0:11

Hello and welcome to the History of Africana

0:13

Philosophy by Chike Jeffers and Peter Adamson, brought

0:16

to you with the support of the King's College

0:18

London Philosophy Department and the LMU in Munich online

0:21

at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's

0:24

episode, Asante Sana,

0:26

Molefi Asante's Afrocentricity.

0:31

In 1942, a boy was born to

0:34

a poor black family in Valdosta, Georgia,

0:36

and was named after his father, Arthur

0:38

Lee Smith. From humble

0:41

beginnings, the boy grew up to become

0:43

a world-renowned scholar, attaining fame and influence

0:45

especially for his contributions to the growth

0:47

of the discipline of black studies. To

0:50

understand what is distinctive about his contributions,

0:53

it's not a coincidence but rather a central part

0:55

of the story that, like many of the other

0:57

figures we've covered, he eventually left his birth name

0:59

behind and took a new one. As

1:02

he has explained in an interview, in

1:04

1972 I went to Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria,

1:06

Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya for the first

1:09

time and for the first time realized

1:11

how crazy it was for a black

1:13

man to have a European name. It

1:16

was in Ghana that it occurred to me that I

1:18

had to change my name. He

1:20

was given his last name, Asante, by

1:23

none other than the Asanteheni, the traditional

1:25

monarch of the Ashanti people of Ghana. With

1:28

this ethonym as a last name, he

1:31

chose as his middle name, Kete, inspired

1:33

by a Ghanaian friend of his, Kete

1:35

Bofa, an aeronautical engineer and also a

1:37

traditional king. Thus

1:39

Asante's middle and last names are both from

1:41

the Akan language, spoken by so many in

1:43

what is now Ghana. For

1:46

his first name though, the man formerly

1:48

known as Arthur chose to express solidarity

1:50

with the South African struggle. He

1:53

named himself Molefi, a common

1:55

name among the Souto people of South Africa

1:57

and Lesotho. Molefi,

1:59

Kete Bofa. A seventy know this was the name

2:02

fit for an. He.

2:04

Went through the process of getting his name

2:07

change legally and Nineteen Seventy Three. By this

2:09

time, he'd already and his cage d from

2:11

U C L, A Department of Communication in

2:13

that most tumultuous of years. Nineteen Sixty Eight.

2:17

He hadn't spent a year teaching at

2:19

Purdue University before you Cla hired him

2:21

to leave their new Center of Afro

2:23

American Studies. It. Was in

2:25

this context that he also became the founding

2:27

editor of the Journal of Black Studies. In

2:30

Nineteen Seventy Three the same year he got

2:32

his new legal name it again new job

2:34

in the Department of Communication had the State

2:37

University of New York at Buffalo. As

2:39

we noted in episode One hundred and eighteen,

2:42

it was here that essential became friends with

2:44

A D S to Nascimento, the two of

2:46

them influencing each other as a Sunday worked

2:48

on history of Afrocentric city and Nascimento worked

2:50

on his theory of get on with. The.

2:53

Theories are so obviously connector that it

2:55

is not totally inappropriate to call Killer

2:57

Bismol a Brazilian form of effort centricity

3:00

and effort simplicity. What you don't piss

3:02

mode looks like coming from an African

3:04

American point of view. This

3:07

brings us to a scientist: nineteen

3:09

eighty bucks. Afro centricity. A theory

3:11

of social change. It was

3:13

not his first. that would be his rhetoric

3:15

of Black revolution from Nineteen Sixty nine. Was

3:19

it the first book published under

3:21

his Africa? that would be a

3:23

rare works title? African and Afro

3:25

American Communication Continuing. Efforts.

3:29

Interested. He was however and importantly

3:31

new thing. The. Titles of

3:33

the to earlier books indicate how

3:35

scientists previous works generally displayed his

3:37

training and expertise in the subjects

3:39

of rhetoric and communication. From.

3:42

The very first sentence of the first chapter.

3:44

After centricity, it's clear that this is no

3:47

longer says project. He. announces.

3:49

This book as a philosophical inquiry

3:51

into the future of the Afrocentric

3:54

perspective. We. Have innocent

3:56

his effort centricity a self consciously philosophical

3:58

work and initial statement of hence dos

4:00

often prospective was when he came back

4:02

to revising and bring it to the

4:05

world. A new a couple of twins.

4:08

The. First major revision came with a

4:10

Nineteen Eighty Eight edition published by Africa

4:12

Robbed Press, and then in two thousand

4:15

and three, he brought out another revised

4:17

and expanded edition for the Chicago based

4:19

publisher, African American Images. In

4:22

some ways, the two thousand and three addition

4:25

provides readers with the most informative experience. For.

4:28

Example: In the original addition, it is

4:30

not entirely clear where to find bugs.

4:32

Most general or authoritative definition of the

4:34

word efforts interested he. Makes

4:37

this crystal clear. Intersection.

4:39

Helpfully and title definition we find

4:41

this I tell us eyes clarification.

4:45

Average interested he is a mode of

4:47

thought and action in which decent reality

4:49

of African interest, values and prospectus produced.

