Why Afrocentrism And What Is It, An Over View John Henrik Clarke.

Often times I got into discussions about historical matters concerning Africa,if the discussion involved just the slave and colonial eras it's mostly Ok some will take issue and say Africans enslaved their own people and did the selling which is a fair point but not from the POV of the Africans of that era,their own people did not include members of other Kingdoms and ethnic groups there was no collective called Africa or even a collective Black,but the trouble usually arise when dealing with eras outside the slave era and certain geographical locations within Africa but above the Sahara,In the vid above is a respected elder now passed but who along with others is considered the fathers of Afrocentrism,many have critique their works sometimes fairly but most of the time unfairly they took the discipline which is made up of academics and researchers and lump them with non academics, people standing on soap box giving their opinions a thing that they wouldn't do to other disciplines,no one for example would lump a Arthur M. Schlesinger with a random white guy giving his opinion on American history even if random white guy did have some valid points,
Now can Afriocetrist make mistakes??...yes they are human just like anyone in other disciplines,can quackry show-up in the discipline??..why yes if it came from a credited scholar they are given a fair hearing if found wanting critique and discarded what I found interesting is many of the nay Sayers that criticized many Afrocentric scholars of the past have shifted positions due to new findings which is amazing given the conservative nature of academics.

I bid members to watch the vid in full see where Dr Henrik Ckarke was coming from.

a reply to: Spider879

Pan-Africanism is meh. Consider this statement from Mr. Clarke:

When the European emerged in the world in the 15th and 16th centuries, for the second time, they not only colonized most of the world, they colonized information about the world, and they also colonized images, including the image of God, thereby putting us into a trap, for we are the only people who worship a God whose image we did not choose!

This is a ludicrous statement on its face and it's woefully inaccurate. I'm all for expanding the attention given to African history but not for the purposes of creating yet more arbitrary division. In this case, polarizing society by presumed continent of ancestral origin. I say presumed because black folks in America have on average an estimated 22-29% European ancestry and another 1%-2% Native American. What's more, looking at patrilineal descent, about 35% of black men have European yDNA.

The whole idea is outmoded and anti-progress.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: Spider879

Pan-Africanism is meh. Consider this statement from Mr. Clarke:

When the European emerged in the world in the 15th and 16th centuries, for the second time, they not only colonized most of the world, they colonized information about the world, and they also colonized images, including the image of God, thereby putting us into a trap, for we are the only people who worship a God whose image we did not choose!

This is a ludicrous statement on its face and it's woefully inaccurate. I'm all for expanding the attention given to African history but not for the purposes of creating yet more arbitrary division. In this case, polarizing society by presumed continent of ancestral origin. I say presumed because black folks in America have on average an estimated 22-29% European ancestry and another 1%-2% Native American. What's more, looking at patrilineal descent, about 35% of black men have European yDNA.

The whole idea is outmoded and anti-progress.

Thanks for your reply I knew well enough that this would not be popular thread, and yes I agree with you it maybe out modded somewhat but inaccurate?? may want to rethink what the Texas and Arizona school board are doing as we speak,as well as other states but especially Texas as they set the standard and given their political clout it is not unreasonable to think that as they go so goes the nation.
thegrio.com...
trade/

fair.org...
As regards to the genetic mix of AAs most AAs already accept that as part of their family's back ground only the very foolish would deny it the vast majority were never purist to begin with,but more to the point what does a colonized mind looked like

It looks like this^ now I stopped being religious for many reasons but think about many people the God concept is very real and the images they pray to.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: Spider879

Pan-Africanism is meh. Consider this statement from Mr. Clarke:

When the European emerged in the world in the 15th and 16th centuries, for the second time, they not only colonized most of the world, they colonized information about the world, and they also colonized images, including the image of God, thereby putting us into a trap, for we are the only people who worship a God whose image we did not choose!

This is a ludicrous statement on its face and it's woefully inaccurate. I'm all for expanding the attention given to African history but not for the purposes of creating yet more arbitrary division. In this case, polarizing society by presumed continent of ancestral origin. I say presumed because black folks in America have on average an estimated 22-29% European ancestry and another 1%-2% Native American. What's more, looking at patrilineal descent, about 35% of black men have European yDNA.

The whole idea is outmoded and anti-progress.

