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164-588: Afrocentricity was coined to evoke "African-centeredness", and, as a unifying paradigm , draws from the foundational scholarship of Africana studies and African studies . Those who identify as specialists in Afrocentricity, including historians, philosophers, and sociologists, call themselves "Africologists" or "Afrocentrists." Africologists seek to ground their work in the perspective and culture common to African peoples, and center African peoples and their experiences as agents and subjects . Ama Mazama defined

328-653: A holistic multidisciplinary theory with a strong focus on the location and agency of Africans, Afrocentricity is designed not to accept the role of subaltern prescribed to Africans by Eurocentrism. An important aspect of Afrocentricity is therefore a deconstruction and criticism of hegemony, racism , and prejudice . Africologists, who produce Afrocentric academic works, identify their professional field as Afrocentricity – not Afrocentrism . Crucially, not all academic works that focus on African or African-American topics are necessarily Afrocentric and neither are works on melanist theories nor those rooted in matters of color of

492-412: A paradeigma is meant to guide an audience would be exemplified by the role of a personal accountant. It is not the job of a personal accountant to tell a client exactly what (and what not) to spend money on, but to aid in guiding a client as to how money should be spent based on the client's financial goals. Anaximenes defined paradeigma as "actions that have occurred previously and are similar to, or

656-446: A "'religious' movement based on an essentialist paradigm." Other academics have also been critical of the criticism of Afrocentricity that seek to define it as a religious movement. Historian and medical anthropologist Katherine Bankole-Medina notes that rather than seeking to understand the theory of Afrocentricity or engage in constructive discourse with the scholars of the theory, many critical academics seek to critique and discredit

820-845: A "form of self-hatred " that is typically "engaged in by vulgar careerists whose plan is to distance themselves from African agency". Asante highlighted Hill-Collins' intellectual work on the centeredness of women of the African diaspora to contrast with her characterized lack of understanding of the intellectual work on the centeredness of African people that Afrocentricity focuses on. As a follow-up to Hill-Collins' Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism? , she authored Ethnicity, Culture, and Black Nationalist Politics , which Asante characterizes as having vaguely defined notions of black nationalism, Afrocentrism/Afrocentricity, civil religion, and African-American ethnic identity. Asante characterized her critiques of Afrocentricity as being supportive of

984-533: A "misunderstanding of Afrocentricity or an attempt to relaunch the Eurocentric domination in knowledge, criticism, and literature." Esonwanne (1992) critiqued Asante's Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1990) and characterized its discourse as "implausible", its argumentation as "disorganized", its analysis as "crude and garbled", its perceived lack of seriousness in study as harmful to the "serious study of African American and African cultures", as being part of

1148-497: A "whole project of Afrocentrism", and as being "off-handedly racist". Esonwanne (1992) indicates that the redeeming quality and "intellectual value" of Asante's earlier work is its " negative value " and that it is a prime example of what researchers in African studies and African-American studies "would do well to avoid". Esonwanne (1992) further characterizes Asante’s Afrocentricity as being a " post-Civil Rights individualist version of

1312-574: A 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi , Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a White woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the Black community throughout the US. Vann R. Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became

1476-466: A White American mother and a Kenyan father— defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected president. At least 95 percent of African American voters voted for Obama. He also received overwhelming support from young and educated Whites, a majority of Asians , and Hispanics , picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column. Obama lost

1640-423: A black form of Eurocentrism). Asante indicates that Afrocentricity is not an enclosed system of thought or religious belief; rather, he indicated that it is an unenclosed, critical dialectic that allows for open-ended dialogue and debate on the fundamental assumptions that the theory of Afrocentricity is based on. Asante further critiqued and characterized Hill-Collins (2006) as being "not only poor scholarship", but

1804-410: A century) led to a theory of atomic structure that accounts well for the bulk properties of matter; see, for example, Brady's General Chemistry . According to P J Smith, this ability of science to back off, move sideways, and then advance is characteristic of the natural sciences, but contrasts with the position in some social sciences, notably economics. This apparent ability does not guarantee that

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1968-467: A change in how a given society goes about organizing and understanding reality. A "dominant paradigm" refers to the values, or system of thought, in a society that are most standard and widely held at a given time. Dominant paradigms are shaped both by the community's cultural background and by the context of the historical moment. Hutchin outlines some conditions that facilitate a system of thought to become an accepted dominant paradigm: The word paradigm

2132-484: A civil religion as Hill-Collins claims. Paradigm In science and philosophy , a paradigm ( / ˈ p ær ə d aɪ m / PARR -ə-dyme ) is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods , postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. The word paradigm is Greek in origin, meaning "pattern". Paradigm comes from Greek παράδειγμα ( paradeigma ); "pattern, example, sample"; from

2296-410: A community of practitioners, i.e., In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Kuhn saw the sciences as going through alternating periods of normal science , when an existing model of reality dominates a protracted period of puzzle-solving, and revolution , when the model of reality itself undergoes sudden drastic change. Paradigms have two aspects. Firstly, within normal science, the term refers to

2460-421: A concept. Other scholars indicate that what has come to be known as Afrocentrism has existed among black communities for centuries as a grassroots political understanding and narrative tradition about the history of Africa and Africans, which lies in contrast to and is distinct from the theory of Afrocentricity and Africology movement that developed in the 1980s. Additionally, use of the term Afrocentric preexisted

2624-542: A crucial role in producing the country's most valuable product and export: cotton . Enslaved people were instrumental in the construction of several prominent structures such as, the United States Capitol , the White House and other Washington, D.C.-based buildings. ) Similar building projects existed in the slave states . By 1815, the domestic slave trade had become a significant and major economic activity in

2788-410: A direct view of the bedrock of reality itself, and obscuring the possibility that there might be other, alternative imageries hidden behind it. The conviction that the current paradigm is reality tends to disqualify evidence that might undermine the paradigm itself; this in turn leads to a build-up of unreconciled anomalies. It is the latter that is responsible for the eventual revolutionary overthrow of

2952-476: A discipline's core model of reality has happened in a more evolutionary manner, with individual scientists exploring the usefulness of alternatives in a way that would not be possible if they were constrained by a paradigm. Imre Lakatos suggested (as an alternative to Kuhn's formulation) that scientists actually work within research programmes . In Lakatos' sense, a research programme is a sequence of problems, placed in order of priority. This set of priorities, and

3116-643: A federal crime to aid or assist those who had fled slavery or to interfere with their capture. By that time, slavery, which almost exclusively targeted Black people, had become the most critical and contentious political issue in the Antebellum United States , repeatedly sparking crises and conflicts. Among these were the Missouri Compromise , the Compromise of 1850 , the infamous Dred Scott decision , and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry . Prior to

