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Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes

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I found this an excellent introduction to Afrocentrism from a studied, academic viewpoint. Howe shows himself to be sympathetic to the political motivations of early 'Afrocentric' scholars while showing the poverty of the genre as a tool for historical research. He is able to savage the 'romantic racialism' and mythologising of modern proponents, littering his argument with direct quotes. (Frances Cress Welsing was my favourite.)

Howe draws parallels with Eurocentric racist ideas, showing how modern Afrocentrism is often reverse racism, a mirroring of the prejudices of white America and Europe. However, while drawing parallels, he is careful not to draw an equal sign - acknowledging issues of power and powerlessness. He castigates Afrocentrism's inherent conservatism, its focus on the 'traditional' family unit - dominant male, dutiful wife, etc - and its failure to address socio- and politico-economic issues in modern-day US, European and African societies. A 'must have' book.

The study of history hinges on the honest search for truth. Even though everyone has biases, it is critical that the ideal of objectivity be something that scholars strive for. Eurocentrism is a betrayal of this ideal as is Afrocentrism. In this volume, Stephen Howe critiques Afrocentrism from its earliest origins to the present day. The results are devastating. Over and over again Howe documents that the difference between Afrocentrists and mainline historians of Africana is that the Afrocentrists abandon widely accepted canons of evidence in favor of ideology. Howe analyzes most of the prominent Afrocentrist thinkers such as Molefi Asante, Martin Bernal, Cheikh Anta Diop, etc., and finds them to be less than objective in their approach to history. Howe also discusses the various strands of thought that have gone into Afrocentric thinking over the years, the origins of which are more obscure. Bottom line, it is not an acceptable corrective of Eurocentric history to swing to the opposite extreme and imagine a history of Africa and the African diaspora. If you want to understand this history, try John Hope Franklin, Sterling Stuckey, Robin D. G. Kelley, James Horton, Franklin Knight, or any other of a great number of scholars who stick to accepted standards of historical evidence without betraying their heritage.

Stephen Howe's "Afrocentrism : Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes" is a brilliant response to the all too prevalent 'neo-nazi' styled propaganda pseudo-sciences within the Afrocentric movement. Along with other distinguished historians, such as Prof. Mary Lefkowitz ('Not Out Of Africa' and 'Black Athena Revisited'), his book joins the small but ever growing list of brave intellectuals who have successfully challenged the politically correct 'racial myth history', with overwhelming doses of historical truth and reality. Those who criticize it are more interested in promoting self-serving racist myth histories, rather than a search for historical reality and honesty.

A great book for those who seek the truth in history. Add it to your library.

The thing to keep in mind when reading this work is that the author is at least moderately Liberal. This can be discerned throughout the book, no place better than near its conclusion when he links Daniel Patrick Moynihan with the 'New Right' for the future Senator's having noted in the 1960s that the disintegrating black family in urban America would lead inevitably to rises in welfare rolls, illegimate births, and violent crime. What Howe does better than anyone else is document the origins of Afrocentric thought back to the black American radical David Walker (a forerunner of the White Race as Devil Race movement) and before him to 'mystical' kooks in 18th century Europe who invented mythologies in which ancient Egypt had sponsored fraternal-educational organizations that were a cross between Masonic Lodges and universities, which supplied the entire world with higher learning. Howe details the rise of black American and Caribbean thought that asserted that those Masonic Egyptians were black, were racially Negro, exactly as are the Congolese or Angolons. He notes that the negritude that formed the most brutal dictatorship in the Western hemisphere, that of Papa Doc Duvalier, was a key origin in the development of Afrocentrism, especially in the former's aggressive anti-rationalism, which is the reason that defenders of Afrocentrism ignore facts and denounce Howe for 'making fun of' the name changes of certain Afrocentrics. Howe also provides extensive quotes showing that core Afrocentric beliefs include the magic properties of melanin that create racially superior human beings, the black phallus imagery of the Christmas tree and Christian cross as well as numerous other items (which claims reveal a fertiltiy cult emphasis in Afrocentric thought that Howe ignores), the specific and vicious anti-Semitism (anti-Arab as a much as anti-Jewish), and the desperate need to see all of the African continent as having but one folk culture from the ancient Egyptians until either after the Arabs or the Europeans destroyed much of the racially superior black civilization, a culture that determined all of the world's high civilzation.

Howe has placed the ideology of afrocentrism where it truly belongs in the trash bin of wishfull thinking> I find, unlike other reviewers, that the author is extremely fair with those writers such as Molefi Asante whose insistance on the black racial purity of Egypt makes one wonder "who is actaully a racist"? Probably the best chapter which explains the desperate attempt by african americans to hitch their star to Egypt is chapter 11. In short this chapter reonforces what is well known: that Egypt is made up of peoples from the Berbers of northern Africa to the people of what is now the Sudan. It should also be stated that Egyptian culture was in full swing before the Nubians began their rise to power..The ties of Sub-Saharan Africa to African Americans is nothing but wishfull thinking..

