Afrocentrism

An 1812 map of Africa

see African studies for the study of African culture and history in Africa.

Afrocentricity, or Afrocentrism, is a controversial ethnocentric approach to the study of history which stresses the distinctive identity and contributions of African cultures to world history. Afrocentrists commonly contend that Eurocentrism has led to the neglect or denial of the contributions of African people and focused instead on a generally European-centered model of world civilization and history. Therefore, Afrocentricity is a paradigmatic shift from a European-centered history to an African-centered history. More broadly, Afrocentricity is concerned with distinguishing the influence of European peoples from African achievements. The ideas of some Afrocentrists have been called pseudohistorical by Western mainstream scholars, especially claims regarding Ancient Egypt. Contemporary Afrocentrists may view the movement as multicultural rather than ethnocentric.

History of Afrocentricity

A 1911 copy of the NAACP journal The Crisis depicting an Afrocentric artist's interpretation of "Ra-Maat-Neb, one of the kings of the Upper Nile"

The origins of Afrocentricity can be found in the work of African and African-diaspora intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Afrocentricity has changed over time, and has been hotly debated both outside and within Afrocentric circles.

Early history

Edward Wilmot Blyden acknowledged a change in perception taking place among Europeans towards Africans in his 1908 book African Life and Customs, which originated as a series of articles in the Sierra Leone Weekly News. In it, he puts forth the notion that Africans were beginning to be seen as different and not inferior, because of writers such as Mary Kingsley and Lady Lugard. Such an enlightened view was fundamental to refuting prevailing ideas of Africa and Africans. Blyden used that standpoint to show how the traditional social, industrial, and economic life of Africans untouched by "either European or Asiatic influence", is simply different. In a letter responding to the original series of articles, J.E. Casely Hayford commented "it is easy to see the men and women who walked the banks of the Nile" passing him on the streets of Kumasi. He further suggested the building of a University to preserve African identity and instincts. In that university, the history chair would teach

"...universal history, with particular reference to the part Ethiopia has played in the affairs of the world. I would lay stress upon the fact that while Ramses II was dedicating temples to "the God of gods, and secondly to his own glory", the God of the Hebrews had not yet appeared unto Moses in the burning bush; that Africa was the cradle of the world's systems and philosophies, and the nursing mother of its religions. In short, that Africa has nothing to be ashamed of in its place among the nations of the earth. I would make it possible for this seat of learning to be the means of revising erroneous current ideas regarding the African; of raising him in self-respect; and of making him an efficient co-worker in the uplifting of man to nobler effort."

The exchange of ideas between Blyden and Hayford embodied the fundamental concepts of Afrocentricism.

Publications such as The Crisis and the Journal of Negro History sought to counter the prevailing view in the West that Sub-Saharan Africa had contributed nothing of value to human history that was not the result of incursions by Europeans and Arabs. These journals put forth a view of Ancient Egyptian civilization as the culmination of events arising from the origin of the human race in Africa and investigated the history of Africa from that perspective.

In his early years, editor of The Crisis W.E.B. DuBois, researched West African culture and attempted to construct a pan-Africanist value system based on West African traditions. DuBois later envisioned and received funding from then Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to produce an Encyclopedia Africana that would chronicle the history and cultures of Africa, however, he died before the work could be completed. Some aspects of DuBois's approach are evident in the work of Cheikh Anta Diop, who identified a pan-African protolanguage and presented evidence that ancient Egyptians were, indeed, Africans. Dubois inspired a number of authors including Drusilla Dunjee Houston. Upon reading his work The Negro (1915) she embarked upon writing her own Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire (1926). The book compiles the evidence regarding the historic origins of Cush and Ethiopia including their influences on Greece.

