Afrocentricity deals with the consciousness of a
people who have been separated from the core of their heritage through slavery, historical untruths, and political, educational, and economic oppression. Afrocentric studies seek to recapture, through historical and
cultural awareness, a full understanding of how African Americans should view the world. In
Afrocentricity, Molefi K. Asante suggests that African Americans should disencumber themselves from the Eurocentric point of view and adopt instead a way of thinking that gives primacy to the cultural achievements of Africans and African Americans.
To adopt the idea of Afrocentricity, one must first accept the proposition that there is a tangible African cultural system based on values and experiences common to the people of the African diaspora. Asante cautions that an Afrocentric people should not replace their history, culture, mythology, and language with another. The infusion and adoption of another culture into the African experience is in direct conflict with traditional African values. People of African descent throughout the world, Asante argues, should embrace what is theirs and discard values and ideologies acquired from other cultures. Asante claims that such acquisitions serve to cripple and dilute the rich heritage of Africans everywhere.
Afrocentricity is not a new concept but a restatement of ideas associated with a number of past leaders of the African American community. In the first chapter, Asante examines the lives and works of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Maulana Karenga.
Asante views Booker T. Washington as having accommodated the white masses in order to seek educational and economic gains for
black people. Asante, however, asserts that economic freedom must always be connected to political and cultural freedom, else freedom does not truly exist. He views Du Bois as a largely Eurocentric thinker who nevertheless had the vision to prepare future generations for Afrocentricity, and he argues that Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement was the most perfect, consistent, and brilliant ideology of liberation in the first half of the twentieth century. Asante also asserts that King’s contribution to the development of Afrocentricity was the moral framework in which he operated and his illumination of the ethical problems that segregation manifested. Asante views Muhammad and Malcolm X as effective organizers who taught their followers to relinquish another culture’s values and focus on obtaining their own.
Lastly, Asante
discusses Karenga and his system of ideology known as Kawaida, a system rooted in African tradition. Asante sees Karenga’s message as representing African genius.
The totality of the Afrocentric experience, Asante says, is expressed in Njia ("The Way").
Afrocentricity contains an extensive
chapter on Njia and advocates its practice, which involves a ritualistic ceremony that acknowledges the value of the African cultural heritage.
Asante asserts that African Americans must awaken to a new consciousness manifested in psychological and political actions. Furthermore, African Americans must accept pan-Africanism and must discard "slave names" in favor of African ones.
Chapter 2 of
Afrocentricity deals with language liberation, the negation of black racism, systematic nationalism, creative, recreative, and consumer intelligence, and the need to advance the
theory of Afrocentricity. Asante argues that blacks must pay critical attention to what is written about Africa, Africans, African Americans, and others of African ancestry.
Chapter 3 discusses how black people should deal with literature, politics, and personalities that do not reflect the historical truths of the African diaspora. Asante also describes several levels of transformation that accompany Afrocentricity. These five levels of
awareness are skin recognition, environmental recognition, personality awareness, interest-concern, and Afrocentric awareness. Asante also identifies conceptual terms that need to be internalized with the adoption of Afrocentricity. He also analyzes the Christian church and its influence as an authoritative religious force within the black community and discusses such topics as Negritude and Marxism. In the final chapter, Asante discusses tactics and strategies for achieving Afrocentricity.
More summaries about the Afrocentricity, The Theory of Social Change