Posted: Sat 05 Sep 2009 13:53 Post subject: What Precisely are Afrocentrism's Claims?
BlackHaze wrote:
No one fought as passionately or vehemently to debunk those claims as everyone does with Afrocentric claims to Egypt.
fwsweet wrote:
I do not believe this claim. The very fact that the consensus today is that Zimbabwe and Egypt were home-grown suggests that your claim is inaccurate.
BlackHaze wrote:
Those were widely held beliefs over the past two centuries. Afrocentrism didn't gain much recognition until the 1960s. Outside of a few Black Studies departments their claims are not taken seriously and never have been by most Archeologists, Historians etc.
I am confused. When you claimed that, "No one fought as passionately or vehemently to debunk those claims as everyone does with Afrocentric claims to Egypt," I thought that we were talking about refutations that: (1) Egypt is geographically located in Africa; (2) ancient Egyptians, like everyone else on earth, ultimately descent from subsaharan Africans about 2600 generations ago; (3) ancient Egyptians, like all other Mediterranean populations, descend from a mix of populations, including Nubians and other East Africans, that have migrated into the region for the past 40 millennia or so; and (4) Egypt and Great Zimbabwe were home-grown.
Given that all four of those facts are fully accepted by scholarly consensus and have been for many decades, and that no current text refutes them, I challenged your claim that, "No one fought as passionately or vehemently to debunk those claims as everyone does with Afrocentric claims to Egypt." If "no one" fought to debunk their refutation, then why have all four claims been accepted by scholarly consensus for many decades?
Now you reply that, "Afrocentrism's claims are not taken seriously and never have been by most Archeologists, Historians etc." I am confused. Are those four claims (above) what you mean by "Afrocentrism's claims"? If so, you are in error, and I hereby ask you to produce an even one peer-reviewed article by an archeologist or historian that disputes even one of those four claims.
Or by "Afrocentrism's claims" do you mean something other than those four claims? If so, then you are changing the subject. Since I suspect that this is the case, I have posted this as a new thread. In accordance with rule 3.6 and its sub-rules, you have 24 hours to state precisely what you mean by "Afrocentrism's claims" in the context of your statement, "Afrocentrism's claims are not taken seriously and never have been by most Archeologists, Historians etc."
I was making reference to claims like the one made by Martin Bernal in Black Athena, which says that classical Greek civilization largely owes its accomplishments to black Africans or the even more ridiculous Afrocentric notion that Olmecs were black. I could go on but I'm sure you get the point.
Now I agree that the four facts you listed are fully accepted by scholarly consensus today but I don't think it’s a stretch to say these facts were rejected by the majority of 19th and 20th century scholars. Though I can’t dig up a study to show you the exact number of people who subscribed to the so-called hamitic hypotheses, I can point out that the scientific community was much more tolerant at the time of racialism, and of the incorporation of racialist theories as an analytical tool in examining human differences, especially with regards to IQ scores and cultural disparities in arts and sciences, like those observed between European and Sub-Saharan nations.
The mere fact that scientific notions of white superiority were accepted for that long a time span, to me anyway, suggest that no one (or very few if any) fought as passionately or vehemently to debunk common Eurocentric claims about Africa’s history, or lack thereof.
Frankly Afrocentricity has been used by the right wing to defame many black areas of scholarship and AA people in general. I believe ONE maybe TWO major scholarly books were written over a decade ago about the whole Black Athena thing or whatever it was called but apart from that, Afro-Centric and theorists/art like Blaxploitaion films, Marcus Garvey and heavy funk music ala George Clinton had been around for years.
The Afrocentric zealots are often trotted out by the conservatives yet anyone with even a slight foot in academia knows the actual existence of this type of scholarship is grossly exaggerated by white supremacists and the right wing to keep their OWN racist pseudoscience alive and not taken as gospel truth by the current crop of renowned black scholars. Many Fox news types act as if these courses are some scaled black version of Blaxploitation film sets replete with "Kill whitey" professors and self hating blacks.
In my experience, Afrocentricity is overall greatly exaggerated in regards to it being a movement or even existing at all. You have a few groups of people making some noise and that's it. Like the ladies "who burned their bras" its simply another borderline urban legend in juxtaposition with how disproportionately its been referenced.
Frankly Afrocentricity has been used by the right wing to defame many black areas of scholarship and AA people in general. I believe ONE maybe TWO major scholarly books were written over a decade ago about the whole Black Athena thing or whatever it was called but apart from that, Afro-Centric and theorists/art like Blaxploitaion films, Marcus Garvey and heavy funk music ala George Clinton had been around for years.
Afrocentricty is an ideology more than anything else. In many urban areas in the U.S. it is quite influential amongst African Americans. In some Black Studies departments at colleges and universities, it is extremely influential.
Also, could you give examples of "right wingers" exclusively using its existence to defame many areas of black scholarship and AA people in general? Many critics of Afrocentrism have been people of African descent and others have been non-conservatives, including British leftist author Stephen Howe.
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