3280-452: A framework of concepts, results, and procedures within which subsequent work is structured. Normal science proceeds within such a framework or paradigm. A paradigm does not impose a rigid or mechanical approach, but can be taken more or less creatively and flexibly. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a paradigm as "a pattern or model, an exemplar; a typical instance of something, an example". The historian of science Thomas Kuhn gave

3444-399: A function of white racial hegemony." In relation to this view, Asante indicates that mutilating one’s own people is one of the greatest forms of dislocation and that revering the instruction of a "slave master" to intellectually attacking one's own people is a form of dislocated behavior. The centerpiece of Hill-Collins’ approach, as Asante (2007) characterized it, is that "Afrocentricity took

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3608-535: A group formed to promote relations between the countries. After riots against Blacks in Cincinnati , its Black community sponsored founding of the Wilberforce Colony , an initially successful settlement of African American immigrants to Canada. The colony was one of the first such independent political entities. It lasted for a number of decades and provided a destination for about 200 Black families emigrating from

3772-450: A long period during which no competing alternative has shown itself capable of resolving the anomaly. He also presented cases in which a dominant paradigm had withered away because its lost credibility when viewed against changes in the wider intellectual milieu. Kuhn himself did not consider the concept of paradigm as appropriate for the social sciences. He explains in his preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that he developed

3936-408: A manufactured intellectual agenda and predicated on the reactionary politics surrounding modern American history. Asante (2007) highlights that Hill-Collins' perspective on black nationalism, rather than being distinct from usual approaches, derives from the same origin as these approaches (e.g., black feminist nationalism, cultural nationalism, religious nationalism, revolutionary nationalism). Within

4100-416: A member of an institutionalized belief system). Some aspects that she defined and related to Asante's Afrocentricity was a fundamental love for black people and blackness (e.g., negritude ) and common black values (e.g., Karenga’s established values and principles of Kwanzaa ); another aspect was black centeredness as a form of grace or relief from white racism ; another aspect was the " original sin " of

4264-642: A number of locations in the United States. In 1863, during the American Civil War , President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation . The proclamation declared that all slaves in Confederate-held territory were free. Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation, with Texas being the last state to be emancipated, in 1865. Slavery in a few border states continued until

4428-499: A pageant illuminating the tyranny of White supremacy ". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-White jury . One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama—indeed, Parks told Emmett's mother Mamie Till that "the photograph of Emmett's disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on

4592-569: A paradigm can only apply to a system that is not in its final stage. Beyond its use in the physical and social sciences, Kuhn's paradigm concept has been analysed in relation to its applicability in identifying 'paradigms' with respect to worldviews at specific points in history. One example is Matthew Edward Harris' book The Notion of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: The Idea of Paradigm in Church History . Harris stresses

4756-464: A paradigm, research programme, research tradition, and/ or professional imagery. These structures will be motivating research, providing it with an agenda, defining what is and is not anomalous evidence, and inhibiting debate with other groups that fall under the same broad disciplinary label. (A good example is provided by the contrast between Skinnerian radical behaviourism and personal construct theory (PCT) within psychology. The most significant of

4920-727: A process known as White flight . Despite discrimination, drawing cards for leaving the hopelessness in the South were the growth of African American institutions and communities in Northern cities. Institutions included Black oriented organizations (e.g., Urban League , NAACP ), churches, businesses, and newspapers, as well as successes in the development in African American intellectual culture, music, and popular culture (e.g., Harlem Renaissance , Chicago Black Renaissance ). The Cotton Club in Harlem

5084-468: A reformulation of black cultural nationalism and being a civil religion, Asante indicates that Black studies derived and developed from black nationalism and that the development of Afrocentricity post-dates the development of Black studies. Asante indicates that the correct understanding that Hill-Collins has is that "Afrocentricity is a social theory in the sense that it explains the dislocation, disorientation, and mental enslavement of African people as being

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5248-661: A result of the scholarly development of Afrocentricity, several scholarly journals and professional associations have developed throughout the United States of America and Africa . As a global intellectual enterprise, Afrocentricity is studied, taught, and exemplified at institutions and locations, such as Quilombismo (which was initiated by Abdias Nascimento ) in Brazil , the Universitario del Pacifico in Buenaventura , Colombia ,

5412-600: A scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly: a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind ." The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (2008) attributes the following description of the term in the history and philosophy of science to Thomas Kuhn 's 1962 work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions : Kuhn suggests that certain scientific works, such as Newton's Principia or John Dalton's New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), provide an open-ended resource:

5576-511: A significant influence on worldwide culture, making numerous contributions to visual arts , literature , the English language, philosophy , politics, cuisine , sports , and music . The African-American contribution to popular music is so profound that most American music , including jazz , gospel , blues , rock and roll , funk , disco , house , techno , hip hop , R&B , trap , and soul , has its origins either partially or entirely in

5740-425: A small cash payment called "freedom dues". Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or European settlers . By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown , and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640,

5904-423: A year, compared with 41 percent in 1960. In 1965, 19 percent of Black Americans had incomes equal to the national median, a proportion that rose to 27 percent by 1967. In 1960, the median level of education for Blacks had been 10.8 years, and by the late 1960s, the figure rose to 12.2 years, half a year behind the median for Whites. Politically and economically, African Americans have made substantial strides during

6068-569: A yearly basis, such as the Cheikh Anta Diop Conference. The theory of Afrocentricity also had subsequent impact on other academic fields and theories, such as anthropology, education, jazz theory, linguistics, organizational theory, and physical education. Afrocentricity and Afrocentrism are not synonymous, but, instead, are distinct from one another, and should not be mistaken for one another. Molefi Kete Asante explains: By way of distinction, Afrocentricity should not be confused with

6232-436: Is also still used to indicate a pattern or model or an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype . The term is frequently used in this sense in the design professions. Design Paradigms or archetypes comprise functional precedents for design solutions. The best known references on design paradigms are Design Paradigms: A Sourcebook for Creative Visualization , by Wake, and Design Paradigms by Petroski. This term

6396-430: Is also used in cybernetics . Here it means (in a very wide sense) a (conceptual) protoprogram for reducing the chaotic mass to some form of order. Note the similarities to the concept of entropy in chemistry and physics. A paradigm there would be a sort of prohibition to proceed with any action that would increase the total entropy of the system. To create a paradigm requires a closed system that accepts changes. Thus

6560-425: Is apparent from his analogy between a paradigm shift and the flip-over involved in some optical illusions. However, he subsequently diluted his commitment to incommensurability considerably, partly in the light of other studies of scientific development that did not involve revolutionary change. One of the examples of incommensurability that Kuhn used was the change in the style of chemical investigations that followed

