Some people believe that Afrocentrism was founded by Jews. Although this is the view of many, Afrocentrism, as a mature social science that was founded by Afro-Americans almost 200 years ago.
These men and women provided scholarship based on contemporary archaeological and historical research the African/Black origination of civilization throughout the world. These Afro-American scholars, mostly trained at Harvard University (one of the few Universities that admitted Blacks in the 19th Century) provide the scientific basis for Afrocantrism and the global role played by African people in civilizing the world.
Afrocentrism and the africalogical study of ancient Black civilizations was began by Afro-Americans.
Edward Blyden
The foundation of any mature science is its articulation in an authoritive text (Kuhn, 1996, 136). The africalogical textbooks published by Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) provided the vocabulary themes for further afrocentric social science research.
The pedagogy for ancient africalogical research was well established by the end of the 19th century by African American researchers well versed in the classical languages and knowledge of Greek and Latin. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) in the Freedom Journal, were the first African Americans to discuss and explain the "Ancient Model" of history.
These afrocentric social scientists used the classics to prove that the Blacks founded civilization in Egypt, Ethiopia, Babylon and Ninevah. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) made it clear that archaeological research supported the classical, or "Ancient Model" of history.
Edward Blyden (1869) also used classical sources to discuss the ancient history of African people. In his work he not only discussed the evidence for Blacks in West Asia and Egypt, he also discussed the role of Blacks in ancient America (Blyden, 1869, 78).
By 1883, africalogical researchers began to publish book on African American history. G.W. Williams (1883) wrote the first textbook on African American history. In the History of the Negro Race in America, Dr. Williams provided the schema for all future africalogical history text.
Dr. Williams (1883) confirmed the classical traditions for Blacks founding civilization in both Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia) and West Asia. In addition, to confirming the "Ancient Model" of history, Dr. Williams (1883) also mentioned the presence of Blacks in Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula. Dr. Williams was trained at Howard.
A decade later R.L. Perry (1893) also presented evidence to confirm the classical traditions of Blacks founding Egypt, Greece and the Mesopotamian civilization. He also provided empirical evidence for the role of Blacks in Phoenicia, thus increasing the scope of the ASAH paradigms.
Pauline E. Hopkins (1905) added further articulation of the ASAH paradigms of the application of these paradigms in understanding the role of Blacks in West Asia and Africa. Hopkins (1905) provided further confirmation of the role of Blacks in Southeast Asia, and expanded the scope of africalogical research to China (1905).
This review of the 19th century africalogical social scientific research indicate confirmation of the "Ancient Model" for the early history of Blacks. We also see a movement away from self-published africalogical research, and publication of research, and the publication of research articles on afrocentric themes, to the publication of textbooks.
It was in these books that the paradigms associated with the "Ancient Model" and ASAH were confirmed, and given reliability by empirical research. It was these texts which provided the pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of the africalogical normal social science.
The afrocentric textbooks of Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) proved the reliability and validity of the ASAH paradigms. The discussion in these text of contemporary scientific research findings proving the existence of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Nubia-Sudan (Kush), Mesopotamia, Palestine and North Africa lent congruency to the classical literature which pointed to the existence of these civilizations and these African origins ( i.e., the children of Ham= Khem =Kush?).
The authors of the africalogical textbooks reported the latest archaeological and anthropological findings. The archaeological findings reported in these textbooks added precision to their analysis of the classical and Old Testament literature. This along with the discovery of artifacts on the ancient sites depicting Black\African people proved that the classical and Old Testament literature, as opposed to the "Aryan Model", objectively identified the Black\African role in ancient history. And finally, these textbooks confirmed that any examination of references in the classical literature to Blacks in Egypt, Kush, Mesopotamia and Greece\Crete exhibited constancy to the evidence recovered from archaeological excavations in the Middle East and the Aegean. They in turn disconfirmed the "Aryan Model", which proved to be a falsification of the authentic history of Blacks in early times.
The creation of africalogical textbooks provided us with a number of facts revealing the nature of the afrocentric ancient history paradigms. They include a discussion of:
1) the artifacts depicting Blacks found at ancient sites
recovered through archaeological excavation;
2) the confirmation of the validity of the classical and Old
Testament references to Blacks as founders of civilization in Africa and Asia;
3) the presence of isolated pockets of Blacks existing outside Africa; and
4) that the contemporary Arab people in modern Egypt are not the descendants of the ancient Egyptians.
The early africalogical textbooks also outlined the africalogical themes research should endeavor to study. A result, of the data collected by the africalogical ancient history research pioneers led to the development of three facts by the end of the 19th century, which needed to be solved by the afrocentric paradigms: (1) What is the exact relationship of ancient Egypt, to Blacks in other parts of Africa;
(2) How and when did Blacks settle America, Asia and Europe;
(3) What are the contributions of the Blacks to the rise, and cultural expression ancient Black\African civilizations;
(4) Did Africans settle parts of America in ancient times.
As you can see the structure of Afrocentrism were made long before Boas and the beginning of the 20th Century.In fact , I would not be surprised if Boas learned what he talked about from the early Afrocentric researchers discussed in this post.
As you can see Afro-Americans have be writing about the Global history of ancient Black civilizations for almost 200 years. It was Afro-Americans who first mentioned the African civilizations of West Africa and the Black roots of Egypt. These Afro-Americans made Africa a historical part of the world.
Afro-American scholars not only highlighted African history they also discussed the African/Black civilizations developed by African people outside Africa over a hundred years before Bernal and Boas.
Your history of what you call "negrocentric" or Black Studies is all wrong. It was DuBois who founded Black/Negro Studies, especially Afro-American studies given his work on the slave trade and sociological and historical studies of Afro-Americans. He mentions in the World and Africa about the Jews and other Europeans who were attempting to take over the field. Hansberry There is no one who can deny the fact that Leo Hansberry founded African studies in the U.S., not the Jews.Hansberry was a professor at Howard University.
Moreover, Bernal did not initiate any second wave of "negro/Blackcentric" study for ancient Egyptian civilization. Credit for this social science push is none other than Chiek Diop, who makes it clear that he was influenced by DuBois.
DuBois
These scholars recognized that the people of Southeast Asia and Indo-China were dark skined, some darker than African and Afro-American people. But when they discussed Blacks in Asia they were talking about people of African descent.
In conclusion, Afrocentrism is a mature social science. A social science firmly rooted in the scholarship of Afro-American researchers lasting almost 200 years. Researchers like Marc Washington, Clyde Winters and Mike are continuing a tradition of scholarship began 20 decades ago. All these contemporary researchers is doing is confirming research , that has not been disconfirmed over the past 200 years.
Aluta continua.....The struggle continues.....
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Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Most excellent Clyde, most excellent! So please explain the simple-minded movement of the last forty years to equate Black studies and Black history, to African-American slavery - which in context is but a blip. Have Blacks become stupid, or was this simply what Whites would fund with research dollars?
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Most excellent Clyde, most excellent! So please explain the simple-minded movement of the last forty years to equate Black studies and Black history, to African-American slavery - which in context is but a blip. Have Blacks become stupid, or was this simply what Whites would fund with research dollars?
Afro-American history has been written by Europeans for a long time. This meant that Blacks who get PhDs in the field are mentored by Euro professors. Once they get in the field they just don't rock the boat.
The same thing goes for Blacks in other fields. It is intersting to note that most heads of African American Studies Depts. usually have English degrees (e.g., Asante and Gates). They are committed to duing history but they are not trained in the field so it limits their influence.
Secondly, except for Asante, most Black Professors are ashamed to be called Afrocentric. If you remember even Ivan van Sertima did not want to be recognized as an Afrocentric scholar. He was ashamed because he didn't know how to do original research. Due to his inability to do primary independent research, in 1991 Eurocentric were able to make Afrocentricism look bad because Ivan and Hunter Adams were teaching things they never researched and as a result when they were called on to defend their studies they hid their heads in the sand.
At this time I was mainly doing research on Olmec, Dravidian , Meroitic and Indus Valley writing studies. I returned to writing in the field to dispell the myth that Afrocentrism was unscientific.In this vain I wrote this article:
Clyde Winters, Afrocentrism a Valid Frame of Reference, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, 170-190 (1994)
You must remember Negroes are afraid to write history unless they feel they will gain European support. Moreover, many Negroes will not support a scholar unless this scholar is first recognized by Europeans.
This is sad.
.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Yes, it is a sad state of affairs.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
Actually none of those people were Afrocentrics Clyde. Many were African Nationalists. Others were Pan Africanists. And others were integrationists. Afrocentrism as a concept is purely a result of the African Studies movement and the efforts of Molefi Asante and Maulena Karenga. Afrocentrism is not the same as African Nationalism or Pan Africanism. In fact, many Pan Africanists and African Nationalists reject Afrocentrism because some of the so called 'defenders' of Afrocentrism are frauds.
African Nationalism and Pan Africanism are much more powerful ideologies concerning African political, social and economic progress as opposed to Afrocentrism, which in many ways is about correcting the historical record and formenting a African centered view on world affairs. However, it is not a political, social or economic plan of liberation. It is more about teaching Africans in America how to reconnect with their Africanness. It is not a liberation struggle. The thinkers of the 19th century were more about HOW to liberate blacks from the day to day oppression they experienced in the world. It was about a liberation struggle, where history was a part but not the whole. Afrocentrism is simply a term that is widely used and abused and many don't even understand what it is really about.
Posted by MindoverMatter718 (Member # 15400) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Actually none of those people were Afrocentrics Clyde. Many were African Nationalists. Others were Pan Africanists. And others were integrationists. Afrocentrism as a concept is purely a result of the African Studies movement and the efforts of Molefi Asante and Maulena Karenga. Afrocentrism is not the same as African Nationalism or Pan Africanism. In fact, many Pan Africanists and African Nationalists reject Afrocentrism because some of the so called 'defenders' of Afrocentrism are frauds.
Correct Doug.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
If you look at the curriculum of almost ANY African studies program, NONE OF THEM deals with African Liberation as a CURRENT EVENT. NONE of them look at Africans in the diaspora STILL in the throes of oppression. NONE of them look at how Africans can be economically, politically or socially liberated.
And THAT has a lot to do with the watering down of African studies, from when it started and had the likes of Dr. Ben, Dr. Clarke and Dr. Jefferies as some of the key scholars. And because of the fall out of some of the so-called 'controversial' subjects that these people taught, African Studies is now devoid of ANY REAL ATTACKS on European colonial oriented societies and cultures as being fundamentally ANTI AFRICAN in any way. Therefore instead of teaching Africans how this system is STILL AGAINST THEM and AGAINST their interests, it largely serves as a way of providing window dressing to the true cause of African studies. Africans are supposed to desire to be FREE and INDEPENDENT of white colonial European cultural, economic and political domination, not to WANT to continue to be part of such a lying, hypocritical, stealing and murderous culture. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING white European colonial culture has GIVEN to Africans or any other non Europeans on this planet, except disease, war and death. There is NOTHING about European colonial culture for Africans to celebrate IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. Everything about European colonial culture is a threat to the continued existence of Africans world wide. And African Studies in its most progressive form is supposed to teach Africans WHY they should not view European colonial culture as a FUTURE for African people and WHY focusing on the liberation of Africans is the ONLY LOGICAL way to guarantee to future success AND PROSPERITY of African people. And if they don't see this then keep in mind the fact that world wide European colonial culture now under the banner GLOBALIZATION is being touted as "the future" for Africans and other people world wide, including all its various and associated myriad offshoots, including NGOS and the United Nations. Anyone with any amount of knowledge of anything about African history would see immediately that this is a DISASTER for African and other people world wide.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Sounds great Doug, but replace it with what? Sub-Saharan's never did develop a defensible super-culture to go back to: note the ease with which that huge and populace continent was conquered by a few strategically placed Whites in the first place.
For salvation, Africans can only look to the future, and whatever new methods they can come up with, because the past and all it's failures, must remain in the past. Just as Whites built great civilizations with knowledge taken from the ancient Blacks in the north. Perhaps Sub-Saharan's can return the favor.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: If you look at the curriculum of almost ANY African studies program, NONE OF THEM deals with African Liberation as a CURRENT EVENT. NONE of them look at Africans in the diaspora STILL in the throes of oppression. NONE of them look at how Africans can be economically, politically or socially liberated.
And THAT has a lot to do with the watering down of African studies, from when it started and had the likes of Dr. Ben, Dr. Clarke and Dr. Jefferies as some of the key scholars. And because of the fall out of some of the so-called 'controversial' subjects that these people taught, African Studies is now devoid of ANY REAL ATTACKS on European colonial oriented societies and cultures as being fundamentally ANTI AFRICAN in any way. Therefore instead of teaching Africans how this system is STILL AGAINST THEM and AGAINST their interests, it largely serves as a way of providing window dressing to the true cause of African studies. Africans are supposed to desire to be FREE and INDEPENDENT of white colonial European cultural, economic and political domination, not to WANT to continue to be part of such a lying, hypocritical, stealing and murderous culture. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING white European colonial culture has GIVEN to Africans or any other non Europeans on this planet, except disease, war and death. There is NOTHING about European colonial culture for Africans to celebrate IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. Everything about European colonial culture is a threat to the continued existence of Africans world wide. And African Studies in its most progressive form is supposed to teach Africans WHY they should not view European colonial culture as a FUTURE for African people and WHY focusing on the liberation of Africans is the ONLY LOGICAL way to guarantee to future success AND PROSPERITY of African people. And if they don't see this then keep in mind the fact that world wide European colonial culture now under the banner GLOBALIZATION is being touted as "the future" for Africans and other people world wide, including all its various and associated myriad offshoots, including NGOS and the United Nations. Anyone with any amount of knowledge of anything about African history would see immediately that this is a DISASTER for African and other people world wide.
African Studies has been a disaster because it became dominated by Europeans. These people had no feelings about Africa so naturally their interest in the area were not the same as those of the Black Students who demanded African Studies.
.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Actually none of those people were Afrocentrics Clyde. Many were African Nationalists. Others were Pan Africanists. And others were integrationists. Afrocentrism as a concept is purely a result of the African Studies movement and the efforts of Molefi Asante and Maulena Karenga. Afrocentrism is not the same as African Nationalism or Pan Africanism. In fact, many Pan Africanists and African Nationalists reject Afrocentrism because some of the so called 'defenders' of Afrocentrism are frauds.
African Nationalism and Pan Africanism are much more powerful ideologies concerning African political, social and economic progress as opposed to Afrocentrism, which in many ways is about correcting the historical record and formenting a African centered view on world affairs. However, it is not a political, social or economic plan of liberation. It is more about teaching Africans in America how to reconnect with their Africanness. It is not a liberation struggle. The thinkers of the 19th century were more about HOW to liberate blacks from the day to day oppression they experienced in the world. It was about a liberation struggle, where history was a part but not the whole. Afrocentrism is simply a term that is widely used and abused and many don't even understand what it is really about.
You are right about one thing most people don't really understand this social science including yourself.DuBois, Willims and etc., were not trying to liberate Blacks as you contend they were normal scientists teaching the truths of history based on the ancient model of history created by the Classical writers which maintained that African people took civilization to the rise of the world.
Secondly, Afrocentrism has nothing to do with the African Studies movement. The African Studies movement was centered around white American Africanists. Afro-Americans began the Afro-American studies movement which was centered around sociology, literature, political science and Afro-American History. In 1969, Blacks left the African Studies Movement and founded the African Heritage Studies Association.
quote:
Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations
African Heritage Studies Association The African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA) is an organization of scholars of African descent who study African history from an Afrocentric perspective. The AHSA emerged at the 1969 annual meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA), in response to agitation by several young black and white Africanists who protested the lack of organizational democracy within the ASA and rejected the traditional view that scholarship should or could achieve “objective” standards. They advocated instead that African studies be pursued from a politically engaged perspective that facilitates African interests.
Members of the ASA’s Black Caucus who led the insurgents charged that the ASA was dominated by “the white caste and…identified with a white posture.” Insisting that “the study of African life be undertaken from a Pan-Africanist perspective…[which] defines that all black people are African people” (African Studies Newsletter, 7 and 11), the group demanded that half the seats on the ASA’s Board of Directors be reserved for scholars of African descent. Led by John Henrik Clarke, the AHSA became an independent organization when its demands were rejected by the ASA in early 1970. Among the founding members of the AHSA were the historian Nell Painter; P.Chike Onwuachi, Director of the African Studies and Research Program at Howard University; and Leonard Jeffries Chair of City College of New York’s Black Studies Department.
The AHSA’s goals are to make the study of African life and history relevant to both African and African American communities, to “use African history to effect a world union of African people,” and to encourage scholarship among “activist-scholars” committed to the “restoration of the cultural, economic and political life of African peoples everywhere” (Clarke, 9). For nearly thirty years, the AHSA has pursued its goals through various avenues.
Many of these scholars practice afrocentricity.Scholars like Clarke,Karenga and Assante practice afrocentricity.
Afrocentricity –is the theorectical perspective found on a African centered consciousness that locates African behaviors within the context of African psychological, cultural and sociological experiences and agency. As a result, it is not the data being used to examine an African phenomenon , it is the approach the researcher uses to illuminate and understand that phenomenon. Assante defined Afrocentricity as:
(1) an intense interest in psychological location as determined by symbols, motifs, rituals, and signs; (2) a commitment to finding the subject-place of Africans in any social, political, economic, architectural, literary, or religious phenomenon with implications for questions of sex, gender, and class; (3) a defense of African cultural elements as historically valid in the context of art, music, education, science and literature; (4) a celebration of centeredness and agency and a commitment to lexical refinement that eliminates pejoratives about Africans or other people; (5) a powerful imperative from historical sources to revise the collective text of African people.
DuBois, Blyden and the rest of the scholars I mention above did not practice afrocentricity they were afrocentric scholars.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
Doug you don’t know what you’re talking about. These researchers may have been nationalist and pan-Africanist politically, but as scholars and researchers they were Afrocentric social scientist . They were Afrocentric scholars because they were accepted the ancient model of history that maintains :1) civilization originated in Africa; and 2) Africans took civilization to Africa, Europe and Asia.
First of all , let’s discuss the definition of Afrocentrism. Afrocentrism-is adherence to principles and theories related to the idea that African and World history originated on the African continent and moved outward from Africa through the human agency of Africans speaking related languages and practicing a shared culture, who founded the first civilizations of Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
Afrocentric researchers base their research on the ancient model of history. The ancient model of history was the model of history formed by the Greco-Roman scholars who recognized that Blacks founded civilization and that there were two Kushes one in Asia and the other in Africa.
Afrocentric researchers have never argued that they must reject anthropological and historical ways of knowing simply because these methods were first recognized by Europeans. In 1974, Harun Kofi Wangara, in an interview with Cheikh Anta Diop (Black World, Feb.1974, pp.53-61), recorded Diop's views on researching Afrocentric history. In this interview Diop observed that "…I think that it will be necessary to put together polyvalent scientific teams, capable of doing in-depth studies , for sure, and that's important. It bothers me when someone takes me on my word without developing a means of verifying what I say….We must form a scientific spirit, capable of seeing even the weaknesses of our own proofs, of seeing the unfinished side of our work and of committing ourselves to completing it. You understand? Therefore we should then have a work which could honestly stand criticism, because what we've done would have been placed on a scientific plane".
As a result Afrocentrism has the following characteristics:
Based on application of science through use of the academic disciplines of Anthropology Archaeology History Linguistics Knowledge produced by recognizing the early expansion of Kushites, from Africa to other parts of the world.
The goal of Afrocentric social sciences is to provide explanations about real phenomenon. The heuristic (way of knowing or discovering new ideas) in social science for purposes of understanding the methods used to produce knowledge in Afrocentrism: are anthropology which discovers new ideas by way of ethnography; and history which discovers new ideas by interpreting records relating to the past.
This means that any researcher who uses the ancient model of history to study ancient history and accepts the fact that Africans directly transferred civilization to the rise of the world is an Afrocentric researcher.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
Except for Marc , Mike and myself most writers at ES could never be called Afrocentric researchers because they don't accept the ancient model of history. To writers here Blacks can exist in Asia, the Americans and Europe, but they can not be African.Hansberry, DuBois,and J.A. Rogers would never accept this, because they knew that the founders of Asian and American civilization had to have been Africans, since the Kushites spread civilization around the world.
These researchers would never attempt to say the present dark skinned people of Asia were negroes like some people, because craniometrics make it clear both groups are different.
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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: If you look at the curriculum of almost ANY African studies program, NONE OF THEM deals with African Liberation as a CURRENT EVENT. NONE of them look at Africans in the diaspora STILL in the throes of oppression. NONE of them look at how Africans can be economically, politically or socially liberated.
And THAT has a lot to do with the watering down of African studies, from when it started and had the likes of Dr. Ben, Dr. Clarke and Dr. Jefferies as some of the key scholars. And because of the fall out of some of the so-called 'controversial' subjects that these people taught, African Studies is now devoid of ANY REAL ATTACKS on European colonial oriented societies and cultures as being fundamentally ANTI AFRICAN in any way. Therefore instead of teaching Africans how this system is STILL AGAINST THEM and AGAINST their interests, it largely serves as a way of providing window dressing to the true cause of African studies. Africans are supposed to desire to be FREE and INDEPENDENT of white colonial European cultural, economic and political domination, not to WANT to continue to be part of such a lying, hypocritical, stealing and murderous culture. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING white European colonial culture has GIVEN to Africans or any other non Europeans on this planet, except disease, war and death. There is NOTHING about European colonial culture for Africans to celebrate IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. Everything about European colonial culture is a threat to the continued existence of Africans world wide. And African Studies in its most progressive form is supposed to teach Africans WHY they should not view European colonial culture as a FUTURE for African people and WHY focusing on the liberation of Africans is the ONLY LOGICAL way to guarantee to future success AND PROSPERITY of African people. And if they don't see this then keep in mind the fact that world wide European colonial culture now under the banner GLOBALIZATION is being touted as "the future" for Africans and other people world wide, including all its various and associated myriad offshoots, including NGOS and the United Nations. Anyone with any amount of knowledge of anything about African history would see immediately that this is a DISASTER for African and other people world wide.
Doug , this is your problem you have never studied Afrocentric works or study the history of African Studies. If you had you would have known that African centered scholars left this area back in 1969. As a result, Africanists are mainly people who support the status quo and maintain that African history begins in Nubia, and African people had no history outside Africa, except as slaves.
Instead of attacking Afrocentrism you should read the research of Afrocentric scholars and not just listen to the critics of this field who mainly discuss Afro-American researchers who practice afrocentricity and not the afrocentric social scientists like DuBois, J.A. Rogers and etc.
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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
In the Afrocentric social science we need researcher who know these methods well, and possessing the declarative and procedural knowledge necessary to write ancient history. Declarative knowledge in relation to writing ancient afrocentric history, simply means that the researchers has knowledge about a particular set of historical experiences.
To complement this declarative knowledge means that the person writing afrocentric history must learn the foreign language related to study of a particular set of historical experiences so that that research can find access to the primary documents relating to the particular experience.
The Afrocentric researcher also needs procedural knowledge to write ancient Afrocentric history. The procedural knowledge necessary for writing this history is knowledge of the methods of producing knowledge within a particular area of social science or humanistic research (i.e., history, linguistics, archaeology or anthropology). Knowledge of the field will provide the researcher with the routines , definitions and principles relating to a specific heuristic for discovering knowledge.
There are differences between Western historical writing and Afrocentric historical writing undertaken by the HEROS of Afrocentric research, Diop, DuBois, and J.A. Rogers. Non-Western recorders of history, beginning with the Egyptians and Sumerians provide narrative treatment of events, which preserve the original statements of events as they happened e.g., the narratives of the Voyage of Unamuno or the battles and extensions of the Egyptian empire of Sesostris III, Thutmose and Rameses II.
