Afrocentrism

Afrocentricity as a Scholarly Perspective and Social Statement

Afrocentrism is a worldview or perspective that is centered on Africa and blacks. Afrocentric scholars typically claim that Western accounts of world history and civilization have neglected or systematically denied the contributions of indigenous, black African peoples. The term "Afrocentrism" thus implies a perspective which is in diametric opposition to that of Eurocentrism. However, it also often functions to distinguish the influence in Africa of Arab, European and Asian peoples from indigenous African achievements. This particular emphasis on Africa is historically tied to black civil rights movements and anti-imperialist ideologies in America and the Caribbean. In modern America, it is associated with African-centred education policies that purport to be anti-racist.

Central to Afrocentrism is the fundamental reorientation of historical scholarship. Afrocentrism shifts the study and evaluation of world history and civilization from a traditionally Western, Eurocentric paradigm — that is, one which treats primarily white or European contributions and posits Greco-Roman beginnings of Western civilization — to one that treats primarily black Africa and black contributions and posits black Egyptian beginnings of Western civilization.

Egypt as a Starting Point for the African Cultural Unity Argument

The head of the Great Sphinx of Giza, the largest and most recognized monumental sculpture in the world. It is commonly thought to have been constructed around 4,500 BC; however, others date it before 10,000 BC.

Afrocentrists claim that early dynastic Egypt was a black civilization. Geopolitical issues generally have caused Egypt to be considered part of the Middle East; however, geographically, the majority of dynastic Egypt, as is the modern-day nation, was located within the African continent. Afrocentrists argue that salient cultural characteristics of ancient dynastic Egypt are indigenous to Africa and that these features are present in other African civilizations. In addition, they believe the study of ancient Egyptian culture should emphasise connections to other early African civilizations such as Kerma and the Meroitic civilizations of Nubia, as archaeology clearly indicates the interrelatedness of Nilotic cultures with dynastic Egypt. This is discussed at great length by Dr. Cheik Anta Diop and is identified as the cultural unity theory. Afrocentrists claim that these made important contributions to ancient Greek and Roman civilizations that traditionally have been either overlooked or appropriated by the West. The more common belief, however, is that ancient Egyptian civilization is more closely associated with the civilizations of the Mediterranean region and Fertile Crescent than with the rest of Africa.

Opponents to the Cultural Unity Theory & Afrocentrism

Afrocentrism finds itself in direct opposition to the views of mainstream scholars such as British historian Arnold Toynbee, who regarded the ancient Egyptian cultural sphere as having died out without leaving a successor and who derided as a "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 Egypt's contributions to Mediterranean civilizations and of black-skinned, "Negroid" Egyptians. More recently, Afrocentrism has found sympathetic readings from mainstream scholars such as Martin Bernal.

Afrocentrism has been charged by one prominent critic as being "a mythology that is racist, reactionary, and essentially therapeutic." Afrocentrists, however, level similar charges at what they perceive as a pronounced Eurocentrism in mainstream historical works, countering that the Afrocentrist approach merely attempts to set the historical record straight by overturning a false paradigm, the basis of which is scholarship often slanted by conscious or unconscious racist attitudes.

History of Afrocentrism

A 1911 copy of the NAACP journal The Crisis depicting "Ra-Maat-Neb, one of the black kings of the Upper Nile."

The beginnings of Afrocentric scholarship can be found in the work of African-American and Caribbean intellectuals early in the twentieth century. Publications such as The Crisis and the Journal of Negro History sought to counter the prevailing view in the West that Africa had contributed nothing to human cultural history that was not the result of incursions by Europeans and Arabs. These journals sought to stress the blackness of some Egyptian pharaohs and to investigate Sub-Saharan African history. The editor of The Crisis W.E.B. DuBois went on to research West African culture and to attempt to construct a pan-Africanist value system based on West African traditions. DuBois later became editor of the Encyclopedia Africana. Some aspects of DuBois's approach is evidenced in the work of the Senegalese anthopologist Cheikh Anta Diop, who claimed to have identified a pan-African language and to have proved that ancient Egyptians were indeed black-skinned.

