ERRORS OF THE
AFROCENTRISTS
ANNE WORTHAM
FOR LIFE,
LIBERTY AND
PROPERTY
Political Notes No. 104
ISSN 0267-7059
ISBN 1 85637 285 5
An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance,
25 Chapter Chambers, Esterbrooke Street, London SW1P 4NN
www.libertarian.co.uk
email: [email protected]
© 1995: Libertarian Alliance; Anne Wortham
This article was first published in Academic Questions, Fall 1992.
Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University,
and continuing Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Standford University.
The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not necessarily
those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers.
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1
ERRORS OF THE
AFROCENTRISTS
ANNE WORTHAM
Some claim that Afrocentrism replaces Eurocentrism with
nothing less than another form of intolerance. However,
Afrocentrists correctly respond that they belong within the
multicultural movement. The perception of opposition between Afrocentrism and multiculturalism rests on a mistaken notion of what multiculturalists espouse. I shall
examine Afrocentrism, first, as a form of multiculturalism
subject to the same errors that characterize multiculturalism
generally; second, I point out some errors that are specific
to Afrocentrism.
MULTICULTURALISM VERSUS THE AMERICAN
IDEAL
Many people think multiculturalism is just another term for
the kind of pluralism that has always been an American
ideal, and suggested by the motto of the United States, E
Pluribus Unum. They think it refers to a pattern of intergroup relations in which cultural differences are mutually
tolerated and voluntarily preserved within the framework of
a larger set of shared principles that legitimize our social,
political, and economic institutions. Thus, they are reluctant to question multiculturalism’s validity or the policies
and programs advanced in its name.
In fact, the concept of pluralism has several interpretations;
those relevant to this discussion I distinguish as voluntary
or individualist pluralism and as corporate pluralism.1 Individualist pluralism envisions the United States as a unified
nation composed of many individuals of diverse beliefs, interests, group affiliations, and cultural backgrounds. It celebrates a political system that rejects ethnic exclusivity and
denies political recognition or formal status to ethnic
groups, therefore making ethnic group preservation voluntary. Corporate pluralism views the United States as a nation composed of several distinct and competing interest
groups, the most salient of which are ethnic groups. Its
conservative aim is to use the political system to recover
historical groups and reinforce traditional communities.
Individualist pluralism holds that individuals ought to be
free, within the limits of respect for the rights of others, to
adopt the values, philosophies, religions, or practices of any
culture they wish. It recognizes that individuals have varied
interests and attributes and that persons of similar background can take different directions in life. The associations they form, through which they pursue their chosen
ends, should be voluntary.
Corporate pluralism, by contrast, is less interested in preserving individual liberty than in preserving specific cultures
and ethnic groups. In its least coercive form, it is premised
on the expectation that individuals will wish to maintain a
majority of their primary relations within their ethnic subcultures. But even in this form, it seeks to regulate factors,
such as education, that may influence an individual’s choice
of affiliation. Corporate pluralism seeks to maintain the
boundaries that divide hereditary groups and to promote
solidarity within those groups. It aims to do this regardless
of what individual members of these groups may desire. It
not only fosters the preservation of ethnic differences, but
makes group identity the basis for the distribution of social
rewards.2
Whereas individualist pluralism restricts the principle of
equality to the political equality of individuals, corporate
pluralism demands political, social, and economic equality
for designated groups. Individualist pluralism is based on
the legal freedom of individuals to strive, in cooperation
with others, for goals that do not require the violation of
individual rights. Corporate pluralism, however, emphasizes the competing interests (currently referred to these days
as “needs”) of groups and requires subjugating the choices
of individuals to the “collective will” of the group. Rather
than encourage the tolerance of individual differences, it
stresses differences among groups of people and promotes
intolerance of differences within groups.
Most of all, corporate pluralism denies the proposition that
persons from different backgrounds can be united by ideas
and values that transcend the interests, beliefs, and norms of
particular groups and subcultures. Instead of promoting intergroup relations based on such universalistic criteria as
rationality, personal autonomy, and individual rights, corporate pluralism affirms cultural particularism — the doctrine that persons belonging to different cultural groups
should be treated differently.
The multicultural education movement’s efforts to impose
“cultural diversity” on college and grade school curricula is
fuelled by just this particularism. It seeks to Balkanize the
curriculum by making it represent selected ethnic groups
and certain other groups that supposedly comprise America’s diversity. Most would agree with the multiculturalists’
stated opposition to the assimilationist ideal of a homogeneous superculture. However, that stated intention obscures multiculturalists’ real target: the transethnic principles
2
of voluntary pluralism and individual liberty. For this reason alone multiculturalism should be opposed.
