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DEBUNKING AFROCENTRISM
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[link to angryboy.ca] Link to below article
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to thechisholmsource.com]
[link to reasonsociety.blogspot.com]
DEBUNKING AFROCENTRISM
“Things that may not be true can be made if you repeat them long and often enough, therefore, always repeat statements that will give your race a status and an advantage. That is how the White man has built up his system of superiority. He is always telling you he is superior and he has written history and literature to prove it. You must do the same.”
– Marcus Garvey
In the early 1990s, The New Republic asked Mary Lefkowitz—a classics professor at Wellesley College—to review Martin Bernal’s Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Bernal, argued that Greece stole the collective knowledge and wisdom of Africa (specifically, Egypt) and claimed it as their own—a theory that originated from George G. M. James’ 1954 book Stolen Legacy: Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy. Lefkowitz was shocked to discover “a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science.” She was even more surprised to discover that such literature was being taught at Wellesley.
During a lecture by visiting professor Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, author of Africa: Mother of Western Civilization, Lefkowitz asked how could Aristotle have stolen his philosophy from the Library at Alexandria, when that library had only been built after his death. “Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the inquiry,” wrote Lefkowitz. “Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by White historians.” She went on to characterize the lecture as more of a “political rally than an academic event.” But she was most troubled by the silence of her colleagues. “One of them said later that she found the lecture so ‘hopeless’ that she decided to say nothing.”
So-called Afrocentrists believe Moses, Cicero, Cleopatra, and Beethoven (among others) belong in the realm of Black history. Afrocentrists are able to make these kinds of claims by invoking the one drop of blood rule; expanding Blackness beyond sub-Sahara Africa; using vague descriptions in historical texts (“he had a flat nose and dark skin”); and scrutinizing the skull shape and size of ancient Egyptian remains for confirmation of Negroid qualities…so that anyone with so much as a tan can fall under the umbrella of Black people.
More radical Afrocentrists have attempted to assert Black superiority through pseudo-science that casts Whites as “ice people” whose lack of melanin not only affects skin pigmentation but also mental and physical development (or lack thereof). The veracity of such claims is almost beside the point—rendering truth nothing more than a perspective to be shaped and wielded for achieving social agendas.
Dr. Geroge J. Sefa Dei is one of the Canada’s most ardent supporters of Afrocentrism. He is a former professor of sociology at the University of Toronto and an immigrant from Ghana. Dei, like most Canadian Afrocentrists, ignores the troublesome rhetoric concerning Greece, “ice people,” etc. in favour of a more ecumenical vision. In 1995, he wrote an influential paper titled The Role of Afrocentricity in the Inclusive Curriculum in Canadian Schools. He argued that the system was failing Black students despite claims of multiculturalism and egalitarianism.
He called for the end of “the current dominance of Eurocentricity” with its “deep-rooted tendency” to consider minority students inferior. He wrote about growing up in Ghana, where it was more important to learn about Canada’s Niagara Falls than the rivers in his own village. He quoted Lee-Ferdinand: “Eurocentrism has been insidious in its universality.” He interviewed Black youths who declared the education system left them feeling as if “all those who have done something worth mentioning in the school books are White men” and “Blacks can’t make it that far so why am I bothering.” Dei concluded: Black youths need to “to re-invent their Africanness within a Diasporic context, and to create a way of being and thinking congruent with positive African traditions and values.”
A typical example of faulty Eurocentrism is the oft-used phrase “Christopher Columbus discovered America”—A ridiculous statement since people were already living in America before Columbus discovered it. A good teacher knows well enough not to make this mistake and would even take the time to point out this error.......continued here: [link to angryboy.ca]
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