What is this “solution” you speak of? I’ve read the whole thread and haven’t found one.
Not true.
It’s a staple of classical race theory to claim that the all the achievements of great civilizations were fomented by Caucasians or the Caucasian/Aryan element in the civilization. And as Tamerlane pointed out, achievements in Africa proper were routinely ascribed to mysterious foreign interlopers.
Afrocentric scholars in the academic mainstream, like Molefi Kete Asante (widely seen as the godfather of the discipline) make few if any of the claims you’re citing here. Asante and the other mainstream academics use standard academic research methods and verifiable sources. No one is obligated to agree with their conclusions, any more than anyone’s obligated to agree with Kevin Macdonald, but Macdonald, like Asante, uses standard academic research methods.
His mother: 1
Father’s father’s father: 1
Father’s mother’s mother: 1
Mother’s father’s father: 1
Mother’s father’s mother: 1
Mother’s mother’s mother: 1
Overall, I’d vote that his ancestry sure looks white.
Wow. Someone has too much time on his hands. 
I take your points, but I think he has a point. There certainly are lots of ‘Afrocentrists’ out there that are making claims that can’t be backed up with any fact, and doing that takes away from the great acheivements that we really have, which are many.
Maybe we should define “Afrocentrist”. Because if we mean the kind of people that go around claiming Cleopatra, Jesus and all of the Hebrews were black Africans, then we have to go ahead and call bullshit on them.
ETA: Nevermind defining it. I am gonna read the wiki article and see what they have to say. I’ll go with that definition, I guess.
Not really. Wikipedia links to the father and mother of everyone and has images of them all. It only took like 10 minutes to verify.
This is why people like you (that is, with a one-track mind or a deep agenda) should not try to read history. Swarthy does not mean anything like “not white”. My grandpa was swarthy. He was also white as they come. more or less your entire argument (to the extent it can even be called that) is absoutely ridiculous, basing huge sweeping claims on minimal or nonexistant evidence, which you in any case are simply interpreting int he way you like and without any confirmation at all.
History is not done in that manner. Well, good history isn’t.
This thread has inspired me to look up what ‘Afrocentrism’ really means.
I have always taken it to mean black people in America that dress in traditional African garb and also tend to claim that black people are soley responsible for all of the world’s great accomplishments. I know people exactly like that, and they self-identify as Afrocentric. Now, I am beginning to think they may want to research the word…cause they are doing Afrocentric wrong, mostly.
Ask the OP, if he ever returns (and I look forward to his return because he’s funny). I think he’ll say that they weren’t white, they were just drawn that way.
Ditto – my grandfather was Hungarian/Slovak, and yet I’d call him “swarthy.” Racially, he’d be considered a Slav-Magyar.
And btw, if the OP wants an example of an albino, look up “Edgar Winter”.
Hey – I have a new theory. If like, all the nobility of Europe were really black, so would that make black people white? It makes perfect sense!!!
Fucking time limits!!!
If you stop and think about it, then it just makes Afrocentrism almost, I dunno, somehow a feeling of inferiority in disguise? Like the true history of Africa, which IS great, but it’s ignored – because some how what is white is what is best. Does that make sense? Like it’s not good enough. It’s STILL Eurocentric with a different name.
I’m in no position to try to analyze that form of Afrocentrism for motives. I’m not black, and I can’t say from any kind of experience WHY people promote it. I do think it may be somewhat related to the motives for GLBT people (of which I DO have experience) to kind of glom onto anyone relatively major in history who might possibly at one point have shown some sort of affection for someone of their own gender either in public or in later-published letters. A sort of “We’re NOT invisible!” kind of thing.
Afrocentrists grasp of historical events and characters reminds me of a television interview with the girlfriend of an English professional soccer player.
She revealed to the interviewer that her neighbourhood had a black coloured statue of Winston Churchill with an attached plaque detailing his time as a soldier in Africa and as prime minister of the UK.
This was all hilariously digested in her teenage mind and regurgitated as “Winston Churchill was the first black president of Africa”
All the ingredients are there to create a majestic lasagne but an all in pot of overcooked stew is comically dished up instead.
(Disclaimer: I am white.)
As Nzinga pointed out, this is probably because that’s what’s taught as The Way Things Are to children of all races in US schools. How much African history are children taught, as compared with European history? If it is taught, it is likely to be about white colonialism or the slave trade, which just reinforces the idea that Europeans are naturally in charge/more important/at the top of the socioeconomic scale. It’s not like black kids spontaneously develop internalized inferiority, it’s in the basic US history curriculum.
Well, jayjay, it is easy in some cases to determine which historical figures were probably gay. (Edward II of England, for example)
Of course they don’t, and of course teaching only about Europe is bullshit. BUT, you don’t teach bullshit to make up for it – it’s only going to make it worse, not better. It’s the same – Eurocentric, but wrapped in a new package.
What I’m saying is, instead of trying to push Afrocentrism, make a campaign to include more authentic African history, and the actual accomplishments of African Americans in the US.