Howe provides a systematic scrutiny of the preposterous and deeply anti-scientific writings of the leading "Afrocentric" theorists and ideologues. His thorough analysis shows why the late 20th century Afrocentrists so closely resemble the Eurocentric racists of 100 years ago, except that instead of belittling all things African, the latter day race-thinkers uncritically praise them instead. Hard-hitting, no nonsense, shrewd and subtle. Belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wants to know more about African and black history.

A superb book. Anyone who still believes in the comedy-scholarship of Afrocentrism after reading this is either nuts, wilfully blind or believes that Africans discovered America. A clear debunking and humiliation of the Afrocentrics and their pseudo-nonsense by a disinterested and knowledgeable academic.

Howe's book offers a fair summary of some trends and history in Afrocentrism, but while devastating on some criticisms, Howe pretty much conceded one of the main Afrocentric arguments- namely that the Egyptians were an indigenous tropical African population. Cheerleaders would do well to consider this.

Indeed, by 1999, the year the book was written there was plenty of evidence to support the Afrocentric claim on this point, not by "wild-eyed" men in Kente cloth but by sober mainstream scholars. Indeed, Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz had this to say in 1996's "Not Out Of Africa:

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"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..." (Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)

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In Black Athena revisited, Lefkowitz recommended the work of conservative Egyptologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject. Here is what Lefkowitz first had to say, then Lovell:

Quote:

"not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."

-- Mary Lefkowitz, Black Athena revisited 1996. pg 106

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Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:

"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, 1999) pp 328-332)

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Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies? [/b]

[i] "Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese."

-- S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54

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Here is what the limb proportion studies say- not only about regular Egyptians but some nobles as well, re their tropical African characteristics:

text:

"It can be seen that all the pharonic values, including those of 'Smakhare', lie much closer to the negro curve than to the white curve. Since stature equations only work satisfactorily in the individuals to whom they have applied have similar proportions to the population group from which they are derived, this provides justification for using negro equations for estimating stature from single bones of the New Kingdom pharoahs, renforcing the previous findings of Robins (1983). Furthermore, the Troller and Gleser white equations for the femur, tibia and humerus yield stature values that have a much wider spread than those from negro equations with mean values that are unacceptably large."

--Robins and Schute. The Physical Proportions and Stature of New Kingdom Pharaohs," Journal of Human Evolution 12 (1983), 455-465

and

[quote]

"Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise."

From:

(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313-324. Ruff CB. 1994.)

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Howe had all this data before him, but is careful not to bring much of it out. Finally however, on page 132 of Howe's book, he mentions Keita's work and admits that the ancient Egyptians were [quote]: "this was a people predominantly of indigenous African origin." [endquote]

In short, Howe concedes one of the key planks of Afrocentrism, although he manages to bury it well. To all those who claim he "destroys" Afrocentrism, Howe does nothing of the sort. In fact, amid his snarky criticisms, he concedes one of the central planks or Afrocentrism, and so does Lefkowitz. Ironic, ain't it?

It could be said that Lefkowitz and Lovell, and Canadian Egyptologist Frank Yurco deserve credit for their fair-minded appraisal of the ancient Egyptian population. Scholarship since 1999 overwhelmingly strengthens the conclusion that the ancient Egyptians were a tropically adapted indigenous African population.

Mr. Howe reminds us that people with a special ax to grind often use history as the sharpening stone. African Americans have tired to reinvent history in an attempt to counteract what they preceive--rightly--as an attempt by some white writers to denigrate the black race. The motive is admirable, but the process is flawed. For instance, no reputable Egyptologist wastes time trying to prove that the ancient Egyptains were black. Certainly some Egyptains, including some pharoahs, were, but there is no evidence that the Egyptains as a whole were.The whole Afrocentrism controversy reminds me of another attempt to rewrite history. A large number of laymen are willing to spend money andtime trying to prove that slavery had nothing to do with theoutbreak of the Civil War. Like the Black origins of ancient Egypt, this idea has no serious backing among academic historians. Its sole purpose is to justify the Confederate effort at independence by denying the influence of slavery as a major goal of the southern leadership in moving toward secession. How ironic that a distorted view of history can be used to justify racists of whatever color.

Timothy Roberts

Jefferson City MO

The truth that is so hard to hear, delivered with precision and true scholarship. Easily debunks the pseudohistoric cult of afrocentrism.