4:52

In. Regards to Fear V, it is the

4:54

placing of African people in the center

4:56

of any analysis of African phenomena. Thus,

4:59

It is possible for anyone to master the

5:01

discipline of seeking the location of Africans in

5:03

a given phenomenon. In terms

5:05

of action and behavior, it is a devotion

5:07

to the idea that what is in the

5:09

best interest of African consciousness is at the

5:12

heart of ethical paper. Finally,

5:14

Efforts interested, he seeks to enshrine

5:17

the idea that blackness itself as

5:19

a trope of ethics. Dust to

5:21

be Black is to be against

5:23

all forms of oppression: racism, classes

5:26

of homophobia, patriarchy, child abuse, pedophilia,

5:28

and white racial domination. Of

5:32

course, if one is interested in understanding not

5:34

just As and his most recent expression of

5:36

his outlook, but his development as a thinker,

5:38

Returning to the earlier additions is vital. For.

5:41

Example: There is certainly no definition of blackness

5:43

as ideally anti homophobic in the earlier editions

5:46

of the book, and this is a point

5:48

to which we will turn. Placing:

5:51

a scientists original contribution in nineteen eighty

5:53

within it's historical context it helps to

5:56

consider how he speaks of is one

5:58

in the book first chapter he

6:00

builds on Chancellor Williams' warning

6:02

in the destruction of Black

6:04

civilization that the African-centered mind

6:06

must oppose Islamic imperialism no

6:08

less than Christian-European imperialism. Asante

6:11

roots his afrocentricity in the idea

6:13

of an African cultural system, arguing

6:16

that all African people participate

6:18

in the African cultural system, although it

6:20

is modified according to specific histories and

6:23

nations. Christianity

6:26

thus recognizes diversity among African people,

6:28

but prizes what it posits beneath

6:30

this diversity, which is a fundamental

6:32

cultural unity. Directly

6:35

following this point, Asante cautions, adoption

6:37

of Islam is as contradictory to

6:39

the diaspora and afrocentricity as Christianity

6:42

has been. Here

6:44

Asante takes for granted arguments made

6:46

by others, who have already shown

6:48

African-Americans and other peoples of the

6:50

diaspora that the imposition of Christianity

6:52

upon their ancestors is something to

6:54

be questioned, challenged, and overthrown. Later

6:58

on in the book, Asante adds his own extensive

7:00

discussion of the Black church. He

7:03

admits that music and dance in the

7:05

context of the church have provided ways

7:07

of expressing what he calls the essence

7:09

of our afro-cavity. Yet

7:11

he is critical of how Black Christianity

7:13

has often encouraged ignorance of the African

7:15

past. Less explored,

7:17

but nonetheless urgent, he claims in the

7:19

first chapter, is the problem posed by

7:21

Islam. Urgent, precisely because

7:23

it had in recent decades figured

7:26

so much in manifestations of nationalism

7:28

and resistance to white domination among

7:30

African-Americans. Asante

7:32

is also writing in the wake

7:34

of something we mentioned last time,

7:36

the efforts by Elijah Muhammad's son,

7:39

Warif Dean Muhammad, to lead African-Americans

7:41

who had previously been loyal to

7:43

his father into the non-separatist orthodoxy

7:45

of Sunni Islam. Asante

7:47

laments, while the nation

7:49

of Islam, under the leadership of Elijah

7:52

Muhammad, was a transitional nationalist movement, the

7:54

present emphasis of Islam in America is

7:56

more cultural and religious. This

7:59

is, in his view, a serious and perhaps

8:01

tragic mistake. Devotion

8:04

to this faith for Asante means

8:06

devotion to a non-African cultural orientation.

