Afrocentrism: Way Forward for Africa? by Iwasepeletu Adenike

Introduction

Afrocentrism was a response to the need to place Africa and Africans in its rightful place in human history. It was born out a desire to state our ‘own’ side of the story in the world’s historical development which had excluded the participation and contributions of the African continent from its summations and compilations. It became imperative to reiterate that ours was not a Dark Continent during the imperialist surge and movement to enlighten the subhuman race, if anything we were the cradle of civilization. Even moreso, that Europeans descended from Africans because Africa was the oldest civilization.

Infact, true historiography states quite clearly that for the first 110,000 years of human cum world history, only Africans inhabited this planet. There were no Europeans existing at the time, true historiography postulates that it took Europeans about 20,000 years to be metamorphosed from the original, advanced African people to the contemporary European people; thus proving that Africans were the ancestors of the Europeans. However, Eurocentrists would argue that during those 100,000 years or more Africans did nothing, created nothing and contributed nothing to world civilization.

To support their claim, since the transatlantic slave trade and the birth of colonialism, information on African history has been presented from the European perspective. It was a concise and deliberate effort to distort and neglect African contributions to world development in a bid to justify the enslavement and colonialization of the African continent. However, the emancipation of slaves in the Americas and the liberation of Africa from European colonialism came with the call for the liberation of knowledge by some Africans who proposed that knowledge should be looked at from the point of view of Africans. This approach came to be known as Afrocentricism within academic circles.

Historical Background

The origin of Afrocentrism cannot be placed with certainty, however it rose with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States of America prevalent in the 60s and 70s, and some even associate it with the Black Panther Movement and Black Nationalism which was prominent during these periods. The is no doubt that the experience of racism and enslavement in the American society created the conditions for the emergence of the Afrocentric theory in the same sense that Marxist theory can be seen as a response to the economic constraints and oppression imposed on Russian peasants.

The most influential book advocating the idea of Afrocentrism was by Marcus Garvey published in 1954; coincidentally he was also one of the foremost propagators of the idealogy. However, it was in the Temples University School of Scholars which is frequently referred to as the ‘Temple Circle’ that the philosophy was first institutionalized; and was popularised by Molefi Kete Asante during the 1980s when he developed the methodological and epistemological foundations for an Afrocentric curriculum based on an African perspective but aiming at global understanding.1 Although Asante MK is often proclaimed the originator of the concept “Afrocentricity” mainly because he was the one who introduced it as an academic concept. Other pioneers of the Afrocentric idea include William Dubois, GGM James, Anta Diop, and Martin Bernal and feminist Lefkowitz RM.

Molefi Kete Asante, born Arthur Lee Smith Jr. was born on August 14, 1942. He is an African-American professor, a leading figure in the fields of African studies, African American studies and Communication studies in Temples University. He is currently in the Department of Africology, where he founded the PhD program in African American Studies. MK Asante is a leading authority on African culture and philosophy, but he is most probably best known for his pioneering work on the theory of Afrocentricism.

Based on the aforementioned, it is undeniable that Afrocentrism is a relatively recent invention born off the product of a specific cultural and historical context namely racism, slavery and imperialism therefore it is fitting to accrue it a modern phenomenon or paradigm geared towards establishing the idea that Africans should reassert a sense of agency in reclaiming their heritage inorder to achieve clarity of mind and purpose.

Afrocentrism prescribes that Africans must look at knowledge from an African perspective. It suggests looking at matters at hand from an African viewpoint; that we misunderstand ourselves when we use viewpoints and terms other than that of the African to study Africa. When Africans view themselves as centred and central in their own history, they see themselves as agents, actors, and participants rather than as marginal and on the periphery of political or economic experience.

Concept of Afrocentrism

MK Asante defined Afrocentricism as a manner of thought and action in which the centrality of African values, interests and perspectives predominate. He further stated that Afrocentricism is an exercise in knowledge and a new historical perspective.2 Also, Afrocentricism is an intellectual movement, a political view, and/or a historical evolution that stresses the culture and achievements of Africans.