While attacking universal principles and transethnic curricula, multiculturalism ignores the fact that the real force
producing cultural homogeneity is mass communication and
mass transportation. As Martin Marger points out, the reality of contemporary ethnic relations involves a paradox:
“While groups extol the need to retain an ethnic culture and
encounter declining resistance to its retention from the
dominant group, societal trends continue to erode those cultural differences.”3 The homogenized culture resulting from
the compression of cultural singularities into common
forms, says Marger, “is brought home strongly when Americans of any ethnic origin travel to the society of their forebears .... It is in such foreign contexts that a unique
‘Americanness’ is more fully revealed.”4 It is precisely that
“unique” Americanness, made possible by modernity’s continual erosion of cultural differences and by a political system that protects individual mobility, that multiculturalism
would undermine, if it could.5 Instead, its only likely effect
is to undermine America’s commitment to individual liberty.
Peter Berger calls modernity’s challenge to ethnicity “the
pluralization of lifeworlds.”6 Multiculturalism’s obfuscation
of this challenge suggests that it may be an anti-concept.
Ayn Rand defines an anti-concept as an
artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term,
designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept ... without public discussion; and, as a means to
that end, to make public discussion unintelligible, and
to induce the same disintegration in the mind of any
man who accepts it, rendering him incapable of clear
thinking or rational judgment.7
A legitimate concept distinguishes the thing to which it
refers from everything else. An anti-concept sounds like a
legitimate concept but it redefines the referent of the latter
by substituting its nonessential properties for essential ones.
Multiculturalism fits Rand’s definition perfectly. While it is
presented as the ideal of a free and open society, it defines
that society by the nonessential property of cultural diversity. Multiculturalism implies that an open society depends
on cultural diversity and the enhancement and preservation
of ethnic differences.8 Schools are therefore responsible for
providing a multicultural education that mirrors society’s
diversity and perpetuates students’ ethnic identities.9 But
cultural diversity is a consequence of an open society, not
its essential or defining attribute. An open society is distinguished by its guarantee of the right of individuals to
choose their associations and not by the right of ethnic
groups to survive.
Anti-concepts generate dangerous distortions. The cultural
diversity of American society depends on the universal right
of individuals to differ and to be different. Multiculturalism, however, aims to replace the universalism of individual rights with the particularism of corporate pluralism,
and thereby delegitimize individualist pluralism. It defines
American society by the nonessential property of its multicultural composition instead of by the ideals, laws, and customs that make such diversity possible. Multiculturalism’s
espousal of the compulsory preservation of ethnic differences and the maintenance of the cultural identity and
solidarity of subgroups threatens America’s free and open
social order.
AFROCENTRISM AS A SPECIES OF
MULTICULTURALISM
According to Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University, a
leading proponent of Afrocentrism, “the Afrocentric idea” is
“a commitment to a historical project that places the African person back on center” in a cultural analysis.10 Afrocentrism is more than an artistic or literary movement and
more than a quest for authenticity through the history of a
people, says Asante. It is an “escape to sanity” — “the
total use of a method to effect psychological, political, social, cultural and economic change.”11 This method involves overthrowing “Eurocentric icons” and exorcising
them from the life and thought of black Americans, whose
minds have been colonized by Europeans. More specifically, Afrocentricity means “placing African ideals at the
center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior.”12
I first encountered the term “Afrocentrism” in Asante’s review of my book, The Other Side of Racism.13 Asante
called the work “neo-racist”, and condemned its “complete
mastery” of what he called “Eurocentric individualistic ideologies”. He accused me of being totally ignorant of “African concepts” and of failing to see the “antagonism
between European individuality and African collectivity.”14
He found it abominable that someone who is both female
and black defends the tenets of individualism as persistently
as I do.
Asante’s objection to my espousal of individualism reveals
Afrocentrism’s racist assumptions. Asante expects (1) that
the Negroid African strain of my ancestry should be the
basis of my racial identity and (2) that my ideas should
therefore be formulated from “African concepts” and my
values reflect “African collectivity”. (Since my ancestry
also includes Scotch-Irish and American Indian strains,
shouldn’t they also be candidates for the source of my
thinking?) Asante’s condemnation of my individualism
would make sense only if I were in fact African and only if
there were a causal connection between race and culture.
But there is no such causal relationship, and I am no more
African than I am Scotch-Irish or Indian. Calling myself
African makes no more sense than a white Australian calling himself English because his ancestors were English
prisoners deported to the Australian continent.
