Dr. Molefi Asante, Noted Afrocentric Scholar, Speaks at House of the Lord Church

"He is scholarship personified, and in addition to that, he brings a revolutionary dimension to his scholasticism and a loving concern for his people." Thus the Rev. Herbert Daughtry introduced the renowned Dr. Molefi Kete Asante at a recent Sunday Evening Freedom Forum at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. As Rev. Daughtry also noted, this great pioneer in the field of Afrocentric curriculum is a Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Temple University and the author of over sixty books. His acclaimed work, a high school text, African American History: Journey of Liberation, is used widely throughout North America.

The evening’s topic was The School System and Black History Curriculum, and in his talk, Dr. Asante delineated what is needed for education to succeed with Black youth. "It's a simple thing," he said. "When you educate a child, the first thing you have to do is center them within their culture."

He explained that white children get that automatically - there are pictures everywhere of white folks, and children open their books and see "Shakespeare said…" etc. "Our children are on the outside of that," Dr. Asante continued. "This can lead to children not even trying to learn, because they sit in the classroom and listen, but they're saying to themselves, ‘I'm not in this.’"

Dr. Asante also pointed out that history as it is so often taught in US schools is not truthful. Black children are forced to hear people like Thomas Jefferson – who owned enslaved Africans, wrote demeaningly of Blacks, and had children by an under-aged enslaved young women – described as a great man. "We've got to train our children to take two sets of notes," he stated. "One set of notes to pass the test and another set to keep their sanity. The first is, ‘This is what they said.’ The other one is, ‘I think this is a lie; I’m going to check this out.’"

Dr. Asante said too, "We’ve got to take back the notion that we can give our children over to the system and it will educate them. The system was not meant to do that." He told of their decades-long struggle to get an Afrocentric curriculum, in which history is taught from the viewpoint of African people instead of whites, into the Philadelphia school system. One of the hopeful things is, a group of probably no more than fifty people brought it about. "You have to have committed people who say, ‘We are going to make this happen,’" he commented.

He broke down for the audience how they are phasing Afrocentric education into the curriculum in Philadelphia’s school system. One very necessary part of the process is working with the teachers, 65% of whom are white, to make sure they know what it is they’re teaching and how to teach it. "Because having an African American history course is not enough," he explained. "You have to train the teachers to teach the course properly."

As an example, Dr. Asante noted that contrary to how it’s usually taught, no "slaves" were ever brought to this country from Africa. "Africans got on the boats and they were enslaved in America," he declared.

Further, once the teachers begin teaching, they have to be monitored to make sure they aren’t making statements like, "In 1840, the slave owners were having a problem because there were so many Africans escaping." "We, the Africans, had a problem, not the slave owners," Dr. Asante observed. "It’s a process in which you have to turn around an entire way of thinking from a white perspective, and if some teachers don't feel comfortable with it, they should be taken out of that classroom and allowed to teach something else."

Dr. Asante also cleared up a misconception often put forth by the white press that Afrocentrists are proponents of self-esteem for Black youth. "Black children have no problem with self-esteem," he declared. "They feel good about the way they look, dress, dance, and sing. What our children have a problem with is cultural-esteem. They don't like being African. That's different.

"So how do you deal with a society that has caused our children not to like their own culture and heritage?" Dr. Asante continued. "By teaching the facts from an Afrocentric point of view where the children gain an understanding that Africa is not inferior to any other place on earth." To demonstrate that, he laid out some of how he teaches truthful history showing African people as resistant, not as victims.

This extremely engrossing and illuminating presentation was rounded out with a brief talk by Simon Deng, who was himself enslaved in Sudan. "Slavery is evil and should not be tolerated by anybody, especially not by us Black people," he said. "It is still fresh in our blood and bodies." He explained that this was why he was planning a walk to Washington DC to bring the message that the US government should not reward the government of Sudan with financial support while it allows this atrocity.

Council Member Charles Barron – AKA the Mayor of Black New York - spoke about the need for a Speaker of color in the City Council. "But no matter who becomes the next Speaker," he stated, "they must be told that they have to bring money to the ‘hood, make sure a person of color gets one of the powerful positions on either the Finance or the Land Use Committee, support reparations, and they must support the Underground Railroad Curriculum Bill requiring African American studies in the City’s high schools."

For more information about Dr. Molefi Kete Asante and his theory of Afrocentricity, visit www.asante.net.

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