8:09

But going beyond what we find in

8:11

Chancellor Williams, Asante also positively suggests that

8:13

we can learn a lot from Islam

8:15

about what it means to put religion

8:17

to good, nationalistic use. He

8:20

asserts as a general principle, all

8:22

religions rise out of the deification of

8:24

someone's nationalism. Islam

8:26

is a particularly instructive example. After

8:29

all, in Islam, the language of God is said

8:31

to be Arabic. The religion's most sacred pilgrimage must

8:34

be made to Mecca, prayers are made in the

8:36

direction of Mecca, and so on. In

8:39

all these ways, the religion is

8:41

an Arabizing influence, which can result

8:43

in Black Muslims seeking to out-Arab

8:45

the Arab. We

8:48

are asked to imagine a reverse situation

8:50

in which the white people of Europe

8:52

and the Arabs of Arabia could be

8:54

found turning heads towards the sacred forest

8:56

of Ashogbo in Yoruba land or towards

8:59

Tuskegee in Alabama or Mount Kilimanjaro in

9:01

Tanzania. Asante

9:03

can't help but be impressed by Islam's Arabizing

9:05

power and calls it one of the most

9:07

powerful tools of mind control ever created. Through

9:10

him, the Prophet Muhammad is the greatest

9:12

nationalist who ever lived in Arabia. He

9:15

adds the caveat that a nationalist is

9:17

not necessarily a racist. Indeed, the true

9:20

nationalist is never a racist. All

9:23

in all, Asante seeks to give due

9:25

respect to the power of Arab nationalism

9:27

demonstrated by the spread of Islam, while

9:29

also calling Black people to become dedicated

9:32

African nationalists who will resist that Arab

9:34

power. Thus, he

9:36

draws practical conclusions, such as this one, whose

9:38

significance to his way of thinking should be

9:40

obvious to us by now. We

9:42

say, if you must change your name,

9:45

choose an African name, not an Arab

9:47

name, like Yousif or Kareem. Knowing

9:50

the Arabization that comes with Islam allows

9:52

Black people to remain true to themselves

9:54

while also working to bring their own

9:56

non-racist message to all the peoples of

9:58

the world. But

10:00

what is this message? According

10:03

to Asante, the task of the Afrocentric

10:05

is nothing less than to humanize the

10:07

universe. And unlike Christianity

10:09

and Islam, this universal mission will

10:12

not require engaging in violent conquest.

10:15

Asante writes, Afrocentricity does not

10:17

convert you by appealing to hatred or

10:19

lust or greed or violence. As the

10:21

highest, most conscious ideology, it makes its

10:24

points, motivates its adherents, and captivates the

10:26

cautious by the force of its truth.

10:30

Was Asante trying to start a new religion? It

10:34

should certainly be clear that he aimed to

10:36

transform the consciousness of his readers to affect

10:38

what we might fairly call a conversion. The

10:41

most self-evidently religious aspect of the

10:43

book is the so-called ideology of

10:45

victorious thought that he names N'jia.

10:49

In the 1980 edition, he provides a

10:51

list of ritual activities that followers of

10:53

N'jia can observe. Then

10:55

in the 1988 version, he added a

10:57

new section at the end of the

10:59

book titled N'jia, The Way, which consists

11:01

of ten sets of numbered aphorisms forming

11:03

what feels very much like a new

11:05

sacred text. The very first

11:07

aphorism seems to announce Asante as a

11:10

prophet, as it reads, This

11:12

is the way that came to Molephi in America.

11:16

Then again, not long after this is

11:18

an aphorism that reads, The Way is

11:20

not contradictory to Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam,

11:22

Yoruba, or any other way of peace

11:25

and power. It is complementary.

11:29

And looking back in 2003,

11:31

Asante stressed that N'jia was

11:33

not to be interpreted as

11:35

a religion. The tensions here concerning

11:37

Asante's religious or secular intentions may

11:39

remind us of Maulana Kerenga and

11:42

his evolving presentation of Kwanza first

11:44

as a substitute and then as

11:46

a complement to Christmas. Even

11:49

indeed no other individual thinker influenced

11:51

Asante's theory of aphrocentricity as greatly

11:53

as Kerenga. For starters,

11:55

N'jia means the way in Swahili,

11:58

this choice to use of Swahili word, was

12:01

undoubtedly influenced by Karinga's use of that

12:03

language to name everything he took to

12:05

be fundamental to an African worldview, including

12:07

the name he chose for his philosophy

12:09

as a whole, namely Kawayda, or tradition.

12:13

We can also, at this point, explain

12:15

the Afrocentric pun in this episode's title.

12:18

As we've seen, the Sante derived his last

12:20

name not from the Bantu language, Swahili, but

12:23

from the Ashanti people of what is now Ghana. It

12:26

still seems fitting, when considering his contributions,

12:28

to invoke one of the first phrases

12:30

anyone learning Swahili will be taught, a

12:32

Sante San, which like Mefibuku or

12:35

Muchas Gracias, means thank you very

12:37

much. In

12:40

an interview, Asante himself confirmed the centrality

12:42

of Karinga among his sources of inspiration.

12:45

As to describe the intellectual and

12:47

developmental process that brought him to

12:49

create Afrocentricity, Asante answered, well, that's

12:51

a very good question, and there's

12:53

a simple answer. I

12:55

am deeply influenced by Maulana Karinga. Reading

12:59

Afrocentricity, the theory of social change, Karinga's

13:01

significance becomes clear primarily by the way

13:03

that Asante places him in a tradition

13:05

of great black thinkers. Washington

13:08

is celebrated, but Garvey is prized even

13:10

more for building on him while understanding,

13:12

as Washington did not, that the assertion

13:15

and affirmation of the African cultural heritage

13:17

was necessary for true liberation of diasporan

13:19

Africans. King and Duois

13:22

are appreciated, but also criticized for

13:24

failing fully to escape a Eurocentric

13:26

outlook and embrace true nationalism. Elijah

13:29

Muhammad is credited as a pioneer of

13:31

fighting for liberation at the level of

13:33

religious symbolism. In 1988, Asante

13:36

added a section on Malcolm X, the

13:38

conclusion of which is well supported by

13:40

the episodes of this podcast series. Asante

13:43

wrote, Malcolm's multifaceted views inspired Bobby

13:45

Seale and Huey Newton, the Black

13:48

Marxists, the Muslims, the Christians, and

13:50

the systematic nationalist Maulana Karinga. In

13:53

fact, the richness of Malcolm's philosophy generated

13:55

a thousand ways to fight for liberation.