Furthermore, since universalism is a hallmark of individualism, it is a contradiction in terms to call individualism Eurocentric.15 But true to his particularistic and racist
orientation, Asante objects to individualism not simply for
its specific content but also for its European origins. In his
view, any philosophy is no more than an expression of its
originators’ particular race or geographic origin. Asante
therefore assumes that because individualism originated in
Europe, it is “centered” on Europeans to the exclusion of
the rest of the world. The same is no less true, he argues,
of ideas formulated by Europeans opposed to individualism.
For instance, because Marxism, which he erroneously calls
“the ultimate example of European rationalism”, was formulated by Europeans, Asante argues that it is just as “European centered” as individualism.16 “Marxism is not
helpful in developing Afrocentric concepts and methods because it, too, is a product of a European consciousness that
3
excludes the historical and cultural perspectives of Africa,”
he writes.17
Clearly then, Afrocentrists assume that culture and civilization are racially determined. They identify Western civilization with a certain type of people, namely white Europeans and their white descendants. They therefore claim
that a curriculum emphasizing the history of Western civilization, or even the history of the United States, serves
only the white majority. This is the argument Asante makes
when he asserts that the language of the American classroom is the white child’s language and that the information
imparted is “white cultural information” alien to blacks and
other minorities.
Asante maintains that white children have the advantage of
being taught in the language of the dominant culture, which
is their own, and that this is a disadvantage for blacks, Hispanics, and Asian students. In order to master information
about the majority culture, minority students must reject
their own cultures and experience their “deaths”. Asante
writes: “Lacking reinforcement in their own historical experiences, they become psychologically crippled, hobbling
along in the margins of the European experience of most of
the curriculum.”18 Because what black children learn is not
centered within the cultural framework of Africa, Asante argues that they suffer from cultural dislocation. Their sense
of place is destroyed and their feelings of limited self-worth
are reinforced. Thus they lack direction and confidence.
Multiculturalist James A. Banks argues that proponents of
the Afrocentrist curriculum “are merely asking that the cultures of Africa and African-American people be legitimized
in the curriculum and that African contributions to European civilization be acknowledged.”19 Banks claims that
they and other groups are “demanding that the facts of their
victimization be told, for truth’s sake, but also because they
need to understand their conditions so that they and others
can work to reform society.”20 But it is clear from the
statements by Afrocentrists that they want more than this.
They are not interested merely in purging the curriculum of
content that “distorts and defames the history of black
Americans”21 or fails to “recognize the language and cultural richness of African-American students”.22 In the face of
the erosion of ethnic belonging caused by the increasing
economic diversity within the black community,23 Afrocentrists are also demanding that schools do what the black
community cannot do and, by all evidence, is unwilling to
do: transform black American children into Africans.
Some multiculturalists maintain that they reject Afrocentrism just as much as they reject Eurocentrism. However,
the meaning of the suffix “centric” is not quite the same in
the words “Eurocentric” and “Afrocentric”. “Eurocentric”
is used to suggest a supposed “European perspective” that
is unfairly imposed on those of non-European ancestry,
while “Afrocentric” designates the view that African cultures should be studied from an “African perspective”.
Afrocentrism entails not using the methods of academic disciplines that originated in Europe,24 but teaching all subjects to students of African ancestry in terms of “the
centrality of a world view based on Africa”.25 Thus, it is
clear that Africanists and multiculturalists share the same
basic assumptions, namely, that a person’s ethnic or racial
ancestry determines his culture; that Western civilization is
not superior to non-European cultures; and that we have an
obligation to use the curriculum to help each racial or eth-
nic group maintain its “own” culture. Afrocentrists and
multiculturalists argue that if the curriculum does not reflect
the cultural diversity of American students, then the education of minority students will suffer and they will be excluded from American society.26 In all these respects,
Afrocentrism is a part of the multicultural movement. Their
shared philosophy is that logic and truth vary with racial
groups and that an individual’s consciousness reflects his
racial ancestry.27 Although the following sections focus on
Afrocentrism, a similar critique could be made of multiculturalism in general.
