Afrocentrist Scholars Ward Off Criticism and Discussion of Their Claims and Theories by Calling Their Opponents Racists; Students Were Being Indoctrinated Along Party Lines

At first I was amazed that what I wrote had provoked hostility far beyond the range of ordinary scholarly disagreement. I was accused of being inspired by racist motives and later of being the leader of a Jewish “onslaught.” An influential Afro-centrist writer, Professor Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University, dismissed my whole discussion as an expression of white prejudice: “Lefkowitz and those who share her views are not interested in understanding Afrocentricity. Their intention is fundamentally the same projection of Eurocentric hegemony that we have seen for the past five hundred years.” Asante tried to cast doubt on everything that I said in my New Republic article. For instance, I reported that I had been surprised when one of my students told me that she had always thought Socrates was black and was concerned that I had never mentioned his African origins. Asante suggested that I had invented the incident, and that my surprise was motivated by “white racism.” Apparently Asante believed I could not endure the thought that Socrates might be black, whereas in reality I doubted that he was black because there was no evidence to support such a contention. Asante, in fact, is aware that there is no such evidence and says that for him the matter is “of no interest.” Why didn’t he imagine that I was responding in the same way as he was? Because there was no evidence, it was not an interesting question.

If Afrocentrist scholars could ward off criticism and even discussion of their claims and theories by calling their academic opponents racists, there seemed to be little hope of sponsoring the kind of debate that has until recently been a central feature of academic life. Rather than being encouraged to ask questions, to read widely, and to challenge any and all assumptions, students were being indoctrinated along party lines. What could be done to improve the situation before Afro-centrists walled their students off into a private thought- world of their own? It is not enough simply to raise questions about some of the more outlandish Afrocentric allegations. There is a need for explanation. There is a need to show why these theories are based on false assumptions and faulty reasoning, and cannot be supported by time-tested methods of intellectual inquiry. There is a need to explain why this misinformation about the ancient world is being circulated, and to indicate that the motives behind it are political, and that this politicizing is dangerous because it requires the end to justify the means.

--Mary Lefkowitz, preface to Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), xii-xiii.