14:00

As this last quotation already indicates,

14:02

the culminating figure in Asante's construction

14:04

of the path to Afrocentricity is

14:06

the systematic nationalist, Kerenga. He

14:09

is presented as a philosophical mind of

14:11

far-reaching vision, one who was ahead of

14:14

his time in the 1960s for being

14:16

concerned first and foremost with cultural reconstruction.

14:19

Still, Asante was not afraid to criticize

14:21

Kerenga. In the 1980

14:23

edition, Asante complained about the anti-supernatural

14:26

dimension of Kerenga's plot, attributing

14:28

to him a materialistic concept of

14:30

history that stands out as his

14:33

most serious flaw afro-centricly, given the

14:35

importance to the African cultural outlook

14:37

of recognizing the continuum of spirit

14:39

and matter. Happily, by

14:41

1988, Asante felt able to

14:44

credit Kerenga with overcoming this earlier flaw,

14:46

writing that his work over the course of the

14:48

1980s proves that Kerenga believes that

14:51

an afrocentric history must never separate

14:53

the spiritual and the material. The

14:57

1980s was also a time of ever-increasing prominence

14:59

for Asante and his theory. In

15:02

1984, he left Buffalo to go to

15:04

Temple University in Philadelphia, where he became

15:06

chair of the African American Studies Department,

15:08

eventually renamed in accordance with his

15:11

terminology the Afrocology and African

15:13

American Studies Department. In

15:16

1987, this department became the first Black

15:18

Studies program to offer the Ph.D., and

15:21

Asante himself would go on to supervise a

15:23

vast number of dissertations. Finally

15:26

with his continuing editorship of the Journal of

15:28

Black Studies, his influence on the field became

15:30

immense and far-reaching. Meanwhile,

15:33

he continued to elaborate his theory,

15:35

publishing The Afrocentric Idea in 1987,

15:39

Kemet's Afrocentricity and Knowledge in

15:41

1990, Malcolm X's Cultural

15:43

Hero and Other Afrocentric Essays

15:45

in 1993, and An Afrocentric

15:47

Manifesto Toward an African Renaissance

15:50

in 2007, this among

15:52

other books. One

15:54

of his clearest attempts to bring more Afrocentricity to the

15:57

study of the history of philosophy, the topic of our

15:59

history, is the own podcast, would be his

16:01

2000 book, The Egyptian

16:03

Philosophers, Ancient African Voices from

16:05

Imhotep to Akhenazi. Note

16:08

the title's emphasis on philosophers rather

16:11

than philosophy. Asante's explicit

16:13

aim is to familiarize readers with the

16:15

names of individual thinkers. He

16:17

seeks, as he puts it, to introduce

16:19

the reader to the wonderful joys of

16:21

knowing ancient Egyptian philosophers, so that their

16:23

names will become as familiar to you

16:25

as the names of Socrates, Plato, Confucius,

16:27

Aristotle, and Mencius. How

16:30

important is Asante's own name in the history

16:32

of Africana philosophy? Here's one

16:34

indication. Something like a third of the

16:36

article that introduced Africana philosophy as a

16:38

term is devoted to a critical evaluation

16:41

of Asante's thought. As

16:43

we mentioned back in the very first

16:45

episode of this whole series, the African-American

16:48

professional philosopher Lucius Outlaw can be credited

16:50

with introducing Africana philosophy as a way

16:52

of referring to philosophy that comes from

16:55

Africa, from the African diaspora, or in

16:57

some sense from both. He

17:00

did this most notably in

17:02

a 1992 article titled

17:04

African African-American Africana Philosophy,

17:06

published in the Journal of the Philosophical Forum. As

17:10

we will discuss further in an upcoming

17:12

episode, Outlaw's article was published in one

17:14

of two groundbreaking special issues of that

17:16

journal that did much to establish the

17:18

philosophy of Africa and the African diaspora

17:20

as an important area of study among

17:22

professional philosophers writing in English, especially

17:24

in the United States. Outlaw

17:28

offers us a perspective on Asante that

17:30

is at times sharply critical, concluding

17:32

that Asante falls far short of his

17:34

own philosophical goals. Before

17:36

considering Outlaw's criticisms, however, we must understand why

17:39

it made sense for Asante to loom

17:41

so large in the article in the first

17:43

place. Outlaw

17:45

begins by noting that it had been

17:47

at that point about a half of

17:50

a century since debates first emerged in

17:52

academic settings concerning what sense, if any,

17:54

it made to attach the word African

17:56

to the word philosophy. He

17:58

clearly has in mind as a starting point. point the excitement

18:00

and controversy that followed the 1945 publication

18:03

of Placide Tempos' Bontu

18:05

philosophy. Looking

18:08

back from the 1990s, Outlaw sees

18:10

much growth and development, noting the

18:12

significant numbers of formerly trained Africans

18:14

building up African philosophy as a

18:16

disciplinary formation, and noting

18:18

as well the growth and development

18:20

of African-American philosophy as a similarly

18:22

distinct area of research, as increasing

18:25

numbers of Americans of African descent

18:27

entered the field. In

18:29

light of these parallel developments,

18:31

he proposes Afrikan philosophy as

18:33

a gathering notion under which

18:35

to situate the articulations, writings,

18:37

speeches, etc., and traditions of

18:39

Africans and people of African

18:41

descent collectively, as well as

18:43

the sub-discipline or field-forming, tradition-defining,

18:46

or tradition-organizing reconstructive efforts which

18:48

are to be regarded as

18:51

philosophy. Right

18:53