Other Afrocentric scholars claim Afrocentricism is a transformation of values, beliefs and attitudes cum behaviourial results thus suggesting that it is the first and only reality for African people, in other words a simple rediscovery of sorts. Another view stressing the centrality of Africans defines Afrocentricism as meaning ‘African centeredness’ which stipulates that Africans should be given their intellectual pride as the originators of civilisation.

According to Asante, what is common to all these definitions is that they all call for a change in the way that the world has viewed Africans, a change that should encompass all attributes of human existence with emphasis on the centrality of African experiences. Asante posits that Afrocentrism as an academic exercise, can be defined in terms of the theory, idealogy and methodology that should be employed to achieve its objectives which primarily is attaining the proposed change that Africans desire.

Afrocentrism in terms of theory places Africans at the centre of any analysis of African phenomena in terms of action and behaviour. It is described as a devotion to the idea that what is in the best interest of African consciousness is at the heart of ethical behaviour and seeks to cherish the idea that ‘Africanness’ itself is an ensemble of ethics. As an ideology it represents the continued longing among Africans for some set of ideas that would bind them together as a community and offer some alternative to an assimilation that is either excluded by Europeans or seen by Africans as an admission of defeat and inferiority.

However, methodologically Afrocentricism is intended as an answer to the intellectual colonialism that serves to validate political and economic colonialism. As an academic phenomenon, therefore, Afrocentricism serves the purpose of binding together the various elements of African and African American studies, transforming them from an interdisciplinary assortment into a unified discipline with ideological and intellectual goals, political purpose and a set of commonly understood methods and theories.

Afrocentricism in times past was labelled as an antithesis a sort of defensive counter move against eurocentricism which is seeking to replace the European view of the world. However, the Asante maintain that it should not be interpreted as an antithesis to eurocentricism. To this end, it becomes necessary to state what Afrocentrism is not:

“it is not a systematic propagation of fantasy history and bizarre theories, nor is it based around a coherent and powerful central myth of a stolen black glory and the unjust ascendance of implacably hostile whites”

Consequently, Afrocentrism is not ‘anti-White’ neither is it a new form of racism. It is not a concept or movement to make Africans feel glorified. Most importantly, it is not ‘an offspring of the Black Power movement nor the seperationist Black Nationalists movement of the 1960s and the 1970s’. The aim of Afrocentricism is not reselecting the bars in order to form new divides. Chukwuokolo highlighted this fact when he stated that:

Afrocentrism which means African centeredness does not violently confront any person or people but is a resolute attempt to put the records right. It is about placing Africans within their own historical framework. It is a demand that the contributions of Africans in all areas of civilization be reflected in world history

According to MK Asante, Afrocentricism is a constructive enterprise primarily because it does not deny others their place. It is based on the harmonious coexistence of an endless variety of cultures. Equally, Asante asserts that there can be no true multiculturalism without Afrocentrism. Afrocentricism does not deny ‘the right of Europe to view the world from its cultural centre’. However, the argument by Asante is that the European view must not be imposed as universal, just like the Europeans, Africans are entitled to give their own perspective of the African experience thus making Afrocentricism an exercise in self awareness, self knowledge and self acknowledgement.

According to Asante, embracing Afrocentricism becomes valuable for Europeans also by giving them a new perspective to see from a different angle and so doing putting them in a position to explore different views and bring new perspectives into the paradigm shift. Consequently, Asante is saying it is necessary to examine all data from the standpoint of Africans as human subjects in this analysis rather than some objects in the European frame of reference.

 Egyptocentrism and Afrocentrism: The Linear Connection

Egypt eventually emerged as central in the debates over Afrocentrism in the mid-twentieth century; these attempts were aimed at recovery and redemption of the African past. Thus, Egypt represented an easily accessible and convenient lee way to the deeper explorations of Africa's complex history. Blyden adopted the position of a linear connection between Egyptians and African Americans in his early writings where he reiterated the argument that Egypt spawned Greek civilization.

Though he never completely abandoned this teleology, by the end of his life in 1912, Blyden had devoted himself to the study of West African cultures, histories and languages, hence he moved away from the static interpretations of a homogenous Africa toward interpretations that recognized the diversity of the continent, though still emphasizing the strong cultural and historical connections between the various peoples, thus becoming the first to emphasize the importance of an “African personality”.

