Afrocentrism

[Red Flag Waver]

According to The Skeptic's Dictionary,


Afrocentrism is a pseudohistorical political movement that erroneously claims that African-Americans should trace their roots back to ancient Egypt because it was dominated by a race of black Africans. Some of Afrocentrism's other claims are: the ancient Greeks stole their main cultural achievements from black Egyptians; Jesus, Socrates and Cleopatra, among others, were black; and Jews created the slave trade of black Africans.

Merriam-Webster, however, defines Afrocentrism as (1) "centered on or derived from Africa or the Africans," or (2) "emphasizing or promoting emphasis on African culture and the contributions of Africans to the development of Western civilization." While I realize that a simple dictionary definition can't give a very meaningful picture of a topic such as this, it does make me wonder if that skeptic isn't just a hysterical white dude railing against a straw man. Come to think of it, I've seen similar attacks against Afrocentrism flipping through my father's dorky copies of Reason magazine, hardly a great bastion of ethnic studies. It seems to me that many critics of this movement, while they may fault Afrocentrists for unduly "politicizing" history and whatnot, have their own very obvious axes to grind.

I would like to see what RevLeft users think. Does Afrocentrism have intellectual merit? And moreover, do you see it as bourgeois or as something with revolutionary potential?

[Anti-White]

Does Afrocentrism have intellectual merit? And moreover, do you see it as bourgeois or as something with revolutionary potential?

Just asking this question is fraught with racist assumptions. Don't most things have revolutionary potential, maybe even all things?

[The Douche]

Just asking this question is fraught with racist assumptions. Don't most things have revolutionary potential, maybe even all things?

No?

[MarxSchmarx]

I would like to see what RevLeft users think. Does Afrocentrism have intellectual merit? And moreover, do you see it as bourgeois or as something with revolutionary potential?

To some degree my response is that the part about Cleopatra being black and so on is irrelevant to the class struggle and is a really needless distraction. I don't really see what difference it makes. Sure, there is cultural indoctrination going on when Jesus is presented as a blonde-haired blue eyed nord, or when Buddha is depicted as a confucian sage. It has on the whole more to do with prevailing artistic standards, which up to about 100 years indeed did largely exclude people of color in Europe and the Americas. So pointing that out doesn't me.

But the evidence that these people were therefore black (in the sense that their morphological features resembled the bantu diaspora in America) or whatever is shoddy. But I also think it is counterproductive.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

According to The Skeptic's Dictionary,

Merriam-Webster, however, defines Afrocentrism as (1) "centered on or derived from Africa or the Africans," or (2) "emphasizing or promoting emphasis on African culture and the contributions of Africans to the development of Western civilization." While I realize that a simple dictionary definition can't give a very meaningful picture of a topic such as this, it does make me wonder if that skeptic isn't just a hysterical white dude railing against a straw man.

Erm, no? There are Afrocentrists who genuinely believe that the ancient Egyptians were black, and that is patent nonsense. That doesn't mean that people who criticise that kind of Afrocentrism are necessarily against the kind of Afrocentrism that seeks to give greater credit to the achievements and contributions of those from African cultures.

It seems to me that there is more than one kind of Afrocentrism, and that you're making a mistake in assuming that an attack on one kind is necessarily an attack on all kinds of Afrocentrism.


Come to think of it, I've seen similar attacks against Afrocentrism flipping through my father's dorky copies of Reason magazine, hardly a great bastion of ethnic studies. It seems to me that many critics of this movement, while they may fault Afrocentrists for unduly "politicizing" history and whatnot, have their own very obvious axes to grind.

Such as? Can you give any actual examples, beyond them simply rubbishing the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black?


I would like to see what RevLeft users think. Does Afrocentrism have intellectual merit? And moreover, do you see it as bourgeois or as something with revolutionary potential?

It is very much the case that Africa and Africans deserve more credit than they're usually given. That's the kind of Afrocentrism that I think has merit. On the other hand, lame historical revisionism like trying to claim the ancient Egyptians as "black" is a load of old horse droppings since for various reasons they were never racially homogeneous.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I understood it to be an umbrella term. A lot of ex-garvyites and ex-noi groups formed over the decades and many of these created mythologies or alternative ways of conceptualizing history in attempts to sort of idealistically reconceptualize the place of black people in society. It's also a natural reaction to the official us history mythology taught in schools.

So those would be specific groups or sets of "Afro-centric" ideas. But then there's Afrocentrism of the late 80s, early 90s sort which was sort of a weak echo of black power (and had the same sort of diversity in ideas... From cultural nationalism to community power to revolutionary ideas to pro-black bussiness) combined with identity politics.

My impression is that it's probably the result of on the one hand a larger political mood at the time... An increase in activism, hope around the end of apartheid and the Cold War... Combined with a growing inequality among black people where a small group achieved upward mobility to an unheard of degree (live where you want to, go where you want, be in a profession, be part of a political machine) while the door was slammed shut by due industrialization... And then locked and chained by the war on drugs and mass incarceration.

Afrocentrism in the sense of soft-nationalism/identity politics could then be away to unite these moods and perspectives. Around the time of the l.a. Riots, I think this concept could have gone a different way and towards some of the community and working class sort of politics like in the late 60s, but ultimately it helped tie working class aspirations to supporting black owned companies and politicians as the way forward instead. Fubu, bet, the regular old capitalists all to happy to manage segregation and ghetto conditions... Just expanded into the (black) suburbs.

Edit: damn auto-correct kept changing garvyites to gravy items.

[Jimmie Higgins]

To some degree my response is that the part about Cleopatra being black and so on is irrelevant to the class struggle and is a really needless distraction. I don't really see what difference it makes. Sure, there is cultural indoctrination going on when Jesus is presented as a blonde-haired blue eyed nord, or when Buddha is depicted as a confucian sage. It has on the whole more to do with prevailing artistic standards, which up to about 100 years indeed did largely exclude people of color in Europe and the Americas. So pointing that out doesn't me.

But the evidence that these people were therefore black (in the sense that their morphological features resembled the bantu diaspora in America) or whatever is shoddy. But I also think it is counterproductive.if you grow up and are told that the only things people like you ever did was get whipped by white people and then saved by Lincoln, then a re-telling of history which starts in Africa, not Greece to Rome to France to England and the the America's, is a powerful thing.

We try and do the same thing with history... As Marxists putting class conflict as the motor of history (rather that some meaningless "progress" or " civilization"). And in telling specific historical events, we try and uncover what the oppressed were doing, their self-activity, not just what was done to them from the top-down. I think looking at class struggle is the way to understand history (since really it's oppressed and oppressors struggling back and forth), but I also think that telling "our" history as opposed to their history is important propagandistic ally, in helping us gain a conception of ourselves.

