Abstract
Eurocentrism as a subspecies of ethnocentrism is based on a master narrative about (Western) Europe and the rest of the world. According to this story, African societies are naturally primitive societies with barbarous tribes in need of European civilization. In the late nineteenth century disciplines such as sociology, biology, and psychology attempted to give a scientific veneer to this racist ideology.1 Eventually, it became commonsense that Black people were the “lady among the races.”2
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Notes
For a general survey of academic racism at the beginning of the twentieth century, see I. A. Newby, Jim Crow’s Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900–1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965).
see Robert V. Guthrie, Even the Rat Was White: A Historical View of Psychology (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1998).
See Robert Ezra Park and E. W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1921), 136.
See Ralph Crowder, Street Scholars and Stepladder Radicals: Self-Trained Black Historians and the Harlem Experience (New York: New York University Press, 2010).
See also Earl E. Thorpe, Black Historians: A Critique (New York: Morrow, 1971).
See, also, Carter G. Woodson, “Ten Years of Collecting and Publishing the Records of the Negro,” Journal of Negro History 10(4) (October 1925), 598–606
Ernest Kaiser, “The History of Negro History: A Survey,” Negro Digest (February 1968), 10–15, 64–80
Arthur A. Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” in The New Negro, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 231–244
L. D. Reddick, “Racial Attitudes in American History Textbooks of the South,” Journal of Negro History 19(3) (July 1934), 225–265
J. A. Rogers, “The Suppression of Negro History,” Crisis 47 (May 1940), 136–137, 146
W. M. Brewer, “Acquainting the Negro with History,” Negro History Bulletin 8 (December 1944), 54, 68
Charles H. Wesley, “The Reconstruction of History,” Journal of Negro History 20(4) (October 1925), 411–427
John Hope Franklin, “The New Negro History,” Crisis 64 (February 1957), 73–75.
Asante, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change (Chicago, IL: African American Images, 2003), 2. All quotes are from this edition unless otherwise stated.
Molefi K. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987), 9. All citations are from this edition unless otherwise stated.
See Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Encyclopedia Africana, 1909–63,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568 (March 2000), 203–219
W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems,” Annali of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568 (March 2000), 13–27.
Quoted in Wilson J. Moses, Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2.
See also Robert Gooding-Williams, “Philosophy of History and Social Critique in The Souls of Black Folks,” Social Science Information 26 (1987), 99–114.
See Mozel C. Hill, “The Formative Years of Phylon Magazine,” Freedomways 5 (Winter 1965), 129–142.
For other arguments on Du Bois’s materialism and materialist understanding of dialectics, consult Eugene C. Holmes, “W E. B. Du Bois-Philosopher,” Freedomways (Winter 1965), 44.
See also, James Jackson, Revolutionary Tracings (New York: International Publishers, 1974).
see Abram Harris, “Reconstruction and the Negro,” in Race, Radicalism, and Reform: Selected Papers of Abram I. Harris, ed. William A. Darity, Jr. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989), 209–212
Loren Miller, “Let My People Go!,” New Masses (October 29, 1935), 23
Ralph Bunch, “Reconstruction Reinterpreted: Book Review of W E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction,” Journal of Negro Education 4(4) (October 1935), 568–570.
See James B. Stewart, “In Search of a Theory of Human History: More on W. E. B. Du Bois’s Theory of Social and Cultural Dynamics” and “The Legacy of W E. B. Du Bois for Contemporary Black Studies,” in Flight: In Search of Vision (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004), 65–85, 249–260.
See Clovis E. Semmes, Cultural Hegemony and African American Development (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992)
Joyce Ann Joyce, “African-Centered Scholarship: Interrogating Black Studies, Pan Africanism, and Afrocentricity,” in Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies, ed. Carole Boyce-Davies (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 125–147
Tunde Adeleke, “Will the Real Father of Afrocentricity Please Stand,” The Western Journal of Black Studies 25(1) (2001), 21–29.