Western historians, beginning with the Greeks, on the other hand, see history as subject to revision through the interpretation and speculation of historical phenomena by the individual historian/author. Thus we have Western historians writing on the same historical experience, interpreting the experience in different ways based on their own perspective.
Afrocentric historians evaluate historical sources in an unbiased , objective reliable, accurate evidence that support a conclusion and evidence that contradicts a particular point of view. Thus we have Afrocentric researchers testing hypotheses based on pro and con evidence. This evidence is studied and they make decisions about a particular historic experience based on the evidence . For example, the Bible claimed that the children of Ham founded the great civilizations. This knowledge led to the hypothesis: There is no relationship between the Blacks of Mesopotamia and Africa. Afrocentric scholars researched the classical evidence and found that the Sumerians and Elamites, claimed they came from Kush, and that both areas in Africa and Mesopotamia were called Kush and Punt in historical records.
This supported the textual evidence that Blacks founded civilization. These researchers had to reject the null hypothesis: There is no relationship between the Blacks of Africa and Mesopotamia.
This shows that Afrocentric scholars let the facts speak for themselves without making value judgments. Europeans took the same evidence and referred to the Egyptians as Black skinned whites in the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic Script, published by UNESCO, while Diop and Obenga proved they were Black Africans.
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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
To understand Afrocentric researchers you must remember that we are falsificationist. We either confirm or disconfirm a theory.
I am a product of Western Civilization. As a result, I was indoctrinated from an early age via TV and books that blacks were inferior. Although I was provided this indoctrination many adults during my socialization and induction into the community in which I grew up in , on the Southside of Chicago (i.e., 47th and Evans) taught me at an early age that Blacks were the founders of civilization based on their reading of the Bible, and the story about the Children of Ham.
There was also a brother called Hammurabi. Hammurabi published a newspaper which highlighted information on ancient Blacks. This newspaper influenced my ideas about ancient history.
As a result, when I undertook the acquisition of abstract sign systems during my forming schooling/ instruction I had already acquired a metacognition ( awareness of your own thinking) that filtered the bias teachings out of me during my years of schooling. I knew who I was based on the truth of the ancient model of history.
Science is hypothesis testing. We either confirm a theory or disconfirm a theory based on eduttukkaadu. A true scientist would never dispute a theory without offering counter eduttukkaadu in support of the counter hypothesis, but Eurocentric researchers get away with this unscientific attack on the ideas of Blacks, Native Americans and Asians everyday due to Eurocentrism.
Science goes out the window when theories are advocated by researchers that are not accepted by the Academe. We like to believe that schooling broadans our knowledge base and makes us wiser but this is not the case.
Schooling provides an environment that constructs the cognitive structures, we use to interpret our environment. If that environment teaching us falsehood, we will learn untruths instead of the Truth. This results from the fact that the growth of the mind is strongly influenced by the cultural sign system in which we live. It is the sign system presented via culture that provides first the child, and later the sdult the psychological tools to interpret the world.
To understand the NKSD (Nubian Kushite Sumerian Dravidian) cultures it requires more that one's racial status and being. Being a African African American or Dravidian will not gain you entry into understanding these cultures. You can only understand these cultures if you find cognitive and psychological engagement with the study of ancient history based on the Truth covering law, of the Ancient Model of History.
Cognitive engagement is an internal indicator. These indicators are process, recognition and desire. Firstly, cognitive engagement requires that you learn how to process information from a self-based approach. This information is processed both by neurological processes, genetics and the mind. The neurogic system helps us understand the mechanics behind our learning.
It makes clear the processes involved in thinking. The mind allows us to interpret knowledge. We don't know where this mind is, but we do know that it has a physical and a meta-physical base. The physical mind is structure by or experiences that form representations or schmata to interpret the experiences we have had and explain what we find in the environment.
The mind is also metaphysical. This part of the mind helps us to find information and answers to the questions we may have about phenomenon through our dreams. ( I can not number the times I went to bed with a question about ancient history that was answered in a dreamthat directed me to sources / evidence to support my inquiry.)
Seeking truth is also genetic. We often discuss the genes and how they make us unique. But no one really discusses the possibility that a genetic memory also exist. This genetic memory would consist of the memories we obtain from our both our parents up to the time of our birth, and the memories of our parents parents , and so on up tothe time of their birth. This memory may even go back to the first human ancestors. This genetic memory would allow us to tap into the memories of our ancestors.
The second feature of cognitive engagement in our quest for the Truth is recognition. Recognition, simply refers to the way you think, learn and process information. Your ability to find Truth will result from three factors, a) your ability to access genetic based knowledge; b) interactions with known knowledge ( via multiple intelligences); and c) desire to know the Truth.
A good example of accessing the Truth genetically, was made clear by a Western scholar who said he did not understand Greek philosophy until he studied Ethiopian civilization. He even claimed that he formerly may have been an Ethiopian. A Eurocentric scholar would belittle the idea expressed by this scholar, but in reality, maybe he was able to access knowledge relating to the Ethiopians from his genetic memory from his ancestors who may have lived in Ethiopia, because he kept himself open to Truth and Truth came his way.
Finally, to complete your quest for cognitive engagement the heuristic used for task analysis and completion must include a self-monitoring process guided by Truth Seeking based on the Ancient Model of History.
Psychological engagement is both an internal and external indicator used to interpret the truth. You need psychological engagement of the NKSD culture to understand the phenomenon. Psychological engagement has three parts 1) identification with an intellectual school of thought ( in this case the Ancient Model of History); a sense of belonging and connection to a group; and 3) a positive relationship with teachers and peers.
It is easy to find identification with a research model, but finding a sense of belonging and positive relationship with teachers is more difficult. You must love yourself and your ethnic group before you can use the ancient model of history to discovery aspects of the past. Yet, you can not be racist. You have to recognize that there is one mankind, eventhough we have different colors, because we all came from God. Finding teachers is also difficult. It is hard to find teachers for the study of NKSD at Universities and Colleges because most of the faculty members at these institutions maintain the status quo. As a result, your teachers will be scholars who are outside the Academe. Scholars who provide the necessary eduttukkaadu (evidences)to support and test their hypotheses.
In summary, Truth seeking is the result of cognitive and psychological engagement along with socializing agents who provide us with the schemata we use to recognize Truth in our research. Truth is like beauty, it is only recognized by the eyes of the beholder of what ever one believes to be true, and interpreted via the Model of History you chose to understand the past.
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Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Sounds great Doug, but replace it with what? Sub-Saharan's never did develop a defensible super-culture to go back to: note the ease with which that huge and populace continent was conquered by a few strategically placed Whites in the first place.
For salvation, Africans can only look to the future, and whatever new methods they can come up with, because the past and all it's failures, must remain in the past. Just as Whites built great civilizations with knowledge taken from the ancient Blacks in the north. Perhaps Sub-Saharan's can return the favor.
Mike
Talking like that about Africa shows you don't know Jack! Back off now bro, or put up!!!
Lion!
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Really lion - that sounds so ghetto.
If there is something that you disagree with, say what it is, and why you disagree.
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
I disagree with your claim that Africans (your so-called sub-saharans) did not attain what do you call it..."a defensible super-culture". What does that mean? Explain it again to this Lion of your so-called Ghettos.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Lion - I would be very happy to explain what I mean.
The first responsibility of government - any government or even group, is defense. That is to protect its people, its property, and its borders. The fact that sub-Saharan's did not even come close to accomplishing this most basic responsibility, indicates that they had a very primitive or non-existent "super-culture" (which has nothing to do with art and the like). It means a sophisticated concept of themselves, and their place in the greater common society of Africans.
As an example, if an outside force attacked the U.S. what do you think Canada and Mexico would do?
They would fight with the U.S. of course. Not because they particularly love the U.S. But because they are sophisticated enough to know that the invader represents a COMMON threat.
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: As an example, if an outside force attacked the U.S. what do you think Canada and Mexico would do?
They would fight with the U.S. of course. Not because they particularly love the U.S. But because they are sophisticated enough to know that the invader represents a COMMON threat.
I guess you never had how Africa was won back. Like the revolutionary wars of Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Those countries are thousands of miles away from Nigeria but Nigerian arms and Nigerian money were key in the liberation of those countries.
I could go on about the role of Ethiopia in the liberation of Africa.
I could go on endlessly about the millions of pounds of Ghana's gold that went into the liberation and re-establishment of Africa.
But then I know you will change the time-frame of our discussion so I await your response before I will address it. No need to anticipate you!
Lion!
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Lion - I was talking about the Africa that ALLOWED colonial rule. The jury is still out on the post colonial rule Africa.
BUT; I can't help but note Zimbabwe. Here the leadership seemed to understand that the true road to freedom is self-sufficiency. And to accomplish that, you must close your country off to outside goods and influence, while you build from within. AND IT GOT TOTALLY FUCHED UP!!! I don't know, but it don't look too good for Africans.
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
Mike
The Ashantis fought three wars with Britain between the beginning and the end of the 19th century. The British lost twice to the Ashantis, and won once. That was the war of the 1890s. 60 years later they were kicked out again.
Parts of eastern Nigeria had not yet been colonized or pacified by the British before colonialism came to an end in Nigeria.
Benin Empire protected itself and the rest of its subjects from European depradations beginning from 1465 when it encountered the Portugese slavers up to 1889 when it fell to British assaults. Now that is more than 400 years of resistance and sovereignty even after contact with those that you would rather see as having evolved a "super-culture."
What we have to understand is that the period of 1880 to 1920s was the period of uncontested so-called white supremacy. That period was lost with the great depression leading to the second world war and the end of colonialism. But every nation succumbed to the red northern Europeans at that time. Even the mighty Turkish Empire which had tangled with northern Europe for about 400 years as well.
Zimbabwe was not the only revolutionary African country. Ethiopia was the head fount of Black resistance and revolutionary wars. The there is Azikiwe's Nigeria; Nkrumah's Ghana; Kenyatta's Kenya; Idi Amin Dada's Uganda.
Today there is South Africa, there is Sudan, there is Zambia and Tanzania. Zambia although one of those your so-called "basket cases" was singularly instrumental to the defeat of the South African regime. Zambia was a frontline state that bore the burnt of the war for South Africa's liberation.
More to come.
Lion!
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by IronLion:
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Sounds great Doug, but replace it with what? Sub-Saharan's never did develop a defensible super-culture to go back to: note the ease with which that huge and populace continent was conquered by a few strategically placed Whites in the first place.
For salvation, Africans can only look to the future, and whatever new methods they can come up with, because the past and all it's failures, must remain in the past. Just as Whites built great civilizations with knowledge taken from the ancient Blacks in the north. Perhaps Sub-Saharan's can return the favor.
Mike
Talking like that about Africa shows you don't know Jack! Back off now bro, or put up!!!
Lion!
Small armies from more technologically or organizationally advanced civilizations conquering less advanced tribal peoples is nothing new, nor unique to Africa. The Romans did it frequently against various Germanic tribes. Just see the campaigns of Caesar. Conquest of Africa according to many historians was due less to technology like guns or artillery than the fragmented nature of African polities, which enabled them to be defeated separately. (Vandervort 1998).
Political fragmentation ain't anything new either. Rome did a profitable divide and conquer bit in Spain and Gaul for centuries. As for political fragmentation, Germany in the 1830s was split into over 30 separate governments. So Africa, while having its own unique problems, is not the first area to see conquest by smaller forces.
Africa's environment also hindered the raising of large armies in many places, relatively speaking, compared to the hordes available in Asia or Europe. quote:
".. the scale of warfare in Africa in modern times has been modest compared to other continents. Even if there had not been a technological gap between African and European armies, or a pressing need for European troops elsewhere, it would rarely have been necessary to send large armies to Africa. The "savage hordes" of popular lore seldom materialized on African battlefields. Because of its 'exceptionally hostile environment, its ancient rocks, poor soils, fickle rainfall, abundant insects, and unique prevalence of disease', Africa remained 'an under populated continent until the late twentieth century'.
Few African states in the late nineteenth century were capable of fielding armies even remotely as large as those routinely assembled for war in Europe, and the same conditions that kept African populations small also militated against deployment of large European armies in Africa. As one British military historian has put it, there were 'no agricultural revolutions here [in Africa] to allow large-scale requisitioning'. --Vandervort 1998
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
I believe it is important to remember that although Africa was colonized in 1899, by the 1960's the African countries were gaining there freedom.
It was not the defeat of African nations by European powers that hinder African progress--it is control of the African mind through education which weakens Africa.
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Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Lion - I don't think that you understand - THE WEST AFRICAN NEGROS WERE THE SLAVERS - Europeans were just customers.
Posted by markellion (Member # 14131) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan: [QUOTE]Conquest of Africa according to many historians was due less to technology like guns or artillery than the fragmented nature of African polities, which enabled them to be defeated separately. (Vandervort 1998).
The situation that most of Africa was in during the 19th century had allot to do with the slave trade. To understand how colonialism happened one must look at the slave trade. On the question of how this happened John Newton supports an economic maniuplation rather than fomenting wars between Africans (political fragmentation) or actually going out and taking them (military domination) or tricking them
War became a bad habit so it wasn't a case of ethnic conflicts but commercialized warfare.
The slave trade also served to horribly depopulate the continent, but an account from 1662 calls lower Guinea "a continuous and black anthill"
quote: The natives are cheated, in the number, weight, measure, or quality of what they purchase, in every possible way : and, by habit and emulation, a marvellous dexterity is acquired in these practices. And thus the natives in their turn, in proportion to their commerce with the Europeans, and (I am sorry to add) particularly with the English, become jealous, insidious, and revengeful.
quote:I judge, the principal source of the slave trade, is, the wars which prevail among the natives. Sometimes, these wars break out between those who live near the sea. The English, and other Europeans, have been charged with fomenting them ; I believe (so far as concerns the Windward coast) unjustly. That some would do it, if they could, I doubt not ; but I do not think they can have opportunity. Nor is it needful they should interfere. Thousands, in our own country, wish for war, because they fatten upon its spoils.....
....I verily believe, that the far greater part of the wars, in Africa, would cease, if the Europeans would cease to tempt them, by offering goods for slaves. And though they do not bring legions into the field, their wars are bloody. I believe, the captives reserved for sale are fewer than the slain.
One article more upon this head, is kidknapping, or stealing free people. Some people suppose, that the ship trade is rather the stealing, than the buying of slaves. But there is enough to lay to the charge of the ships, without accusing them falsely. The slaves, in general, are bought, and paid for. Sometimes, when goods are lent, or trusted on shore, the trader voluntarily leaves a free person, perhaps his own son, as a hostage, or pawn, for the payment; and, in case of default, the hostage is carried off, and sold ; which, however hard upon him, being in consequence of a free stipulation, cannot be deemed unfair. There have been instances of unprincipled captains, who, at the close of what they supposed their last voyage, and when they had no intention of revisiting the coast, have detained, and carried away, free people with them; and left the next ship, that should come from the same port to risk the consequences. But these actions, 1 hope and believe, are not common.
"Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic world, 1400-1800" By John Kelly Thornton
page 75
quote: Capuchins who visited the area in 1662 regarded it as so populated it resembled "a continuous and black anthill" and noted that "this kingdom of Arda [Allada] and most of the region [Lower Guinea] exceed in number and density [the population] of all other parts of the world.
Posted by markellion (Member # 14131) on :
William Pitt also supports a view that the African wars were motivated by economic reasons
"You there subvert the whole order of nature; you aggravate every natural barbarity, and furnish to every man living on that continent motives for committing, under the name and pretext of commerce, acts of perpetual violence and perfidy against his neighbor"
On the other hand Robert Norris argues that the Africans were
"living in a continual state of war, and rapine, long before the commerce with Europeans was introduced among them;"
William Pitt, The Younger. 1759-1806.
352. From His Speech On The Abolition Op The Slave-trade . April 2, 1792.
quote: Do you think nothing of the ruin and the miseries in which so many other individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved, in consequence of carrying off so many myriads of people? Do you think nothing of their families which are left be- bind I of the connections which are broken ? of the friendships, attachments, and relationships that are burst asunder! Do you think nothing of the miseries in consequence, that are felt from generation to generation? of the privation of that happiness which might be communicated to them by the introduction of civilization, and of mental and moral improvement? A happiness which you withhold them so long as you permit the slave-trade to continue. What do you know of the internal state of Africa? You have carried on a trade to that quarter of the globe from this civilized and enlightened country. but such a trade, that, instead of diffusing either knowledge or wealth, it has been the check to every laudable pursuit. Instead of any fail interchange of commodities; instead of conveying to them, from this highly favored land, any means of improvement; you carry with you that noxious plant by which everything is withered and blasted; under whose shade nothing that is useful or profitable to Africa will eves flourish or take root. Long as that continent has been known to navigators, the extreme line and boundaries of its coasts is all with which Europe is yet become acquainted; while other countries in the same parallel of latitude, through a happier system of intercourse, have reaped the blessings of a mutually beneficial commerce. But as to the whole interior of that continent you are, by your own principles of commerce, as yet entirely shut out: Africa is known to you only in its skirts. Yet here you are able to infuse a poison that spreads its contagious effects from one end of it to the other, which penetrates to its very center, corrupting every part to which it reaches. You there subvert the whole order of nature; you aggravate every natural barbarity, and furnish to every man living on that continent motives for committing, under the name and pretext of commerce, acts of perpetual violence and perfidy against his neighbor.
quote: That the wars which have always existed in Africa, have no connexion with the slave trade, is evident from the universality of the practice of it between communities in a savage state. The oldest writers, as Leo, and others, have represented the Africans as living in a continual state of war, and rapine, long before the commerce with Europeans was introduced among them; and no man of sense can doubt but the same practice would still continue, if no trade existed, and with greater frequency. Besides the motives of ambition and resentment, which the African has, in common with other nations of men, the turbulent and irascible disposition of a Negro prompts him to harrass and dispute with his neighbour, upon the most trivial provocations. Lured by the love of plunder, before he ever saw an European commodity
Posted by markellion (Member # 14131) on :
"Some Historical Accounts of Guinea" By Anthony Benezet
quote: William Bofman remarks*, "That one of the former commanders gave large sums of money to the Negroes of one nation, to induce them to attack some of the neighboring nations, which occasioned a battle which was more bloody than the wars of Negroes usually are." This is confirmed by J. Barbot, who says, "That the country of D'Elmina, which was formerly very powerful and populous, was in his time so much drained of its inhabitants by the infinite wars fomented amongst the Negroes by the Dutch, that there did not remain inhabitants enough to till the country."
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Lion - I don't think that you understand - THE WEST AFRICAN NEGROS WERE THE SLAVERS - Europeans were just customers.
The situation you do not understand is that you Mike are from the WEST AFRICAN NEGRO STOCK TOO. Perhaps you care to explain how you ended up being the slaver and the slaved!
Take yourself back to 1446 when Portugese began slave raiding and tell me what Europeans of that time had to trade with Africans in exchange for people???
Mike..sometimes I cannot believe I am reading my own brother!
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
quote:Originally posted by markellion: "Some Historical Accounts of Guinea" By Anthony Benezet
quote: William Bofman remarks*, "That one of the former commanders gave large sums of money to the Negroes of one nation, to induce them to attack some of the neighboring nations, which occasioned a battle which was more bloody than the wars of Negroes usually are." This is confirmed by J. Barbot, who says, "That the country of D'Elmina, which was formerly very powerful and populous, was in his time so much drained of its inhabitants by the infinite wars fomented amongst the Negroes by the Dutch, that there did not remain inhabitants enough to till the country."
Markellion
Take a second look at all those authorites you are citing and you will realize that they are all some pale faced boys.
Search further and you will be amazed at their deeply entangled masonic roots.
Those jokers are there to keep you confused and depressed with bull crap they themselve know nothing bout.
Dont play the negro cause thatz what they want you to be. Find your true history from your own sources.
Lion!
Posted by markellion (Member # 14131) on :
That was an abolitionist source
OHENEBA, an Ashanti prince, also confirms the economic motive behind this horrible trade
"Poku on Ashanti Role in Slave Trade" (length: 1 min 10 sec)
OHENEBA: The whole slavery episode was an unfortunate error in the history of Africa, and for that matter of Ashanti. I would say it depleted the human resources of the empire, what perhaps the empire could have achieved, you know, was lost through this trade, you know. So much as we, as I said, do have regrets, you know, that error in our history, you know, perhaps it was a sign of the times and we couldn't have done otherwise.
GATES: But do you think the Africans understood how horrible the Transatlantic slave trade was?
OHENEBA: No, no, no, no. I mean, I don't think they knew. I mean if they had known, you know, known about the horrible stories that is … going through when they were being transported, not only from (Maquist), but through the Transatlantic, through (Gorea) and then the Trans-Atlantic route from the States, I don't think they would have continued doing it, you know. I mean, besides there was no means of knowing, you know, the brutalities that they underwent.
GATES: Perhaps the people round the castles might have seen how horrible it was.
OHENEBA: Yes, they might have seen some aspect of it, but those of us, who were in the interior, you know, had no means of knowing, you know, except through a few stories here and there, you know. But if they had known I'm sure that they wouldn't have continued doing it.
GATES: It's hard to, to turn down such a huge source of profit. You know the motivation of human beings …
OHENEBA: Well that's it, that's the human factor in trading, the profitability of it. But it's happened and now I think most people are very sorry that it had happened, you know, naturally, yes.
GATES: Especially the slaves.
OHENEBA: Well, hope so. Yes. Yes.
Posted by markellion (Member # 14131) on :
Dahomey and the Dahomans Vol. 1 By Frederick Edwyn Forbes
quote: I had been often a day or two journeying into various parts of the interior of Africa, and had seen the state of the slave trade in its advanced systematic stage, and had considered the horrors of that division of it disgusting enough. I have visited bara- coons, and seen men so fearfully attenuated, from want and over-exercise in the march to the coast, as to render nature unable to support the frame. I have seen the hold of a slave ship, and the horrors consequent on diseases arising from the crowded state and want of wholesome food to alleviate the cravings of hunger and thirst. I have seen the slave toiling in South America, and known that the labour of these was a matter of calculation to the master, whether, by continual toil and short life, he would gain more money than by light work and protracted miserable existence. But what are all these to the tragic scenes that introduce the slaves to slavery? A country living in peace with all around, and pursuing trade in the endeavour to become rich, is suddenly surrounded by a ruthless banditti; and how changed the scene ! The old would be rejected if brought to market, they are sacrificed ; the whole nation are transported, exterminated, their name to be forgotten, except in the annual festival of their conquerors, when sycophants call the names of vanquished countries to the remembrance of the victors.
This state of society will last as long as the slave trade exists. The question that should be asked is: Is it in the power of this country to stop it ? I will not confine myself to opinions, but relate facts.
Dahomey and the Dahomans Vol. 2 By Frederick Edwyn Forbes
quote: The amazons now advanced in the same The amazons' war order, and having saluted the king he dance and joined them, and again performed a war dance. They also sang in praise of the liberality of the slave-dealer, who gave them muskets and powder to make war upon innocent neighbours; to enrich himself by supplying the market with slaves. These are the evils to uproot: and yet this very man is directly trading with, and receives these muskets and this powder from, British agents in British shipping.
Posted by JMT2 (Member # 16951) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Some people believe that Afrocentrism was founded by Jews. Although this is the view of many, Afrocentrism, as a mature social science that was founded by Afro-Americans almost 200 years ago.
These men and women provided scholarship based on contemporary archaeological and historical research the African/Black origination of civilization throughout the world. These Afro-American scholars, mostly trained at Harvard University (one of the few Universities that admitted Blacks in the 19th Century) provide the scientific basis for Afrocantrism and the global role played by African people in civilizing the world.
