Black Studies, White Studies, and Afrocentrism

Abstract

It is with the continued advances in the discipline of African American (Black) Studies that this essay comes to life. Recent articles by Bunzel and Grossman take dubious aim at Black Studies, its instructors, and its organizing principles. Grossman is even so obtuse as to use Lefkowitz’s Not Out of Africa, a book with virtually no grounding in reality as it relates to African Studies, to help prove her misguided thoughts. The authors are not concerned with Black Studies so much as they are with the fear of losing the privileged position White studies maintains. They use their articles as a poor attempt to discredit or otherwise slander a discipline that they simply do not understand or even attempt to understand. Articles such as “Tales from the Black Studies Ghetto” and “Black Studies Revisited” are clear evidence of the fear and ignorance Eurocentric thinkers are gripped by when dealing with an Afrocentric paradigm.