See John Henrik Clarke, “The Fight To Reclaim African History,” Negro Digest (February 1970), 10–15, 59–64.
J. A. Rogers, World’s Greatest Men of Color, Vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1972), xxiii–xxiv.
John Henrik Clarke, “The Mean of Black History,” Black World (February 1971), 34, Italics Added.
See Cheik Anta Diop, Cultural Unity of Black Africa (Chicago: Africa World Press, 1978), i, v. Clarke also suggested the need for an “Afrocentric view of the woman in power” based on Diop’s analysis of matriarchy in pre-colonial African societies.
P. Chike Onwuachi, “Negritude in Perspective,” Black World (October 1971), 6.
See also P. Chike Onwuachi, African Identity and Black Liberation (Buffalo, NY: The Black Academy Press, 1972).
Clovis Semmes, Cultural Hegemony and African American Development (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), 15–16.
Jacob Carruthers, “Reflections on the Revision of the African Centered Paradigm,” (1999). http://www.africanbynature.com/eyes/openeyes_carruthers.html (Accessed May 25, 2014).
Lerone Bennett, “The Challenge of Blackness,” Black World (February 1971), 21.
St. Clair Drake, “What Happened to Black Studies,” in African American Studies Reader, ed. Nathaniel Norment (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2001), 269.
See also James B. Stewart, Flight in Search of Vision (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 2004), 23–29.
See also, Abdul Alkalimat, The Academic Journals of Black Studies: A Preliminary Report. December 2008. http://eblackstudies.org/may2009/draft_report_black_studies_journals_dec_2008.pdf (last accessed February 13, 2015).
See, for example, Gerald A. McWorter and Ronald Bailey, “Black Studies Curriculum Development in the 1980s: Its Patterns and History,” The Black Scholar 15(2) (1984), 18–31
Robert Allen, “Politics of the Attacks on Black Studies,” The Black Scholar 6(1) (1974), 2–7
Molefì Kete Asante, “African American Studies: The Future of the Discipline,” The Black Scholar 22(3) (1992), 20–29
Melba Joyce Boyd, “The Legacy of Darwin T. Turner and the Struggle for African American Studies,” The Black Scholar 41(4) (2011), 11–16
Elridge Cleaver, “Education and Revolution,” The Black Scholar 1(1) (1969), 44–52
Angela Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” The Black Scholar 3(4), (1971), 2–15
Darlene Clark Hine, “The Black Studies Movement: Afrocentric-Traditionalist-Feminist Paradigms for the Next Stage,” The Black Scholar 22(3)(1992), 11–18
Manning Marable, “Blueprint for Black Studies and Multiculturalism,” The Black Scholar 22(3) (1992), 30–35
William H. McClendon, “Black Studies: Education for Liberation,” The Black Scholar 6(1) (1974), 15–25
Sydney Walton, “Black Studies and Affirmative Action,” The Black Scholar 6(1) (1974), 21–28.
Yosef ben-Jochannan argues that only Black people are qualified to teach in African American Studies. See Yosef ben-Jochannan, Cultural Genocide in the Black and African Studies Curriculum (New York: ECA Associates, 1998). It was originally published in 1972.
See Norman Hill, “Integration or Segregation?,” in Black Studies: Myths and Realities, ed. Martin Kilson (New York: A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund, 1969), 45.
Molefi K. Asante, “The Afrocentric Idea in Education,” The Journal of Negro Education 60(2) (Spring 1991), 171.
For a discussion of intensional and extensional definitions, see Patrick J. Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006), 94–100.
For an insightful discussion of this point, see Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (New York: Verso, 1998).
Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Afrotopia: The Roots ofAfrican American Popular History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Gerald Early, “Understanding Afrocentrism,” Civilization 2(4) (July–August 1995), 31–39.
John H. McClendon III, “The Afrocentric Project: The (Juest for Particularity and the Negation of Objectivity,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 18(2) (1996), 21–22.
