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Are You Scared of Your Shadow?

The activities of the anti-Afrocentrists are clear barometers of how accepted the intellectual idea of Africans as agents has become in the intellectual community. Already pronounced in the popular cultural sphere of Africans in North America, Africa, Europe, and South America as a generator of fashions, styles, art, and music, the concept of Afrocentricity has begun to affect method and theory in the social sciences (Kershaw, 1989). Quite a number of scholars have written critiques of Afrocentricity. Some authors (e.g., Appiah, 1993; Early, 1995) have bordered on panic writing and ad hominem attacks on Afrocentrists. Others have made highly useful critiques of the intellectual ideas surrounding the Afrocentric movement. One such writer is Sidney Lemelle, whose 1993 essay, "The Politics of Cultural Existence," in Race and Class sought to maneuver through the media minefields to ascertain the authentic voice of the Afrocentrists. Lemelle (1993) seeks to place Afrocentricity within the context of the continuing struggle against oppression. Indeed, he writes that his article is "an attempt to gauge the importance of Pan Africanist and Black Nationalist thought as forces for change through a historical and contemporary examination of their influence on popular consciousness and liberation struggles" (p. 95). I believe that Lemelle has attempted an important critique of the Afrocentric idea. He raises four questions about the "debate" surrounding the politics of cultural existence: