AFROCENTRISM The Argument We're Really Having

Afrocentrism is many things to many people, from the insistent claims of Leonard Jeffries to the commercialism of the mainstream media. In the last five years it has pushed its way into the American consciousness, both as an academic movement and as an attitude. Several years ago I watched Eddy Murphy as Akenaton, Iman as Nfertiti, and Michael Jackson as a Trickster Imhotep in the music video "Remember the Time." MTV had met Afrocentrism? At any rate, it was an ambitious fantasy set in ancient Egypt for the delectation of Black Americans and, perhaps, the consternation of Whites.

I, a professional Africanist, had remained largely removed from the controversy surrounding Black nationalist historiography and, especially, Afrocentrism. Not that I hadn't heard about clashes. Several years ago, I could not help but be aware of charges of both racism and anti-Semitism at Hillary Clinton's alma mater, Wellesley College. Professor Tony Martin of the Africana Studies Department taught from The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, a book issued by the Nation of Islam; it argued that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. Professor Mary Lefkowitz, a classicist, became one of Professor Martin's chief critics. He in turn accused her of leading a "Jewish onslaught." The president of the college became embroiled in an argument over freedom of speech, a debate with national reverberations, especially in a decade of supposedly deteriorating Black/Jewish relations.

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