50s, 60s and 70s

George James, a follower of Pan Africanist leader Marcus Garvey, who emphasized the importance of Ethiopia as a great, "black civilization", was one of the first writers to argue that Black peoples should develop pride in African history. James's book, Stolen Legacy (1954) is often cited as one of the foundational texts of Afrocentricity. James claimed that Greek philosophy was "stolen" from ancient Egyptian traditions and that these had developed from distinctively "African" cultural roots. For James, the works of Aristotle and other Greek thinkers were, in fact, poor synopses of aspects of ancient Egyptian wisdom. According to James, the Greeks were a violent and quarrelsome people, unlike the Egyptians, and were not naturally capable of philosophy. James famously claimed in his book that Aristotle had physically "stolen" his ideas and works from an "African" Library of Alexandria, when, in fact, the Library of Alexandria was built by Greeks out of the collected scrolls of the Egyptian temples, during the Hellenistic period of Egypt, and well after Aristotle's death.

80s and 90s

the vital necessity for African people to use the weapons of education and history to extricate themselves from this psychological dependency complex/syndrome as a necessary precondition for liberation. [...] If African peoples (the global majority) were to become Afrocentric (Afrocentrized), ... that would spell the ineluctable end of European global power and dominance. This is indeed the fear of Europeans. ... Afrocentrism is a state of mind, a particular subconscious mind-set that is rooted in the ancestral heritage and communal value system.

Although Afrocentricity is often associated with liberal politics, the movement is not homogeneously liberal. During the 80s and 90s, as politics became more conservative in the United States and, as sociological research became increasingly preoccupied with the problem of the "black underclass," some Afrocentric scholars, influenced by the conservative climate of the time began to reframe Afrocentric values as a remedy for what they perceived to be the cultural poverty of poor African Americans. Jawanza Kunjufu made the case that Hip Hop culture was the root of many social ills. For some Afrocentrists at this time the problems of the ghetto stemmed not from race and class inequality, but rather from a failure to socialize black youth with Afrocentric values.

During this period there were also Afrocentric writers focusing on study of indigenous African civilizations and peoples, with the aim of emphasizing African history unencumbered by European or Arab influence. Primary among them is Chancellor Williams, whose book The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. set out to determine a "purely African body of principles, value systems (and) philosophy of life".

Contemporary

In recent years, there is an emergence of indigenous African authors who have argued vigorously for the rediscovery of African Identity looking at all issues affecting Africans from the optics and hermeneutics of the Africa. Among such authors is Rev. Bekeh Ukelina Utietiang who is a Roman Catholic priest. Though a Catholic priest he rejected the European names he was given at baptism and confirmation in the Church and rather took on traditional African names. In early 2007 he published a book entitled, "Afridentity: Essays on Africa" (Africa Reads Books Inc., Silver Spring, MD) in which he argued strongly that Africa can only move forward if it rediscovers its true identity which is African and not Euro-American as the West has made Africans to believe. Bekeh Utietiang is very much disappointed that a whole generation of Africans are losing sense of what it means to be African. He makes a strong case for the use of traditional African culture – African languages, African religious customs, African government systems – in rebuilding an Africa that is true to itself.

Studies of African and African-diaspora cultures have also adopted a more positive approach to influence by African religious, linguistic and other traditions. For example Lorenzo Dow Turner's seminal 1949 study of the Gullah language, a dialect spoken by black communities in Georgia and South Carolina, demonstrated that its idiosyncrasies were not simply incompetent command of English, but incorporated West African linguistic characteristics in vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and semantic system. Likewise, religious movements such as Vodun are now less likely to be characterized as mere superstition, but identified in terms of links to African traditions. Scholars who adopt such approaches may or may not see their work as Afrocentrist in orientation.

Afrocentricity contends that race still exists as a social and political construct. It argues that racist Eurocentric ideas about history were adopted for centuries. They claim that according to these ideas, Blacks had no civilization, no written language, no culture, and no history of any note before coming into contact with Europeans. Further, European history commonly receives more attention within the academic community than the history of sub-Saharan African cultures or those of the many Pacific Island peoples. Afrocentrists contend it is important to divorce the historical record from past racism. Molefi Kete Asante's book Afrocentricity (1988) argues that African-Americans should look to African cultures "as a critical corrective to a displaced agency among Africans."

Contemporary Afrocentrists may view the movement as multicultural rather than ethnocentric. Afrocentricity, in their opinions is one part of a larger multicultural movement that has begun to shift the focus of historical and cultural studies away from Eurocentrism. Less concerned about specific claims about the race of the Egyptians or other controversial topics, some Afrocentrists believe that the burden of Afrocentricity is to define and develop African agency in the midst of the cultural wars debate and, in doing so, support all forms of multiculturalism.