If Blyden was considered a pioneer for seriously enunciating the depth and diversity of West Africans; others soon followed his direction, in his 1920 book “In When Africa Awakes”, Harrison implored African Americans to:

Go to Africa, live among the natives and learn what they have to teach us (for they have much to teach us)…. Let us begin by studying the scientific works of the African explorers and stop reading and believing the silly slush which ignorant missionaries put into our heads about the alleged degradation of our people in Africa. Let us learn to know Africa and Africans so well that every educated Negro will be able at a glance to put his hand on the map of Africa and tell where to find Jolofs, Ekoisi, Mandingoes, Yorubas, Bechuanas or Basutos and can tell something of their marriage customs, their property laws, their agriculture and system of worship. For not until we can do this will it be seemly for us to pretend to be anxious about their political welfare.

Harrison clearly evokes the depth and diversity of Africans, typically he appeals to African Americans to learn about Africa and Africans not from Europeans and/or the European perspective but through the eyes of Africans themselves.

The 1950s brought in a radical surge, a new awakening that is another stream of Afrocentric thought that built on earlier attempts to trace a direct lineage between ancient Egyptians, sub-Saharan Africans, and Africans in the diaspora at large. This new trend of thought tends to dominate popular and even some scholarly understandings of Afrocentrism ever since; the ‘godfather’ of this school of Afrocentrism is Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, the intellectual forefather of Molefi Asante and Martin Bernal.

In his 1955 book, “The African Origin of Civilization”, Diop argues that Africa was the cradle of humanity and civilization. Not only did the letters and sciences emerge from Egypt; black Egyptians had the greatest of human social attributes distinguishing them from the ‘ferocity’ of Europeans in their “gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature, endowed with a spirit of justice and gaiety”.6

The climate no doubt informed Diop's summations, which is Egypt's warm and favorable climate as opposed to Europe's cold and forbidding climate, this factor(s) went a long way in explaining the benevolence of the African people and their distinguishing personality. Diop also went ahead to reiterate the assertion that ancient Greece drew all of its important elements of civilization from Egypt and Africa.

However, it stands that the most controversial contribution to this new stream of Afrocentric scholarship relates to the question of Egypt's influence on ancient Greece. The idea of the ‘stolen’ Egyptian legacy received serious consideration from the scholarly community with the publication of Martin Bernal's 1987 “Black Athena”; his book became a shining path for controversies surrounding Afrocentrism, he made arguments that were strikingly similar to those made by earlier African American intellectuals, such as Marcus Garvey and Cheikh Anta Diop.

Bernal argued that the Greeks were indebted to Egyptian influences in the building of Western civilization. However, he went one step further when he argues that portions of the ancient Greek population were actually derived from Egyptians who colonized the region. He proves that until the late eighteenth century, even European scholars acknowledged the influence of the Egyptians on Greece. It was only with the emergence of ‘pseudoscientific racism’ was this ‘ancient model’ replaced by the ‘aryan model’ that view ancient Greece as almost entirely ‘white’ and European.

What separated Bernal from scholars who preceded him was his expertise in ancient history and languages, as well as the rigorous methodology he employed in researching his book. However, the evocative and dramatic rendering of “Black Athena” has been criticized by some classicists as being too imaginative in its use of linguistic and archaeological findings. Nonetheless, other scholars of ancient Greece find his arguments provocative and compelling.

Hitherto, some of his critics refused to engage his research based on its merits, preferring rather to resort to unconstructive criticism (unscholarly in spirit and perhaps racist in delivery). Foremost among them was Mary Lefkowitz, in her 1996 “Her Not Out of Africa” book, which bears on its dust frontcover a pictorial of Socrates wearing a Malcolm X baseball cap, the contents were no less subtle, instead of trying to understand the historical imperatives that inspire the claims of Socrates or Cleopatra’s blackness, she smugly refutes all claims that the ancient world was anything other than ‘aryan’.

In her high-handed attempt to dismiss the evidentiary basis for Egyptian and African claims to the ancient world, she unwittingly feeds into the very marginalization and exclusion that initiated these inquiries in the first place.

The Insurgence of Afrocentrism

Though the glorious history and contributions of Africans to humanity is sofar well documented to dispel the Eurocentric myth that the continent was dark and its people inferior, backward and uncivilized; survival instincts forced Europeans to adopt an offensive geopolitical strategy, a kind of reverse psychological strategy aimed at showing that they were superior and Africans inferior.

It must be understood against this backdrop, that a paramount modus operandi of imperialism to link eurocentrism ‘with innate qualities of excellence in beauty, intelligence and the God-given right to rule other races’ was adopted. Its adverse effect on the African was to degrade his color and intellectual capacity thus the physical subordination that had been imposed by force came to be associated with the African's ‘innate qualities of incompetence.’ And the goal was achieved through the falsification of the history of Africa and the miseducation of the African.

Kwame Ture warned, ‘If you do not know who you are, you would not know what your interests are.’ A people without a sense of history are ill equipped to plan and visualize a future because of an unclear cum distorted cum miseducated picture of their past. A people without the knowledge of ‘having done’ will have grave difficulty acknowledging the motivation of ‘can do’.

Malcolm X aptly describes it in a speech delivered in Detroit, Michigan:

“the Black man has no self-confidence, he has no confidence in his own race because the white man the European destroyed you and my past, he destroyed our knowledge of our culture and by having destroyed it, now we do not know of any achievement, any accomplishment and as long as you can be convinced that you never did anything, you can never do anything.”

It becomes incumbent for Africans to use the weapons of history and education to extricate themselves from this psychological dependency complex/syndrome as a necessary precondition for liberation. Having at the back of our minds what Mark Twain once said that

“when a country enslaves a people, the first necessity is to make the world feel that the people enslaved are subhuman. The next effort is to make his fellow countrymen believe that the enslaved man is inferior, and then worst of all to make that man believe himself inferior”.

The Europeans perpetrated this in various forms principally through religion and eurocentric global miseducation and then through military, political, economic and psycho cultural imperialistic means. By denigrating and devaluating African system, culture and civilizations Europeans succeeded in stripping Africans of their oneness, their humanity and their Africaness.

However, it is worthy to note that despite their seeming success at eradicating our African identity, in most recent times there has been an awakening of the African mind because of the potency, continuity and adaptability of the African personality. This explains the recent agitation for an Afrocentric interpretation of our conscious African reality and an Afrocentric curricular in institutions of learning.

Afrocentrism’s foremost goal became demonstrating that ancient Egypt was before ancient Greece as ancient Greece was before Rome. The fact of the matter is that written history from the Eurocentric perspective twists and discounts the substantial evidence of African influence on Greece by overlooking ancient writings of great scholars and philosophers such as Plato, Homer, Herodotus, Diogenes, Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus etcetera.

Purposely the observation made by Aristotle was discountenanced, he had reported that the Egyptians gave the world the study of geometry and mathematics which was proof of the contributions of Africans to world development. Therefore, Afrocentrist scholars challenge the Western view which contends that Greeks gave the world rationalism thereby effectively marginalizing Africans and their achievements.

Afrocentrism and the Africa centered curriculum must be potent, ubiquitous and countervailing not only so that Africans may see themselves through the lens of the dawn of human cum world history but also more importantly so that they can extricate themselves from the vicious, divisive and deleterious psychological dependency complex of the eurocentrics.

According to Lattimore, Afrocentrism is the most potent weapon in the armory of Africans in this struggle for reenactment. He was quoted to have said ‘being black in America is like being forced to wear ill-fitting shoes, some people adjust to it, it is always uncomfortable on your foot but you have got to wear it because it is the only shoe you have got’. Lattimore believes this was the invisible dictum behind eurocentrism while on the other hand the visible dictum behind Afrocentrism is to tell Africans that eurocentric miseducation is not ‘the only shoe they have got to wear’ but that the African centered curriculum on Afrocentric global reeducation is the alternative shoe they have to wear now.