[MarxSchmarx]

if you grow up and are told that the only things people like you ever did was get whipped by white people and then saved by Lincoln, then a re-telling of history which starts in Africa, not Greece to Rome to France to England and the the America's, is a powerful thing.

We try and do the same thing with history... As Marxists putting class conflict as the motor of history (rather that some meaningless "progress" or " civilization"). And in telling specific historical events, we try and uncover what the oppressed were doing, their self-activity, not just what was done to them from the top-down. I think looking at class struggle is the way to understand history (since really it's oppressed and oppressors struggling back and forth), but I also think that telling "our" history as opposed to their history is important propagandistic ally, in helping us gain a conception of ourselves.

You raise valid points. Of course, even the "official" version of history appears to be atrociously taught in American schools to whites, blacks, and everyone else. I have, for instance, come across many Americans who claim to have never heard of the Mexican-American war. In my experience, the situation is only marginally better in a lot of the rest of the world where most people have at least a secondary education.

Don't get me wrong, the despondence that drives the desire to tell history from a different perspective than the official records is indeed important. I think it's perfectly legitimate to emphasize for instance how west African political dynamics catalyzed the colonization of the new world. And, as you suggest, retelling the story of western civilization beginning with how Egypt rather than Rome and Greece became the fountain is certainly a valuable propaganda tool that undermines hegemonic oppression.

But at the same time, I think devoting effort trying to recast the "great men (or women)" of history as belonging to one race or another to a large degree misses this point. Efforts to claim Cleopatra was somehow black are symptomatic of this. They still presume the prevailing ruling class narrative that history is driven by a handful of privileged people in power. It strikes me as quite analogous to the notion that we need more black CEOs, when we should be working to have no CEOs. Under the guise of subversion they reinforce prevailing ruling class ideology. That is why I think these kinds of claims have very little of value to add. If anything they may be (mildly) counter-productive to the broader goal of taking control of our own narratives with shoddy history.

If we want individual black female heroes to inspire and motivate the struggle against white supremacy in young people history education targets, why not Harriet Tubman or, if we must choose war figures, Yaa Asantewaa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaa_Asantewaa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaa_Asantewaa)?)
? Focusing on asserting cleopatra was black instead strikes me as a lame substitute and in any case a reaction driven primarily by the dominant culture rather than creating alternative narratives.

[ComradeOm]

We try and do the same thing with history...Ummm, no we don't. Without wanting to get into a whole 'what is history' discussion, there are such things as objective facts in history. To claim, as some do, that ancient Egyptians were black (and that the white Greeks/Europeans 'stole' their civilisation from them) is both objectively wrong and a way of projecting nonsensical racial theories back in time. It's just bad history

And I'm sorry but that is not what Marxism is about. Class struggle is not a myth or pseudo-science. If "our history" involves blatant untruths or mischaracterisations then it's not history at all and should be jettisoned immediately

[Invader Zim]

Ummm, no we don't. Without wanting to get into a whole 'what is history' discussion, there are such things as objective facts in history. To claim, as some do, that ancient Egyptians were black (and that the white Greeks/Europeans 'stole' their civilisation from them) is both objectively wrong and a way of projecting nonsensical racial theories back in time. It's just bad history



Agreed, but I would go further.

It isn't 'just bad history', it is fiction masquerading as 'history'. 'Bad history' is an historical account littered with errors, or inadequate and incomplete analysis of the evidence available. An historian does not aim to distort the past according to an ideological predilection. Nor does an historian attempt to use the past to judge the present, or vice versa.

To quote von Ranke:

"You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was."

[Jimmie Higgins]

Ummm, no we don't. Without wanting to get into a whole 'what is history' discussion, there are such things as objective facts in history. To claim, as some do, that ancient Egyptians were black (and that the white Greeks/Europeans 'stole' their civilisation from them) is both objectively wrong and a way of projecting nonsensical racial theories back in time. It's just bad historyNo, you misunderstood me - I wasn't very clear.

First, seeing history in terms of class struggle is not changing the focus - it's an attempt to understand it. So the equivalent alternatives to this sense of history are concepts such as "civilization" "gaining knowledge" "progress".

What we do that's the same as Afrocentrism in general is not in the understanding of history (since most Afrocentric ideologies probably agree with Eurocentric ones that gaining knowledge or civilization are the basis for historical development) but in the telling of it. Class struggle can be told from the perspective of any class involved and most in-depth Marxist histories explain the larger economic conditions and the subjective thinking and actions of both capitalist and worker forces. But I think there is propagandistic benifit in also telling our class's "hidden" or obscured histories. That's what I mean by "our histories".

Second, I think you are conflating general "Afrocentric" approaches to history with specific examples of certain Afrocentric versions of history which are more ideological than factual. (Sometimes Marxists do that too from time to time as well, but it's counterproductive.) An Afrocentric approach as I understand it just means refocusing history in a nationalistic way. Because there is a lot of mystacism involved in US black nationalism some Afrocentric histories are more NOI-like spirituality and conspiracy theory, but it could also be factual and it originally came out of scholarly efforts to counter the ways in which euro-centric histories downplayed or did their own ideologically-driven revision of the cultures of people they wanted to conquer.


It seems to me that many critics of this movement, while they may fault Afrocentrists for unduly "politicizing" history and whatnot, have their own very obvious axes to grind.Yeah, the way history is told IS political - you know that trite phrase says it all: "the victors write the history books". Whenever someone is accused of "politicizing" something neutral, they are really being told to shut up and not challenge the political status-quo underlying whatever is being "politicized".

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I don't think liberation comes from epistemologically dubious beliefs, like the notion that an empress who descended from a (fairly elitist and tribalist) Greek Imperial community was necessarily "black". It seems more like "religion" in the Marxist sense of an ideology which helps us cope.

[Invader Zim]

Yeah, the way history is told IS political - you know that trite phrase says it all: "the victors write the history books". Whenever someone is accused of "politicizing" something neutral, they are really being told to shut up and not challenge the political status-quo underlying whatever is being "politicized".

I do not agree. Firstly, the assertion that 'history is written by the victors' is absurd. One only has to look at the most influential works on German society in the 1930s and 1940s to see that they were written by Germans - despite intense interest from historians from the 'winning' side of the Second World War.