AFROCENTRISM’S MISTAKEN ANALYSIS OF
SELF-ESTEEM
By claiming that black students view the American school
as a “foreign” (European) place that does “foreign things”,
Afrocentrists like Asante completely distort the educational
experience of millions of black students. By perpetuating
the view that American Negroes are outsiders to the Western experience, they deliberately deny the fact that it’s our
cultural heritage too. As Earl E. Thorpe pointed out three
decades ago:
Since 1865 practically all colored Americans ... constantly have viewed this country as their home, and
have not wished to be expatriated or colonized. Their
political and social faith have been the traditional faith
of America, and they speedily and unhesitatingly have
risen to the colors when the nation was imperilled by
war. By and large, they have been basically American
since the early days of slavery, and their so-called
racial traits are simply American traits, accentuated
here and there by historic circumstance. This does not
deny the survival of certain African words, dances, and
similar idioms, but these survivals have become a part
of the total national culture.28
Afrocentrists claim that the way to improve the educational
achievement of black children is to improve their selfimage by requiring teachers to include or emphasize the
contribution of blacks in the curriculum. This approach is
being advocated or implemented in school districts from
Portland, Oregon, to Atlanta, Georgia.29 It is based on the
premise that the self is a collective phenomenon and, hence,
that self-esteem depends upon cultural heritage. It assumes
that personal identity is by definition tied to the thoughts
and deeds of people with whom one happens to share some
racial ancestry and ethnic history.
According to the New York State Board of Education’s
1989 Task Force on Minorities, the value of the Afrocentric
approach is that it will not only cause children of minority
groups to have “higher self-esteem and self-respect”, but
also cause children from European cultures to have “a less
arrogant perspective”.30 Together these propositions
amount to saying that the self-esteem of black students depends upon having white classmates who will try to disprove their presumed racism by tolerating the ethnocentrism
of blacks. This unchallenged demand for one-sided tolerance rests on the double standard of victimization politics
that Ayn Rand condemned so passionately over twenty
years ago:
“Tolerance” and “understanding” are regarded as unilateral virtues. In relation to any given minority, we
are told, it is the duty of all others, i.e., of the majority,
4
to tolerate and understand the minority’s values and
customs — while the minority proclaims that its soul
is beyond the outsider’s comprehension, that no common ties or bridges exist, that it does not propose to
grasp one syllable of the majority’s values, customs or
culture, and will continue hurling racist epithets (or
worse) at the majority’s faces. Nobody can pretend
any longer that the goal of such policies is the elimination of racism.31
How can a black child develop high self-esteem if he internalizes the view that he must be treated more carefully than
other people? How can a white child develop healthy selfesteem if he is guided by the lesson that he must show his
tolerance of others by condoning their intolerance of him?
There is no doubt that black children have a need for selfesteem. They are not unique in this; the need for self- esteem is inherent in man’s nature.32 But it is a cruel hoax to
suggest that there is any significant linkage between self-esteem and race or ethnicity.
Although it may seem logical that experiences of prejudice,
discrimination, and economic failure would cause a group
to have relatively lower self-esteem, studies of the effects of
minority status indicate that such is not necessarily the case.
The assumption of a direct relationship between self-esteem
and discrimination implies that there is no variation in the
effect that ethnicity has on one’s self concept and that all
blacks adjust to their ethnic status in the same way.33 To
date, studies of the relation of ethnic identity and self-concept show that: (1) no assumptions about self-esteem can be
based on race; (2) such factors as social class, academic
achievement, and reference groups appear to be more important than race in explaining self-image; and (3) self-satisfaction, pride, and self-respect are not a monopoly of
dominant groups.34
On what, then, is self-esteem based? Psychologist Nathaniel Branden, who links self-esteem to man’s conceptual
consciousness and capacity of volitional choice, writes that
positive self-esteem is “the conviction that one is competent
to live and worthy of living”.35 In order to sustain our
lives, we need to know that we are competent to live, from
whence comes self-confidence; and we need to know that
we are worthy of living, from whence comes self-respect.
“Man makes himself worthy of living, by making himself
competent to live”, says Branden.36 The only way that a
person can make himself competent to live is by the proper
exercise of his rational faculty, through the preservation of
the will to understand and the will to efficacy.
What is more important to the self-esteem of a ChineseAmerican: knowing that tea, paper, paper money, and printing originated in China or acquiring the skills necessary to
sell tea and calculate earnings? What is more important to
the self-esteem of a Negro American: knowing that Negro
spirituals and folk songs gave rise to American popular
music or learning to defer immediate gratification and tolerate unavoidable frustration in order to achieve goals?
This is not to suggest that knowledge of one’s cultural heritage has no value, but rather that such knowledge is no substitute for competence in the art of living.
I attended school in a segregated school system in the
South. My teachers, who were black, knew that a proper
education meant teaching me how to function as a human
being, not as a black person. In the face of a society that
viewed Negroes only in terms of racial stereotypes, they did
not teach me counter-stereotypes, as Afrocentrists would;
rather, they taught me what I needed to know to fulfill my
human potential. I believe my teachers understood that
being a victim of racism did not entitle me to exemption
from the standards of human achievement; nor did they
give me the impression that I could acquire self-worth secondhand.
