Impact of Eurocentric Thought Process

Posted: July 17, 2001
Dr Kwame Nantambu

This writer argues that through their control of the global media apparatus and scholarship, Europeans have been able to portray themselves as the only creators of world history and to present themselves as the original peoples with original ideas.

In the process, the contributions and achievements of Afrikan people have been relegated to the ashheap of history. In reality then, HIS-STORY or His-Eurocentric version or interpretation of world events and history has been the prime mover in the thought process of the Eurocentric world view.

This analysis argues that since the 15th century, ethnocentrism (lack of tolerance of other cultures), etnocentrism (lack of tolerance of other races) and xenophobia (fear of other races) have conditioned, fashioned and determined the mind-set, attitude and thought process of Europeans towards Afrikan peoples.

As such, in the spirit of Eurocentrism, the Afrikan person cannot be treated or integrated as a social equal. The European thought process and strive for global dominance have left no room or place for the Afrikan except that of servitude, powerlessness and second-class citizenship.

European thought process has totally refused to accept the Afrikan on the basis of his humanity because of the colour of his skin. As part of this genius thought process, Europe has become the SUBJECT of world history and Afrika, the OBJECT.

Yet despite their racist, supremacist, divisive, ahistorical and dysfunctional scholarship, Europeans cannot deny the salient fact, in the words of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, that:
'....Civilization did not start in European countries and the rest of the world did not wait in darkness for the Europeans to bring the light....Most of the history books in the last five hundred years have been written to glorify Europeans at the expense of other peoples....Most western historians have not been willing to admit that there is an African history to be written about and that this history predates the emergence of Europe by thousand so years.

It is not possible for the world to have waited in darkness for Europeans to bring the light because, for most of the early history of man, the Europeans themselves were in darkness. When the light of culture came for the first time to the people who would later call themselves Europeans, it came from Africa and Middle Eastern Asia....It is too often forgotten that, when the Europeans emerged and began to extend themselves in the broader world of Africa and Asia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they went on to colonize most of mankind. Later, they would colonize world scholarship, mainly to show or imply that Europeans were the only creators of what could be called a civilization. In order to accomplish this, the Europeans had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they previously knew about Africa....'

In fact, European scholarship has sought to deny relentlessly any sense of originality to Mother Afrika and its people. According to their thought process, NOTHING came out of Afrika but slaves.

This assertion is totally false as two European scholars, R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton correct history in their book A History of the Modern Word (1984)as follows:
'Europeans were by no means the pioneers of human civilization. Half of man's recorded history had passed before anyone in Europe could read or write. The priests of Egypt began to keep written records between 4000 and 3000B.C., but more than two thousand years later the poems of Homer were still being circulated in the Greek city-states by word of mouth. Shortly after 3000 B.C., while the pharaohs were building the first pyramids, Europeans were creating nothing more distinguished than huge garbage heaps.'

This point of view is further supported by the Eurocentric historian, Joseph McCabe in his treatise Life Among the Many Peoples of the Earth (1940) thus.
'Four thousand years ago, when civilization was already one or two thousand years old, White men were just a bunch of semi-savages on the outskirts of the civilized world. If there had been anthropologists in Grete, Egypt and Babylonia, they would have pronounced the white race obviously inferior and might have discoursed learnedly on the superior germ-plasm or glands of coloured folks,' (i.e. Black-Afrikan melanin people).

One of the primary objectives of Eurocentric scholarship is to train Afrikan people to function as powerless, defenseless and expendable servants within the system of European supremacy.

The major impact of this process is that Afrikan people are now brain-dead, brain-damaged, culturally comatose and anesthesied.

Afrikan-Trinis are culturally maimed and paralysed from the head/mind down. And there seems to be no hope of recovery in sight. The Euro-centric cultural doctors have not only locked the doors but have also thrown away the keys.

Trinis are living in both physical and cultural jail encaged, encircled and enclosed by Euro-American iron bars. Eurocentric thought process has robbed Afrikan people of our civility, our humanity and our spirituality.

As deceased Pan Afrikan Nationalist President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, once observed 'Before the White man came, we (Afrikans) had the Land and he had the Bible; now we have the Bible and he has the Land.'

