cultures. are then a easier step. Remember than even the EU followed a regional union that proved sucessful, the Benelux. But then a problem arises. Many African countries have different cultures within themselves. If only the borders could be redrawn..
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An African Union is much easier to achieve than it seems. Just think of what the ordinary person wants.
1)He/she wants to be able to travel across borders for trade, visits, jobs, etc. without being harassed by neocolonial border guards. In other words, free travel---as was the case during precolonial times.
2) He/she wants to be able to use one single currency when travelling from region to region for whatever reason.
3) He/she would hope that important things like scientific and medical research should not be left to the efforts of those tiny neo-colonial governments--many of whose budgets are partially paid by European governments--but would be carried out under the aeges of regional scientific and medical cooperative research insitutes.
4)He/she would hope that educational systems be normalised throughout the continent and the continuing imitation of the colonial educational systems be a thing of the past.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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An African Union is much easier to achieve than it seems. Just think of what the ordinary person wants.
1)He/she wants to be able to travel across borders for trade, visits, jobs, etc. without being harassed by neocolonial border guards. In other words, free travel---as was the case during precolonial times...
Depends on where and what time. What do you suppose walled cities were for, in some "Sudanic" complexes? What about the ancient Egyptian military fortresses on its northern and southern borders? With respect to the latter at least, I would think that the purpose here, was to keep an eye on and control the movement into and out of the nation, and naturally for security reasons.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
You may be right with regard to walled cities, but I am talking about a general situation. For example, in precolonial times there were signposts saying "You are now entering country X; get ready to show your papers".
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posted
lamin, certanly, many people want that (I certanly do), but there are still plenty of racists/nationalists/tribalists or simply people that don't care, in Africa or otherwise. And of course, the average person has little power, I doubt the elites want to share their power..or even lose it.
P.S. I also have some doubts that movements were so free back in the past. Complex societies/civilizations, such as the ones in Africa before colonialism, usually aren't very keen on foreigners roaming about..but this doesn't mean that people wouldn't want such freedom of course.
Posts: 218 | Registered: Aug 2007
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posted
First, a correction: "in precolonial times there were no signposts announcing that you are now entering country X. Get ready to show your papers". Of course, this is meant metaphorically: today you have to show passports and visas to travel from one small country to another.
Compare that with the U.S., the E.U or Canada where you travel thousands of miles without travel documents using the same currency. That's what I mean.
But my point about precolonial travel is still valid: pastoralists moved with their cattle as they saw fit. And agriculturalists lived in their villages but were free to migrate when ecologies demanded it.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Masonic Rebel: Topic: why is there such low objection on people who spread so called "afrocentrism"?
Answer Afrocentrism has the chance to become a very powerful form of scholarship if done correctly really not much different from other forms of African Scholarship.
Note: Cheikh Anta Diop is part of the Afrocentric movement because Dr. John Henrik Clarke help Diop book receive publishing in America so basically Diop became part of the Movement for African Scholarship in the United States
quote:Cheikh Anta Diop is part of the Afrocentric movement because Dr. John Henrik Clarke help Diop book receive publishing in America so basically Diop became part of the Movement for African Scholarship in the United States.
I disagree. Afrocentrism is a post Diop political movement founded by Molefe Asanti.
You can't use Diop, or Shaka Zulu, or Mohammad to bolster the credibility of that movement, unless you can prove [post mortem] that they would all agree with the tenants and objectives of said movement.
In the case of Diop this is highly debatable.
If one agrees with Diop, one may refer to onself as a Diop-ian.
But you can't imply that Diop agrees 'with you', call him and AFrocentric, and then use him to justify claims -> he never made.
It's a big difference.
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posted
And even further to the point, while Dubois, Garvey, Diop and others would agree with furthering Africans researching and understanding their own past from an African perspective, it does not mean they would agree with Afrocentrism. More specifically, if Afrocentrism is really an academic movement, then what has it produced? Most African American studies departments are not equipped to do the kind of research and education that is indicated by the Afrocentrist movement. Therefore, if the current curriculum of most African studies programs is evidence of the impact of the Afrocentric paradigm, then it is a failed paradigm, as it does not measure up to the level of scholarship required to even begin producing African champions like Diop.
Posts: 8890 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
DuBois, Diop J.A. Rogers and etc., were Afrocentric researchers. The research done in most Afro-American studies departments is produced through Afrocentricity—not Afrocentrism.
Asante maintains that Afrocentricity is concerned with Africans making themselves the subjects and agents of their own history. As a result, he believes that consciousness defines one’s ability to conduct Afrocentric research.
Thus he views the major characteristic of an Afrocentric history as interest in psychological location, African subject-place in which the voice of the scholars demonstrate African agency, Thusly he notes that “Afrocentricity is not data but the approach to data….If I can not find something in written text I do not dismiss the idea outright because of “absence of evidence” is not “evidence of absence”.
This view of evidence is not acceptable in Afrocentrism where evidence (anthropological, linguistic and etc.) is used to confirm the ancient history of Black and African people. Researchers like DuBois, Diop, J.A. Rogers, Carter G. Woodson and etc., using Afrocentrism to conduct their research recognize the fact that when Africans settled in other parts of the world they may have changed elements of the parent culture to accommodate their new areas of settlement. Thus the Mande in Africa recognized the leopard as the master of the bush. In MesoAmerica, there were no leopards , so they replaced this feline with the jaguar. As a result, if Diop would not have found evidence to support a link between Egypt and Black Africa he could not have confirmed his theory that Egypt was an African civilization.
The failure to recognize that research methods in historiography, anthropology and linguistic are neutral, and that it is doxa that determines how the researcher interprets evidence has stagnated research among many researchers who use the same outdated sources to describe Black civilizations even though new research has been conducted that support the research of J.A. Rogers, Diop and DuBois. A cursory reading of the work of these scholars will show that they used the lastest reseach of their day in their historical narrative.
It must be remembered that Afrocentrism is based on evidence and using traditional social science research methods. Due to the anti-Black/African character of the Academe, Afrocentrism has never been taught in Western based Universities in the United States and much of the rest of the world. As a result, the major Afrocentric researchers conducted their research outside the Academe.
You asked what has it produced. The answer is it has confirmed the founding of civilization by Black and African people in EurAsia, Africa and the Americas.
There are four philosophical schools associated with the afrocentric study of ancient history: perennialist, essentialist, existentialist, and progressivist. The taxonomic system we use to classify the various afrocentric philosophical positions and related values affecting afrocentrism are modeled on philo-sophical developments associated with education.
We can use taxonomies of educational philosophies to discuss any proposed afrocentric curriculum because both education and philosophy are "cultural experiences". Moreover, because afrocentrism seeks to explain and delineate the story of African people, it clearly is a field of study which encompasses all aspects of the culture of Black and African people (Asante, 1990, 1991; Winters, 1994).
The perennialist afrocentrists study the great works. The adherents of this school include Martin Delaney (1978), Cornish and Russwurm (1827), Frederick Douglas (1966), and Edward Blyden (1869). These Afrocentrists see knowledge as truth, which is eternal.