Eurocentrism

Main article: Eurocentrism

Afrocentricity developed in response to the pervasive Eurocentrism members of the African diaspora and Africans under colonial rule experienced when they were exposed to European ideas of history. In part in response to the pressure of Afrocentrists, the study of history has changed, gradually incorporating Afrocentic ideas as a part of a broader push toward multiculturalism in academia.

I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. ...[In] our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered the symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.Journal on African Philosophy] — David Hume, noted 18th century European historian, philosopher and essayist

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

A Black skin means membership in a race of men which has never created a civilization of any kind. — John Burgess, 20th century scholar and founder, Political Science Quarterly[2]

Such blatant racism was common among mainstream scholars, educators and historians well into the 20th century. Afrocentrists contend that the denial and denigration, as well as what they view as the attendant appropriation of, black historical achievement make the study of world history with new eyes an important undertaking. Thus, a primary concern of Afrocentricity has been to engage the biased methods and approaches used by some European scholars, and the European dominated intellectual community in relation to the African people, including Egypt. A seminal moment for Afrocentricity was the presentation of Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, at the 1974 UNESCO symposium "The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of Meroitic Script," which attacked a long history of biased scholarship. In the words of one historian of Egypt, Jean Vercoutter, who attended:

Whilst acknowledging that the ancient Egyptian population was 'mixed', a fact confirmed by all the anthropological analyses, writers nevertheless speak of an Egyptian 'race', linking it to a well defined human type, the white, 'Hamitic' branch, also called 'Caucasoid', 'Mediterranean', 'Europid' or 'Eurafricanid'. There is a contradiction here: all the anthropologists agree in stressing the sizeable proportion of the Negroid element--almost a third and sometimes more--in the ethnic [i.e. biological] mixture of the ancient Egyptian 'population', but nobody has yet defined what is meant by the term 'Negroid', nor has any explanation been proffered as to how this Negroid element, by mingling with a 'Mediterranean' component often present in smaller proportions, could be assimilated into a purely Caucasoid race." - Jean Vercoutter

Afrocentrists write that European scholars carefully define Black peoples as narrowly as possible, creating an extreme "true Negro" south of the Sahara, while allocating all else not meeting the extreme type to "Caucasoid" groupings, including Ethiopians, Egyptians and Nubians (C. G. Seligman's Races of Africa, 1966) French historian Jean Verncoutter (quoted above) argues that selective grouping is common among scholars where the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians is involved, with Negroid remains being routinely classified as "Mediterranean" even though they were recorded in substantial numbers by archaeological workers ( Vercoutter 1978- The Peopling of ancient Egypt) Afrocentrists also point of the work of Czech anthropologist Eugene Strouhal which describes both physical, cultural and material links of ancient Egypt with the peoples of Nubia and the Sahara, ( Strouhal (1968, 1971- Strouhal, E., ‘Evidence of the early penetration of Negroes into prehistoric Egypt), the analyses of Falkenburger (1947) which show a clear Negroid element, especially in the southern population and sometimes as predominating in the predynastic period, and the research of archealogist Bruce Williams which argues for a Nubian influence on formation of the Egyptian kingships. They also cite recent mainstream restudies which confirm the varied character of, and Nilotic influence on the Egyptian people.

Early Afrocentrists found that scholars used theories of white civilizers flowing into Africa to explain the civilizations there, being unwilling to attribute any elaborate developments to blacks. Today, even Afrocentric critics such as Mary Lefkowitz at times finds common ground with Afrocentrists on this topic. In her "Not Out Of Africa"[12], Lefkowitz notes that a number of earlier historical theories suggesting Caucasians initially sweeping into ancient Egypt from the north have been rendered untenable by modern research, which suggests a movement of peoples from the South, up from the Sahara into the Nilotic zone.

"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54."

Definitions of Pan-African identity

The indigenous Papuans of New Guinea have Australoid and Negroid physical characteristics and are considered black in some cultures despite being genetically closer to Southeast Asians than to Africans.

