Salsassin Wrote:
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> Yeah, I have heard this as well. That it seems to
> have become a vendetta. Almost like she has
> become a champion of Eurocentrism.
No.

What happens is that anyone who dares criticize Afrocentrism is labeleda racist and a defender of Eurocentrism. This is what has happened to me. Upholding academic standards, critical thinking, and the proper use of evidence is NOT Eurocentrism. The problem is that there is a reciprocal alliance between the numerous (mostly white) and well-conected proponents of post-modernism and the Afrocentrics (and/or people like Vine DeLoria). The Afrocentrics use the prestigious publications by post-modernists to argue that 1) the West is corrupt, 2) there is no truth, 3) However, the 'truth' of non-western or oppressed groups, or feminists is more valid than 'Western truth' or 'male truth' because these groups have a higher claim to morality. The POMO's use Afrocentric claims (such as the Dogon/Sirius B, or the claim that perfectly ground telecopic lenses have been found in Egypt) as examples of the superiority of 'African centered' science over 'Western science.'

Lefkowitz began by legitimately complaining about distortions being taught at her University in her area of expertise-- Classics. she was bitterly attacked as a racist (and Jew) as a result of her acting entirely within her academic and professional qualifications. If you read her stuff, and I've read a lot, she writes primarily within her area of competence and fully documents and footnotes her stuff-- not the case with most Afrocentrics. Check out the credentials and the areas in which they claim to have expertise in their publications.

As an examp'e. I have Lefkowitz review of James's book <i>Hidden Legacy</i> published in 1994-- however I don't know how much of it I can post given copyright laws?

We have been trying to get permission to reproduce my big melanin paper on the Hall of Maat site because it covers a whole different area than my Van Sertima Olmec stuff-- perhaps when that comes back we could post it. Meanwhile here is a piece I posted previously in Maat:

I don’t want to get into a broad discussion of Afrocentrism generally or Bernal’s *Black Athena*-- been there, done that (I spent a whole summer on the Athena Discussion list on the ocassion of the publication of Lefkowitz’s book). My work has centered on refuting claims of racial superiority of Black people due to their higher melanin concentrations, attempts to introduce the Portland Baseline Essay in Science as curricular material in grade school science, and attempts to claim an Egyptian or African origin for Olmec and Mesoamerican civilization. If people wnt to discuss these, fine. There is a voluminous literature on *Black Athena (which btw does not claim that Egyptians were black, despite the title). Vimberger’s web page posted below is a Bernal partisan. An useful reference might be Jacques Berlinerblau. 1999. *Heresy in the University. The *Black Athena* Controversy and the Responsibilities of American Intellectuals* New Brunswick: Rutgers Univesity Press. Another overall view with a large bibliography is Stephen Howe. 1998. *Afrocentrism. Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes* London:Verso. The following is something I wrote for the melanin paper (have to save time somehow)
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At the turn of the century, hyper-diffusionist European scholars argued that all civilization originated from one primary center of innovation, Egypt (Perry 1923, 1937; Smith 1923; Massey 1907; Churchward 1913, 1921). Because, most Europeans did not think that Black people were capable of the achievements reached by classical Egyptian civilization, in this "Heliocentric model" the Egyptians were Caucasian and Egypt was not considered part of Africa. Much effort has been expended in archeology, anthropology, and history to overcome the racist ideology of the nineteenth century. The dominant theory today, independent invention, holds that discoveries and inventions such as agriculture, metallurgy, and architectural techniques have been discovered independently by different peoples and that because biological differences do not produce cultural differences, one race or ethnic group cannot claim intellectual or cultural superiority over all others. Claims that particular ideas have diffused from one culture to another are no longer assumed to be true; they must bear the burden of proof to show the correct temporal sequence and clear evidence of contact.