Information and the disimenation of information is all important. Anyone should be able to understand this. It is true that imagery, propaganda through imagery on a mass scale started through european expansion and co-opted 'God' in their image and used it as a tool to further propagate their goals.

This is simply historical reality. Revivionist history is ironically the whole purpose of the point which you miss and repeat yourself. There will not doubt be other posters, who due to their limited understanding of history which is obtained through imagery, will agree with you, further proviing the point.

What I find odd and always have done, is people who think that by denying history, changes it. People understand in this day and age of information/propaganda, that if you repeat a falsehood often enough, people will start to believe it and consider it to be the true version of events and then defend it regardless of new evidence, regardless of the flimsiness of its original premise.

This is the whole point.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Not to mention the Native's were forced to worship a god that they didn't choose. Matter of fact, when the Europeans were done with the natives of Central America, there were no more natives of central America. There were "Mexicans". My wife, whose family has lived in the west Texas/Panhandle area for hundreds of years, identifies as "Mexican", knowing absolutely nothing about her Apache heritage.

It makes me sad.

Very true Big Furry others went through similar hell as well,having being constantly made over in the image of one's conqueror this have to had an impact on one's self image,but Dr Clark also went after the Muslims and criticized Farrakhan deafening silence of Arab/Islamic slavery and cultural oppression in Sudan and Mauritania also telling was his prediction of Farrakhan's million mans march would produce nothing of value for the AA community as a whole but would give Farrakhan a rise in AA politics which it did for then Muammar Khadafi started to bank roll him in his business ventures.

Now I am not saying Christianity or Islam did not do any good in Africa we only have to look to the Christian Kingdoms of Nubia and Ethiopia but they were for the most part remade into Africa's image as they were under mostly local control the Christian Kingdom Of the Kongo shone only briefly.

Islamic Africa was a double edge sword as it did bought many African kingdoms in a wider contact with worlds far beyond it's borders but it took an awful toll on the indigenous cultures that cared not for Islam many of the destruction was done by newly converted African Islamist themselves who now looked west to Mecca and sought lineage in the Prophet Muhammad's family and anything before Islam was of no value,one only have to look at the actions of Boko Haram today who desperately tries to mimic and out do their counter part ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

a reply to: Spider879

Christianity is just a means to an end. There are two sides to almost all religions, and the majority of people are not given any insight into one side.

The problem is a culture of conquest. The lasting impact of the Roman Empire...

a reply to: Spider879

I should have explained. What I take issue with is that in order to substantiate an argument that Christianity is a European religion, Mr. Clarke focused narrowly on one aspect of the spread of Christianity which ignores everything that came before or after. Here's a video on youtube containing a decent map depicting the spread of various religions with a timeline. It's not perfect (for instance, there's nothing about Judaism in Africa), but it gives the general idea:



Some places in Europe had barely become mostly Christian by the 12th century (Norway for example) while there were areas of Northern Africa that were already Christian in the early centuries AD (the Kingdom of Aksum for example).

For what it's worth, I'm an atheist.

The basic problem is ethnocentrism and its ramifications of racial and religious superiority. In theory the greatness of America is the wiping away of nativist ethnocentric thinking something that has always been the very basis of the human endeavor of conquering each other through warfare and violence…at the base of this is ethnocentrism.

Indeed whether the Klansmen’s idea of white superiority or Jewish ideas of superiority over the goyim, or the Christian fundamentalist delusion that Jesus loves only them, or the Black Muslim bigot, or Muslim Jihadists bigot they all are under the delusion that their race, religion or tribe is better than others and this psychological delusion is at the very essence of human evil all based on blanket ignorance.

Much of the overbearing Black Nationalist thinking is a reaction to white supremacy ideas that pervaded Europe and America since the 16th century.

This is not something that went on in ancient times regarding skin color, though they were still tribal and nationalistic it wasn’t based on the vapid idea of skin color until the 16th century and later when some “ scientist” and religionist started to espouse white supremacy.

You rarely heard of white and black or red people in ancient times.

This is a modern twisted concept something that the sociologist should examine and study.

So it is the ethnocentric notion that will concoct any excuse to allow the human to feel himself better than others whether it is skin color, religion, gender, or even concepts.

It’s all a delusion.

There’s only one race, the human race, and I also believe one religion, Rumi’s religion of love.