The essentialist afrocentric school emphasize in their writing data that is well established through scientific research. Afrocentrists of this philosophical school include W. E. B. DuBois (1965, 1970), John Jackson (1974), C.A. Winters (1985, 1989, 1991, 1994) and Leo Hansberry (1981). They believe that as new research is published, it should be analyzed to discover how it relates to the ancient history of African and Black people to enrich our understanding of the past.
The existentialist afrocentrists believe that africalogical studies should thrive to teach African people to know more about themselves so we can have a better world. The afrocentric existentialists include J.A. Rogers, Anta Diop (1974, 1991), G.M. James (1954), Marcus Garvey (1966) and A.A. Schomburg (1979).
The final afrocentric philosophical school is the progressivist. The afrocentric school of progressivism believes that we should have knowledge of the process and futuristic focus on afrocentric studies. The major exponent of this frame of reference is Molefi K. Asante (1991).
In regards to the afrocentric view that the Egyptians were Black Africans we must look to the afrocentric perennialists. The perennialists founded the afrocentric ancient history curriculum. The perennialist school is associated with Frederick Douglas (1966) and Martin Delaney (1978). These Afrocentrists writing in the 19th century placed the great works of the past center stage in the formulation of their afrocentric ancient history knowledge base.
The perennialists postulated that you should use the Bible and the writings of the classical scholars who recognized the "Ancient Model" of history (i.e., Blacks played a major role in ancient history) in deciding on what to teach people about the ancient history of African Americans. The Old Testament provides annals of the ancient Empires of Africa and Mesopotamia.
In the Old Testament the Blacks are recognized as the sons of Ham. According to the Old Testament narrative found in the Book of Genesis (10:6), the children of Ham, are alleged to be the founders of all the ancient civilizations including Kush (the Ta Seti, and C-Group cultures of Nubia and the Sudan; the Sumerians of Mesopotamia and the Elamites of Iran), Mizraim (the founder of the Egyptians), Phut (the civilizations of ancient Ethiopia/ South Arabia), and Canaan (the early Canaanites and Hatians of ancient Palestine). The Old Testament narrative and the classical literature was important to the perennialists because it already recognized the division of Black people of Africa into two groups: the Semitic (Canaan and Phut) speakers and Black African (Egypt, Sumer and Elam) speakers (Winters 1985, 1989, 1991).
Africalogical Paradigms of ancient history
As a result of the "Ancient Model" scientific efforts of africalogical ancient history researchers of the diverse philosophical schools discussed above is organized around two theoretical or empirical generalizations\paradigms. An empirical generalization is 'an isolated proposition summarizing observed uniformities of relationships between two or more variables" (Merton, 1957, 95), a "scientific law" is "a statement of invariance derivable from a theory" (Merton, 1957, 96).
The two paradigms associated with ASAH developed by the perennialist afrocentric scholars are:
(1) Black\African people are the children of Ham;
(2) Blacks founded the first civilizations in Asia
(Sumer, Babylon and Elam), Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia
and Libya\ North Africa) and Europe (Greece and
Crete).
The normal scientific research in africalogical ancient historical studies is directed toward the articulation of those phenomena and theories supplied by the ASAH to deduce new paradigms.
Due to the foundation of africalogical ancient research by the afrocentric perennialists, ASAH research is paradigm based. As a result, africalogical ancient historical fact-gathering, that is the historical, linguistic and anthropological data through which afrocentric scientists inform their colleagues ( and the public at large) is based on these paradigms.
The theoretical paradigms of the ASAH provide africalogical researchers with the criterion for choosing the problems and solutions to social science phenomena including:
(1) the design of research phenomena;
(2) the maps or areas of research; and
(3) the interpretation of research results.
The paradigms for ASAH predicted four hypothesis that were unknown at the time the "Ancient Model" of history was developed, to guide the development of scientific knowledge for the africalogical study of early history. These propositions based on the "Ancient Model" are:
(1) If Blacks founded civilization in Asia and Africa
, they may have influenced civilization in the Americas.
(2) If Blacks founded civilization in West Asia, Africa and
Europe, archaeological data will support their earlier
presence in these regions of the world.
(3) If Blacks founded the first civilizations, they also
invented writing and other elements of social and
scientific technology.
(4) If Blacks founded civilization they probably founded
civilization throughout Asia and Europe.
Given the two empirical paradigms and four predicted hypothesis related to the "Ancient Model", africalogical ancient history research should increase the precision of the application of afrocentric research methods and scope of research in this area so as to answer three questions in the mature afrocentric social science. Research in the afrocentric social sciences seeks to answer three classes of questions based on the ASAH paradigms:
(1) the determination of significant ASAH facts;
(2) the match of ASAH facts with theory; and
(3) the articulation of ASAH theory.
The normative function of the ASAH paradigms provides the afrocentric ancient history researchers with shared paradigms, or points of view that help define how s/he will research ancient history. These paradigms insure that africalogical researchers use the "Ancient Model" of research, as opposed to the "Aryan Model" of research to illuminate the early history of Black/African people.
The Africalogical ancient history paradigms developed by Delany (1978), Douglas (1966), Edward Blyden (1869) and Cornish and Russwurm (1827) form the theoretical base for ASAH research. In normal afrocentric social science research new paradigms have to 1) be related to the older theories; and 2) they must be compatible with already established rules for research modeled by the afrocentric perennialists.
.
REFERENCES
Anselin, A. (1982). Le mythe d' Europe. Paris: Editions Anthropos.
Bernal, M. (1996, Spring). The Afrocentric interpretation of history: Bernal replies to Lefkowitz. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 86-95.
Bernal,M. (1987). Black Athena. New York: Free Association Press. Volume 1.
________. (1991). Black Athena. New York: Free Association Press. Volume 2.
Blyden, E.W. ( January, 1869). The Negro in ancient history.
Methodist Quarterly Review, 71-93.
Blyden, E.W. (1887). Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
_____________. (1890). The African Problem and the method for
its solution. Washington, D.C.: Gibson Brothers.
_______________.(1905). West Africa before Europe. London:
C.M. Phillips.
Clegg, L.H. (1975). Who were the first Americans? The Black
Scholar, 7(1), 32-41.
Coleman, B.E. (1971). A history of Swahili, The Black Scholar,
2 (6), 13-25.
Cornish, S. & Russwurm, J.B. (1827). European colonies in America, Freedom Journal, 1.
Carruthers, J. (1977). Writing for Eternity, black book bulletin,
5 (2), 32-35.
Carruthers, J. (1980). Reflections on the history of afrocentric
worldview, black book bulletin, 7(1), 4-13, 25.
Delany, M.R. (1978). The origin of races and color. Baltimore, M.D.: Black Classic Press.
Diop,C.A. (1974). The African Origin of Civilization. (ed. & Trans) by Mercer Cook, Westport:Lawrence Hill & Company.
_________.(1977). Parente genetique de l'Egyptien Pharaonique et
des Languaes Negro-Africaines. Dakar: IFAN ,Les Nouvelles
Editions Africaines.
__________.(1978) The Cultural Unity of Black Africa. Chicago: Third World Press.
__________. (1981). A Methodology for the study of migration.
UNESCO (Ed.), African Ethnonyms and Toponyms, (pp.87-110).
Paris: UNESCO.
___________.(1986). "Formation of the Berber Branch". In Libya
Antiqua. (ed.) by Unesco,(Paris: UNESCO) pp.69-73.
____________.(1987). Precolonial Black Africa. (trans. ) by
Harold Salemson, Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company.
____________.(1988). Nouvelles recherches sur l'Egyptien ancient
et les langues Negro-Africaines Modernes. Paris: Presence
Africaine.
_____________(1991). Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. (trans.) by Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi and (ed.) by
H.J. Salemson and Marjoliiw de Jager, Westport:Lawrence
Hill and Company.
Douglas, F. (1966). The claims of the Negro ethnologically considered. In H. Brotz (Ed.), Negro social and political
thought (pp. 226-244). New York: Basic Books, Inc., Pub.
DuBois, W.E.B. (1924). The Gift of Black Folks. Boston.
DuBois, W.E.B. (1970). The Negro. New York: Oxford University
Press.
DuBois, W.E.B. (1965). The world and Africa. New York :
International Publishers Co., Inc.
Ferris, W.H. (1913). The African abroad. 2 vols. New Haven,CT
:Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor.
Garvey, M. (1966). Who and What is a Negro. In H. Brotz (Ed.), Negro social and political thought (pp. 560-562).New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers.
Graves, Robert. (1980). The Greek Myths. Middlesex:Peguin Books
Ltd. 2 volumes.
Hansberry, L.H. (1981). Africa and Africans: As seen by classical
writers (Vol. 2). Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press.
Hopkins, P.E. (1905). A Primer of Facts pertaining to the early greatness of the african race and the possibility of restoration by its descendants-with epilogue. Cambridge: P.E. Hopkins & Com.
Hume, D. (1875). Essays: Moral political and literary. T.H. Green
and T.H. Grose. 2 Vols. London.
Jackson, J. (1974). Introduction to African civilization.
Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press.
James, G.M. (1954). Stolen legacy. New York: Philosophical Library.
Kuhn, T.S. (1996). The structure of scientific revolution.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lacouperie, Terrien de. (1891). The black heads of Babylonia and ancient China, The Babylonian and Oriental Record, 5 (11), 233-246.
Lawrence, H.G. (1962). African explorers of the New World,
The Crisis, 321-332.
Merton, R.K. (1957). Social theory aand social structure.
Glencoe, Ill. : The Free Press.
Moitt,B. (1989). "Chiekh Anta Diop and the African Diaspora:
Historical Continuity and Socio-Cultural Symbolism".
Presence Africaine, no. 149-150:347-360.
Parker,G.W. (1917) . "The African Origin of Grecian Civilization
".Journal of Negro History, 2(3):334-344.
___________. (1981). The Children of the Sun. Baltimore,Md.:
Black Classic Press.
Perry, R.L. (1893). The Cushite. Brooklyn: The Literary Union.
Rawlinson, George. (1928).The History of Herodutus. New York
: Tudor.
Schomburg, A.A. (March, 1925).The Negro digs up his past.
Thompson, Jr. A.A. (1975). Pre-Columbian [African] presence
in the Western Hemisphere,Negro History Bulletin, 38 (7), 452-456.
Williams, G.W. (1869). History of the Negro Race in America. New York: G.P. Putnam.
Wimby, D. (1980). The Greco-Roman Tradition concerning Ethiopia and Egypt, black books bulletin, 7(1), 14-19, 25.
Winters, C.A. (1977). The influence of the Mande scripts on ancient American writing systems", Bulletin l'de IFAN, T39, serie B, no. 2 (1977), pp.941-967.
Winters, C.A. (1979). Manding Scripts in the New World", Journal of African Civilizations, l(1), 80-97.
Winters,C.A. (December 1981/ January 1982). Mexico's Black Heritage. The Black Collegian, 76-84.
Winters, C.A. (1983a). "The Ancient Manding Script". In Blacks
in Science:Ancient and Modern. (ed.) by Ivan van Sertima, (New Brunswick: Transaction Books) pp.208-215.
__________. (1983b). "Les Fondateurs de la Grece venaient d'Afrique en passant par la Crete". Afrique Histoire (Dakar), no.8:13-18.
_________. (1983c) "Famous Black Greeks Important in the development of Greek Culture". Return to the Source,2(1):8.
________.(1983d). "Blacks in Ancient China, Part 1, The Founders
of Xia and Shang", Journal of Black Studies 1 (2), 8-13.
________. (1984a). "Blacks in Europe before the Europeans".
Return to the Source, 3(1):26-33.
Winters, C.A. (1984b). Blacks in Ancient America, Colorlines, 3(2), 27-28.
Winters, C.A. (1984c). Africans found first American Civilization , African Monitor, l , pp.16-18.
_________.(1985a). "The Indus Valley Writing and related
Scripts of the 3rd Millennium BC". India Past and
Present, 2(1):13-19.
__________. (1985b). "The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians,
Manding and Sumerians". Tamil Civilization,3(1):1-9.
__________. (1985c). "The Far Eastern Origin of the Tamils",
Journal of Tamil Studies , no.27, pp.65-92.
__________.(1986). The Migration Routes of the Proto-Mande.
The Mankind Quarterly,27 (1), 77-96.
_________.(1986b). Dravidian Settlements in Ancient Polynesia.
India Past and Present, 3 (2), 225-241.
__________. (1988). "Common African and Dravidian Place Name
Elements". South Asian Anthropologist, 9(1):33-36.
__________. (1989a). "Tamil, Sumerian, Manding and the Genetic
Model". International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics,18(1):98-127.
__________. (1989b). "Review of Dr. Asko Parpola's 'The Coming of the Aryans'",International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 18(2):98-127.
__________. (1990). "The Dravido-Harappan Colonization of Central Asia". Central Asiatic Journal, 34(1/2):120-144.
___________. (1991). "The Proto-Sahara". The Dravidian Encyclopaedia, (Trivandrum: International School of Dravidian Linguistics) pp.553-556. Volume l.
----------.(1994). Afrocentrism: A valid frame of reference, Journal of Black Studies, 25 (2), 170-190.
_________.(1994b). The Dravidian and African laguages, International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 23 (1), 34-52.
Woodson, C.G. & Wesley, C.H. (1972). The Negro in Our History. Washington, D.C. Associated Publisher.
Here is the fruit of 200 years of Afrocentric research, please present the articles and books that have refuted these paradigms. Instead of these ideas being refuted they have been provided more support through recent research. For example, G. W. Parker was the first Afrocentric scholar to discuss the fact that the original Greeks were Blacks. This work has been supported by linguistic and genetic research that confirm his work.
Also let's not forget that Diop confirmed the African origin of the Egyptians, the first paradigm developed by Afrocentric researchers. The fact that you guys on this form maintain the Egyptians were Black Africans is further confirmation of the Afrocentric social science research paradigms.
Your claim that the Egyptians were Blacks is an Afrocentric idea. This is why people identify you guys as Afrocentric researchers--evethough you are not.
I have already pointed out how it was DuBois who introduced African studies to the Academe and Hansberry who taught the first African history courses at University. This proves the success of the Afrocentric paradigm in the Academe.