The relationship among racial, cultural and continental identities is one of the more difficult problems in Afrocentic thought. In other instances, the concept of black racial identity has been used to include among "African" peoples populations generally thought of as non-Africans, such as the Australoid (sometimes called "Veddoid") peoples of Australia and New Guinea and the Dravidians of India and the people of the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Also included by some writers in the African diaspora are the "Negritos" of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Java, Borneo, Sumatra and Malaysia, and Cambodia); the "Africoid," aboriginal peoples of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia; some Afrocentrists also claim that the Olmecs of what is now Mexico came from Africa, though this is not a widespread view among historians of Mesoamerica.[3] Afrocentrists who adopt this approach contend that such peoples are African in a racial sense, just as the white inhabitants of modern Australia may be said to be European.

Critics argue that such peoples were not recent emigrants from Africa, and the entire population of the world might just as reasonably be considered part of an African race according to the Out of Africa model of human migration. Studies show that some members of these darker-skinned ethnic groups and "Mongoloid" East Asians are genetically closer to one another than they are to indigenous Africans. In such matters, Afrocentrists adopt the pan-Africanist perspective that such people of color are all "African people" or "diasporic Africans." As Afrocentric scholar Runoko Rashidi writes, they are all part of the "global African community." This view, however, disregards how most "Mongoloid" East Asians identify themselves and the conclusions of geneticists about population relatedness.

African as a race

Main article: Ancient Egypt and race

Proponents of the Dynastic race theory would classify supermodel Alek Wek, a Sudanese Dinka, as Caucasoid.

Afrocentrists hold that Africans exhibit a range of types and physical characteristics, and that such elements as wavy hair or aquiline facial features are part of a continuum of African types that do not depend on admixture with Caucasian groups. They cite the nonracial approach of Hiernaux and Hassan which demonstrates that populations can vary based on microevolutionary principles (climate adaptation, drift, selection), and that this variation is present in both living and fossil Africans. They condemn attempts to split African peoples into racial clusters as new versions of older, discredited theories such as the "Hamitic Hypothesis" and the Dynastic Race Theory that attempted to separate out African groups like Nubians, Ethiopians and Somalians into "Caucasoid" groups that entered Africa to bring civilization to the natives. They also charge a double standard at play in Western academia which has made little attempt to define a "true white", but does not hesitate to define Blacks as narrowly as possibly, while allocating as much as possible to broad "Caucasoid" or other categories when it comes to Egypt or other African civilizations. Afrocentric writer C.A. Diop captures this belief in a double standard as follows:

"But it is only the most gratuitous theory which considers the Dinka, the Nouer and the Masai, among others, to be Caucasoids. What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognising as white only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular--the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? Just as the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries must be considered as two extreme poles of the same anthropological reality, so should the Negroes of East and West Africa be considered as the two extremes in the reality of the Negro world. To say that a Shillouk, a Dinka, or a Nouer is a Caucasoid is for an African as devoid of sense and scientific interest as would be, to a European, an attitude which maintained that a Greek or a Latin were not of the same race." (1964)

According to Neil Risch of Yale "East African groups, such as Ethiopians and Somalis, have great genetic resemblance to Caucasians and "are clearly intermediate between sub-Saharan Africans and Caucasians". According to Loring Brace "when the nonadaptive aspects of craniofacial configuration are the basis for assessment, the Somalis cluster with Europeans before showing a tie with the people of West Africa or the Congo Basin".

Such results however, are generally misleading. Many scholars have noted the fallacies of typological thinking as it concerns indigenous eastern African populations. The inhabitants of East Africa right on the equator have appreciably longer, narrower, and higher noses than people in the Congo at the same latitude, features that are sometimes erroneously labeled "Caucasoid". However, such features have always been indigenous to Saharo-tropical African and many anthropologists point out that there's nothing to suggest that these populations are closely related to "Caucasoids" of Europe and western Asia. Indeed, genetic analyses have indicated that Somali people in particular, are overwhelmingly indigenous. The male Somali population is a branch of the East African population − closely related to the Oromos in Ethiopia and North Kenya − with predominant E3b1 cluster lineages that were introduced into the Somali population 4000−5000 years ago, and that the Somali male population has approximately 15% Y chromosomes from Eurasia and approximately 5% from other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, determining that Somalis and those in the Horn of Africa are of the Elongated African type. Similarly, Ethiopians are found to share maternal lineages in common with both sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia. Both Ethiopians and Yemenis contain an almost-equal proportion of Eurasian-specific M and N and African-specific lineages.However, even these results may prove misleading since a great number of geneticists cite M1 lineages as being native to and emerging in Ethiopia some 60,000 years ago.

