We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument About Afrocentrism

by Clarence Earl Walker

Afrocentrism has been a controversial but popular movement in schools and universities across America, as well as in black communities. But in We Can't Go Home Again, historian Clarence E. Walker puts Afrocentrism to the acid test, in a thoughtful, passionate, and often blisteringly funny analysis that melts away the pretensions of this "therapeutic mythology." As expounded by Molefi Kete Asante, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and others, Afrocentrism encourages black Americans to discard their recent history, with its inescapable white presence, and to embrace instead an empowering vision of their African (specifically Egyptian) ancestors as the source of western civilization. Walker marshals a phalanx of serious scholarship to rout these ideas. He shows, for instance, that ancient Egyptian society was not black but a melange of ethnic groups, and questions whether, in any case, the pharaonic regime offers a model for blacks today, asking "if everybody was a King, who built the pyramids?" But for Walker, Afrocentrism is more than simply bad history--it substitutes a feel-good myth of the past for an attempt to grapple with the problems that still confront blacks in a racist society. The modern American black identity is the product of centuries of real history, as Africans and their descendants created new, hybrid cultures--mixing many African ethnic influences with native and European elements. Afrocentrism replaces this complex history with a dubious claim to distant glory. "Afrocentrism offers not an empowering understanding of black Americans' past," Walker concludes, "but a pastiche of 'alien traditions' held together by simplistic fantasies." More to the point, this specious history denies to black Americans the dignity, and power, that springs from an honest understanding of their real history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa, Philosophy, Race

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXAMINATION OF SOME OF THE HISTORICAL CLAIMS BEING MADE

Clarence Earl Walker is an American historian and Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of History at the University of California, Davis.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2001 book, “This little book is an intervention in the debates about Afrocentrism. It offers a critique of the focus in Afrocentric discourse on Egypt (called Kemet) both as a black civilization and as the progenitor of Western civilization. In making this argument, I readily acknowledge the Afrocentrism is a popular form of black cultural nationalism. What this text does is raise questions about Afrocentrism as a form of historical consciousness. Although some of its advocates may claim that Afrocentrism is history, the methods by which its proponents reach their conclusions are not historically rigorous. The scholars who call themselves Afrocentrists have not written history in the strictest sense of the term; what they have produced is a therapeutic mythology designed to restore the self-esteem of black Americans by creating a past that never was.” (Pg. xvii-xviii) Later, he explains, “I have chosen to explore Egyptian (Kemetic) Afrocentrism because it is the most popular and powerful expression of this enthusiasm currently sweeping black America.” (Pg. xxiii)

In the first chapter, he states, “Afrocentrism if Eurocentrism in blackface? This can be seen in the very categories Afrocentrism uses to define itself. Frequently used words such as ‘classical’ and ‘African,’ for example, have a Western etymology and are not African in origin. The word ‘classical’ comes from the Latin adjective ‘classicus,’ which originally referred to someone belonging to the highest of the five classes of Roman citizens… When Molefi K. Asante calls his new textbook ‘Classical Africa,’ which Africa is he referring to? In using this terminology, Asante and the other Afrocentrists get conscripted into the very categories they claim to be contesting.” (Pg. 4)

He points out, “the nineteenth-century black spokesmen who claimed a glorious past for their people did so in order to combat a racist social order. This racism expressed itself not only in the works of white historians such as Hegel and his intellectual heirs but also in the pronouncements of white racist scientists and anthropologists… According to this group’s theory, known as polygenesis, Adam and Eve were not the father and mother of humankind after all, but only of white humanity. Instead of one creation, there were two. The advocates of polygenesis thus posed a challenge to the biblical story of creation and a belief in the unity of humankind set forth in the book of Genesis.” (Pg. 19-20)

