African-Centered Education
Encyclopedia
Afrocentric education
is education designed to empower African people
. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by limiting their awareness of themselves and indoctrinating them with ideas that work against them. To control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-determination in relationship to others. Like educational leaders of other cultures
, proponents assert that what educates one group of people does not necessarily educate and empower another group—so they assert educational priorities distinctly for the Africans in a given context.
to describe the process of systematically depriving African American
s of their knowledge of self. Dr. Woodson believed that miseducation was the root of the problems of the masses of the African American community and that if the masses of the African American community were given the correct knowledge and education from the beginning, they would not be in the situation that they find themselves in today. Dr. Woodson argues in his book, The Mis-Education of the Negro
, that African Americans often valorize European culture to the detriment of their own culture.
The problem concerning formal education is seen by Afrocentrists to be that African students are taught to perceive the world through the eyes of another culture, and unconsciously learn to see themselves as an insignificant part of their world. An Afrocentric education does not necessarily wish to isolate Africans from a Eurocentric education system but wishes to assert the autonomy of Africans and encompass the cultural uniqueness of all learners.
A school based on African values, it is believed, would eliminate the patterns of rejection and alienation that engulf so many African American school children, especially males. The movement for African-centered education is based on the assumption that a school immersed in African traditions, rituals, values, and symbols will provide a learning environment that is more congruent with the lifestyles and values of African American families.
, an Americo-Liberian
educator and diplomat active in the pan-Africa movement, perceived a change in perception taking place among Europeans towards Africans in his 1908 book African Life and Customs, which originated as a series of articles in the Sierra Leone
Weekly News. In it, he proposed that Africans were beginning to be seen simply as different and not as inferior, in part because of the work of English writers such as Mary Kingsley
and Lady Lugard
, who traveled and studied in Africa. Such an enlightened view was fundamental to refute prevailing ideas among Western peoples about African cultures and Africans.
Blyden used that standpoint to show how the traditional social, industrial, and economic life of Africans untouched by "either European or Asiatic influence", was different and complete in itself, with its own organic wholeness. In a letter responding to Blyden's original series of articles, Fante journalist and politician J.E. Casely Hayford commented, "It is easy to see the men and women who walked the banks of the Nile
" passing him on the streets of Kumasi
. Hayford suggested building a University to preserve African identity and instincts. In that university, the history chair would teach
The exchange of ideas between Blyden and Hayford embodied the fundamental concepts of Afrocentrism.
In the United States, during the early 20th century and the Harlem Renaissance
, many writers and historians gathered in major cities, where they began to work on documenting achievements of Africans throughout history, and in United States and Western life. They began to set up institutions to support scholarly work in African-American history and literature, such as the American Negro Academy (now the Black Academy of Letters and Arts), founded in Washington, DC in 1874. Some men were self-taught; others rose through the academic system. Creative writers and artists claimed space for African-American perspectives.
Leaders included bibliophile Arthur Schomburg, who devoted his life to collecting literature, art, slave narratives, and other artifacts of the African diaspora. In 1911 with John Edward Bruce
, he founded the Negro Society for Historical Research in Yonkers, New York
. The value of Schomburg's personal collection was recognized, and it was purchased by the New York Public Library
in 1926 with aid of a Carnegie
Corporation grant. It became the basis of what is now called the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, based in Harlem, New York. Schomburg used the money from the sale of his collection for more travel and acquisition of materials.
Hubert Henry Harrison used his intellectual gifts in street lectures and political activism, influencing early generations of Black Socialists and Black Nationalists. Dr. Carter G. Woodson
co-founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History
(as it is now called) in 1915, as well as the The Journal of Negro History, so that scholars of black history could be supported and find venues for their work.
Among their topics, editors of publications such as NAACP's The Crisis
and Journal of Negro History sought to include articles that countered the prevailing view that Sub-Saharan Africa had contributed little of value to human history that was not the result of incursions by Europeans and Arab
s. Historians began to theorize that Ancient Egyptian civilization was the culmination of events arising from the origin of the human race in Africa. They investigated the history of Africa from that perspective.