However, Diop also drew on the ideas of George M. James, a follower of the black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who emphasised the importance of Ethiopia as a great black civilization and who argued 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 modern Afrocentrism. James claimed that Greek philosophy was "stolen" from Ancient Egyptian mystery 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 some aspects of Ancient Egyptian wisdom. The Greeks were violent and quarrelsome people, unlike the Egyptians, and were not naturally capable of philosophy.

These ideas were not wholly new, but date back to eighteenth century Masonic texts that drew on ancient writings that claimed Greek thinkers studied in Egypt. The poet William Blake had also attacked "the stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero," asserting that they were copies of more ancient Semitic wisdom. Such views were associated with radical and Romantic thought that rejected classical Greco-Roman culture as the model for civilization. James's distinct contribution was to tie these claims to an opposition between white European and black African identity, associating these alleged ancient appropriations of black wisdom with white imperialist exploitation of black peoples and thefts of artifacts from black African cultures. By claiming that the Greeks were barbaric and were innately incapable of philosophy, he also inverted normative imperialist racial hierarchies, which made the same claims about black Africans.

James's approach was copied by a number of other writers and has had an influence on many books that claim to prove that black Africans originated intellectual or technological achievements that were later claimed by whites. Some of these books are not considered to be serious scholarship. However, several later writers have abandoned James's more extreme claims to concentrate on the notion that modern black peoples should center their understanding of culture and history on Africa. Molefi Kete Asante's book Afrocentricity (1988) directly connected Afrocentrism to radical black civil-rights politics, arguing that African Americans should look to African cultures "as a critical corrective to a displaced agency among Africans."

Other authors have adapted James's assertion that Egyptian culture's influence on the Greeks has been underestimated. Among such scholars the most influential is Martin Bernal, whose book Black Athena stressed influence of what he called Afroasiatic and Semitic civilizations on the classical ones. Yet other writers have abandoned the claim that Europeans stole African culture, but concentrate on the study of indigenous African civilizations and peoples as a corrective to emphasis on European and Arab influence on the continent. Such Afrocentric scholars maintain that a paradigm shift from a view of world history centered around European accomplishments and racist assumptions about other peoples and cultures to one that emphasizes the black beginnings of humankind and black contributions to world history, would result in significant attitudinal shifts in the West and elsewhere. Indeed, many claim that a dramatic shift has already occurred. This, then, they argue, challenges the Eurocentric view of world history which for so many centuries devalued and appropriated, or simply ignored achievements by blacks.

Criticisms of Afrocentrism

Critics of Afrocentrism counter that much historical Afrocentric research simply lacks scientific merit and that it actually seeks to supplant and counter one form of racism with another, rather than attempt to arrive at the truth. Among scholarly critics, Mary Lefkowitz's Not out of Africa is widely regarded 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 classical scholars, she rejects James's views on the ground that his sources predate the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Actual ancient Egyptian texts show little similarity to Greek philosophy. She also contends that Bernal underestimates the distinctiveness of Greek intellectual culture. Asante, however, disputes her conclusions.

Afrocentrists tend to emphasise the racial and cultural unity of Africa as a whole as the home of black, or Africoid, peoples. However, critics assert that Afrocentrism relies on a projection of modern racial and geographical categories onto ancient cultures in which they simply did not exist. It is argued that in ancient Western culture, the distinction between Europe and Africa was not as important as the notion that civilized peoples encircled the Mediterranean sea. The farther from the Mediterranean they were, the more alien they were considered to be. This applied to all peoples. The equation of "African" with black identity has also been criticized, partly because movement of populations around the Mediterranean in ancient times makes any rigid distinctions among North African, Asian, and European peoples of the area problematic; and partly because the notion of a unified "black" or Negroid race is itself considered to be unsustainable by many modern geneticists. Further, Diop's claim to have discovered a pan-African proto-language is rejected by almost all linguists.

People think of themselves as belonging to races defined by skin color and physiognomy and link this to their ancestry. One of the impacts of this is that historical achievements are ascribed to races with which modern peoples identify themselves. Others insist that this approach violates the fundamental demand of history as a discipline, which should aspire to understand events as they occurred, not as they affect the self-esteem of modern people.