This is not to deny the importance of teaching children
about the history of Negro Americans. In my school, we
learned about many blacks who had contributed to American culture. But we were not taught that there was anything special about them other than that they were smart,
articulate, creative people who played a role in making
America and uplifting the Negro community. Afrocentrism,
however, substitutes its own selective and self-aggrandizing
conceptions for objective history of the black Americans
and of the peoples of Africa. In teaching students about the
lives and achievements of people like Ralph Ellison or
Duke Ellington, for example, Afrocentrists would encourage
students to see them not as individuals but as symbolic ancestors whose accomplishments are no more than an extension of the black community, and must remain the exclusive
cultural property of Negroes.
Self-esteem, however, is not a transferable commodity to be
conferred upon one by other people’s character and actions.
It must be earned by each individual himself; there is no
other way. As Branden points out, a person with positive
self-esteem “expects others to perceive his value, not to create it”.37
Afrocentrism’s linkage of self-esteem with the achievements and cultural creations of people who share one’s
racial ancestry limits the frame of reference to an “Africancentered” universe peopled by persons of African descent.
“Our Africanity is our ultimate reality”, asserts Asante,
quoting Maulana R. Karenga.38 Such an approach perpetuates the kind of other-oriented dependency that is a primary
obstacle to positive self-esteem. What Afrocentrism will instill is not positive self-esteem but a fear of personal autonomy and the psychointellectual independence it entails.
Afrocentrists harm black children when they teach them
that they cannot have pride in themselves unless they first
have pride in their African origins. I agree with columnist
William Raspberry that what black children need is not immersion in the history of ancient Africa, but education in
what is necessary for success in modern America: “Black
Americans who have achieved some success in this country
owe it to black children to tell them how they did it.”39
They need to own up to their debt to the ideas and values
that made such success possible, rather than diverting the
attention of black children to traditions, beliefs, and values
of ancestors whose way of life is irrelevant to the contemporary world, and left much to be desired in its own time
and place.
AFROCENTRISM’S GEOGRAPHICAL
DETERMINISM
An underlying assumption of multiculturalism and Afrocentrism is a crude kind of determinism that asserts a direct
relationship between geography and culture. Consider, for
example, Asante’s use of the idea found in Michael Bradley’s book, The Iceman Inheritance, that European attitudes
5
and responses were shaped by the Wurm ice age.40 In the
European landscape dominated by glaciers, a mentality
(which Asante calls a “caveman mentality”) emerged that
drew boundaries, established patriarchy, and introduced individual and clan territoriality. “Pressures of human survival, xenophobia and reliance on hunting combined to create
the philosophical outlook of the European”, writes Asante.
In the regions where the sun dominated the environment,
however, there emerged what Asante calls the “palm tree
mentality” that was “fundamentally community/societyoriented, relaxed and directed toward transcendence”.41
The “palm tree mentality” could be found in African societies, where human interaction was “based on agriculture,
burial of the dead, and ancestor respect”, and on a very
strong collective mentality that gave greater importance to
the group than to the individual.42
Asante’s use of Bradley’s geographical determinism to support his argument against universal standards of discourse
and to justify his denigration of the so-called “Western
mentality” is not unique. Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York divides the human race into the “ice
people” and the “sun people”. Europeans, who are descendants of the ice people, are materialistic, selfish, and
violent; while Africans, who are descendants of the sun
people, are spiritual, communalistic, and peaceful.
These classifications assume a nonexistent correlation between race and culture and ignore the meaning men give to
the world they confront. This is not to deny that there is
some correlation between geography and culture, particularly among primitive peoples; but, as social demographer
William Petersen points out, “The greater the control over
its natural environment a society has, the smaller this correlation will generally be and the less can one regard it as an
inescapable cause-effect relation.”43
Afrocentrists ignore the fact that the correlation between
geography and culture depends on absence of technical
skills. Indeed, linking natural environment with culture and
temperament amounts to no more than a folk belief advanced to justify stereotyping whites and claiming that
blacks have greater moral stature than whites. It is the
same as the “scientific racism” of such European writers as
Count de Gobineau, whose racial theories were used to justify European imperialism. Indeed, Jeffries’ assertion that
blacks are biologically superior to whites because they have
more melanin in their skin (he reportedly believes that melanin regulates health and intellect) resembles the claims of
Nazi leaders, who preached German racial superiority.