In March 1925 Schomburg published an essay "The Negro Digs Up His Past" in the Survey Graphic in an issue devoted to Harlem's intellectual life. The article had widespread distribution and influence, as he detailed the achievements of people of African descent. Alain Locke included the essay in his collection The New Negro
.
Afrocentrists claimed The Mis-Education of the Negro
(1933) by Carter G. Woodson
, an African-American historian, as one of their foundational texts. Woodson critiqued education of African Americans as "mis-education" because he held that it denigrated the black while glorifying the white. For these early Afrocentrists, the goal was to break what they saw as a vicious cycle of the reproduction of black self-abnegation. In the words of The Crisis editor W. E. B. Du Bois, the world left African Americans with a "double consciousness," and a sense of "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."
In his early years, W. E. B. Du Bois, researched West Africa
n cultures and attempted to construct a pan-Africanist
value system based on West African traditions. In the 1950s Du Bois envisioned and received funding from Ghana
ian president Kwame Nkrumah
to produce an Encyclopedia Africana
to chronicle the history and cultures of Africa. Du Bois died before being able to complete his work. Some aspects of Du Bois's approach are evident in work by Cheikh Anta Diop
in the 1950s and 1960s.
Du Bois inspired a number of authors, including Drusilla Dunjee Houston. After reading his work The Negro (1915), Houston embarked upon writing her Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire (1926). The book was a compilation of evidence related to the historic origins of Cush
and Ethiopia, and assessed their influences on Greece.
The work of Cheikh Anta Diop
became very influential. In the following decades, histories related to Africa and the diaspora gradually incorporated a more African perspective. Since that time, Afrocentrists have increasingly seen African peoples as the makers and shapers of their own histories.
In this context, ethnocentric Afrocentrism was not intended to be essential or permanent, but was a consciously fashioned strategy of resistance to the Eurocentrism of the time. Afrocentric scholars adopted two approaches: a deconstructive rebuttal of what they called "the whole archive of European ideological racism" and a reconstructive act of writing new self-constructed histories.
At a 1974 UNESCO symposium in Cairo titled "The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of Meroitic Script", Cheikh Anta Diop
brought together scholars of Egypt from around the world.
Key texts from this period include:
Some Afrocentric writers focused on study of indigenous African civilizations and peoples, to emphasize African history separate from European or Arab
influence. Primary among them was Chancellor Williams
, whose book The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. set out to determine a "purely African body of principles, value systems (and) philosophy of life".
In his (1992) article "Eurocentrism vs. Afrocentrism", US anthropologist Linus A. Hoskins wrote:
American educator Jawanza Kunjufu made the case that hip hop
culture, rather than being creative expression of the culture, was the root of many social ills. For some Afrocentrists, the contemporary problems of the ghetto
stemmed not from race and class inequality, but rather from a failure to inculcate Black youth with Afrocentric values.
In 1997, US cultural historian Nathan Glazer described Afrocentricity as a form of multiculturalism. He wrote that its influence ranged from sensible proposals about inclusion of more African material in school curricula to what he called senseless claims about African primacy in all major technological achievements. Glazer argued that Afrocentricity had become more important due to the failure of mainstream society to assimilate all African Americans. Anger and frustration at their continuing separation gave black Americans the impetus to reject traditions that excluded them.
s, no cultures, and no histories of any note before coming into contact with Europeans. Further, according to the views of some Afrocentrists, European history has commonly received more attention within the academic community than the history of sub-Saharan African cultures or those of the many Pacific Island peoples. Afrocentrists contend it is important to divorce the historical record from past racism. Molefi Kete Asante
's book Afrocentricity (1988) argues that African-Americans should look to African cultures "as a critical corrective to a displaced agency among Africans." Some Afrocentrists believe that the burden of Afrocentricity is to define and develop African agency in the midst of the cultural wars
debate. By doing so, Afrocentricity can support all forms of multiculturalism.
