Black History vs. Afrocentric History

The movements across Africa to oppose colonial rule coincided with the American civil rights movement.  Blacks on both continents were united by resisting a common form of oppression.  And once victory was obtained it ended the era of colonialism and segregation (which began with the Tran-Atlantic slave trade) and started a new historical period of independence.   This period disintegrated the European label black and returned distinction to a diverse group of people with respective histories and different futures.  For example Blacks in the United States became African Americans.
The first African American president was Barack Obama in 2008, that’s African American history.  But Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960, and that’s Congolese history, and so on.
Afrocentric history is the past according to Afrocentricity.
Afrocentricity or Afrocentrism is a worldview in response to Eurocentric views and racist depictions of African people.  Holders of this cultural ideology believe White historians removed the accomplishments of Africans in antiquity to glorify Europe and reduce the non-White to a subservient race to maintain White suprem­acy. Therefore Black history, with its humiliating origin, is an extension of White supremacy that damages the self conceptualization of Africa’s dark skinned descendents creating the need for a history that promotes positive African images to foster self esteem.
For that reason afrocentric history asserts European civilization derived from Africa.  It argues Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt.  It brags African’s navigated the world before European exploration and the civilizations of Mesoamerica were deeply influenced by Africans.  It also claims figures from Socrates to Beethoven were Black.
There is very little evidence to support these claims.  And critics of afrocentric history have referred to it as pseudo-history based on poor scholarship, therapeutic mythology, western civilization in black face, and a minstrel study for misdiagnosed deficiencies in self esteem.
But the fundamental flaw of afrocentric history is its terminology.  It interchanges the modern racial category Black with the general term African, but when applied in antiquity this interchange creates an inaccurate synonym. Therefore afrocentric history, through its own good intentions, treats the very subject it tries to uplift with the same indifference to distinction as the Portuguese and the Spanish.
According to Frank Snowden, professor of classics at Howard, and considered America’s greatest Black classicist, race as a social construct didn’t exist in antiquity, and if the notion of race was absent today, as it was then, the world would be a better place.
(J. Pharaoh Doss is a contributor to the New Pittsburgh Courier. He blogs at jpharoahdoss.blogspot.com)