This is the same racist thinking that has been used to justify
the oppression of blacks and other minorities. Of course,
the Afrocentrists reject this and similar critiques on the
ground that they reflect the caveman or ice person mentality, which is the last thing wanted from a black person
who is supposed to possess a palm tree mentality. Critics
like me must be explained away. “African-Americans who
participate only in Eurocentric views can easily become
anti-black, the logical extension of European cultural imperialism”, writes Asante. “They are victims of their own
identity crisis, a crisis produced purely by their submission
to the roles whites have forced them to play.”44
THE MISTAKEN ASSUMPTION OF CULTURAL
EQUIVALENCE
Although Afrocentrists typically proclaim the superiority of
African civilizations, they frequently retreat to the more
modest position that every culture is “valid” on its own
terms. Multiculturalists, however, typically proclaim the
equal value of all cultures and only occasionally betray
their hostility to Western civilization. This is one respect in
which multiculturalists differ from Afrocentrists, though it
is clearly a difference in emphasis only.
As George Reisman points out, the promotion of cultural
equivalence requires that a culture based on superstition and
limited to the level of making dugout canoes be regarded as
equal to one based on science and capable of launching
space ships; that a culture that fosters collectivistic and security-oriented thinking and motivation be considered equal
to one that fosters individualism and competition.45 Reisman notes that multiculturalist teachers do not want students to study non-Western civilizations and the conditions
of primitive peoples from the perspective of seeing how
they lag behind Western civilization and what they might do
to catch up. Study from that perspective would be denounced as seeing the world through a “Western lens”. It
would be considered offensive to people of non-West European origin.46
The stated objective of a curriculum that teaches cultural
equivalence, says Reisman, is to make students who have
non-European backgrounds feel that they are equal to
whites. But the actual consequence is that students imbibe
the erroneous assumption that there is a causal relationship
between race and culture, and consequently view themselves not as unique personalities, but as carriers of the cultures of their ancestors. They also learn to devalue more
advanced civilizations, or accept dubious claims about their
ancient ancestors’ achievements in order to sustain the illusion that all civilizations are culturally equal.
Reisman has made one of the best arguments against
Afrocentrism’s geographical determinism: “Western civilization is not a product of geography. It is a body of
knowledge and values. Any individual, any society, is
potentially capable of adopting it.”47 Some of Western civilization’s essential elements did not even originate in the
West. But this is a minor point, “The most vital thing to
realize about [Western civilization]”, says Reisman, “is that
it is open to everyone.”48
AFROCENTRISM’S ATTACK ON REASON
I believe that it is precisely the accessibility of Western
civilization that multiculturalists and Afrocentrists are attacking. They aim to discredit not only the content of
Western civilization but also the universality of the rational
faculty that produced it and comprehends it. Their true
enemy is reason.
According to Asante, Afrocentrism aims to liberate students
from such “Eurocentric myths” as objectivity, universalism,
individualism, rationality, the scientific method, and economic self-interest. Objectivity, he says, has “protected social and literary theory from the scrutiny that would reveal
how theory has often served the interest of the ruling
class”.49 Ironically, the ideas from which Afrocentrists
think blacks need to be protected are those responsible for
human progress wherever and whenever it occurs, including
6
the abolition of slavery in the United States. There can be
no hope that America will continue to advance if its largest
minority group — not to mention all other Americans —
come to view those ideas as mere myths.
To demand that our ideas are valid simply because they are
ours or our ancestors’ implies that the truth is irrelevant.
This will produce nothing but that which dogmatism has
produced throughout history: irreconcilable conflict, misery,
death, and destruction. Yet this is precisely the kind of
thinking Afrocentrists and other multiculturalists encourage.
Their insistence on the primacy of consciousness over reality sabotages consciousness itself. For it leaves men without a rational way to distinguish truth from falsehood.
Truth, then, can be decided ultimately by nothing but force.
The attempt to discredit objectivity is an attack on man’s
basic tool of knowledge, the faculty of reason. That faculty
is the foundation of human nature. It is essential to our
capacity for free choice and thus grounds those universal
individual rights that can be recognized only through its
exercise. By attacking the faculty of reason, Afrocentrists
and multiculturalists seem to be trying to make cultural particularism inescapable. To teach young people that they
cannot rely on reason because it is part of “the dominant
ideology” of capitalist society or because it is “Eurocentric”
is to short-circuit their capacity to think critically and arrive
at independent judgments. If successful, it would produce a
generation incapacitated by uncertainty and abject conformity, and lacking all basis for positive self-esteem.
During the fall of 1989, I gave two talks at Smith College.