Secondly, and directly building from the previous point - this is because good history, like any other scholarly discipline, is about rigorous application of method combined with depth of insight. There is nothing necessarily 'political' about striving to tell the truth. However, politicising the past, and attempting to colour events as a means of making a political point in the present, is a very dangerous game for an historian to play and often leads to history being produced which is soon debunked once the politics which informed its production go out of fashion. Thus, nobody takes Correlli Barnett's 'Decline' trilogy overly seriously anymore, because while it was influential for a period in the 1980s, it was correctly identified as being overly coloured by the authors politics, and the politics of the day, by the 1990s, and, again rightly, Barnett was accused of oversimplification and failure to engage with material and ideas which failed to support his thesis.

In short, what Barnett wrote was 'politicising something neutral', and his history suffered because of it, because, in my view at least, his politics clouded his judgement and led him to produce an inaccurate model of the society he studied.

Call me old fashioned, but I believe that society could have evolved and developed in only one way and that a thesis is either correct or incorrect. While the ephemeral nature of any given point in the past might make it impossible to know which of several different theses, regarding a particular issue, if any, is closest to the truth, at the end of the day there can only be one 'right' answer: either Hitler was a 'weak dictator', in various respects, or he was not. Either appeasement was the best defensible policy, given the information available to Chamberlain's cabinet, or it was not and they should have done something else. Either Stalin was directly complicit, and his will a key driving factor, in the murder and repression of millions of soviet citizens, or he was not.

If you challenge the status-quo assessment of the past, as a political statement, then you are not 'doing' history, and you have made your challenge for wholly the wrong reason, and indeed begun the entire enterprise for the wrong reason. A topic should be investigated because existing scholarship fails to adequately address it, typically because it is understudied or new methods and paradigms offer the opportunity for re-assessment. The historian then examines the evidence and draws conclusions - what they do not, or rather should not, do is to approach the issue with political preconceptions and then look for the evidence to support those preconceptions. It is simply not good enough to state that because something is the establishment line it, therefore, must be a distortion of the truth.

[Red Commissar]

I think afrocentrism was a pretty amorphous term. For some groups it was trying to reclaim what they felt was a lost culture or history, and for others it was inventing false histories with the claim that it had been rubbed out.

The important thing about Afrocentrism is to understand the context it grew out of. Even in the case of those creating their own history it was a response to the times they lived in where society and sometimes academia reduced African cultures to things that never created anything of worth and rather just a "pecularity" to look at. Some of this permeated even in to the way blacks perceived themselves and trying to adjust their appearances to remove more "African" things. Malcolm X has a good look at this with his experience with conking his hair and why it was popular among youth when he was young.

I don't think it's particularly a bad thing with this reawakening and trying to assert who they are, rather than feeling that they should fit what society thinks they should be like. Yeah some of the stuff NoI and others did with history were idiotic but that shouldn't make an excuse to dumb down what Afrocentrism, black power, etc was as merely the reverse side of white supremacy without looking at the times it came out of.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I do not agree. Firstly, the assertion that 'history is written by the victors' is absurd. One only has to look at the most influential works on German society in the 1930s and 1940s to see that they were written by Germans - despite intense interest from historians from the 'winning' side of the Second World War.

Secondly, and directly building from the previous point - this is because good history, like any other scholarly discipline, is about rigorous application of method combined with depth of insight. There is nothing necessarily 'political' about striving to tell the truth. However, politicising the past, and attempting to colour events as a means of making a political point in the present, is a very dangerous game for an historian to play and often leads to history being produced which is soon debunked once the politics which informed its production go out of fashion. Thus, nobody takes Correlli Barnett's 'Decline' trilogy overly seriously anymore, because while it was influential for a period in the 1980s, it was correctly identified as being overly coloured by the authors politics, and the politics of the day, by the 1990s, and, again rightly, Barnett was accused of oversimplification and failure to engage with material and ideas which failed to support his thesis.

In short, what Barnett wrote was 'politicising something neutral', and his history suffered because of it, because, in my view at least, his politics clouded his judgement and led him to produce an inaccurate model of the society he studied.

Call me old fashioned, but I believe that society could have evolved and developed in only one way and that a thesis is either correct or incorrect. While the ephemeral nature of any given point in the past might make it impossible to know which of several different theses, regarding a particular issue, if any, is closest to the truth, at the end of the day there can only be one 'right' answer: either Hitler was a 'weak dictator', in various respects, or he was not. Either appeasement was the best defensible policy, given the information available to Chamberlain's cabinet, or it was not and they should have done something else. Either Stalin was directly complicit, and his will a key driving factor, in the murder and repression of millions of soviet citizens, or he was not.

If you challenge the status-quo assessment of the past, as a political statement, then you are not 'doing' history, and you have made your challenge for wholly the wrong reason, and indeed begun the entire enterprise for the wrong reason. A topic should be investigated because existing scholarship fails to adequately address it, typically because it is understudied or new methods and paradigms offer the opportunity for re-assessment. The historian then examines the evidence and draws conclusions - what they do not, or rather should not, do is to approach the issue with political preconceptions and then look for the evidence to support those preconceptions. It is simply not good enough to state that because something is the establishment line it, therefore, must be a distortion of the truth.

The telling of history is an interpretation of historical evidence and documents - I strongly disagree that this interpretation is not colored by ideology - how could it be otherwise in class societies? There is an objective sequence of events, an objective history, but the telling of history is subjective.

Where do new paradigms or understandings come from? Not purely looking at historical records in isolation. Often it comes from new political understandings. History is a political battle and the winners do write it - there would be no ethnic studies program or "people's histories" without the civil rights movement forcing a change in view of the agency of workers and the oppressed in society. As these short-term gains and movements have been pushed back - low and behold, ethnic studies, labor studies and so are are the first to be cut in the budget crisis as well as suffering ideological attacks on their legitimacy.

There is an objective history, there is a wider and more accurate history that could be told now - there is also objective science and discovery - but the way history and science are examined is not outside of class society and not free of ideological entanglements - it's far from "neutral" and that's why there are always going to be little battles over "whose history" get's told and from what perspective.

Generally my problem with Afrocentric tellings of history (assuming that it's not an example of factually incorrect history) is the same problem as with mainstream history: it focuses on "great-men" views or some concept of abstract civilization.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

The Nubians controlled Egypt for a time, didn't they? Wouldn't they pass for having dark skin?

Or is this like one of those racialist THESE PEOPLE WERE ACTUALLY ETHNICALLY US WE ARE THE MASTER RACE kinds of historical revisionism?

