(3 of 3)
Even some well-educated black professionals are not immune to the odd tenets of Afrocentrism. Covering the annual convention of the black National Medical Association last summer, Andrew Skolnick, an editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association, listened in disbelief as Dr. Patricia Newton, a psychiatrist affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, waxed eloquent about the wonders of melanin. It has "one of the strongest electromagnetic field forces in the universe," she proclaimed, and was responsible not only for imparting traits that make blacks superior to other races but also for stimulating healing through movement.
"No joke," she explained. "Because when you hear that bass drum ... it creates a melatonin increase surge, causing it to be released in the body, induces the opiate system -- the endorphin and enkephalin system -- and gives you a sense of well-being." From the audience, Skolnick says, "there was not a single murmur of dissent."
These melanist notions and other extremes of Afrocentrism are discomforting to many black educators. John Warfield, who until recently headed the African- American Studies Center at the University of Texas at Austin, calls the melanist theory "a difficult concept to support scientifically" and feels that Afrocentrism is "a romanticizing of Africa that should give everyone pause." But he urges understanding of a form of black nationalism that "waxes and wanes" with the sense of discontent among U.S. blacks. He calls it "a response reflective of some of the destitution in the black community."
While acknowledging the bad science in Afrocentrism, Manning Marable, director of African-American studies at Columbia University, attributes it to a handful of crackpots engaged in what he calls "vulgar Afrocentrism based purely on speculation and racial divisiveness." It developed as "an attempt to speak to a crying need for identity, purpose and human development within the context of the black underclass." Much of Afrocentrism, he says, is based on solid scholarship.
But Marable and some other responsible black educators may be underestimating the appeal of "vulgar" Afrocentrism. Barry Mehler, a white Ferris State professor who specializes in investigating white racism, only recently became aware of the melanist advocates and was shocked by the wide acceptance of their views. "They do not represent a majority of black opinion," he says, "but they represent a significant minority." In a society that has treated blacks as inferiors because of the color of their skin, it is hardly surprising that many of them now embrace melanist doctrine. But in doing so, they are indulging in what they have long decried: racism.