How many of the text mentioned herein have you read? If you have not read the research of Afrocentric scholars how can you make the claim they have not impacted on Academia.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: DuBois, Diop J.A. Rogers and etc., were Afrocentric researchers. The research done in most Afro-American studies departments is produced through Afrocentricity—not Afrocentrism.
Asante maintains that Afrocentricity is concerned with Africans making themselves the subjects and agents of their own history. As a result, he believes that consciousness defines one’s ability to conduct Afrocentric research.
Thus he views the major characteristic of an Afrocentric history as interest in psychological location, African subject-place in which the voice of the scholars demonstrate African agency, Thusly he notes that “Afrocentricity is not data but the approach to data….If I can not find something in written text I do not dismiss the idea outright because of “absence of evidence” is not “evidence of absence”.
This view of evidence is not acceptable in Afrocentrism where evidence (anthropological, linguistic and etc.) is used to confirm the ancient history of Black and African people. Researchers like DuBois, Diop, J.A. Rogers, Carter G. Woodson and etc., using Afrocentrism to conduct their research recognize the fact that when Africans settled in other parts of the world they may have changed elements of the parent culture to accommodate their new areas of settlement. Thus the Mande in Africa recognized the leopard as the master of the bush. In MesoAmerica, there were no leopards , so they replaced this feline with the jaguar. As a result, if Diop would not have found evidence to support a link between Egypt and Black Africa he could not have confirmed his theory that Egypt was an African civilization.
The failure to recognize that research methods in historiography, anthropology and linguistic are neutral, and that it is doxa that determines how the researcher interprets evidence has stagnated research among many researchers who use the same outdated sources to describe Black civilizations even though new research has been conducted that support the research of J.A. Rogers, Diop and DuBois. A cursory reading of the work of these scholars will show that they used the lastest reseach of their day in their historical narrative.
It must be remembered that Afrocentrism is based on evidence and using traditional social science research methods. Due to the anti-Black/African character of the Academe, Afrocentrism has never been taught in Western based Universities in the United States and much of the rest of the world. As a result, the major Afrocentric researchers conducted their research outside the Academe.
You asked what has it produced. The answer is it has confirmed the founding of civilization by Black and African people in EurAsia, Africa and the Americas.
There are four philosophical schools associated with the afrocentric study of ancient history: perennialist, essentialist, existentialist, and progressivist. The taxonomic system we use to classify the various afrocentric philosophical positions and related values affecting afrocentrism are modeled on philo-sophical developments associated with education.
We can use taxonomies of educational philosophies to discuss any proposed afrocentric curriculum because both education and philosophy are "cultural experiences". Moreover, because afrocentrism seeks to explain and delineate the story of African people, it clearly is a field of study which encompasses all aspects of the culture of Black and African people (Asante, 1990, 1991; Winters, 1994).
The perennialist afrocentrists study the great works. The adherents of this school include Martin Delaney (1978), Cornish and Russwurm (1827), Frederick Douglas (1966), and Edward Blyden (1869). These Afrocentrists see knowledge as truth, which is eternal.
The essentialist afrocentric school emphasize in their writing data that is well established through scientific research. Afrocentrists of this philosophical school include W. E. B. DuBois (1965, 1970), John Jackson (1974), C.A. Winters (1985, 1989, 1991, 1994) and Leo Hansberry (1981). They believe that as new research is published, it should be analyzed to discover how it relates to the ancient history of African and Black people to enrich our understanding of the past.
The existentialist afrocentrists believe that africalogical studies should thrive to teach African people to know more about themselves so we can have a better world. The afrocentric existentialists include J.A. Rogers, Anta Diop (1974, 1991), G.M. James (1954), Marcus Garvey (1966) and A.A. Schomburg (1979).
The final afrocentric philosophical school is the progressivist. The afrocentric school of progressivism believes that we should have knowledge of the process and futuristic focus on afrocentric studies. The major exponent of this frame of reference is Molefi K. Asante (1991).
In regards to the afrocentric view that the Egyptians were Black Africans we must look to the afrocentric perennialists. The perennialists founded the afrocentric ancient history curriculum. The perennialist school is associated with Frederick Douglas (1966) and Martin Delaney (1978). These Afrocentrists writing in the 19th century placed the great works of the past center stage in the formulation of their afrocentric ancient history knowledge base.
The perennialists postulated that you should use the Bible and the writings of the classical scholars who recognized the "Ancient Model" of history (i.e., Blacks played a major role in ancient history) in deciding on what to teach people about the ancient history of African Americans. The Old Testament provides annals of the ancient Empires of Africa and Mesopotamia.
In the Old Testament the Blacks are recognized as the sons of Ham. According to the Old Testament narrative found in the Book of Genesis (10:6), the children of Ham, are alleged to be the founders of all the ancient civilizations including Kush (the Ta Seti, and C-Group cultures of Nubia and the Sudan; the Sumerians of Mesopotamia and the Elamites of Iran), Mizraim (the founder of the Egyptians), Phut (the civilizations of ancient Ethiopia/ South Arabia), and Canaan (the early Canaanites and Hatians of ancient Palestine). The Old Testament narrative and the classical literature was important to the perennialists because it already recognized the division of Black people of Africa into two groups: the Semitic (Canaan and Phut) speakers and Black African (Egypt, Sumer and Elam) speakers (Winters 1985, 1989, 1991).
Africalogical Paradigms of ancient history
As a result of the "Ancient Model" scientific efforts of africalogical ancient history researchers of the diverse philosophical schools discussed above is organized around two theoretical or empirical generalizations\paradigms. An empirical generalization is 'an isolated proposition summarizing observed uniformities of relationships between two or more variables" (Merton, 1957, 95), a "scientific law" is "a statement of invariance derivable from a theory" (Merton, 1957, 96).
The two paradigms associated with ASAH developed by the perennialist afrocentric scholars are:
(1) Black\African people are the children of Ham;
(2) Blacks founded the first civilizations in Asia
(Sumer, Babylon and Elam), Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia
and Libya\ North Africa) and Europe (Greece and
Crete).
The normal scientific research in africalogical ancient historical studies is directed toward the articulation of those phenomena and theories supplied by the ASAH to deduce new paradigms.
Due to the foundation of africalogical ancient research by the afrocentric perennialists, ASAH research is paradigm based. As a result, africalogical ancient historical fact-gathering, that is the historical, linguistic and anthropological data through which afrocentric scientists inform their colleagues ( and the public at large) is based on these paradigms.
The theoretical paradigms of the ASAH provide africalogical researchers with the criterion for choosing the problems and solutions to social science phenomena including:
(1) the design of research phenomena;
(2) the maps or areas of research; and
(3) the interpretation of research results.
The paradigms for ASAH predicted four hypothesis that were unknown at the time the "Ancient Model" of history was developed, to guide the development of scientific knowledge for the africalogical study of early history. These propositions based on the "Ancient Model" are:
(1) If Blacks founded civilization in Asia and Africa
, they may have influenced civilization in the Americas.
(2) If Blacks founded civilization in West Asia, Africa and
Europe, archaeological data will support their earlier
presence in these regions of the world.
(3) If Blacks founded the first civilizations, they also
invented writing and other elements of social and
scientific technology.