6724-405: Is frequently confused with ethnonationalism, often simplified to black pride or romanticized black history, often misconstrued by progressive / liberal academics as being a black version of white nationalism, or mischaracterized as being a black version of Eurocentrism. They further state, that Afrocentrism has been fallaciously characterized as being a notion based on black supremacy and as being

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6888-464: Is now generally seen as too limited. Some examples of contemporary paradigm shifts include: Kuhn's idea was, itself, revolutionary in its time. It caused a major change in the way that academics talk about science; and, so, it may be that it caused (or was part of) a "paradigm shift" in the history and sociology of science. However, Kuhn would not recognize such a paradigm shift. Being in the social sciences, people can still use earlier ideas to discuss

7052-727: Is now the continental United States. The first recorded Africans in English America (including most of the future United States) were "20 and odd negroes" who arrived in Jamestown , Virginia via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants . As many Virginian settlers began to die from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. An indentured servant (who could be White or Black) would work for several years (usually four to seven) without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland

7216-401: Is the usual developmental pattern of mature science" (p. 12). Paradigm shifts tend to appear in response to the accumulation of critical anomalies as well as in the form of the proposal of a new theory with the power to encompass both older relevant data and explain relevant anomalies. New paradigms tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in physics at

7380-419: Is used in reference to ethnic identity and cultural heritage; as such, there are modal uses of terms such as "African civilization" and "African culture", which do not deny the significance of the discrete identities and heritages of more specific African groupings (e.g., African-American , Hausa , Jamaican , Kikuyu , Kongo , Yoruba ). Asante (1993) indicates that usage of such terms, in reference to Ma'at ,

7544-695: The American Revolution . After the United States was founded in 1783, most Black people continued to be enslaved , primarily concentrated in the American South , with four million enslaved people only liberated during and at the end of the Civil War in 1865. During Reconstruction , they gained citizenship and adult-males the right to vote ; however, due to the widespread policy and ideology of White supremacy , they were largely treated as second-class citizens and found themselves soon disenfranchised in

7708-673: The Civil War , eight serving presidents had owned slaves, a practice that was legally protected under the US Constitution. By 1860, the number of enslaved Black people in the US had grown to between 3.5 to 4.4 million, largely as a result of the Atlantic slave trade . In addition, 488,000–500,000 Black people lived free (with legislated limits) across the country. With legislated limits imposed upon them in addition to "unconquerable prejudice" from Whites according to Henry Clay . In response to these conditions, some free Black people chose to leave

7872-717: The Great Awakening . By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies , which made them the second largest ethnic group after English Americans . During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious American colonists secure their independence by defeating the British in the American Revolutionary War . Blacks played a role in both sides in the American Revolution. Activists in

8036-589: The Irish and Germans . According to the 2010 census , nearly 3% of people who self-identified as Black had recent ancestors who immigrated from another country. Self-reported non-Hispanic Black immigrants from the Caribbean , mostly from Jamaica and Haiti, represented 0.9% of the US population, at 2.6 million. Self-reported Black immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa also represented 0.9%, at about 2.8 million. Additionally, self-identified Black Hispanics represented 0.4% of

8200-475: The New York Times , or Newsweek , created the term Afrocentrism in opposition to Afrocentricity and critics of Afrocentricity advanced this effort. Zulu indicates that Afrocentrism was an imposed term, which was part of a deceptive grand narrative, intended to derail and curtail the momentum of the paradigm of Afrocentricity being adopted and used. Asante indicates that Afrocentrism post-dates Afrocentricity as

8364-458: The Trans-Atlantic slave trade as the major reasoning for the suffering and death of black people, Africa as the promised land , and a form of salvation through self-redefinition and self-reclamation as an African people as well as rejection of what is perceived as being of white people and white culture (which are viewed as bearing evil qualities in relation to black people). Another aspect of

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8528-656: The Western states. The west does have a sizable Black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin , many of whom may be of Brazilian , Puerto Rican , Dominican , Cuban , Haitian , or other Latin American descent. The only self-reported ancestral groups larger than African Americans are

8692-446: The colony of Georgia to come to Florida as a refuge, promising freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism . King Charles II issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who fled to Spanish Florida and accepted conversion and baptism. Most went to the area around St. Augustine , but escaped slaves also reached Pensacola. St. Augustine had mustered an all-Black militia unit defending Spanish Florida as early as 1683. One of

8856-470: The experience of dual cultures (e.g., Africanisms , Americanisms ), resulted in some African-Americans re-exploring their African cultural heritage rather than choosing to be Americanized . Additionally, the African-American experience of ongoing racism emphasized the importance that culture and its relative nature could have on their intellectual enterprise. All of this cultivated a foundation for

9020-550: The illusion of equality. Following her characterized view of black nationalism, Asante (2007) indicates that Hill-Collins conflates black nationalism (e.g., Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam ) with Afrocentricity (e.g., Molefi Kete Asante and Afrocentricity ). Asante indicates that black nationalism, as a political ideology, is distinct from Afrocentricity, which is a philosophical paradigm, and that both serve distinct purposes and operate in distinct spheres. Rather than being

9184-623: The 16th century, with Africans from West Africa and coastal Central Africa being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere . After arriving in the Americas , they were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations , particularly in the southern colonies . A few were able to achieve freedom through manumission or escape, and founded independent communities before and during

9348-429: The 1790s, Governor Francisco Luis Héctor, baron of Carondelet reinforced local fortifications and recruit even more free Black men for the militia. Carondelet doubled the number of free Black men who served, creating two more militia companies—one made up of Black members and the other of pardo (mixed race). Serving in the militia brought free Black men one step closer to equality with Whites, allowing them, for example,

9512-503: The 1900 Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the technical use of paradigm only in the context of grammar) and of rhetoric (as a term for an illustrative parable or fable ). In linguistics , Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) used paradigm to refer to a class of elements with similarities (as opposed to syntagma – a class of elements expressing relationship. ). The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines one usage of paradigm as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of

9676-629: The 1900 Hampton Negro Conference , Reverend Matthew Anderson said: "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South." Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants , redlining and racial steering ". While many Whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, many other Whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions,

9840-439: The 1948 work of Cheikh Anta Diop when he introduced the idea of an "African Renaissance", J.A. Sofala's 1973 treatise The African Culture and Personality, and the three 1973 publications of The Afrocentric Review . Following the example of these and other preceding African intellectuals, Asante formally proposed the concept of Afrocentricity in a 1980 publication, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change , and further refined

10004-477: The 20th and 21st centuries, immigration has played an increasingly significant role in the African-American community. As of 2022, 10% of Black Americans were immigrants, and 20% were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first, and so far only, African American to be elected president of the United States. Kamala Harris became the nation's first African-American vice president in 2020. African-American culture has had

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10168-613: The African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación , which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, and that of others. Although some did not have the money to do so, government measures on slavery enabled the existence of many free Blacks. This caused problems to the Spaniards with the French creoles (French who had settled in New France ) who had also populated Spanish Louisiana. The French creoles cited that measure as one of

