We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism (Hardcover)

by Clarence E. Walker (Author) "Afrocentrism is a mythology that is racist, reactionary, and essentially therapeutic..." (more)
Key Phrases: black homophobes, black civilization, black past, United States, American Negro, North America (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Like Stephen Howe's Afrocentrism (LJ 5/15/98) and Mary Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa (LJ 2/1/96), this book is a discourse on the historiography of "Afrocentrism." In this boldly conceived and well-executed analysis, Walker (history, Univ. of California, Davis) basically questions Afrocentrism as a form of historical consciousness. He argues that it is based on "European romantic racialism" and is a "therapeutic mythology" designed to restore the self-esteem of black Americans damaged and disoriented by "Eurocentrism." Like Howe, Walker critically analyzes, and in some cases debunks, "truth claims" (e.g., ancient Egypt and not Greece as the progenitor of Western civilization) in the writings of leading proponents of Afrocentrism like Molefi Asante, John H. Clarke, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and Maulana Karenga. He equates Afrocentrism with white conservatives' views of black Americans' problems and sees Afrocentrism as a form of "Totalitarian groupthink" within the context of contemporary black political and cultural politics. This fantasy or "Afromessianism" as he renames it is dangerous for even black Americans today and poses a threat to cross-racial alliances. Intriguing and challenging, this work will appeal to scholars and students of African American studies and race relations in America. Edward G. McCormack, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Lib., Long Beach
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
University of California history professor Walker takes on the controversial subject of Afrocentrism, maintaining that it is a therapeutic mythology that turns Eurocentrism on its ear and has little to do with the academic rigors of history. He traces it back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century efforts to answer racist historical and anthropological theories. He points to early arguments among philosophers and historians about the various contributions of racial groups, which discounted black Africans' and African Americans' contributions. He examines the negritude movement, Afrocentrism's intellectual forebear, as a reaction to colonialism that emphasized differences based on culture. Afrocentrism, however, attributes racial differences to biology, ascribing all virtues to blacks and all vices to whites. Because it centers Western civilization in Egyptian culture, Afrocentrism has become "Eurocentrism in blackface." The dangers of Afrocentrism lie in its neglect of black African descendants and its shortcomings as a platform for the future. Walker also takes to task the current rightward-leaning American politics that advocates so-called color blindness, "a form of disavowal," he says, of America's racist past. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition edition (June 14, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195095715
• ISBN-13: 978-0195095715
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,271,189 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Breath of Fresh Air on this Subject, July 2, 2001

By	Andre M. "brnn64" (Mt. Pleasant, SC United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Clarence Walker does a good job in deconstructing the Afrocentric school of Black history, with it's emphasis on African pseudomyhology to salve the egos of many Black Americans and ignoring of raw facts and detailed research. Mr. Walker's views may be a bit too conservative for some, but he does a good job of backing up his views with verifiable facts and good research. However, I would say that the need for this book was at it's peak 10 years ago, when the Afrocentric fad was at it's peak and nonsense passing as fact filled the sheleves of Black bookstores. But it still does a good job of rebutting those that will listen to the crackpots again.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Examining Afrocentrism's Egyptian branch, July 29, 2002

By A Customer

"Nonsense" is one of Clarence Walker's favorite words in this scathing critique of Afrocentrist discourse, which focuses on the attempt to reclaim Egypt as a seat of Black culture. It is not, in fact, a conservative analysis; most of the usual right-wing suspects will run screaming from this book, which comes down hard on the pro-affirmative action side, savages what Walker sees as a return to "free market racism" (85), and drubs the homophobia shared by some black leaders and their purported opponents. (In a footnote, Walker bluntly describes Dinesh D'Souza's _The End of Racism_ as itself "racist.")

Walker's project might be described thusly: he subverts central Afrocentrist tenets about race, culture, and historical origins by demonstrating that most of these supposedly critical arguments actually derive from outmoded European beliefs. Most seriously, he shows how Afrocentric ideas of race borrow from the newly "scientific" racism of the mid- and late-19th century. Elsewhere, he catalogs ludicrous errors in Afrocentric history texts; examines methodological problems in Afrocentric research on Egypt; and attacks the anti-Semitism he sees endemic to some strands of this discourse. He also argues that Afrocentrism finds itself unable to deal with American slavery, a problem that is an artifact of one of the most serious problems with Afrocentrism as a disciplinary approach: it seems incapable of engaging in dialogue with "mainstream" scholarship.

This is an exasperated book. Walker has no patience with those who define "blackness" by one's willingness to toe a particular intellectual and political line. He is equally irritated with what he describes as the "therapeutic" trend in Afrocentrist historiography, which substitutes psychological uplift for the complexities of historical study. His use of the word "Negro" is political, since he sees nothing particularly "African" about "African-Americans." (As Walker points out, many Africans refuse to consider African-Americans "one of them.") Since Walker is writing a jeremiad and not an in-depth analysis of Afrocentrism's own history (see, e.g., Wilson Moses' _Afrotopia_), the book occasionally irons out difficulties and lumps when it ought to split. In particular, it is not always clear that Walker himself understands the particularities of contemporary Egyptology. The book hardly constitutes an assault on the study of Black history, however; it is, rather, a plea for a Black history written without romantic blinkers on.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Begining, June 27, 2001

By	Kimberley Wilson (VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

We Can't Go Home Again is a good begining on the subject of Afrocentrism. Walker explains what the movement is and isnt'. He tells wny Afrocentrism arose and what's supposed to be wrong with it. He explodes certain myths and fantasies and shows the reader that real Black history is fall more complicated and intersting than the feel good pap that is being taught in our schools today.