(4) If Blacks founded civilization they probably founded
civilization throughout Asia and Europe.
Given the two empirical paradigms and four predicted hypothesis related to the "Ancient Model", africalogical ancient history research should increase the precision of the application of afrocentric research methods and scope of research in this area so as to answer three questions in the mature afrocentric social science. Research in the afrocentric social sciences seeks to answer three classes of questions based on the ASAH paradigms:
(1) the determination of significant ASAH facts;
(2) the match of ASAH facts with theory; and
(3) the articulation of ASAH theory.
The normative function of the ASAH paradigms provides the afrocentric ancient history researchers with shared paradigms, or points of view that help define how s/he will research ancient history. These paradigms insure that africalogical researchers use the "Ancient Model" of research, as opposed to the "Aryan Model" of research to illuminate the early history of Black/African people.
The Africalogical ancient history paradigms developed by Delany (1978), Douglas (1966), Edward Blyden (1869) and Cornish and Russwurm (1827) form the theoretical base for ASAH research. In normal afrocentric social science research new paradigms have to 1) be related to the older theories; and 2) they must be compatible with already established rules for research modeled by the afrocentric perennialists.
.
REFERENCES
Anselin, A. (1982). Le mythe d' Europe. Paris: Editions Anthropos.
Bernal, M. (1996, Spring). The Afrocentric interpretation of history: Bernal replies to Lefkowitz. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 86-95.
Bernal,M. (1987). Black Athena. New York: Free Association Press. Volume 1.
________. (1991). Black Athena. New York: Free Association Press. Volume 2.
Blyden, E.W. ( January, 1869). The Negro in ancient history.
Methodist Quarterly Review, 71-93.
Blyden, E.W. (1887). Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
_____________. (1890). The African Problem and the method for
its solution. Washington, D.C.: Gibson Brothers.
_______________.(1905). West Africa before Europe. London:
C.M. Phillips.
Clegg, L.H. (1975). Who were the first Americans? The Black
Scholar, 7(1), 32-41.
Coleman, B.E. (1971). A history of Swahili, The Black Scholar,
2 (6), 13-25.
Cornish, S. & Russwurm, J.B. (1827). European colonies in America, Freedom Journal, 1.
Carruthers, J. (1977). Writing for Eternity, black book bulletin,
5 (2), 32-35.
Carruthers, J. (1980). Reflections on the history of afrocentric
worldview, black book bulletin, 7(1), 4-13, 25.
Delany, M.R. (1978). The origin of races and color. Baltimore, M.D.: Black Classic Press.
Diop,C.A. (1974). The African Origin of Civilization. (ed. & Trans) by Mercer Cook, Westport:Lawrence Hill & Company.
_________.(1977). Parente genetique de l'Egyptien Pharaonique et
des Languaes Negro-Africaines. Dakar: IFAN ,Les Nouvelles
Editions Africaines.
__________.(1978) The Cultural Unity of Black Africa. Chicago: Third World Press.
__________. (1981). A Methodology for the study of migration.
UNESCO (Ed.), African Ethnonyms and Toponyms, (pp.87-110).
Paris: UNESCO.
___________.(1986). "Formation of the Berber Branch". In Libya
Antiqua. (ed.) by Unesco,(Paris: UNESCO) pp.69-73.
____________.(1987). Precolonial Black Africa. (trans. ) by
Harold Salemson, Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company.
____________.(1988). Nouvelles recherches sur l'Egyptien ancient
et les langues Negro-Africaines Modernes. Paris: Presence
Africaine.
_____________(1991). Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. (trans.) by Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi and (ed.) by
H.J. Salemson and Marjoliiw de Jager, Westport:Lawrence
Hill and Company.
Douglas, F. (1966). The claims of the Negro ethnologically considered. In H. Brotz (Ed.), Negro social and political
thought (pp. 226-244). New York: Basic Books, Inc., Pub.
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Here is the fruit of 200 years of Afrocentric research, please present the articles and books that have refuted these paradigms. Instead of these ideas being refuted they have been provided more support through recent research. For example, G. W. Parker was the first Afrocentric scholar to discuss the fact that the original Greeks were Blacks. This work has been supported by linguistic and genetic research that confirm his work.
Also let's not forget that Diop confirmed the African origin of the Egyptians, the first paradigm developed by Afrocentric researchers. The fact that you guys on this form maintain the Egyptians were Black Africans is further confirmation of the Afrocentric social science research paradigms.
Your claim that the Egyptians were Blacks is an Afrocentric idea. This is why people identify you guys as Afrocentric researchers--evethough you are not.
I have already pointed out how it was DuBois who introduced African studies to the Academe and Hansberry who taught the first African history courses at University. This proves the success of the Afrocentric paradigm in the Academe.
How many of the text mentioned herein have you read? If you have not read the research of Afrocentric scholars how can you make the claim they have not impacted on Academia.
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The problem with you Mr. Winters is that you lump everything together that should NOT be lumped together. Afrocentrism is not Pan Africanism and especially not REVOLUTIONARY Pan Africanism. Just like everything else, you mix elements of fact with elements of fantasy in order to promote something that has no historical validity to the current struggle. Yes, Africans built some of the earliest civilizations on the planet, but today Africans are NOT associated with ANY SORT of civilization? WHY? Yes, black people in South Asia built some of the earliest civilizations in Asia as well, but NOT ALL ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS WERE BLACK. And again black Asians have been pushed to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in Asia in many ways. WHY? Yes, there were INDIGENOUS dark skinned blacks throughout the Pacific and Australia from some of the EARLIEST migrations of humans around the world. In many places these aboriginal people no longer exist or are on the bottom of the socio economic ladder. WHY? Yes, in the Americas there were indigenous DARK SKINNED individuals among those who built the earliest civilizations there. There may have been some contact with Africans during this time, but MANY of these people WERE NOT BLACK. And today, the indigenous people of the Americas have been relegated to the BOTTOM of the socio economic ladder. WHY? Pan Africanism and Revolutionary African Nationalism were designed to address what has HAPPENED to black people ALL OVER THE WORLD in a struggle for human rights, economic, social and political freedom and independence. But there have been MANY such movements over the last 200 years and lumping them all together when all of them had DIFFERENT agendas and goals is NOT HISTORICAL FACT, it is HISTORICAL FICTION, as much as attributing EVERYTHING historically in world development to blacks, which is NOT CORRECT EITHER.
Diop, Garvey, Woodson and Dubois were AFRICANISTS and PAN AFRICANISTS. There was no Afrocentrism or Afrocentricity back then. Afrocentrism is the CHILD of African Nationalism and Pan Africanism. Actually there was a movement called Negritude then, however, which is another name that came along. Africanists and Pan Africanists are not necessarilty Afrocentrics. Afrocentrism is mainly an academic paradigm TOUTED by African American members of Universities within the last 25 years who want to promote a methodology for teaching African/African American Studies. But Afrocentrism is a RECENT development and is NOT the SPARK that caused the flame of African struggles for independence. You are giving credit to Afrocentrism for something IT DID NOT DO. I give credit to those thinkers who helped define the struggle, even those who had their flaws, but they were NOT inspired by Afrocentrism nor were they following a Afrocentric paradigm. The concept of Afrocentrism did not exist, but what did exist was Afrianist thought and Pan African ideology. You need to stop trying to posthumously turn every African thinker from the last 200 years into Afrocentric and CLAIM them as Afrocentric champions, when they WERE NOT AFROCENTRIC. Any Afrocentric CHAMPIONS would be those scholars and educators who have had a MAJOR IMPACT on the eductional, political, social and economic status of Africans in the diaspora for the last 30 years. WHERE ARE THEY and are YOU one of those "champions".