[Invader Zim]

The telling of history is an interpretation of historical evidence and documents - I strongly disagree that this interpretation is not colored by ideology - how could it be otherwise in class societies? There is an objective sequence of events, an objective history, but the telling of history is subjective.

Where do new paradigms or understandings come from? Not purely looking at historical records in isolation. Often it comes from new political understandings. History is a political battle and the winners do write it - there would be no ethnic studies program or "people's histories" without the civil rights movement forcing a change in view of the agency of workers and the oppressed in society. As these short-term gains and movements have been pushed back - low and behold, ethnic studies, labor studies and so are are the first to be cut in the budget crisis as well as suffering ideological attacks on their legitimacy.

There is an objective history, there is a wider and more accurate history that could be told now - there is also objective science and discovery - but the way history and science are examined is not outside of class society and not free of ideological entanglements - it's far from "neutral" and that's why there are always going to be little battles over "whose history" get's told and from what perspective.

Generally my problem with Afrocentric tellings of history (assuming that it's not an example of factually incorrect history) is the same problem as with mainstream history: it focuses on "great-men" views or some concept of abstract civilization.


The telling of history is an interpretation of historical evidence and documents - I strongly disagree that this interpretation is not colored by ideology - how could it be otherwise in class societies?

I agree that an individual's outlook, life and experiences, including their politics, influences how they perceive things around them. If there is one thing that the posties have hammered home, it is that. However, an historian should be aware of that and they should be able, to some degree at least, to set that aside and be intellectually honest enough to note when the evidence does not support their ideological assumptions regarding the past. Really, it isn't difficult, despite all the hand wringing that goes on in university history department seminars on historiography and historical skills. It is just being honest, open minded and making an effort to approach issues and leaving any agenda you may have at the door - in other words, it is called being a professional. Obviously you can't eliminate bias entirely, because it is partly subconscious, but as long as you're honest you should be able to spot when the sources don't match the thesis you're developing. And if you don't you can be damn sure that people reviewing the work, critiquing the work and using the work will.


Where do new paradigms or understandings come from? Not purely looking at historical records in isolation. Often it comes from new political understandings.

Sometimes, sometimes not. Would you contend that a paradigm like Atlantic history has any inherent political agenda, as Marxist history does? Atlantic history came about because taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture is a natural progression. But I take your point on that.

However, just because a new paradigm or methodology has a particular political heritage does not for a moment imply this heritage must influence its application. For example, if you were examining a working class community and attempted to deploy a prosopographical approach would that immediately imply that you agree with the politics of Lewis Namier? Or, if you use oral history, are you trying to achieve the same thing as George Ewart Evans or Allan Nevins?

In fact, that is an interesting case study. Nevin's began using oral history because the advent of the telephone naturally decreased a amount of traditional political correspondence of 'great men'. meanwhile, entirely independently, Evans' used oral history to study agricultural, rural history and the lives of people who usually leave little or no trace in the archives. So the same method was arrived at by two different groups of historians for entirely separate purposes and to explore separate interests.

But this returns us to the issue rather nicely. If I want to learn about power within the middling ranks of the Civil Service, and it is my suspicion that change is enforced by changing outside circumstances (structuralism), as opposed to internal pressures and planning (intentionalism), and then I go out and interview a civil servant who tells me the opposite to what I initially thought - what do I do? If our politics so colour our interpretations, presumably I would not even notice, ignore the evidence, misrepresent it or deliberately fail to attribute it the weight it deserves. Most historians do not do that, and the idea that we should not and cannot try to be honest is just post-modernist bullshit. I'm not saying you can entirely eliminate bias, but a good historian is upfront about where they stand and tries their best to be even handed. If they don't, then their work typically dates very quickly.


History is a political battle and the winners do write it

Then presumably, you believe that black people, women, homosexuals and the working classes have 'won' their various political battles, against those in high politics, with wealth, and from elite backgrounds. Because unsurprisingly, international (read diplomatic) history has taken a massive hit since the 1960s and shows few signs of recovery.


there would be no ethnic studies program or "people's histories" without the civil rights movement forcing a change in view of the agency of workers and the oppressed in society.

Firstly, I don't think you can point to 'x' event as that that is why we have this historiographical shift. While it is undeniable that massive social changes were occurring in the 1960s which influenced 'People's history', or history from below, it is also true that these historiographical movements had their origins much earlier. You can actually trace history from below right back to the rise of social history in France in the 1920s. Perhaps you need to expand your view of the profession beyond North America? You don't need to have programmes specifically on labour history, history from below, etc. anymore, because it is almost impossible to imagine any modern module on social history that wouldn't already draw upon these paradigms in quite some detail.

Secondly, the reason that these programmes go under is not because they have lost some ideological war, but because they don't attract students. Writing a good module involves picking out a misleading title that is attractive to teenage boys, and that is easy if you study, say, the First World War or the Russian Revolution. It is not so easy if the module is an exploration of the application of social-scientific theoretical paradigms to ethnic studies. For what I think are pretty obvious reasons students in history departments don't want to do that kind of thing. Or any module which includes the words 'agrarian' or 'peasant' in the title. Its sad that students don't want to examine niche interests and that the bottom line is building modules with appeal, but it is difficult to justify putting on a module that will have only a dozen or so takers - it puts massive pressure on colleagues. And that's the real reason these programmes lose funding when times are hard, because they don't draw in the students, and if something has to go it is going to be an unpopular module or programme.

As for attacks on the legitimacy of Ethnic studies, the attack I've seen is that it is largely over-theorised and infected by post-modernism and post-structuralism. That's true. If people in these fields want to be taken seriously as historians they should stop moonlighting as social-scientists and theoreticians and get back to actual historical research.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Yeah, the Skeptic's Dictionary definition is pretty wildly terrible, in that it posits that a few relatively fringe ideas (with some historical problemitization required, in that "blackness" is not a fixed immutable category) as central to afrocentrism. In context (and by context, I mean this society is white supramacist), I think it's fair to call that definition some racist garbage.

The Webster's definition is more subtly problematic. This is in the sense that the second definition rests on the relationship of African cultures to "Western Civilization", which, in fact, means centering "the West" - an historically Eurocentric construction, meaning that, really, it's not "Afrocentric" at all.