He argues, “The people of ancient Egypt were of mixed genetic background. Their roots lay not only in Africa but also in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor. The ancient Egyptians did not think of people in terms of black or white races… [Frank] Yurco [in ‘Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?’ in the Biblical Archaeology Review 15:05, Sep-Oct 1989] informs us that ‘the ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of varying complexions of color, from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti) to the light brown of Middle Egypt to the darker brown of upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan… where even today, the population shifts to Nubian… The integration of various types of people into the Egyptian military created a state whose population was heterogeneous… The fact that the Egyptians married the people they subjugated does not mean they thought of them as equals, however. This can be seen in their attitudes toward the Nubians. Nubia, or Kush, as it was called in the ancient world, is the modern-day Sudan. The Egyptians called Nubia ‘miserable Kush’ and thought the country and its people were backward. For the Egyptians, Nubia was a source of raw materials and slaves… In their effort to create a usable and glorious past for today’s black Americans, the Afrocentrists have read modern racial categories back into a world where they had no meaning.” (Pg. 44-46)

He notes, “The question that must be asked at this point is, Were the Ethiopians and Egyptians Negroes? The answer to this query is not straightforward. When, for example, in 1903 the Ethiopian emperor Menilek II was asked ‘to become the honorary president of the Society for the Uplift of Negroes,’ His Imperial Majesty responded, ‘…the Negro should be uplifted, but I am not a Negro.’ Historically the Ethiopian upper class did not consider itself negroid. Indeed, these people used a derogatory term, ‘Shangalla’ or ‘Shankalla,’ to describe people whose skin was darker than theirs… In the ancient world there were no ‘Negroes’… thus the people whom the Greeks called Ethiopian were not Negroes as we use the term today… color did not operate in this context the way it does in contemporary America.” (Pg. 47-48)

He observes, “Although Cleopatra was queen of Egypt, Michael Grant has written that ‘she possessed not a drop of Egyptian blood in her veins.’ Cleopatra’s family, the Ptolemies, did not intermarry with their Egyptian subjects, and in fact Cleopatra was the only member of her family to speak Egyptian. In claiming Cleopatra was black, the Afrocentrists have seized on the fact that she ‘had a fairly dark complexion.’ … As a royal house, the Ptolemies married into the royal families of both Syria and Persia, and these alliances may have further darkened the family’s complexion. This does not, however, make her ‘black,’ which … is an anachronism when applied to the ancient world. Nor does it validate [John Henrik] Clarke’s description of her as ‘light-skinned.’ The term ‘light-skinned’ had no meaning in the world of Ptolemaic Egypt, where Cleopatra reigned. If Clarke means by ‘light-skinned’ that Cleopatra was a ‘mulatto,’ ‘quadroon,’ or ‘octoroon,’ these taxonomies did not exist in Cleopatra’s world.” (Pg. 55-56)

He notes, “The disaffection that some Southern black peasants felt toward [Booker T.] Washington is a subject that American historians have not examined in detail---an unfortunate omission, since members of the black intelligentsia cannot have been Washington’s only critics… Washington’s memoir ‘Up from Slavery’ … has very little positive to say about the autochthonous culture of southern black peasants. Washington was a black Victorian who wanted to still the laughter of his people and make them black Yankees.” (Pg. 106-107)

He concludes, “How are we to explain the popularity of Afrocentrism among some black Americans? I believe that the return to ‘communityism’… has created a space for the growth of speculative and conspiratorial ideas in black America… the Afrocentrists ply shoddy political, social, and intellectual nostrums that supposedly will solve black America’s problems. Because no one leader or set of ideas is capable of addressing the multitudinous ills afflicting black America at present, Afrocentrism, with its emphasis on a usable past rather than a usable present, is risible. As Booker T. Washington observed many years ago, ‘not all knowledge is power.’” (Pg. 131-132)

This book will be of great interest to those seriously studying Afrocentrism.

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fighting, short polemic by an historian against Afrocentrism in general and Molefi Asante in particular. There are lots of sharp claims that I agree with, but we don’t get sufficent examples that might satisfy those sympathetic to Afrocentrism. Afrocentrism is “Eurocentrism in blackface,” is “therapeutic mythology” drawing on outdated “contributionist” history. Afrocentrists have “invented an African world we have lost, in which all social relations took place between equals.” True, but Ta-Nehisi Coates gives us a memorable example, here we don’t have much. There are stronger sections about the shady place of Jews in afrocentric thinking and periodic unearthing of homophobic statements by afrocentric writers. A devastating diss: afrocentrity “suggests that nothing important has happened in black history since the time of the pharaohs and thus trivializes the history of black Americans.” True, yet I suspect that there is a more sophisticated Afrocentrism that wants to respond.