Afrocentrism and Afrocentrification

Afrocentricism is rooted in the African ancestral heritage and communal value system which represents the Africanness of a people thus positing the human being as the centrality of all existence as opposed to Eurocentrism which posits political power and crass materialism as the centrality of all existence, therefore it can be deduced that the human factor cum element in Eurocentrism is not central in the overall theme of world history.

Afrocentrism postulates that Africans should be the subject of world history/culture/civilization and not the object of ‘his-eurocentric-story. Because based on historical reality, true historiography has shown that Europeans did not create science, religion, mathematics, philosophy and agriculture but instead imitated the African originals. This fact clearly shows that the Europe of today is a progressive replica derivative of the Africa of yesterday, the dawn of world history and human existence.

Therefore, the purpose of Afrocentrism is to cure Africans of the deadly disease some term ‘afro-sclerosis’ which was inflicted on them by eurocentrism in the last 500 years. It should teach that the blood that unites Africans is thicker than the disparate water and culture that divide and separate them. It should be directed towards an African originality based on the reality and authentification of Mother Africa.

Through the process of Afrocentrism or Afrocentrification, Africans should be imbued with a positive, subconcious sense of self confidence and self empowerment and thus be fully equipped to eliminate and permanently eradicate the mental paralysis, induced collective historical-cultural amnesia, collective lobotomy and psychological genocide eurocentrism imposed upon them aeons ago. Summarily, Afrocentrism represents the most potent challenge to the European nationalism and European power structure in the last 100 years.

A Critique of Afrocentrism

Some Eurocentric scholars have argued on whether or not Afrocentricism aims to distort or balance history, thus making Afrocentricism the most explosive and controversial subject to be embraced by African scholars. Therefore, some prominent Eurocentric scholars and historians are rebelling against Afrocentrism, the Africa centered curriculum and the curriculum of inclusion.

Subsequently, Afrocentricism has prompted much controversy and has been widely attacked by many Eurocentric critics and scholars including feminists, humanists and black progressives. For instance, Afrocentricism has been tagged reversed Eurocentrism in some quarters, these scholars contend that Afrocentricism merely seeks to replace one geopolitical hegemonic center Europe with another hegemonic one Africa.

Further, these critics claim that Afrocentricism poses a threat to the ‘supposed’ unity among Americans, which is it undermines the very fabric of American society. By emphasizing the Africans prerogative to be ‘human as Africans’, Afrocentricism is believed to threaten the unity of American society including the American academia.

Thus, some academics challenge Afrocentric scholars who they claim not only affirmed the achievements of black African civilisations but also placed Africa at the centre of history and culture and claimed that the European culture(s) emerged from Africa;9 these critics argue that Afrocentricism has been making untenable historical claims, especially in relation to ancient Egypt.

For instance, few scholars question that the earliest humans appeared on the African continent. And whether or not that should be interpreted to mean civilization also started from Africa is debatable. Afrocentrists maintain that ancient Egypt is the source of civilization and that Egyptians had a stronger influence on the formation of Greek culture than is generally recognized.

This argument, probably the most publicized has stemmed from European classicists who having subscribed to the Greek Miracle theory became disturbed by two related developments associated with the spread of Afrocentricism; first credit was being taken away from Europe for the great civilizations of the Nile Valley in particular Egypt and Ethiopia, second as a consequence the original intellectual achievements of Greece itself were revisited and diminished.

It was confirmed that many Greek philosophers had studied for long periods of time in ancient Africa and were in reality indebted to their African teachers for many of their ideas. These claims must be more correctly understood within the context of Diopian historiography which places Egypt at the beginning both conceptually and chronologically of African civilization.

Often associated with the above criticism is the additional claim that in its search for ‘Africanness’, Afrocentricism does not allow for cultural change. In fact, some argue Afrocentricism’s inability to deal adequately with cultural change prevents it from understanding that being African today also means being at least partly European as a result of colonization and widespread westernization. Afrocentricsm is then perceived as too restrictive and incapable of grasping the dialectical complexity of modern African identities.

Lefkowitz an Afrocentric feminist scholar criticized Asante’s position on Afrocentric femininism as being anti-women and that this was a bid to avoid exposing the atrocities that are committed in Africa against women and girls in an attempt to prevent criticism against Africa. She maintains that many women in Africa are victims of rape, sexual harassment and female genital mutilation; moreso girls are taught to be submissive and boys are encouraged to be sexually aggressive.