Afrocentrism and the africalogical study of ancient Black civilizations was began by Afro-Americans.
Edward Blyden
The foundation of any mature science is its articulation in an authoritive text (Kuhn, 1996, 136). The africalogical textbooks published by Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) provided the vocabulary themes for further afrocentric social science research.
The pedagogy for ancient africalogical research was well established by the end of the 19th century by African American researchers well versed in the classical languages and knowledge of Greek and Latin. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) in the Freedom Journal, were the first African Americans to discuss and explain the "Ancient Model" of history.
These afrocentric social scientists used the classics to prove that the Blacks founded civilization in Egypt, Ethiopia, Babylon and Ninevah. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) made it clear that archaeological research supported the classical, or "Ancient Model" of history.
Edward Blyden (1869) also used classical sources to discuss the ancient history of African people. In his work he not only discussed the evidence for Blacks in West Asia and Egypt, he also discussed the role of Blacks in ancient America (Blyden, 1869, 78).
By 1883, africalogical researchers began to publish book on African American history. G.W. Williams (1883) wrote the first textbook on African American history. In the History of the Negro Race in America, Dr. Williams provided the schema for all future africalogical history text.
Dr. Williams (1883) confirmed the classical traditions for Blacks founding civilization in both Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia) and West Asia. In addition, to confirming the "Ancient Model" of history, Dr. Williams (1883) also mentioned the presence of Blacks in Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula. Dr. Williams was trained at Howard.
A decade later R.L. Perry (1893) also presented evidence to confirm the classical traditions of Blacks founding Egypt, Greece and the Mesopotamian civilization. He also provided empirical evidence for the role of Blacks in Phoenicia, thus increasing the scope of the ASAH paradigms.
Pauline E. Hopkins (1905) added further articulation of the ASAH paradigms of the application of these paradigms in understanding the role of Blacks in West Asia and Africa. Hopkins (1905) provided further confirmation of the role of Blacks in Southeast Asia, and expanded the scope of africalogical research to China (1905).
This review of the 19th century africalogical social scientific research indicate confirmation of the "Ancient Model" for the early history of Blacks. We also see a movement away from self-published africalogical research, and publication of research, and the publication of research articles on afrocentric themes, to the publication of textbooks.
It was in these books that the paradigms associated with the "Ancient Model" and ASAH were confirmed, and given reliability by empirical research. It was these texts which provided the pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of the africalogical normal social science.
The afrocentric textbooks of Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) proved the reliability and validity of the ASAH paradigms. The discussion in these text of contemporary scientific research findings proving the existence of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Nubia-Sudan (Kush), Mesopotamia, Palestine and North Africa lent congruency to the classical literature which pointed to the existence of these civilizations and these African origins ( i.e., the children of Ham= Khem =Kush?).
The authors of the africalogical textbooks reported the latest archaeological and anthropological findings. The archaeological findings reported in these textbooks added precision to their analysis of the classical and Old Testament literature. This along with the discovery of artifacts on the ancient sites depicting Black\African people proved that the classical and Old Testament literature, as opposed to the "Aryan Model", objectively identified the Black\African role in ancient history. And finally, these textbooks confirmed that any examination of references in the classical literature to Blacks in Egypt, Kush, Mesopotamia and Greece\Crete exhibited constancy to the evidence recovered from archaeological excavations in the Middle East and the Aegean. They in turn disconfirmed the "Aryan Model", which proved to be a falsification of the authentic history of Blacks in early times.
The creation of africalogical textbooks provided us with a number of facts revealing the nature of the afrocentric ancient history paradigms. They include a discussion of:
1) the artifacts depicting Blacks found at ancient sites
recovered through archaeological excavation;
2) the confirmation of the validity of the classical and Old
Testament references to Blacks as founders of civilization in Africa and Asia;
3) the presence of isolated pockets of Blacks existing outside Africa; and
4) that the contemporary Arab people in modern Egypt are not the descendants of the ancient Egyptians.
The early africalogical textbooks also outlined the africalogical themes research should endeavor to study. A result, of the data collected by the africalogical ancient history research pioneers led to the development of three facts by the end of the 19th century, which needed to be solved by the afrocentric paradigms: (1) What is the exact relationship of ancient Egypt, to Blacks in other parts of Africa;
(2) How and when did Blacks settle America, Asia and Europe;
(3) What are the contributions of the Blacks to the rise, and cultural expression ancient Black\African civilizations;
(4) Did Africans settle parts of America in ancient times.
As you can see the structure of Afrocentrism were made long before Boas and the beginning of the 20th Century.In fact , I would not be surprised if Boas learned what he talked about from the early Afrocentric researchers discussed in this post.
As you can see Afro-Americans have be writing about the Global history of ancient Black civilizations for almost 200 years. It was Afro-Americans who first mentioned the African civilizations of West Africa and the Black roots of Egypt. These Afro-Americans made Africa a historical part of the world.
Afro-American scholars not only highlighted African history they also discussed the African/Black civilizations developed by African people outside Africa over a hundred years before Bernal and Boas.
Your history of what you call "negrocentric" or Black Studies is all wrong. It was DuBois who founded Black/Negro Studies, especially Afro-American studies given his work on the slave trade and sociological and historical studies of Afro-Americans. He mentions in the World and Africa about the Jews and other Europeans who were attempting to take over the field. Hansberry There is no one who can deny the fact that Leo Hansberry founded African studies in the U.S., not the Jews.Hansberry was a professor at Howard University.
Moreover, Bernal did not initiate any second wave of "negro/Blackcentric" study for ancient Egyptian civilization. Credit for this social science push is none other than Chiek Diop, who makes it clear that he was influenced by DuBois.
DuBois
These scholars recognized that the people of Southeast Asia and Indo-China were dark skined, some darker than African and Afro-American people. But when they discussed Blacks in Asia they were talking about people of African descent.
In conclusion, Afrocentrism is a mature social science. A social science firmly rooted in the scholarship of Afro-American researchers lasting almost 200 years. Researchers like Marc Washington, Clyde Winters and Mike are continuing a tradition of scholarship began 20 decades ago. All these contemporary researchers is doing is confirming research , that has not been disconfirmed over the past 200 years.
Aluta continua.....The struggle continues.....
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Wonderful post, Dr Winters. Thanks for sharing this resourceful information.
Posted by Brada-Anansi (Member # 16371) on :
DR Winters wrote;To writers here Blacks can exist in Asia, the Americans and Europe, but they can not be African.Hansberry, DuBois,and J.A. Rogers would never accept this, because they knew that the founders of Asian and American civilization had to have been Africans, since the Kushites spread civilization around the world.
Dr Winters that's a false accusation most of the folks do report on African involvenment in Europe,Asia and possibly in the Americas...What we do not do is take every single phenotype you deemed African..and try to postion them as Africans...even when they had no contact with Africa for hundreds of thousands years..what makes a culture African?..is it not shared biology and environment..way of thinking ie common God concepts and institutions languistic connections. Simple phenotype recognization..is simply not enough..Africans...that's folks with an African Culture can be found in any-part of the world,without need of muddling them up with indiginous Black folks they found there.
AS far as Black folks living else-where because they are not Africans doesn't take away any admiration for their culture and civilizations or common causes I may have in regards to racism,shadism,colonial or X-colonial experience. We can emphasized with each other because we are both Blacks. they are all just black folks Asians or Africans..diffrernt history and delevolopment
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: If you look at the curriculum of almost ANY African studies program, NONE OF THEM deals with African Liberation as a CURRENT EVENT. NONE of them look at Africans in the diaspora STILL in the throes of oppression. NONE of them look at how Africans can be economically, politically or socially liberated.
And THAT has a lot to do with the watering down of African studies, from when it started and had the likes of Dr. Ben, Dr. Clarke and Dr. Jefferies as some of the key scholars. And because of the fall out of some of the so-called 'controversial' subjects that these people taught, African Studies is now devoid of ANY REAL ATTACKS on European colonial oriented societies and cultures as being fundamentally ANTI AFRICAN in any way. Therefore instead of teaching Africans how this system is STILL AGAINST THEM and AGAINST their interests, it largely serves as a way of providing window dressing to the true cause of African studies. Africans are supposed to desire to be FREE and INDEPENDENT of white colonial European cultural, economic and political domination, not to WANT to continue to be part of such a lying, hypocritical, stealing and murderous culture. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING white European colonial culture has GIVEN to Africans or any other non Europeans on this planet, except disease, war and death. There is NOTHING about European colonial culture for Africans to celebrate IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. Everything about European colonial culture is a threat to the continued existence of Africans world wide. And African Studies in its most progressive form is supposed to teach Africans WHY they should not view European colonial culture as a FUTURE for African people and WHY focusing on the liberation of Africans is the ONLY LOGICAL way to guarantee to future success AND PROSPERITY of African people. And if they don't see this then keep in mind the fact that world wide European colonial culture now under the banner GLOBALIZATION is being touted as "the future" for Africans and other people world wide, including all its various and associated myriad offshoots, including NGOS and the United Nations. Anyone with any amount of knowledge of anything about African history would see immediately that this is a DISASTER for African and other people world wide.
Doug , this is your problem you have never studied Afrocentric works or study the history of African Studies. If you had you would have known that African centered scholars left this area back in 1969. As a result, Africanists are mainly people who support the status quo and maintain that African history begins in Nubia, and African people had no history outside Africa, except as slaves.
Instead of attacking Afrocentrism you should read the research of Afrocentric scholars and not just listen to the critics of this field who mainly discuss Afro-American researchers who practice afrocentricity and not the afrocentric social scientists like DuBois, J.A. Rogers and etc.
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Clyde you are seriously deluded. The writers you listed were Pan Africanists and African Nationalists or integrationists, FIRST AND FOREMOST and their historical studies were meant to BOLSTER AND SUPPORT a larger agenda of African liberation. Afrocentrism is a social movement? Where? Social movement to do what? Pan Africanism and African Nationalism are not simply SOCIAL movements. They are NATIONALIST movements meaning building and defending AFRICAN nations and institutions of economic, political and social control RUN BY Africans and FOR Africans. Dubois was an INTEGRATIONIST. He felt that staying WITHIN the American colonial system was THE BEST THING for Africans in America. Garvey was a BLACK NATIONALIST. His was NOT simply a SOCIAL movement. Anyone who thinks this and seriously claims themselves to be a scholar is exposing themselves as a fraud. A social movement seeks to bring change to the existing social structure either working within it or through violent opposition to it. African Nationalism and Pan Africanism in many ways are about totally DESTROYING or LEAVING the existing social structure and building a NEW ONE, with an explicit focus on AFRICA as the PRIORITY for African liberation and independence. Not ironically, W.E.B Du Bois, after spending so much time trying to support Africans staying IN America and AGAINST Garvey and the back to Africa movement, he later moved to Ghana where he died (BECAUSE of the American pressures AGAINST him).
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: DR Winters wrote;To writers here Blacks can exist in Asia, the Americans and Europe, but they can not be African.Hansberry, DuBois,and J.A. Rogers would never accept this, because they knew that the founders of Asian and American civilization had to have been Africans, since the Kushites spread civilization around the world.
Dr Winters that's a false accusation most of the folks do report on African involvenment in Europe,Asia and possibly in the Americas...What we do not do is take every single phenotype you deemed African..and try to postion them as Africans...even when they had no contact with Africa for hundreds of thousands years..what makes a culture African?..is it not shared biology and environment..way of thinking ie common God concepts and institutions languistic connections. Simple phenotype recognization..is simply not enough..Africans...that's folks with an African Culture can be found in any-part of the world,without need of muddling them up with indiginous Black folks they found there.
AS far as Black folks living else-where because they are not Africans doesn't take away any admiration for their culture and civilizations or common causes I may have in regards to racism,shadism,colonial or X-colonial experience. We can emphasized with each other because we are both Blacks. they are all just black folks Asians or Africans..diffrernt history and delevolopment
You just don't get it do you. Africans/Negroes are not the same as Indo-Chinese and Samoan dark skinned people. Afrocentric researchers recognize this difference and would never connect the two.
Yes respect their culture, but when discussing the Mesopotamians, early Europeans and Southeast Asian megalithic cultures, Chinese: Xia and other civilizations we are talking about people from African--not dark skinned Asians like the ones posted by Doug.These scholars based their claim of Africans in these areas on history, linguistics, anthropology and especially craniometrics not a single phenotype . Asians can be dark skinned but craniometrically they are different from Africans.
You spend your time reading solely literature from the Academe. It was never in their interest to tell the truth about African people and their history. Reading the literature of the status quo leaves you absent the knowledge base to really discuss the history of these areas. Therefore you know nothing about the evidence presented by the founders of Afrocentrism. Read instead of making comments without the prior knowledge to give a full examination of the evidence in this matter. It is clear you have not read J.A. Rogers who provides 1000's of references supporting African/Negroes in history. Until you read Afrocentric literature by Afrocentric scholars you will continue to be ignorant of the real history of African people.
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Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: DR Winters wrote;To writers here Blacks can exist in Asia, the Americans and Europe, but they can not be African.Hansberry, DuBois,and J.A. Rogers would never accept this, because they knew that the founders of Asian and American civilization had to have been Africans, since the Kushites spread civilization around the world.
Dr Winters that's a false accusation most of the folks do report on African involvenment in Europe,Asia and possibly in the Americas...What we do not do is take every single phenotype you deemed African..and try to postion them as Africans...even when they had no contact with Africa for hundreds of thousands years..what makes a culture African?..is it not shared biology and environment..way of thinking ie common God concepts and institutions languistic connections. Simple phenotype recognization..is simply not enough..Africans...that's folks with an African Culture can be found in any-part of the world,without need of muddling them up with indiginous Black folks they found there.
AS far as Black folks living else-where because they are not Africans doesn't take away any admiration for their culture and civilizations or common causes I may have in regards to racism,shadism,colonial or X-colonial experience. We can emphasized with each other because we are both Blacks. they are all just black folks Asians or Africans..diffrernt history and delevolopment
You just don't get it do you. Africans/Negroes are not the same as Indo-Chinese and Samoan dark skinned people. Afrocentric researchers recognize this difference and would never connect the two.
Yes respect their culture, but when discussing the Mesopotamians, early Europeans and Southeast Asian megalithic cultures, Chinese: Xia and other civilizations we are talking about people from African--not dark skinned Asians like the ones posted by Doug.
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No Clyde, YOU don't get it. All these people are bound by the fact that they ALL face similar patterns of social, economic, and political disruption and destruction BECAUSE of their dark skin and features. Name ONE of these dark populations that have ECONOMIC, POLITICAL or SOCIAL freedom and are the dominant force in their perspective countries...... By NOT being part of the vision of a global colonial elite which focuses on white skin and specific ethnicities, these people face the same sort of hardships WORLD WIDE, no matter if they are African, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander or anyone else. They are ALL relegated to the lowest rungs of the socoeconomic ladder by WHITE SUPREMACY.
And that is not even getting into the historic and genetic relations of all these people to the FIRST OOA migrations of which they have retained many of the tropical features of the first populations of these regions.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: DR Winters wrote;To writers here Blacks can exist in Asia, the Americans and Europe, but they can not be African.Hansberry, DuBois,and J.A. Rogers would never accept this, because they knew that the founders of Asian and American civilization had to have been Africans, since the Kushites spread civilization around the world.
Dr Winters that's a false accusation most of the folks do report on African involvenment in Europe,Asia and possibly in the Americas...What we do not do is take every single phenotype you deemed African..and try to postion them as Africans...even when they had no contact with Africa for hundreds of thousands years..what makes a culture African?..is it not shared biology and environment..way of thinking ie common God concepts and institutions languistic connections. Simple phenotype recognization..is simply not enough..Africans...that's folks with an African Culture can be found in any-part of the world,without need of muddling them up with indiginous Black folks they found there.
AS far as Black folks living else-where because they are not Africans doesn't take away any admiration for their culture and civilizations or common causes I may have in regards to racism,shadism,colonial or X-colonial experience. We can emphasized with each other because we are both Blacks. they are all just black folks Asians or Africans..diffrernt history and delevolopment
You just don't get it do you. Africans/Negroes are not the same as Indo-Chinese and Samoan dark skinned people. Afrocentric researchers recognize this difference and would never connect the two.
Yes respect their culture, but when discussing the Mesopotamians, early Europeans and Southeast Asian megalithic cultures, Chinese: Xia and other civilizations we are talking about people from African--not dark skinned Asians like the ones posted by Doug.
.
No Clyde, YOU don't get it. All these people are bound by the fact that they ALL face similar patterns of social, economic, and political disruption and destruction BECAUSE of their dark skin and features. Name ONE of these dark populations that have ECONOMIC, POLITICAL or SOCIAL freedom and are the dominant force in their perspective countries...... By NOT being part of the vision of a global colonial elite which focuses on white skin and specific ethnicities, these people face the same sort of hardships WORLD WIDE, no matter if they are African, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander or anyone else. They are ALL relegated to the lowest rungs of the socoeconomic ladder by WHITE SUPREMACY.
And that is not even getting into the historic and genetic relations of all these people to the FIRST OOA migrations of which they have retained many of the tropical features of the first populations of these regions.
I agree with almost everything you say. But you look at history from a political perspective. Afrocentric researchers are not interested in self-esteem building or politics they are truth seekers who want to provide a clear understanding of the world history of Blacks.
You should also read Afrocentric literature. Using the ancient model of history you can not relegate the historic civilizations of Asia to the OOA population. We have history and textual evidence over 6000 years old. This literature proves that the Kushites settle Asia. This means they were not OOA peoples. So I must disagree with your interpretation of the origins of all blacks in Asia.
.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Lion - On another thread; despite all evidence, BrandonP struggles to accept the fact that the Hebrews, and thus Jesus were Black. That because he is thinking with his heart, not his head.
You are doing the same thing regarding sub-Saharan Africans. markellion has posted what appears to be some wonderful sources for the study of that region. And though there is probably some element of B.S. in some of them, the overall truth in them cannot be denied, simply because we can see the evidence of it for ourselves.
You really need to stop looking at our people as mere victims. The fact is that at every step, what happened was due ENTIRELY to their own actions, or lack of action. So as much as I like to beat-up on White people, the fact is that in the sub-Saharan, and perhaps in Europe too, it was entirely the Black mans own fault. And I wouldn't doubt that the Black mans reputation for stupidly grew out of that period, because quite frankly, they look pretty stupid to me too.
Posted by Agbaya (Member # 6729) on :
Thanks for your honesty?
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
You are right Mike about Africans and the slave trade. Walter Rodney, West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade , outlines the involvement of Africans in the trade. He shows how African elites made sure they were not sold as slaves, and how Africans dominated the trade to get Rum and cheap European goods. It also shows how even when the British tried to end the trade African elites continued to trade slaves.
Walter Rodney is an Afro-American professor I believe at Howard.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Agbaya - That is not a useful response. It continues to amaze me how little objective dialog exists for such an important subject.
Perhaps like me, many find it too deflating and depressing to actually research, but you can still talk about it.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: DR Winters wrote;To writers here Blacks can exist in Asia, the Americans and Europe, but they can not be African.Hansberry, DuBois,and J.A. Rogers would never accept this, because they knew that the founders of Asian and American civilization had to have been Africans, since the Kushites spread civilization around the world.
Dr Winters that's a false accusation most of the folks do report on African involvenment in Europe,Asia and possibly in the Americas...What we do not do is take every single phenotype you deemed African..and try to postion them as Africans...even when they had no contact with Africa for hundreds of thousands years..what makes a culture African?..is it not shared biology and environment..way of thinking ie common God concepts and institutions languistic connections. Simple phenotype recognization..is simply not enough..Africans...that's folks with an African Culture can be found in any-part of the world,without need of muddling them up with indiginous Black folks they found there.
AS far as Black folks living else-where because they are not Africans doesn't take away any admiration for their culture and civilizations or common causes I may have in regards to racism,shadism,colonial or X-colonial experience. We can emphasized with each other because we are both Blacks. they are all just black folks Asians or Africans..diffrernt history and delevolopment
You just don't get it do you. Africans/Negroes are not the same as Indo-Chinese and Samoan dark skinned people. Afrocentric researchers recognize this difference and would never connect the two.
Yes respect their culture, but when discussing the Mesopotamians, early Europeans and Southeast Asian megalithic cultures, Chinese: Xia and other civilizations we are talking about people from African--not dark skinned Asians like the ones posted by Doug.
.
No Clyde, YOU don't get it. All these people are bound by the fact that they ALL face similar patterns of social, economic, and political disruption and destruction BECAUSE of their dark skin and features. Name ONE of these dark populations that have ECONOMIC, POLITICAL or SOCIAL freedom and are the dominant force in their perspective countries...... By NOT being part of the vision of a global colonial elite which focuses on white skin and specific ethnicities, these people face the same sort of hardships WORLD WIDE, no matter if they are African, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander or anyone else. They are ALL relegated to the lowest rungs of the socoeconomic ladder by WHITE SUPREMACY.
And that is not even getting into the historic and genetic relations of all these people to the FIRST OOA migrations of which they have retained many of the tropical features of the first populations of these regions.
I agree with almost everything you say. But you look at history from a political perspective. Afrocentric researchers are not interested in self-esteem building or politics they are truth seekers who want to provide a clear understanding of the world history of Blacks.
You should also read Afrocentric literature. Using the ancient model of history you can not relegate the historic civilizations of Asia to the OOA population. We have history and textual evidence over 6000 years old. This literature proves that the Kushites settle Asia. This means they were not OOA peoples. So I must disagree with your interpretation of the origins of all blacks in Asia.
.
Clyde, Africans were the first populations of Asia from 60,000 years ago. Therefore Kushites have nothing to do with the fact that tropically adapted BLACK PEOPLE are the first populations of Asia. Period. Whether or not Africans have continued to travel to Asia SINCE THEN is irrelevant to this. The Papuans are not Africans and have been there for over 60,000 years, along with the Negritoes, Melanesians and all the other aboriginal peoples of Asia and the pacific. They are all black and Kush has nothing to do with the ORIGIN of blacks in Asia.
As I said before, the people you listed were about AFRICAN LIBERATION, not simply writing history for history's sake. The histories they wrote were about correcting distortion IN SUPPORT of African liberation. To this day African Nationalists and Pan Africanists do not necessarily support the agenda of Afrocentrism because it does NOT provide direct and clear support for African Liberation as a goal and agenda. Arguing with whites over the African role in world history is one thing. Liberating Africans from exploitation world wide is totally something else. One is simply a discourse, the other is an ideology, philosophy, plan of action and form of engagement on all levels, economically, philosophically, socially and politically. Arguing over history and its presentation does not produce African liberation as an automatic result.
The two are not the same.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Follow-up to the above:
I has been said that a failure to know history, dooms you to repeat it.
A perfect example is Africa's largest and richest country Nigeria.
In the East, they are fighting a war because they are taking oil from that region and not sharing the wealth with the people who live on the land there.
In the North, they are fighting a war because the people there are Muslims, and they want to create their own country, JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE MUSLIMS!!
So you see, the stupidity continues unabated.
Posted by Agbaya (Member # 6729) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Perhaps like me, many find it too deflating and depressing to actually research, but you can still talk about it.
Nope. That used to be the case until I realised Blacks are what it's *ALL* about.
How can anyone have any more pride on this planet as far as achievements than an African?
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Clyde, Africans were the first populations of Asia from 60,000 years ago. Therefore Kushites have nothing to do with the fact that tropically adapted BLACK PEOPLE are the first populations of Asia. Period. Whether or not Africans have continued to travel to Asia SINCE THEN is irrelevant to this. The Papuans are not Africans and have been there for over 60,000 years, along with the Negritoes, Melanesians and all the other aboriginal peoples of Asia and the pacific. They are all black and Kush has nothing to do with the ORIGIN of blacks in Asia.
As I said before, the people you listed were about AFRICAN LIBERATION, not simply writing history for history's sake. The histories they wrote were about correcting distortion IN SUPPORT of African liberation. To this day African Nationalists and Pan Africanists do not necessarily support the agenda of Afrocentrism because it does NOT provide direct and clear support for African Liberation as a goal and agenda. Arguing with whites over the African role in world history is one thing. Liberating Africans from exploitation world wide is totally something else. One is simply a discourse, the other is an ideology, philosophy, plan of action and form of engagement on all levels, economically, philosophically, socially and politically. Arguing over history and its presentation does not produce African liberation as an automatic result.
The two are not the same.
Historical research and writing history will not produce Liberation. I have taught African and Afro-American history since 1973 and it has not changed the character of my students and their attitudes towards "Liberation". They either felt it or they didn't.
You are being silly. There was no such thing as "Liberation Day", the life and times of DuBois,J.A. Rogers, Blyden, Williams, John Jackson and etc. As a result, they were writing for purposes of research not "Liberation".
You are right Pan-Africanist and Nationalist do not support Afrocentrism because this social science requires research using the normal sciences:Anthropology, linguistics and history. These researchers do not do original research they practice Afrocentricity, not Afrocentrism.
Afrocentricity –is the theorectical perspective found on a African centered consciousness that locates African behaviors within the context of African psychological, cultural and sociological experiences and agency. As a result, it is not the data being used to examine an African phenomenon , it is the approach the researcher uses to illuminate and understand that phenomenon.
As noted previously Afrocentrism examines the history of African and Black people using the ancient model of history. These researchers recognize the social science research methods of linguistics, history, anthropology and archaeology as appropriate means to undertstand and illuminate the past of African and Black people.
Doug you write
quote:
What we do not do is take every single phenotype you deemed African..and try to postion them as Africans...even when they had no contact with Africa for hundreds of thousands years.
No Afrocentric scholar looks at every culture in Asia and the Americas as African. They only point too specific civilizations in Asia and the Americas as African, i.e., the Sumerians and Elamites, Xia and Yi-Shang of China, Indus Valley, megalithic civilizations of Southeast Asia, the Lapita culture of the Pacific, and the Olmec civilization of Mexico. All of these people arrived in Asia and the Americas after 3000 BC. They point to these civilizations because there is aracheological, textual and linguistic evidence pointing to their direct and recent African origins.
How can you write this Doug
quote:
Whether or not Africans have continued to travel to Asia SINCE THEN is irrelevant to this.
This is an ignorant statement. The archaeological, linguistic, anthropological, epigraphic and historical research make it clear that the decendants of the OOA populations did not create and develop the River Valley Civilizations: Sumer, Elam, Indus Valley and Xia China.It was the Kushites who introduced architecture, sciences, agriculture, writing and etc., to ancient China, Sumer-Elam, Minoan Crete and Olmec America. If you don't recognize these people you don't understand the history of the world. Without the Kushites there would be no history to write of these lands. How can an intelligent person like you say the Kushites were "irrelevant". Are you mad?
If you read the work of J.A. Rogers, DuBois and etc. you would know this. But you concentrate on trying to "Liberate" yourself from a white conciousness. This "Liberation will never take place unless you read authentic Afrocentric research by scholars who were expert in their fields.
Your problem is that you don't understand research in a fiield of study. If you understood research in a field of study, you would know that Afrocentrism is a mature social science which has research paradigms recognized in the past that new Afrocentric scholars either confirm or disconfirm through their research. This is why Eurocentric scholars never attack the work of Afrocentric scholars like DuBois, George Jackson, J.A. Rogers and etc. because their research is founded on solid scholarship.
In conclusion, you may talk about "Liberation" in reference to researchers who use Afrocentricity to illuminate information about African people, Afrocentric researchers used proven research methods from the noormal fields of science to illuminate the world history of Black and African people.
.
Posted by Brada-Anansi (Member # 16371) on :
Dr Winters wrote:Samoan dark skinned people. Afrocentric researchers recognize this difference and would never connect the two.
And yet my former boss and navy chief Petty officer Aiina..who happeneds to be a Samoan chief also found a common connection with all of us young black folks...back then when we were...all just boot-camps looking for the next party and spending money like only a sailor would..didn't matter to him if we were AA's Purto-Ricans,Dominicians,Jamaicans,Samoans,and yes even ma boy Nasir who was Egyptian...would take us down to the paint-locker for a private chat and some much needed Up-braiding for not studying enough to make the next rank or getting Jobs dominated by White folks...he did this not because he felt African, but he knew he was black..and felt the racism waay back when he joined up..we could hardly imagine..but felt we could piss away those hard won oppertunites...and he wasn't havning non of it not in his Navy not while he was Black and Samoan.
I don't have a pic of the Ol man...and it probaberly wouldn't be cool to just post a pic espicially if he is still alive and kicking without permission...but if you can take my word for it he looks not unlike Adolph Ceaser only with heavier features and a booming voice...Nuff respect..... Chief Aiina. Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Loved Adolph in "A Soldiers Story". The story he told about an incident in WW I Europe, struck a nerve.
Brada-Anansi - Now I understand your sometimes "Off Nature" knowing Navy standards, it is probably required of swabbies.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: Dr Winters wrote:Samoan dark skinned people. Afrocentric researchers recognize this difference and would never connect the two.
And yet my former boss and navy chief Petty officer Aiina..who happeneds to be a Samoan chief also found a common connection with all of us young black folks...back then when we were...all just boot-camps looking for the next party and spending money like only a sailor would..didn't matter to him if we were AA's Purto-Ricans,Dominicians,Jamaicans,Samoans,and yes even ma boy Nasir who was Egyptian...would take us down to the paint-locker for a private chat and some much needed Up-braiding for not studying enough to make the next rank or getting Jobs dominated by White folks...he did this not because he felt African, but he knew he was black..and felt the racism waay back when he joined up..we could hardly imagine..but felt we could piss away those hard won oppertunites...and he wasn't havning non of it not in his Navy not while he was Black and Samoan.
I don't have a pic of the Ol man...and it probaberly wouldn't be cool to just post a pic espicially if he is still alive and kicking without permission...but if you can take my word for it he looks not unlike Adolph Ceaser only with heavier features and a booming voice...Nuff respect..... Chief Aiina.
Good post. My son was in the Navy too so I know that you guys may have been tight. The Samoans are interesting because the research suggest that there origins lie among the Fijians. Maybe there was a mix between the Samoans and Indo-Chinese people that explains this group.
Even during WWII colored people connected. During the War my wifes uncle claims that he was captured by Japanese who took his gun and killed the whites. So a color bond can exist between colored people.
But in this thread we are talking about Afrocentrism, a social science field. Afrocentrism is not concerned simply with color--this is not enough. It is about using evidence to support the existence of African people in Asia based on archaeology, linguistics and etc.
I have detected a relationship between many Oceanian languages and African langauges but I have never researched the possibility of a Samoan connection.
.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Clyde, Africans were the first populations of Asia from 60,000 years ago. Therefore Kushites have nothing to do with the fact that tropically adapted BLACK PEOPLE are the first populations of Asia. Period. Whether or not Africans have continued to travel to Asia SINCE THEN is irrelevant to this. The Papuans are not Africans and have been there for over 60,000 years, along with the Negritoes, Melanesians and all the other aboriginal peoples of Asia and the pacific. They are all black and Kush has nothing to do with the ORIGIN of blacks in Asia.
As I said before, the people you listed were about AFRICAN LIBERATION, not simply writing history for history's sake. The histories they wrote were about correcting distortion IN SUPPORT of African liberation. To this day African Nationalists and Pan Africanists do not necessarily support the agenda of Afrocentrism because it does NOT provide direct and clear support for African Liberation as a goal and agenda. Arguing with whites over the African role in world history is one thing. Liberating Africans from exploitation world wide is totally something else. One is simply a discourse, the other is an ideology, philosophy, plan of action and form of engagement on all levels, economically, philosophically, socially and politically. Arguing over history and its presentation does not produce African liberation as an automatic result.
The two are not the same.
Historical research and writing history will not produce Liberation. I have taught African and Afro-American history since 1973 and it has not changed the character of my students and their attitudes towards "Liberation". They either felt it or they didn't.
You are being silly. There was no such thing as "Liberation Day", the life and times of DuBois,J.A. Rogers, Blyden, Williams, John Jackson and etc. As a result, they were writing for purposes of research not "Liberation".
You are right Pan-Africanist and Nationalist do not support Afrocentrism because this social science requires research using the normal sciences:Anthropology, linguistics and history. These researchers do not do original research they practice Afrocentricity, not Afrocentrism.
Afrocentricity –is the theorectical perspective found on a African centered consciousness that locates African behaviors within the context of African psychological, cultural and sociological experiences and agency. As a result, it is not the data being used to examine an African phenomenon , it is the approach the researcher uses to illuminate and understand that phenomenon.
As noted previously Afrocentrism examines the history of African and Black people using the ancient model of history. These researchers recognize the social science research methods of linguistics, history, anthropology and archaeology as appropriate means to undertstand and illuminate the past of African and Black people.
Doug you write
quote:
What we do not do is take every single phenotype you deemed African..and try to postion them as Africans...even when they had no contact with Africa for hundreds of thousands years.
No Afrocentric scholar looks at every culture in Asia and the Americas as African. They only point too specific civilizations in Asia and the Americas as African, i.e., the Sumerians and Elamites, Xia and Yi-Shang of China, Indus Valley, megalithic civilizations of Southeast Asia, the Lapita culture of the Pacific, and the Olmec civilization of Mexico. All of these people arrived in Asia and the Americas after 3000 BC. They point to these civilizations because there is aracheological, textual and linguistic evidence pointing to their direct and recent African origins.
How can you write this Doug
quote:
Whether or not Africans have continued to travel to Asia SINCE THEN is irrelevant to this.
This is an ignorant statement. The archaeological, linguistic, anthropological, epigraphic and historical research make it clear that the decendants of the OOA populations did not create and develop the River Valley Civilizations: Sumer, Elam, Indus Valley and Xia China.It was the Kushites who introduced architecture, sciences, agriculture, writing and etc., to ancient China, Sumer-Elam, Minoan Crete and Olmec America. If you don't recognize these people you don't understand the history of the world. Without the Kushites there would be no history to write of these lands. How can an intelligent person like you say the Kushites were "irrelevant". Are you mad?
If you read the work of J.A. Rogers, DuBois and etc. you would know this. But you concentrate on trying to "Liberate" yourself from a white conciousness. This "Liberation will never take place unless you read authentic Afrocentric research by scholars who were expert in their fields.
Your problem is that you don't understand research in a fiield of study. If you understood research in a field of study, you would know that Afrocentrism is a mature social science which has research paradigms recognized in the past that new Afrocentric scholars either confirm or disconfirm through their research. This is why Eurocentric scholars never attack the work of Afrocentric scholars like DuBois, George Jackson, J.A. Rogers and etc. because their research is founded on solid scholarship.
In conclusion, you may talk about "Liberation" in reference to researchers who use Afrocentricity to illuminate information about African people, Afrocentric researchers used proven research methods from the noormal fields of science to illuminate the world history of Black and African people.
.
People like Blyden weren't just teaching history just to teach history Clyde. They were teaching history to provide support for the idea of WHY Africans in the diaspora needed to UNITE and go back to Africa in order to BUILD strong African communities there AS A FORM OF LIBERATION from the oppression of the white colonial system which NEVER INTENDS for Africans to be anything other than what they are now: minorities and bit players in SOMEONE ELSE'S program.
So again, you are wrong in trying to pretend that these people were simply historians, when that is not the case.
Like I said, teaching history WITHOUT A PLAN for liberation means nothing. Pan Africanists and African Nationalists are about PLANNING and STRATEGIZING for African liberation, with a focus on AFRICA as the key for this liberation. It is not simply about teaching history and HOPING someone will WANT to be liberated. That is pure nonsense. Marcus Garvey as a BLACK NATIONALIST WHO HAD A PLAN and was the most powerful force behind many of the modern African movements in the U.S. and he was NOT simply about telling history and waiting for someone to WANT to be liberated. Again, you are PURPOSELY distorting the facts and that is a PERFECT example of why many Pan Africanists and African Nationalists do not support so-called Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity as doing anything for the cause of liberating African people. They don't even teach the facts of the historical struggle accurately in the first place.
Not only that but the rest of your post is equally silly as it tries to TALK AROUND the fact that blacks ARE the first populations of Asian and the Pacific. PERIOD. There was no other FIRST population in Asia OTHER THAN the blacks. Therefore, what on earth does Kush have to do with the movement of blacks into Asia over 60,000 years ago? Nothing Clyde.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
^Ah the enthusiasm of youth!
The problem with that Doug, is that the radicals of the sixties who having traveled TO Africa, to do as you say, found out two things.
1) They weren't really Africans - culturally that is.
2) Africans didn't want them leading them to ANYTHING!
Which is exactly as it should be.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Brada-Anansi - When you get a chance, please get a couple of your shipmates to polish that up a bit.
Posted by Asar Imhotep (Member # 14487) on :
I can see both perspectives in this debate. I think what Doug is missing is the fact that Dr. Winters is speaking on METHOD of research and he (Doug) is speaking on PURPOSE. To me there is no difference in the purpose of these scholars. One wants to liberate the mind, the other on a political plane.
I think Doug should expand his perspective a little bit and see that Afrocentric scholars have the same ultimate goal in mind, but seek it in different ways.
Afrocentricity is a method of interpreting history using the lens of African cultures. Afrocentricity would never interpret NTR (netcher) as "Gods" because African cultures understand them as "intelligent forces" that shape material existence. The NTR is energy in its purist form; that's why the same word in Amarigna ANATARA means "purify" and refers not only to great,knowledgeable men and women, but to ANCESTORS who are in a "pure" state of being.
Afrocentricity seeks to better understand and recapture how we envisioned the world prior to colonization in an effort to build social institutions grounded on a perspective and ethics that is lasting and won't change when the politics change. That's the problem with Africa now and the many coups that happen on a yearly basis. Much political talk, but no ethics, no philosophy of life and community. They lack UBUNTU.
I don't care what anyone says about Karenga, Karenga has left a social institution in place that addresses ethics, philosophy and purpose for being human (Kawaida, Kwanzaa, etc.). I have yet to feel anything coming out the nationalist camp that compares.
One of the things that makes Diop special is he was trying to get Africa united based on shared history. What he realized however that all of the research on linguistics, anthropology, archeology etc., means nothing if they don't have a shared culture. I see Afrocentrism as a paradigm that paves the way for a shared culture because it is Afrocentricity that seeks to understand and interpret culture from the agency of African people in an effort to build upon it and develop it and spread it amongst Africans in the diaospora.
Pan-Africanists don't deal with culture. Their focus is primarily history as events and politics. That can't be all there is in the "struggle of liberation." I think there is room for both methods as they serve the same purpose. Because I don't care if you do create a political state of Africans from the diaspora, if they see the world from a Eurocentric cultural lens, it will be caos and disharmony in the new state.
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
Mike and Ahmad don't forget this:
Just as your African elites supposedly sold you, similarly your Negro American compatriots oversaw and policed the plantation system.
The Maroons of Jamaica served as police for the British to get back runaway slaves.
Elite southern Negro-Americans were also slave owners in their own right.
The first man to die in John Brown's war was a negro. He accidentally bumped into John Brown's team as they crept up to assassinate the first plantation white owning family on their hit list. My negro boy fled on seeing the armed men and made to raise alarm to warn the white family.
He got shot in the back as he was running towards the big masa house.
By your logic Ahmad and Mike, Afro-Americans are guilty of collaborating with slavers?
Would you ever draw such a deduction?
Let us respect the spirit of the fallen and the departed. Those who stood up to fight for Africa and were killed by the weight of the slave system. Let us respect, the African souls which were crushed in their agonies, from losing their sons, their daughters and their blood relatives to the wicked deeds of slavers.
Let us remember those that fell dead fighting off the slave raiders, those whose arms and legs were chopped off, those who survived with permanent injuries in their physic and their psyche.
Let us respect those that had to live in difficult circumstances and made choices that may seem compromising in restrospect.
Let us celebrate forever, those wise fathers and mothers who fought for us and protected Africans from the depradations of the pale wolf.
Let's keep in mind the deeds of Queen Nzinga, Oba Ewuare, Yaa Ashentewaa, and thousands of other nameless patriots who fought and ran away to fight again another day.
Again, I cannot really believe that I am reading the both of you properly. It is just too sad considering the fallacious implication of your so called realism.
I will leave it at that.
Atulu oma omalu...atulu ofeke ofenye isi no ofia! (Speak subtleties to wisdom and the wise understands, speak such to the clowns and they get lost in their misconception).
Lion!
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: I can see both perspectives in this debate. I think what Doug is missing is the fact that Dr. Winters is speaking on METHOD of research and he (Doug) is speaking on PURPOSE. To me there is no difference in the purpose of these scholars. One wants to liberate the mind, the other on a political plane.
I think Doug should expand his perspective a little bit and see that Afrocentric scholars have the same ultimate goal in mind, but seek it in different ways.
Afrocentricity is a method of interpreting history using the lens of African cultures. Afrocentricity would never interpret NTR (netcher) as "Gods" because African cultures understand them as "intelligent forces" that shape material existence. The NTR is energy in its purist form; that's why the same word in Amarigna ANATARA means "purify" and refers not only to great,knowledgeable men and women, but to ANCESTORS who are in a "pure" state of being.
Afrocentricity seeks to better understand and recapture how we envisioned the world prior to colonization in an effort to build social institutions grounded on a perspective and ethics that is lasting and won't change when the politics change. That's the problem with Africa now and the many coups that happen on a yearly basis. Much political talk, but no ethics, no philosophy of life and community. They lack UBUNTU.
I don't care what anyone says about Karenga, Karenga has left a social institution in place that addresses ethics, philosophy and purpose for being human (Kawaida, Kwanzaa, etc.). I have yet to feel anything coming out the nationalist camp that compares.
One of the things that makes Diop special is he was trying to get Africa united based on shared history. What he realized however that all of the research on linguistics, anthropology, archeology etc., means nothing if they don't have a shared culture. I see Afrocentrism as a paradigm that paves the way for a shared culture because it is Afrocentricity that seeks to understand and interpret culture from the agency of African people in an effort to build upon it and develop it and spread it amongst Africans in the diaospora.
Pan-Africanists don't deal with culture. Their focus is primarily history as events and politics. That can't be all there is in the "struggle of liberation." I think there is room for both methods as they serve the same purpose. Because I don't care if you do create a political state of Africans from the diaspora, if they see the world from a Eurocentric cultural lens, it will be caos and disharmony in the new state.
Pan Africanists and African Nationalists are about concrete plans of action by using history and political analysis as the LOGICAL BASIS for the need to build AFRICAN NATIONS that defend and nurture AFRICANS culturally, politically, socially and culturally. Like I said, SOME Africans BELIEVE that the system of oppression IS the solution for Africa and they seek to work WITHIN that system as the way forward. But that is NOT based on any understanding of history OR current events in the view of the NATIONALISTS who feel ultimately that without a NATION or NATIONS to stand up for and push the agenda of Africans, that Africans are DOOMED to stay relegated to the bottom of everybody else's ladder. And no everyone whether Pan Africanist, African Nationalist or Afrocentrist is all of the same opinion on everything concerning the way forward for Africans. Just as there were distinctions between King and Malcolm, Garvey and Dubois and others, there are distinct differences of approach and overall purpose within all of these ideologies.
However, the main difference between the Nationalists is in the name itself: NATION. They want THEIR OWN and want a plan for an AFRICAN NATION free and independent from exploitation and the corruption that has historically DESTROYED African people and culture. It is not correct to say that the nationalists don't care about culture. They DO care about culture, but they also care MORE about the DESTRUCTION of African culture, as well as people, nations and languages because of the HISTORY of exploitation and oppression. This means that if the history of such systematic DESTRUCTION is to be understood properly, then it means that THE SYSTEM ITSELF MUST be eradicated and replaced in order to properly strengthen and reinforce the cultures of Africa. According to this form of analysis, the two CANNOT coexist. One exists to the detriment and destruction of the other and no amount of celebrating the history of those cultures will STOP them from being wiped out WITHOUT a concrete plan TO BUILD NATIONS that nurture and protect those cultures, just as whites build NATIONS to nurture and protect the culture, history and identity of whites TO THE DISADVANTAGE of all others.
As an example of what I mean, the NATIONALISTS look at the history of land grabs, murder and corruption as part and parcel of the SYSTEM of white colonial exploitation. They do not expect such a system EVER to benefit Africans as it has been in Africa for over 200 years and NOT AT ALL during that time has it done ANYTHING for Africans. So why would anyone expect ANYTHING DIFFERENT from that system in the next 200 years. This point of view certainly looks at the current affairs in Africa, with foreign backed corruption, land grabs, starvation and poverty as nothing more of a CONTINUATION of the same system of oppression, that will never EVER produce anything different. This system has NEVER fed Africans, NEVER clothed Africans, never EDUCATED Africans and NEVER built infrastructure for Africans. Therefore based on the DOCUMENTED HISTORY of this system being AGAINST AFRICANS, why should anyone want to be a PART OF IT and expect anything DIFFERENT? But again, that is also based on a PROPER EDUCATION and UNDERSTANDING of the history of this system to begin with as GLOBALIZATION started 400 years ago with the British crown companies, including the Dutch and East and West India companies. ALL of these companies were based on the principle of building WEALTH for European elites by STEALING it from everyone else. Globalization is simply a continuation of this same framework. And we all know what that framework has done FOR Africans...... Therefore, if one truly WANTS to be free of systematic exploitation of African people and culture, what OTHER alternative is there other than the struggle for strong independent African NATIONS that defend and support African people and culture and their political and economic interests? This system was built to do what it has done to Africans and will continue to do so because that is the sole reason for its existence. There is no benefit in it for Africans, just like there is no benefit from having a bomb in your mouth.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Some people believe that Afrocentrism was founded by Jews. Although this is the view of many, Afrocentrism, as a mature social science that was founded by Afro-Americans almost 200 years ago.
These men and women provided scholarship based on contemporary archaeological and historical research the African/Black origination of civilization throughout the world. These Afro-American scholars, mostly trained at Harvard University (one of the few Universities that admitted Blacks in the 19th Century) provide the scientific basis for Afrocantrism and the global role played by African people in civilizing the world.
Afrocentrism and the africalogical study of ancient Black civilizations was began by Afro-Americans.
Edward Blyden
The foundation of any mature science is its articulation in an authoritive text (Kuhn, 1996, 136). The africalogical textbooks published by Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) provided the vocabulary themes for further afrocentric social science research.
The pedagogy for ancient africalogical research was well established by the end of the 19th century by African American researchers well versed in the classical languages and knowledge of Greek and Latin. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) in the Freedom Journal, were the first African Americans to discuss and explain the "Ancient Model" of history.
These afrocentric social scientists used the classics to prove that the Blacks founded civilization in Egypt, Ethiopia, Babylon and Ninevah. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) made it clear that archaeological research supported the classical, or "Ancient Model" of history.
Edward Blyden (1869) also used classical sources to discuss the ancient history of African people. In his work he not only discussed the evidence for Blacks in West Asia and Egypt, he also discussed the role of Blacks in ancient America (Blyden, 1869, 78).
By 1883, africalogical researchers began to publish book on African American history. G.W. Williams (1883) wrote the first textbook on African American history. In the History of the Negro Race in America, Dr. Williams provided the schema for all future africalogical history text.