But until human beings accept and understand these simple but sublime concepts we will always have war, conquest and injustice.

a reply to: spacedog1973

Please spare me your sanctimonious diatribe. How perfectly ironic that you don't know the first thing about me and yet you feel comfortable admonishing me about the significance of controlling information. Perhaps you should stop projecting your preconceptions on strangers lest you find yourself continuously creating straw men out of thin air and looking rather foolish in the process.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

It could be said that many European "natives" were forced to worship that god as well. It was at times a bloody conversion proces (and others the various cultural groups shrugged and let it go)

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Repeat ad nauseam until it eventually sinks in.

Afrocentricism is no better than Eurocentricism. They aren't even natural; we evolved to be loyal to much smaller groups, either kinship groups or groups sharing a fairly concrete common interest.

There are as many differences among Africans (and everybody else) as there are between different 'races'.

As for people being 'forced to worship other people's gods', I don't recall that I had any choice about being made a member of the Anglican Church, about saying my prayers at night or going to church when my parents (and later, my schoolteachers) demanded it.

How ironic that a member named The Antediluvian turns out to be the prime champion of civilized good sense in the thread; what is racialism (which Afrocentricism is, slice it how you will) but an antediluvian holdover?

a reply to: theantediluvian

I get that Christianity wasn't necessarily a European invention,the trouble is when it became Roman and the later images attached to it,this was later infused with a notion of White Vs Black color symbology good vs bad light vs darkness,now how does this applies to non Christian Europeans although they were put upon by Christian Romans,simple after being conquered the white vs black symbology did not apply to them in any negative, take this from Psalm 51:7 or the song that goes along with it.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Off-course it meant spiritual whiteness but to a dark-skinned slave or the recently conquered being told by a member of the new priestly class the he should wash himself whiter than snow in order to enter paradise might just call for hatred of self especially in societies strictly governed by "racial" hierarchy.
Now one may think that such color symbolism is universal given the fact that daylight bring the light and night brings darkness which bad things can happen, rest assured this is not so in some African societies White is the color of death black is the color of resurrection and life the gods are Black,like Osiris is symbolically Black and Seth his polar opposite is Red not unlike the East African counter parts Engai Narok (Black God) is benevolent, and Engai Nanyokie (Red God) is vengeful.

a reply to: Astyanax

In a sense you are correct the sense of being African or even black as a collective is very very recent and even less so than a sense of being European or "White" perhaps this is all a march to globalism one way or another but the fact still remains we are here and I can witness the every harmful effects on blacks and others as they sought to better chances for entry in the after life,or literately bleaching their skins for success in this life..is this not the washing themselves whiter than snow

Even In Jamaica the land of Rasta,Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley the govt had to step in and banned this product,this is still widely available in other Caribbean nations both Latin and Anglo speaking across wide swath of Africa ,India and off-course AA communities.
What Afrocentrism does is to try to combat that mind set at-least for folks of African descent by saying look if you are gonna believe in religious BS then at-least let it be of your own creation..ie shiit your ancestors came up with.

a reply to: Spider879

Do you have any evidence to show that the preference for fair skin (which is far older than the European cultural explosion and worldwide) is due to European cultural dominance?

a reply to: Astyanax

among the latin folks in the area it is less about white dominance, and more about vanity. A woman who is dark skinned is a woman who works in the fields. A more fair skinned woman is a woman whose husband is able to support the family and she doesn't have to work in the fields. My mother in law is from that age, working in the "chope`" (chopping cotton....not really spanish, but a word they used nonetheless) to provide basic necessities for my wife while she was growing up. My wifes older siblings would work in the fields with my mother in law. It was a family affair, with my wife and her younger sister being left to play in the rows between the cotton.

My mother in law gets upset with my wife when she gets a dark tan. But I married a latin girl because of that dark skin...so she lets herself get quite dark in the summer.

ETA: thought I'd add..."chope`" is pronounced "chop-ay". Same with cake...around the in laws we call it "cak-eeee". LOL...its pretty fun living in that overlap between cultures.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: Spider879

Do you have any evidence to show that the preference for fair skin (which is far older than the European cultural explosion and worldwide) is due to European cultural dominance?

