The International Students Organization's Philosophy of Diversity simply states as their mission statement : "to motivate and unite the student body at Tennessee Tech while encouraging multicultural self-expression. To eliminate ignorant stereotypes and promote a new philosophy of diversity in thought and a recognition of the need for multicultural education." You may view the very well presented pages concerning many of the students worldwide at their site which is located at:
http://www.tntech.edu/www/life/orgs/iso/?

We here at BSNNET feel that Mr. Hector Gaba and company at Tennessee Technical University have very well stated what any advocate of this new philosophy of diversity should advance.Thusly, we endorse that philosophy and adopt is as our own substituting the phrase "student body at Tennessee Tech" with students associated with BSNNET".
 

ELIMINATE STEREOTYPES AND PROMOTE PHILOSOPHY OF DIVERSITY

As African-Americans, we feel that our perception of our history as articulated and chronicled by Josef ben Jochanan, Count Volney, John Henrik Clark , Sir Godfrey Higgins , Drusilla Dungee Houston, Van Sertima , L.S.B.Leakey, Herodotus , Cheikh Anta Diop , Tony Browder , Asa Hilliard and a host of other historians specializing in Ethiopian and Egyptian history, is just as valid as the reality of the Sphinx gazing out across the arid desert and a hundred times more valid than the refutable idea that Columbus could have possibly discovered a country inhabited by millions of people that have come to be called "American  Indians "!

Yet, the fact that Africans located in Egypt during the early development of East Africa were black people and the fact that the earliest Egyptians were Ethiopian black people has become the subject of much debate. The debate began, as I know it, when Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote a book published by W.W. Norton & Company entitled The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. It seems that the notion that African-Americans had a rich and contributory civilization prior to slavery was unthinkable. To think that that rich and contributory civilization existed without the consent of eurocentric research and development was deplorable. In fact, for the African-American and the African to join hands in identifying themselves as a people of common ancestry was viewed by eurocentric oriented historian and philosopher alike as anti-American!

The posture of the eurocentric philosopher and historian was reactionary. The heavy guns were brought out to dispel any notion that classified the African-American as anything other than sons and daughters of slaves who amounted  to nothing more than two-thirds of a human being. Heading the team defending the eurocentric position was Schlesinger. His captains were, and still are, Miriam Lichtheim, Afaf Marsot, and Diane Ravitch.The posture assumed by the aforementioned is not new. Attempts to destroy any historical facts that suggest that Africans played a central role in the development  and advancement of civilization is as old as the comparatively new eurocentric alphabet.. These attacks have been launched ever since little people with little minds conceived that in order for them to appear in control, everything must have originated from europe and the western nations. These attempts have been amateurish, ill-conceived and logic defying. 
 

THE POSTURE OF THE EUROCENTRIC IS REACTIONARY

The posture of the afrocentric philosopher and historian was and still is actionary. That action being to inform the populous of the serious contributions that Africans and the descendants of Africans have made to civilization, to identify the sources for validation of that information, and to insure that present and future generations of all civilizations are aware of those contributions.

Is the position taken by the Afro-centrist necessary in a society that is , like it or not , multicultural? I think so. With your permission I will personalize the matter for a few paragraphs or more. I am a 58 year old African-American male. Two generations removed from slavery. I attended elementary school at Matoca Laboratory on Virginia State University's campus in Ettrick, Virginia, 18 miles from Richmond, the former capital of the confederacy. Many of my elementary school classmates can  remember only one book that they read during the first seven years of their education. The name of that book is Little Black Sambo. A story about a little black boy who grabs hold of a tigers tail and gets pulled in a circle around a tree until the boy turns to butter. Our teachers had to sneak books in for us to read. The only time I remember reading anything worth while was during Negro History week. Then we would be read too from books about George Washington Carver, Phyllis Wheatley and Booker T. Washington. No references were ever made concerning the history of African-Americans prior to slavery. We were taught that black was a bad color, that Africans were bad people, that we were not suppose to drink out of the same water fountains as white people, that we were to use separate bathrooms from white people, that we were to sit in the backs of buses and that Ethiopians were white. The worst word you could be called during those years was not 'nigger'. The worst word you could be called was Black!

The up side of the mid and late 40's was our music.It was perceived at that time to be something akin to sin to listen too by white people. Today they call it rock and roll. Then they called it race music.This past week I sat down in front of the T.V. and listened to all of the music sang and played by white artist for three days non-stop. A full 92% of that music was written and played by African-American musicians during the late forties, the fifties and the early sixties. These 'rock & roll' artist now claim that music as their own. No reference is ever made to the original composers and performers. African-American children think it is "white folks" music. I thought that Ethiopians were white.If you tell the lie big enough and long enough it becomes history. The Big lie is that "white folks" invented rock and roll. The "Great Big Lie" was that Ethiopians are white people. A people that steals music from its original creators and teaches its children that Ethiopians are white has no qualms about altering the history of the people from whom it stole music and lied to about their ancestors.
 

THE GREAT BIG LIE IS THE TOOL OF THE EUROCENTRIST

An even "Greater Big Lie" is that African-Americans had no viable history prior to slavery. Usage of that lie is emphatic when attempting to isolate African History from Egyptian History. The afrocentrist see it as their responsibility, and their sworn duty, to insure that future generations of people are aware of the contributions made by Africans and the descendants of Africans toward the advancement of world civilization. They see it as their duty and responsibility to make it known that Africa was once the light of the world and Egypt is a child of Ethiopia that became the shining star of Africa. I am in total agreement with the position assumed by the Afrocentrist. It is their efforts that dispel Little Black Sambo theories and the notion that Egypt is a "white" country separate from the rest of Africa. The pure 'afrocentrist' considers it disrespectful when called an 'afrocentrist' because he knows that the word African itself is a misnomer of european disignation.In truth, what we now call Africa (including Egypt) was called Kemit (KMT without the vowels), or the Land of the Blacks long before the eurocentrist had an alphabet to write or language to speak.
 