Dr. Williams (1883) confirmed the classical traditions for Blacks founding civilization in both Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia) and West Asia. In addition, to confirming the "Ancient Model" of history, Dr. Williams (1883) also mentioned the presence of Blacks in Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula. Dr. Williams was trained at Howard.
A decade later R.L. Perry (1893) also presented evidence to confirm the classical traditions of Blacks founding Egypt, Greece and the Mesopotamian civilization. He also provided empirical evidence for the role of Blacks in Phoenicia, thus increasing the scope of the ASAH paradigms.
Pauline E. Hopkins (1905) added further articulation of the ASAH paradigms of the application of these paradigms in understanding the role of Blacks in West Asia and Africa. Hopkins (1905) provided further confirmation of the role of Blacks in Southeast Asia, and expanded the scope of africalogical research to China (1905).
This review of the 19th century africalogical social scientific research indicate confirmation of the "Ancient Model" for the early history of Blacks. We also see a movement away from self-published africalogical research, and publication of research, and the publication of research articles on afrocentric themes, to the publication of textbooks.
It was in these books that the paradigms associated with the "Ancient Model" and ASAH were confirmed, and given reliability by empirical research. It was these texts which provided the pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of the africalogical normal social science.
The afrocentric textbooks of Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) proved the reliability and validity of the ASAH paradigms. The discussion in these text of contemporary scientific research findings proving the existence of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Nubia-Sudan (Kush), Mesopotamia, Palestine and North Africa lent congruency to the classical literature which pointed to the existence of these civilizations and these African origins ( i.e., the children of Ham= Khem =Kush?).
The authors of the africalogical textbooks reported the latest archaeological and anthropological findings. The archaeological findings reported in these textbooks added precision to their analysis of the classical and Old Testament literature. This along with the discovery of artifacts on the ancient sites depicting Black\African people proved that the classical and Old Testament literature, as opposed to the "Aryan Model", objectively identified the Black\African role in ancient history. And finally, these textbooks confirmed that any examination of references in the classical literature to Blacks in Egypt, Kush, Mesopotamia and Greece\Crete exhibited constancy to the evidence recovered from archaeological excavations in the Middle East and the Aegean. They in turn disconfirmed the "Aryan Model", which proved to be a falsification of the authentic history of Blacks in early times.
The creation of africalogical textbooks provided us with a number of facts revealing the nature of the afrocentric ancient history paradigms. They include a discussion of:
1) the artifacts depicting Blacks found at ancient sites
recovered through archaeological excavation;
2) the confirmation of the validity of the classical and Old
Testament references to Blacks as founders of civilization in Africa and Asia;
3) the presence of isolated pockets of Blacks existing outside Africa; and
4) that the contemporary Arab people in modern Egypt are not the descendants of the ancient Egyptians.
The early africalogical textbooks also outlined the africalogical themes research should endeavor to study. A result, of the data collected by the africalogical ancient history research pioneers led to the development of three facts by the end of the 19th century, which needed to be solved by the afrocentric paradigms: (1) What is the exact relationship of ancient Egypt, to Blacks in other parts of Africa;
(2) How and when did Blacks settle America, Asia and Europe;
(3) What are the contributions of the Blacks to the rise, and cultural expression ancient Black\African civilizations;
(4) Did Africans settle parts of America in ancient times.
As you can see the structure of Afrocentrism were made long before Boas and the beginning of the 20th Century.In fact , I would not be surprised if Boas learned what he talked about from the early Afrocentric researchers discussed in this post.
As you can see Afro-Americans have be writing about the Global history of ancient Black civilizations for almost 200 years. It was Afro-Americans who first mentioned the African civilizations of West Africa and the Black roots of Egypt. These Afro-Americans made Africa a historical part of the world.
Afro-American scholars not only highlighted African history they also discussed the African/Black civilizations developed by African people outside Africa over a hundred years before Bernal and Boas.
Your history of what you call "negrocentric" or Black Studies is all wrong. It was DuBois who founded Black/Negro Studies, especially Afro-American studies given his work on the slave trade and sociological and historical studies of Afro-Americans. He mentions in the World and Africa about the Jews and other Europeans who were attempting to take over the field. Hansberry There is no one who can deny the fact that Leo Hansberry founded African studies in the U.S., not the Jews.Hansberry was a professor at Howard University.
Moreover, Bernal did not initiate any second wave of "negro/Blackcentric" study for ancient Egyptian civilization. Credit for this social science push is none other than Chiek Diop, who makes it clear that he was influenced by DuBois.
DuBois
These scholars recognized that the people of Southeast Asia and Indo-China were dark skined, some darker than African and Afro-American people. But when they discussed Blacks in Asia they were talking about people of African descent.
In conclusion, Afrocentrism is a mature social science. A social science firmly rooted in the scholarship of Afro-American researchers lasting almost 200 years. Researchers like Marc Washington, Clyde Winters and Mike are continuing a tradition of scholarship began 20 decades ago. All these contemporary researchers is doing is confirming research , that has not been disconfirmed over the past 200 years.
Aluta continua.....The struggle continues.....
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Winters, C.A. (1979). Manding Scripts in the New World", Journal of African Civilizations, l(1), 80-97.
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in Science:Ancient and Modern. (ed.) by Ivan van Sertima, (New Brunswick: Transaction Books) pp.208-215.
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Winters, C.A. (1984c). Africans found first American Civilization , African Monitor, l , pp.16-18.
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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: [QUOTE]People like Blyden weren't just teaching history just to teach history Clyde. They were teaching history to provide support for the idea of WHY Africans in the diaspora needed to UNITE and go back to Africa in order to BUILD strong African communities there AS A FORM OF LIBERATION from the oppression of the white colonial system which NEVER INTENDS for Africans to be anything other than what they are now: minorities and bit players in SOMEONE ELSE'S program.
So again, you are wrong in trying to pretend that these people were simply historians, when that is not the case.
Like I said, teaching history WITHOUT A PLAN for liberation means nothing. Pan Africanists and African Nationalists are about PLANNING and STRATEGIZING for African liberation, with a focus on AFRICA as the key for this liberation. It is not simply about teaching history and HOPING someone will WANT to be liberated. That is pure nonsense. Marcus Garvey as a BLACK NATIONALIST WHO HAD A PLAN and was the most powerful force behind many of the modern African movements in the U.S. and he was NOT simply about telling history and waiting for someone to WANT to be liberated. Again, you are PURPOSELY distorting the facts and that is a PERFECT example of why many Pan Africanists and African Nationalists do not support so-called Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity as doing anything for the cause of liberating African people. They don't even teach the facts of the historical struggle accurately in the first place.
Not only that but the rest of your post is equally silly as it tries to TALK AROUND the fact that blacks ARE the first populations of Asian and the Pacific. PERIOD. There was no other FIRST population in Asia OTHER THAN the blacks. Therefore, what on earth does Kush have to do with the movement of blacks into Asia over 60,000 years ago? Nothing Clyde.
I agree with you that the Kushites have nothing to do with 60kya. Afrocentric scholars mainly write about Blacks 5000-7000 years ago who founded civilization.
Your discussion of OOA has nothing to do with Afrocentrism as it was organized around the "Ancient Model".
Blyden did advocate the Back to Africa movement but he never encouraged Blacks to return to Egypt one of his major areas of research.
I repeat we are not talking about politics we are talking about a field of research/study.
.
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Posted by Egmond Codfried (Member # 15683) on :
Dr. Clyde Winters is truly a fearsome thing to behold. I've borrowed this from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice.
Clyde Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois. Here he attended Public School and graduated from DuSable High School in 1969.
Winters is a graduate of the University of Illinois-Urbana. Here he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Anthropology and History. At Chicago State University he earned a Masters degree in Special Education. He has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Loyola University Chicago.
Winters has written extensively on anthropological, linguistic, special education and comparative education themes. His articles have appeared in Afrique Noire, Journal of Modern African Studies, Contemporary Review, Negro Journal of Education, Journal of Black Studies, International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, Journal of Tamil Studies, Southeast Asian Anthropologist and Central Asiatic Journal, to name a few.
Winters' special interest include Neurobiological learning and instruction, learning disabilities among inmates, Dravidian and African linguistics and ancient scripts. He has deciphered the Libyco-Berber, the Meroitic, the Olmec and the Indus Valley writings.
Clyde Has taught at the elementary, high school and college levels. During this period he has attempted to present a multicultural attitude toward education which recognizes that each student can learn through his own individual effort , and initiative.
Winters is married and the father of six children. This has allowed him to understand that each child and adult brings a unique attitude to learning, that should be nourished by teachers so they can get the most out of each student they teach. His motto is "Education is Good, but Boldness is Better".
Editor, African Library Briefs, for Young Readers, Ames, Iowa,1974-1975.
Editor, Umoja Watu, Ames, Iowa, 1974-1975.
Contributing Editor, Afrikan Mwalimu, 1975-1980.
Associate Editor, Journal of African Civilization, 1979-1984
Contributing Editor,Afrique Histoire, 1982-1987.
Professional Societies
Black World Foundation 1970-1975
Tanzania Historical Association 1972-1976
African Heritage Studies Association 1974-1976
Educators to Africa Association 1970-1976
Asian Studies Association 1972-1993
Association for Supervision 1987-Present
National Council for Social Studies 1988-1992
Illinois Adult and Continuing Educators Association, 1990-1995
Central States Anthropological Society 1996-Present
Council for Learning Disabilities 1990-Present
American Anthropological Association 1996-Present
American Educational Research Association 1995-Present
Professional Duties
IACEA Section Head: Correctional Education
Biographical Note: International Who's Who in Asian Studies, Hong
Kong, 1979.
Member Proposal Committee for Rajavajan Award, of the Tamil University for Creative Writing in Tamil, 1983--
Reader and Evaluator of Ph.D., thesis in Social Sciences for the University of Kerala, Trivandrum, India, 1987--
Books
Clyde Winters, Career Development Activies for Language Arts and Social Studies (6th Grade Social Studies Lessons). Chicago: Chicago Public Schools, 1998.
_____________, Structured Curriculum Handbook A Resource Guide for Grade Six Social Science First Semester. Chicago: Chicago Public Schools, 1999.
______________, (Program of Study Committee).Expecting More: Program of Study Grades 9& 10 Social Science. Chicago: Chicago Board of Education, 1997.
______________, (Program of Study Committee).Expecting More: Program of Study Grades 6, 7& 8 Social Science. Chicago: Chicago Board of Education, 1998.
PUBLICATIONS
Clyde A. Winters,"Contemporary Trends in Traditional Chinese Islamic Education". INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF EDUCATION, 30(4):475-479.
___________________. 1987. "Koranic Education and Militant Islam in Nigeria". INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF EDUCATION, 33(2):171-185.
___________________. 1987b. "Traditional and contemporary Trends in Chinese Muslim Education",MUSLIM EDUCATION QUARTERLY ,4(4):52-65.
___________________. 1988. "Contemporary Trends in Chinese Muslim Education". MUSLIM EDUCATION QUARTERLY,4(4):52-65.
___________________. 1988b. "ISLAMIZATION AND EDUCATION IN MUSLIM CHINA".THE MUSLIM WORLD LEAGUE JOURNAL, 15:18-23.
___________________. 1988c. "Psychology Test and Black Police Recruits",LABOR LAW JOURNAL, 39(9):634-636.
___________________. 1988d. "Police Quotas", CHICAGO TRIBUNE,9 December,Sec.1, p.26.
___________________. 1989. "Psychology Test, Suits and Minority Applicants", THE POLICE JOURNAL,LXll (l):22-30.
__________________. 1989b. "Chicago Female Police", THE POLICE JOURNAL,LXll (2):136-142.
__________________. 1990. "Problems of Variance in the Utility of the MMPI in the Selection of Metropolitan Police",THE POLICE JOURNAL,LXlll (2):121-128.
___________________. 1991. "Informal Assessment of Special Needs Adults and K-W-L-Plus in Correctional Education". ADULT EDUCATION Connection 4(3):5.
___________________. 1991b. "Hispanics and Policing in Chicago and Cook County, Illinois". THE POLICE JOURNAL, LXlV (l):71-75.
Mathews,M &________. 1992. Bibliotherapy and the Life centered curriculum for Offender populations in prison, Yearbook of Correctional Education, pp. 61-68.
___________________. 1993. "A Theoretical Model for Correctional Education in the U.S.". THE POLICE JOURNAL,LXVI (2):211-219.
-----------------, et al. 1993. "The Role of a Computer-Managed Instructional System's Prescriptive Curriculum in the Basic
Skills Areas of Math and Reading Scores for Correctional
Pre-Trial Detainees". THE JOURNAL OF CORRECTIONAL EDUCATION, 44(1):10-19.
----------------.1993. "The Therapeutic use of the Essay in Corrections", JOURNAL OF CORRECTIONAL EDUCATION,44(2):58-61.
----------,et al..1993. "An Education Policy for Large Jail Programs:A Case Study". THE JOURNAL OF CORRECTIONAL EDUCATION, 44, (3): 124-133.
-------------------.1993. "Making Math Easy for the Unique Learner".ADULT & CONTINUING EDUCATION TODAY,XXIII (10):5.
------------------.1994. "Non-Standard English and Reading". ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English and Communication. ED 358 438. 13 pp.
__________________.1994. "The Application of Neurobiological Research in Special Education Instruction". Special Issue: Knowledge Production and Educational Change for Democratic Renewal, PART II: Implications for Educational Policy: Transforming Educational Practice. Thresholds in Education, 20 (2 & 3), 36-42.
_________________.1995a. "Inmate Opinions Towards Education and Participation in Prison Education Programmes". The Police Journal, LXVII, 39-50.
_________________.1995b. IACEA Survey of correctional educators. Keeping Pace, (Newsletter Illinois Adult and Continuing Educators Association,Inc.) 13 (1), Spring, p.15.
________________.1995c. Neurobiological Learning and Adult Literacy, ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading & Communication Skills. ED 385 740.
________________.1995d. Gang's, Drugs and Violence. Teacher's Guide. Chicago: Gangs, Drugs and Violence Prevention Consultants.
________________.1996a. "Adult Math Learning Difficulty Among Offender Students". The Criminologist 20, (2), 75-80.
_________________.1996c. "The Effects of Never-married Parenthood on Offender Non-marital Fatherhood". Police Journal LXIX (3), 262-265.
________________.1996d. "Adult Learning and Multisensory Teaching. ERIC Clearinghouse . ED 393 966. 16p.
________________.1996e. Concentrations of Poverty and Urban Gangs. The Criminologist, 20 (4), 217-228.
________________.1996f. Foundations of the Afrocentric Ancient History Curriculum, The Negro Educational Review, XLVII (3-4), 214-217.
________________.1997. Learning Disabilities, Crime, Delinquency, and Special Education Placement. Adolescence , 32 (126), 451-62.
_______________. 1998. Urban American youth and correctional education.The Criminologist, 22(1), 15-20.
_____________. 1998a.Ebonics and special education placement. The Negro Educational Review, 19 (1-2), 83-86.
____________. 1998b.Communication theory and its implication for teaching and offender rehabilitation. The Criminologist, 22 (3),131-136.
___________.2000."Making math easy for the learning disabled adolescents: Neurobiology and the use of math manipulatives. Review Journal of Philosophy and Social Science, 25 (1&2), 58-68.
___________.2000. Neurological Basis Cognition, Emotion and Classroom Instruction. Research Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences , 25 (1&2), 39-44.
____________.2000.Motivations behind inmate participation in correctional education programs.Research Journal of Philosophy and Social Science, 25 (Special Issue), 28-58.
____________.2001.Brain based learning and special education.Research Journal of Philosophy and Social Science, 26 (1&2),143-181.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
"Learning Disabilities and Correctional Education",13th Annual Illinois Adult and Continuing Education Association (IACEA), March 27,1992. Oak Brook, Illinois.
"Making Math Easy for the Learning Disabled",Partnerships for Literacy X Conference, February 3,1993. Chicago, Illinois.
"One + One= Success: Hands On Math for Adult Learners", 14th Annual IACEA Conference, March 23, 1993. Springfield, Ill.
"Creating High Interest Reading Materials for the Older ABE Student",2nd Annual Adult Learning Skills Program Conference, April 17, 1993. Chicago.
"Communication Theory and Its Implications for Teaching and Offender Rehabilitation", International Correctional Education Association 48th Annual Conference, July 13,1993
. Chicago.
"The Applications of Neurobiological Research to Special Education Instruction", 3rd Annual Research Symposium, Thresholds in Education Foundation, October 8,1993. Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, Illinois.
"Enriching the Multicultural World and U.S. History Curriculum" , Multicultural Forum, The Chicago Teachers Union, February, 22, 1995. Chicago, Illinois.
"The Potential of the Neurobiological Knowledge Base on the Education of Individuals with Learning Disabilities, 17th International Conference on Learning Disabilities, October 27, 1995. Chicago.
"Resources on Islam in Central Asia", Resources for Central Asian Studies workshop on Contemporary Methodologies, May 19, 1996. Ohio State University: Middle East Studies Center. Columbus Ohio.
"Egyptian Tour", Creative Classrooms. September 27, 1997. Chicago Foundation for Education. Chicago Illinois.
"Biblioconscientization and Multicultural Literacy", 19th International Conference on Learning Disabilities, October 25, 1997. Arlington, Virginia.
"A Multicultural/ Global View of Good Teaching", Education and Social Transition in a Global Society, November 1, 1997. Midwest Comparative and International Education Society Conference. University of Illinois. Urbana, Illinois.
"Vygotsky, Biblioconscientioustization and the role of training Pre-Service teachers in the Social Transition of Contemporary Students in a Global Society", November 2,1997. Midwest Comparative and International Education Society Conference . University of Illinois. Urbana, Illinois.
"The Philosophical Basis of Africalogical Studies", Midwest Philosophy of Education Society, November 15, 1997. Loyola University. Chicago, Illinois.
Member of Panel: A Coversation with Elliot Eisner, Department of Curriculum, Instruction, & Educational Psychology, May 7, 1998. Mallinckrodt Campus, Loyola University Chicago.
"Dewey, Correctional Education, and Ofender Habilitation", Midwest Philosophy of Education Society Annual Conference: November 6, 1998. Loyola University Chicago.
"Cognition, Dewey, and the Organization of Teacher Education and Small Schools", Midwest Philosophy of Education Society Annual Conference: November 7, 1998. Loyola University Chicago.
"Brain-based methods for teaching math", CPS 5th Annual Miniconference Under the Umbrella, 22 January 1999, Malcolm X College, Chicago.
"Olmec Symbolism in Mayan Writing", Panel: Mexico and Guatemala: Invented Traditions and Abiding Symbols. Central States Anthropological Society, 16 April 1999, Chicago.
"Harappan Origins of Yoga", Panel Religion and the Sacred Self. The Anthropology of Religion Section of the AAA, 17 April 1999, Chicago.
"Young People Accessing Future Careers", Connections'99, 20 April 1999, Pheasant Run Resort, St. Charles, Illinois.
"The potential impact of the neurobiological knowledge base in the Education of the Learning Disabled", Roundtable: Brain and Education, American Educational Research Association, 23 April 1999, Montreal, Canada.
"Wings to the World of Social Studies", Area VII Hub Technology Leadership & Mentors Conference,24 September, Chicago,Illinois.
"Corey H Inclusion and School Change", 21st International Conference on Learning Disabilities, 16 October 1999, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"Wings to the Afrocentric Internet World", Chicago Public Schools Rising to the Challenge Annual Professional Development Conference, Navy Pier, 29 October 1999, Chicago, Illinois.
"Rocket to Success", ICE Educational Technology Conference '99, 12 November 1999, Naperville, Illinois.
"Music Across the Ages", Creative Classroom 2000 Workshop: September 9, 2000.
"Internet to Teach Community History", Illinois Education and Technology Conference: October 16, 2000. Springfield , Illinois.
"The Sky's No Limit:Students making their Own Business", Illinois Education and Technology Conference: October 16, 2000. Springfield , Illinois.
"Motivations behind Inmate Participation in Correctional Education Programs", Mid-Western Educational Research Association Conference: October 26, 2000, Chicago, Illinois.
Posted by markellion (Member # 14131) on :
The slave trade had to do with manipulating African money systems, it was completely the fault of Europeans. The fact that these elites complained about abolition only reinforces this point, the British did more than any other nation to create this situation
quote:I verily believe, that the far greater part of the wars, in Africa, would cease, if the Europeans would cease to tempt them, by offering goods for slaves. And though they do not bring legions into the field, their wars are bloody. I believe, the captives reserved for sale are fewer than the slain.
I have not sufficient data to warrant calculation but, I suppose, not less than one hundred thousand slaves are exported, annually, from all parts of Africa, and that more than one-half of these are exported in English bottoms.
If but an equal number are killed in war, and if many of these wars are kindled by the incentive of selling their prisoners ; what an annual accumulation of blood must there be, crying against the nations of Europe concerned in this trade, and particularly against our own!
Dahomey and the Dahomans By Frederick Edwyn Forbes
quote:These wars are directly and instrumentally the acts of the slave-merchants of Whydah and its neighbouring parts; but have they no higher parties on whom to lay the blame of their actions? are these, the agents of larger houses, the instruments in the hands of parties who have other means of disposing of their goods, to bear the whole blame? Truth is strange but a truth it is, that the slave trade is carried on in Dahomey and the neighbouring kingdoms with British merchandize, and, at Porto Novo, the residence of the monarch of slave dealers, by British shipping direct. I do not mean to say that if British goods were not obtainable, the traffic would cease to exist; but the taste for British goods runs high, and if these could not be purchased with slaves, palm-oil would be manufactured to obtain them.
Thus the discontinuance of trading with the slave ports would afford most important aid in the reduction of the horrors of the slave trade.
Posted by markellion (Member # 14131) on :
"Some Historical Accounts of Guinea" By Anthony Benezet
All these sources blame Europeans for the slave trade. It seems like people didn't catch that
quote: And from the same relations there is no reason to think otherwise, but that they generally lived in peace amongst themselves ; for I do not find, in the numerous publications I have perused on this subject, relating to these early times, of there being wars on that coast, nor of any sale of captives taken in battle, who would have been otherwise sacrificed by the victors: notwithstanding some modern authors, in their publications relating to the Weft Indies, desirous of throwing a veil over the iniquity of the slave trade, have been hardy enough, upon mere supposition or report, to assert the contrary…..
…But that the Europeans are the principal cause of these devastations, is particularly evidenced by one, whose connection with the trade would rather induce him to represent it in the fairest colors, to wit, William Smith, the person sent in the year 1726 by the African company to survey their settlements, who from the information he received of one of the factors, who had resided ten years in that country, says "'That the discerning natives account it their greatest unhappiness, that they were ever visited by the Europeans. That we Christians introduced the traffic of Slaves; and that before our coming they lived in peace."
quote:Originally posted by IronLion:
quote:Originally posted by markellion: "Some Historical Accounts of Guinea" By Anthony Benezet
quote: William Bofman remarks*, "That one of the former commanders gave large sums of money to the Negroes of one nation, to induce them to attack some of the neighboring nations, which occasioned a battle which was more bloody than the wars of Negroes usually are." This is confirmed by J. Barbot, who says, "That the country of D'Elmina, which was formerly very powerful and populous, was in his time so much drained of its inhabitants by the infinite wars fomented amongst the Negroes by the Dutch, that there did not remain inhabitants enough to till the country."
Markellion
Take a second look at all those authorites you are citing and you will realize that they are all some pale faced boys.
Search further and you will be amazed at their deeply entangled masonic roots.