Afrocentrists, however, contend that race as a social and political construct still exists. They argue that the racist untruths propounded for centuries– that blacks had no civilization, no written language, no culture and no history of any note before coming into contact with Europeans– make the racial identity of ancient Egypt an important issue. Further, such lies have been applied to a particular, broad category of humanity based on the same "racial" phenotype and lineages used by Afrocentrists in refuting such myths. However artificial and discredited a construct, the matter of race became an important and enduring issue, Afrocentrists argue, when whites and others pronounced an entire segment of humanity inherently inferior on the basis of it. Further, such biases persist today. As a result, Afrocentrists contend, it is important to set the historical record straight within the context in which the history of human civilizations heretofore has been framed, taught and studied— and that is the context of race.

Crucial to this aspect of the debate are arguments about whether the ancient Egyptians reasonably can be considered to have been black and the extent of significant cultural or racial links between sub-Saharan and nonblack North African peoples.

Egypt and Black Identity

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Queen Tiye, 18th Dynasty Egypt (1382-1344 BC), Nubian wife of the pharaoh Amenhotep III, mother of Akhenaton.

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Queen Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaton

Many Afrocentrists insist that ancient Egyptians were black African peoples, often emphasising that this black identity was strongest in early Egyptian history, but waxed and waned over time. Among Afrocentrist authors, it is common to refer to Egypt as "Kemet," the indigenous term for the country, which means "black land." Traditionally, mainstream scholars contend this term refers to the dark, fertile soil beside the Nile, in contrast to the desert beyond it, labelled the "red land" by Egyptians. Afrocentrists, however, associate the term with Egyptian racial identity, pointing out that ancient Egyptians also called themselves "Kmemeu," or "the black people" and their subjects "Kemetu," or "the blacks' people." They also cite the archaeological evidence, particularly that of temple statuary, and the writings of Herodotus and other ancient authors, who refer to the dark skin and woolly hair of Egyptians. Opponents would argue that indigenous Egyptian terminology is best translated as "people of the black land," and that Western classical writers usually described Egyptians as a mid-tone between black Ethiopians and pale Europeans. Herodotus himself is clear that Egyptians look different from Ethiopians. Marcus Manilius states that "the Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness. Less sun-burnt are the natives of India. The land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it is a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone."

Both Afrocentrists and mainstream scholars typically connect the ancient Egyptian language with those of various other African peoples. However, most linguists consider Egyptian a typical example of an Afro-Asiatic (otherwise called "Hamito-Semitic") language - a language group, most probably native to Africa, that covers North Africa, the Horn of Africa, much of Chad and Nigeria, and most of the Middle East. As a result, speakers of Afro-Asiatic languages are multi-ethnic and possess a wide range of skin colors. In contrast, Afrocentrists commonly link ancient Egyptian with languages of the Niger-Congo family, virtually all the speakers of which are blacks. For example, Diop claims that the ancient Egyptian language has vocabulary in common with Wolof, while Théophile Obenga links it with Mbochi. However, mainstream scholars contend it is inadequate to list similar-sounding or possibly related terms in different languages; only a rigorous investigation using the methodology of historical linguistics, in particular the comparative method, suffices.

Afrocentrists also cite the results of Diop's forensic tests of melanin content in Egyptian mummies and of forensic reconstruction of skulls to prove their contention that the early dynastic Egyptians were black Africans and remained so in predominant part for millennia. Opponents question the validity of Diop's tests, contending that reliable evidence about melanin levels cannot be easily extracted from mummies because of the chemical treatment to which they have been subjected. Likewise, reconstructions of faces from skulls relies on assumptions concerning ethnicity, and such results as have been obtained are ambiguous. However, supporters of Diop's claims assert that similar tests for determining the melanin content in bones have been used by police departments in the gathering of forensic evidence around the world.

Opponents of Afrocentrism often argue that Egyptians belong among the Semitic peoples of the Middle-East, pointing to the fact that Egypt is at the extreme north eastern edge of the African continent, close to both Israel and Arabia. However, rather than being comprised of a singular people, Egypt also extends south into areas occupied by undeniably black-skinned people. Further, "Semitic" also defines a language group that also includes many black African peoples.