Today, the European not only controls the Land and its resources of Afrikan peoples but most importantly, he controls the mind of Afrikan peoples, their value system and way of life.

And such a control is reflected in the Euro-Americanisation of ALL aspects of life in TnT with severe self-destructive, dysfunctional and sometimes violent, murderous, insane, inhumane human behaviour and consequences on a daily basis.

It has dislodged, misdirected, dislocated and detoured Afrikan people from our original time-line our ancestors established in ancient Kemet in the B.C. era.

Dr. Ivan van Sertima, the Guyanese scholar, has called this Eurocentric thought process the 'five hundred year curtain' of European control and supremacy.

On the other hand, history suggests that the re-emergence of the original ancient Kemetic-centered thought process is 2050 A.D.

This writer suggests that the year 2050 A.D., represents the emergence of the ancient Kemetic Afrocentric world view/value system/way of life based on the seven principle of Goddess Ma'at. The year 2050 is the Age of Aquarius - an Age in which 'severing of old ties is sometimes unavoidable.' It is also an Age during which a natural, global eco-disaster, cataclysm or catastrophe too ghastly to contemplate will not only bring humankind to it subconscious senses but will also usher in a global change from the current Eurocentric world view to the new 'spiritual fire' of the Afrocentric world view. The world will move from a condition of Isfet (chaos/imbalance) to a new genre of balance and human perfectibility.

The fact of the matter is that the world is controlled by the laws of nature although it may be governed by the laws of politics, economics or military and nuclear might. As the deceased international Reggae super star Bob Marley opined in his apocalyptic lyrics in 'Redemption Song.'
'Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none a them can stop the time'

Nuclear weapons and atomic energy are NOT more powerful than the forces of nature, the cosmos and the universe. There is a much more potent, spiritual God-force or 'higher power.'

The year 2050 A.D. is not an historical accident or aberration. It coincides with the constellation of the Orion (Osirian) Belt that occurred in 10,500 B.C. above the Giza plateau in ancient Kemet (Egypt). The alignment of the three pyramids at the Giza plateau on earth is a perfect spiritual and terrestrial re-enactment of the map of Orion's Belt as it occurred in the sky above in 10,500 B.C. as corroborated by engineer Robert Bovell during TLC's Cable TV Channel program titled 'Secrets of the Pyramids and the Sphinx.'

In the Belt of Orion, (Osiris) three stars run in a row but the top star (the smallest one) is slightly off-set to the left. At the Giza plateau, two of the pyramids are of almost identical size and set along a diagonal line but the third pyramid is not only much smaller but is also off-set to the left of this diagonal line just as the alignment of the three stars in Orion's Belt.

It is also my prognostication that the next Pope of the Roman Catholic Church will be someone of Afrikan descent; this decision will precipitate preparation for the inevitable, natural, cyclical, global change from a Euro-religious to a Kemetic-spiritual world view/value system/way of life by the year 2050 A.D. Ancient Kemet raises again!

As a counter-measure against this Eurocentric thought process, Afrikan people must internalise the historical reality that the blood that unites us is thicker than the diasporan water, culture and accents that separate and divide us.

We might have come from the Old' World (Afrika) to the New' World (Europe) in different European slave ships but we must achieve total liberation in the same Pan Afrikan Nationalist freedom boat.

More specifically, the alternative Kemetic-centered thought process must seek to cure Afrikan people of the deadly disease of sclerosis that the Eurocentric thought process has inflicted upon them.

Through this Afrocentric thought process, Afrikan people would be imbued with a positive, subconscious sense of self-confidence, and self-empowerment and thus be equipped to eliminate and permanently eradicate the mental paralysis, induced collective, historical-cultural amnesia, collective psychosis, mentacide and psychological genocide the Euro-centric thought process has imposed upon them.

In the final analysis, Afrikans must live in the hope that the process of time, our turn will come when we will once again occupy a prominent position in the world's history and when we will command a strong voice in the global council of nations as we did in the B.C. era.

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

Dr. Nantambu is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University, U.S.A.

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