6.1: African Centeredness - Readings and Media

The selected readings, images, and videos of this module will inform students about the concept of African centeredness also known as afrocentrism. Included are links to articles about the aligned concepts of Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism as well.

Readings and Videos

Black History Files. "How Does Afrocentrism Relate to Pan-Africanism?." YouTube video, 3:52. December 6, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ldoAvV0zY.

Afrocentrism

Afrocentrism is the interpretation of reality from perspectives that are centered by and within the processes that maintain and perpetuate the life and culture of people of African descent. Afrocentric or African-centered education is the means by which the attributes of African culture are developed and advanced, along with the knowledge and skills needed to maintain and perpetuate it. Both concepts are corollaries of the "African worldview," a term first coined by Senegalese anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop, whose 1978 work, The Cultural Unity of Black Africa, is generally regarded as the cornerstone of the Afrocentric idea, which has since been amplified and popularized by African American Studies theoreticians in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Moreover, Afrocentrism has also created controversy in academe, most notably in the historiographical debate over Martin Bernal's Black Athena (1987) which suggested African origins to ancient Greek civilization and thus greater western civilization.

Diop's thesis is that European and African cultural orientations represent antithetical worldviews. Instead of a universal hierarchy of cultures in which Western European culture represents the epitome, Diop suggested that African and European cultures developed within two axiomatic and divergent "cradles" of civilization. The environmental harshness of the northern cradle (Europe) gave rise to individualism, possessiveness, and forms of social organization reflective of the scarcity of natural resources within the European environment. Conversely, the warmth and fertility of the southern cradle (Africa) and the absence of moral and material misery produced a sense of collectivism and benevolence among precolonial Africans. The following attributes of the African worldview have been identified in the literature:

• an emphasis on the family as a source of personal identity and reference
• a far-reaching and abiding spirituality
• respect for elders and ancestral figures
• a preference for communal and societal arrangements
• a live-and-let-live philosophy of coexistence and cooperation among individuals, communities, and cultures
• an optimistic and holistic disposition toward life

While, as Diop contends, the Afrocentric worldview has existed from antiquity, Afrocentrism is a contemporary concept. Afrocentrism shares with earlier constructions such as negritude, Black Nationalism, and early pan-Africanism an emphasis on the need for people of African descent to resist Western cultural hegemony. What sets Afrocentrism apart, however, is its focus on recovery and restoration of the African worldview as a means of locating and centering present conceptions of reality and analyses of phenomena. Among contemporary scholars, Molefi Kete Asante is perhaps the most widely known and prolific proponent of Afrocentrism and Afrology, a term he has coined to refer to "the science or study of all modalities related to people of African descent from an Afrocentric perspective." Other African American Studies scholars such as Maulana Karenga, Daudi Ajani ya Azibo, Jacob H. Carruthers, and Marimba Ani have focused on the ideological function of culture in European and African societies and the personal transformation facilitated by the concept of the "de-Europeanization" of culture.

Afrocentric education is part of the same process of cultural restoration and promulgation that is inherent to Afrocentrism. Schools are among the institutions through which the process of cultural assault upon Africans has been facilitated. African students are taught to think in non-African ways, using Western orientations to knowledge as the foundation for learning. Carter G. Woodson provides a treatise on this process in his classic 1933 text, The Mis-Education of the Negro. As a countervailing force, African-centered education contributes to the development of African American people's sense of history, pride, and collective belonging through a reinforcement of their culture. Some of the major assumptions underlying Afrocentric education are that it

• acknowledges African spirituality as an essential aspect of our uniqueness as a people and makes it an instrument of liberation
• facilitates participating in the affairs of nations and defining (or redefining) reality from the perspectives of African people's needs and interests
• prepares people of African descent for self-reliance and governance in every regard
• emphasizes the fundamental relationship between the strength of African American families and the strength of their communities and nations
• ensures that the historical role and function of the customs, traditions, rituals, and ceremonies that have protected and preserved our culture are maintained and perpetuated
• facilitates African people's spiritual expression
• ensures harmony in social relations between people of African descent and others
• prepares African American youth to meet their responsibilities as adults
• sustains the continuity of African life over successive generations

More recently, Afrocentrism ignited a significant controversy through the polemic debate raised by historian Martin Bernal's Black Athena (1987), which suggested African origins to Western civilization. Bernal argued that ancient Greek civilization was significantly influenced by African culture due to initial Egyptian and Phoenician migration into Greece, with northern Indo-Europeans moving into the region much later and mixing in with the local population. Moreover, he also hypothesized that classical Greek evolved from African languages, most notably Semitic and Egyptian dialects from the Near East. Classicists, historians, and archeologists, foremost among them historians Mary Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, criticized Bernal's work as speculative for its purported lack of solid evidence regarding ancient Greek origins. Lefkowitz and Rogers, in their book Black Athena Revisited (1996), which was a collection of essays engaging Bernal's book, created a maelstrom of controversy within academe. Lefkowitz, in particular, came under attack by some Afrocentric scholars for questioning Bernal's scholarship, thus illustrating the politicized nature of Afrocentrism in modern academe.

Kofi Lomotey

Mwalimu J. Shujaa

Shujaa, Mwalimu J., and Kofi Lomotey. "Afrocentrism." The American Mosaic: The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2025, africanamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1407577. Accessed 17 Dec. 2025.

• pan-Africanism
• Black Nationalism