Afrocentrists argue that Afrocentricity is important for people of all ethnicities who want to understand African history and the African diaspora
. For example, the Afrocentric method can be used to research African indigenous culture. Queeneth Mkabela writes in 2005 that the Afrocentric perspective provides new insights for understanding African indigenous culture, in a multicultural context. According to Mkabela and others, the Afrocentric method is a necessary part of complete scholarship and without it, the picture is incomplete, less accurate, and less objective.
Studies of African and African-diaspora cultures have shifted understanding and created a more positive acceptance of influence by African religious, linguistic and other traditions, both among scholars and the general public. For example religious movements such as Vodou are now less likely to be characterized as "mere superstition", but understood in terms of links to African traditions.
In recent years Africana Studies
or Africology departments at many major universities have grown out of the Afrocentric "Black Studies" departments formed in the 1970s. Rather than focusing on black topics in the African diaspora (often exclusively African American topics), these reformed departments aim to expand the field to encompass all of the African diaspora. They also seek to better align themselves with other University departments and find continuity and compromise between the radical Afrocentricity of the past decades and the multicultural scholarship found in many fields today.
African Centered Leadership-Fellowship (ACL-F)
2000
Dr. Uhuru Hotep, co-director of the Kwame Ture Leadership Institute, established an ethnocentric approach to leadership specifically based on the four principles of restoration of sovereignty, Sankofa, Maat restoration, and Johari Sita installation.
Restoration of sovereignty is a concept that surrounds cultural, political and economic entities of society. Sovereignty is synyonmous with self-determination. In the tradition of a self-sufficient creation of communities, seshemet (leadership) was developed to restore the Moroon tradition of kilombo construction.
Sankofa is a leadership technique of Ghana that emphasizes living in the present to learn from the past. This concept requires its followers to learn about the contributions of their ancestral leaders and to continue with their struggles. It mandates that African centered leaders reconnect with their ancestors.
Maat restoration is a collaboration of the central themes of truth, justice, order, harmony, balance, reciprocity and propriety. which is based on the teachings of ancient Kemet. This concept is characterized by the restoring of public confidence and the promotion of psychological and fiscal prosperity among the leaders and their followers.
Johari Sita is a multifaceted Afrocentric approach to leadership-followership development. It can best be described as the processes, procedures and practices of ACL-F. This model of leadership is the foundation for nation-wide workshops called "Preparing African Youth for 21st Century Leadership and Service."
The internal loci of control for African centered leaders and followers are contrary to the political and financial dependency of followers of external loci of control of many mainstream middle class Black American leadership practices.
*Goggins II, Lathardus. African Centered Rites of Passage and Education.
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
is education designed to empower African people
African people
African people refers to natives, inhabitants, or citizen of Africa and to people of African descent.-Etymology:Many etymological hypotheses that have been postulated for the ancient name "Africa":...
. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by limiting their awareness of themselves and indoctrinating them with ideas that work against them. To control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-determination in relationship to others. Like educational leaders of other cultures
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.-Biography:...
, proponents assert that what educates one group of people does not necessarily educate and empower another group—so they assert educational priorities distinctly for the Africans in a given context.
Philosophy
Afrocentric education has, as one of its tenets, decolonizing the African mind. The central objective in decolonizing the African mind is to overthrow the authority that alien traditions may exercise. In order to achieve this, Eurocentric ideology must be dismantled from everyday African life. This is not to say that the African is to reject foreign tradition, but she or he is to deny its authoritative control in the culture of the African, and denounce allegiance to this authoritative control. Decolonizing the African mind seeks to mentally liberate Africans. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. It is then clear that an Afrocentric education is essential based on the idea of mental liberation.Education
Education was understood to be a process of harnessing the inner potential, and thus it is imperative to equip the youth with an awareness of their identity. The term "miseducation" was coined by Dr. Carter G. WoodsonCarter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African American history. A founder of Journal of Negro History , Dr...
to describe the process of systematically depriving African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s of their knowledge of self. Dr. Woodson believed that miseducation was the root of the problems of the masses of the African American community and that if the masses of the African American community were given the correct knowledge and education from the beginning, they would not be in the situation that they find themselves in today. Dr. Woodson argues in his book, The Mis-Education of the Negro
The Mis-Education of the Negro
The Mis-Education of the Negro is a book originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that African-Americans of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools...