after making this proposal, however, he

18:55

raises the self-critical question of what,

18:58

if anything, is so characteristic of

19:00

the philosophical practices of African and

19:02

African descended thinkers, such that

19:04

we might be able to see these

19:06

practices as constituting a unified and distinctive

19:08

enterprise. He goes

19:10

so far as to ask whether Afrikan

19:12

philosophy should be understood as a venture

19:14

which should be bound by particular norms,

19:17

appropriate to discursive practices by and or

19:19

in the interests of African peoples, in

19:21

contrast to norms of the life worlds

19:23

of other peoples. This

19:26

is what makes Asante so relevant. He

19:28

is, in Outlaw's estimation, the most

19:30

prominent defender of the thesis that

19:32

all African peoples ought to be

19:34

organizing their philosophical thought in accordance

19:36

with a particular unifying agenda and

19:39

shared strategies of inquiry. He

19:42

draws attention to the mature statement

19:44

of Afrocentric methodology in Asante's Chemet

19:46

Afrocentricity and Knowledge, according

19:48

to which, the Afrocentric seeks to

19:51

uncover and use codes, paradigms, symbols,

19:53

motifs, myths, and circles of discussion

19:55

that reinforce the centrality of African

19:57

ideals and values as a valid

20:00

of reference for acquiring and examining

20:02

data. Outlaw appreciates

20:04

how Asante's work seeks to move us

20:06

beyond the world in which European norms

20:08

and agendas predominate. He worries,

20:11

however, that Asante's attempt to

20:13

substitute an African foundation in

20:15

place of this European hegemony

20:17

requires ignoring all the discontinuities

20:19

that result from the various

20:21

historical, geographical, cultural, and sociological

20:23

dispersions of African and African-descended

20:25

people over time and space.

20:29

Outlaw's belief in the usefulness of

20:32

Africana philosophy as a gathering term

20:34

does not lead him to engage,

20:36

as he believes Asante does, in

20:38

the treatment of the term African

20:40

as if it had the unifying

20:42

power of a trans-historical, trans-geographical essence.

20:45

Thus Outlaw approvingly quotes Stuart Hall's claim

20:47

that to be Black is to belong

20:50

to a politically and culturally constructed category,

20:53

which cannot be grounded in a

20:55

set of fixed, trans-cultural, or transcendental

20:57

racial categories in which therefore has

20:59

no guarantees in nature. In

21:03

the absence of the guarantee of a

21:05

Black essence, the work of building up

21:07

Africana philosophy as a disciplinary formation is,

21:09

he believes, more complex and difficult. He

21:13

takes the gathering together of the

21:15

philosophical traditions of African and African-descended

21:17

people to be only an initial,

21:19

though important, step, after which

21:21

the real work begins, interrogating works,

21:24

learning from them, comparing and contrasting

21:26

them with endeavors by African and

21:28

other peoples as part of a

21:30

larger ongoing effort to catalog and

21:32

study the many creations of African

21:34

peoples, the contributions of African peoples

21:36

to the treasure houses of human

21:38

civilization. We

21:41

find another critical perspective on Asante's work in

21:43

a seminal essay from 1990 called

21:45

Africa on My Mind, Gender,

21:48

Counter-Discourse, and African-American Nationalism, published

21:51

in the Journal of Women's History

21:53

by the African-American historian E. Francis

21:55

White. The essay

21:57

examines connections between African-centered thought as it

21:59

develops. among African Americans in the

22:01

latter part of the 20th century, and

22:03

the problem of repressive gender relations. Kerenga

22:06

comes up as an example when surprisingly given his

22:09

claim back in the 1960s in

22:11

the quotable Kerenga that gender equality

22:13

should be regarded as the devil's

22:16

concept. Like

22:18

Asante though, White is attentive to how Kerenga

22:20

has changed in the 1980s. Indeed, she

22:23

admits to being impressed by the extent of this

22:25

change. She sees in

22:27

Kerenga's introduction to Black studies a sensitivity

22:30

to criticisms by Black feminists that reshaped

22:32

his views, even if he does

22:34

not explicitly note the change. But

22:37

Kerenga is only one of a number

22:39

of targets of criticism in White's article,

22:41

which does not blame any one individual

22:43

for the problem of sexism in Black

22:45

nationalism. Now, what's surprising when it comes

22:47

to Asante, White's critique does not mostly

22:49

concern gender. She is

22:51

most bothered, like outlaw, with the

22:54

way Asante downplays Black diversity. She

22:57

writes, What I find most disturbing

22:59

about Asante's work is his decision to

23:01

collapse differences among Black people into a

23:03

false unity that only a simplistic binary

23:06

opposition would allow. With

23:08

regard to gender, White even acknowledges

23:11

a moment where Asante speaks positively

23:13

of feminism's compatibility with afrocentricity. This

23:16

moment comes in, the afrocentric idea,

23:18

as he highlights the parallel quest

23:20

of constructing a post-eurocentric and a

23:23

post-male ideology as we unlock creative

23:25

human potential. Yet,

23:28

White finds this moment to be an

23:30

exception to a disappointing rule. She

23:32

claims there is a loud silence around gender in

23:35

most of Asante's work. He avoids

23:37

the topic so often in her eyes

23:39

that the passage, just quoted, counts as

23:41

nothing more than a shallow gesture towards

23:43

the concerns of Black feminists rather than

23:45

an attempt to take their concerns seriously.

