MANY PRESENT DAY GENERATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS APPEAR TO BE INDIFFERENT ABOUT ANCIENT HISTORY AND PARTICULARLY ABOUT AFRICAN HISTORY DEALING WITH THE ANCIENT AFRICAN EGYPTIANS AND WHO THE BUILDERS OF THE PYRAMIDS AND THE COLOSSAL ARCHITECTUAL STRUCTURES, -- THE GREAT SPHINX PYRAMID HAVING BEEN REFFERRED TO AS ONE OF THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD. CHECK OUT THE FOLLOWING ... AFTER READING IT ... CARE TO COMMENT? ANCIENT EGYPT: Ancient Egypt was essentially populated by people who in the 19th and 20th century would have been classified as “black people” and “people of African descent. RECENT BLACK HISTORIANS HAVE SAID “ANCIENT EGYPT WAS ESSENTIALLY A BLACK AFRICAN COUNTRY.” A WHITE OPPONENT OF THE FACT THAT ANCIENT EGYPT WAS PEOPLED BY A BLACK AFRICAN PEOPLE, FRANK YURCO, HAD THE FOLLOWING TO SAY ABOUT IT: “The deeper reason for the Afrocentric campaign lies in the theory that the purpose of history in the schools is essentially therapeutic: to build a sense of self-worth among minority children. Eurocentrism, by denying nonwhite children any past in which they can take pride, is held to be the cause of poor academic performance. Race consciousness and group pride are supposed to strengthen a sense of identity and self-respect among nonwhite students.” (emphasis added) (43-44) “Frank J. Yurco, an Egyptologist at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, after examining the evidence derivable from mummies, paintings, statues, and reliefs, concludes in the Biblical Archaeological Review THAT ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, LIKE THEIR MODERN DESCENDANTS, VARIED IN COLOR (1) FROM THE LIGHT MEDITERRANEAN TYPE (2) TO THE DARKER BROWN OF UPPER EGYPT (3) TO THE STILL DARKER SHADE OF THE NUBIANS AROUND ASWAN. HE ADDS THAT ANCIENT EGYPTIANS WOULD HAVE FOUND THE QUESTION MEANINGLESS AND WONDERS AT OUR PRESUMPTION IN ASSIGNING ‘OUR PRIMITIVE RACIAL LABELS’ TO SO IMPRESSIVE A CULTURE.” Yurco’s verdict on John Henrik Clarke’s Baseline Essay exposition of the Afrocentric case is comprehensive - ‘A mélange of misinformation, inconsistance [sic], outright fallacious information, half-truths, and outdated information ... virtually valueless as scholarship. ... reads more like a medieval chronicle in parts than like a current survey of history.’ (emphasis added) (42) “Feel-good history, moreover, is a betrayal of a noble profession. . .. LET US BY ALL MEANS TEACH BLACK HISTORY, AFRICAN HISTORY, WOMEN’S HISTORY, HISPANIC HISTORY, ASIAN HISTORY. BUT LET US TEACH THEM AS HISTORY, NOT AS FILIOPIETISTIC COMMEMORATION. THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY IS TO PROMOTE NOT GROUP SELF-ESTEEM, BUT UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD AND THE PAST, DISPASSIONATE ANALYSIS, JUDGMENT, AND PERSPECTIVE, RESPECT FOR DIVERGENT CULTURES AND TRADITIONS, AND UNFLINCHING PROTECTION FOR THOSE UNIFYING IDEAS OF TOLERANCE, DEMOCRACY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS THAT MAKE FREE HISTORICAL INQUIRY POSSIBLE.’ (55) [THIS WAS QUOTED BY MARY LEFKOWTIZ IN NOT OUT OF AFRICA, INTRODUCTION, P. 4) - MARY LEFKOWITZ Mary R. Lefkowitz (/ˈlɛfkoʊwɪts/; born c. 1935) is an American classical scholar and Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College. She is best known to non-Classicists for her anti-Afrocentrism book, Not Out of Africa (1996). She is the widow of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Anti-Afrocentricism[edit] In 2008, Lefkowitz published History Lesson, which the Wall Street Journal described as a personal account of what she experienced as a result of questioning the veracity of Afrocentrism and the motives of its advocates.[2] She was attacked in newsletters from the Wellesley Africana Studies Department by her colleague Tony Martin,[3] which turned into a rancorous, personal conflict with anti-Semitic elements. Nut Maat Ra Kemetrtin stated in May 1994 at Cornell University that Black people should interpret their own reality. . . . Jews have been in the forefront of efforts to thwart the interpretation of our own history.[4] Another incident described in her book, Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, the author of Africa: The Mother of Western Civilization, gave the Martin Luther King lecture at Wellesley in 1993. Dr. Lefkowitz attended this lecture with her husband, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University. In that lecture, ben-Jochannan stated that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria, Egypt. During the question and answer session following the lecture, Lefkowitz asked ben-Jochannan, How would that have been possible, when the library was not built until after his death? ben-Jochannan replied that the dates were uncertain. Sir Hugh responded, Rubbish! Lefkowitz writes that ben-Jochannan proceeded to tell those present that they could and should believe what black instructors told them and that although they might think that Jews were all hook-nosed and sallow faced, there were other Jews who looked like himself.[5] Lefkowitz has published on subjects including mythology, women in antiquity, Pindar, and fiction in ancient biography. She came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. In Black Athena Revisited (1996), which she edited with Guy MacLean Rogers, her colleague at Wellesley College, the ideas of Martin Bernal are further scrutinized. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lefkowitz
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 10:04:10 +0000
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