Abstract
This year, 2018, marks the beginning of the first doctoral program in Black Studies in the United States, more specifically at Temple University, in Philadelphia. It is only fitted that the Journal of Black Studies (JBS) should mark this occasion with a special issue dedicated to examining and reflecting on this watershed development. Certainly, if one remembers that it was only 19 years prior that the first program in Black Studies had emerged at San Francisco State University, and that, from its very inception, Black Studies’ existence was constantly questioned and threatened by those administrators who did not see any value in Black faces and Black Studies programs or departments on their campuses, then one may develop a better appreciation for the tour-de-force that actually occurred 30 years ago with the creation of the first PhD program in Black Studies. It was a Black man, Molefi Kete Asante, who with the support of a few colleagues and members of the Black community initiated the process that would result in the creation of the first doctoral program at Temple University. But Professor Asante also understood that the institutionalization of Black Studies at the highest level, that of the PhD, would require epistemological demarcation from European disciplines, in order to establish Black Studies’ institutional turf and boundaries—in other words, for Black Studies to be able to justify its existence and need to grow. Afrocentricity was thus boldly offered by Molefi Kete Asante (1987/1998, 1990) as the metaparadigm for Black Studies. While European disciplines had been engaged in studies of African phenomena, Asante argued that those studies suffered from severe distortions and produced misleading interpretations of the African experience. Furthermore, and quite importantly, those distortions could not simply be corrected or deleted as regrettable excesses of cultural or racial chauvinism. Indeed, the very racist hierarchies upon which Europe built its discourse about itself and “others,” precluded any superficial remedy, but called instead for genuine intellectual decolonization through a debunking of the spurious notions of “universalism” and “objectivity,” accompanied with a radical epistemological reorientation, with Africa no longer lying at the periphery of European consciousness but occupying a central place as agent of its own history. Once created, Temple’s PhD program in African American Studies became immediately successful, with literally hundreds of students from within the United States and around the world seeking admission into was seen then as a most progressive space.
Let us note here that, White supremacy being a worldwide phenomenon, the challenge of dismantling Eurocentric distortions and disentangling oneself from European self-serving racial mythology is a global one, not just the unfortunate lot of African people in America. For example, in his analysis of Eurocentrism and its devastating impact on the peoples of South America, Quijano (2000) poignantly remarks how, The Eurocentric perspective of knowledge operates as a mirror that distorts what it reflects. Consequently, when we look in our Eurocentric mirror, the image that we see is not just composite, but also necessarily partial and distorted. Here the tragedy is that we have all been led, knowingly or not, wanting it or not, to see and accept that image as our own and as belonging to us alone. In this way, we continue being what we are not. And as a result we can never identify our true problems, much less resolve them, except in a partial and distorted way. (p. 557)
Quijano (2000, p. 560) concluded, “Consequently, it is time to learn to free ourselves from the Eurocentric mirror where our image is always, necessarily, distorted. It is time, finally, to cease being what we are not,” a sentiment and resolution shared by those who, along with Molefi Kete Asante, determined to engage in Afrocentric studies of the African experience and further build Africology, the discipline borne out of the Afrocentric approach. Indeed, unlike most other Black Studies departments that consider themselves “interdisciplinary,” or “multidisciplinary,” the Temple department insists that Black Studies must be conceived as “unidisciplinary” if it is to live up to its mission of ending the intellectual (and otherwise) subordination of Black people to Whites (Mazama, 2012).
As a metaparadigm, Afrocentricity has its own set of assumptions (Mazama, 2003). One of them is Pan-African unity based on a common origin on the African continent and a shared deep cultural matrix with different surface manifestations. Its organizing principle is the centrality of Africa for African people, as made clear by Asante (1990) when he writes that, “The Afrocentrist will not question the idea of the centrality of African ideals and values but will argue over what constitutes those ideals and values” (p. 6). The ultimate aim of the scholarship produced by students and faculty of the Department of Africology at Temple University is to provide African people with a mirror that does justice to what it reflects, thus providing African people with further means to disentangle themselves from the deadly grip of Eurocentrism and White supremacy.
The contributors to this special issue were carefully selected, based on their closeness, throughout the years, to the Temple project and its creator, Molefi Kete Asante. The latter provided his own detailed account of the arduous process that finally led to the approval of the doctoral program in African American Studies by Temple University’s trustees in 1987. What Asante’s narrative makes clear is that the creation of the doctoral program at Temple required great determination, a strong exercise in agency, and collaborative actions with the community to overcome the obstacles presented by racist faculty and administrators. While this is not the object of the present special issue of JBS, one should not underestimate either the ferocity or relentlessness of the attacks against the Temple doctoral program after its creation. Our enemies did not go to sleep but kept devising plans to sabotage and undermine our advancement, or even write us out of existence. This is because, as Ibram Kendi’s essay cogently demonstrates, Eurocentric assumptions of African intellectual inferiority and inadequacy have deep and pervasive roots in modern European intellectual history and concepts. The founding fathers of most European disciplines exhibited, one after the other, most outrageous racist views. Without a doubt, the idea that Black Studies scholars could be trained by Black Studies professors, outside of European disciplinary confines, was a slap in the face of White racists, and as such Kendi argues, “a profoundly antiracist idea.” The idea that it was possible for Black students not to study in Europe to be considered highly educated by European standards was unbearable to many. Yet, as Patricia Reid-Merritt argues in her essay, the time and the place were ripe for a doctoral program in Black Studies. Temple University, with its mission of serving the disenfranchised, located in Philadelphia, a largely Black city vibrating with social and racial protest, all concurred to facilitate the creation of the first doctoral program in Black Studies. As she further assesses the impact of the doctoral program and the maturation of Africology, Reid-Merritt identifies no less than 180 individuals who have earned their doctorate in Africology and moved on to various, mostly academic positions. Maulana Karenga’s essay provides an in-depth examination of the far-reaching implications of the creation of the doctoral program in Black Studies. Maulana Karenga identifies two major achievements of the doctoral program in Africology. First, it significantly enlarged the scope of higher education by challenging and breaking up the Eurocentric monopoly over scholarship, thus contributing to achieving truly multicultural education. Second, Maulana Karenga credits the Temple doctoral program in Africology with facilitating the emergence of scholars who are conscious of their obligation to work toward the betterment of the life conditions of their people, and who are thus best defined as “activist intellectuals.” Finally, Ama Mazama endeavors to assess Molefi Kete Asante’s unique contributions to Black Studies. She argues that those are best understood as being both substantial and institutional. By proposing a metaparadigm to inform Black Studies scholars’ intellectual endeavors, Asante rescued Black Studies from the status of “field” or “area of interest” to which it had been confined by Eurocentric-minded individuals to elevate it to the status of a full fledged, autonomous discipline. But, most importantly, the Afrocentric paradigm proposed by Asante brought much needed conceptual clarity in the midst of great confusion. On an institutional level, again, the creation of a doctoral program forced the African experience into a space from which it had been excluded based on allegations of ahistoricalness, cultural deprivation, and cognitive deficiencies.
In conclusion, this special issue of the JBS is offered as a tribute to the courage, vision, and agency of Molefi Kete Asante, and those who struggle along with him against White racism and domination, and for the empowerment of African people everywhere. It is hoped that Asante’s relentless commitment and tremendous accomplishments will serve as a model to inspire present and future generations of Africans. It is hoped that the Department of Africology at Temple University will inspire present and future generations of scholars to fight for the creation and nurturing of Afrocentric spaces.