In any case, I think "revolutionary potential" isn't necessarily the correct framing of this question. I would say that Afrocentrism is incredibly useful for decentring Europe, and challenging hegemonic naratives of European supremacy, settler-colonialism, etc.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I agree that an individual's outlook, life and experiences, including their politics, influences how they perceive things around them. If there is one thing that the posties have hammered home, it is that. However, an historian should be aware of that and they should be able, to some degree at least, to set that aside and be intellectually honest enough to note when the evidence does not support their ideological assumptions regarding the past. Really, it isn't difficult, despite all the hand wringing that goes on in university history department seminars on historiography and historical skills. It is just being honest, open minded and making an effort to approach issues and leaving any agenda you may have at the door - in other words, it is called being a professional.I think we are talking about different things. Individuals or whole schools of thought might have a specific agenda or even just principles or beliefs which less intentionally create a sort of agenda in their study. But I think I'm speaking more about ideological entanglements, the larger pressures that sort of shape or color basic tendencies in the telling of history. I think of this as different than, say, the patriotically heroic Russian history in the Stalinist era which is just nationalist propaganda oriented around the actions of (russian) Great Men; or even activist history of the pre-Stalin era where the common history told was consciously re-oriented around a materialist, class-struggle history. History and even "hard-sciences" where interpretation is pretty minimal in society can't help reflect that society in terms of time and IMO the balance of things in regards to class struggle.

Some of it comes out of people having agendas - right-wing think tanks, the needs to politically promote patriotism and national myths glorifying the system and its leaders. Some of it though, I think, is just a reflection: history in general can present (in the case of US history) blacks as passive or dumb - victims or people who need control, at certain points because black people have been more or less politically pacified. If, on the other hand, there is a struggle in which people can widely see black people having agency, then the passive view of people in the past becomes less credible as well as the idea of wanting to understand the politics and history of black communities becomes more socially "relevant" in a wide variety of ways.

...And yes, black liberation among many other things has not been achieved. I think you were taking the "winners write history" too literally:) I just mean that social struggle changes wider social views and allows for new interpretations and new conceptions of history to take root. Scholars or activists can study whatever, but I don't think their research alone creates a wider basis for that discovery or research to become a larger school of thought let alone a dominant way of seeing history.


Obviously you can't eliminate bias entirely, because it is partly subconscious, but as long as you're honest you should be able to spot when the sources don't match the thesis you're developing. And if you don't you can be damn sure that people reviewing the work, critiquing the work and using the work will. Sure, but I mean the broader social biases - if Native Americans are politically and geographically marginalized and there is no public awareness of them beyond some anachronistic images in pulp entertainment, then scholars and researchers can't be honest about a bias they have no consciousness of.


Sometimes, sometimes not. Would you contend that a paradigm like Atlantic history has any inherent political agenda, as Marxist history does?I think obviously Marxist history is ideologically entangled, but I don't think it should have an agenda, in the sense of having forgone conclusions. I think it needs to be "useful" to social change which means it needs to be as accurate as possible and ultimately help revolutionary workers gain a better understanding of how the world works.


But this returns us to the issue rather nicely. If I want to learn about power within the middling ranks of the Civil Service, and it is my suspicion that change is enforced by changing outside circumstances (structuralism), as opposed to internal pressures and planning (intentionalism), and then I go out and interview a civil servant who tells me the opposite to what I initially thought - what do I do? If our politics so colour our interpretations, presumably I would not even notice, ignore the evidence, misrepresent it or deliberately fail to attribute it the weight it deserves. Most historians do not do that, and the idea that we should not and cannot try to be honest is just post-modernist bullshit. I'm not saying you can entirely eliminate bias, but a good historian is upfront about where they stand and tries their best to be even handed. If they don't, then their work typically dates very quickly.You know a lot more about history as an academic field than I do, and I am sure that what you are arguing is true and that most scholars are dedicated to working towards a greater understanding. But again I think I'm just talking about history in a slightly different way: more of history as a social thing which would include everything from scholarly history to the official history in a modern country (either education system or national myths) to what history gets presented in pop culture.


Secondly, the reason that these programmes go under is not because they have lost some ideological war, but because they don't attract students. Writing a good module involves picking out a misleading title that is attractive to teenage boys, and that is easy if you study, say, the First World War or the Russian Revolution. It is not so easy if the module is an exploration of the application of social-scientific theoretical paradigms to ethnic studies. For what I think are pretty obvious reasons students in history departments don't want to do that kind of thing. Or any module which includes the words 'agrarian' or 'peasant' in the title. Its sad that students don't want to examine niche interests and that the bottom line is building modules with appeal, but it is difficult to justify putting on a module that will have only a dozen or so takers - it puts massive pressure on colleagues. And that's the real reason these programmes lose funding when times are hard, because they don't draw in the students, and if something has to go it is going to be an unpopular module or programme.But that's sort of a catch-22 isn't it? If certain subjects become disfavored in academia because there isn't a wider student interest... why do some subjects attract more interests than others? I'm sure in countries where there are peasant uprisings, courses on the conditions and traditions of pesants are seen as very interesting and relevant. In other words certain areas of study can become favored or disfavored generally due to wider ideological entanglements.

This isn't to say I'm a "anti-meta-narrative" relativist or whatnot - I think that events are real and material, forces have measurable effects. But I also think that because it's a divided society we actually can precieve things in different ways - great men histories are important for ruling class people and to a lesser extent professionals because their actions do matter, they can alter things by doing this or that.


As for attacks on the legitimacy of Ethnic studies, the attack I've seen is that it is largely over-theorised and infected by post-modernism and post-structuralism. That's true. If people in these fields want to be taken seriously as historians they should stop moonlighting as social-scientists and theoreticians and get back to actual historical research.Conceptually, ideologically they are most definitely "po-mo" these days... as with most fields in US schools anyway. But I'm pretty sure the scholarship ranges similarly as in other areas from well-researched to sloppy to agenda-driven. But really that's not why they are being gutted - unlike more general tendencies in favoring this view or that because it reflects certain impressions of society at a given time, eliminating ethnic studies is a deliberate ideological attack in the US and part of larger and overlapping concerted efforts.

[Invader Zim]

Hey Jimmie, first off, its nice to talk to someone who's given these issues some thought. So, while I may not have drawn all the conclusions you have it's nice to know what someone else thinks about this bullshit too.


I think of this as different than, say, the patriotically heroic Russian history in the Stalinist era which is just nationalist propaganda oriented around the actions of (russian) Great Men; or even activist history of the pre-Stalin era where the common history told was consciously re-oriented around a materialist, class-struggle history. History and even "hard-sciences" where interpretation is pretty minimal in society can't help reflect that society in terms of time and IMO the balance of things in regards to class struggle.

Ah, i see where you're coming from now. And I certainly think in terms of popular history, that element of history that filters down from what my colleagues do to the general public does get filtered through the kind of thing you're talking about.