Yet even these programs seem to contradict themselves as MOST of them focus on the history of Africans in America and not hardly on a GLOBAL understanding of Africans in the diaspora. It does not empower anyone with the skills they need to control the archaeological artifacts and historical images of Africans or black people world wide. The focus should be producing NEW CHAMPIONS in the struggle for African economic, political and social independence, not claiming LONG DEAD champions who blazed the trail and not making the struggle for the truth about the history of African people into some crackpot looney toon sideshow only good for laughter and not taken seriosly.
From Temple Universities African American studies Course Listing:
quote: 1252. Afrocentricity (3 s.h.) F S.
(Formerly: AF-AM S 0050.)
An introduction to the theories and methods of Afrocentricity. Discussion of cultural, scientific, historical, and psychological consciousness. Critique of African world-voice by examining Pan Africanism, Negritude, and African Nationalism.
Afrocentricity is not Pan Africanism or African Nationalism.
One thing I will say is that these movements historically have come from African American University Scholars and Academics. Because of the historical importance of African American thinkers on the struggle for African economic, political and social liberation Afrocentricity/Afrocentrism needs to step up its game to promote the NEXT LEVEL of African development and consciousness and not water itself down with Black Cleopatras, Black Vikings and other such nonsense. If the last 100 years of struggle towards African independence are to be lumped together with something that has as its biggest claim to fame the promotion of a black Egypt, then something is completely and totally wrong. This is all about the struggle for African independence and development world wide, not just black civilizations in antiquity.
quote: I Introduction Print this section
Pan-Africanism, philosophy that is based on the belief that African people share common bonds and objectives and that advocates unity to achieve these objectives. In the views of different proponents throughout its history, Pan-Africanism has been conceived in varying ways. It has been applied to all black African people and people of black African descent; to all people on the African continent, including nonblack people; or to all states on the African continent.
The formal concept of Pan-Africanism initially developed outside of Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It developed as a reaction to the impact of European colonialism in Africa on peoples of African descent. In the mid-20th century, activists in Africa adopted Pan-Africanism as a rallying cry for independence from colonial rule. Some African Pan-Africanists sought to unite the continent as one independent nation. From these origins and objectives, Pan-Africanism developed in two basic forms. In one form, known as Continental Pan-Africanism, it advocates the unity of states and peoples within Africa, either through political union or through international cooperation. In its other, broader form, known as Diaspora Pan-Africanism, it relates to solidarity among all black Africans and peoples of black African descent outside the African continent. Developed and interpreted by thinkers, authors, and activists around the world, Pan-Africanism remains a significant force in global politics and thought. II Background Print this section
European contact with sub-Saharan Africa began in the mid-15th century, when the Portuguese established a thriving trade on Africa’s western coast. By the end of the century, in addition to buying items such as pepper, gold, and ivory, the Portuguese were buying increasing numbers of African slaves. The Portuguese were followed by slave traders and colonists from Britain and, later, France. In the 16th century the expansion of agricultural plantation economies in new European colonies in North and South America and the Caribbean made African slavery exceedingly profitable. European demand for African slaves increased, and more and more Africans were enslaved by West and Central African slave traders and taken from Africa. See Atlantic Slave Trade.
Early European trade in Africa was accompanied from its very beginning by European attempts to seize territory from African states in order to secure control of the sources of the goods they were purchasing. After conquering territory, European colonialists set out to control the African population for use as inexpensive labor in plantations, mines, and other flourishing businesses established in the African colonies. In this way, the first contacts of European traders with Africa marked the beginning of European domination of African peoples.
Colonialism systematically degraded Africans, both slaves and residents of Europe’s African colonies. Slaves labored under cruel and dehumanizing conditions for no pay or extremely low wages. Furthermore, these slaves were scattered in far-flung European colonies, separated from their African homes and relatives. From the mid-15th century to the late 19th century, an estimated 6 percent of Africans in the slave trade were taken to the British territory that became the United States; 17 percent were sent to Spanish territory in North and South America; 40 percent to European-held islands in the Caribbean Sea; and 38 percent to Portuguese territory in South America. This dispersion of African peoples is known as the African Diaspora. The term Diaspora also refers to these dispersed peoples’ descendents, who largely compose the present-day population of people of African descent outside of Africa.
Africans in the African colonies were indoctrinated with the notion of the inherent supremacy of European culture through everyday interaction with Europeans and through the few colonial schools Europeans established. The political systems of the indigenous African peoples were transformed, as traditional African rulers were usually forced to act as pawns of the colonial administration. Colonialism also had a major economic impact on Africans, as agricultural commodities, minerals, and people were usually exported from the African colonies to Europe and the New World rather than being used for the direct benefit of Africans. Roads, bridges, ports, and other facilities were built only to facilitate this export trade.
Slavery and the colonial system were hated by Africans and were institutions that the Pan-African movement arose to combat. Pan-Africanism also developed to overcome the obstacles facing the African Diaspora—a scattered, diverse, and often disadvantaged population of people of African descent. Pan-African thinkers would maintain that, although they were dispersed throughout the world, African people and people of African descent were a unified people and should try to work together for the good of all. III Development of Pan-Africanism Print this section
Africans resisted European domination from their earliest contacts with Europeans. The record of this resistance is present in the early communications between the rulers of African states and the monarchs of Europe in the 17th century, as well as in the routine physical resistance of Africans to slavery from the beginning of the slave trade. Modern resistance to colonialism, however, began with the development of a formal Pan-African movement at the dawn of the 20th century. In 1900 Henry Sylvester Williams, a lawyer from the Caribbean island of Trinidad, organized a Pan-African conference in London to give black people the opportunity to discuss issues facing blacks around the world. The conference attracted a small but significant representation of Africans and people of African descent from the Caribbean and the United States, as well as whites from Britain.
The original political objective of the meeting was to protest the unequal treatment of blacks in the British colonies as well as in Britain. However, the speakers also used the forum to make statements about the needs to uphold the dignity of African peoples worldwide and to provide them with education and other social services. In addition, speakers at the conference celebrated aspects of traditional African culture and pointed out great historical achievements of African peoples in the tradition of influential Pan-African pioneer Edward Wilmot Blyden. Blyden, a Caribbean-born Liberian educator, wrote extensively in the late 19th century about the positive accomplishments of Africans and may have coined the term Pan-Africanism.
The next several Pan-African meetings were organized by distinguished African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The consequences of World War I (1914-1918) raised serious concerns among blacks in the United States. The main issues were the well-being of African American and African soldiers who had served in the war and the status of former German colonial territories in Africa that had been captured during the war by Britain, France, and other Allied powers. Du Bois convened the first Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919. The congress was held at the same time as the Paris Peace Conference, at which European powers negotiated the aftermath of the war.