SCHLESINGER IS NOT QUALIFIED TO SPEAK ON MULTICULTURALISM

Arthur Schlesinger is many things. An Egyptologist he is not. A Pulitzer he would not receive for his book The Disuniting of America. Why? (1) Refutable statements made by key reference individuals on his team.(2) References to statements made in support of his thesis who were not egyptologist or archeologist(3) Schlesinger has no background in Egyptology himself. (4) None of his reference persons are knowledgeable about Ethiopia. (5) Insupportable statements concerning the thrust of the multicultural movement.

What are the refutable statement made by key reference persons?
A. Frank J. Yurco, Egyptologist. Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History." Ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, varied in color from the light Mediterranean type to the darker brown of upper Egypt to the still darker shades of the Nubian around Aswan". pp.77

This statement amused me greatly. Obviously, Yurco hasn't taken a good look at African-American families. As I sit her with my green eyes and brown skin I think of my grandfather on my mother's side who was darker than most Nubians and my grandmother on my fathers side who was lighter than most whites and all of the hues and shades of color of family members that fall somewhere in between. Yurco could have been describing the average African-American family! Need I say more.

B. Miriam Lichtheim."Egyptologist"? "The Egyptians were not Nubians and the original Nubians were not black!"

At first this may seem to be a flippant statement. It is not. This is a statement that  is consistent with the eurocentric line of historical thought that attributes the original inhabitants of Nubia as being from India. It will hold water as long as one digs no deeper. We, however, are going a little deeper than that. First, we will state this. There were inhabitants of Nubia that migrated there from India. There is however, no evidence to support a thesis that states there were no black Kemitians(Africans) in Nubia at that time.There is also no evidence that the Indians in Nubia were not also Black! How so, Dr. Lichtheim may ask?
 

ETHIOPIA :THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION

Because the original inhabitants of India were dark-skinned people. Just as the majority of Indians are dark-skinned today...they were even darker then. Let us trace the background of the people of India. Now you will see why our eurocentrisist tried to conceal from us the fact that Ethiopians were a black people.
 

THE NAME " HINDU " IS ETHIOPIAN

The name India means Black as in India Ink. The Bishop of Avranches in his Discussion on Parod.Ch. xiii states " there were three Ethiopias, that is, countries of the Blacks: Ehtiopia, Arabia and Susiana. Herodotus says "there were two Ethiopian nations. One in India and the other in Egypt." This is consistent with the majority of the serious egyptologist who maintain the Menes(Narmer) was the Ethiopian Cushite that combined Egypt into one country under one government around 3100 B.C. Wilsford in his Treatise on Egypt and the Nile that ancient statues of Budda in India have " have crisp curly hair, with flat noses and thick lips." He also states," nor can it be reasonably doubted that a race of Negroes formerly had power and pre-eminence in India." Confirmation of this is made by Maurice , who states in his History Volume Two p.146 "The figures in the Hindu caverns have flat noses and thick lips." The list goes on and on. Josephus, Volney, Philostratus all agree that there were two or three Ethiopia's. And we know that Ethiopians are a non-white people as are the Nubians and the Indians. I think that we have proved beyond a doubt that non-white people inhabited those regions and developed vast areas into nomes which were civilized.

I personally believe that the original Nubians were from where they are today. Whether the people of what is now called Nubia spread out as far as India, I do not know. We do know that there were black people in India and there were black people in Nubia. Those people are part of our history and will remain so in spite of the attempts of the unqualified Schlesinger, the journalist, to prove otherwise.I have yet to meet or see on television a person with white skin from India.Whether the Cushites spread from India to Egypt or from Egypt to India or from Ethiopia to Egypt and India is of no consequence. What is of consequence is that they were ancestors of the African-American who was forcefully removed from Africa to other countries. The tentacles of the Ethiopian reached every portion of the globe due to their mastery of the waters of the world.
C. Schlesinger is entitled to voice his opinion. This does not entitle the world of academe to embrace the book and pass it off as a legitimate dissertation on multiculturalism. It certainly does not qualify as a factual historical account on the history of the black and non-white ancestors of African -Americans prior to slavery. At best it is a statement of personal opinion by persons unqualified and/or unwilling  to view the ancient history of non-white people in the east in its true light.

Schlesinger's list of "sources " is exhaustive but incomplete. He cites George Washington, John Quincey Adams, Myrdal, Bryce, Melville, Abraham Lincoln, Henry James, Woodrow Wilson, Nicholas Roosevelt and an virtual army of Presidents, authors, and journalist. Many who qualify as specialist in their respective fields of endeavor. Their proficiency in egyptology and archeology, however, is dubious at best. Some were slave owners. Others were stuanch segregationist. Serious politicians and journalist have little time to concentrate in exhaustive studies concerning the history of Ethiopia and Egypt. Our journalist, Schlesinger, even throws in a few African-American scholars to boot. Snowden will be the first to admit that his education was eurocentric and his exposure to African history was greatly hampered by a lack of available resources on the subject matter. John Henrik Clark was totally quoted out of context. Patchwork ( the pulling out of sentences and paragraphs statements to advance ones position) was prevalent  and

THE BOOK LACKS AUTHENTICITY

notorious. The use of skills learned over years of deadline-driven reporting was abundant. Nothing of substance in Schlesingers "sources" is visible. The book and its thesis were poorly conceived and lacked academic viability. The list of sources is a  sham.

Continued in March Issue
 

 
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