, that African Americans often valorize European culture to the detriment of their own culture.
The problem concerning formal education is seen by Afrocentrists to be that African students are taught to perceive the world through the eyes of another culture, and unconsciously learn to see themselves as an insignificant part of their world. An Afrocentric education does not necessarily wish to isolate Africans from a Eurocentric education system but wishes to assert the autonomy of Africans and encompass the cultural uniqueness of all learners.
A school based on African values, it is believed, would eliminate the patterns of rejection and alienation that engulf so many African American school children, especially males. The movement for African-centered education is based on the assumption that a school immersed in African traditions, rituals, values, and symbols will provide a learning environment that is more congruent with the lifestyles and values of African American families.
19th and early 20th century
Edward Wilmot BlydenEdward Wilmot Blyden
Edward Wilmot Blyden was an Americo-Liberian educator, writer, diplomat, and politician primarily in Liberia. He also taught for five years in Sierra Leone, and his writings were influential in both countries....
, an Americo-Liberian
Americo-Liberian
Americo-Liberians are a Liberian ethnicity of African American descent. The sister ethnic group of Americo Liberians are the Sierra Leone Creole people who are of African American, West Indian, and liberated African descent...
educator and diplomat active in the pan-Africa movement, perceived a change in perception taking place among Europeans towards Africans in his 1908 book African Life and Customs, which originated as a series of articles in the Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
Weekly News. In it, he proposed that Africans were beginning to be seen simply as different and not as inferior, in part because of the work of English writers such as Mary Kingsley
Mary Kingsley
Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English writer and explorer who greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and African people.-Early life:Kingsley was born in Islington, London on 13 October 1862...
and Lady Lugard
Flora Shaw
Dame Flora Louisa Shaw, Lady Lugard, DBE , the daughter of an English father, Captain George Shaw and a French mother, Marie Desfontaines, was a British journalist and writer...
, who traveled and studied in Africa. Such an enlightened view was fundamental to refute prevailing ideas among Western peoples about African cultures and Africans.
Blyden used that standpoint to show how the traditional social, industrial, and economic life of Africans untouched by "either European or Asiatic influence", was different and complete in itself, with its own organic wholeness. In a letter responding to Blyden's original series of articles, Fante journalist and politician J.E. Casely Hayford commented, "It is easy to see the men and women who walked the banks of the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
" passing him on the streets of Kumasi
Kumasi
Kumasi is a city in southern central Ghana's Ashanti region. It is located near Lake Bosomtwe, in the Rain Forest Region about northwest of Accra. Kumasi is approximately north of the Equator and north of the Gulf of Guinea...
. Hayford suggested building a University to preserve African identity and instincts. In that university, the history chair would teach
The exchange of ideas between Blyden and Hayford embodied the fundamental concepts of Afrocentrism.
In the United States, during the early 20th century and the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
, many writers and historians gathered in major cities, where they began to work on documenting achievements of Africans throughout history, and in United States and Western life. They began to set up institutions to support scholarly work in African-American history and literature, such as the American Negro Academy (now the Black Academy of Letters and Arts), founded in Washington, DC in 1874. Some men were self-taught; others rose through the academic system. Creative writers and artists claimed space for African-American perspectives.
Leaders included bibliophile Arthur Schomburg, who devoted his life to collecting literature, art, slave narratives, and other artifacts of the African diaspora. In 1911 with John Edward Bruce
John Edward Bruce
John Edward Bruce, also known as Bruce Grit or J. E. Bruce-Grit , born a slave in Maryland, United States, became a journalist, historian, writer, orator, civil rights activist and Pan-African nationalist...
