In the fall of 1991 I was asked to write a review-article for The New Republic about Martin Bernal's Black Athena and its relation
    to the Afrocentrist movement. The assignment literally changed my life. Once I began to work on the article I realized that here was
    a subject that needed all the attention, and more, that I could give to it. Although I had been completely unaware of it, there was in
    existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were
    books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been
    stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools
    and even in universities.

    Ordinarily, if someone has a theory which involves a radical departure from what the experts have professed, he is expected to defend
    his position by providing evidence in its support. But no one seemed to think it was appropriate to ask for evidence from the
    instructors who claimed that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt.
        -Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa

One is torn by two competing emotions in reading Not Out of Africa.  On the one hand, there's the visceral thrill of watching idiotic ideas get an old-fashioned butt-whipping.  But, on the other hand, there's something poignant about the need of black scholars to claim the accomplishments of the Greeks and Egyptians as their own.  It is very nearly painful to watch the ease with which Ms Lefkowitz disposes of the lunatic ideas that make up Afrocentrism, though she deserves great credit for taking them seriously enough to lay them out systematically, and demonstrating that they actually do have ancient sources,  before annihilating them.  Still, as you near the end of the book, the contest has been so uneven that it's natural to wonder if this bloodbath was really necessary.

However, in her conclusion, Ms Lefkowitz makes the case for why it is necessary to utterly destroy Afrocentrism, and here she is equally persuasive.  Her reasons are as follows :

    (1)    By claiming European civilization as a product of Africans, Afrocentrism has the perverse effect of making blacks responsible
            for the culture which justified their enslavement and oppression for centuries.

    (2)    By focussing solely on the achievements of the Egyptians, Afrocentrism fails to consider genuinely black African cultures, like
            that of Nubia.

    (3)    By teaching black students that white Europeans stole their culture, Afrocentrism fosters racial animosity.

    (4)    Afrocentrism is not only antihistorical it is also antiscientific--denying genetic, archaeological, linguistic, and other forms of data.

    (5)    It wastes precious educational time; the time that students spend learning the lies of Afrocentrism is time that they are not
            spending learning the truth.

And she closes with a very strong statement :

    Students of the modern world may think it is a matter of indifference whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt.  They
    may believe that even if the story is not true, it can be used to serve a positive purpose.  But the question, and many others like it,
    should be a matter of serious concern to everyone, because if you assert that he did steal his philosophy, you are prepared to ignore or
    to conceal a substantial body of historical evidence that proves the contrary.  Once you start doing that, you can have no scientific or
    even social-scientific discourse, nor can you have a community, or a university.

That's pretty bracing stuff, but it cuts to the quick : are we truly prepared to sacrifice our universities and our students on the altar of political correctness, self esteem, and multicultural hogwash?  One would certainly hope not, and we can only thank Ms Lefkowitz for having the courage to take on the racially charged task of confronting these issues head on.  She has done us all a great service.

(Reviewed:05-Dec-01)

Grade: (A) Orrin C. Judd

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