The central focus of an Afrocentric curriculum for students of African descent is the African experience, whether on the continent or in the diaspora. The critics of Afrocentricism argue that given the broad range of the experience(s) of Africans, how possible is it going to be for these abstract principles to be reconciled into one solid curriculum?

Certain Eurocentric scholars say some of the information that Afrocentrists want added to the curriculum is erroneous; others say some of the proposed additions are not as significant to the development of human civilization as the weight being afforded them by Afrocentrists. Some opponents of Afrocentricism have a problem with its approach to knowledge that is Africanised and prefer what they see as a universal approach to knowledge.10

Afrocentricism is based on the premise that somewhere in the universe there is a collective African consciousness. Many scholars contend that there is not a unity of thought across the continent of Africa. There is no single derived African consciousness in the Americas, nor is there one common line of descent or mind of Africans on the continent of Africa.

There has never been a collective African spirit or action and/or thought despite the effort of the PanAfricanism and Negritude movements. The premise of Afrocentricism is therefore questionable regardless of its promise of bringing a collective spirit, clarity of mind and unity of purpose to Africans.

Class and cultural distinctions as well as a lack of one common hereditary language amongst Africans has hampered unity amongst Africans. In Africa, there is a separation of dialect and language between Africans in the lower, middle and upper classes. There is no sense of a ‘common struggle’ that unifies the varied African minds the world over. There is no single ideology that crosses these many ethnicities and/or boundaries neither skin tone, religious and social habits.

There are thousands of different languages, thousands of different cultural groups and regional differences between people from the forests, people from the grasslands and people from the coastlands. There are dark skins, brown skins and lighter skin complexions among Africans. There are rich and poor, educated and uneducated and Muslims, Christians and many other religious denominations.11

It is imperative to mention at this juncture, the agenda that has raised dust even among the supporters of Afrocentricism; the recommendation that Swahili should be adopted as an Afrocentric language. The reason for this is that people who were taken to the Americas during the transatlantic slave did not speak or even know the language. The same can be said about Africans in Africa where there is a multitude of languages which raises the questions of the acceptability of the recommendation.

In Defense of Afrocentrism

Asante say those who dismiss African historical contributions as insignificant are usually eurocentrics steeped in a European centered academic background that prevents them from appreciating the value and extent of contributions from other civilizations. Some say such scholars have for generations purposefully ignored or obscured non Europeans as being intellectually grounded. It is precisely this attitude that allowed Afrocentricism to challenge Eurocentrism in the first place.

For European scholars who have a negative reaction to Afrocentricism, Asante believes that such critics do so out of fear. However, these unspoken fear is not so much about a shattered national unity in America which considering racism would have never truly existed but about the threat that Afrocentricism poses to Euro-American's self preserving monopoly over reason cum rationality.

Other Afrocentric scholars support these claim that much of the disagreement surrounding Afrocentricism emanates from whites wanting to dominate the world and control knowledge. This unspoken fear is revealed on two levels. The first level is that Afrocentricism provides them with no grounds for authority unless they become students of Africans.

This fear they contend is existential according to which African scholars might have something to teach whites. On the second level, Eurocentric scholars consider it rather derogratory that they have to admit that the foundations of Western civilisation was laid by non-Europeans and started in Egypt.

This explains why Afrocentric scholars such as Cheikh Anta Diop and John Henrik Clarke have been condemned by Eurocentric scholars for introducing afrocentric cultural orientations and correcting the historical context and chronological schedule in which world cum historical orientations are rooted in relation to Greek and Roman importance over that of Egypt the oldest civilization. The above Afrocentrics have succeeded in illegitimatizing European history by countering claims about Greek and Roman primacy in rhetorical philosophy.