23:48

We can turn to an essay Asante wrote

23:51

later on, Afrocentricity, Women and Gender, included

23:53

in his Malcolm X as cultural hero

23:55

and other afrocentric essays, to see how

23:57

he responds to White and other Black

23:59

people. Here,

24:01

Asante makes it clear that he

24:04

intends Afrocentricity to be not merely

24:06

neutral on questions of gender, but

24:08

rather aggressively anti-sexist. He

24:10

even seems to recognize what Kimberly

24:12

Crenshaw had recently named Intersectionality, when

24:14

he stresses the need to pay

24:17

attention to how African-American women suffer

24:19

from the African patriarchy of dominance

24:21

and white female racism, along with

24:23

the white patriarchal racism of white

24:25

men. It remains important

24:27

to him, however, not to confuse the

24:29

European past with the African past. Like

24:32

Shaykh Antediyop, who greatly influenced the development of

24:34

his thinking over the course of the 1980s,

24:37

Asante takes the conflict and subordination of

24:39

women in European gender relations to result

24:41

in part from the difficulties of the

24:44

northern climate. In Africa,

24:46

he claims, even if a man forced

24:48

a woman out on her own, she could gather

24:50

her own yams, cassava, and bananas. He

24:53

concludes his discussion of how African conditions

24:55

fostered greater equality for African women by

24:58

evoking a female leader we began discussing

25:00

in our last episode. Thus,

25:02

the African woman is not a Joan of

25:04

Arc waiting to be burned, but an Inzinga,

25:06

who goes to fight the Portuguese, and when

25:08

she speaks to the Portuguese in her role

25:11

as military queen and is refused a seat,

25:13

her soldiers compete for the opportunity to have

25:15

her sit on their backs. Whatever

25:19

one concludes about the strength of Asante's

25:21

efforts to oppose sexism, it must be

25:23

noted that all three editions of Afrocentricity

25:25

contain a section that would fit most

25:27

people's definition of homophobia. This

25:30

in spite of his claim in the 2003

25:32

edition that to be black in a moral

25:34

sense is to be anti-homophobic. Asante's

25:37

view, as expressed in the original 1980

25:39

edition, is that homosexuality

25:41

is a deviation from Afrocentric thought because

25:44

it makes the person evaluate his own

25:46

physical needs above the teachings of national

25:48

consciousness. In

25:51

the 2003 edition, the first notable change, ironically,

25:53

is the gender equality in his new expression

25:55

of the claim. Homosexuality

25:58

and lesbianism are deviations from Afrocentric

26:00

thought because they often make the person

26:02

evaluate his or her own physical needs

26:05

above the teachings of national consciousness. An

26:08

idea that seems to underlie his view,

26:10

even if it is not explicitly stated,

26:12

is that one cannot contribute to the

26:14

building of strong black families if one

26:16

has constructed one's identity on the basis

26:18

of a sexual desire that is, in

26:20

itself, contrary to the building of families.

26:23

Asante argues in the 2003 edition

26:25

that the historical African response to

26:27

same-gender love and desire has been

26:30

toleration but not one of acceptance

26:32

as a model of relationships. This

26:35

attitude of toleration is what justifies

26:37

for him Afrocentricity's claim to be

26:40

anti-homophobic. He invokes the

26:42

greatness of Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, and

26:44

Audre Lorde, arguing that while their lifestyle

26:46

was never accepted as optimal for the

26:49

African community, neither were they

26:51

excluded. He also asserts, I

26:53

support the rights of gays and lesbians to make

26:55

their own choices and I will defend their right

26:57

to be free from attacks, insults, and assaults. But

27:00

he concludes by once again drawing a

27:03

historical distinction, pointing out that while ancient

27:05

Greek authors like Plato seem to speak

27:07

favorably of homosexuality, the 42

27:09

negative confessions from the Egyptian Book of

27:11

the Dead condemn the practice. So

27:14

it seems clear that Asante's anti-sexism is

27:17

more authentic than his claim to be

27:19

anti-homophobic, and we might consider at

27:21

least one factor that could help explain this disparity.

27:24

Along with figures like Kerenga and

27:26

Nachimento, another major influence on the

27:28

initial development of Afrocentricity was Kariamo

27:30

Welsh, Asante's partner at the time

27:32

that he was creating and first

27:34

articulating his theory. Welsh

27:37

was born in North Carolina and raised in Brooklyn.