, he founded the Negro Society for Historical Research in Yonkers, New York
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers is the fourth most populous city in the state of New York , and the most populous city in Westchester County, with a population of 195,976...
. The value of Schomburg's personal collection was recognized, and it was purchased by the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
in 1926 with aid of a Carnegie
Carnegie
Carnegie may refer to:*Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, for whom many entries on this page are named*Dale Carnegie, motivational speaker and author*David Carnegie , Scottish-Swedish industrialist...
Corporation grant. It became the basis of what is now called the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, based in Harlem, New York. Schomburg used the money from the sale of his collection for more travel and acquisition of materials.
Hubert Henry Harrison used his intellectual gifts in street lectures and political activism, influencing early generations of Black Socialists and Black Nationalists. Dr. Carter G. Woodson
Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African American history. A founder of Journal of Negro History , Dr...
co-founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History is an organization dedicated to the study and appreciation of African-American History. It is a non-profit organization founded in Chicago, Illinois, on September 9, 1915 and incorporated in Washington, D.C. on October 2, 1915 as...
(as it is now called) in 1915, as well as the The Journal of Negro History, so that scholars of black history could be supported and find venues for their work.
Among their topics, editors of publications such as NAACP's The Crisis
The Crisis
The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois , Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.The original title of the journal was...
and Journal of Negro History sought to include articles that countered the prevailing view that Sub-Saharan Africa had contributed little of value to human history that was not the result of incursions by Europeans and Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s. Historians began to theorize that Ancient Egyptian civilization was the culmination of events arising from the origin of the human race in Africa. They investigated the history of Africa from that perspective.
In March 1925 Schomburg published an essay "The Negro Digs Up His Past" in the Survey Graphic in an issue devoted to Harlem's intellectual life. The article had widespread distribution and influence, as he detailed the achievements of people of African descent. Alain Locke included the essay in his collection The New Negro
The New Negro
The New Negro: An Interpretation is an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African American art and literature edited by Alain Locke, who lived in Washington, DC and taught at Howard University during the Harlem Renaissance...
.
Afrocentrists claimed The Mis-Education of the Negro
The Mis-Education of the Negro
The Mis-Education of the Negro is a book originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that African-Americans of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools...
(1933) by Carter G. Woodson
Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African American history. A founder of Journal of Negro History , Dr...
, an African-American historian, as one of their foundational texts. Woodson critiqued education of African Americans as "mis-education" because he held that it denigrated the black while glorifying the white. For these early Afrocentrists, the goal was to break what they saw as a vicious cycle of the reproduction of black self-abnegation. In the words of The Crisis editor W. E. B. Du Bois, the world left African Americans with a "double consciousness," and a sense of "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."
In his early years, W. E. B. Du Bois, researched West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
n cultures and attempted to construct a pan-Africanist
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a "one African community". Differing types of Pan-Africanism seek different levels of economic, racial, social, or political unity...
value system based on West African traditions. In the 1950s Du Bois envisioned and received funding from Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
ian president Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana...
to produce an Encyclopedia Africana
Encyclopedia Africana
Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience edited by Henry Louis Gates andAnthony Appiah is a compendium of Africana studies including African studies and the "Pan-African diaspora" inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois' project of an "Encyclopedia Africana"...
to chronicle the history and cultures of Africa. Du Bois died before being able to complete his work. Some aspects of Du Bois's approach are evident in work by Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were...
in the 1950s and 1960s.
Du Bois inspired a number of authors, including Drusilla Dunjee Houston. After reading his work The Negro (1915), Houston embarked upon writing her Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire (1926). The book was a compilation of evidence related to the historic origins of Cush
Kingdom of Kush
The native name of the Kingdom was likely kaš, recorded in Egyptian as .The name Kash is probably connected to Cush in the Hebrew Bible , son of Ham ....
and Ethiopia, and assessed their influences on Greece.