Role of Ancient Egypt

Main article: Ancient Egypt and race

The ancient pyramids of Egypt

Sevral Afrocentrists have said that important cultural characteristics of ancient Egypt are indigenous to Africa and that these features are present in other African civilizations. Critical of much of mainstream Egyptology, Afrocentrists write that the study of ancient Egyptian culture has been artificially disconnected from other early African civilizations, such as Kerma and the Meroitic civilizations of Nubia — particularly in light of the fact that archaeological evidence clearly indicates a confluence among this cultural triad. This perspective, championed by the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, is known formally as the Cultural Unity Theory. This related theories have proponents outside Afrocentric circles, among them Bruce Williams of the Oriental Institute, Chicago. Afrocentrists also claim that the ancient Egyptians made significant contributions to ancient Greece and Rome during their formative periods. The more conventional belief among archaeologists and Egyptologists such as Frank J. Yurco and Fekri Hassan and historians is that the ancient Egyptian civilization was a unique mix of indigenous peoples, related, in terms of culture and language, to the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken across northern Africa, Chad and the Horn of Africa and by the Beja of the Sudan. There is general agreement, however, that Arabs are not indigenous to Egypt, but migrated from the Near East, eventually conquering Egypt in 700 A.D. The conventional belief in a non-Black Egypt has been challenged by scholars who believe the cultural similarities between Egypt and the Levant are due to the exportation of cultural elements from the Nilotic civilizations, rather than the reverse.

Afrocentrists claim a growing acceptance of Egypt as an African culture with its own unique elements, citing mainstream scholars like Bruce Trigger who decries many approaches of the past as 'marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism'. and the approach of Egyptologist Frank Yurco, who sees the Egyptians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Somalians, and others as one localized Nile valley population, that need not be artificially clustered into racial percentages.

This Afrocentric view finds itself in direct opposition to the conclusions of Eurocentric scholars such as British historian Arnold Toynbee, who regarded the ancient Egyptian cultural sphere as having died out without leaving a successor, and who regarded as "myth" the idea that Egypt was the "origin of Western civilization." However, there are numerous accounts in the historical record dating back several centuries wherein scholars have written of an Egypt and its contributions to Mediterranean civilizations.

Criticism of Afrocentricity

Critics write that some Afrocentric research lacks scientific merit and that it seeks to supplant and counter one form of racism with another, rather than attempt to arrive at the truth. Among these critics, Mary Lefkowitz's Not out of Africa is regarded by some as the foremost critical work. In it, she contends Afrocentric historical claims are grounded in identity politics and myth rather than sound scholarship. Like most other mainstream scholars, she rejects James's views on the ground that his sources predate the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs. She contends that actual ancient Egyptian texts show little similarity to Greek philosophy. She also contends that Bernal underestimates the distinctiveness of Greek intellectual culture. Asante and others, however, dispute her conclusions. Mary Lefkowitz has also characterized Afrocentricity as "an excuse to teach myth as history".Likewise, African-American History professor Clarence E. Walker has proclaimed it to be "a mythology that is racist, reactionary, and essentially therapeutic".

