Africa: Mother of Western Civilization (African-American Heritage Series) (African-American Heritage Series) by Yosef ben-Jochannan

It is true that African culture has been largely sidelined by European and US academics. The African contribution must in that case, by default, have been greater than Europeans make it out to be. However, to argue, as Dr Ben does, that all culture emanated from Africa and that Africa is the source of all Western Civilization is clearly nonsense. He goes as far as to maintain that Freemasonry has African origins. Why anyone would want to claim an aberrant system like Freemasonry as part of their heritage is beyond me!

St Clair Drake put it in a nutshell when he wrote: “Ben-Jochannen’s books challenge the reader to exercise alert vigilance to distinguish between fact, statements with a high degree of probability, and assertions based merely on a will to believe” (Black Folk Here & There, p.326)

Most of Dr Ben’s major works draw on a bizarre array of sources, including mystical and Masonic texts, and this is no exception. Anything he can find to throw at his ideological opponents he will pick up and throw, however jumbled and incoherent it might be.

He argues for an African monoculture, whereas Africa is necessarily multicultural. He asserts that pre-Arabic Egyptian rulers were (apart from the Hyksos) Black people. He maintained that Egyptian culture has Ethiopian origins, that Greek culture had Egyptian roots, that monotheistic religion had its origins in Egypt, and that all science and art had African origins. Wow!

The book also contains basic factual errors, which prompts me to ask why we should believe that everything written by Black representatives is automatically true. In the interest of labelling Queen Cleopatra as `Black’, Dr Ben overlooks the fact that her family (the Ptolemies) did not intermarry with their Egyptian subjects. While the Ptolemies basked in luxury and claimed to be gods (which is why they were allowed to practise incest), their subjects were downpressed and on the breadline. She was probably not `White’, the Makedonians being of mixed ancestry, having married into both the Syrian and Persian royal families. But that does not make her Black as understood today. Additionally she was actually Cleopatra VII, not Cleopatra VIII (as repeatedly stated on p.112). Also Dr Ben writes: “Cleopatra VIII committed suicide after being discovered in a plot with Marc Antonio (Mark Anthony) to murder Julius Caesar” (pp.112-113). In reality Julius Caesar had been dead for 14 years when Cleopatra committed suicide.

As with all his works, he includes the charge that “white Jews’ of the Western world are global impostors, having falsely hijacked a heritage which, according to Dr Ben, rightfully belongs to Black Africans. They have done this, he argues, by cunningly proclaiming their identity with the Israelites of the Bible. Consequently, he accuses them of propounding a racist creed from their very beginnings (pp.584-627).

It is important to distinguish between Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity.
Maulana Karenga writes: “Afrocentric means essentially viewing social and human reality from an African perspective or standpoint.” And that’s fine! But, by contrast, “Afrocentrism appears more often in ideological discourse between Afrocentric advocates and critics especially in popular pieces on the subject”. [Maulana Karenga. Introduction to Black Studies. (Los Angeles, CA.: The University of Sankore Press, 1993), p.35.]

Afrocentrism is the notion that all civilization and technology had its origins in Africa. This is almost as much of a myth as Eurocentrism, which is a reverse mirror-image of Afrocentrism. A person can view things Afrocentrically without being Afrocentrist.

If you want a serious study on the place of African civilization in human history, you will have to look elsewhere.

“… are part of the African-American heritage from their “Mother-Land” – ALKEBU-LAN (Africa). See J. A. Rogers’ AFRICA’S GIFT TO …”

Today I Rise: Health & Healing For African American Single Mothers by F.B. McCall-Smith

The lives of the women we meet in Mothering Against the Odds provide the reader with a new awareness of the complexities of child-rearing in the United States today. The editors of this volume, clinicians, researchers, educators, theoreticians and writers, were initially drawn together by their common interest in establishing a community where they could share their experiences in parenting. Their own sense of personal and intellectual isolation as mothers spurred them to examine the multiplicity of mother-roles faced by all women; the resulting volume is the work of eighteen writers and scholars. Garcia Coll, et al frame their discussion of mothering in a format of personal narratives which reveal the individual challenges faced by those who mother at the so-called margins of society. The editors’ choice of these narratives of women mothering came from their awareness that the diverse experiences shaping mothers’ experiences are untreated in contemporary discussion of society’s problems. The chapters illustrate a variety of mothering experiences: stories of women with biracial and exceptional children, mothers with HIV/AIDS; immigrant, homeless, single, adoptive, incarcerated, and teen mothers. Three conversations with the editors are interspersed within the text which highlight themes emerging from the individual stories of mothering. Each chapter stands alone as moving account of a mother’s struggles and triumphs in a particular instance; all the chapters are tied together by the common thread of the voice of the mother’s experience in each instance. The reader is left with a sense of the formidable tasks faced by those who are so often invisible in our society and yet who are coping and contributing successfully in many ways that leave one humbled. The voices of these mothers are the voices and lives that sociologists, psychologists, and of course educational policy makers, need to consider as they pursue ways to improve the lives of our children and of our families. While this is an academic book it also is a highly accessible and readable book for all those who have an interest in children, women and families. Above all, the stories told here represent lives of triumph, lives of women quietly confronting many problems usually hidden from the public view. And the editors state their intent to continue their study of mothering and the varied contexts women live in; we certainly hope they will. While the reader is left with many troubling questions, we also hope that through a consideration of the dignity of the lives of these women we can bring about change. Mothering Against the Odds is a must read for all those concerned with issues related to families today.

“… one African American mom suggested that white Americans’ knowledge of African American mothers is so limited that in their imagination no bad behavior …”

“… Our African mothers and grandmothers had a relationship with music that didn’t need …”

Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers by Lucia C Birnbaum

As early as the 1960s, Africa was posited as the original site of human culture–some 130,000 years ago. Considered revolutionary and dangerous at the time, this theory has now been substantiated by increasingly solid archeological evidence. Building on the foundation of that theory, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum postulates that if blacks were the original people, it follows that any original divinity must also have been black. Then, with an abundance of new research and evidence, Birnbaum demonstrates that that deity was female. Dark Mother offers another revolutionary and dangerous theory, a convincing reason for delving into its amalgam of solid scholarship, family history, feminist tract, and New Age sensibility.

“… italian/french mediterranean coast, I was startled by signs of the african mother. Bluffs are the color red ochre, grottoes are shaped like …”

“… and it requires a good deal of parenting. I hope African-American mothers will use the lessons in …”

My Mother Had a Dream: African-American Women Share their Mothers’ Words of Wisdom by Tamara Nikuradse

My mother did have a dream… for me and my brother. But unfortunatley, she wasn’t able to see it become a reality. My mother died at the young age of 28 years, a victim of breast cancer and denial. I was eight years old when she left us and I really missed out on the motherly advice that’s passed on from generation to generation by mothers to their daughters. As I read the book I found “words of wisdom” from other famous black mothers and daughters such as Gladys Knight, Maya Angalou, Coretta Scott King and many others. I was always told,”it takes a village to raise a child”, and I saw this book as my “village of black mothers” just trying to give one of their daughters words of encouragement and strength in her time of need. I also liked how you can add your own “words of wisdom” to pass to your own daughter.