I suppose as because I got my degree in history and all, it bugs me when people try to push myth as fact. (I get royally annoyed when people pull the whole “hemophilia was caused by inbreeding” or “everyone thought the Earth was flat!”, so maybe I’m a bit over-sensitive)
I have a question, or questions, and I’m not trying to be a smart ass.
If I were to want to seriously study Black History, would I, by definition, find myself studying African history? if not African history exclusively, what other history would I be studying? By whom would that history be written and how would I verify that person or persons bona fides? Where would I even start or how would I begin?
Remember please that I was raised in 1940 thru early 1960s Texas, where Black and White water fountains, waiting rooms, rest rooms, etc, etc., were common and blacks rode in the backs of buses and a black man dared not look at white women in a “certain way.” I hate to say this but I was taught that if a black man accomplished something significant it only meant that he had “human” blood in his family line. How much truth do you think I absorbed concerning black history?
Just for the record, I totally rejected all that crap, beginning when I was about fifteen. Again for the record, my father cut me from his will because I refused to embrace his racist theories. My questions above are legitimate; I want to fight my ignorance.
Black history, in a U.S. context, generally refers specifically to African-American history - i.e. the history of black people in the United States and the colonial areas that would become the United States. African history is usually a seperate subject, though sometimes the two can be overlapped in college coursework - I once took a course on African and Afro-American Literature that covered everything from Sundiata: an Epic of Old Mali to Crick Crack, Monkey. Generally speaking where I went to school African history was taught in the history department, Black history in the Ethnic Studies depatment, but of course that will vary from school to school.
As for what sources, just look for well-reviewed works with legitimate looking academic credentials. For example on average academic presses are usually a safer bet ( particularly in terms of straight, narrative history ) than vanity or mass-market publishers, though that certainly isn’t a guarantee of quality. I’m sure if you posted a thread in Cafe Society looking for specific topics folks could point you in some directions.
Well, when I took history in high school (which was “World History” - advanced level) we spent about a month learning about nothing but various ancient African cultures. They really pounded us over the head with it (and the class was 100% white, in Indiana.) We also learned a hell of a lot about the pre-Columbian cultures of the New World. On the other hand, we learned almost nothing about the Hundred Years War; I think we spent about one day on the Thirty Years War; we didn’t learn anything at all about the German electorate system; we spent virtually no time on the Restoration period in England and learned barely anything about the Williamite or Hanoverian successions; there were a hell of a lot of things essential to European history that we never learned. But we did do week-long projects on the Zimbabwe empire.
In US history there was a hell of a lot of “the Indians were all wiped out,” “Columbus was evil” and “slaverywasbadslaverywasbadslaverywasbadslaverywasbad”. I don’t recall us spending more than 15 minutes talking about white indentured servants, or Irish shipped over to America by Cromwell to work out indefinite periods of hard labor in de facto slavery, or any of the white people who were worked to death in America and on whose bones the country was built in addition to the blacks and Indians.
History classes in the 21st century are totally P.C.
Well. your impression of your particular classes is certainly that they were “totally P.C”
OTOH, I have had enough experience with high chool history classes in the last few years to know that your experience was far from typical,
Everything changes :).
As I recall you’re a young guy, Argent Towers. I’m just about 42, so not ancient. But I assure you we did NOT spend a month on ancient African cultures when I was in high school ( in the uber-liberal CA Bay Area ) or a learn much about pre-Colombian history ( “Aztecs & Incas conquered” ). We spent a little time on ancient Egypt and that was it - next to nothing sub-Saharan that I can recall ( I remember my teacher saying he remembered “Hatshepsut” with the mnemonic “Hot Ketchup” ). Really ancient Greece and Rome dominated my world history class, then we skipped rapidly to WW I & II and never got much past that. We never spent much time on the HRE either, if it makes you feel any better, not that I’m sure we should of. Damn little on China or India either ( “Yellow River”, “Mohenjo-Daro” ).
And I was already a total history geek by the time I entered high school. I even took a second semester of world history, a rare elective, and we spent next to no time on Africa. It was mostly post-Roman European history up through Vietnam I think.
So I weep not for you - every high school world history class is a contrast in shitty compromises. It’s just wayyyy too much to cover in such a short period of time. Your complaints about the Hundred Years War ( should at least be mentioned, in terms of the final separation of the crowns of France and England ) and somewhat more strongly the Thirty Years War ( keystone moment in the development of modern nationalism ) are kinda reasonable. But the German electoral system? Hanoverite and Williamite Successions? Pshaw. I wouldn’t teach that stuff in high school either and I like that sort of thing. It just isn’t essential enough to cram into precious class hours.
Now is a month on Africa excessive? Maybe - depends on how its done and just what you include in Africa. But world history by definition shouldn’t be completely dominated by a study of Europe no matter how central it has been in the last 300 years. Given the paucity of instruction in decades past, a little corrective is no big deal, as long as it is handled properly ( which is really the key issue ).