Sure, but I mean the broader social biases - if Native Americans are politically and geographically marginalized and there is no public awareness of them beyond some anachronistic images in pulp entertainment, then scholars and researchers can't be honest about a bias they have no consciousness of.

Again, i better see where you're coming from and again agree. it is interesting that in the 1960s, when Marxist history was all the rage, questions of gender and sexuality didn't really cross most historians minds because of wider cultural biases regarding what history is and should be, despite the fact that these marxist historians were doing something new and radical there still wasn't the framework to move much beyond. I take it that is the kind of thing you're talking about - and again i agree. But I do think that academic history is much better today and much more inclusive than it was even 20 years ago.


But that's sort of a catch-22 isn't it? If certain subjects become disfavored in academia because there isn't a wider student interest... why do some subjects attract more interests than others?

I think teenage boys will always be more interested in the historical equivalent of playing with toy soldiers. I guess that goes back to what you were saying before about wider society - and in this instance how concepts of gender and masculinity are constructed, and boys receive guns and toy soldiers as infants and beyond. I don't mean to be dismissive or suggest that as a universal rule, but if you were to hold a module on the military history of the Second World War you would get a large intake, and a majority of those would be young males. Younger female students and mature students just aren't represented as highly on that kind of module. Which is why that kind of history remains popular.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yeah I definitely did not mean to imply that all scholarly history is propaganda - or even if it's a sort of system-friendly conception of history that it's due to some kind of overt plot (although in the US, since the new left basically found refuge in universities after the decline of movements, there have been overt attempts to control what's considered legitimate scholarship - David Horowitz's academic mccarthyism attempts being a crude but obvious example in the US). And in universities there is much more ideological room for all sorts of different viewpoints. So I apologize if my arguments sounded anti-intellectual or whatnot.

And in general - sorry for derailing, everyone!:D

[tachosomoza]

I've given a lot of study to precolonial African history, it is pretty fucking awesome and good to use against racialist louts who think Africans were a bunch of savages dancing around fires chanting Ooga booga before the benevolent Europeans came along and asked them nicely to come work on plantations and be traded like merchandise. That being said, Afrocentrists usually have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and simply despise white people.

[adipocere]

I would like to see what RevLeft users think. Does Afrocentrism have intellectual merit? And moreover, do you see it as bourgeois or as something with revolutionary potential?

Placed into it's political/social/historical framework, Afrocentrism as a "movement" has always struck me as something that was embraced more by whites than blacks at the expense of black intellectuals whose ideas were far more threatening. Think Ebonics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English).

"Afrocentrism" needs to be understood in the context of ever adapting white racism in the US. In the late 80's/early 90's there was a pop resurgence in "Scientific Racism." The new wave of Scientific Racism seemed to be white society trying to racially define black people in "positive" stereotypes such as athletics, entertainment, cuisine and music. The entertainment industry can not be underestimated, particularly at that point in time, in shaping public attitudes/perceptions. Take for instance, the 1988 movie Coming to America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_to_America). A cynic could argue that this was an example of a new Globalized Jim Crow.

Anyway, in my view, the whole concept of Afrocentrism seems particular to its era and I don't mean to disparage the black Americans who may have embraced or appreciated some or all of the aspects of this. For instance, there is no movement or dictionary word for whites in the US who celebrate their Irish roots. We call that Boston and St. Patrick's day and Notre Dame. Taking the Irish example further, there are serious historical/academic works that are taking another look at the Irish contribution to Western civilization, particularly insofar as conservation of classic and medieval works and modern education. You don't see this having been hijacked by the entertainment industry and turned into a joke.

Sorry if this post has a rambling quality to it. It's such a huge subject. I only wanted to draw attention to the pop culture idea of Afrocentrism, not get into specifics or really debate any of the actual ideas in it. It's really just my simplistic opinion that Afrocentrism was a consumerist driven distraction by a racist white society that is uncomfortable with any form of black independence, intelligence and pride.

With that said, I do not think it has any revolutionary potential. If anything it was entirely counter-revolutionary and was just another aspect of the mass defanging of serious black struggle.

[adipocere]

racialist louts who think Africans were a bunch of savages dancing around fires chanting Ooga booga...

I have to take issue with that statement. It is inherently racist to assume that when people stop "dancing around fires chanting Ooga booga" they have somehow achieved a social/cultural/developmental/moral milestone. That type of reasoning contributed to European concept that slavery had a "civilizing" effect on people who were otherwise animals. It also helped justify the extermination of American Indians.

I suspect that you didn't mean to imply that there is something inherently backwards with people who live that way, however your choice in wording belies a fundamental attitude that you might consider analyzing.

[adipocere]

There are Afrocentrists who genuinely believe that the ancient Egyptians were black, and that is patent nonsense...ancient Egyptians were black?...lame historical revisionism like trying to claim the ancient Egyptians as "black" is a load of old horse droppings since for various reasons they were never racially homogeneous.

I wont bother to quote all of the discussion about the "black" Egyptian argument going on here.

I only wish to point out that the theory of black Egyptians is only interesting in the amount of mainstream "academia" devoted to discredit the idea. It even went so far as to demonstrate that the more powerful Egyptians were more white and that slaves may have been more black. What would be the relevance for this anyway? Unless the notion that civilization is inherently tied to race, what difference does it make?

The hard fact, ÑóẊîöʼn is that we have no fucking clue what they looked like, therefor the theory of black Egyptians is no more credible then the "proof" against it. There are no photographs. We can only speculate what they may have looked like over the course of 3000 years, and if anything our absolute inability to legitimately prove it either way says a hell of a lot about the superficiality of race in general and the enduring legacy of white supremacy. The only useful study of black Egyptians is in relation to the development of modern racism, and the entire debate itself is an ironically poetic illustration of modern racism that is enshrined in academia.
The only proof I see in your argument is that your own lazy adherence to a
par·a·digm /ˈparəˌdīm/
Noun


A typical example or pattern of something; a model.
A worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject.

[Invader Zim]

I only wish to point out that the theory of black Egyptians is only interesting in the amount of mainstream "academia" devoted to discredit the idea.

Well, for what its worth, I've been working within 'mainstream academi[c]' history for a decade and never come across any attack or defence of the idea. None.

[adipocere]

Well, for what its worth, I've been working within 'mainstream academi[c]' history for a decade and never come across any attack or defence of the idea. None.
Then explain the sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy) for the Wikipedia entry on the subject. It's not exactly a blogroll. Also note the disclaimer: This article is about the "history of the controversy" about the race of the ancient Egyptians. For discussion of the scientific evidence relating to the race of the ancient Egyptians, see Population history of Egypt.