The agenda of the first Pan-African Congress resembled that of the 1900 conference in its concern for the plight of Africans and people of African descent. Significant emphasis was placed on the provision of education for Africans and the need for greater African participation in the affairs of the colonies. Specific interest in the African territories of the conquered German colonial empire was also expressed. A proposal was made that these territories be held in trust by the newly founded League of Nations with the goal of granting the territories self-determination as soon as possible. Nevertheless, the territories were placed under the nominal supervision of the league, which distributed the territories to other European colonial powers without demanding that the new colonial rulers move the territories toward self-determination.
The next Pan-African congresses sponsored by Du Bois were held in 1921 (in London, Paris, and Brussels, Belgium), 1923 (in London and Lisbon, Portugal), and 1927 (in New York City). These congresses were attended by increasing numbers of representatives from the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Several important factors affected the growing popularity of the congresses. First, many delegates were sponsored by international labor movements, which were growing in size and power in the 1920s. A second factor was the growth of the black nationalist movement of Marcus Garvey. The Garvey movement was important in the United States as a popular expression of the sentiments of African unity and redemption among working-class blacks. His followers contrasted with the more elite black groups cultivated by Du Bois. Garvey, a Jamaican, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 to promote black pride, political and economic improvements for blacks everywhere, and the repatriation of blacks to Africa (often called the “Back to Africa” movement).
The institutional growth of the Garvey movement was swift and international in scope. Garvey’s newspaper, the Negro World, achieved wide distribution, and chapters of UNIA sprung up all over the Americas, as well as in Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Garvey also established a steamship company, the Black Star Line, with which he hoped both to enter international trade and to transport blacks to Africa. Garvey hoped to oversee the repatriation of tens of thousands of American blacks to the West African nation of Liberia, which had been founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century. The Garvey movement declined when Garvey was arrested and imprisoned in 1925 on charges of mail fraud relating to the operation of the Black Star Line, and his repatriation scheme was never fulfilled.
Influenced by Garvey’s ideas, young Africans studying in London founded the West African Student Union (WASU) in the late 1920s. WASU became a focal point for younger, more politically aggressive blacks from Africa and the Caribbean who agitated for African independence from colonialism.
In the late 1920s and the 1930s, public awareness of the plight of peoples of African descent grew as black cultural movements such as the Harlem Renaissance in the United States gained recognition. The Harlem Renaissance, centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, disseminated the works of black writers such as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Du Bois himself, along with other black artists espousing black pride and challenging racial injustice. In France, a similar movement, called the négritude movement, followed the Harlem Renaissance. The movement developed in Paris among French-speaking African intellectuals and activists whose works affirmed the integrity of African civilization, defending it against charges of African inferiority. Noted proponents of négritude included the authors Léopold Sédar Senghor (who later became the first president of Senegal), Aimé Césaire, Alioune Diop, and Léon-Gontran Damas. IV African Independence Print this section
In the 1930s and 1940s, global forces such as the Great Depression (the worldwide economic slump of the 1930s) and the development and onset of World War II significantly hampered the efforts of the Pan-African movement. Nevertheless, concern for Africa among people of African descent remained strong in the United States and Britain. American and British Pan-African groups mounted substantial protests when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. In 1937 African American groups formed the Council on African Affairs, the first American lobby organization led by blacks. The council worked to raise awareness in the United States about the plight of Africans living under colonialism and advocated the liberation of African colonies. It was headed by the internationally renowned black singer and film star Paul Robeson and included such important black scholars and activists as W. E. B. Du Bois, educator Alphaeus Hunton, future congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. The council also attracted African American artists such as singer and actor Lena Horne, who helped raise funds for projects.
In the early 1940s Kwame Nkrumah, a native of the British-ruled Gold Coast (now Ghana) in West Africa, founded the African Student Organization in the United States. At the time, Nkrumah was a student in the United States. In 1944 Nkrumah left America for London, where he joined an important group of Pan-Africanists led by Jamaican activist George Padmore and Trinidadian author C. L. R. James. Also in the group were Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, who, like Nkrumah, would eventually become leaders of their countries. In 1945 this group sponsored the fifth Pan-African Congress, which brought together numerous African nationalists and trade unionists. The meeting, held in Manchester, England, gave great impetus to the movement for African independence and fostered African leadership of the Pan-African movement.
In 1957 Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African state to gain independence, and Nkrumah became its first prime minister. Nkrumah held the Pan-Africanist view that the independence of Ghana would be incomplete without the independence of all of Africa. To work toward this goal, he appointed Padmore to establish a Pan-African Secretariat within the Ghanaian government. The secretariat pursued the twin goals of total African independence and continental political union in two series of international conferences, held between 1958 and 1961: First, the All-African Peoples’ Conferences were held to stimulate independence movements in other African colonies. Second, Nkrumah organized the Conferences of Independent African States to establish a diplomatic framework for the political union of Africa. By inviting representatives from independent North African states to the conferences and by holding the 1961 All-African Peoples’ Conference in Cairo, Egypt, Nkrumah’s intent was clearly to unite the entire African continent.
In 1960 Nkrumah invited W. E. B. Du Bois to live in Ghana to act as an adviser and to initiate a project that Du Bois had proposed, the Encyclopedia Africana, a comprehensive encyclopedia of the culture and history of African peoples. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963 with this project incomplete. However, the publication of several books during this period made Continental Pan-African philosophy more widely known. Notable among these books were Padmore’s Pan-Africanism or Communism? (1956) and Nkrumah’s Africa Must Unite (1963).
In 1960, 17 African countries gained independence. By the end of 1963, approximately 80 percent of the African continent was independent. Nkrumah’s goal of establishing a United States of Africa with a centralized power structure was opposed by the leaders of many of the new African countries, who resisted giving up their nations’ newfound autonomy. In May 1963 representatives from 32 African nations of both North and sub-Saharan Africa met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and founded the Organization of African Unity (OAU, now African Union) as a loose federation of independent African states committed to continent-wide cooperation. The unfinished African independence movement, political differences among the independent nations, and the poverty of the African continent kept political union from becoming a reality.
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Your problem is that you have never looked at the science of Afrocentrism. You continue to publish these responses from the media without verfying the research of Afrocentrism. Like most laymen, you write what others have said without researching the phenomena yourself..
I asked you one simple question:"How many of the books written by Afrocentric scholars have you read? Again, if you have not read the material how can you claim these researchers are wrong.
In addition, I am still waiting for you to publish the articles and books that have falsified the paradigms that form the foundation of Afrocentric social science. Please list this material.
As I said before the thesis that the Egyptians were Black is one of the first Afrocentric paradigms. If you claim the Egyptians were Black Africans, you are also maintaining an Afrocentric theme.
I can not claim you are an Afrocentric scholar though, because you have not done any original research to confirm or disconfirm the theory.
Just because a term has been recently coined to describe a phenomena, like Afrocentrism, does not mean that researchers who practice this phenomena before the term was created did not use the science. The Egyptians wrote many documents that chronicle the events and experiences that took place in ancient Egypt. They did not use the term "History", to describe these writings but we interpret the material as history.
