The Significance of Afrocentricity for Non-Africans

Abstract

Each country of the world is a unique composite society with a diversity of races and cultures. People originally migrated to different continents and countries, bringing cultural traits from their homelands. Each culture's diversity has been at the center of the making of this multicultural world. However, the assumption that being civilized and culturalized is acting European is still deeply rooted within prevailing universal social notions. That belief is based on a Eurocentric worldview, which has sought to a very great extent to colonize and enslave people of other races. This Eurocentric worldview hypothesizes that because non-Whites are different, they are inferior. To be superior means to be the same as the White ethnic group. I grew up in Japan reading Story of Little Black Sambo, drinking the juice whose trademark is a Black minstrel, and playing with a Black stereotyped doll. I had never realized that those products were an insult to Africans until I became aware of race problems by studying ethnicity and actually living in the multicultural society. Most Japanese people believe that Japan is a homogeneous country that disregards other Asian and indigenous populations, and therefore, it is not necessary to deal with racial and cultural issues. The Japanese distorted perception of Africans and African