Not out of Africa: How ''Afrocentrism'' Became An Excuse to Teach Myth as History (A New Republic book) PDF
Preview Not out of Africa: How ''Afrocentrism'' Became An Excuse to Teach Myth as History (A New Republic book)
ACCLAIM FOR NOT OUT OF AFRICA "An anguished and eloquent cry against declining standards of historical scholarship and against the teaching of `feel good' history." -Kirk us Reviews "With great eloquence, learning and compassion, Not Out of Africa shows how preferring myth to facts is a disaster for everyone." -Wall Street Journal "The real problem with Afrocentrism ... is not that its `truth' about Greece and Egypt are false. More dangerous is the underlying attitude that all history is fiction, which can be manipulated at will for political ends." -Time "A careful and methodical response to one of Afrocentrism's central tenets: that the ancient Greeks hijacked much of their philosophy, theology, and science from the ancient Egyptians and passed it off as their own invention." - Boston Globe "A painstaking refutation of the main Afrocentric mythologies which have come to prominence from their small beginnings in the 1950s to their high- water mark following Martin Bernal's Black Athena books in the 1980s." - The Times (London) "Lefkowitz presents the evidence and arguments underlying classical scholars' objections to Afrocentric claims clearly and concisely." -American Historical Review "Lefkowitz is superb at lighting the dim corridors in which falsehood is transmuted into fact." -Commentary "Should you read Not Out of Africa? Yes. It is a work of true merit and even unsettling knowledge is a useful tool." -Virtual Dashiki "Mary Lefkowitz will make enemies.... Cassandras are, after all, inconvenient, especially when they show that a myth designed to help a particular community is in reality demeaning that community and helping to marginalize it." -Times Literary Supplement "Written in reaction to a veritable firestorm of criticism and vituperation, sometimes quite ugly." -Glenn Loury, Arion "Mary Lefkowitz's courageous book reminds us that history must be based on evidence, openly arrived at and openly argued, not a myth, ideology, or opinion. She further reminds us that if scholars abandon the canons of scholarship, then the university itself is in peril." -Diane Ravitch, New York University "Not Out of Africa combines a learned demolition of various 'politically correct' historical fantasies with a thoughtful inquiry into questions of historical method and of academic freedom. Anyone perplexed by multicultural education should read it." -Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., CUNY Graduate Center NOT OUT OF AFRICA For Guy MacLean Rogers ... nunc uino pellite curas; cras ingens iterabimus aequor. NOT OUT OF AFRICA HOW AFROCENTRISM BECAME AN EXCUSE TO TEACH MYTH AS HISTORY MARY LEFKOWITZ CONTENTS Illustrations ix Preface xi one Introduction 1 two Myths of African Origins 12 three Ancient Myths of Cultural Dependency 53 four The Myth of the Egyptian Mystery System 91 five The Myth of the Stolen Legacy 122 six Conclusion 155 Epilogue 177 Notes 195 Supplementary Notes 239 Bibliography 255
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