Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History

historyplace.com ^ | 1996 | Mary Lefkowitz

[AntiGuv]

Excellent article. Thanks! I found this very intriguing and now intend to purchase the book. I encountered some of these myths back in my college days - particularly the Library of Alexandria theft story - and endeavored to dispell them as best I could. I'm quite pleased to see an academician publish a text toward this end.

[Destro]

bump

[gr8eman]

Great Post!!...Now hear this...JESUS WAS BLACK, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS BLACK, THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS BLACK, SANTA CLAUS, THE EASTER RABBIT, THE TOOTH FAIRY...ALL BLACK! SLICK WILLIE...THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT!...any questions?

[RLK]

From my own analysis published elsewhere. The entirity of Europe an much of the orient is filled with elaborate architecture, public works, invention, libraries, scrolls, and manuscripts going back hundreds and thousands of years. In Black Africa one finds naught. The way it is presently going, there never will be anything. There has never been anything of substance in Black Africa to steal or imitate. The solution to this problem by black activist scholars may be to claim the Vikings were really black Africans or some such nonsence, but it isn't going to fly.

[SpringheelJack]

I think it's a sad commentary that somebody actually has to go to the trouble of refuting this crap, although I'm glad Lefkowitz did. There's just no shortage of idiocies and lies people will willingly believe: from the claim that Shakespeare didn't really write Shakespeare's works, or that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked, to believing that Jack the Ripper was really the Prince of Wales. And then there's this. Pseudo-history is a strange, irrational, and silly subject.

[weegee]

Don't forget the claims that "white devils" were a science experiment gone wrong by black scientists and that black men once had wings...

[Congressman Billybob]

This is a brilliant article. Not only is it highly factual, it is also well written. The general point I gained from it is that any group of people whose world view is based on lies, are destined for defeat historically.

That applies in politics, in theology, in education, in race relations, in conflicts of culture. It is why most blacks have marginalized themselves in American society. It is why "teechurs" unions are dangerous. It is why left-wing Democrats need to be defeated. It is why Islamicists must be subdued by war.

All these conclusions are far afield from the subject of this article. But they follow logically from this. When many people, especially many people with weapons, are motivated by a philosophy of lies, normal people are in danger.

Congressman Billybob

Click for "Til Death Do Us Part."

Click for "to Restore Trust in America"

Click for "I am almost out of ideas"

[KC_Conspirator]

Excellent article.

[tictoc]

Ping

[aruanan]

If identity didn't matter, the Afro-Centrists wouldn't be trying to rip off other cultures to bolster their own sense of inadequacy. Another good treatment of this subject is found in Higher Superstition, The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, pp. 203-214. This is an excellent book, especially because the authors bend over backwards to avoid supporting the thesis of such people as Newt Gingrich that academia is dominated by whacked-out leftists. Still, they say, "

"When we use the phrase academic left we do not refer merely to academics with left-wing political views. There are countless academics who do excellent and penetrating work, in appropriate fields, from a left-wing viewpoint. There are countless left-wing scientists--although we are stodgy enough to insist that there is no such thing as left-wing science. We are using academic left to dsignate those people whose doctrinal idiosyncracies sustain the misreadings of science, its methods, and its conceptual foundations that have generated what nowadays passes for a politically progressive critique of it." p 9

"We are treading now on the slippery territory of the "political correctness" debate; and we face the fact that this book will be read as yet another salvo in that dreary war. If we are to be candid, we must admit that nothing we offer will comfort those who describe the PC furor as a vicious invention of the political right."p 8

"What we have to say is narrowly concerned with science and with misconceived attacks on science that grow out of a doctrinaire political position. The left has to take the blame, because that's where most (but certainly not all) of the silliness is coming from on this issue, at this time, although there has been an abundance of it in the past from the other side. The campus right has had the good tactical sense to leave the matter alone, except to comment on the foibles of the left. It may well be that there are dead-of-night confabulations betweeen leading anti-PC activists and, let us say, the Institute for Creation Research. If so, these have yet to come to light. In any case, we are not stalking-horses for social conservatism. If the academic left were to choose to abandon the most extravagant of its philosophical lucubrations, particularly those that lead to misguided assaults on natural science, the occasion for books like this one would disappear." p 9

[PatrickHenry]

Fine article. Ping.

[Havoc]

Another fine example of why one must actually use one's brains and do more than listen to any story told claiming to be history. If one makes statements purporting to be historical fact, whether accepted by anyone or not, one cannot simply take things on their face or one might believe Such fables as that Shishak was Shoshenk I, that Cleopatra was black or that Constantine was a Christian.

Much of history has been manipulated by people with agendas.
The Roman church spent centuries remanufacturing history to suit it's purposes. Hitler's third Riech made it up as they went and today's Liberals in america attempt to rewrite history at every turn to support their pathetic lifestyles. If you can get to the bottom of what they're saying - you'll quickly find why it's being said and what's attempted to be propped up with it. You'll usually find that the perversion of history is used as an excuse to prop up a current practice at the time of the perversion. By example the destruction of true Jewish History by way of German Propaganda in WWII was intended to remove the notion of the Jew as a chosen race of God. The Aryans can't be the Chosen or "master" race if the Jews already own that title. Therefore they reinvented history and defamed and destroyed the Jews in order to prop up their new assertion that the Aryan was the chosen.

The Roman Catholic Church is full to the brim of examples of this - not the least of which is the Roman deception and rewrite of History that is the Isidorian decretals and the frauds of Gracian. But to put those indoctrinated in such beliefs on the spot is to ask them to think for themselves, which they often cannot or will not do. Thus the American black woman who sells the notion that Cleopatra was black to puff herself up on fantasies - or the liberal who will fight feverishly to insist that maybe tomorrow - Roosevelt was a homo or sumsuch so that it makes it seem more acceptable for the 40 year old guy next door to lull your 17 year old into the notion that it's ok to be a homo because someone says today that Roosevelt was one. "So just bend over like the prison boys showed me and I'll teach you how to be one.." Pathetic; but, it's the way it often works. Sickening things often need fantastic stories to make them seem normal. And bottom feeders will employ any tactic at their disposal - as will religious zealots trying to create history to prop up something they otherwise have no support for. Wasn't it the Mormons who wanted us to believe that little winged men lived on the moon and that blacks could not be 'saved'...

Have fun with history. Learn from it. But don't abuse it lest the truth come to find you out and show you to be a liar. :)

[stanz]

Looks like an excellent post. Going to have fun reading this in the Lincoln Tunnel tonight.

[aristeides]

Martin Bernal once basically confessed to me over lunch that he didn't care whether what he was writing was true or not.

[mhking]

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[VadeRetro]

Looks like an accurate debunking to me.

Yes! Let's teach the truth and not what we or someone with some clout wishes were true.

[rdb3]

Afrocentrism is as American as apple pie.

Period.

[RightWhale]

Thanks for the ping. There are huge gaps in our history, and trying to fill in the missing pieces is nothing if not entertaining.

[rdb3]

The entirity of Europe an much of the orient is filled with elaborate architecture, public works, invention, libraries, scrolls, and manuscripts going back hundreds and thousands of years.

Slow your roll. This was not always the case.

"The entirety of Europe" was NOT always filled with such things. In fact, there was a time when the Romans and even Arab cultures considered Western Europeans to be "backwards," especially Britons.

Once the technology and know-how migrated to these parts of Europe through conquest and trade-routes, they made the most out of what they just learned. And they are to be commended for that. But don't get crazy. I know history, too.

My M.A. thesis was on this very topic.