Those jokers are there to keep you confused and depressed with bull crap they themselve know nothing bout.
Dont play the negro cause thatz what they want you to be. Find your true history from your own sources.
Lion!
Posted by Marc Washington (Member # 10979) on :
. .
Dr. Winters. I like this definition you gave:
Afrocentrism - is adherence to principles and theories related to the idea that African and World history originated on the African continent and moved outward from Africa through the human agency of Africans speaking related languages and practicing a shared culture, who founded the first civilizations of Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
More followed in your definition but the above as key concepts and aspects of Afrocentrism provides essential highlights.
I like it.
And, again, the definition of Afrocentrism: Afrocentrism - is adherence to principles and theories related to the idea that African and World history originated on the African continent and moved outward from Africa through the human agency of Africans speaking related languages and practicing a shared culture, who founded the first civilizations of Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
And, an example of that single people moving through the world carrying a single culture and establishing the first civilizations in the diaspora:
Afrocentrism - is adherence to principles and theories related to the idea that African and World history originated on the African continent and moved outward from Africa through the human agency of Africans speaking related languages and practicing a shared culture, who founded the first civilizations of Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
More followed in your definition but the above as key concepts and aspects of Afrocentrism provides essential highlights.
I like it.
And, again, the definition of Afrocentrism: Afrocentrism - is adherence to principles and theories related to the idea that African and World history originated on the African continent and moved outward from Africa through the human agency of Africans speaking related languages and practicing a shared culture, who founded the first civilizations of Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
And, an example of that single people moving through the world carrying a single culture and establishing the first civilizations in the diaspora:
Definition of Afrocentrism:frocentrism - is adherence to principles and theories related to the idea that African and World history originated on the African continent and moved outward from Africa through the human agency of Africans speaking related languages and practicing a shared culture, who founded the first civilizations of Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
With this definition, below are eight cultural traditions that began in Africa and are found worldwide moved by African human agency even before the birth of Christ and the emergence of the Western world. In fact, it was this world that whites saw when they themselves began to cover the earth mostly in the AD:
1) Red and black figures appearing together in art rock:
. .
Posted by Marc Washington (Member # 10979) on :
Continued …
Definition of Afrocentrism:Afrocentrism - is adherence to principles and theories related to the idea that African and World history originated on the African continent and moved outward from Africa through the human agency of Africans speaking related languages and practicing a shared culture, who founded the first civilizations of Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
With this definition, below are eight additional cultural traditions that began in Africa and are found worldwide moved by African human agency even before the birth of Christ and the emergence of the Western world. In fact, it was this world that whites saw when they themselves began to cover the earth mostly in the AD:
THE CONSTELLATION OF OBJECTS OF THE SINGLE WORLDWIDE CULTURAL TOOLKIT FOUND WHEREVER AFRICANS WERE FOUND
9) The earliest population of civilizers worldwide had artificially elongated heads
The above and hundreds more items were part of the African cultural toolkit carried from Africa worldwide by human agency.
. .
Posted by Hammer (Member # 17003) on :
There was no golden age of africa, only a povery stricken, disease riddled mud hole that has been living off international welfare for a century.
Posted by Marc Washington (Member # 10979) on :
THE CONSTELLATION OF OBJECTS OF THE SINGLE WORLDWIDE CULTURAL TOOLKIT FOUND WHEREVER AFRICANS WERE FOUND IN THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC
17) 25,000 years of the African steatophygous form in AfroEurAsia
The above are examples of the earliest phase of worldwide African culture carried by human agency from the mother continent. . .
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Hammer: There was no golden age of africa, only a povery stricken, disease riddled mud hole that has been living off international welfare for a century.
You are very ignorant. African countries only became independent of European colonial rule less than 40 years ago. This makes your comments stupid amd clearly racist.
There was indeed a golden age of Africa.And a Golden Age of Africans guiding Europeans to civilization. Up until 1492 much of Western Europe was under the control of African Muslims. You got your education systems from the African Muslims of Spain and France fool. In addition, many of the royals of Europe are decedants of African Muslims.
Africa was only conquered berween 1899-1905. By the 1960's African contries began to become independent. Granted African countries are poor but this is because of colonial and neo-colonial policies. It is amazing that African countries are doing as well as they are given the fact they are only 40 years and less ruling their own contries after they were raped by the colonial powers.
.
Posted by Hammer (Member # 17003) on :
Naturally Clyde....typical. Anyone who disagrees with you people is a racist. Who cares, call us anything you wish. Scream it to the rooftops untill your vocal cords rot, I could care less. The fact is that we have poured trillions upon trillions into the bottomless pit of africa and in many cases we are going in the wrong direction.
Posted by Brada-Anansi (Member # 16371) on :
BY Hammer:There was no golden age of africa...
The Songhay Empire: The Golden Age of Timbuktu As Timbuktu enjoyed unprecedented success under Moussa, another developing West African kingdom, the Songhay Empire, was increasing its influence over the western Sudan. In about 1464, King Sonni Ali Ber came to the Songhay throne. An able and ambitious ruler, he sent his army to capture the valuable city of Timbuktu in 1468.
In spite of his political achievements, Sonni Ali Ber was not a popular ruler. Although he was a Muslim, he distrusted and mistreated Islamic scholars and did not support the intellectual life of Timbuktu. A few months after the king's death, one of his generals seized the throne, with the support of the people. The general was a devout Muslim called Mohamed Toure, and he took the title of Askia, becoming known as Askia Mohamed. Askia Mohamed's first ambition was to establish a state and a stable government for the empire. Unlike his predecessor, Askia Mohamed took full advantage of the scholars centered in Timbuktu and used them as advisors on legal and ethical matters. Under his reign, religion and learning once again assumed a primary place in the Songhay Empire.
Leo Africanus, a famous traveler and writer who visited Timbuktu during the reign of Askia Mohamed, wrote the following of the city's intellectual life: "In Timbuktu there are numerous judges, doctors and clerics, all receiving good salaries from the king. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a big demand for books in manuscript, imported from Barbary. More profit is made from the book trade than from any line of business."1 Under Askia Mohamed's rule, scholarship and Islam were once again revered and supported, ushering in a new era of stability that led to Timbuktu's sixteenth-century golden age.
Askia Mohamed had created the largest and the wealthiest of all the kingdoms of the Sudan. He had a well-administered state, probably the most highly organized of all the African states. With a stable and efficient government and with the support of the Muslim scholars, religious leaders, and traders, Askia Mohamed had made Songhay a great trading empire and a center of Muslim scholarship and learning.
Photo Credits: (top to bottom) 1. Nik Wheeler/CORBIS 2. M. Kone/UNESCO 3. C. & J. Lenars/CORBIS Scholars from all over the Islamic world came to the University of Sankore (as well as the city's over 180 madersas) where courses as varied as theology, Islamic law, rhetoric, and literature were taught. The university was housed in the Sankore Mosque built with a remarkably large pyramidal mihrab in the declining years of the Mali Empire. The university, one of the first in Africa, became so famous that scholars came to it from all over the Muslim world. At this period in African history, the University of Sankore was the educational capital of the western Sudan, where 25,000 students studied a rigorous academic program.
In the book, Timbuctoo the Mysterious, French author Felix Dubois describes the intellectual accomplishments of the ancient African university: "The scholars of Timbuctoo yielded in nothing, to the saints in the sojourns in the foreign universities of Fez, Tunis, and Cairo. They astounded the most learned men of Islam by their erudition. That these Negroes were on a level with the Arabian savants is proved by the fact that they were installed as professors in Morocco and Egypt. In contrast to this, we find that Arabs were not always equal to the requirements of Sankore." 2 As a center of intellectual achievement, Timbuktu earned a place next to Cairo and other leading North African cities.
1Davidson, Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 93.
2Dubois, Felix. Timbuctoo the Mysterious. (London: W. Heinemann, 1897), p. 285.
please read the above books^^
The mosque at Jenne
The Black Plague woresned by lack of basic hygiene.
Posted by Marc Washington (Member # 10979) on :
. .
This so-called newbie Hammer guy with just 23 posts addressing Dr. Winters casually and with familiarity as Mr. Djehuti is likely another alias of so-called Djehuti to find a new way to enter the threads. A fresh new face.
Whenever he disappears in one form from threads as he has recently, he appears in another form.
Mr. Hammer uses some of the same expressions and has the some of the same reactions in the same place as oh so brilliant Mr. Djehuti does.
Our Mr. Newly Graduate is up to his old tricks again.
Watch the vitriolic, sarcastic way he will respond over the next few posts and you'll see he's our old, lovable Mr. Dj.
. .
Posted by Brada-Anansi (Member # 16371) on :
Marc;your dislike for Djehuti is blinding your senses...for that is non other than American Patriot,sometimes goes as American Hammer,Horemheb.
Posted by Brada-Anansi (Member # 16371) on :
Hay Mike!!! I haven't forgot you [quote]Brada-Anansi - When you get a chance, please get a couple of your shipmates to polish that up a bit.
Is that before we polish you Air-Force albatross on the green.. Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
quote:Originally posted by Hammer: There was no golden age of africa, only a povery stricken, disease riddled mud hole that has been living off international welfare for a century.
Oh Oh, looks like Dirk8/Mo has brought in his relatives, now we are really in for it.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Brada-Anansi - Quite true, the Brutish types (Army/Navy/Marines) do seem to do better at the non-cerebral activities - But we have bigger penis's.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Hammer: Naturally Clyde....typical. Anyone who disagrees with you people is a racist. Who cares, call us anything you wish. Scream it to the rooftops untill your vocal cords rot, I could care less. The fact is that we have poured trillions upon trillions into the bottomless pit of africa and in many cases we are going in the wrong direction.
I am calling you a racist because you are making false claims without any knowledge. You say you don't care. This is sad. You Euronuts always claim to be knowledgeable but you can not even count the years between the beginning and end of colonial rule in Africa. This can not be an accident so your comments are racist in nature pure and simple.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Hammer: The fact is that we have poured trillions upon trillions into the bottomless pit of africa and in many cases we are going in the wrong direction.
This also shows your ignorance of globalism and the world economy. No one gives anyone else something for nothing.
The USA and other countries have not given trillions of dollars to African countries do the math. But we do know that these countries have made trillions of dollars exploting the mineral wealth of African countries.
The genius of the African is that eventhough these countries are poor they have built great cities and try to educate as many people as they can given their limited resources.
Look at the large number of poor and uninsured in the USA. If you visit places like W. Virginia and Kentucky you see immense hunger among whites who refuse to seek assistance because they have too much pride.
Look at Georgia today. A big flood has struck the state and the Repulican administration which is run by Euronuts refused to take additional unemployment assistance from the Federal goverment, can't even provide monies to help people recover their losses. Like you they are conservatives, maybe not racist, but like you in an attempt to keep Black Americans down they don't have the monies to help the people in their own state.
This is sad. People like you Euronuts are ruining America. Instead of talking about Africans who are trying to build their countries after years of colonialism which took much of their wealth, you should concentrate on making America better for all Americans.
.
Posted by Hammer (Member # 17003) on :
You needed more colonialism clyde, no less. Good god man the Zulu's were still throwing spears in 1880. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Hammer: You needed more colonialism clyde, no less. Good god man the Zulu's were still throwing spears in 1880. Wake up and smell the coffee.
That's right they were still throwing spears and defeated many Afrikaner and English armies until the English invented a new strategy.
It was a new military strategy that defeated the Zulus--not just guns.
If you knew anything about African history you would know that the Zulus defeated many Afrikaner and British armies. You are a fool. Everytime you write you show your ignorance of globalism and illustrate the ignorance which characterizes you Euronuts.
Both the Germans and French had guns but during WWII, the Germans took France and most of Europe. This makes it clear that technology alone does not win wars. It is strategy and morale.
Remember this if Europeans were so superior why couldn't they keep their colonies in Africa for more than sixty (60) years. You Euronuts in your childish view of the world believe that Europeans have always ruled Africans--but history shows this not to be true.
But lets look at the history of Europe. African Mulsims from Senegal ruled Spain and much of France for almost 400 years. These Black Africans did not leave Europe until 1492. It was these Black Africans who gave your ignorant ancestors science, the arts and education. Moreover, the First Universities of Spain and France, which were used as models by other European nations were founded by Black African scholars.
.
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
^^Teach
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
From the horses mouth:
Dr. Molefi Asante:
quote: Afrocentricity
By Dr. Molefi Kete Asante
Afrocentricity is a paradigm based on the idea that African people should re-assert a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity. During the l960s a group of African American intellectuals in the newly-formed Black Studies departments at universities began to formulate novel ways of analyzing information. In some cases, these new ways were called looking at information from “a black perspective” as opposed to what had been considered the “white perspective” of most information in the American academy.
In the late l970s Molefi Kete Asante began speaking of the need for an Afrocentric orientation to data. By l980 he had published a book, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change, which launched the first full discussion of the concept. Although the word existed before Asante’s book and had been used by many people, including Asante in the l970s, and Kwame Nkrumah in the l960s, the intellectual idea did not have substance as a philosophical concept until l980.
The Afrocentric paradigm is a revolutionary shift in thinking proposed as a constructural adjustment to black disorientation, decenteredness, and lack of agency. The Afrocentrist asks the question, “What would African people do if there were no white people?” In other words, what natural responses would occur in the relationships, attitudes toward the environment, kinship patterns, preferences for colors, type of religion, and historical referent points for African people if there had not been any intervention of colonialism or enslavement? Afrocentricity answers this question by asserting the central role of the African subject within the context of African history, thereby removing Europe from the center of the African reality. In this way, Afrocentricity becomes a revolutionary idea because it studies ideas, concepts, events, personalities, and political and economic processes from a standpoint of black people as subjects and not as objects, basing all knowledge on the authentic interrogation of location.
So that it becomes legitmate to ask, “Where is the sistah coming from?” or “Where is the brotha at?” “Are you down with overcoming oppression?” These are assessment and evaluative questions that allow the interrogator to accurately pinpoint the responder’s location, whether it be a cultural or psychological location. As a paradigm Afrocentricity enthrones the centrality of the African, that is, black ideals and values, as expressed in the highest forms of African culture, and activates consciousness as a functional aspect of any revolutionary approach to phenomena. The cognitive and structural aspects of a paradigm are incomplete without the functional aspect. There is something more than knowing in the Afrocentric sense; there is also doing. Afrocentricity holds that all definitions are autobiographical.
One of the key assumptions of the Afrocentrist is that all relationships are based on centers and margins and the distances from either the center or the margin. When black people view themselves as centered and central in their own history then they see themselves as agents, actors, and participants rather than as marginals on the periphery of political or economic experience. Using this paradigm, human beings have discovered that all phenomena are expressed in the fundamental categories of space and time. Furthermore, it is then understood that relationships develop and knowledge increases to the extent we are able to appreciate the issues of space and time.
The Afrocentric scholar or practitioner knows that one way to express Afrocentricity is called marking. Whenever a person delineates a cultural boundary around a particular cultural space in human time, this is called marking. It might be done with the announcement of a certain symbol, the creation of a special bonding, or the citing of personal heroes of African history and culture. Beyond citing the revolutionary thinkers in our history, that is, beyond Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X and Nkrumah, we must be prepared to act upon our interpretation of what is in the best interest of black people, that is, black people as an historically oppressed population. This is the fundamental necessity for advancing the political process.
Afrocentricity is the substance of our regeneration because it is in line with what contemporary philosophers Haki Madhubuti and Maulana Karenga, among others, have articulated as in the best image and interest of African people. What is any better than operating and acting out of our own collective interest? What is any greater than seeing the world through our eyes? What resonates more with people than understanding that we are central to our history, not someone else’s? If we can, in the process of materializing our consciousness, claim space as agents of progressive change, then we can change our condition and change the world. Afrocentricity maintains that one can claim this space only if one knows the general characteristics of Afrocentricity as well as the practical applications of the field.
There are five general characteristics of the Afrocentric Method
1. The Afrocentric method considers that no phenomena can be apprehended adequately without locating it first. A phenom must be studied and analyzed in relationship to psychological time and space. It must always be located. This is the only way to investigate the complex interrelationships of science and art, design and execution, creation and maintenance, generation and tradition, and other areas bypassed by theory.
2. The Afrocentric method considers phenomena to be diverse, dynamic, and in motion and therefore it is necessary for a person to accurately note and record the location of phenomena even in the midst of fluctuations. This means that the investigator must know where he or she is standing in the process.
3. The Afrocentric method is a form of cultural criticism that examines etymological uses of words and terms in order to know the source of an author’s location. This allows us to intersect ideas with actions and actions with ideas on the basis of what is pejorative and ineffective and what is creative and transformative at the political and economic levels.
4. The Afrocentric method seeks to uncover the masks behind the rhetoric of power, privilege, and position in order to establish how principal myths create place. The method enthrones critical reflection that reveals the perception of monolithic power as nothing but the projection of a cadre of adventurers.
5. The Afrocentric method locates the imaginative structure of a system of economics, bureau of politics, policy of government, expression of cultural form in the attitude, direction, and language of the phenom, be it text, institution, personality, interaction, or event.
Analytic Afrocentricity
Analytic Afrocentricity is the application of the principles of the Afrocentric method to textual analysis. An Afrocentrist seeks to understand the principles of the Afrocentric method in order to use them as a guide in analysis and discourse. It goes without saying that the Afrocentrist cannot function properly as a scientist or humanist if he or she does not adequately locate the phenom in time and space. This means that chronology is as important in some situations as location. The two aspects of analysis are central to any proper understanding of society, history, or personality. Inasmuch as phenoms are active, dynamic, and diverse in our society, the Afrocentric method requires the scientists to focus on accurate notations and recording of space and time. In fact, the best way to apprehend location of a text is to determine where the researcher is located in time and space first. Once you know the location and time of the researcher or author it is fairly easy to establish the parameters for the phenom itself. The value of etymology, that is, the origin of terms and words is in the proper identification and location of concepts. The Afrocentrist seeks to demonstrate clarity by exposing dislocations, disorientations, and decenterness. One of the simplest ways of accessing textual clarity is through etymology. Myths tie all relationships together, whether personal or conceptual. It is the Afrocentrist’s task to determine to what extent the myths of society are represented as being central to or marginal to society. This means that any textual analysis must involve the concrete realities of lived experiences, thus making historical experiences a key element in analytica Afrocentricity. In examining attitude, direction, and language the Afrocentrist is seeking to uncover the imagination of the author. What one seeks to do is to create an opportunity for the writer to show where he or she stands in relationship to the subject. Is the writer centered or is the writer marginalized within his own story?
Afrocentric Philosophy
The philosophy of Afrocentricity as expounded by Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, central figures of the Temple School, is a way of answering all cultural, economic, political, and social questions related to African people from a centered position. There are other Afrocentric ideas as well but these are the ones propounded in texts by Professors Asante, Mazama, and the late C. Tsehloane Keto. Indeed, Afrocentricity cannot be reconciled to any hegemonic or idealistic philosophy. It is opposed to radical individualism as expressed in the postmodern school. But it is also opposed to spookism, confusion, and superstition. As example of the differences between the methods of Afrocentricity and postmodernism, consider the following question, “Why have Africans been shut out of global development?” The postmodernist would begin by saying that there is no such thing as “Africans” because there are many different types of Africans and all Africans are not equal. The postmodernist would go on to say that if there were Africans and if the conditions were as described by the querist then the answer would be that Africans had not fully developed their own capacities in relationship to the global economy and therefore they are outside of the normal development patterns of the world economy. On the other hand, the Afrocentrist does not question the fact that there is a collective sense of Africanity revealed in the common experiences of the African world. The Afrocentrist would look to the questions of location, control of the hegemonic global economy, marginalization, and power positions as keys to understand the underdevelopment of African people.
As I said before, Afrocentrism is primarily about education as a result of the black studies movement in the 60s on college campuses nation wide as well as now in high schools.
Another article about Afrocentric ideology in black studies and its strengths and weaknesses. It is here that Afrocentric ideology has to be analyzed, which is to say has it achieved its goal. African Studies IMO is weaker now than ever. African Americans are more confused about who they are now than ever. They know little to nothing about what is going on in Africa now and how it impacts THEM and why they should care. Not to mention they largely today don't know their *ss from crack, which surely isn't any form of progress. The very idea that blacks have to rely on forums like this and the likes of Clyde and Marc Washington certainly says a lot. As it stands, Afrocentricity is nothing more than some feel good history someone may get while in college, that really doesn't amount to much of anything in a larger sense.
quote: Issue 9 (2006) West Africa Review
FROM BLACK AESTHETICS TO AFROCENTRISM (OR, A SMALL HISTORY OF AN AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN DISCURSIVE PRACTICE)
Tejumola Olaniyan
(For BJ)
You have all heard of the African Personality; of African democracy, of the African way to socialism, of negritude, and so on. They are all props we have fashioned at different times to help us get on our feet again. Once we are up we shan't need any of them any more. But for the moment it is in the nature of things that we may need to counter racism with what Jean-Paul Sartre has called an anti-racist racism, to announce not just that we are as good as the next man but that we are much better. —Chinua Achebe (Morning Yet 44)
Chinua Achebe, the distinguished novelist, published the famous article, "The Novelist as Teacher," from which I culled the epigraph above, in 1965. He offers in it what still remains a discerning entry into an inquiry on the nature and functions of such social phenomena as Black Aesthetics and Afrocentrism, which he could very well have added to his list of "props" were it not for the circumstances of history which placed the latter two at a later moment. Even so, Achebe included "negritude," a significant lodestar in the genealogy of both black aesthetics and Afrocentrism.
Two principal features of black aesthetics and Afrocentrism—features indispensable for the full grasp of both their form and substance—emerge from Achebe's condensed historicization. First, they are "props . . . fashioned . . . to help us get on our feet again," meaning that they are neither essential nor permanent but consciously fashioned contingent strategies of resistance. They are discourses, discursive means designed to achieve particular ends. To speak of discourse is to speak against the realm of the given and the inevitable and to emphasize instead the enormous transformational work in the construction of social phenomena, their overdetermined and contingent existence. And since no discourse is monologic but most often multiple, dispersed, and contradictory, the realm of the social is replete with agones, scars, and offensive and defensive masks—epic battles for the framing and definition of reality (Macdonell, Foucault).
Second, as contingent strategies of resistance, black aesthetics and Afrocentrism are "re-active" discourses, counter-discourses against the dominant or hegemonic discourses that subordinate them. Specifically, they are racialist or race-based discourses designed to counter the pervasive Euro-American racism against the peoples and cultures of African descent.
Black aesthetics as a programmatic quest began in the United States of America in the last half of the 1960s and lasted until the mid-1970s, while Afrocentrism, its more expansive incarnation, erupted into public and scholarly consciousness in the 1980s and has firmly remained there. Black aesthetics was a product of the twilight of the vulgar institutionalized racism known as "Jim Crow" and of the civil rights struggles, both peaceful and violent, mounted against it. Afrocentrism, on the other hand, emerged in the context of post-civil rights persistence of discrimination and racism of the subtle and therefore most insidious kind. Black aesthetics was the more militant, its "military wing" the Black Power movement, while Afrocentrism has proven to be infinitely more tenacious. Part of its tenacity is derived from the incredible range of field it has declared its legitimate focus, from curricula matters at all levels of the educational system and in all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences to sartorial standards to tour cruise packages; Afrocentrism thus authorized wider cross-class and cross-professional participation. Black aesthetics, on the contrary, was the exclusive project and burden solely of the artists—as the group of cultural workers that uniquely give affective form and measure to a community's ideals of beauty, ethics and politics. It aimed mostly for product—the "black" poem or play or criticism—while Afrocentrism aims mostly for method: the Afrocentric approach to wedding or reading history. The distinctive tone of black aesthetics was querulous; Afrocentrism took it up but significantly lowered the decibel, diverting its energies instead to building institutions where it could be autonomous, or nudging dominant institutions for more elbow room. While black aesthetics argued in the name of blackness, which often intimidated and therefore short-circuited sympathies from a white public as yet not too willing to share their racial privileges, or from blacks who would rather protest in a less confrontational manner, Afrocentrism argues strategically in the name of multiculturalism, a quietly "high moral ground" agenda it shares with other American ethnicities as well as radical and activist groups able to influence public opinion.