See Amy J. Binder, Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
see, Richard C. Lewontin, Steven Peter Russell Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
Richard C. Lewontin, Steven P. R Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 18.
Charles S. Finch, The African Background to Medical Science (London: Karnak House, 1990)
Richard D. King, African Origin of Biological Psychiatry (Germantown, TN: Seymour-Smith, 1990).
see Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, “Afrocentric Creationism,” Creation/Evolution 11(2) (Winter 1991–1992), 1–8
Bernard R Ortiz de Montellano, “Afrocentric Pseudoscience: The Miseducation of African Americans,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 775 (1996), 561–572.
Frances Cress Welsing, The Isis (Yssis) Papers: The Keys to the Color (Chicago, IL: Third World Press, 1991), 233.
V. N. Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 70.
Francis Cress Welsing, “The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation,” Black Scholar 5 (May 1974), 34.
see Eddie Claude, Jr., “An Analysis of the Cress Theory of Color Confrontation,” Journal of Black Studies 22(2) (December 1991), 284–293.
see Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, “Melanin, Afrocentricity, and Pseudoscience,” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 36 (1993), 33–58.
Molefi K. Asante, Kernet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990), 4.
Linda James Myers, “The Deep Structure of Culture: Relevance of Traditional African Culture in Contemporary Life,” Journal of Black Studies 18(1) (September 1987), 81.
Norman Harris, “A Philosophical Basis for an Afrocentric Orientation,” in The Afrocentric Paradigm, ed. Ama Mazama (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 113.
See also, Adisa A. Alkebulan, “Defending the Paradigm,” Journal of Bluk Studies 37(3) January 2007), 410–427.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology in Collected Works, Vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 24.
see John H. McClendon, “Richard B. Moore, Radical Politics and the Afro-American History Movement: The Formation of a Revolutionary Tradition in African American Intellectual Culture,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 30 (July 2006), 7–46.
see Jeffrey Babcock Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883–1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
see Hubert H. Harrison, A Hubert Harrison Reader, ed. Jeffrey Babcock Perry (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 13, 35–36, 41, 42–46, 102, 114, 116, 225, 308, 327, 356, 362.
see Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization (New York: Monthly Review, 1970)
John H. McClendon, “Nkrumah’s Consciencism: Philosophical Materialism and the Issue of Atheism Revisited,” Journal of African Philosophy 4(2012), 29–52.
see Sikivu Hutchinson, Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (Los Angeles, CA: Infidel Books, 2011)
Juan Marciai Floyd-Thomas, The Origins of Black Humanism in America Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Dona Richards (Marimba Ani), “The Implications of African American Spirituality,” in Molefi Asante and Karimu Welch Asante (eds.), African Culture: The Rhythms of Unity (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 210.
See Mambo Ama Mazama, “Afrocentricity and African Spirituality,” Journal of Black Studies 33(2) (November 2002), 218–234.
See John S. Mbiti, African Religions & Philosophy. Oxford: Heinemann, 1989.
For a critical treatment of Mbiti, see D. A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 103–123.
KwasiWiredu, “Morality and Religion and Akan Thought” in African American Humanism: An Anthology, ed. Norm R. Allen (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991), 210–211.
Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 133.
Paulin J. Hountondji, African Philosophy Myth and Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 38.
see E. Wamba-Dia-Wamba, “Philosophy in Africa: Challenges of the African Philosopher,” in African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, ed. Tsenay Serequeberhan (New York: Paragon House, 1991), 211–246.
See Christian Neugebauer, “Ethnophilosophy in the Philosophical Discourse in Africa: A Critical Note,” Quest: An International African Journal of Philosophy 4(1) (June 1990), 43–64.
See Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987), 93–94.
Molefi K. Asante, Afrocentricity (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1989), 2.
See Hountondji, African Philosophy Myth and Reality; D. A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994)
Tsenay Serequeberhan, African Philosophy: The Essential Readings (New York: Paragon House, 1991).