You can wrap it in academic neutrality all you want, but the entire debate is manufactured around a basic desire for a racial litmus test.

I also am taking into consideration the NatGeo style documentaries that were produced in the 90's which I personally remember.

edit: If there has been nothing attacking or defending it, then why are people on here calling the theory "patent nonsense"? How much more mainstream can you get then people casually tossing out debate settling "proof" when it suits them. A forum full of commies should know better.

[MarxArchist]

if you grow up and are told that the only things people like you ever did was get whipped by white people and then saved by Lincoln, then a re-telling of history which starts in Africa, not Greece to Rome to France to England and the the America's, is a powerful thing.

We try and do the same thing with history... As Marxists putting class conflict as the motor of history (rather that some meaningless "progress" or " civilization"). And in telling specific historical events, we try and uncover what the oppressed were doing, their self-activity, not just what was done to them from the top-down. I think looking at class struggle is the way to understand history (since really it's oppressed and oppressors struggling back and forth), but I also think that telling "our" history as opposed to their history is important propagandistic ally, in helping us gain a conception of ourselves.


Historical materialism is the basis of modern revolutionary socialism. If it were just making up stories we'd all be in bad shape so far as real tangible justification for socialism.

[MarxArchist]

if you grow up and are told that the only things people like you ever did was get whipped by white people and then saved by Lincoln, then a re-telling of history which starts in Africa, not Greece to Rome to France to England and the the America's, is a powerful thing.

We try and do the same thing with history... As Marxists putting class conflict as the motor of history (rather that some meaningless "progress" or " civilization"). And in telling specific historical events, we try and uncover what the oppressed were doing, their self-activity, not just what was done to them from the top-down. I think looking at class struggle is the way to understand history (since really it's oppressed and oppressors struggling back and forth), but I also think that telling "our" history as opposed to their history is important propagandistic ally, in helping us gain a conception of ourselves.


Historical materialism is the basis of modern revolutionary socialism. If it were just making up stories we'd all be in bad shape so far as real tangible justification for socialism, it's not that every exact thing Marx said was 100% correct it was the method itself that was game changing. Having that said Egypt being located where it is, I would think their culture was a diverse mix of people NOT with white skin but what we see in North Africa today. The pictures from Christian books with a white Jesus and white Pharaohs do seem to be an extension of white supremacy but I don't think that justifies the claim that Egyptian culture was an all black culture but I think it obvious that people with darker skin (black people) could have been in positions of power.

[Devrim]

Having that said Egypt being located where it is, I would think their culture was a diverse mix of people NOT with white skin but what we see in North Africa today. The pictures from Christian books with a white Jesus and white Pharaohs do seem to be an extension of white supremacy but I don't think that justifies the claim that Egyptian culture was an all black culture but I think it obvious that people with darker skin (black people) could have been in positions of power.

Jesus if he existed, would have looked Middle Eastern. I'd describe Middle Eastern people as white, but certainly not as 'Germanic' as some images you see.

Cleopatra was of Greek/Macedonian descent, and would, one would imagine have looked pretty similar to people in South Eastern Europe today.

Devrim

[MarxArchist]

Jesus if he existed, would have looked Middle Eastern. I'd describe Middle Eastern people as white, but certainly not as 'Germanic' as some images you see.

Cleopatra was of Greek/Macedonian descent, and would, one would imagine have looked pretty similar to people in South Eastern Europe today.

Devrim

If Jesus actually existed I would think he looked like this (below). Maybe that is Jesus? ;)

http://watermarked.cutcaster.com/cutcaster-photo-100533770-Middle-Eastern-Man-Praying.jpg

[ComradeOm]

Jesus if he existed, would have looked Middle EasternDefine "Middle Eastern" in a pre-Arabic/Turkish Levant. The only certainty that can be said about Jesus (usual disclaimer: if he existed) is that he was Jewish

[Devrim]

Define "Middle Eastern" in a pre-Arabic/Turkish Levant. The only certainty that can be said about Jesus (usual disclaimer: if he existed) is that he was Jewish

I'd imagine that 'Middle Eastern' people looked pretty much like they do now. The Turks came as conquerors in quite small numbers. Turkish people are genetically pretty similar to their Greek neighbors. The Semitic tribes living their spoke languages related to Arabic, and one would imagine they looked pretty similar too.

Devrim

[Invader Zim]

Then explain the sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy) for the Wikipedia entry on the subject. It's not exactly a blogroll. Also note the disclaimer: This article is about the "history of the controversy" about the race of the ancient Egyptians. For discussion of the scientific evidence relating to the race of the ancient Egyptians, see Population history of Egypt.

You can wrap it in academic neutrality all you want, but the entire debate is manufactured around a basic desire for a racial litmus test.

I also am taking into consideration the NatGeo style documentaries that were produced in the 90's which I personally remember.

edit: If there has been nothing attacking or defending it, then why are people on here calling the theory "patent nonsense"? How much more mainstream can you get then people casually tossing out debate settling "proof" when it suits them. A forum full of commies should know better.

What debate? The fact that there is a wikipedia entry on the issue does not mean that there is an academic debate of any relevance today. There are also wikipedia entries on holocaust denial which include rantings from individuals with academic credentials - but that does not mean that there is an actual 'debate'. Furthermore, a casual glance at the wikipedia entry suggests that this 'debate' was a product of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And today:

'Since the 1970s, the issues regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians have been "troubled waters which most people who write (in the United States) about ancient Egypt from within the mainstream of scholarship avoid." The debate, therefore, takes place mainly in the public sphere and tends to focus on a small number of specific issues.'

So, in short, there is, apart from perhaps on the peripheries, no academic debate anymore, and nobody talks about this "issue". The wiki article suggests that this is because academics don't want to get into such a loaded debate, but I imagine it is also because the issue isn't an interesting one. Primarily because it doesn't matter whether the holders of power in Ancient Egypt had black, white, brown or even, as in the case of depictions of the gods Osiris and Ptah, green skin.

[Ismail]

Good ol' Grover Furr wrote a nice summary of Afrocentrism back in the 90's: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/afrocent.html

As he notes: "Afrocentrism is a racist, highly conservative, nationalist pseudo-science."

What I find interesting is that in Africa proper petty-bourgeois "African socialists" tried to portray an idyllic precolonial Africa communitarian in its economic base and democratic in its political life, whereas Afrocentrists in the West extol the hierarchical nature of African kingdoms (including most recently Haile Selassie's Ethiopia) as examples of "majestic" black civilization. On one hand you have "damn Europeans ruined our precolonial egalitarian socialist societies" and the other "we were leading empires while whites were living in caves!"