The Afrocentric historian, John Henrick Clarke, for example completely destroyed the Eurocentric myth by correctly asserting that:

“civilization did not start in European countries and the rest of the world did not wait in darkness for the Europeans to bring the light, most of the history books in the last five hundred years have been written to glorify Europeans at the expense of other peoples”

Most Western historians have not been willing to admit that there is an African history to be written about and that this history predates the emergence of Europe by thousands of years. It is not possible for the world to have waited in darkness for the Europeans to bring the light, because for most of the early history of man the Europeans themselves were in darkness. When the light of culture came for the first time to the people who would later call themselves Europeans it came from Africa.

Often it is overlooked that when the Europeans emerged and began to extend themselves into the broader world of Africa during the 15th and 16th centuries respectively, they distorted world scholarship mainly to show or imply that Europeans were the only creators of what could be called civilization. In order to accomplish this, the Europeans had to forget or pretend to forget all they previously knew about Africa.

Asante's response to the cultural change argument has been that Africans need a place to stand in order to challenge oppressive white structures and systems of knowledge and therefore cannot afford fluid, postmodern, and evanescent selves. Asante maintains that any discourse on identity is necessarily essentialist. Afrocentrists point out that far from denying the westernization of many Africans' consciousness, they recognize it as a destructive force that must be circumvented.

The reason why Lefkowitz criticized Asante’s view on feminism was because he and some Afrocentric scholars view feminism as being Eurocentric and therefore negative and counter-productive. As it seeks to maintain the system of dominance and white privileges that promotes particularism as opposed to universalism. On the contrary Afrocentrists proclaim that Afrocentricism views the male and female as complementary. Moreover Asante viewed patriarchy as an eurocentric phenomenon that gave birth to racism, classism and capitalism.13

Asante’s response to the claim of some erudite scholars that Afrocentrism is otherwise reversed eurocentrism that seeks to replace one hegemonic power with another is that Afrocentricism is fundamentally non hegemonic instead it welcomes the existence of a multiplicity of cultural centers cum orientations, which is multiculturalism.

Conclusion

The crux of the matter is, if Africans were to become Afrocentric, that is Afrocentricized, if they were to control their actions and mindsets and begin to act independently as a united and powerful majority with an Africa centered subconscious mindset; then that would spell the ineluctable end of the European global power and dominance. And the bottom line is that Europeans still want to control the minds and actions of Africans so that they can ossify, maintain and perpetuate their power position and global dominance.

This indeed is the fear of Europeans who do not want to lose their global power position; this inherent insecure status makes them scared whenever they hear the footsteps of Afrocentrism or people demanding an Africa centered curriculum. Europeans do not want Africans to see, judge and evaluate themselves from their own original, authentic and Africa centered context and perspective.

However, through the process of Afrocentrism, Africans must continue to champion the resolve to, so to speak return to the dawn of human history in order to detoxify and demystify their subconscious mindset of what some call the ‘invisible drug’, which is Eurocentric miseducation as they approach the end of the 21st century.

Moving forward, they can face Europeans as equals, now that they are armed with the correct knowledge, information and interpretation of the rich, glorious and dynastical history of Africa, African scientific inventions cum innovations, the humane-communal modus vivendi of Africa and the unmatched cum unprecedented intellectual acumen of their African ancestors.

Our African ancestral history is the bedrock upon which Africans must build their future and contemporary PanAfrican Nationalist movement which should serve to challenge European nationalism. Africans must face the stark reality that the only way to do so is to go through the process and program of Afrocentrification which essentially entails Africans detoxifying their subconscious mind of the miseducation that has been dumped and injected into them in the last 500 years.

This is urgent, imperative and necessary, because it was due to the fact that Eurocentrism imbued Africans with the ‘lesser’ subconscious mindset that Africans are perceived and misconstrued as perhaps myopic, mindless, disunited, powerless and self-destructive. After their minds have been detoxified through the process cum program of Afrocentrification, then their newly acquired internal subconscious sobriety and spiritualism will fill that void so that they can now begin to love each other, respect each other and in the process save themselves in general.

While Afrocentricism continues to exercise a significant influence in the United States, it has also been receiving increased attention in Africa and Europe where a vigorous intellectual movement has emerged informed by Afrocentric tenets and referred to as the “African Renaissance”14 thus creating the possibility for Afrocentricism to be transformed into a PanAfrican school of thought in the years to come.