1960s and 1970s
The 1960s and 1970s were times of social and political ferment. In the U.S. were born new forms of Black Nationalism, Black Power and Black Arts Movements, all driven to some degree by an identification with "Mother Africa." Afrocentric scholars and Black youth also challenged Eurocentric ideas in academia.The work of Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were...
became very influential. In the following decades, histories related to Africa and the diaspora gradually incorporated a more African perspective. Since that time, Afrocentrists have increasingly seen African peoples as the makers and shapers of their own histories.
You have all heard of the African Personality; of African democracy, of the African way to socialism, of negritudeNégritudeNégritude is a literary and ideological movement, developed by francophone black intellectuals, writers, and politiciansin France in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas.The Négritude...
, and so on. They are all props we have fashioned at different times to help us get on our feet again. Once we are up we shan't need any of them any more. But for the moment it is in the nature of things that we may need to counter racism with what Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
has called an anti-racist racism, to announce not just that we are as good as the next man but that we are much better.
—Chinua Achebe, 1965
In this context, ethnocentric Afrocentrism was not intended to be essential or permanent, but was a consciously fashioned strategy of resistance to the Eurocentrism of the time. Afrocentric scholars adopted two approaches: a deconstructive rebuttal of what they called "the whole archive of European ideological racism" and a reconstructive act of writing new self-constructed histories.
At a 1974 UNESCO symposium in Cairo titled "The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of Meroitic Script", Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were...
brought together scholars of Egypt from around the world.
Key texts from this period include:
- The Destruction of Black Civilization (1971) by Chancellor Williams
- The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1974) by Cheikh Anta Diop
- They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (1976) by Ivan Van Sertima
Some Afrocentric writers focused on study of indigenous African civilizations and peoples, to emphasize African history separate from European or Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
influence. Primary among them was Chancellor Williams
Chancellor Williams
Chancellor James Williams was an African American sociologist, historian and writer....
, whose book The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. set out to determine a "purely African body of principles, value systems (and) philosophy of life".
1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s and 1990s, Afrocentrism increasingly became seen as a tool for addressing social ills and a means of grounding community efforts toward self-determination and political and economic empowerment.In his (1992) article "Eurocentrism vs. Afrocentrism", US anthropologist Linus A. Hoskins wrote:
The vital necessity for African people to use the weapons of education and history to extricate themselves from this psychological dependency complex/syndrome as a necessary precondition for liberation. [...] If African peoples (the global majority) were to become Afrocentric (Afrocentrized), ... that would spell the ineluctable end of European global power and dominance. This is indeed the fear of Europeans. ... Afrocentrism is a state of mind, a particular subconscious mind-set that is rooted in the ancestral heritage and communal value system.
American educator Jawanza Kunjufu made the case that hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
culture, rather than being creative expression of the culture, was the root of many social ills. For some Afrocentrists, the contemporary problems of the ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
stemmed not from race and class inequality, but rather from a failure to inculcate Black youth with Afrocentric values.
In the West and elsewhere, the European, in the midst of other peoples, has often propounded an exclusive view of reality; the exclusivity of this view creates a fundamental human crisis. In some cases, it has created cultures arrayed against each other or even against themselves. Afrocentricity’s response certainly is not to impose its own particularity as a universal, as Eurocentricity has often done. But hearing the voice of African American culture with all of its attendant parts is one way of creating a more sane society and one model for a more humane world. -Asante, M. K. (1988)
In 1997, US cultural historian Nathan Glazer described Afrocentricity as a form of multiculturalism. He wrote that its influence ranged from sensible proposals about inclusion of more African material in school curricula to what he called senseless claims about African primacy in all major technological achievements. Glazer argued that Afrocentricity had become more important due to the failure of mainstream society to assimilate all African Americans. Anger and frustration at their continuing separation gave black Americans the impetus to reject traditions that excluded them.