In the first, I spoke on individualism in the black community. My basic argument was that whites do not have a
monopoly on individualism, that blacks can be individualists too. Suddenly, in the middle of my talk, a black student ran out of the room crying. Why? Well, I was
speaking in a language that was offensive to her. Students
told me of the offensiveness of my views during the question period after the talk I gave the next night. They told
me, in effect, that I spoke a language that should not come
from someone who is black and female. They had been
taught that my ideas were the same as those used by racists
and sexists to justify exploitation. One young lady, a white
student, condemned me and said I should not have been
permitted to speak at Smith.
I can understand why the students were offended by my
remarks. Collectivism is now taken for granted and taught
under the guise of “diversity”. When today’s students hear
the principles of individualism articulated, they think they
are hearing an opposing brand of collectivism that they call
Eurocentrism.50 We owe it to our students to teach them
the difference between individualism and collectivism, and
to inform them of what is at stake in the conflict between
those worldviews. They may resent being so enlightened,
they may flee from us in tears; but at least they will be
aware of what the debate is really about.
NOTES
1. The concept of corporate pluralism is derived from Milton
Gordon’s typology of models of intergroup relations, in which
the competing ideologies are liberal pluralism and corporate
pluralism. Missing from Gordon’s typology is the third orientation I call individualist pluralism. Liberal pluralism seeks
equality among individuals, inequality of result, and unity out
of group diversity. Corporate pluralism seeks equality among
groups, equality of result, and unity out of group diversity. Individualist pluralism seeks equality before the law and unity
out of individual diversity. See Milton Gordon, “Toward a
General Theory of Racial and Ethnic Group Relations”, in Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity: Theory
and Experience, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1975; and Milton Gordon, “Models of Pluralism: The
New American Dilemma”, Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, March 1981.
2. See Martin Marger, Race and Ethnic Relations: American and
Global Perspectives, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, California, 1985.
3. Ibid., p. 290. See also Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth:
Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America, Atheneum, New York,
1981.
4. Marger, p. 291.
5. As Marger and others have noted, increasing numbers of
America’s most recent immigrants retain their native language.
Rather than encourage language assimilation, many multiculturalists judge tolerance of ethnic pluralism by people’s support
for efforts to provide public educational and other services in
the immigrants’ language, especially Spanish.
6. Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner, The
Homeless Mind, Random House, New York, 1973, pp. 63-82.
7. Ayn Rand, “ ‘Extremism,’ or the Art of Smearing”, in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, New American Library, New York,
1966, p. 177.
8. James A. Banks, “Multicultural Education: For Freedom’s
Sake”, Educational Leader, December 1991/January 1992.
9. See James A. Banks, “Teaching Ethnic Literacy: A Comparative Approach”, Social Education, December 1973; “Curricular Models for an Open Society”, in Delmo Della-Dora and
James E. House, eds., Education for an Open Society, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Washington DC, 1974; “Pluralism, Ideology and Curriculum Reform”,
The Social Studies, May-June 1976; and “A Response to Philip
Freedman”, Phi Delta Kappan, May 1977.
10. Molefi Kete Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, Temple University
Press, Philadelphia, 1987, p. 125.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 6
13. Anne Wortham, The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical
Study of Black Race Consciousness, Ohio State University
Press, Columbus, Ohio, 1981.
14. Molefi Kete Asante, review of The Other Side of Racism: A
Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness, by Anne
Wortham, Black Books Bulletin 7, no. 3, 1981, pp. 46-47.
15. The practice of smearing individualism by attributing to it
characteristics antithetical to it has persisted among social
scientists, social critics, philosophers, poets, and politicians
since the eighteenth century. The most recent had been the
characterization of the Reagan political era, the lifestyle of
baby boomers, and the Los Angeles riots as “individualistic”.
For analyses of misconceptions of individualism and the vices
attributed to it, see Alan S. Waterman, The Psychology of Individualism, Praeger, New York, 1984; Frank Chodorov, “What
Individualism Is Not”, in Charles H. Hamilton, ed., Fugitive
Essays, Liberty Press, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1980; and Nathaniel Branden, “Counterfeit Individualism”, in Ayn Rand, The
Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, New American Library, New York, 1964.
16. Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, 1988, p. 80.
17. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, p. 8.
7
18. Molefi Kete Asante, “Afrocentric Curriculum”, Educational
Leader, December 1991/January 1992, pp. 28-31.
19. Banks, “Multicultural Education”, p. 33.
20. Ibid.
21. Asa G. Hilliard, “Why We Must Pluralize the Curriculum”,
Educational Leader, December 1991/January 1992, pp. 12-14.
See also Asa G. Hilliard et al., The Infusion of African and
African-American Content in the School Curriculum, Aaron
Press, Morristown, New Jersey, 1990.