According to an article in Time Magazine, a fringe group of Afrocentrists have asserted that blacks possess superior and supernatural traits that can be ascribed to the magical qualities of melanin. They also assert that the Ancient Egyptians could fly with gliders. These ideas represent the views of extremists within the Afrocentric movement. While approving of the legitimate aims of Afrocentricity, many educators, both black and white, are concerned that the excesses of this relatively small group will subvert the very goals Afrocentricity seeks to accomplish. "It defeats what we're trying to do because it's going to be discredited," says David Pilgrim, a sociologist at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. "All the good reasons why it was proposed are going to come back tenfold as negatives on the black community -- and on the black intellectual community specifically." Pilgrim, who is black, calls the claims of the extremists "pseudoscience" and "reverse Jensenism," referring to the controversial theories of Arthur Jensen, who argued that blacks were genetically less intelligent on average than whites. However, these fringe theories are not usually incorporated into Afrocentric curriculum and are seen by many Afrocentric academics as trivial distractions to the central issue.

List of prominent authors

• Molefi Kete Asante, professor, author: Afrocentricity: The theory of Social Change; The Afrocentric Idea; The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten
• Ishakamusa Barashango, college professor and lecturer; founder, Temple of the Black Messiah, School of History and Religion; co-founder and creative director, Fourth Dynasty Publishing Company, Silver Spring, Maryland
• Hakim Bey, leader of the Moorish Science Temple, author of the "Journal of the Moorish Paradigm"
• Jacob Carruthers, Egyptologist; founding director of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization; founder and director of the Kemetic Institute, Chicago
• Cheikh Anta Diop [4],[5], author: The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality; Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology; Precolonial Black Africa; The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity; The Peopling of Ancient Egypt & the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script
• H. B. ("Barry") Fell, Harvard professor, linguist, author: Saga America, 1980 [6]
• Charles S. Finch, medical doctor and author: Echoes of the Old Darkland: Themes from the African Eden (1991), Africa and the Birth of Science and Technology (1991), The Star of Deep Beginnings (1998), Biblio Africana: An Annotated Reader's Guide to African Cultural History and Related Subjects (1999), The African Background to Medical Science: Essays on African History, Science & Civilizations (2000), The Afrikan Origins of the Major World Religions (with Yosef Ben-Jochannan and Modupe Oduyoye) (1987)
• Drusilla Dunjee Houston, lecturer, syndicated columnist, author: Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, 1926.
• Yosef Ben-Jochannan, author: African Origins of Major "Western Religions"; Black Man of the Nile and His Family; Africa: Mother of Western Civilization; New Dimensions in African History; The Myth of Exodus and Genesis and the Exclusion of Their African Origins; Africa: Mother of Western Civilization; Abu Simbel to Ghizeh: A Guide Book and Manual
• Runoko Rashidi [7], author: Introduction to African Civilizations; The global African community: The African presence in Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific
• J.A. Rogers, author: Sex and Race: Negro-Caucasian Mixing in All Ages and All Lands : The Old World; Nature Knows No Color Line; Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas : The New World; 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof: A Short Cut to the World History of the Negro
• Ivan van Sertima, author: They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, African Presence in Early Europe ISBN 0887386644; Blacks in Science Ancient and Modern; African Presence in Early Asia; African Presence in Early America; Early America Revisited; Egypt Revisited: Journal of African Civilizations; Nile Valley Civilizations; Egypt: Child of Africa (Journal of African Civilizations, V. 12); The Golden Age of the Moor (Journal of African Civilizations, Vol. 11, Fall 1991); Great Black Leaders: Ancient and Modern; Great African Thinkers: Cheikh Anta Diop[8]
• Chancellor Williams, author: The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.
• Bekeh Ukelina Utietiang, author: "Afridentity: Essays on Africa" Silver Spring: Africa Reads Books, 2007.
• Théophile Obenga, author: Ancient Egypt and Black Africa : a student's handbook for the study of Ancient Egypt in philosophy, linguistics, and gender relations
• Asa Hilliard, III, author: SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind; The Teachings of Ptahhotep