2000s
Today, Afrocentricity takes many forms, including striving for a more multicultural and balanced approach to the study of history and sociology. Afrocentrists contend that race still exists as a social and political construct. They argue that for centuries in academia, Eurocentric ideas about history were dominant: ideas such as blacks having no civilizations, no written languageWritten language
A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
s, no cultures, and no histories of any note before coming into contact with Europeans. Further, according to the views of some Afrocentrists, European history has commonly received more attention within the academic community than the history of sub-Saharan African cultures or those of the many Pacific Island peoples. Afrocentrists contend it is important to divorce the historical record from past racism. Molefi Kete Asante
Molefi Kete Asante
Molefi Kete Asante is an African-American scholar, historian, and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African American studies, African Studies and Communication Studies...
's book Afrocentricity (1988) argues that African-Americans should look to African cultures "as a critical corrective to a displaced agency among Africans." Some Afrocentrists believe that the burden of Afrocentricity is to define and develop African agency in the midst of the cultural wars
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
debate. By doing so, Afrocentricity can support all forms of multiculturalism.
Afrocentrists argue that Afrocentricity is important for people of all ethnicities who want to understand African history and the African diaspora
African diaspora
The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...
. For example, the Afrocentric method can be used to research African indigenous culture. Queeneth Mkabela writes in 2005 that the Afrocentric perspective provides new insights for understanding African indigenous culture, in a multicultural context. According to Mkabela and others, the Afrocentric method is a necessary part of complete scholarship and without it, the picture is incomplete, less accurate, and less objective.
Studies of African and African-diaspora cultures have shifted understanding and created a more positive acceptance of influence by African religious, linguistic and other traditions, both among scholars and the general public. For example religious movements such as Vodou are now less likely to be characterized as "mere superstition", but understood in terms of links to African traditions.
In recent years Africana Studies
Africana studies
In United States education, Africana studies, or Africology is the study of the histories, politics and cultures of peoples of African origin both in Africa and in the African diaspora....
or Africology departments at many major universities have grown out of the Afrocentric "Black Studies" departments formed in the 1970s. Rather than focusing on black topics in the African diaspora (often exclusively African American topics), these reformed departments aim to expand the field to encompass all of the African diaspora. They also seek to better align themselves with other University departments and find continuity and compromise between the radical Afrocentricity of the past decades and the multicultural scholarship found in many fields today.
African Centered Leadership-Fellowship (ACL-F)
2000
Dr. Uhuru Hotep, co-director of the Kwame Ture Leadership Institute, established an ethnocentric approach to leadership specifically based on the four principles of restoration of sovereignty, Sankofa, Maat restoration, and Johari Sita installation.
Restoration of sovereignty is a concept that surrounds cultural, political and economic entities of society. Sovereignty is synyonmous with self-determination. In the tradition of a self-sufficient creation of communities, seshemet (leadership) was developed to restore the Moroon tradition of kilombo construction.
Sankofa is a leadership technique of Ghana that emphasizes living in the present to learn from the past. This concept requires its followers to learn about the contributions of their ancestral leaders and to continue with their struggles. It mandates that African centered leaders reconnect with their ancestors.
Maat restoration is a collaboration of the central themes of truth, justice, order, harmony, balance, reciprocity and propriety. which is based on the teachings of ancient Kemet. This concept is characterized by the restoring of public confidence and the promotion of psychological and fiscal prosperity among the leaders and their followers.
Johari Sita is a multifaceted Afrocentric approach to leadership-followership development. It can best be described as the processes, procedures and practices of ACL-F. This model of leadership is the foundation for nation-wide workshops called "Preparing African Youth for 21st Century Leadership and Service."
The internal loci of control for African centered leaders and followers are contrary to the political and financial dependency of followers of external loci of control of many mainstream middle class Black American leadership practices.
See also
- PedagogyPedagogyPedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
- Philosophy of educationPhilosophy of educationPhilosophy of education can refer to either the academic field of applied philosophy or to one of any educational philosophies that promote a specific type or vision of education, and/or which examine the definition, goals and meaning of education....
