Not out of Africa: How ''Afrocentrism'' Became An Excuse to Teach Myth as History (A New Republic book)

294 Pages·1997·2.4 MB·English

by  Mary Lefkowitz

ACCLAIM FOR NOT OUT OF AFRICA
"An anguished and eloquent cry against declining standards of historical
scholarship and against the teaching of `feel good' history." -Kirk us Reviews
"With great eloquence, learning and compassion, Not Out of Africa shows
how preferring myth to facts is a disaster for everyone." -Wall Street Journal
"The real problem with Afrocentrism ... is not that its `truth' about Greece and
Egypt are false. More dangerous is the underlying attitude that all history is
fiction, which can be manipulated at will for political ends." -Time
"A careful and methodical response to one of Afrocentrism's central tenets:
that the ancient Greeks hijacked much of their philosophy, theology, and
science from the ancient Egyptians and passed it off as their own invention." -
Boston Globe
"A painstaking refutation of the main Afrocentric mythologies which have
come to prominence from their small beginnings in the 1950s to their high-
water mark following Martin Bernal's Black Athena books in the 1980s." -
The Times (London)
"Lefkowitz presents the evidence and arguments underlying classical
scholars' objections to Afrocentric claims clearly and concisely." -American
Historical Review
"Lefkowitz is superb at lighting the dim corridors in which falsehood is
transmuted into fact." -Commentary
"Should you read Not Out of Africa? Yes. It is a work of true merit and even
unsettling knowledge is a useful tool." -Virtual Dashiki
"Mary Lefkowitz will make enemies.... Cassandras are, after all,
inconvenient, especially when they show that a myth designed to help a
particular community is in reality demeaning that community and helping to
marginalize it." -Times Literary Supplement
"Written in reaction to a veritable firestorm of criticism and vituperation,
sometimes quite ugly." -Glenn Loury, Arion
"Mary Lefkowitz's courageous book reminds us that history must be based on
evidence, openly arrived at and openly argued, not a myth, ideology, or
opinion. She further reminds us that if scholars abandon the canons of
scholarship, then the university itself is in peril." -Diane Ravitch, New York
University
"Not Out of Africa combines a learned demolition of various 'politically
correct' historical fantasies with a thoughtful inquiry into questions of
historical method and of academic freedom. Anyone perplexed by
multicultural education should read it." -Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., CUNY
Graduate Center
NOT OUT OF AFRICA
For Guy MacLean Rogers ... nunc uino pellite curas; cras ingens iterabimus
aequor.
NOT
OUT OF
AFRICA
HOW AFROCENTRISM
BECAME AN EXCUSE TO TEACH
MYTH AS HISTORY
MARY LEFKOWITZ

CONTENTS
Illustrations ix
Preface xi
one Introduction 1
two Myths of African Origins 12
three Ancient Myths of Cultural Dependency 53
four The Myth of the Egyptian Mystery System 91
five The Myth of the Stolen Legacy 122
six Conclusion 155
Epilogue 177
Notes 195
Supplementary Notes 239
Bibliography 255