27:40

By the time she met Asante in Buffalo,

27:42

she had already established herself as a dancer

27:44

and choreographer. The 1980 edition

27:47

of Afrocentricity is a testament to the

27:49

intellectual dimension of their love partnership, starting

27:51

with the forward that Welsh provided the

27:53

book. It begins, The

27:55

need for an Afrocentric philosophy is so great

27:58

that it is impossible for me not to

28:00

insist on every black person reading this book.

28:03

We then find in Asante's first

28:05

chapter the comparison of his creation

28:08

of Anjia with Welsh's creation of

28:10

Wofundae, defined in the book's

28:12

glossary as a philosophy of African

28:14

aesthetics developed by choreographer-writer Kariyama Welsh.

28:18

As time went on, the word became most

28:21

associated with the dance technique that Welsh pioneered

28:23

and taught to generations of students. The

28:26

year that Afrocentricity was published was also

28:28

the year of Zimbabwe's independence, and Welsh

28:30

and Asante went to spend time in

28:32

that country on Fulbright scholarships. Welsh

28:35

deepened her knowledge of African dance while living

28:37

on the continent and became the founding artistic

28:39

director of the National Dance Company of Zimbabwe.

28:42

Welsh and Asante were also finally married

28:44

in Zimbabwe, and their son, Olafie Komalo-Asante,

28:46

was born there. Now

28:48

known as MK Asante, their son has

28:51

become an acclaimed writer and documentary filmmaker.

28:54

His best-known book, Buck, a Memoir, published

28:56

in 2013, is among other things a

28:58

portrayal of the tough times in the

29:01

1990s, during which the family fell apart, ending

29:03

in Welsh's and Asante's divorce in 2000. The

29:07

book's depiction of a son's estrangement from

29:09

his father and their ultimate reconciliation is

29:11

deeply touching. Let

29:14

us return, however, to the importance of women's

29:16

voices in African-centered thought, which is exemplified by

29:18

Welsh's work as a scholar up until her

29:20

death in 2021. One

29:24

problem with the stereotyping of African-centered thought as

29:26

patriarchal is that it can obscure just how

29:28

many of the major figures of African-centered thought

29:30

in the 1980s and 90s were outspoken women,

29:34

greatly respected as leading intellects in many black

29:37

circles while also stirring up as much controversy

29:39

with their work as their male counterparts. We

29:42

can explore some of the controversy they

29:45

sparked by turning again, as we did

29:47

last time, to Stephen Howe's attempted takedown

29:49

of the tradition in his book, Afrocentrism,

29:51

Mythical Paths and Imagined Homes. Few

29:54

of the thinkers that Howe discusses disturb him

29:57

as much as Francis Cress-Wellsings, a psychiatrist.

30:00

who first began to publish her unique views

30:02

on racism in the 1970s, but

30:04

who was best known for her 1991 book, The

30:07

ISIS Papers. Here's a

30:09

key passage from that book explaining her view. The

30:12

reason that the black male is and always

30:14

has been central to the issue of white

30:17

supremacy is clarified by the definition of racism

30:19

as white genetic survival. In

30:22

the collective white psyche, black males

30:24

represent the greatest threat to white

30:26

genetic survival because only males of

30:28

any color can impose sexual intercourse,

30:30

and black males have the greatest genetic potential

30:32

of all non-white males to cause white genetic

30:35

annihilation. Thus, black males

30:37

must be attacked and destroyed in a

30:39

power system designed to assure white genetic

30:41

survival. Critics

30:43

who point to sexism among African-centered thinkers

30:46

might find it convenient that Cress-Wellsons theory

30:48

of racism is so focused on black

30:50

men. Actually though, it

30:52

may be more appropriate to place her concern

30:54

with white fear of black men in a

30:57

tradition of gender analysis by black women thinkers

30:59

that reaches back to Ida B. Wells' writings

31:01

on lynching. Still, there's

31:03

no getting around the fact that Cress-Wellsons

31:05

pushed her analysis to extremes that many

31:07

have found simultaneously confusing and amusing, such

31:10

as the memorable chapters of the book,

31:12

where she treats everything from the Christian

31:14

cross to guns to the Washington monuments

31:16

to just about every single sport or

31:19

game involving balls as symbolic of white

31:21

fear of the black penis. A

31:24

graphic passage on white male homosexuality,

31:27

in fact so graphic and frankly, homophobic that

31:29

we'd rather not provide this details, pushed Howe

31:31

over the edge, causing him to

31:33

call the ISIS papers idiotic and contemptible and

31:36

to lament the fact that it reportedly sold

31:38

40,000 copies within a few

31:40

months of publication. Howe

31:43

is more complimentary, however, when

31:45

discussing another major female African-centered

31:47

thinker, Marimba Ani. Howe

31:50

writes, despite Asante's preeminence, undoubtedly

31:52

the most powerfully argued, as well

31:54

as most extensive presentation of the

31:56

essential general features of an Afrocentric

31:58

worldview, is a- recent massive

32:00

book by Marimba Ani. This

32:03

refers to her 1994 book,

32:05

Yurugo, an African-centered critique of

32:08

European cultural thought and behavior.