- AfrocentrismAfrocentrismAfrocentrism is cultural ideology mostly limited to the United States, dedicated to the history of Black people a response to global racist attitudes about African people and their historical contributions by revisiting this history with an African cultural and ideological center...
- Africana studiesAfricana studiesIn United States education, Africana studies, or Africology is the study of the histories, politics and cultures of peoples of African origin both in Africa and in the African diaspora....
- Black nationalismBlack nationalismBlack nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
- Black separatismBlack separatismBlack separatism is a movement to create separate institutions for people of African descent in societies historically dominated by whites, particularly in the United States. Black separatists also often seek a separate homeland...
- Afrikan Centered Education Collegium CampusAfrikan Centered Education Collegium CampusAfrikan Centered Education or ACE is an Afrocentric elementary school, middle school, and high school spread across several campuses in Kansas City, Missouri, United States and administered by the Kansas City, Missouri School District. The PreK-5 grade campus is located at 6410 Swope Parkway. The 6...
Resources
- Woodson, Dr. Carter G. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro. Khalifah's Booksellers & Associates.
- Akbar, Dr. Na'im. (1998). Know Thyself. Mind Productions & Associates.
- Chinweizu (1987). Decolonizing the African Mind. Sundoor Press.
- Pollard Diane S., et al.(2000). African-Centered Schooling in Theory and Practice. Bergin & Garvey.
Further reading
- Molefi Kete AsanteMolefi Kete AsanteMolefi Kete Asante is an African-American scholar, historian, and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African American studies, African Studies and Communication Studies...
(1980). Afrocentricity: The theory of social change. Amulefi Pub. Co. - Kondo, Zak. Black Students Guide to Positive Education.
*Goggins II, Lathardus. African Centered Rites of Passage and Education.
- Gill, Walter. Issues in African American Education.
- Cartwright, Madeline. For the Children.
- Zaslavsky, Claudia. Africa Counts.
- Hilliard III, Asa G. SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind.
- Hilliard III, Asa G. Maroons Within Us.
- Hilliard III, Asa G., et al. Young, Gifted and Black.
- Hilliard III, Asa G., Payton-Stewart, Lucretia, Williams, Larry Obadele. Infusion of African and African American Content in the School Curriculum.
- Palmer, Anyim. The Failure of Public Education in the Black Community.
- Foluke, Gyasi A. The Crisis and Challenge of Black Mis-Education in America.
- DuBois, W.E.B. and Aptheker, Herbert. The Education of Black People.
- Lomotey, Kofi. Going to School: the African American Experience.
- Akoto, Kwame Agyei. Nationbuilding: Theory and practice in Afrikan-centered education.
- Shujaa, Mwalimu J. Too Much Schooling, Too Little Education.
- Lometey, Kofi. Sailing Against the Wind: African Americans and Women in U.S. Education.
- Richard Majors. Educating Our Black Children: New Directions and Radical Approaches.
- Hale, Janice E. Unbank the Fire: Visions for the Education of African American Children.
- Watkins, William H. The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1954
- Denbo, Sheryl. Improving Schools for African American Students: A Reader for Educational Leaders.
- Ani, Marimba.Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior.
- Murrell Jr., Peter C. African-Centered Pedagogy:Developing Schools of Achievement for African American Children.
- Ford, Donna Y. Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students.
- Ratteray, Joan D. Center Shift: An African-Centered Approach for the Multi-Cultural Curriculum.
- Tatum, Beverly Daniel. Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria.
- Gentry, Atron A. Learning to Survive: Black Youth Look for Education and Hope.
- Kafele, Baruti K. A Black Parent’s Handbook to Educating Your Children (Outside of the Classroom)
- Shockley, Kmt G. The Miseducation of Black Children.
External links
- The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson (full text)
- The Audiobook version of "The Mis-Education of the Negro"
- Journal of Negro EducationJournal of Negro EducationThe Journal of Negro Education is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Howard University established in 1932...
- Coalition for African-centered Rites of Passage