| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism. By Clarence E. Walker. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xxxvi, 172 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-19-509571-5.)

Afrocentrism has generated a considerable and mostly hostile literature, to which Clarence E. Walker adds this brief essay. Walker sees Afrocentrism as a bankrupt concept applied as a misdirected therapy for the lack of self-respect among African American youth. He also views it as something of a danger because mobilization of support for it detracts from more useful and productive forms of activity.

For purposes of his argument, Walker relies heavily on Molefi Asante's writing to define Afrocentrism, though he occasionally includes other prominent Afrocentrists such as Leonard Jeffries or Maulana Ron Karenga. The first part of the book identifies the intellectual origins of Afrocentrism in nineteenth-century thought, tracing it through the intellectual fashions of the period and linking it to more modern nationalist movements. It then seeks to match the fantasies against the realities, first in the nature and influence of ancient Egypt and second of precolonial West Africa.

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