22. Kenneth C. Holt, “A Rationale for Creating African-American
Immersion Schools”, Educational Leader, December 1991/
January 1992, p. 18.
23. Studies show that although blacks have a greater sense of race
consciousness than other groups, there is evidence that
“younger and better educated blacks do not feel as strong a
sense of group boundaries as do older and less well educated
blacks”, National Research Council, in Gerald D. Jaynes and
Robin M. Williams, Jr., eds., A Common Destiny: Blacks and
American Society, National Academy Press, Washington DC,
1989, p. 200.
24. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, p. 174. Asante argues that “the
idea of discipline, inherited from the German school, has little
to do with an intellectual enterprise in the twentieth century.
The abandonment of this archaic notion has been coming for a
long time.”
25. Ibid., pp. 159-181.
26. James A. Banks, “Multicultural Education: Characteristics and
Goals”, in James A. Banks and C. A. McGee Banks, eds.,
Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives, Allyn and
Bacon, Needham Heights, Massachusetts, 1989. This is a
variation of the position held by affirmative action’s proponents, who argue that advancing minorities through quotas and
preferential hiring practices is necessary if they are to attain
equity with the majority. See John C. Livingston, Fair Game?
Ineqality and Affirmative Action, Freeman, San Francisco,
1979.
27. For an analysis of the political consequences of this orientation, which he calls “pluralistic social subjectivism”, see Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in
America, Stein and Day, New York, 1982. I should point out
that characterizing multiculturalism as being premised on epistemological and normative relativism or subjectivism does not
make one a “traditionalist” in the sense that Peter A. Redpath
defines it (“Saving the Academic Soul”, Measure, May 1992).
Redpath identifies academic traditionalists as proponents of the
univocal position that truth is objective and universal. My argument agrees with Redpath that extreme traditionalists are in
error because they fail to recognize that while truth is universal it is also contextual or, as he puts it, “originates within
particular conditions” (p. 8). While truth is never subjective, it
is both particular (contextually objective) and universal. What
is needed, writes Redpath, is neither extreme traditionalism nor
extreme multiculturalism, but a view of education that “admits
the importance of particular conditions as necessary conditions
for the improvement of education and ... the possible transcultural and global nature of the content of truth statements which
are being taught” (p. 9).
28. Earl E. Thorpe, The Mind of the Negro, Ortlieb Press, Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, 1961, pp. xix-xx.
29. Julie Johnson, “Curriculum Seeks to Lift Blacks’ Self-Image”,
New York Times, 8 March 1989.
30. Joseph Berger, “Now the Regents Must Decide if History Will
Be Recast”, New York Times, 11 February 1990.
31. Ayn Rand, “The Age of Envy”, in The New Left: The AntiIndustrial Revolution, second revised edition, Signet, New
York, 1973, pp. 152-186.
32. See Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Self-Esteem, Bantam Books, New York, 1971; and Honoring the Self: The Psychology of Confidence and Respect, Bantam Books, New
York, 1985.
33. See Morris Rosenberg and Roberta G. Simmons, Black and
White Self-Esteem: The Urban School Child, American Sociological Association, Washington DC, 1971; Leonard Bloom,
The Psychology of Race Relations, Schenkman, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1971; and Howard M. Bahr, Bruce A. Chadwick, and Joseph H. Strauss, African Ethnicity, D. C. Heath,
Lexington, Massachusetts, 1979.
34. Richard T. Schaefer, Racial and Ethnic Groups, Little Brown,
Boston, Massachusetts, 1979.
35. Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Self-Esteem, p. 110.
36. Ibid., p. 114.
37. Ibid., p. 204.
38. Asante, quoting Maulana R. Karenga, Afrocentricity, p. 81.
39. William Raspberry, in Allan C. Brownfield, “Afro-Centered
Education is a Distortion of History”, Human Events, 1 June
1991, pp. 10-12.
40. Michael Bradley, The Iceman Inheritance, Dorset, Toronto,
1979.
41. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, pp. 62-63.
42. Ibid., p. 63.
43. William Petersen, Population, Macmillan, New York, 1975,
p. 106.
44. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, p. 165.
45. George Reisman, “Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism”, The Intellectual Activist 5, no. 10, 1989, p. 6.
46. Ibid. Implicit in presenting cultures as normatively equivalent
is the rejection of the hierarchical nature of value judgment.
Such ethical relativism recently led law-abiding citizens to
identify with the lawless behavior of rioters during the Los
Angeles riots.
47. Ibid., p. 4.
48. Ibid.
49. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, p. 164.
50. See William M. McGovern, “Collectivism and Individualism”,
Felix Morley, ed., Essays on Individuality, Liberty Press, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1977.