10332-514: The African-American community. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from several Central and West Africa ethnic groups. They had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids, or sold by other West Africans, or by half-European "merchant princes" to European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo in

10496-503: The American Revolution. They fought in the 1779 battle in which Spain captured Baton Rouge from the British. Gálvez also commanded them in campaigns against the British outposts in Mobile , Alabama , and Pensacola , Florida. He recruited slaves for the militia by pledging to free anyone who was seriously wounded and promised to secure a low price for coartación (buy their freedom and that of others) for those who received lesser wounds. During

10660-504: The Caribbean to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina ), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans . De Ayllón and many of

10824-474: The Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson , would later own one of the first Black "slaves", John Casor , resulting from the court ruling of a civil case. The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven Black slaves into New Amsterdam (present-day New York City ). All

10988-501: The European-American social power of whiteness to erase their racial identity and become any other identity (e.g., Native American, of Irish descent, of Italian descent) except an identity of African descent, the European-American social power to operate as individuals rather than as a monolithic racial identity (e.g., Black American), and a tradition of racism operating in the modern context of color-blindness , desegregation , and

11152-451: The Jim Crow laws, to avoid racially motivated violence . To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools , churches , banks, social clubs, and other businesses. In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in

11316-725: The Montgomery bus." The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson . Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions , and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to ensure Black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. By 1966,

11480-736: The Patriot cause included James Armistead , Prince Whipple , and Oliver Cromwell . Around 15,000 Black Loyalists left with the British after the war, most of them ending up as free Black people in England or its colonies, such as the Black Nova Scotians and the Sierra Leone Creole people . In the Spanish Louisiana , Governor Bernardo de Gálvez organized Spanish free Black men into two militia companies to defend New Orleans during

11644-401: The South . These circumstances changed due to participation in the military conflicts of the United States , substantial migration out of the South , the elimination of legal racial segregation , and the civil rights movement which sought political and social freedom. However, racism against African Americans and racial socioeconomic disparity remain a problem into the 21st century. In

11808-534: The South sparked the Great Migration during the first half of the 20th century which led to a growing African American community in Northern and Western United States. The rapid influx of Blacks disturbed the racial balance within Northern and Western cities, exacerbating hostility between both Blacks and Whites in the two regions. The Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across

11972-513: The US Census Bureau, evidence from the 2000 census indicates that many African and Caribbean immigrant ethnic groups do not identify as "Black, African Am., or Negro". Instead, they wrote in their own respective ethnic groups in the "Some Other Race" write-in entry. As a result, the census bureau devised a new, separate "African American" ethnic group category in 2010 for ethnic African Americans. Nigerian Americans and Ethiopian Americans were

12136-649: The US after White Americans . The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States . Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African American, the majority of first-generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. Most African Americans are of West African and coastal Central African ancestry, with varying amounts of Western European and Native American ancestry. African-American history began in

12300-636: The US and emigrate to Liberia in West Africa. Liberia had been established in 1821 as a settlement by the American Colonization Society (ACS), with many abolitionist members of the ACS believing Black Americans would have greater opportunities for freedom and equality in Africa than they would in the US. Slaves not only represented a significant financial investment for their owners, but they also played

12464-497: The US as a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919 . Overall, Blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for Blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. At

12628-407: The US. As a result of this large-scale forced movement, countless individuals lost their connection to families and clans, and many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa. The 1863 photograph of Wilson Chinn , a branded slave from Louisiana, along with the famous image of Gordon and his scarred back, served as two of the earliest and most powerful examples of how

12792-423: The United States . In June 2021, Juneteenth , a day which commemorates the end of slavery in the US, became a federal holiday. In 1790, when the first US census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000—about 19.3% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the Civil War , the African American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of

12956-471: The United States population, at about 1.2 million people, largely found within the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities. Self-reported Black immigrants hailing from other countries in the Americas, such as Brazil and Canada, as well as several European countries, represented less than 0.1% of the population. Mixed-race Hispanic and non-Hispanic Americans who identified as being part Black, represented 0.9% of

13120-748: The United States, a period often referred to as the " nadir of American race relations ". These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities. The desperate conditions of African Americans in

13284-690: The United States, continuing to flourish until the 1860s. Historians estimate that nearly one million individuals were subjected to this forced migration, which was often referred to as a new "Middle Passage". The historian Ira Berlin described this internal forced migration of enslaved people as the "central event" in the life of a slave during the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Berlin emphasized that whether enslaved individuals were directly uprooted or lived in constant fear that they or their families would be involuntarily relocated, "the massive deportation traumatized Black people" throughout

13448-514: The Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when they sentenced John Punch , a Negro, to lifetime servitude under his master Hugh Gwyn , for running away. In Spanish Florida , some Spanish married or had unions with Pensacola , Creek or African women, both enslaved and free, and their descendants created a mixed-race population of mestizos and mulattos . The Spanish encouraged slaves from

13612-453: The accepted standard model theory the experiment would test for. To illustrate the point, an experiment to test for the mass of neutrinos or the decay of protons (small departures from the model) is more likely to receive money than experiments that look for the violation of the conservation of momentum, or ways to engineer reverse time travel. Mechanisms similar to the original Kuhnian paradigm have been invoked in various disciplines other than

13776-505: The account is veridical at any one time, of course, and most modern philosophers of science are fallibilists . However, members of other disciplines do see the issue of incommensurability as a much greater obstacle to evaluations of "progress"; see, for example, Martin Slattery's Key Ideas in Sociology . Opaque Kuhnian paradigms and paradigm shifts do exist. A few years after the discovery of

13940-510: The aesthetic aspects incorporate African mythology , rhythm , and the performing arts . Mazama also argues that Afrocentricity can integrate aspects of African spiritualities as essential components of African worldviews . Mazama sees spirituality and other intuitive methods of acquiring knowledge and emotional responses used in the paradigm as a counterbalance to rationality , and firsthand experience of these cultural and spiritual artifacts can inform Afrocentricity. Mazama indicates that many of

14104-687: The agency of Africans and to avoid critique. Hilliard and Alkebulan indicate that, rather than the academic work of scholars of Afrocentricity being used to define Afrocentricity, mass media has shaped the public understanding of Afrocentricity using the work of journalists and the work of academics, who are not professionals in the field of Afrocentricity – such as Mary Lefkowitz and her work, Not Out of Africa , which also confuses Afrocentrism with Afrocentricity – as authoritative sources for criticisms of Afrocentricity. Cultural critic and postcolonial studies professor Edward Said has also been criticized of confusing Afrocentricity with Afrocentricism. In 1991,