Bibliography

• Asante, Molefi Kete (1990). Kemet, Afrocentricity, and knowledge. Africa World Press.
• Bailey, Randall C. (editor) (2003). Yet with a steady beat: contemporary U.S. Afrocentric biblical interpretation. Society of Biblical Literature. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Berlinerblau, Jacques (1999). Heresy in the University: The Black Athena Controversy and the Responsibilities of American Intellectuals. Rutgers University Press.
• Binder, Amy J. (2002). Contentious curricula: Afrocentrism and creationism in American public schools. Princeton University Press. {{cite book}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
• Browder, Anthony T. (1992). Nile Valley Contributions To Civilization: Exploding the Myths, Volume 1. Washington, DC: Institute of Karmic Guidance.
• Crawford, Clinton (1996). Recasting Ancient Egypt In The African Context: Toward A Model Curriculum Using Art And Language. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.
• Henderson, Errol Anthony (1995). Afrocentrism and world politics: towards a new paradigm. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
• Henke, Holger and Fred Reno (editors) (2003). Modern political culture in the Caribbean. University of the West Indies Press. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Howe, Stephen (1998). Afrocentrism: mythical pasts and imagined homes. London: Verso.
• Houston, Drusilla Dunjee (1926). Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire. Oklahoma: Universal Publishing Company.
• Kershaw, Terry (1992). ""Afrocentrism and the Afrocentric method." Western Journal of Black Studies". 16 (3): 160–168. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Konstan, David. "Inventing Ancient Greece: [Review article]", History and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2. (May, 1997), pp. 261–269.
• Lefkowitz, Mary R. (1996). Not out of Africa: how Afrocentrism became an excuse to teach myth as history. New York: BasicBooks.
• Lefkowitz, Mary R. and Guy MacLean Rogers (editors) (1996). Black Athena Revisited. University of North Carolina Press. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Lewis, Martin W. (1997). The myth of continents: a critique of metageography. University of California Press.
• Magida, Arthur J. (1996). Prophet of rage a life of Louis Farrakhan and his nation. New York: BasicBooks.
• Morton, Eric. "Race and Racism in the Works of David Hume." Journal on African Philosophy. (2002) ISSN: 1533-1067. Africa Resource Center. Retrieved on 2006-11-06.
• Moses, Wilson Jeremiah (1998). Afrotopia: the roots of African American popular history. Cambridge University Press.
• Sniderman, Paul M. and Thomas Piazza (2002). Black pride and black prejudice. Princeton University Press.
• Spivey, Donald (2003). Fire from the soul: a history of the African-American struggle. Carolina Academic Press.
• Walker, Clarence E. (2000). We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism. Oxford University Press.
• Wells, Spencer (2002). The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Princeton University Press.
• Osei-Yaw, Emmanuel. D.(2006)
• Ani, Marimba (1994). Yurugu: An African-centered Critique of European Thought and Behavior. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press. ISBN 0-86543-248-1.
• Asante, Molefi Kete (1988). Afrocentricity (rev. ed. ed.). Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press. ISBN 0-86543-067-5. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Asante, Molefi Kete (1990). Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press. ISBN 0-86543-188-4.
• Asante, Molefi Kete (1998). The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 1-56639-594-1.
• Karenga, Maulana (1993). Introduction to Black Studies (2nd ed. ed.). Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press. ISBN 0-943412-16-1. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)

See also

• Black Athena
• Ethnocentrism
• Eurocentrism
• Kamau Kambon
• Kush
• Nuwaubianism
• Nilotic
• Ausar Auset
• Race of Ancient Egyptians
• African philosophy
• African writing systems
• Axum
• Great Zimbabwe

External links

• 'Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White' Biblical Archaeology Review for September – October, 1989. Frank Joseph Yurco's perpective on the race controversy of the ancient Egyptians
• Afrocentrism by Robert Todd Carroll, Skeptic's Dictionary
• Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having by Ibrahim Sundiata
• Building Bridges to Afrocentrism by Ann Macy Roth, for the University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center
• Afrocentrist multicultural pseudo-history by The Association for Rational Thought
• Ex Africa Lux? by T. A. Schmitz (PDF)
• Fallacies of Afrocentrism by Grover Furr, for the Montclair State University
• "Not Out Of Africa Excerpt," by Mary Lefkowitz
• Racism and the Rediscovery of Ancient Nubia
• UC Davis History Professor Clarence Walker's take on Afrocentrism
• Safari Scholarship Reinvents History by Ilana Mercer

Afrocentric websites

• returntoglory.org
• ankhonline.com
• afrostyly.com
• asante.net