‘Afrocentric’ Fantasies Sadly Usurp True Glories of the Black Experience

By Mona Charen

(syndicated column printed in the Kansas City Star, February 16, 1994)

WASHINGTON — Was Cleopatra black? A significant number of American children are being taught as much. Does it matter? Well, in one sense, it shouldn’t and that gets us, in honor of black history month, into the controversy over “Afrocentric” education.

The Afrocentric movement has backed a curriculum for primary and secondary education that is designed to enhance the self-esteem of black students by familiarizing them with the greatness of Africa’s history.

A study of the question by the Manhattan Institute reveals a few problems:

1. There is no empirical evidence that teaching about African civilization improves the academic performance, personal situations or life chances of black students;

2. the content of the major Afrocentric curricula is often racist and frequently in error;

3. there are better and more honest ways to teach about African history.

It is true that for many years America’s textbooks gave only glancing attention to the history of black Americans outside of slavery, and there is no question that for accuracy’s sake, if not to build self-esteem in black students, that had to be corrected.

But the introduction of Afrocentrism only replaced one implicit lie — that blacks played a small part in American history — with another.

Basic to the Afrocentric view is that Africa is the true source of the Western intellectual tradition. The seminal book on the subject, Stolen Legacy, argues that the ancient Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy but stole the ideas from the ancient Egyptians, who were black.

Scholars of the ancient world contradict both assertions. There is no evidence that the Egyptians originated the ideas of the Greeks, nor is it accurate to say that ancient Egyptians were black.

The best archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Egyptians were a number of different hues, ranging from fair in the north, to quite dark in the south along the Nubian border. (The ancient Egyptians, unlike their modern admirers, were quite indifferent to differences in skin color.)

Afrocentrism is a peculiar blend. On the one hand, Afrocentrists claim that the civilization of Europe is corrupt, aggressive and inhumane — inferior in every way to African civilization, which is visualized as a paradise of communitarianism, cooperation and spirituality. At the same time, Afrocentrists claim that black Africans (i.e. Egyptians) invented Western civilization.

The Portland Baseline Essays, one of the most popular Afrocentric texts in use in America, comes in for scathing criticism by the Manhattan Institute. Riddled with falsehoods and fantasies, its picture of Africa is as misleading as its portrayal of the United States.

The Afrocentrists are not engaged in an effort to broaden or enhance the education of Americans. They are propagandists. Like the Nation of Islam and the Ku Klux Klan, they believe that race is the most important attribute of a person.

Blacks, the Afrocentrist believe, are inherently morally superior to whites. Inconvenient facts, such as the fact the black Africans participated vigorously in the slave trade, selling their fellow blacks to white slave traders, are ignored or denied while a fantastic theory of black Egyptian glory is embroidered.

Blacks in America have achieved greatness in every field of endeavor. That is what children should be taught.

The Manhattan Institute canvassed a diverse group for suggestions and produce a prodigious reading list including Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, My bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, The Content of Our Character by Shelby Steele, Succeeding Against the Odds by John H. Johnson, Shadow and Act by Ralph Ellison, Black Boy by Richard Wright, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe, and many others.

Black history is the story of incredible strength, perseverance and, yes, success, in the face of adversity. Teach that.

The wild imaginings of the Afrocentrists can lead only to further racial hostility, confusion and, ultimately, disillusionment.

*** See the response to this article by Leon Dixon ***

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