14268-516: The assertions of the Pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey , who argued that ancient Egypt laid the foundation for civilization in world history. These would be echoed in the contexts of Black Nationalism , Negritude , Pan-Africanism , Black Power movement , and the Black is Beautiful movement that served as harbingers for the formal development of Afrocentricity. Molefi Kete Asante dates the first use of

14432-424: The associated set of preferred techniques, is the positive heuristic of a programme. Each programme also has a negative heuristic ; this consists of a set of fundamental assumptions that – temporarily, at least – takes priority over observational evidence when the two appear to conflict. This latter aspect of research programmes is inherited from Kuhn's work on paradigms, and represents an important departure from

14596-673: The birth of Kete Asante and it later became incorporated into the Afrocentric methodology and paradigm created by Asante. As Kete Asante further notes, while African-centeredness may suggest a limitation in geography, Afrocentricity can be performed anywhere in the world as a form of academic study. While there are different designations (e.g., Africanity, Gloriana Afrocentricity, Proletarian Afrocentricity) for Afrocentricity, Amo‑Agyemang indicates that Afrocentricity should not be mistaken for Afrocentrism and does not seek to replace Eurocentrism. As Afrocentricity centers African identity, and privileges

14760-433: The black equivalent of hegemonic Eurocentrism. Rasekoala states that, while Afrocentrism has been characterized as an ideology focused on cultural traits (e.g., customs, habits, traditions, values, value systems) of Africans, Afrocentricity is a methodology that focuses on the positionality, agency, and experiences of Africans. Proponents of Afrocentricity state that it is a theoretic concept of agency. They further state that

14924-400: The centered lens of African ideals. M'Baye indicates that, unlike Afrocentrism, the intellectual theory of Afrocentricity adds value to the field of Black studies. Some academics have stated that some of the more radical views of Afrocentricism have been unfairly attributed to Kete Asante. Some academics have indicated that Afrocentricity is distinct from Afrocentrism, and that Afrocentrism

15088-551: The characterization of Afrocentrism as a civil religion involves the homophobic and sexist exclusion of black GLBTQ individuals, black women , biracial and multiracial individuals, and wealthy black individuals. Asante (2007) characterized Hill-Collins (2006) as following a similar approach as Stephen Howe and Mary Lefkowitz of not providing a clear definition for the concept of Afrocentricity that they are attempting to critique and then, subsequently, negatively and incorrectly characterizing Afrocentricity as Afrocentrism (i.e.,

15252-544: The colonists died shortly afterward, due to an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to the Island of Hispaniola , whence they had come. The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free Black domestic servant from Seville , and Miguel Rodríguez, a White Segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in what

15416-430: The colony's slaves, however, were freed upon its surrender to the English. Massachusetts was the first English colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662, Virginia passed a law that children of enslaved women would take the status of the mother, rather than that of the father, as was the case under common law . This legal principle was called partus sequitur ventrum . By an act of 1699, Virginia ordered

15580-567: The concept in The Afrocentric Idea (1987). Other influential publications that helped to develop Afrocentricity include Linda James Myers' Understanding the Afrocentric Worldview (1988), Asante's Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1992), Ama Mazama's edited compilation The Afrocentric Paradigm (2003), and Asante's An Afrocentric Manifesto (2007). Temple University , the institutional home of Molefi Kete Asante and site of

15744-526: The concept of paradigm precisely to distinguish the social from the natural sciences. While visiting the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1958 and 1959, surrounded by social scientists, he observed that they were never in agreement about the nature of legitimate scientific problems and methods. He explains that he wrote this book precisely to show that there can never be any paradigms in

15908-895: The concepts, traditions, and history of Africans, Amo‑Agyemang indicates that Afrocentricity clarifies, deconstructs, and undermines hegemonic epistemologies; also, that it serves as a liberatory method that "negates/repudiates exploitations, oppression, repression, domination and marginality of indigenous cultural knowledge" and seeks the "democratisation of knowledge, de‑hegemonisation of knowledge, de‑westernisation of knowledge, and de‑Europeanisation of knowledge". Major critics of Afrocentricity have been Tunde Adeleke (e.g., The Case Against Afrocentrism , 2009), Clarence Walker (e.g., Why We Can't Go Home Again , 2001), Stephen Howe (e.g., Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes , 1998), and Mary Lefkowitz (e.g., Not Out of Africa , 1997). These major critical works were characterized in Asante (2017) as being

16072-507: The context of racialized American national identity, Asante characterizes Hill-Collins' notion of civil religion as the reverence for American civil government and its political principles; along with this notion is the characterized view of immigrating Afro-Caribbeans choosing how to not become "black" Americans (who later join with African-Americans and partake in the UNIA movement), immigrating Europeans choosing how to become "white" Americans,

16236-428: The deportation of all free Blacks, effectively defining all people of African descent who remained in the colony as slaves. In 1670, the colonial assembly passed a law prohibiting free and baptized Blacks (and Native Americans) from purchasing Christians (in this act meaning White Europeans) but allowing them to buy people "of their owne nation". In Spanish Louisiana , although there was no movement toward abolition of

16400-611: The detractors of Afrocentricity intentionally mislabel Afrocentricity as Afrocentrism in order to steer people of African descent, who are not yet aware of what composes Afrocentricity, away from it. This has been characterized as an “ongoing ideological warfare to ensure the continuation of the subjugation of African people as objects of analysis, thus discouraging them from being agents in their own history.” Additionally, it has been further indicated that those who charge scholars of Afrocentricity of producing political propaganda, do so as well, while portraying it as scholarship, in order to deny

16564-507: The development of Afrocentricity. Examples of the kinds of arguments that presaged Afrocentricity include pieces published in the Freedom's Journal (1827) that drew connections between Africans and ancient Egyptians , African-American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass and David Walker , who highlighted the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians as Africans to undermine the white supremacist assertion that Africans were inferior, and

16728-544: The discovery of electrostatic photography , xerography and the quartz clock . Kuhn pointed out that it could be difficult to assess whether a particular paradigm shift had actually led to progress, in the sense of explaining more facts, explaining more important facts, or providing better explanations, because the understanding of "more important", "better", etc. changed with the paradigm. The two versions of reality are thus incommensurable . Kuhn's version of incommensurability has an important psychological dimension. This

16892-399: The elementary account of how science works . According to this, science proceeds through repeated cycles of observation, induction, hypothesis-testing, etc., with the test of consistency with empirical evidence being imposed at each stage. Paradigms and research programmes allow anomalies to be set aside, where there is reason to believe that they arise from incomplete knowledge (about either

17056-533: The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from White authority. During the post-war period, many African Americans continued to be economically disadvantaged relative to other Americans. Average Black income stood at 54 percent of that of White workers in 1947, and 55 percent in 1962. In 1959, median family income for Whites

