Molefi Kete Asante: Why Afrocentricity?
Let me remind you of a recent event. A white policeman in New Richmond, Ohio, refused to shoot a white man begging to be shot. The policeman, Jesse Kidder, is praised for demonstrating restraint in refusing to shoot the man, Michael Wilcox, who had been accused of killing his fiancée. Pundits and commentators announced gleefully that Kidder’s action was exceptional and certainly an example of good police behavior. Few would dispute the fact that the police used restraint, but the lesson to the white child and to the black child, I should add, is that police can show restraint when the suspect is white, even if he is suspected of murder.
.. Thus the white child finds three aspects of privilege immediately in a racist society. They are secure in their physical and psychological situations; they are protected in their living spaces; and they have the freedom to explore every conceivable adventure without fear or trepidation. On top of this they are granted audacity that is condemned in black children.
.. Young black boys must know their power and learn to respect it, to be amused by the fear that they cause in those who reflect on the violence they have measured against us.
.. The ancient African philosophers such as Amenhotep, the son of Hapu, Imhotep, Ptahhotep, Amenemhat, Merikare and Akhenaten lived hundreds, even thousands of years before Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Why is it that children do not learn that the African Imhotep built the first pyramid? Our children do not know that Hypatia, Plotinus and St. Augustine were born in Africa.