Although I studied West African literature in college and came across terms like “pan africanism” and “afrocentricity” several times, I never truly grasped their meanings. I suppose this may have had something to do with the predominantly white institution I attended, but I am Nigerian, if only by birth, so something should have clicked, right? It wasn’t until I was setting up this blog that the meanings started to surface from my subconscious.
The way I came to understand it was against its apparent opposite. If I remember clearly, it was a tweet that put it all into sharp focus for me. It was afrocentric as opposed to eurocentric. It seems simple, but break it down with me for a moment. The prefixes ‘afro’ and ‘euro’ are self explanatory, meaning Africa and Europe respectively. The suffix ‘centric’ means ‘located at or having a centre’ according to Wiktionary. You can see it’s not hard to figure out how these two terms start to play out in our (the United States of America, that is) culture.
Our culture has a very eurocentric vision of beauty. Our television programs, radio programs, blockbuster movies and yes, even our religious institutions are deeply rooted in eurocentric ways of knowing and seeing. Our rose colored glasses aren’t in fact rose, they are eurocentric. On the other hand, our culture doesn’t understand and often misrepresents marks of the afrocentric. Afrocentric people are often seen as ‘exotic’ or ‘conscious’ or some other term used to separate them from the mainstream. But while we can look to eurocentric ideals and name them clearly, afrocentricism doesn’t have that luxury.
First of all, what is this Africa around which afrocentricism revolves? What exactly are its standards of beauty, its ways of knowing and seeing and being? And back to the first question, what is it (Africa)? And this is where it gets tricky because Africa, technically speaking, is a eurocentric invention in name and in representation today. Yes, even American afrocentricism has traces of eurocentricism laced in it. After all, how many black people in diaspora have returned to ‘the continent’ to find their roots? That is an American thing. How many dashikis and headwraps and ankh amulets and other symbols of afrocentricism find their way into the American market for consumption? That is not only an American thing, it’s a globaly thing and not special to afrocentricism at all.
Neither afrocentricsm or eurocentricism are bad, on their own; however. they don’t exist without the other and without other -centricisms filling our shrinking global community. That said, it’s all in the mind. A purely eurocentric mind can’t learn, unlearn and relearn that way of knowing. Similarly, an afrocentric mind can’t be achieved by shutting down the eurocentric tension altogether. It’s all a delicate way of balance; a delicate way of thinking.