17220-474: The end of the 19th century. At that time, a statement generally attributed to physicist Lord Kelvin famously claimed, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." Five years later, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity , which challenged the set of rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics , which had been used to describe force and motion for over two hundred years. In this case,

17384-411: The facts of the world and the universe from within a paradigm'. African-Americans African Americans , also known as Black Americans , formerly also called Afro-Americans , are an American racial or ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa . African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in

17548-531: The first African American woman elected to the US Senate . There were 8,936 Black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001, there were 484 Black mayors. In 2005, the number of Africans immigrating to the United States, in a single year, surpassed the peak number who were involuntarily brought to the United States during the Atlantic slave trade . On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama —the son of

17712-400: The first PhD program in the field of Africana Studies, which at Temple is named Africology and African American Studies, is widely regarded as the leading institution for scholarship in Afrocentricity. In addition to Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity developed among the "Temple Circle" (e.g., Abu Abarry, Kariamu Welsh Asante , Terry Kershaw , Tsehloane Keto, Ama Mazama, Theophile Obenga ). As

17876-433: The framework of American civil religion and stripped it of its American symbols and substituted a black value system." Asante indicates that the earliest Africologists (e.g., Nah Dove , Tsehloane Keto, Ama Mazama, Kariamu Welsh , Terry Kershaw ) of the "Temple Circle" or contemporaneous scholars (e.g., Maulana Karenga , Wade Nobles , Asa Hilliard , Clenora Hudson-Weems , Linda Myers) had no conscious intention of creating

18040-473: The history of science. Perhaps the greatest barrier to a paradigm shift, in some cases, is the reality of paradigm paralysis : the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking. This is similar to what psychologists term confirmation bias and the Semmelweis reflex . Examples include rejection of Aristarchus of Samos' , Copernicus ', and Galileo 's theory of a heliocentric solar system,

18204-426: The idea of "social paradigm" in the context of social sciences. He identified the basic components of a social paradigm. Like Kuhn, Handa addressed the issue of changing paradigm; the process popularly known as " paradigm shift ". In this respect, he focused on social circumstances that precipitate such a shift and the effects of the shift on social institutions, including the institution of education. This broad shift in

18368-589: The idea of African centeredness. However, it has come to refer to a broad cultural movement of the late twentieth century that has a set of philosophical, political, and artistic ideas which provides the basis for the musical, sartorial , and aesthetic dimensions of the African personality. On the other hand, Afrocentricity, as I have previously defined it, is a theory of agency , that is, the idea that African people must be viewed and view themselves as agents rather than spectators to historical revolution and change. To this end Afrocentricity seeks to examine every aspect of

18532-418: The incumbent paradigm, and its replacement by a new one. Kuhn used the expression paradigm shift (see below) for this process, and likened it to the perceptual change that occurs when our interpretation of an ambiguous image "flips over" from one state to another. (The rabbit-duck illusion is an example: it is not possible to see both the rabbit and the duck simultaneously.) This is significant in relation to

18696-409: The issue of incommensurability (see below). An example of a currently accepted paradigm would be the standard model of physics. The scientific method allows for orthodox scientific investigations into phenomena that might contradict or disprove the standard model; however grant funding would be proportionately more difficult to obtain for such experiments, depending on the degree of deviation from

18860-527: The many ways these two sub-disciplines of psychology differ concerns meanings and intentions. In PCT, they are seen as the central concern of psychology; in radical behaviourism, they are not scientific evidence at all, as they cannot be directly observed.) Such considerations explain the conflict between the Kuhn/ Dogan view, and the views of others (including Larry Laudan, see above), who do apply these concepts to social sciences. Handa, M.L. (1986) introduced

19024-432: The mirror-neurons that provide a hard-wired basis for the human capacity for empathy, the scientists involved were unable to identify the incidents that had directed their attention to the issue. Over the course of the investigation, their language and metaphors had changed so that they themselves could no longer interpret all of their own earlier laboratory notes and records. However, many instances exist in which change in

19188-489: The most reported sub-Saharan African groups in the United States. Historically, African Americans have been undercounted in the US census due to a number of factors. In the 2020 census, the African American population was undercounted at an estimated rate of 3.3%, up from 2.1% in 2010. Texas has the largest African American population by state. Followed by Texas is Florida , with 3.8 million, and Georgia , with 3.6 million. After 100 years of African Americans leaving

19352-414: The new paradigm reduces the old to a special case in the sense that Newtonian mechanics is still a good model for approximation for speeds that are slow compared to the speed of light . Many philosophers and historians of science, including Kuhn himself, ultimately accepted a modified version of Kuhn's model, which synthesizes his original view with the gradualist model that preceded it. Kuhn's original model

19516-458: The newborn medium of photography could be used to visually document and encapsulate the brutality and cruelty of slavery. Emigration of free Blacks to their continent of origin had been proposed since the Revolutionary war. After Haiti became independent, it tried to recruit African Americans to migrate there after it re-established trade relations with the United States. The Haitian Union was

19680-531: The opposite of, those which we are now discussing". The original Greek term παράδειγμα ( paradeigma ) was used by scribes in Greek texts (such as Plato 's dialogues Timaeus [ c. 360 BCE] and Parmenides ) as one possibility for the model or the pattern that the demiurge supposedly used to create the cosmos. The English-language term paradigm has technical meanings in the fields of grammar (as applied, for example, to declension and conjugation –

19844-451: The overall White vote, although he won a larger proportion of White votes than any previous non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter . Obama was reelected for a second and final term , by a similar margin on November 6, 2012. In 2021, Kamala Harris , the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, became the first woman, the first African American, and the first Asian American to serve as Vice President of

20008-417: The overall population of the country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as " freemen ". By 1900, the Black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million. In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South. Large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. The Great Migration , as it

20172-474: The pan-Africanist doctrine" that merits not giving into "temptation to dismiss the notion of Afrocentricity completely in abeyance". Asante (1993) critiqued Esonwanne (1992) and the critical review that was given to his earlier work. Asante indicated that scholars who considered using Esonwanne (1992) as a means to comprehend his earlier work would have a limited comprehension of his earlier work. Esonwanne's characterization of Asante's work as "off-handedly racist"

20336-507: The paradigm of Afrocentricity as being composed of the " ontology / epistemology , cosmology , axiology , and aesthetics of African people" and as being "centered in African experiences", which then conveys the "African voice". According to her, Afrocentricity incorporates African dance , music , rituals , legends , literature , and oratures as key features of its expository approach. Axiological features of Afrocentricity that Mazama identifies include explorations of African ethics , and

20500-582: The philosophy of science. These include: the idea of major cultural themes, worldviews (and see below), ideologies , and mindsets . They have somewhat similar meanings that apply to smaller and larger scale examples of disciplined thought. In addition, Michel Foucault used the terms episteme and discourse , mathesis, and taxinomia, for aspects of a "paradigm" in Kuhn's original sense. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Kuhn wrote that "the successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution

20664-476: The physical sciences and in historical organisations such as the Church is that the former, unlike the latter, requires technical expertise rather than repeating statements. In other words, after scientific training through what Kuhn calls ' exemplars ', one could not genuinely believe that, to take a trivial example, the earth is flat , whereas thinkers such as Giles of Rome in the thirteenth century wrote in favour of

20828-422: The pope, then could easily write similarly glowing things about the king. A writer such as Giles would have wanted a good job from the pope; he was a papal publicist. However, Harris writes that 'scientific group membership is not concerned with desire, emotions, gain, loss and any idealistic notions concerning the nature and destiny of humankind...but simply to do with aptitude, explanation, [and] cold description of

20992-452: The population. Of the 12.6% of United States residents who identified as Black, around 10.3% were "native Black American" or ethnic African Americans, who are direct descendants of West/Central Africans brought to the US as slaves. These individuals make up well over 80% of all Blacks in the country. When including people of mixed-race origin , about 13.5% of the US population self-identified as Black or "mixed with Black". However, according to

21156-509: The post-war Reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, that period ended in 1876. By the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement . Segregation was now imposed with Jim Crow laws, using signs used to show Blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For those places that were racially mixed, non-Whites had to wait until all White customers were dealt with. Most African Americans obeyed

21320-504: The post–civil rights era. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court Justice. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the US Congress . In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected governor in US history. Clarence Thomas succeeded Marshall to become the second African American Supreme Court Justice in 1991. In 1992, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became

21484-434: The primarily sociological importance of paradigms, pointing towards Kuhn's second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Although obedience to popes such as Innocent III and Boniface VIII was widespread, even written testimony from the time showing loyalty to the pope does not demonstrate that the writer had the same worldview as the Church, and therefore pope, at the centre. The difference between paradigms in

21648-756: The programs of Africamaat in Paris , France , the Centre for African Renaissance at the University of South Africa in South Africa , a training program operated by Stanley Mkhize at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa , and the Molefi Kete Asante Institute in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , United States . Africological conferences also developed, some which operate by invitation, and some which occur on

21812-574: The public understanding of Afrocentrism that has been conveyed through mass media, which is held by some proponents and held by some critics of Afrocentrism, and the academic conceptualization of Afrocentricity held by Africologists. Karenga indicates that Afrocentricity is an intellectual paradigm or methodology , whereas, Afrocentrism, by merit of the term’s suffix (i.e., -ism ), is an ideological and political disposition. Additionally, Karenga indicates that, in Afrocentricity, African behaviors and African culture are subject to examination through

21976-620: The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. While the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship to Whites only, the 14th Amendment (1868) gave Black people citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave Black men the right to vote. African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools and community/civic associations, to have space away from White control or oversight. While

22140-461: The right to carry arms and boosting their earning power. However, actually these privileges distanced free Black men from enslaved Blacks and encouraged them to identify with Whites. Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the US Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the 3/5 compromise . Due to the restrictions of Section 9, Clause 1 , Congress

22304-401: The set of exemplary experiments that are likely to be copied or emulated. Secondly, underpinning this set of exemplars are shared preconceptions, made prior to – and conditioning – the collection of evidence. These preconceptions embody both hidden assumptions and elements that Kuhn describes as quasi-metaphysical. The interpretations of the paradigm may vary among individual scientists. Kuhn

22468-484: The skin, biology, or biological determinism ; this means that some claims to Afrocentricity are not strictly part of the paradigm, and certain critiques of supposedly Afrocentric ideas may not be critiques of Afrocentricity per se . Midas Chanawe outlined in his historical survey of the development of Afrocentricity how experiences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade , Middle Passage , and legal prohibition of literacy , shared by enslaved African-Americans , followed by

22632-463: The social arena, in turn, changes the way the individual perceives reality. Another use of the word paradigm is in the sense of " worldview ". For example, in social science, the term is used to describe the set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect the way an individual perceives reality and responds to that perception. Social scientists have adopted the Kuhnian phrase "paradigm shift" to denote

22796-434: The social sciences in his essay, particularly in sociology, political science and political anthropology. However, both Kuhn's original work and Dogan's commentary are directed at disciplines that are defined by conventional labels (such as "sociology"). While it is true that such broad groupings in the social sciences are usually not based on a Kuhnian paradigm, each of the competing sub-disciplines may still be underpinned by

22960-473: The social sciences. Mattei Dogan , a French sociologist, in his article "Paradigms in the Social Sciences", develops Kuhn's original thesis that there are no paradigms at all in the social sciences since the concepts are polysemic , involving the deliberate mutual ignorance between scholars and the proliferation of schools in these disciplines. Dogan provides many examples of the non-existence of paradigms in

23124-664: The south in large numbers seeking better opportunities and treatment in the west and north, a movement known as the Great Migration , there is now a reverse trend, called the New Great Migration . As with the earlier Great Migration, the New Great Migration is primarily directed toward cities and large urban areas, such as Charlotte , Houston , Dallas , Fort Worth , Huntsville , Raleigh , Tampa , San Antonio , New Orleans , Memphis , Nashville , Jacksonville , and so forth. A growing percentage of African Americans from

23288-501: The subject place of Africans in historical , literary, architectural , ethical, philosophical , economic , and political life. In addition to Molefi Kete Asante, many other academics have explained that Afrocentricity and Afrocentrism are distinct from one another, and that critics have often conflated the two when criticizing Afrocentricity. Further, Asante indicates that by conflating Afrocentricity with Afrocentricism, critics of Afrocentrism have mischaracterized Afrocentricity as being

23452-399: The substantive topic, or some aspect of the theories implicitly used in making observations). Larry Laudan has also made two important contributions to the debate. Laudan believed that something akin to paradigms exist in the social sciences (Kuhn had contested this, see below); he referred to these as research traditions . Laudan noted that some anomalies become "dormant", if they survive

23616-734: The system's worst elements. First established in South Carolina in 1704, groups of armed White men— slave patrols —were formed to monitor enslaved Black people. Their function was to police slaves, especially fugitives. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or slave rebellions , so state militias were formed to provide a military command structure and discipline within the slave patrols. These patrols were used to detect, encounter, and crush any organized slave meetings which might lead to revolts or rebellions . The earliest African American congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following

23780-521: The systematic methodology of Afrocentricity. As a result of the popular misconceptions of what Afrocentricity is not, Stewart indicates that this has had a negative impact in terms of public perception. Some academics have stated that, while Afrocentrism is popular culture, Afrocentricity is an academic theory and that Afrocentricity has been depicted by mass media and critics as Afrocentrism in order to attempt to mischaracterize and/or invalidate Afrocentricity. Karenga indicated that distinctions exist between