[Asante]

The physical appearance of the early ancient Egyptians was most similar to modern day Nilotic and other East African populations according to consistent anthropological studies. This would in just about any social context around the world place the ancient Egyptians in the "black" African category. The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt 2001 concluded this on the matter:


"The evidence also points to linkages to other northeast African peoples, not coincidentally approximating the modern range of languages closely related to Egyptian in the Afro-Asiatic group (formerly called Hamito-Semetic). These linguistic similarities place ancient Egyptian in a close relationship with languages spoken today as far west as Chad, and as far south as Somalia. Archaeological evidence also strongly supports an African origin. A widespread northeastern African cultural assemblage, including distinctive multiple barbed harpoons and pottery decorated with dotted wavy line patterns, appears during the early Neolithic (also known as the Aqualithic, a reference to the mild climate of the Sahara at this time). Saharan and Sudanese rock art from this time resembles early Egyptian iconography. Strong connections between Nubian (Sudanese) and Egyptian material culture continue in later Neolithic Badarian culture of Upper Egypt. Similarities include black-topped wares, vessels with characteristic ripple-burnished surfaces, a special tulip-shaped vessel with incised and white-filled decoration, palettes, and harpoons..."

"Other ancient Egyptian practices show strong similarities to modern African cultures including divine kingship, the use of headrests, body art, circumcision, and male coming-of-age rituals, all suggesting an African substratum or foundation for Egyptian civilization."

"The race and origins of the Ancient Egyptians have been a source of considerable debate. Scholars in the late and early 20th centuries rejected any considerations of the Egyptians as black Africans by defining the Egyptians either as non-African (i.e Near Easterners or Indo-Aryan), or as members of a separate brown (as opposed to a black) race, or as a mixture of lighter-skinned peoples with black Africans. In the later half of the 20th century, Afrocentric scholars have countered this Eurocentric and often racist perspective by characterizing the Egyptians as black and African....."

"Physical anthropologists are increasingly concluding that racial definitions are the culturally defined product of selective perception and should be replaced in biological terms by the study of populations and clines. Consequently, any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depend on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the Egyptians as 'blacks' [i.e in a social sense] while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans." Source: Donald Redford (2001) The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, Volume 3. Oxford University Press. p. 27-28 " Not only was there physical appearance consistent with that which is deemed black, but the cultural, archaeological and linguistic origins of ancient Egypt is proven to have stemmed from various other inner African cultures. You can also read that in the passage that many early Egyptologist were reluctant (to say the least) to acknowledge the fact that they were black and instead opted to expand the "Caucasoid" categorization (which was considered scientific in that era) to include indigenous variations of tropical Africans (who have the most genetic and physical variation of Earth). Within the last two years genetic studies have been conducted on ancient Egyptian mummies and every single one of them have been proven to be most genetically related to various modern Sub Saharan African populations. The main region of Sub Saharan Africa that matches up with these mummies has been the region of the Great Lakes (which is currently inhabited by Bantu and Nilotic groups).

Below are the DNAtribes analysis of the Amarna period pharaohs (including Tut). The genetic data for this analysis was made public by Zahi Hawass after the "discovery" at the beginning of 2011.


Geographical analysis of the Amarna mummies was performed using their autosomal STR profiles based on 8 tested loci. Results are summarized in Table 1 and illustrated in Figure 1. Maps for individual Amarna mummies are included in Figures 2-8 in the Appendix.

Discussion: Average MLI scores in Table 1 indicate the STR profiles of the Amarna mummies would be most frequent in present day populations of several African regions: including the Southern African (average MLI 326.94), African Great Lakes (average MLI 323.76), and Tropical West African (average MLI 83.74) regions.

These regional matches do not necessarily indicate an exclusively African ancestry for the Amarna pharaonic family. However, results indicate these ancient individuals inherited some alleles that today are more frequent in populations of Africa than in other parts of the world (such as D18S51=19 and D21S11=34).

In December of last year another study was conducted on Ramses III and his son concluding that they were E1b1a carriers. Below the DNAtribes analysis on Ramses III/son and what they believe happened in relation to the population history of the Nile Valley to help explain why the closest matches to every pharaoh analyzed thus far groups with Sub Saharan Africans as opposed to the modern day inhabitants of "Egypt".


These results indicate that both Ramesses III and Unknown Man E (possibly his son Pentawer) shared an ancestral component with present day populations of Sub-Saharan Africa.... A previous issue of DNA Tribes Digest identified African related ancestry for King Tut and other royal mummies from the Amarna Period. In this issue, results indicate that the later pharaoh Ramesses III also inherited alleles that are most frequent in present day populations of Sub-Saharan Africa. This provides additional, independent evidence of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (possibly among several ancestral components) for pharaonic families of ancient Egypt.....In addition, these DNA match results in present day world regions might in part express population changes in Africa after the time of Ramesses III. In particular, DNA matches in present day populations of Southern Africa and the African Great Lakes might to some degree reflect genetic links with ancient populations (formerly living closer to New Kingdom Egypt) that have expanded southwards in the Nilotic and Bantu migrations of the past 3,000 years (see Figure 1)

Since forum rules maintain that I must have at least 25 post to insert links or pictures (in case the charts from DNAtribes and documentaries from renown historians) just inbox me a request for my the links to my evidence.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Historical materialism is the basis of modern revolutionary socialism.Yes, I support historical materialism as the best explaination I know of that explains the dynamics of histoty. But it's apples and organges to compare general afrocrentric histories to Historical Matrerialism. It would be apples and apples to compare and contrast H.M. with views that history is driven by genetics or great men or abstract notions of civilization. Afrocentric or mainstream histories would probably employ on of those other apples.

On late-night public access cable shows there are "Afrocentric" tellings of history (which are basically like the similar late-night preechers) who have mystical versions of history and are probably some distant mutation from Garvyite views. But there are - if my understanding is correct - also more "scholary and fact-based" versions. Most likely these would come from a mainstream view of how history develops and I think that is the basis for criticisms - they just relocate bourgeois history most of the time.

But I think its a straw-man and alienating to conflate general afrocentrism with some bizzare mystical or genetic-tellings of history. Historical Materialism is a "method" IMO, not a viewpoint.

[Asante]

Erm, no? There are Afrocentrists who genuinely believe that the ancient Egyptians were black, and that is patent nonsense.

Is the media to blame for some misinformation on your part or have you actually read numerous peer reviewed studies which lead you to make such a statement?