It is commonly accepted that the population of Egypt was, at least in later dynasties, a mixture of black African; Mediterranean; Semitic; and, even later, European peoples. However, these very categories are disputable and indeterminate. In typical portrayals of Egyptians in their own art, from the Old Kingdom onwards they appear as brown-skinned (using a red ochre pigment). The tomb of Tutankhamun contained a box on which the king was depicted riding a chariot over black-skinned people, presumably representing Nubia. There were also walking sticks, the handles of which depicted both black-skinned and pale-skinned conquered adversaries, representing defeated Nubian and Asiatic enemies. Sometimes, such depictions of skin tones were symbolic, and the details of this imagery have yet to be fully explained.

However, skin color among various populations of indigenous Africans differs naturally. Today, a brown-skinned Fula is generally considered no less a black African than a very dark-skinned Nubian. Afrocentrists argue that the same can be said of Nubians and Egyptians. There are numerous representations in Egyptian sculpture and murals spanning more than three millennia of individuals with dark skin, of faces which are broad across the cheekbones, with full lips and pronounced prognathisms. In fact, the Great Sphinx of Giza (above left) clearly exhibits these same characteristics. Such features are characteristic of a "Negroid", or Africoid, phenotype. In fact, prognathism— a forward-slanting facial profile— is a key indicator used by forensic experts today to determine racial identity. It is important to note, however, that all aspects of the standard Africoid phenotype of coarse, curly hair; broad, flat noses and full lips do not apply to all black peoples, many of whom have relatively straight hair and narrower facial features. Paradoxically, while these peoples posses a range of skin tones and some diverge from the classically Africoid phenotype, they are considered no less "Negro," no less black, than other autochthonous peoples of the African continent— many of the Nilotic and Cushitic peoples of northeast and East Africa being examples. Further, these indigenous, black, African peoples of the Nile Valley all comprised in part—and Afrocentrists believe in predominant part—the ethnically diverse kingdoms of ancient dynastic Egypt.

Cranial analysis and forensic reconstruction of mummified remains

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Puntite royalty, Queen Aty, who exhibits the distinctive physical characteristics of a Khoisan woman, and Chief Parakhu.

The ancient Egyptians themselves traced their origin to a land they called "Punt," [1], or "Ta Nteru" ("Land of the Gods"). Scholars once commonly thought Punt was located on what is today the Somali coast, but it is now thought to have been in either southern Sudan or Eritrea. The ancient Puntites commonly were described as black peoples with "Negroid" features and elongated, or dolichocephalic, heads. In fact, an elongated skull is considered a racial trait of the black African populations of the region, and of certain Africoid populations, generally. In the classic "Negroid" phenotype, the skull is typically significantly longer than that of the Caucasian phenotype. Some Nordic populations also are known to have long heads; however, a Nordic presence in the Nile Valley in prehistoric times is implausible.

Wrote historian Drusilla Houston in her 1926 work The Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire:

In the inscriptions relative to the campaigns of Pepi I, Negroes are represented as immediately adjoining the Egyptian frontier. This seems to perplex some authors. They had always been there. This was the Old Race of predynastic Egypt—the primitive Cushite type. This was the aboriginal race of Abyssinia. It was symbolized by the Great Sphinx and the marvelous face of Cheops. Take any book of Egyptian history containing authentic cuts and examine the faces of the first pharaohs, they are distinctively Ethiopian. (Note: Houston here likely uses "Ethiopian" in the manner of the day to mean "black African.") The "Agu" of the monuments represented this aboriginal race. They were the ancestors of the Nubians. and were the ruling race of Egypt. Petrie in 1892 exhibited before the British Association, some skulls of the Third and Fourth Dynasties, showing distinct Negroid characteristics. They were dolichocephalic or long skulled. The findings of archaeology more and more reveal that Egypt was Cushite in her beginning and that Ethiopians were not a branch of the Japheth race in the sense that they are so represented in the average ethnological classifications of today.[2]

The French team's controversial, computer-generated, forensically reconstructed image of King Tutankhamun's head with pale skin and hazel eyes.

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Gold death mask of Tutankhamun found in the young king's tomb, excavated by Howard Carter in 1922. The mask appears in the background of the National Geographic image (left).