The iconoclastic artistic experimentation that surfaced with movement for black aesthetics in the 1960s USA, formally known as the Black Arts Movement, could in a certain sense be regarded as a revolution. In the area of theatre and theatre criticism where black aesthetics some of its fullest articulations, it effected a decisive break from previous practice, a shift, as one critic calls it, from the canon of "the theatre of Negro participation" and "the criticism of Negro sensibility," a blend of "Western bourgeois esthetic criteria and a sentimental racial awareness," to "black theatre" and "the Black Esthetic Criticism," a self-assured advocacy of black "consciousness" undergirded by a determined synthesis of dramaturgical and ideological presuppositions (Jeyifous 34, 40, 35). For instance, the previous era was occupied largely with a "rectification" of the "negative images of the race" produced and circulated by the dominant discourse, while remaining essentially grounded within the same aesthetic structure and vision that produces the lamented images in the first place. Rarely was that ground questioned. This received structure, on the other hand, was in the era of black aesthetics the constant target of interrogation, a structure to move away from if there was to be any possibility of constructing a truly liberating black subjectivity.
Never in the black artistic traditions was there such an irruption whose iconoclasm was so simultaneously inward (an uncompromising critique of black culture itself) and outward (a re-visioning of the relationship with the larger social structure, in both national and international dimensions). The period was momentous enough: the festering stalemate of Civil Rights struggles both in its achievements and tragedies, such as the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation ruling and the later assassination of many of its members and leaders; the American misadventure in Vietnam; the formation of a socialist state in Cuba, so tantalizingly a mere stone throw away; and the massive wave of political decolonization on the African continent and elsewhere. It was a period of productive flux that appropriately left nothing as sacrosanct from critical inspection. For once, "Power" became prefixed with "Black," both as describing the seized moment and as a galvanizing aspiration. The Black Arts Movement was the cultural arm of the nationalist, political Black Power crusade.
The first anthology of the movement, Black Fire, edited by Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal appeared in 1968, containing essays, poetry, fiction and short plays. It was, however, the Drama Review special issue on black theatre of the same year, edited by Ed Bullins, that immediately became the movement's unofficial manifesto. Together with Black Expression (1969) and The Black Aesthetic (1971), both edited by Addison Gayle, these anthologies codify the movement's central concern, the development of an anti-Eurocentric, anti-imperialist discursive practice known as the "black aesthetic."
LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, the one in whom the consciousness explosion of the times received its most complex expression articulates the informing canons of black aesthetic:
I would like to . . . say that my conception of art, black art, is that it has to be collective, it has to be functional, it has to be committed and that actually, if it's not stemming from conscious nationalism, then at this time it's invalid. When I say collective, that it comes from the collective experience of black people, when I say committed, it has to be committed to change, revolutionary change. When I say functional, it has to have a function to the lives of black people (cited in Jeyifous 41).
In these terms, the new black theatre literally defined itself away from the mainstream American theatre. "Collective" pushes this theatre from the norm of formalized entertainment symbolized by Broadway to a non-play event characteristic of—so went the interpretation—indigenous African communal rituals and religious occasions. "Committed" underscores consciousness grasped as transitory, continually transforming itself in response—and this is the "functional" part—to the perceived needs, hopes and aspirations of black people. The quest, defined by Baraka, was for a "post-white or post-American form."
Larry Neal, the leading critic of the movement, wrote of the group's proposition of "a radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic . . . a separate symbolism, mythology, critique, and iconology" that would primarily "speak to the spiritual and cultural needs of Black people" ("The Black" 257) and bring about "the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world" (259) These largely didactic expositions interspersed with only vague and rhetorical intimations of formal specificity later gave way to more sustained explorations of a distinctive difference for the black aesthetic event, building on re-visioned African-American and African expressive forms. In drama, for instance, early ideological vociferations and agit-prop pieces gave way to some form of modified realism and then expansive rituals- the latter the most favored as the truly black and anti-Western aesthetic.
Black Power and its parallel black cultural revolt also swept through the Caribbean in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The quest for a "black aesthetic" took the form of a quest for a "Caribbean aesthetic." The Caribbean was and is by no means only black; the European and East Indian components are duly recognized, but the reasoning was that a truly anti-imperial Caribbean aesthetics would have to be anchored on the cultural traditions of the majority of the Caribbean population, the blacks. Such was the logic of the most significant writer produced by the times, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, articulated in such writings as "The Love Axe" and the collection, Roots. Considered by many to be the region's second leading poet after Derek Walcott, Brathwaite's poetry gave eloquent voice to the thematic preoccupations of black aesthetic-cultural revolt such as racial inequality, quest for identity, exile, journey, reclamation of Africa, return to roots, and interrogation of history. In form, he appropriated words, concepts, symbols, mythological systems and allusions from Caribbean, African American and African cultures. His The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (1973), best exemplifies his black Caribbean aesthetic practice.
The continental African discourse of "black aesthetics" was no less uneven, though accented differently. It achieved its most activist exploration in South Africa, where the practice of apartheid, or racial segregation, by the minority white population that controlled the government, produced a similar explosive racial animosity as in the United States of America. Perhaps because of the overwhelming frazzling sanctions against the black majority on which the apartheid system rests, the late 1960s South African Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), could not produce or elaborate any large body of aesthetic/cultural theory.
The Black Consciousness Movement, on the belief that the way to liberation from white minority rule lay in a change of consciousness of blacks—a change from their inferiority complex and overly Eurocentric ways and ideas forced on them by various apparatuses of the apartheid regime—embarked on a program of ideological recuperation and re-indoctrination. The goal was "black consciousness," an outlook meant to instill pride and dignity in black self and heritage and catalyze a steadfast resistance to the institutionalized racism of apartheid. Black consciousness is the self-conscious invention and promotion of black culture and art that would aid the "conscientization" and therefore liberation of black people. Steve Biko, the articulate and matyred leader of the movement wrote:
Black culture above all implies freedom on our part to innovate without recourse to white values. This innovation is part of the natural development of any culture. A culture is essentially the society's composite answer to the varied problems of life. We are experiencing new problems every day and whatever we do adds to the richness of our cultural heritage as long as it has man as its centre. The adoption of black theatre and drama is one such important innovation which we need to encourage and to develop. (I Write 96).
Black Consciousness was long on rhetoric and short on practice of black aesthetics. A lot was written by the many drama groups on radical content, but very little that was specific on form, which is where aesthetics and its cultural provenance or ethnicity are determined.
In performance, the groups mix forms at will, combine elements of realism and non-realism, barriers between performers and the audience are observed or ignored as seen fit, fiery, direct polemical speeches are not uncommon, and many groups are well-known for multi-media shows, integrating song, film projection, recitation and chant, sound and "sculptural groupings" (Kavanagh 166).
Elsewhere racially less claustrophobic on the continent, black aesthetics and its sponsoring sentiments were not unknown among Western-trained intellectuals, but had far more erratic sway. This remained so in spite of the institution of many cultural festivals show-casing indigenous African performance forms (the gigantic and wasteful Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, FESTAC, held in Nigeria in 1977, included), and the many conferences on African writing devoted to exploring "appropriate" and "relevant" aesthetic paradigms for the continent held at various times and in various places. A colloquium on black aesthetics was organized at Makerere University in Uganda in March 1971. It was followed by a similar event in June of the same year at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The papers of the latter occasion were collected in the volume, Black Aesthetics, edited by Andrew Gurr and Pio Zirimu. Although the focus of the colloquium was specific enough, the papers ranged more generally over such wider matters as cultural imperialism, the dual cultural socialization of the ex-colonized world, the role of the writer in society, and the role of literature in liberation struggles, than on the formal properties of a poem or play or fiction that would constitute "black aesthetic."
But there was a preceding effort, and it was richer and more promising. It was not named "black aesthetics" but the sentiments and goal were the same. This was the effort of Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel Laureate in literature. Beginning from the early 1960s, even before the USA Black Arts Movement, Soyinka launched a withering attack at Negritude for what he called its narcissistic cult of the African world ("The Future," "From a Common Back Cloth," "And After the Narcissist?"). Soyinka called instead for greater self-confidence and a "seemingly indifferent acceptance" of the properly apprehended black self; "the duiker will not paint 'duiker' on his beautiful back to proclaim his duikeritude," Soyinka debunked the romanticism of the black self and the African past, "you'll know him by his elegant leap. The less self conscious the African is, and the more innately his individual qualities appear in his writing, the more seriously he will be taken as an artist of exciting dignity" ("The Future," cited in Chinweizu, Toward 201).
The venom notwithstanding, Soyinka's critique was basically one of affirmation. He was himself deeply committed to the defense of African cultures and cultural production against racist dismissals, and specifically to the critical study and appropriation of indigenous aesthetic paradigms in his writings. When obviously prejudiced critics began to use his arguments to condemn any Africa-centered discourses whether in aesthetics, philosophy or history, Soyinka had to clarify his reading of Negritude, emphasizing similarity of goals but a great divergence of means. "Our opposition to negritude," he said, is "based on self-acceptance," "a hard-eyed self-examination, not self-denial" ("The African World" 36). He identified the vision of Negritude as the "restitution and re-engineering of a racial psyche, the establishment of a distinct human entity and the glorification of its long-suppressed attributes," and warned that this vision "should never be underestimated or belittled" (Myth 126). The disagreeable point, however, was that Negritude adopted an overly simplified route toward realizing its goal:
Its re-entrenchment of black values was not preceded by any profound effort to enter into this African system of values. It extolled the apparent. Its reference points took far too much colouring from European ideas even while its Messiahs pronounced themselves fanatically African. In attempting to refute the evaluation to which black reality had been subjected, Negritude adopted the Manichean tradition of European thought and inflicted it on a culture which is most radically anti-Manichean (Myth 127).
The obverse of Soyinka's criticisms indicate his own strategies for artistically registering the "African worldview," his favorite phrase; and in works such as the essay, "The Fourth Stage" (Myth 140-60), a theory of Yoruba tragedy, and plays such as The Road, Dance of the Forests and Death of the King's Horseman, he produced the most profound and persuasive "black aesthetic" on the African continent.
In defense of Negritude and in the name of a "traditional" and "native" African aesthetic, the admittedly loud trio, Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ikechukwu Madubuike, attacked Soyinka as "euromodernist" and un-African. They gave as reasons Soyinka's difficult poetic articulations and unfamiliar allusions, and when they justified their charges by arguing that poetic complexity is European and simplicity African, "explicitness is a hallmark of African poetry" while "obscurity . . . is a badge of Western modernism" (Chinweizu, "Prodigals" 10), we witnessed the last gasps of a degenerated vision.
At a summative level, "black aesthetics" in its various manifestations was the emblem of black cultural renaissance at a period when politics qua politics was really the driving objective: struggle for black participation in the political process or against neocolonialism. This explains the varying degrees of aggressivity of the discourse. Afrocentrism, on the other hand, is a cultural child of quieter times, a period when politics or militant protests seem dated or unattractive and cultural qua cultural struggle seems the most effective. It is for this reason that far more than black aesthetics, the turf of Afrocentrism is primarily ideological: a struggle to change dominant negative public consciousness about the black world. This is why the core theme in all Afrocentric exertions is education, conceived both as means and as goal.
It becomes clear then why Afrocentrists have claimed The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), the famous book published by Carter G. Woodson, the distinguished African American historian, as one of its foundational texts. Woodson's critique of the education of the African American up to the time he was writing as "mis-education" or education for servitude—because it denigrated the black while glorifying the white—applied to the colonies as well. That Western education universally functioned, in the historical Africa-Europe encounter, as part of an apparatus of domination is obvious enough. Woodson specified the process involved as subjectification that produced in the African American not simply a racialized consciousness (this is the lot of whites too) but also a slavish or servile one. Woodson's elaboration is classic and prescient in its subtlety for insisting that while the situation was ideal for no one white or black, it nevertheless benefitted the white more than the black:
The so-called modern education, with all its defects . . . does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. . . . [T]aught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro's mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor. The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary (xii, xiii, 192).
This was also the argument of W. E. B. Du Bois about thirty years earlier, that the African American was smitten with a peculiarly unhealing lesion by "a world which yields him no true self consciousness" but a "double consciousness," a sense of "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Souls 18). The controlled mind Woodson describes is what Du Bois means by seeing "one's self through the eyes of others." It is Afrocentrism's declared goal to break the vicious cycle of the (re)reproduction of black self-abnegation or inferiority complex.
Afrocentrism sets about its daunting task by adopting two approaches, often deployed simultaneously: deconstructive and reconstructive. A rebuttal of the whole archive of European ideological racism, and an often bold and passionate restitutive act of inscribing authentic (because self-constructed and not blatantly imposed) African—most often meaning black—subjectivity. Without this framework, it would be difficult to fully appreciate the significance of some texts that have become favorites with Afrocentrists such as The Stolen Legacy (1954) by George G. M. James, They Came Before Columbus (1976) by Ivan Van Sertima, Black Folk Here and There 1991) by St. Clair Drake, The Destruction of Black Civilization (1974) by Chancellor Williams, The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1974) by Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987) by Martin Bernal, and Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, by Marimba Ani. Ani's 672-page book was first published in January 1994; by July of the same year, it had gone into its fourth printing.
Afrocentrism is a movement for the reformation of the consciousness of both blacks and whites—but particularly of blacks—perceived to be hamstrung by centuries of racist European thinking, teaching, and general ideas. It is an "escape to sanity," as Molefi K. Asante, professor and one-time chair of African American Studies at Temple University, and the chief popularizer of Afrocentrism within the American academy, puts it (Afrocentric Idea 125). It flaunts its genealogy in the great African empires and kingdoms, the many slave revolts, Pan-Africanism, Negritude, independence of African countries from colonial rule, and the Black Power/black aesthetics movement. So if it seems that we have heard or read about similar "afrocentric" endeavors or pronouncements in the past, it is probably very true.
Afrocentrism is fast becoming institutionalized in the United States, the center of its storm. The recent spate of academic codifications of the phenomenon, journalistic accounts of its "street" manifestations, reactions to it from diverse institutions (e.g. Euro-American and African-American newsmagazines) and perspectives, say as much. It is tempting to think Afrocentrism, as many emergency experts in the press have done, under the general umbrella of fad and consumerism and the increasing purchasing power of blacks. After all, the most popular and visible modes of dissemination of Afrocentrism are items of consumption: clothing, hairstyle, paintings, sculptures, children's toys, books. But there is something else more profound than this. Afrocentrism has received and is receiving considerable boost from the cultural shift known as postmodernism and its privileging of difference, micro-struggles, and the politics of identity. Postmodernism's general assault on the authority and universalist claims of Western "culture" is also the mainstay of any Afrocentric agenda. The cultural shift has also rejuvenated black studies which, in turn, is providing Afrocentrism much-needed intellectual and institutional anchor in the academy.
Afrocentrism is often chided for its overwhelming focus onreformation of consciousness and racial pride. "Contribute to solving the problem of black male unemployment by gainfully employing all black males over the age of 18, and the positive psychological intent of Afrocentricity will be accomplished" (Hazzard-Gordon 21), so goes a sample of the argument. Indeed, there is much appearance of truth in this reproach, after all, what seem to be the most pressing problems of blacks—both in Africa and the diaspora—in relation to whites, are economic exploitation and political domination, rather than psychological subjection. And fervid Afrocentrism neither directly leads to more and better-paying jobs for blacks nor to an arrest of the increasing fourth-worldization of both African countries and black communities in Europe and America.
In spite of these, the reproach nonetheless misses the mark and confuses issues, after all, the most vociferous and committed proponents of Afrocentrism are employed middle-class blacks, from university professors to company executives, lawyers, journalists, doctors, millionaire entrepreneurs (rappers, actors and actresses, and more)—those with the requisite purchasing power to sustain numerous Afrocentric cottage industries producing books, cards, posters, t-shirts, and transcontinental art dealerships and vacation cruises; and also with adequate intellectual resources to persuade school districts across the United States to diversify their curricula. But there is an even more important reason why the reproach is off course: an inability to properly specify the character of Afrocentrism as a mode of struggle: it is a struggle over consciousness or subjectification. It is linked to the economic and the political but is not reducible to either.
Many "theories" have been put forward to understand Afrocentrism, the most common being that it is no more than Eurocentrism in black clothing. This is a profound truth as well as a profound lie. First, the truth. There could be no Afrocentrism without Eurocentrism. They are both locked in an intricate specular embrace in which difference resides more in the "visible" paraphernalia than in the "invisible" supporting structures. Thus for every Roman aqueduct and Gothic cathedral, there must be found parallel African "feats." Which explains the undue fixation with the Africanization of Egypt of antiquity, with its pyramids and sphinxes. No, it is not shunning the execrable monumentalization of history that is important but merely adding one's own monuments; it is not how history is represented that matters but simply a question of additional representations. Whatever happened to Fanon's stirring appeal against such "nauseating mimicry" (Wretched 311, 311-16)?
Asante is always quick to (a) deny borrowing structures from Eurocentrism and (b) delink Afrocentrism from "race," emphasizing that whatever link exists is only coincidental. As palpable evidence, he is eager to run off a list of those he considers as black Eurocentrics but he has never been as equally eager to admit of the possibility of white Afrocentrics. Leonard Jeffries's spurious theory of white people as "ice people" and black people as "sun people" (Boyd 37) nauseates us even as it also reminds us that, in the historiography of the racialization of thought and culture, he stands in the good company of European greats such as Hegel, Hume, Kant, Jefferson, Mill, and their shadows in many current permutations such as christians/heathens, civilized/barbaric, ethnic/tribe, and so on. He is merely reading these figures "upside down."
Jean-Paul Sartre was very correct then in his famous censure against the afrocentrism of Negritude—that it is an anti-racist racism. It is "the weak stage in a dialectical progression," he says, an antithetical low ebb in which "the theoretical and practical affirmation of white supremacy is its thesis" (15, 60). Without Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism is devoid of many basic epistemological premises.
But Afrocentrism is not simply black-faced Eurocentrism. As a counter-discourse, it dares Eurocentrism to glimpse a space it (Eurocentrism) is structurally incapable of contemplating. The latter's claims to seamlessly account for all experience is embarrassed by a force and passion that is thoroughly disconcerting. When Asante declares that "[t]he question 'Do you like classical music?' usually elicits this response from me: 'Whose classical?'" ("Molefi Kete Asante" 21), he sends unsettling tremors to the foundations of an old and authoritative discourse of Western cultural supremacy. Why should the African-American remain in subjection and still count time as B.C. and A.D., Asante queries in a different context. For the genuinely Afrocentric in America, the time-mark is 1619, the year of African arrival in America for the "beginning again." Thus 1601 is none other than 18 B.B.A. (Before the Beginning Again) and 1999 400 A.B.A. (After the Beginning Again) (Afrocentricity 24). I think we are right to snigger at these apparently futile twitches, though we must not forget that our sniggers are less about the twitches than a complicit homage and fatalistic surrender to the continuing force and power of Eurocentrism. This subversive thrust authorizes dreams beyond existing boundaries and is thus a propeller of the dynamism of history (Olaniyan).
Afrocentrism thus goes beyond Eurocentrism. This explains the insight of Fanon in his simultaneous justification and condemnation of Negritude: that it is important for the psycho-affective equilibrium of the black but that it is also a potentially straight road to a blind alley (Wretched 206-248). Sartre then is very wrong: his stricture against Negritude, a parochial and vulgar marxist exegesis (an approach which, to be fair to him, he moved away from in some of his later works), lacks the subtlety and productive ambiguity found in Fanon and which also underpin Achebe's own riposte in the epigraph above that an anti-racist racism is in the absence of everything else a good antidote to white racism.
The deconstructive logic I have outlined is not limited to Eurocentrism-Afrocentrism transactions alone but a structural feature of dominant-subordinate relations. Witness, for instance, the systematic and thoughtful unscrambling Afrocentrism—dominant in black discursive sphere, male-dominated and homophobic—is currently receiving from the discourse of many black feminist writers and scholars (Henderson, Wallace, McDowell, Gates).
It is in the nature of counter-discourses like black aesthetics and Afrocentrism to be a qualitative advance over the dominant, no matter how slight or easily (re)incorporated into the dominant—the need for (re)incorporation is evidence of the advance I am talking about. The "advance" is the quintessentially relativist character of counter-discourses. The proponents of "black aesthetics" only wanted that, and never suggested that other peoples of the world must have it. Asante's rallying cry, "Pluralism without hierarchy," is fundamentally anti-imperialist. Were this to be the European motto in the 18th and 19th centuries, there would have been no Empire. Most anti-Eurocentric Afrocentric discourses rarely propose their own superiority and conversely, European inferiority. When they do, they become utterly ludicrous, like many utterances of Leonard Jeffries or of the Nation of Islam.
But the relativism of black aesthetics and Afrocentrism, like of all counter-discourses, is not due to any altruism but to their structural location as subordinate(d) discourses. To adapt a popular saying, relativism is the weapon of the weak. In fact, the dream of counter-discourses is very often to take over the master's house, not to dismantle it. Witness the result of political nationalism in most erstwhile colonized countries, or the Afrocentric fixation with "centering" Africa (Asante, "Putting Africa at the Center") rather than querying the construct of "center" and "margin"—someone, after all, would have to be pushed to the margin once one accepts the idea of a center.
As Afrocentrism continues to catalyze debates and inspire new social forms, the challenge is at least to guard against the degeneration of relativism and so prevent ghettoization, and at most to re-vision and theorize relativism itself as a mode of intercultural transactions. Toward both objectives, I propose Fanon as one of our ground-clearers and guides—and we might just as well start with the following delicious formulation:
To us, the man who adores the Negro [undue narcissism by the black, paternalist/maternalist benevolence by the white] is as "sick" as the man who abominates him [self-hatred by the black, virulent racism by the white] (Black Skins 8).
Such a visionary rethinking is particularly necessary given the still shaky foothold in the American academy of that most enduring legacy of black aesthetics and Afrocentrism: the institutionalization of Black Studies as a valid area of study. Part of doing the rethinking is to cut through the tangled controversy of Black Studies and disciplinary organization of knowledge production.
Well into the third decade after its emergence, a consensus is still far from the horizon about the institutional topography and professional and methodological features of Black Studies. Two elements remain constant in the many definitions of this area of inquiry: the black world in general and black America in particular as the focus, and a perspective that is, in the final analysis, partisan toward the aspirations of blacks. The latter, that is, the question of orientation or perspective, is usually considered more important, since there could be a focus on the black world that is unquestionably inimical to black interests. It is in fact this kind of deleterious focus—either by negative representation or non-representation—by the West and its intellectual traditions, that Black Studies was designed to redress. And here I direct readers to the useful volume edited by Armstead Robinson, Black Studies in the University (1969), which could very well pass as an account of the origin of Black Studies at Yale University.
The great debate today is less about definition and more about the ultimate institutional form Black Studies would take. The two contending models are Black Studies as a program, and as a department. Activist Afrocentrists generally argue in favor of a department. A program depends on the traditional disciplines as resource base, that is, for faculty and courses. A department, on the other hand, aims to be autonomous and self-contained. I believe it says a lot about the nature of Black Studies that this debate is absolutely unintelligible outside the parameters of unequal race relations in America. In other words, while the connections between the conditions and practices of knowledge production and social power may be hidden or subtle in the traditional disciplines, they are generally open in the case of Black Studies.