Depend on region to region in places where there are fair skinned folks that is/was the norm .

originally posted by: Spider879
a reply to: Astyanax

In a sense you are correct the sense of being African or even black as a collective is very very recent and even less so than a sense of being European or "White" perhaps this is all a march to globalism one way or another but the fact still remains we are here and I can witness the every harmful effects on blacks and others as they sought to better chances for entry in the after life,or literately bleaching their skins for success in this life..is this not the washing themselves whiter than snow

Even In Jamaica the land of Rasta,Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley the govt had to step in and banned this product,this is still widely available in other Caribbean nations both Latin and Anglo speaking across wide swath of Africa ,India and off-course AA communities.
What Afrocentrism does is to try to combat that mind set at-least for folks of African descent by saying look if you are gonna believe in religious BS then at-least let it be of your own creation..ie shiit your ancestors came up with.

Asians have liked light skin long before European influence purely due to the fact that the higher caste or class amongst them tend to have lighter skin. Dark skin is seen as being of low caste/class.

As for the cream can we say that all the white people paying for spray on tan and sessions in tanning beds is due to psychological trauma inflicted by black or brown people?

I also note you put "white" in quotes yet you freely use the term black people without quotes, am I to assume you think white people don't really exist whilst black people do?

originally posted by: rowanflame

originally posted by: Spider879
a reply to: Astyanax

In a sense you are correct the sense of being African or even black as a collective is very very recent and even less so than a sense of being European or "White" perhaps this is all a march to globalism one way or another but the fact still remains we are here and I can witness the every harmful effects on blacks and others as they sought to better chances for entry in the after life,or literately bleaching their skins for success in this life..is this not the washing themselves whiter than snow

Even In Jamaica the land of Rasta,Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley the govt had to step in and banned this product,this is still widely available in other Caribbean nations both Latin and Anglo speaking across wide swath of Africa ,India and off-course AA communities.
What Afrocentrism does is to try to combat that mind set at-least for folks of African descent by saying look if you are gonna believe in religious BS then at-least let it be of your own creation..ie shiit your ancestors came up with.

Asians have liked light skin long before European influence purely due to the fact that the higher caste or class amongst them tend to have lighter skin. Dark skin is seen as being of low caste/class.

As for the cream can we say that all the white people paying for spray on tan and sessions in tanning beds is due to psychological trauma inflicted by black or brown people?

I also note you put "white" in quotes yet you freely use the term black people without quotes, am I to assume you think white people don't really exist whilst black people do?

I know in "some" regions of Asia lite skin was/is seen as a class or caste issue but only in some cases and I suspect some cultural domination of liter skinned folks over darker skinned folks that took place in ancient times,but here is what I mean.

"It is a fact that in this country when a child is born they anoint him once a week with oil of sesame, and this makes him grow much darker than when he was born. For I assure you that the darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than those who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white..."
Marco Polo.

Sextus Empiricus writes that beauty is relative, the Ethiopian preferring the blackest and the most flat-nosed and the Persians approving the whitest and the most hook-nosed.
Snowden.

Ethiopian is meant to be "Nubians" or Kusites not the highland Ethiopia further south which we know today.
I used white in quotes to distinguished them from white non Europeans,

In a manner of speaking yes some white folks maybe doing just that,not for trauma but for reasons of pop culture which is heavily influenced by Black and Brown folks and spread with American cultural imperialism in a strange twisted sorta way,hence the lip injection with ass fat,silicone injection in the behind and the general obsession with ass a once black and latino cultural thing,time was a bubble butt was not working for most white guys I knew when we used sat around with nothing better to do than discuss female body parts,they were most into breast.

a reply to: Spider879
There is a DARK black dude who frequents my local, its a fact I have witnessed that black people simply wont speak to him and will even move away if he stands near them. Whites are the only people who will talk to him and I think he has noticed that too since he also now avoids black people himself, his only friends are white and thats a fact. Rejected by his own people !

In all Asian country's I have visited they are obsessed with having light skin, Indonesia, Thailand, china etc Years ago when I visited Indonesia I had an unreal experience. People were coming up to me touching me and walking off, I was getting really pissed with it because I thought they were trying to pickpocket me. Then I asked a guy why are these people touching me. He simply answered "for luck", I said what they are wishing me good luck? He laughed and said no they think by touching you they will get good luck, its because your very white. I felt like I was a lucky cow or something

Its got to do with the religion and class system I'm sure. In Hinduism the devas (gods) are white or sky blue whilst the asuras (demons) are dark skinned. Added to this those who are lower class and work out in the fields are dark whilst those who are upper class stay in the shade. Some asians will even walk around with a parasol to insure no sun exposure which could darken the skin.