John, I think you and others are confused a bit.

1) Just because a person is dark brown in complexion does not make that person an African American. Just because a person is not African American does not mean that person is not dark brown.

2) Just because the AE are not directly related to African Americans does not mean that they could not have also been dark brown in complexion.

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The whole point of Afrocentrism in debating the academic establishment in terms of the study of Ancient Egypt is that they feel that the establishment goes too far in trying to remove any "color" from the AE. Call it Eurocentric or what you want, but trying to somehow minimize the fact that there were and are many Egyptians who are quite dark brown is a perfect example of what the Afrocentrics argue against. Given the fact that, in many tombs from AE, the portraits of the owners are painted quite dark brown, and given the fact that so many in Egypt today possess the same complexion, I see no reason to dismiss the possibility of a more prominent population of dark brown Africans in Egypt's past. There is a quite active effort in my opinion to overly generalize the AE as lighter than most other Africans, when that is not necessarily the case. True the AE were a unique nationality like all other African nations, so why is there so much effort to disconnect Egypt from Africa, when even most here admit that Egyptian culture sprang up from within the Nile valley which is in Africa. Therefore that makes it an African culture, with some influences of people and culture from outside, but still an African people and culture. Those facts alone are enough to demolish any sort of Eurocentric claims of a European or semitic origin of AE culture and people.

Afrocentrists are not scientists and unfortunately they keep trying to disprove scientific research without any solid research of their own. If they would start studying archaeology and antropology, go to Egypt and do some of their own research, maybe someone would actually respect their position more.

But even given the flaws of current Afrocentric writing, it does not change the fact that historically Egyptology has been anything but a Eurocentric treasure hunt. That is a fact. Today's research is still tainted by the attitudes of Victorian Egyptologists who felt that the artifacts of AE belong to them and were their legacy, even though they were from thousands of miles away. When someone today paints a mental image of an AE person, most likely that person will look like a European, not an Arab, not a "mediterranean" but like a Northern Briton and god forbid, not like a dark brown Tuareg or native Egyptian. So even if Afrocentrism is sometimes sloppy and very hateful, it does not make Eurocentrism OK or acceptable either.

Lastly, the whole idea of AE being the basis of Western Civilization is a misnomer, IMO. America was built upon the ideas of Greece and modelled after Ancient Rome. The rennaissance was based around the discovery of Ancient Greece and Greek writings. Therefore, AE could not have been a direct basis for Western Civilization. However, what is really being said is that AE was the home of many ideas and concepts that eventually would become commonplace in many societies. AE was a great civilization that influenced many others with whom it came in contact and therefore did provide influence. They also deserve credit for many acheivements that quite possibly were firsts of many sorts. This is what the Afrocentrists are really talking about, giving the AE credit for architectural, intellectual and artistic acheivements prior to the Greeks and separate from the Babylonians. Somehow they feel that these achievements are understated. Such understatements are the foundations of many arguments here at Maat, especially concerning things like mathematics and astronomy. So, in that sense the Afrocentrists aren't unique. What does make them unique is the fact that they have little or no independent research or evidence to back up their claims or shed light on these age old debates.