# Is Afrocentrism Legitimate Scholasticism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 5, 2006, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380 "2006-04-05T04:46:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ZeroGyro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47774/32.png) [@ZeroGyro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZeroGyro)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380/61 "2006-04-09T16:39:34Z")
One example of Diop’s shoddy work: his claim of a Paleo-African language (and culture). From [here](http://www.africawithin.com/diop/origin_egyptians.htm%5B/url): > [@Diop](#): > > Walaf, a Senegalese language spoken in the extreme west of Africa on the Atlantic Ocean, is perhaps as close to ancient Egyptian as Coptic. An exhaustive study of this question has recently been carried out. In this chapter enough is presented to show that the kinship between ancient Egyptian and the languages of Africa is not hypothetical but a demonstrable fact which it is impossible for modern scholarship to thrust aside. He completely ignored all linguistic study of African languages, constructions of proto-languages and relationships and historical linguistic methodology. [Here](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/roger_blench/Archaeology%20data/Africa%20language%20history%20text.pdf) (PDF) is a overview of African languages. According to vast majority of linguists studying Africa, Egyptian certainly was African but not in the way Diop was so certain it was. He completely ignored all linguistic study of African languages, constructions of proto-languages and relationships and historical linguistic methodology. Paleo-African (and Diop’s linguistic work in general) has even less acceptance than the Nostratic theory and is so off the map I don’t how many linguists even acknowledge it as being worthy of discussion. Diop died before population genetics took off so he made a number of points that we know now out right have no genetic reality. From [here](http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/Stanton%20Files/black_race.htm): > [@](#): > > According to Dr. Diop, 15,000 years Before Present, interbreeding between the Black Africoid and Caucasoid white created the Chancellade Man (prototype of yellow race). This contact was made around the Caspian Sea area of the Caucasus Mountains during the Reindeer Period in the Magdalenian Age. The epicanthic eyelid developed as a result of this group migrating to Outer Mongolia where the high wind factor caused the eyelid fold (Dr. Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, p 16) L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza discusses the history of various populations [this paper](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/15/7719f). [Here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-of-human-migrations.jpg) is a map of human migrations. I don’t think anyone has written a book “Diop: Discredited!” but the work of the majority of linguists, geneticists, and archaeologists who cover the subjects he did (many who agree that Ancient Egypt was black African) certainly don’t agree with the way he got to many of his conclusions and some of those conclusions themselves (above examples). Why would Ehret slam Diop in that interview? He was discussing Bernal and Diop isn’t doing any research or studying Ehret’s work from the grave. Diop, Théophile Obenga, and others were understandably reactionary to the common racist treatment of African people and history in academia (racist Carleton Coon was President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists while Diop was doing his work), but the academic world has changed significantly (thanks in large part to people like Afrocentrists calling out academic racism) and their outdated work shouldn’t be used now as a primary source, if at all, by people interested in African history. ---
**Author:** ![ZeroGyro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47774/32.png) [@ZeroGyro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZeroGyro)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2006, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380/62 "2006-04-09T16:41:13Z")
Sorry for repeating myself in that post. ---
**Author:** ![ZeroGyro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47774/32.png) [@ZeroGyro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZeroGyro)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380/63 "2006-04-09T18:20:27Z")
Ugh… okay, [this](http://www.africawithin.com/diop/origin_egyptians.htm) is the first link and [this](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/15/7719) is the fourth link. I can’t find a working link to the second one. I’ll work on it… ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2006, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380/64 "2006-04-09T18:32:42Z")
I think your “fourth link” actually links to Cavilli-Sforza’s paper, not the map. I don’t care how many screwups you have, though, this is great stuff you’re providing. (Actually, I’m not even sure there isn’t a map of human migration linked there, so maybe I’m the screwup.) ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380/65 "2006-04-09T18:47:23Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Your definition of Afrocentrism is incomplete. Afrocentrism includes ancient, precolonial and postcolonial African history, as well as the population movements of the black diaspora in general. Both Garvey’s and DuBois’ interests in those areas are well documented. Afrocentrism is not just about ancient African societies, the colonial period, or exclusively about Egypt— which I already stated in a link in this thread. Yet you still used them to implicitly justify your claims here. > [@](#): > > “The Egyptians were the Egyptians,” is perfectly true. They just happened to have been black, too. That would be one opinion. Which most scholars seemt o disagree with. Many were probably “black” in the modern parlance. Many others probably _weren’t_. Your insistance that they must have been “black” suggests strongly that you are not, in fact, judging the issue scientifically. I’ve seen you repeatedly make an awful lot of a few peices of evidence which fit your theory and ignore everything which does not. I’ve also seen you change your definition of "black"on the fly to fit whatever suits you, and I find it dishonest. Why don’t you clear the air? Were the mixed? How much? When? Were they pure “Bantu” or not? If not, when did population groups mix? Are you claiming the truly ancient history, or recorded great ages, or both? > [@](#): > > The modern obsession with race, and racist claims like those espoused by Arnold J. Toynbee that asserted that the black race has had never produced civilization Which is a total nonsequiter. The fact that somebody else sometime in the past said something ignorant doesn’t justify present intellectual foolishness. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2006, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380/66 "2006-04-09T20:54:36Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > Yet you still used them to implicitly justify your claims here. Which claims? That there were less loony afrocentrists out there? I included DuBois (academic that he was) and Garvey (Pan-Africanist activist that he was) as two more legitimate afrocentrists in the discipline as a whole. I said nothing about them being Egyptologists. > [@](#): > > That would be one opinion. Which most scholars seem to disagree with. Many were probably “black” in the modern parlance. Many others probably _weren’t_. Your insistance that they must have been “black” suggests strongly that you are not, in fact, judging the issue scientifically. I’m not wholly judging the issue scientifically, no. I’m not wholly swayed by afrocentric emotional appeals, either. I prefer the biases of my own eyes and judgment to those of Egyptologists or pan-Africanists and what makes sense to me. > [@](#): > > I’ve seen you repeatedly make an awful lot of a few peices of evidence which fit your theory and ignore everything which does not. I’ve also seen you change your definition of "black"on the fly to fit whatever suits you, and I find it dishonest. Firstly, I don’t think I’m anywhere near as narrow-minded as you’ve painted, but feel free to post a few links of clear cut examples where I’ve “repreatedly” “made a lot of a few pieces of evidence” and “ignored everything” which does not. I’m sure we’ll all be anxious to see that. I’ll grant you one thing: there are times when I change my definition of “black” because “black” means different things to different people in different cultural contexts: my rooming with Panamanians in college expanded my understanding of differing societies’ definitions of race and class along those lines. It’s never been done on the fly, and I usually acknowledge when I’m referring to someone else’s cultural standards of blackness. I find my own working definition of “black” to be remarkably consistent: possessing naturally high melanin content definitely means you’re black, possessing certain physical features means you’re mostly likely black, personal identification with “black” culture means you’re likely black, and in America, the precepts of the one-drop rule makes you black, even now in 2006. Of the four, I can probably justify the first two the easiest but we as a society still call [these](http://www.101lifestyle.com/images/celebs/jennifer_beals/jennifer_beals-pics-001.jpg) [women](http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Horne,%20Lena/Horne,%20Lena%20(Cabin%20in%20the%20Sky)_01.jpg) [black,](http://www.entertainment-news.org/images/full_size/mariah-careys-mimi-to-debut-over-rainbow.jpg) and if they are, damn sure a bunch of [Egyptians](http://www.cah.utexas.edu/photojournalism/graphics/photojournalists/kennerly/bigpics/Kennerly_05.jpg) are. I realize looking at pictures and making calls isn’t very scientific, but the real world has other spheres of influence than science. Sue me. > [@](#): > > Why don’t you clear the air? What the hell else have I b…? Sigh. Get on with it, man. Okay, why don’t I. > [@](#): > > Were they mixed? Almost certainly. Although… I imagine many of the royal bloodlines may have been less apt to mix. Guesswork. > [@](#): > > How much? Quite possibly the array may have been as pronounced and varied as blacks in the American south: with dark, blue-black Ethiopians existing alongside high toned Louisiana Creole society. > [@](#): > > When? To a varying extent, from the beginning of Khemet’s founding. > [@](#): > > Were they pure “Bantu” or not? Probably not, since Bantu were West Africans and we’re talking East Africa. > [@](#): > > If not, when did population groups mix? To a varying extent, from the beginning of Khemet’s founding. Please note: blacks are still there. > [@](#): > > Are you claiming the truly ancient history, or recorded great ages, or both? It’s not just me making the claim: the afrocentrist position is that black Egypt was most pronounced at the beginning, but that Egypt has always been black. > [@](#): > > The fact that somebody else sometime in the past said something ignorant doesn’t justify present intellectual foolishness. You know, I agree compeletely. Not just with your statement’s impact means to afrocentric scholarship, but what that implies about the seemingly intractable dogma of long held beliefs about the peoples of ancient Egypt. Forget the fantasies of the melanin/afrocentric crowd: why pretending its not true (or worse, not even possibly true) that black subSaharan East Africans from Sudan and Ethiopia followed the Nile downriver into the Mediterranean and founded Khemet first, interacted with other peoples in the region and influenced (and was influenced by) other ancient civilizations? ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2006, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380/67 "2006-04-10T20:24:28Z")
I think it’s legitmate to question what the Kemetians looked like back in the pre-dynastic and dynastic days. I would agree that it was likely that they would have had to ride in the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama but on the other hand, so what? I’ve seen people from India who might have had to use seperate water fountains and pictures of people from other parts of the world I would have categorized as “black”. All this shows is that racial distinctions are arbitrary and can vary depending on culture. There is some evidence that Egyptian culture was influence by people who weren’t native to the Nile Valley. They dug up some evidence that suggest that a group of herdsman from the Sudan may have had an influence on how Egyptians viewed the afterlife as well as their burial techniques. I wish I could remember the book I read it in but it’s been almost a year. Marc [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-afrocentrism-legitimate-scholasticism/351380.md?page=3)