See Paul Gilroy, “Tyrannies of Unanimism,” in Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism, ed. Gaurav Gajanan Desai and Supriya Nair (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 220–247
See Barbara Ransby, “Afrocentrism and Cultural Nationalism,” in Dispatches from the Ebony Tower, ed. Manning Marable (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 216–223.
Walter Rodney, “Tanzanian Ujamaa and Scientific Socialism,” African Review [Dar es Salaam, Tanzania] 1(4) (1972), 61–76. This article is available online: https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/rodney-walter/works/ujamaaandsci-entificsocialism.htm (Accessed April 11, 2014).
see Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
See also Terence Hunt, “Reagan Tells Savimbi He Wants to Be Very Helpful,” Associated Press News Archive (January 30, 1986) http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1986/Reagan-Tells-Savimbi-He-Wants-to-Be-Very-Helpful/id-aac4344cb87abdb-200515823dcf2b712 (Accessed March 10, 2013).
Barbara Ransby, “Afrocentrism and Cultural Nationalism,” in Dispatches from the Ebony Tower, ed. Manning Marable (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 219.
Karl Marx, “Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843),” in Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 182.
Adisa A. Ajamu, “From TefTef to MedewNefer: The Importance of Utilizing African Languages, Terminologies, and Concepts in the Rescue, Restoration, Reconstruction, and Reconnection of African Ancestral Memory,” in African World History Project: The Preliminary Challenge, eds. Jacob H. Carruthers, and Leon C. Harris (Los Angeles: Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, 1997), 182.
See Albert G. Mosley, African Philosophy: Selected Readings (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995)
Kwasi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980)
Chidi Amuta, The Theory of African Literature: Implications for Practical Criticism (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Zed Books, 1989), 41.
C. V. Roman, “Philosophical Musings in the By-Path of Ethnology,” A. M. E. Church Review 28(1) (July 1911), 446–447.
Kwame Gyekye, “Philosophy, Culture and Technology in the Post Colonial,” in Post-Colonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 25–44.
Paulin Hountondji, “Tradition, Hindrance or Inspiration?,” Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy 14(1–2) (2000), 5–11.
For an opposing view, see Albert Mosley, “Science, Technology and Tradition in Contemporary African Philosophy,” African Philosophy 13(1) (March, 2000), 25–32.
see, John H. McClendon III, “Kwame Nkrumah’s Materialism contra Representative Realism,” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience 5(1) (Fall 2005), 1–14.
See also, McClendon’s important article, “Nkrumah’s Consciencism as Philosophical Text: Matter of Confusion,” Journal on African Philosophy 3 (2003), 1–39.
see Kwasi Boadi, “The Ontology of Kwame Nkrumah’s Consciencism and the Democratic Theory and Practice in Africa: A Diopian Perspective,” Journal of Black Studies 30(4) (March 2000), 475–501.
see John H. McClendon, Consciencism: The Philosophy of Nkrumaism (PhD Thesis, University of Kansas, 1999).
see Martin Odei Ajei, “Nkrumah and Hountondji on Ethno-Philosophy: A Critical Appraisal,” in Hegel’s Twilight: Liber Amicorum Discipulorumque Pro Heinz Kimmerle, ed. M. B. Ramose and H. Kimmerle (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), 131–150.
See also, Paulin Hountondji, “From the Ethnosciences to Ethnophilosophy: Kwame Nkrumah’s Thesis Project,” Research in African Literatures 28(4) (1997), 112–120.
See Molefi K. Asante, An Afrocentric Manifesto (Maiden, MA: Polity Press, 2007), 6, 32–34.
See V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism in Collected Works, Vol. 14 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 260.
See also, John H. McClendon, C.L.R. James’s Notes on Dialectics: Lefit Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism’. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004)
Helena Sheehan, Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1985).
Théophile Obenga, African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period, 2780–330 B. C (Popenguine: Per Ankh Books, 2004), 31.
For a similar argument, see George G. M. James, Stolen Legacy (Newport News, VA: United Brothers Communications Systems, 1989).
For a materialist analysis within African American Studies, see Angela Y. Davis, “Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation,” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. Joy James (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 161–209
Stephen C. Ferguson II, “The Utopian Worldview of Afrocentricity: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy,” Socialism and Democracy, 25(1), (2011), 44–70
Eugene C. Holmes, “A Philosophical Approach to the Study of Minority Problems,” The journal of Negro Education 38(3) (1969), 196–203
John H. McClendon III, “On the Nature of Whiteness and the Ontology of Race: Toward a Dialectical Materialist Analysis,” in What White Looks Like: African American Philosophers On the Whiteness Question ed. George Yancy (New York: Routledge, 2004), 211–225
John H. McClendon III, “Black and White or Left and Right?: Ideological Critique in African American Studies,” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience 2(1) (2002), 47–56
Clarence J. Munford, Production Relations, Class and Black Liberation: A Marxist Perspective in Afro-American Studies (Amsterdam: B. R. Gruner, 1978)
Robert Young, “Putting Materialism Back into Race Theory: Toward a Transformative Theory of Race,” THE RED CRITIQUE, 11 (Winter/Spring 2006) http://redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/index.html
See Vanessa D. Johnson, “The Nguzo Saba as a Foundation for African American College Student Development Theory,” Journal of Black Studies 31(4) (March 2001), 409–416.
see John H. McClendon, “From Cultural Nationalism to Cultural Criticism: Philosophical Idealism, Paradigmatic Illusions and the Politics of Identity,” in Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies, ed. Carole Boyce Davies (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 3–26.
See also Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique (New York, 1989).
See Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
see James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
See also, Steven Lukes, Moral Relativism (New York: Picador, 2008).
See Cornel West, The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (New York: Monthly Review, 1991).
Asante, The Afrocentric Manifesto (Maiden, MA: Polity Press, 2007), 16.
Walter Benn Michaels, Our America: Nativism, Modernism and Pluralism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 137.
see Alan Garfinkel, Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 156–184.
V. I. Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question in Collected Works, Vol. 20 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 24.
See Michael Parenti, The Culture Struggle (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006).
Kati Whitaker, “Ghana Witch Camps: Widows’ Lives in Exile,” http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19437130 (Accessed April 21, 2014).
Mualana Karenga, The Quotable Karenga, ed. Clyde Halisi and James Mtume (Los Angeles, CA: US Organization, 1967), 27–28.
see Tracye Matthews, “‘No One Ever Asks, What a Man’s Place in the Revolution Is’: Gender and the Politics of the Black Panther Party 1966–1971,” in The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered), ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1998), 267–304.
See also, Maxine Williams, “Black Women and the Struggle for Liberation” in Black Woman’s Manifesto, ed. Third World Women’s Alliance (New York: Third World Women’s Alliance, 1970), 9–18
Linda La Rue, “The Black Movement and Women’s Liberation,” The Black Scholar 1(7) (May 1970), 36–42.
Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), 122.
See Renzo Llorente, “Maurice Cornforth’s Contribution to Marxist Metaethics,” Nature, Society and Thought 16(3) (2003), 261–275.
See also, Paul Blackledge, Marxism and Ethics Freedom, Desire, and Revolution (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012)
Vanessa Wills, “Marx and Morality” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2012).
see Alan M. Dershowitz, Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
see William Ash, Morals and Politics: The Ethics of Revolution (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
see Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (New York: Broadway Books, 2010).
see, Maurice Dobb, Theories of Value and Distribution since Adam Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 32.
See John H. McClendon III, “The Afrocentric Project: The Quest for Particularity and the Negation of Objectivity,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 18(2) (1996).
John H. McClendon, “Black Sociology: Another Name for Black Subjectivity,” Freedomways 20(1) (Spring 1980). 53–59.
Malcolm X, “Appeal to African Heads of State: A Speech to African Summit Conference,” in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 75.
see MoshikTemkin, “From Black Revolution to ‘Radical Humanism’: Malcolm X between Biography and International History,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 3(2) (2012), 267–288.
