We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument About Afrocentrism by Clarence E. Walker

Afrocentrism has been a debatable yet renowned stream in colleges and universities throughout the USA, in addition to in black groups. yet in We cannot pass domestic Again, historian Clarence E. Walker places Afrocentrism to the acid attempt, in a considerate, passionate, and sometimes blisteringly humorous research that melts away the pretensions of this "therapeutic mythology."
As expounded by means of Molefi Kete Asante, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and others, Afrocentrism encourages black americans to discard their contemporary heritage, with its inescapable white presence, and to include in its place an empowering imaginative and prescient in their African (specifically Egyptian) ancestors because the resource of western civilization. Walker marshals a phalanx of significant scholarship to rout those rules. He exhibits, for example, that historic Egyptian society was once no longer black yet a melange of ethnic teams, and questions no matter if, at least, the pharaonic regime bargains a version for blacks this present day, asking "if everyone was once a King, who outfitted the pyramids?" yet for Walker, Afrocentrism is greater than easily undesirable history--it substitutes a feel-good fantasy of the prior for an try and grapple with the issues that also confront blacks in a racist society. the trendy American black id is the fabricated from centuries of actual background, as Africans and their descendants created new, hybrid cultures--mixing many African ethnic impacts with local and eu components. Afrocentrism replaces this complicated historical past with a doubtful declare to far away glory.
"Afrocentrism bargains now not an empowering figuring out of black americans' past," Walker concludes, "but a pastiche of 'alien traditions' held jointly via simplistic fantasies." extra to the purpose, this specious heritage denies to black americans the consideration, and tool, that springs from a decent figuring out in their actual history.