The advantages of a program are many. Because it entails what is considered as a more optimum use of resources, i.e. professors in the different disciplines working on the black world are also Black Studies professors, it is relatively more easily funded by university administrations. There is also a far wider faculty expertise and course offerings than a department could ever dream of, since a university with specialists in black history in the History department is not likely to be enthusiastic in hiring similar specialists for a Black Studies department. And as a shield against the vagaries of the job market or graduate school admissions, the program also grounds the student in one or more of the traditional disciplines.
For the Afrocentrists however, the program remains a revolution aborted, a half-way house, a pitiful compromise that is still miles away from the autonomy in the production of knowledge about the black world that the 1960s struggles aimed for. The ideological argument is that the program, locked in so tight an embrace with the existing disciplines, can only sponsor "studies about blacks," not "black studies"—the result of which can only be a bland, diffused knowledge which, though about blacks, is lacking in any unified and unifying passion, much less the required one for the advancement of blacks. The program is seen, furthermore, as too dependent on the goodwill of—largely white and male—administrators and departmental chairs, a goodwill that cannot always be taken for granted, a goodwill offered ever so miserly and condescendingly. And if a program is easier to fund, it is also easier to scrap in times of financial crises, the critics say, insisting that the proper recognition and institutional rootedness and stability of Black Studies depend on its being accorded a departmental status.
The arguments against the program are the arguments for the department: a department confers status, is autonomous, and rooted beyond administrative caprice. Proponents rarely examine though, how a departmental status necessarily guarantees autonomy—and to what extent—from unsympathetic administrators. Or how a department will necessarily secure a unified and unifying ideological perspective. The risk of ghettoization is rarely seriously addressed, because this could be very subjective: one's ghetto is another's autonomous space. When addressed at all, it becomes another instance of the ubiquitous but often true "bad faith" of the administrators. This often turns out like a clash between an immovable object and an irresistible force, since, as I have argued, very few administrations are willing to hire a black literature faculty for an English department and another one for a Black Studies department in the same university. This is why many of the existing Black Studies departments today have to operate on a faculty "joint-appointment" basis with other departments—which opponents insist is still far from the desired autonomy.
The underlying epistemological and philosophical question of this debate is whether Black Studies is a discipline which, like history, biology, or economics, is a distinct branch of learning with its own distinctive disciplinary rituals, practices and end-product, knowledge; or a thematic focus that cuts across the disciplines, i.e. multidisciplinary or, as it is commonly described, "interdisciplinary." The implications of this question for the institutional structure of Black Studies are clear enough: to say that Black Studies is a discipline is to say it ought to be a department—by the logic of the existing congruence of disciplinary identity with departmental status, while Black Studies as thematic focus nearly automatically implies the program.
But Black Studies is really not like physics, biology or political science. And the proponents of Black Studies as a discipline—hardcore Afrocentrists all—know this very well, which is why they have been the most vociferous and defensive about their stand. Let us quickly look at the solutions to this dilemma proposed by two of the most visible advocates of Black Studies as a discipline. Maulana Karenga, in his Introduction to Black Studies published in 1982, accepts the "interdisciplinary" character of Black Studies but argues that it is a "discipline" nonetheless, an "interdisciplinary discipline." He writes:
Black Studies . . . as an interdisciplinary discipline has seven basic subject areas. These interdisciplinary foci which at first seem to be disciplines themselves are, in fact, separate disciplines when they are outside the discipline of Black Studies, but inside, they become and are essentially subject areas which contribute to a wholistic picture and approach to the Black experience. Moreover, the qualifier Black, attached to each area in an explicit or implicit way, suggests a more specialized and delimited focus which of necessity transforms a broad discipline into a particular subjected area. The seven basic subject areas of Black Studies then are: Black History; Black Religion; Black Social Organization; Black Politics; Black Economics; Black Creative Production (Black Art, Music, and Literature); and Black Psychology" (35-6).
It is not clear in Karenga's book how such an appropriation of the existing disciplines will magically transform them into a Black Studies discipline with distinctive disciplinary practices and end-product.
Molefi Asante tries to avoid Karenga's circumlocution while at the same time affirming its premise. Black Studies, he says, is "Africalogy," a discipline devoted to "the Afrocentric study of African concepts, issues and behaviors" (1987: 16). Shoring up Karenga, he writes: "Africalogy is a separate and distinct field of study from the composite sum of its initial founding disciplines" (1990: 141). And in the essay, "Afrocentric Metatheory and its Disciplinary Implications," his contribution to the inaugural issue of The Afrocentric Scholar: The Journal of the National Council for Black Studies, Asante "clarifies" that "African American Studies is a discrete discipline with certain critical perspectives, theories, and methods which are necessary for its role in discovery and understanding" (104). "In Africology" [sic], I quote, "language, myth, ancestral memory, dance-music-art, and science provide the sources of knowledge, the canons of proof, and the structure of truth" (108). Methodologically, "[t]he groundedness of observations and behavior in the historical experiences of Africans becomes the main base for operation in the field of African American Studies.... As a discipline, Africology is sustained by a commitment to centering the study of African phenomena, events, and persons in the cultural voice of the composite African people" (110). Perhaps, what we have here is really not an avoidance of circumlocution but a substitution of one for the other. For the question we posed to Karenga is still unanswered: what transforms the traditional disciplines to "Afric(a/o)logy" once they enter Black Studies? Asante says that "[t]he fundamental basis for Africology as a separate discipline is a unique perspective" (1992: 105). But a perspective is not a discipline, otherwise there would have been Marxist, Republican, Liberal, Democratic, Poststructuralist, etc departments.
I have argued that this debate in unintelligible outside the realm of unequal race relations. Let me now clarify what I mean. The genealogy of Black Studies in agonistic racial struggles is unhidden, as we all know, so it calls for no deconstruction. Exclusion calls for struggles for representation. The current debate receives its constant supply of catalyst from the unresolved and perhaps unresolvable tension between what I call corporeal representation and discursive or ideological representation. Corporeal representation means tangible, outward, bodily representation, while discursive or ideological representation refers to representation according to perspective or orientation. The dream of Black Studies, whether as discipline or program or any other institutional manifestation, and whether so clearly expressed or not, is that there be a convergence between corporeal and desired ideological representation, i.e. black professors teaching black or other materials from a black point of view—the point of view that advances the interests of blacks. This is also the dream of Women's Studies, in which we probably can find parallels to the Black Studies debate.
D.R Winters wrote;But lets look at the history of Europe. African Mulsims from Senegal ruled Spain and much of France for almost 400 years. These Black Africans did not leave Europe until 1492
Why shave off 300yrs^, I thought Africans took part in the original conquest.of 711 a.d.
Posted by Marc Washington (Member # 10979) on :
. .
That's one aspect of the Moors. Aside from that, we've been in Europe forever and in his writings, Dr. Winters accounts for that. Here's more evidence:
There's lots of material showing Africans dominating Europe even from 1.7 million years ago and images showing African presence in individual countries from way back.
. .
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: D.R Winters wrote;But lets look at the history of Europe. African Mulsims from Senegal ruled Spain and much of France for almost 400 years. These Black Africans did not leave Europe until 1492
Why shave off 300yrs^, I thought Africans took part in the original conquest.of 711 a.d.
You are correct.
.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
One merit point for you Brada-Anansi. Nice to see that you are on your toes.
In 711 A.D. A Berber army led by general Tariq ibn Ziyad, invaded Iberia (Spain) and overthrew the Visigoths (Western Goths).
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Clyde - Your thoughts on this please.
I am sure that you know better that I, the stupid and racist comments that were made when the Olmec heads were first discovered in 1862. i.e. they couldn't possibly be Black people, but we'll let that go - ancient history, right? Wrong.
White people are still at it, and now they have those White people who call themselves "Native Americans" helping them.
I have recently been trying to do some research on the "Spirit Cave Mummy".
First White people still are up to their old tricks, read these quotes from another site:
Quote: The Spirit Cave mummy is the oldest human mummy found in North America. It was discovered in 1940 in Spirit Cave, thirteen miles east of Fallon, Nevada by the husband-and-wife archaeological team of Sydney and Georgia Wheeler.
In 1994 University of California, Riverside anthropologist R. Erv Taylor examined seventeen of the Spirit Cave artifacts using mass spectrometry. (This is a direct quote): The results indicated that the mummy was approximately 9,400 years old — older than any previously known North American mummy. Further study determined that the mummy exhibits Caucasoid characteristics resembling the Ainu, although a definitive affiliation has not been established. There is also a possible link to Polynesians and Australians that is stronger than to any Native American culture.
Update (Year 2000 research findings) - Craniometric Analysis Suggests Mummy Closest to Norse Europeans, followed by Ainu
A complete reading of the final report on Spirit Cave Mummy's cultural/racial affiliation (via craniometric analysis - Jantz and Owsley) suggested, "Their analysis showed the Spirit Cave cranium closest to “Norse” and “Ainu". It should be noted that the probability for Norse was 0.00084, with Ainu an even lower probability.”" (pg 39 from BLM document sourced below).
Anyone doubting the racist sickness afflicting these people; should read and read the above paragraph a hundred times or more, perhaps then it would sink in. "Norse Europeans" with a probability of 0.00084: For the uninformed, that number means that there was NO probability for Norse European or Ainu, but they did manage to get you thinking in that direction - see how it works? To summarize:
the mummies weren't American Indian, they weren't Ainu, and they weren't White! But you will notice "that they just couldn't bring themselves to admit that they were Black people" - sick, really sick! Also note: All ancient skeletons and Mummies are DNA tested, but the results are rarely published, and the very few that are published, give only MtDNA data, which is not very useful without the Y-DNA of the males; that withholding of information, gives them free rein to make these racist analyses and comments.
End Quote.
So how are "Native Americans" involved?
They are playing "PAC MAN" if a piece of Mammoth Sh1t is found, they will claim that it is their heritage and demand that it be returned to them with NO RESEARCH to be done on it.
Of course this ONLY to protect the racist myth that they, and NOT Black people were the original Americans - pure Bullsh1t!
Here is a list of what has been done. You will note how many of them - like the "Spirit Cave Mummy" - are described as "Caucasian looking" White people are pathetic!
Source: Friends of Americas past.
Arlington Springs Woman 10,000-13,000 years old DNA Testing Underway Location: California
Discovered in 1959 on Santa Rosa Island, Arlington Springs Woman is estimated to be 10,000-13,000 years old. Santa Rosa Island is one of eight Channel Islands off the southern California coast and is better known for a variety of pigmy Mammoth that once lived there. The remains of Arlington Springs woman have recently been reanalyzed by the latest radiocarbon dating techniques. Radiocarbon dating is conducted by measuring the amount of C-14 (an atomically unstable form of carbon) that is contained in a sample. The result of the testing indicates an approximate age that makes her older than any other known human remains found in North America. She lived at the end of the Pleistocene (Pleistocene, the time period that spanned from 1.8 million to 11,000 years ago) a time when sea levels were at least 150 feet lower than today. With lowered sea levels the Northern Channel Islands were joined creating one island. This woman’s presence on an island at this early date is significant, because it demonstrates that earliest Paleolndians (PaleoIndian Period, 13000 BP to 7,900 BPJ had water craft necessary for a crossing of the Santa Barbara Channel.
Browns Valley Man 8,900 years old (Caucasoid Features) returned to tribes (repatriated) Location: Minnesota
The Browns Valley man was discovered on October 9, 1933, in a gravel pit on the Plateau Addition of Browns Valley. An investigation of the site determined the age of the grave to be between 8,000 and 12,000 years. Testing revealed that the Browns Valley skeleton was one of the oldest ever found in the United States. Based on examination his features resemble those of a Greenland Eskimo. His jawbone was much wider than that of the mound builder and exceeds in width even that of Heidelberg Man (Homo Erectus). Found with the Browns Valley man were artifacts of a transition period between the Yuma and the Folsom types. The Browns Valley Man was found a few years later than the famous Minnesota Woman, listed later.
Buhl Woman 10,800 years old, no DNA Testing, returned to tribes (repatriated) Location: Idaho
This 11,000-year-old skeleton of a woman was found in a quarry near the town of Buhl in 1989 and was yielded valuable information about PaleoIndian skeletal morphology and diet. Buhl Woman was one of the best preserved and most thoroughly studied of the known early Americans. Her bones have been measured and photographed, teeth casts made, radio carbon dating and isotopic analysis done, and the geological context of the find recorded; the results appeared in last fall’s issue of American Antiquity. Examination and testing showed that she was between 17 and 21 years of age at the time of her death. Though no DNA analysis was done, the cranial morphology was determined to be similar to that of the American Indians and East Asian populations. Analysis of different carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in bone collagen (bone collagen is produced by removing the calcium content with an acid and reducing the bone to a protein gelatin) suggests that she ate mostly meat and some fish. Wear patterns on her teeth suggests that her food was likely cooked before eaten. Buhl Woman was healthy and cause of her death could not be determined. However, tooth enamel damage and bone development indicated periodic nutritional stress (possibly due to seasonal changes). An obsidian biface, and the eye of a bone needle which revealed no signs of wear, suggesting that they may have been made specifically as grave offerings. It appears that there was a deliberate placement of the biface immediate below the skull and would suggest a purposeful interment.
Horn Shelter, 9,600 years old DNA testing underway; returned to tribes (repatriated) Location: Texas
In 1970, a PaleoIndian double burial of an adult and child was discovered at the Horn Shelter, Number 2, in central Texas. The archaeological site is located along the western bank of the Brazos River between Waco and Lake Whitney. Two individuals, an adult male and a juvenile, were buried together in a shallow grave and covered with soil and stone slabs. Under the head of the adult was a variety of grave offerings. Included in the offerings were seashell beads, turtle carapaces, flint-knapping tools, red ochre, small slabs of sandstone, flint, and perforated canine teeth. Found with the juvenile was a small-eyed bone needle. Other bones found in and around hearths found under the shelter indicate a heavy dependence on smaller game, though bison bones have been found in deposits in front of the shelter. Both skeletons were fairly complete but had suffered from post-mortem damage. At- the time of his death, the adult male was likely in his mid 30s to early 40s. The juvenile is believed to be a male with an approximate age of 12 years. The only traumatic injury on either individual was a healed fracture of a bone metatarsal (foot bone) on the adult male.
Hourglass Cave Man 7,900-7,700 years old DNA testing completed returned to tribes (repatriated) Location: Colorado
The Hourglass Cave man, while not among the earliest human skeletons from North America is one of very few from the early Holocene period (The age Of Man, the last 11,000 years). Anthropologists have defined this as the youngest period for (Paleolndians/Americans). Both nuclear and motrochondrial DNA from his bones was recovered. Researchers believe that the cold and the consistent environment of the cave enhanced preservation of his remains. DNA analysis produced no surprises for researchers. They confirm the sex by examining pelvic bones and features from his DNA linked the Hourglass Cave Man to living Amerind populations, though not to a specific tribe.
Gordon Creek Woman 9,700 years old (Caucasoid Features), No DNA testing Location: Colorado
Discovered in 1965, the Gordon Creek woman had a relatively small face with a distinctive alveolar prognathism, a trait more common in today’s European and African people than in Asians. There are two types of prognathism; alveolar prognathism, which is limited to the tooth region, and facial prognathism which affects a much larger area of the face, causing it to jut out, thereby increasing the facial area. At this site, hematite covered bones and associated tools were found. Hematite is blood red in color (in the powdered form) and lends itself well in use as a pigment. Hematite gets its name from the Greek word Hemos meaning blood-like. To date, no DNA analysis has been conducted. Little additional information is available on the World Wide Web about the Gordon Creek Woman.
Grimes Point Woman 9,700 year old, no DNA testing Location: Nevada
The Grimes Point Archaeological site is noted for its rock carvings and petroglyphs. Archaeological excavations unearthed the remains of a female believed to be 8-10 years of age at the time of her death. Subsequent testing revealed her remains to be 9,700 years old. A wealth of information on the site and surrounding area can be found, but little information is available on the World Wide Web about the Grimes Point Woman.
Kennewick Man 9,300 years old (Caucasoid features) Awaiting a Federal Court decision: demanded by the tribes for repatriation Location: Kennewick, Washington
Kennewick Man was named after the city where he was discovered. He is 9,300 year old with strong Caucasoid features. He was found in July of 1996 by two men gathered to watch a hydroplane boat race at Columbia Park, in Kennewick, Washington. Initial studies of the skull and bone fragments (more than 390 bones and bone fragments were recovered from a 300-square foot section of the river bottom) showed the remains to be the second oldest ever found in Washington. The state’s oldest were 10,300 years old and were found near Lyons Ferry along the Snake River. At 5 feet 9 inches, the skeleton is taller and thinner than most ancient Indian skeletons. A 2-inch-long stone spear point was lodged in the skeleton’s right hip. It was a stone projectile point used 5,000 to 9000 years ago. Years before his death this projectile had slammed into his hip, remaining there until his death. Additionally, some years before he died, this mans chest had been crushed, and he had to cope with a withered arm.
Pelican Rapids Woman (Minnesota Woman) 7,800 years old (Caucasoid features) returned to tribes (repatriated) Location: Minnesota
In 1932, a crew of road builders near Pelican Rapids dug into the silt of a lake bed and found the well-preserved fossilized remains of a young girl. The fossil skeleton, found in previously studied layers, was determined to be about 8,000 years old. The much discussed young woman has come to be known as the “Minnesota Woman” and has been extensively measured and studied in order that her racial origin and age may be surmised. Measurements indicate that she is an ancient Homo Sapien, more primitive Mongoloid than the Indian or Eskimo, being long-headed whereas finds of later groups are more or less round headed.
Spirit Cave Man 9,400 years old (Caucasoid features) returned to tribes (repatriated) Location: Nevada
The Spirit Cave man burial was discovered in a small cave in 1940. The lower burial was found intact and in an excellent state of preservation. It was lined with sagebrush, on which the mortuary bundle was deposited, and then covered with more sagebrush. The upper part of the body was partially mummified: some hair and scalp remained on the head, and his leather moccasins, rabbit-skin blanket, and burial mats were in good condition. The body had been placed on his left side with his knees flexed upward to the level of his hips. Recent radiocarbon dating results indicate that Spirit Cave Man dated to the transitional Pleistocene or early Holocene, more than 9,000 years ago.
Wizard's Beach Man 9,200-9,500 years old, DNA testing completed Location: Nevada
Wizard's Beach Man was found in 1978 after a prolonged drought had lowered the level of Pyramid Lake northeast of Reno. The discovery site is only about 100 miles from Spirit Cave. The related ages and proximity of these two sites indicate a major Paleoindian presence in the region. An important note, the skulls of these individuals differ considerably from one another; Wizard Beach Man resembles modern Indians, while Spirit Cave Man most resembles the Ainu (Ama are the indigenous people of Japan, originally inhabiting northern Japan and Sakhalin).
Wilson-Leonard 9,000 -11,000 years old, DNA testing completed Location: Texas
The Wilson-Leonard site was discovered in 1973 and deemed as having major archaeological significance. At the Wilson-Leonard site in central Texas studies of a 6-meter-thick sequence of alluvial fan deposits was conducted. Alluvial fans are created over time by disposition of soil and matter. The well preserved archaeological deposits represent the major cultural period of the Holocene and terminal Pleistocene periods. Scientists discovered in the deposits a burial. Radiocarbon dating placed the skeletal remains at 9,000-11,000 years old. Wilson-Leonard deposits were found to be at least 16 feet thick and represented virtually every known interval in local prehistory back to 11,000 years ago. Individually, these archaeological discoveries represent a page in the history of early man in North America, but when examined with one another they begin to write another chapter. However, additional work, archaeological investigations, radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis is still needed before the book of history on early man in America is rewritten. It would appear that PaleoIndian populations of North America were far more complex than originally anticipated. Pushing archaeologists into the next century are unanswered questions about the past. Do PaleoIndian represent a single cultural group? Why is it that the oldest PaleoIndian sites appear in South America and not North America? Were there other people on the continent before the arrival of the PaleoIndian?
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: One merit point for you Brada-Anansi. Nice to see that you are on your toes.
In 711 A.D. A Berber army led by general Tariq ibn Ziyad, invaded Iberia (Spain) and overthrew the Visigoths (Western Goths).
Please remind the readers that the ribats of Ziyad were all situated in Senegal. It was from here that his armies made their way to Europe.
.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
Move it up.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
Move it up.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Assante defined Afrocentricity as:
(1) an intense interest in psychological location as determined by symbols, motifs, rituals, and signs; (2) a commitment to finding the subject-place of Africans in any social, political, economic, architectural, literary, or religious phenomenon with implications for questions of sex, gender, and class; (3) a defense of African cultural elements as historically valid in the context of art, music, education, science and literature; (4) a celebration of centeredness and agency and a commitment to lexical refinement that eliminates pejoratives about Africans or other people; (5) a powerful imperative from historical sources to revise the collective text of African people.
DuBois, Blyden and the rest of the scholars I mention above did not practice afrocentricity they were afrocentric scholars. [/QB]
Somebody should rephrase this in plain everyday speech rather than ivory tower academic lingo.
For example, what average person has any idea what any of these terms mean:
"psychological location"
"agency"
"subject-location"
"collective text"
"lexical refinement"
(lexical refinement I mean really, come on son)
these Professors don't connect with common folk because they use all of this intellectual mumbo jumbo (Euroish) instead of plain talk like Malcom
Posted by Gigantic (Member # 17311) on :
Tariq ibn Ziyad
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
^Gigantic - I thought that I would just quote myself from another thread to answer that silly picture.
"Whites have carefully cultivated a fantasy world and a fantasy history of themselves. In this fantasy world, they were all of the great people and civilizations of the world - complete with the requisite fake artifacts."
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
Go ahead Mike bump that thread, a refresher is in order.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Go ahead Mike bump that thread, a refresher is in order.
don't go ahead Mike, let it alone
Posted by Confirming Truth (Member # 17678) on :
Nice debunk, Mike <insert sarcasm>.
Posted by IronLion (Member # 16412) on :
quote:Originally posted by Confirming Truth: Nice debunk, Mike <insert sarcasm>.
Chief Sitting Bull was also whitey, eh punk?
Lion!
Posted by Confirming Truth (Member # 17678) on :
^no he wasn't, dirtyfoot treehugger.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
Clyde, what is your opinion of Martin Bernal's books
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: Clyde, what is your opinion of Martin Bernal's books
My opinion is well known. His research is fine but it has nothing to do with Afrocentrism.
His major thesis is that Egyptian civilization was taken to Greece by the Hyksos, who he assumes were Jews.
.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: Clyde, what is your opinion of Martin Bernal's books
My opinion is well known. His research is fine but it has nothing to do with Afrocentrism.
His major thesis is that Egyptian civilization was taken to Greece by the Hyksos, who he assumes were Jews.
If somebody said The Greeks took many major ideas from Egypt many Afrocentrics would not have a problem. Now if somebody says the Hyksos took ideas from Egypt (the were in part of Egypt for 100 years) and some of these ideas were then transferred from the Hyksos to the Greeks after they were expelled from Egypt as well as some Greeks also learning direct in Egypt how is it that not Afrocentric?
you said earlier
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Europeans built America,the British Empire, Greece and Rome.
Arab civilization in Iran belongs to the Persians. (unlike Mike you describe them as "non-black"
Setting aside the Hyksos question, you seem to be taking an even less Afrocentric position that Greece and Rome were not rooted in African ideas at all. Correct me if I'm misinterpreting your position
they are all just black folks Asians or Africans..diffrernt history and delevolopment
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