1500 years after the founding of the first dynasty and after centuries of miscegenation of the population of Egypt among various ethnic groups, Tutankhamun's father and others of the 18th dynasty show facio-cranial characteristics which are in conformity with an Africoid phenotype (see image of Queen Tiye above). Documentaries in 2002 and 2003 aired on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. provided strikingly Africoid images of both Tutankhamun[3] and Nefertiti[4] based on forensic reconstruction of mummified remains. However, more recent forensic reconstructions of Tutankhamun produced a somewhat different result.[5]

An interesting aspect of the recent reconstructions is their somewhat bucktoothed appearance. This form of facial projection, called an alveolar prognathism, with large incisors, is a trademark physical characteristic of many Sudanese, Somalis and other indigenous peoples of the region. An 1870 edition of the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London describes in detail the peoples referred to as "Australians":

The males of this type are commonly of fair stature, with well-developed torso and arms, but relatively and absolutely slender legs. The colour of the skin is some shade of chocolate-brown; and the eyes are very dark brown, or black. The hair is usually raven-black, fine and silky in texture; and it is never woolly, but usually wavy and tolerably long. …The Australians are invariably dolichocephalic, the cranial index rarely exceeding 75 or 76, and often not amounting to more than 71 or 72. …The nose is broad rather than flat; the jaws are heavy, and the lips remarkably coarse and flexible. There is usually strongly marked alveolar prognathism. The teeth are large, and the fangs usually stronger and more distinctly marked than in other forms of mankind.[6]

The accompanying map in the journal article places these "Australian" peoples in the Nile Valley, India and Australia, which is in keeping with patterns of migragtion and settlement well documented in ancient texts and oral histories, as well as supported in part by the modern DNA evidence of geneticist Spencer Wells. (See "Black-centered history and Africa" below.)

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Typical, orthagnathous (flat) Caucasoid skull

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Typical Africoid skull with prominent prognathism and receding chin line

Scientific examination and analysis of skulls of royal Egyptian mummies across several dynasties confirm a predominance over time of sloping and dolichocephalic cranial structures and/or significant alveolar prognathisms and receding chins. Further, these characteristics, common to "mesolithic Nubians" as well as modern-day Nubians,[7] were prominent features in royal mummies of the late 17th and 18th Dynasties: Queen Ahmes-Nefertari, Amenhotep I, Queen Meryetamon, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Tjuya (Queen Tiye's mother), and an "Elder Lady" thought likely to be Queen Tiye among them.[8] The controversial fair skin and hazel eyes of the French team's reconstruction of King Tutankhamun notwithstanding, Tutankhamun's alveolar prognathism, prominent front teeth, receding chin and dolichocephalic cranium [9],[10] evidence extremely strong Nilotic— that is to say, black African— characteristics. [11] In fact, according to facio-cranial analysis, King Tutankhamun shared precisely the same distinctive racial characteristics as his fellow royals of the 17th and 18th Dynasties noted above.

In the most recent attempt to put a face on the long-dead monarch, three separate teams of Egyptian, French and American investigators each produced a reconstruction of what they determined to be an accurate likeness of King Tutankhamun. The Egyptian and French teams knew the identity of the subject whose face they were reconstructing, the Egyptians working from CT scans of the skull itself, the French and American teams working from identical plastic reproductions. The American team, however, did not know the identity of the specimen.

According to a widely publicized press release dated May 10 2005, Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), announced that "Based on this skull, the American and French teams both concluded that the subject was Caucasoid (the type of human typically found, for example, in North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East)." [12]

In a telephone interview with the Washington Post, Susan Antón, a member of the American team, described the specimen as "somewhat equivocal." [13]

"The decidedly masculine jaw was the giveaway, she said, although the rounded forehead, the sharp brow and the prominent eyes suggested a woman. Age was easy, she said. The third molars were in the process of coming in, something that happens between the ages of 18 and 20. Race was "the hardest call." The shape of the cranial cavity indicated an African, while the nose opening suggested narrow nostrils — a European characteristic. The skull was a North African." [14]

Contrary to Hawass' pronouncement, Antón did not use the term "Caucasoid", or any other racial term, to describe the skull of King Tutankhamun. A close reading of her comments indicates Antón found a clearly Africoid cranium, but with a narrow nasal cavity. While she did not assign an explicit racial classification, Antón's finding of typically Negroid ("African") cranial characteristics, except for a narrow nasal opening, is consonant with the physical characteristics of both the Nilotic and Cushitic blacks of the Nile River Valley, generally, and North Africa in particular, a region which today includes the present-day predominantly black North African nation of Sudan, with Ethiopia and Eritrea immediately to the east. There is no ethnic group in North Africa (or elsewhere on the planet) known to possess the precise cluster of phenotypical characteristics, of dolichocephalism—so extreme in King Tutankhamun that for years scientists suspected a genetic deformity—pronounced alveolar prognathism with enlarged incisors, resulting in a bucktoothed appearance and a receding chin line; and a narrowed nasal cavity, other than the indigenous black Africans of the region. The uniqueness of this set of characteristics is underscored by the fact that the American team, contrary to the French and Egyptian teams, produced its findings absent any knowledge whatsoever of the skull's identity or origin.