23944-682: The term, "Afro-centric", to 1964, when the Institute of African Studies was being established in Ghana and its founder, Kwame Nkrumah , said to the Editorial Board of the Encyclopedia Africana : "[T]he Africana Project must be frankly Afro-centric in its interpretation of African history, and of the social and cultural institutions of the African and people of African descent everywhere." Other antecedents to Afrocentricity identified by Asante include

24108-416: The terms and concepts used in Afrocentricity are meant to shift the conceptual status of Africans from being objects that are acted upon to subjects who are agents that act. In contrast to the hegemonic ideology of Eurocentrism , the paradigm of Afrocentricity is argued by Africologists to be non- hierarchical and pluralistic and not intended to supplant "' white knowledge' with ' black knowledge'". As

24272-856: The theory as well as engage in intellectual militarism. Consequently, between Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity, many critical academics tend to overlook their key suffix distinction (i.e., -ism and -icity). Philosopher Ramose indicated that, in contrast to Afrocentricity, Afrocentrism has been characterized as a notion that negates the notion of Afrocentricity being a “positive and progressive paradigm.” Other academics have indicated that since Afrocentricity has been made increasingly well-known inside and outside of academia, it has resulted in non-academics developing their own forms of analysis that are not so precise or accurate and these subsequently developed forms of analysis have been incorporated into various forms of media (e.g., music, film). This form of popular culture, or Afrocentrism, has also subsequently been mistaken for

24436-416: The theory of Afrocentricity. Asante (1993) went on to clarify that Cheikh Anta Diop, Maulana Karenga, and Wade Nobles, despite differences in professional backgrounds or academic interests, were all scholars in the theory of Afrocentricity. Asante (1993) went on to clarify that, similar to the use of the term "European", the use of the composite term "African" is not used it in reference to an abstraction, but

24600-578: The total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then. By 1990, the African American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the US population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900. At the time of the 2000 US census , 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South . In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest , while only 8.9% lived in

24764-422: The variant Afrocentrism. The term “Afrocentrism” was first used by the opponents of Afrocentricity who in their zeal saw it as an obverse of Eurocentrism. The adjective “Afrocentric” in the academic literature always referred to “Afrocentricity.” However, the use of “Afrocentrism” reflected a negation of the idea of Afrocentricity as a positive and progressive paradigm. The aim was to assign religious signification to

24928-440: The verb παραδείκνυμι ( paradeiknumi ); "exhibit, represent, expose"; and that from παρά ( para ); "beside, beyond"; and δείκνυμι ( deiknumi ); "to show, to point out". In classical (Greek-based) rhetoric , a paradeigma aims to provide an audience with an illustration of a similar occurrence. This illustration is not meant to take the audience to a conclusion; however, it is used to help guide them to get there. One way of how

25092-515: The west and north are migrating to the southern region of the US for economic and cultural reasons. The New York City , Chicago , and Los Angeles metropolitan areas have the highest decline in African Americans, while Atlanta , Dallas , and Houston have the highest increase respectively. Several smaller metro areas also saw sizable gains, including San Antonio; Raleigh and Greensboro, N.C.; and Orlando. Despite recent declines, as of 2020,

25256-405: The word its contemporary meaning when he adopted the word to refer to the set of concepts and practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period of time . In his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (first published in 1962), Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as: "universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions to

25420-463: The work of Lavoisier on atomic theory in the late 18th century. In this change, the focus had shifted from the bulk properties of matter (such as hardness, colour, reactivity, etc.) to studies of atomic weights and quantitative studies of reactions. He suggested that it was impossible to make the comparison needed to judge which body of knowledge was better or more advanced. However, this change in research style (and paradigm) eventually (after more than

25584-543: Was $ 5,600 (equivalent to $ 58,532 in 2023), compared with $ 2,900 (equivalent to $ 30,311 in 2023) for non-White families. In 1965, 43 percent of all Black families fell into the poverty bracket, earning under $ 3,000 (equivalent to $ 29,005 in 2023) a year. The 1960s saw improvements in the social and economic conditions of many Black Americans. From 1965 to 1969, Black family income rose from 54 to 60 percent of White family income. In 1968, 23 percent of Black families earned under $ 3,000 (equivalent to $ 26,285 in 2023)

25748-400: Was a "strange mix" due to each of the scholars having different methodological approaches to African studies and African-American studies. Based on this characterization of Asante's earlier work as a "strange mix", Asante (1993) viewed this as indication of Esonwanne (1992) showing a lack of comprehension and familiarity with his earlier work, with the works of Diop, Karenga, and Wade, as well as

25912-401: Was a Whites-only establishment, with Blacks (such as Duke Ellington ) allowed to perform, but to a White audience. Black Americans also found a new ground for political power in Northern cities, without the enforced disabilities of Jim Crow . By the 1950s, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till ,

26076-538: Was addressed in a chapter of his earlier work, but that the shortcomings of the critiques presented in Esonwanne (1992) show that Esonwanne may not have read as far as that chapter. Hill-Collins (2006) characterized Afrocentrism as essentially being a civil religion (e.g., common beliefs and values; common tenets that distinguish believers from non-believers; views on the unknowns of life, on suffering, and on death; common places of gathering and rituals that establish one as

26240-404: Was at pains to point out that the rationale for the choice of exemplars is a specific way of viewing reality: that view and the status of "exemplar" are mutually reinforcing. For well-integrated members of a particular discipline, its paradigm is so convincing that it normally renders even the possibility of alternatives unconvincing and counter-intuitive. Such a paradigm is opaque , appearing to be

26404-449: Was called, spanned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million Black people moved north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed , with more African Americans moving south to the Sun Belt than leaving it. The following table of the African American population in the United States over time shows that the African American population, as a percentage of

26568-511: Was characterized by Asante as "gratuitous mudslinging" that lacked specificity about what was being characterized as "off-handedly racist". Additionally, Asante indicated that, due to the lack of specific example cited from his earlier work to support the characterization of it as "off-handedly racist", it was "not only a serious breach of professionalism but a grotesque and dishonest intellectual ploy". Esonwanne (1992) indicated that grouping Cheikh Anta Diop, Maulana Karenga, and Wade Nobles together

26732-413: Was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased, and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or attempting to running away. Unlike slaves, they were freed after their term of service expired or if their freedom was purchased. Their children did not inherit their status, and on their release from contract they received "a year's provision of corn, double apparel, tools necessary", and

26896-544: Was unable to pass an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves until 1807. Fugitive slave laws (derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution— Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 ) were passed by Congress in both 1793 and 1850 , guaranteeing the right of a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave anywhere within the US. Slave owners, who viewed enslaved people as property, ensured that it became

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