Malcolm X, “Racism: The Cancer That Is Destroying America,” Egyptian Gazette (August 25, 1964).
See Gerald Home, Communist Front?: The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988).
William Strickland, Malcolm X: Make it Plain (New York: Viking, 1994), 160–161.
See George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Pathfinder, 1967)
William W Sales, From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1994)
Jack Barnes, Malcolm X, Black Liberation & the Road to Workers Power (New York: Pathfinder, 2009).
Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews and a Letter by Malcolm X, ed. George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder Books, 1970), 46.
see Adolph Reed, “The Allure of Malcolm X and the Changing Character of Black Politics,” in Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1999), 220–221.
See also, Molefi Asante, “Afrocentricity and Malcolm X,” in The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X, ed. Robert Terrill (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 150–157.
Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 121.
Aristotle, Categories in the Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1970), 7a–7b.
See W. T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel: A Systematic Exposition (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), 203.
See Paulin Hountondji, “The Particular and the Universal,” in African Philosophy: Selected Readings, ed. Albert Mosley (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 172–198.
Jay N. Van Hook, “Universalism and Particularism: African Philosophy or Philosophy of Africa?,” African Philosophy 12(1) (March, 1995), 11–19.
see William R Jones, “The Legitimacy and Necessity of Black Philosophy: Some Preliminary Considerations,” The Philosophical Forum 9(2–3) (Winter-Spring, 1977–1978), 149–160.
On the concept of Ground, see Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, with the Zusätze: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze. Translated by Théodore F. Geraets, W A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1991), 188–192, 329n9.
For a study of abstract universality as it relates to African American Studies see Robert Fikes, “The Persistent Allure of Universality: African American Authors of White Life Novels, 1845–1945,” The Western Journal of Black Studies 21(4) (Winter 1997), 225–231.
see Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: Essays on Art, Race, Politics and World Affairs (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 31–36.
An argument on behalf of the color blind thesis presented by an African American philosopher is Naomi Zack, Race and Mixed Race (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993).
For a critical appraisal of the color blind thesis read philosopher William A. Banner, “Guest Editorial: Thoughts on a Colorblind Society,” The Journal of Negro Education 54(1) (Winter 1985), 1–2.
Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ldeology for Decolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 78.
See, Jay-Z, Decoded (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010), 235.
see Kelefa Sanneh, “Word: Jay-Z’s ‘Decoded’ and the language of hip-hop,” The New Yorker (December 6, 2010). http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/06/word-3(last accessed November 24, 2014).
see Adam Bradley, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2009).
see John H. McClendon III, “African or American? A Dialectical Analysis of Jazz Music,” in The African Presence in Black America, ed. Jacob U. Gordon (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004), 85–114.
See also the following articles by Paul Robeson: “The Source of the Negro Spirituals,” “Paul Robeson and Negro Music,” “Soviet Culture,” “Songs of My People,” “Some Aspects of Afro-American Music,” “The Related Sounds of Music,” in Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918–1974, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1978), 73–76, 81–82, 136–137, 211–217, 436–439, 443–448
See also Paul Robeson, “A Universal Body of Folk Music—A Technical Argument by the Author,” in Here I Stand (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), 115–117.
Paul Robeson, “The Related Sounds of Music,” in Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918–1974, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1978), 444.
Paul Robeson, Here I Stand (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), 44.
Paul Robeson, “I, Too, Am American,” in Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918–1974, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1978), 191.
see Miles Mark Fisher, Negro Slave Songs in the United States (New York: Citadel Press, 1978), 6, 210.
E. Wamba-Dia-Wamba, “Philosophy in Africa: Challenges of the African Philosopher,” in African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, ed. Tsenay Serequeberhan (New York: Paragon House, 1991), 242.
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© 2015 Stephen C. Ferguson II
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Ferguson, S.C. (2015). The Afrocentric Problematic. In: Philosophy of African American Studies. African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137549976_3
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