The French team's "Caucasoid" reconstruction, which has been exhibited prominently as the "real" image of King Tutankhamun, has sparked considerable criticism. Detractors point to the French team's decision to arbitrarily assign pale skin and hazel eyes to the young king based on modern-day, highly miscegenated, Arabized Egyptians, features which they contend do not properly reflect the eye or skin color of the average citizen of ancient dynastic Egypt, or of today's rural Egypt. Arabs did not occupy Egypt until the 7th century AD. Critics charge the French team with deliberately whitening their reconstruction, particularly in light of the fact that the French team knew the identity of the specimen and that most, if not all, Egyptian artifacts which portray the boy king depict him with considerably darker skin, fuller lips, dark eyes, and a broader nose. Others have argued that even mummy portraits of presumably highly miscegenated Egyptian subjects of the Roman era nearly 1,500 years after Tutankhamun's death reflect a blacker, more Afro-Semitic-looking Egyptian populace than is represented by the Egyptian reconstruction.[15] Afrocentrists long have charged Hawass and the Arab Egyptian government with mounting a campaign to destroy and appropriate black African Egyptian culture.

Ethnographic murals of the New Kingdom

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Image illustrating the Book of Gates copied by Carl Richard Lepsius from the tomb of Ramesses III. The standard portrayal of an Egyptian is the first large figure at the top left. The other images are typically portrayals of "Asiatics" (long beards), "Libyans" (yellow/green cloak) and "Nubians" (black-skinned). However in this image the labels differ from the norm. The black figure at the bottom left is labelled as an Egyptian, and the captions for Asiatics and Libyans are transposed

There are numerous images in which Egyptians are contrasted with non-Egyptian peoples. Like other peoples throughout history, the Egyptians seem to have identified themselves as an ideal or norm of sorts among other populations. Further, there is evidence the ancient Egyptians thought in terms of national identity and ethnicity; the modern Western concept of "race" was alien to them. During the New Kingdom, Egyptian suzerainty extended to the north as far as the Hittite empire and into Nubia to the south. At this time, Egyptian sacred literature and imagery commented systematically on differences based on these two criteria. This is evident in Akhenaton's "Great Hymn to the Aten", in which it is said that the peoples of the world are differented by God: "Their tongues are separate in speech/And their natures as well;/ Their skins are distinguished./The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,/ You set every man in his place."

This differentiation of peoples is later refined in the Book of Gates, a sacred text that describes the passage of the soul though the underworld. This contains a description of the distinct peoples known to the Egyptians: Egyptians themselves, plus Asiatics, Nubians and Libyans. These peoples are illustrated in several tomb decorations, in which they are differentiated by skin-color and clothing. These depict Egyptians ("Ret," or "men," often used as "ret na romé," meaning "we men above mankind"); Asiatics/Semites ("AAMW" or "Namu,": "travelers" or "wanderers," often used as "namu sho," or "people who travel the sands," meaning nomads or Bedu/Bedouin); other Africans ("Nahasu," or "strangers"); and, finally, Libyans, ("TMHHW", or Tamhu," a term for which several etymologies have been proposed). In most cases the Egyptians are depicted as red-brown, wearing loincloths. Uniquely, in the tomb of Ramesses III a label identifies figures identical to Nubians as Egyptians. Quite strikingly, these images of the Ret and the Nahasu are identical in every way, including dress. Afrocentrists use this as evidence that Egyptians were identical to other Africans. Other Egyptologists take the view that the artists mislabelled the images because the labels are reversed for TMHHW (Libyans) and AAMW (Asiatics/Semites) as well.