Scholars who practiced Afrocentrism can be identified as Afrocentric scholars, as illustrated by their use of Afrocentric research methods, and support of the Afrocentric research paradigms. For example, let's not forget that Diop accepted the idea that the Sumerians were Blacks and that the Dravidians were of African origin. It was Th. Obenga who explained the relationship between Dravidian and African languages.
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-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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Clyde, Dubois, Garvey, Diop and other famous thinkers of the 1900s were not AFROCENTRIC. Period. They were AFRICAN CENTERED, but being AFRICAN CENTERED does not make you AFROCENTRIC. There is no debate on this. You are making up nonsense.
Studying Egypt from an African perspective does NOT make one an Afrocentric. Is Martin Bernal an Afrocentric?
Afrocentrism is a RECENT ACADEMIC MOVEMENT and therefore, should be JUDGED BY ITS OWN CURRENT AUTHORS and ITS OWN CURRENT IMPACT ON THE EDUCATION and HISTORY of AFRICAN PEOPLE. Just as Garvey, Dubios, Booker T. Washington are judged on the impact they had IN THEIR TIMES, Afrocentrism should be judged on its CURRENT impact. Afrocentrism, Pan Africanism, African Nationalism and Negritude are NOT JUST WORDS. ALL of them have SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT AGENDAS and ALL SUCH MOVEMENTS DIFFERED in APPROACH as well as IDEOLOGY. You are NOT MAKING SENSE trying to lump them all together as ONE MOVEMENT and ONE IDEOLOGY because they WERE NOT. Just like Martin Luther King and Malcom X had DIFFERENT ideologies even though they ULTIMATELY wanted the SAME THING. Afrocentrism HAS ITS OWN agenda an there are MANY WAYS that Afrocentrism DIFFERS from PAN AFRICANIST and AFRICAN NATIONALIST IDEOLOGIES. AFRICAN LIBERATION does not START with studying ancient Egypt. It STARTS with ACKNOWLEDGING YOU ARE BEING OPPRESSED and that the ONLY way you can succeed is by RIDDING YOURSELF of that OPPRESSION. Studying ancient Egypt has its place, but LIBERATION MOVEMENTS are not built around STUDYING ANCIENT EGYPT.
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Thus he views the major characteristic of an Afrocentric history as interest in psychological location, African subject-place in which the voice of the scholars demonstrate African agency, Thusly he notes that “Afrocentricity is not data but the approach to data….If I can not find something in written text I do not dismiss the idea outright because of “absence of evidence” is not “evidence of absence”.
This view of evidence is not acceptable in Afrocentrism where evidence (anthropological, linguistic and etc.) is used to confirm the ancient history of Black and African people. Researchers like DuBois, Diop, J.A. Rogers, Carter G. Woodson and etc., using Afrocentrism to conduct their research recognize the fact that when Africans settled in other parts of the world they may have changed elements of the parent culture to accommodate their new areas of settlement. Thus the Mande in Africa recognized the leopard as the master of the bush. In MesoAmerica, there were no leopards , so they replaced this feline with the jaguar. As a result, if Diop would not have found evidence to support a link between Egypt and Black Africa he could not have confirmed his theory that Egypt was an African civilization.
Afrocentrism is not a new area of research it is 200 years old. The term is new, but the method is old and consist of falsification research methods.
Your comments betry your ignorance of Afrocentrism.You show a lack of critical assessment of the research. You deride a field of study based on the commentary of others. This is not science and makes your comments on Afrocentrism empty--and barren of truth and reality.
Afrocentrism has nothing to do with Pan-Africanism.Pan-Africanism is a political concept.
It has nothing to do with Nationalism. If you read the work of John Jackson, J.A. Rogers, Diop, DuBois and etc., you find that their work is purely academic, they are not pushing a nationalist agenda, they are only explaining and elaborating the history of Black and African people.
Afrocentrism is a field of social science. As a result, DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, J.A.Rogers are all Afrocentric scholars due to their method of research as dicussed above.
Doug
quote:
Studying Egypt from an African perspective does NOT make one an Afrocentric. Is Martin Bernal an Afrocentric?
I can see you have not read Bernal. If you read Bernal you would know that he is an advocate of the Hyskos being Jews. He is Jewish, so he is probably promoting the members of his faith.
As a result, I would never claim Bernal is an Afrocentric scholar, he is Semiticentric.
To be an Afrocentric scholar you must acknowledge that the Egyptians were Blacks of African descent.
Thus he views the major characteristic of an Afrocentric history as interest in psychological location, African subject-place in which the voice of the scholars demonstrate African agency, Thusly he notes that “Afrocentricity is not data but the approach to data….If I can not find something in written text I do not dismiss the idea outright because of “absence of evidence” is not “evidence of absence”.
This view of evidence is not acceptable in Afrocentrism where evidence (anthropological, linguistic and etc.) is used to confirm the ancient history of Black and African people. Researchers like DuBois, Diop, J.A. Rogers, Carter G. Woodson and etc., using Afrocentrism to conduct their research recognize the fact that when Africans settled in other parts of the world they may have changed elements of the parent culture to accommodate their new areas of settlement. Thus the Mande in Africa recognized the leopard as the master of the bush. In MesoAmerica, there were no leopards , so they replaced this feline with the jaguar. As a result, if Diop would not have found evidence to support a link between Egypt and Black Africa he could not have confirmed his theory that Egypt was an African civilization.
Afrocentrism is not a new area of research it is 200 years old. The term is new, but the method is old and consist of falsification research methods.
Your comments betry your ignorance of Afrocentrism.You show a lack of critical assessment of the research. You deride a field of study based on the commentary of others. This is not science and makes your comments on Afrocentrism empty--and barren of truth and reality.
Afrocentrism has nothing to do with Pan-Africanism.Pan-Africanism is a political concept.
It has nothing to do with Nationalism. If you read the work of John Jackson, J.A. Rogers, Diop, DuBois and etc., you find that their work is purely academic, they are not pushing a nationalist agenda, they are only explaining and elaborating the history of Black and African people.
Afrocentrism is a field of social science. As a result, DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, J.A.Rogers are all Afrocentric scholars due to their method of research as dicussed above.
Doug
quote:
Studying Egypt from an African perspective does NOT make one an Afrocentric. Is Martin Bernal an Afrocentric?
I can see you have not read Bernal. If you read Bernal you would know that he is an advocate of the Hyskos being Jews. He is Jewish, so he is probably promoting the members of his faith.
As a result, I would never claim Bernal is an Afrocentric scholar, he is Semiticentric.
To be an Afrocentric scholar you must acknowledge that the Egyptians were Blacks of African descent.
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Studying history from a FACTUAL basis and putting Africa into proper perspective does not make one AFROCENTRIC. And the PROOF of this is the fact that BERNAL and his book "BLACK ATHENA" is the POSTER CHILD for Afrocentrism. If anyone is associated with Afrocentrism it is Bernal. So, THAT ITSELF contradicts the idea that studying Egypt from an AFRICAN perspective makes one Afrocentric, by YOUR OWN ADMISSION. And the Hyksos were foreign to Egypt so it does not matter if he thinks they were Jewish or not.
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