32:12

Ani drew her title from a Dogon

32:14

legend, according to which the creator had

32:16

been providing each being with twin souls,

32:18

male and female, until a

32:21

being called Yurugo arrogantly wished to compete

32:23

with the creator and did not wait

32:25

for his female twin soul. Out

32:27

of his broken placenta, he

32:29

created Earth, this imperfect place

32:31

inhabited by single-souled, impure and

32:33

incomplete beings like himself. Ani

32:37

uses Yurugo as a metaphor for

32:39

Europe's disordered imperialistic culture, concluding at

32:41

the end of her book, "...now

32:44

that we have broken the power of

32:46

their ideology, we must leave them and

32:48

direct our energies towards the recreation of

32:50

cultural alternatives informed by ancestral visions of

32:53

a future that celebrates our Africanness and

32:55

encourages the best of the human spirit.

32:58

Each of the cultures historically victimized by

33:00

Europe must reclaim its own image." One

33:04

way she tries to reclaim African culture

33:07

is to introduce various technical terms, using

33:09

Swahili, like Keringa before her. Among

33:12

these, the one that has become most

33:14

widely used is Maafa, which she translates

33:16

as Great Disaster, and which she applies

33:18

to the massive loss of African life

33:20

during the transatlantic slave trade. In

33:24

highlighting women thinkers like Cress-Wellshing and Ani, we

33:26

do not mean to suggest that the mere

33:28

existence of women contributors is enough to show

33:30

that a tradition of thought is not sexist

33:33

and patriarchal. Just consider

33:35

Shahrazad Ali's notorious 1989 book, The

33:37

Black Man's Guide to Understanding the

33:39

Black Woman. A

33:42

member of the Nation of Islam, Ali created

33:44

a firestorm of controversy with this book, given

33:46

her claim that the black woman's unbridled tongue

33:48

is such a source of discord that, when

33:50

she crosses the line and becomes viciously insulting,

33:53

it is time for the black man to

33:55

soundly slap her in the mouth. E.

33:58

Francis White also reflected in

34:00

Africa on my mind, on the capability of

34:02

black women to be the source of regressive

34:05

gender discourse. In

34:07

fact, the example of African-centered thought

34:09

that she critically discusses in greatest

34:11

life is a piece by Charlene

34:14

Harper Bolton called A Reconceptualization of

34:16

the African-American Woman, which clearly

34:18

combines this concern to return to African

34:21

tradition with a rejection of feminism. In

34:24

the final section of her article, though,

34:26

White showed herself open to the possibility

34:28

that feminism and nationalism can be fruitfully

34:30

brought together. She explored

34:32

this possibility by discussing a thinker we

34:34

have already prominently featured in our story,

34:37

Patricia Hill Collins. At

34:39

the time White was writing, Collins had not

34:41

yet published Black Feminist Thought. It

34:44

came out in 1990, the same year White's

34:46

article was published. But Collins

34:48

had already published a piece called The

34:50

Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought, in

34:53

which she argued, since black women have

34:55

access to both the Afrocentric and the

34:57

feminist standpoints, an alternative epistemology used to

34:59

rearticulate a black woman's standpoint reflects elements

35:02

of both traditions. In

35:04

response, White registers her concern that Collins

35:06

may have gone too far in trying

35:09

to identify an essential black woman's standpoint,

35:11

thus falling into the trap of ignoring

35:13

diversity. Still, she

35:15

admits that Collins and other Afrocentric

35:17

feminists are able to reveal the

35:19

strengths of nationalist ideology in its

35:22

counterattack against racism. By

35:25

the time Asante clarified his view that

35:27

Afrocentricity should be understood as aggressively anti-sexist,

35:29

he was happy to count Collins in

35:32

a list of leading Afrocentric female thinkers.

35:35

As the 20th century came to an end, though,

35:37

Collins reconsidered her own use of the term. In

35:40

the revised 10th Anniversary Edition of Black Feminist

35:42

Thought that she published in 2000,

35:45

she used the term much less often, explaining that over

35:47

the course of the 1990s, news media and

35:50

subsegments of US higher education attacked the term

35:52

as well as all who used it. To

35:55

the point that they effectively discredited the term,

35:58

Collins was lamented in 2000 that As

36:00

of this writing, the term afrocentrism refers

36:03

to the ideas of a small group

36:05

of Black Studies professionals with whom I

36:07

have major areas of disagreement, primarily concerning

36:09

the treatment of gender and sexuality. Especially

36:13

since it is the label, rather than her ideas,

36:15

that Collins felt compelled to change,

36:17

this is a striking case study concerning the

36:20

management of public controversy with respect to academic

36:22

word choices. It would not

36:24

be the last time that the name of a

36:26

movement within Africana philosophy would be taken by

36:28

its opponents and transformed into a term of abuse.

36:31

It's a cheap trick, but as Collins perceived

36:34

also an effective one. This

36:36

has never been more clear than from

36:38

recent events, as conservatives have raced to

36:40

criticize one theory in particular, which was

36:42

perhaps the inevitable response to a movement

36:44

called critical race theory. That's

36:46

our next topic here on the history of

36:49

Africana. Thank

36:58

you.