Black-centered history and Africa

The relationship among racial, cultural and continental identities is one of the more difficult problems in Afrocentic thought. Despite the problems with a Eurocentric approach to history, there has been a common European cultural identity for many centuries. It is more difficult to make the same claim for Africa, in which diverse cultures often were unaware of one another's existence. For this reason, some Afrocentrists have been accused of manufacturing "African" cultural values by cherry-picking from wholly different peoples.

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 Tamils (also called Dravidians) of India and the people of the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Also included in the African diaspora are the "Negritos") of the Far East (Thailand, Java, Borneo, Sumatra and Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia); the Africoid, aboriginal peoples of Melanesia, Micronesia andPolynesia; and, speculatively, the Olmecs of what is now Mexico.[16] Afrocentrists who adopt this approach contend that such peoples are African in a racial sense, just as the white inhabitants of Australia may be said to be European. Critics would 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 these darker-skinned ethic groups— with the exception, of course, of the Olmecs— and "Mongoloid" East Asians are genetically closer to one another than they are to indigenous Africans. However, Afrocentrists point out that such genetic similarities are due to populations of blacks and later Asiatic peoples developing together in isolation over time. This fact, they contend, does not change the fundamental black racial identity of these peoples based on the traditional metrics of the classic "Negroid" phenotype, physical similarities with other peoples classified as Negroid and presumptive patterns of prehistoric migrations. In such matters, Afrocentrists adopt the pan-Africanist perspective that such peoples are all "African people" or "diasporic Africans." As Afrocentric scholar Runoko Rashidi writes, they are all part of the "global African community."

Interestingly, in 2002, geneticist Spencer Wells completed a study of human out-migrations from Africa utilizing the DNA of San Bushmen of the Kalahari who, according to Wells, have the oldest human DNA on earth. Wells concluded from analysis of DNA specimens that the earliest human emigration from Africa of which there is definitive proof was that of San Bushmen to southern India (the modern Tamils, also known as "Dravidians") and then along coastal routes to Australia (the Aborigines), while shortly afterwards a second migration from Africa, also by San Bushmen, reached Central Asia, and thence covered most of the Eurasian continent.

A different world-view

I am apt to suspect the Negroes...to be naturally inferior to the White. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white.... — David Hume, 18th century European philosopher

When we classify mankind by color, 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, 19th century historian

A Black skin means membership in a race of men which has never created a civilization of any kind. — John Burgess, 19th century scholar[17]

Afrocentrists argue that the ignorance and blatant racism of such mainstream scholars and historians, as well as what they consider to be the attendant appropriation or "whitewashing" of black history, make the study of world history with new eyes an important undertaking. It is in this sense that the Afrocentrist paradigm legitimately may be considered to be "therapeutic." That is not to say, however, that it is necessarily, as Lefkowitz has charged, "an excuse to teach myth as history."

While their findings may be sometimes tentative and often controversial, Afrocentrist scholars do not approach Afrocentrism as artful storytelling or pseudo-social science. It is neither fiction nor mere sophistry. In their eyes, Afrocentrism is a critical, historiographical approach to history, based on a weltanschauung which is fundamentally and radically different from that of many of their relatively recent, mainstream predecessors; but which harkens back to an earlier view of the history of world civilizations. It is the examination and analysis of existing scholarship, as well as the study of the original historical record itself, grounded in scholarly inquiry and rigorous research.

List of notable Afrocentric historians

• Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, professor, author: Afrocentricity: The theory of Social Change; The Afrocentric Idea; The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten
• Dr. 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
• Dr. Jacob Carruthers, Egyptologist; founding director of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization; founder and director of the Kemetic Institute, Chicago
• Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop[18],[19], 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
• Dr. H.B. ("Barry") Fell, Harvard professor, linguist, author: Saga America, 1980 [20]
• Drusilla Dunjee Houston, lecturer, syndicated columnist, author: Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, 1926.
• Dr. 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
• Dr. Runoko Rashidi[21], 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
• Dr. Ivan van Sertima, author: They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient Amerca, African Presence in Early Europe; Blacks in Science Acient 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[22]
• Dr. Chancellor Williams, author: The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.
• Dr. Théophile Obenga, author: Ancient Egypt and Black Africa : a student's handbook for the study of Ancient Egypt in philosophy, linguistics, and gender relations
• Dr. Asa Hilliard, III, author: SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind; The Teachings of Ptahhotep

