8/14/2019 Afrocentricity, Multiculturalism, and Black Athena by
Wallace Robert
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Afrocentricity, Multiculturalism, and Black AthenaRobert W
Wallace
The Afrocentric movement no w influential in NorthAmerican
primary an dsecondary schools is arguably the most important an d
challenging developmentinhigher education since the curricular
reforms of the nineteen-sixties 1. This movement is currently
informed by tw o different an d contrasting orientations:
multicultural, an d what ma y be called Afro-Hellenic. In its
multicultural orientation,Afrocentrism is grounded in ethnic an d
cultural diversity, within the frameworkof contemporary society.
Bycontrast, Afro-Hellenism, which attributes to Africam an y o f t
h e accomplishments traditionally associated w i th t h e ancient
Greeks,is abstract, intellectual, and grounded in th e traditional
orientations of Westerncivilization. The argument of this essay is
that Afro-Hellenism is in fact, as it seems,paradoxical. As a
proposition it is difficult to defend on historical grounds. As
apolitical concept it is retrograde an d counterproductive.Th e
movement toward multiculturalism in th e United States is in p a rt
t h eresult of increased immigration t o t he U.S. especially from
Central America, th eCaribbean an d Southeast Asia. It is also,
inpart, th e result of conflicting attitudestoward non-whites felt
b y m a ny white Americans: attitudes that continue to reflect an
element of racism, excluding non-whites from full partidpation
inAmericansociety despite ideologies of th e meltingpot. Racism
remains an issue no t leastin primary and secondary education. When
American public schools began tobe desegregated in th e 1960s, many
Southernwhites left these schools to establish privateacademies,
often calledChristian, as for example (i n a communityI know) the
Liberty Christian Academy. Extraordinarily, Christian is a
codeword, meaning that blacks are no t welcome. In 1980, although
blacks constitutedonly 10 percent of the American population, more
than two thirds of black childrenattended schools that were m or e
t ha n 50% black. In integrated schools thesechildren are often
treatedpoorly, placed in remedial sections or tracked into
vocational areas. Racism, of course, also remains a factor
inAmerican societygenerally. A recent book h as a rg u ed that in
fact most white Americans are affected byracist thinking, believing
(for example) that blacks a re p r ob a bl y intellectuallyinferior
to whites 2. In part as a consequence of racism, America ha s n o t
b e enable to solve the problem of a large urban black underclass,
whose conditions,of crime an d drugs an d teenage pregnancies, are
steadily deteriorating 3.
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