It is ironic that today, much of Afrocentric writing about Egypt is based on the same evidence and on the writings of those earlier Heliocentric authors. However, now the claim is that ancient Egypt was a black African civilization and that Egyptians (or at least the rulers and the cultural leaders) were Negroid (Diop 1974, 1981; Williams, C. 1974). No one disputes that Egypt is in Africa, or that its civilization had elements in common with sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in religion. However, the claim that all Egyptians, or even all the pharaohs, were black, is not valid. Most scholars believe that Egyptians in antiquity looked pretty much as they look today, with a gradation of darker shades toward the Sudan. Evidence for the racial composition of Egypt comes from a variety of sources. Berry, Berry, and Ucko (1967), using a "measure of divergence" based on thirty non-metrical skeletal variants, found that there were significant differences between negroid populations (Ashanti, Sudan), Mediterranean populations (Palestine), and all ancient Egyptian samples. They also found a remarkable degree of constancy in the population of Egypt over a period of 5000 years. Recent multivariate analysis of crania (Keita 1990) showed a pattern common to both late dynastic northern Egypt and the Maghreb (North Africa west of Egypt) in which both tropical African and European phenotypes, as well as intermediate patterns, were present. Early southern predynastic Egyptian crania showed affinities with tropical African patterns and differed notably from the Maghreb pattern. Archeological evidence suggests that the Nile valley was primarily settled by immigrants from both the Sahara and from more southern areas and that Egyptian culture was formed by the fusion of Saharan and Nilotic peoples (Hassan 1988). The mixture of phenotypes suggested by the archaeologic and skeletal evidence is amply supported by representations in art and sculpture (Vercoutter, 1978; O'Connor, 1971; Trigger, 1978; Kelly, 1991). Egypt was a multiracial society that did not discriminate internally on the basis of color, but looked down on all foreigners regardless of color (Yurco, 1989; Snowden, 1970, 1989, 1992; Young, 1992; Levine, 1992; Coleman, 1992). Even Martin Bernal, the most articulate proponent of Egyptian influence on Greece, agrees that in the pharaonic period Egypt was a racially mixed society with a higher incidence of Negroid phenotypes in Upper Egypt (Young, 1992; Kelly, 1991; Bernal, 1992).

Based on this Black Heliocentric Model, it is claimed that Greek civilization (and ultimately all of Western civilization) was heavily and fundamentally influenced by Egypt (Bernal, 1987, 1991) and that practically all of Greek civilization was stolen from Egypt (James, 1988; ben-Yochannan, 1971). Black Egyptian civilization is also claimed to be the forerunner of other civilizations: of the New World Olmecs (Van Sertima, 1976), India and China (Van Sertima, 1985a), and Europe (Van Sertima, 1985b).

How is the superiority of Egyptians, the primary source of all civilization, explained? A couple of approaches have been taken. A number of Afrocentrists, most prominently Molefi Kete Asante (1980), have proposed that Egypt (and Africans in general) was undergirded by a particular value system/religious orientation, njia (called maat by others) and by an African epistemology that is different from that of the West. The glory of Egypt and of other African empires was due to the superiority of this approach to knowledge and to their organization of society. This approach is based on philosophical and historical evidence, and will not be discussed further. A more extreme approach attributes the success of Egypt (and the use of maat) to the fact that Black people are mentally, spiritually and physically superior to other people. This is a theory of biological superiority based on the amount of melanin in the skin of Black people. A number of extraordinary properties are attributed to melanin. These properties, in turn, confer superior powers to humans who have large amounts of melanin in their skin. By extension, two other substances involved in animal pigmentation, ß-MSH (ß-melanin stimulating hormone) and melatonin, are also claimed by some to confer extraordinary powers to people with black skin.

An active group, referred to here as the "melanists," has been developing and publicizing the properties of melanin. There have been five Annual Melanin Conferences held around the country. The talks presented have been widely disseminated through broadcasts on African-American radio programs. The program "African-American World View," broadcast on Detroit Public Schools Radio, WDTR 90.9 FM, has been particularly diligent in broadcasting most of the talks presented at the various Melanin Conferences in addition to other appearances of the melanists. Some of these views have recently become available in writing. The melanists are a diverse group, with an unusually high proportion of psychologists and psychiatrists. The following list is not inclusive: Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a practicing psychiatrist in Washington, D.C.; Dr. Richard King, a psychiatrist teaching at San Francisco State University; Dr. Wade Nobles, a psychologist at San Francisco State University; Neferkare Stewart, a San Francisco psychologist; Dr. Leonard Jeffries, former head of African-American Studies at City University of New York; Hunter Havelin Adams of the Chicago Lifeways Institute, formerly an environmental technician at Argonne National Laboratory; Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, an educational consultant in Chicago and developer of a set of Afrocentric curricular materials; Anthony T. Browder, a Washington artist; Carol Barnes; Dr. Naim Akbar. None of these melanists has done or is doing actual laboratory research on melanin. Their information is obtained from searching the medical literature as well as referring to a diverse collection of literature on Egypt and the New Age.