Related topics

• Afro-asiatic languages
• Afrocentricity
• Axum
• Black Athena
• Cultural appropriation
• Eurocentrism
• Great Zimbabwe
• Historiography
• Kush
• Meroe
• Nilotic
• Nubia
• Tutankhamun

External links

• African by Nature Presents Your Eyes, an examination of black African identity vs. Europeanized images of Egypt
• Afrocentrism from The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll
• Ancient Nubia & Egypt Summary of Cheikh Anta Diop's Work (in French) La Nubie et L'Egypte Ancienne dans leurs Contexte Naturel Negro-Africain
• Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having by Ibrahim Sundiata
• Afrocentrism in Rastafari
• Afrocentrist multicultural pseudo-history by The Association for Rational Thought
• Building Bridges to Afrocentrism by Ann Macy Roth, for the University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center
• "The Egyptians: Who Were They?"
• "Egyptology: Hanging in the Hair," by Anu M'bantu and Fari Supia, West Africa Magazine, July 8, 2001
• Ex Africa Lux? by T. A. Schmitz (PDF)
• Fallacies of Afrocentrism by Grover Furr, for the Montclair State University
• "The Global African Presence," by Runoko Rashidi
• "Negro History and The Myth of Ham's Curse," by Babu G. Ranganathan (an East Indian writes of the black identity of ancient Egypt, India, etc.)
• "Not Out Of Africa Excerpt," by Mary Lefkowitz
• Pride and prejudice By Dinesh D'Souza
• "Race in Antiquity: Truly Out of Africa," by Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, a critical assessment of Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa.
• Racism and the Rediscovery of Ancient Nubia
• "Return to Glory," The Freeman Institute
• Safari Scholarship Reinvents History by Ilana Mercer
• UC Davis History Professor Clarence Walker's take on Afrocentrism

References

• Asante, Molefi Kete. Kemet, Afrocentricity, and knowledge. Africa World Press, 1990).

• Bailey, Randall C (ed.). Yet with a steady beat: contemporary U.S. Afrocentric biblical interpretation (Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).

• Berlinerblau, Jacques. Heresy in the University: The Black Athena Controversy and the Responsibilities of American Intellectuals (Rutgers University Press, 1999)

• Binder, Amy J. Contentious curricula : Afrocentrism and creationism in American public schools (Princeton University Press, 2002).

• Browder, Anthony T. Nile Valley Contributions To Civilization: Exploding the Myths, Volume 1. (Washington, DC: Institute of Karmic Guidance, 1992).

• Crawford, Clinton. Recasting Ancient Egypt In The African Context: Toward A Model Curriculum Using Art And Language. (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1996.

• Henderson, Errol Anthony. Afrocentrism and world politics: towards a new paradigm (Praeger, Westport, Conn., 1995).

• Henke, Holger and Reno, Fred (eds.). Modern political culture in the Caribbean (University of the West Indies Press, 2003).

• Howe, Stephen. Afrocentrism: mythical pasts and imagined homes (Verso, London, 1998).

• Houston, Drusilla Dunjee. Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire (Universal Publishing Co.: Oklahoma City, 1926).

• Kershaw, Terry. "Afrocentrism and the Afrocentric method." Western Journal of Black Studies, 1992, 16(3), pp 160-168.

• Lefkowitz, Mary R. Not out of Africa: how Afrocentrism became an excuse to teach myth as history (BasicBooks, NY, c1996).

• Lefkowitz, Mary R. and Rogers, Guy MacLean (editors) Black Athena Revisited (University of North Carolina Press, 1996)

• Lewis, Martin W. The myth of continents: a critique of metageography (University of California Press, 1997).

• Magida, Arthur J. Prophet of rage a life of Louis Farrakhan and his nation (BasicBooks, NY, 1996).

• Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. Afrotopia: the roots of African American popular history (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

• Sniderman, Paul M. and Piazza, Thomas. Black pride and black prejudice (Princeton University Press, 2002).

• Spivey, Donald. Fire from the soul: a history of the African-American struggle (Carolina Academic Press, 2003).

• Walker, Clarence E. We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism (Oxford University Press, 2000).

• Wells, Spencer. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Princeton University Press, 2002).