Dr. John Henrik Clarke vs Mary Lefkowitz: The Great Debate (1996) | Best Quality

they wanted to know what the discussion was to be what it was about he says oh my god you mean they're still discussing this stuff I said yeah of course they're still discussing this stuff because this stuff is the stuff that Scholarship is made of and that academic inquiry is made of tonight we enter the world of scholars who have diametrically opposed on the subject of the origins and foundations of what we know today as Western civilization one school of thought is that it is distinctly African or afro-asian in origin the other that Western civilization in large measure is the bequest of ancient Greece make no mistake this is not a mere difference of opinion in the ivory tower the battle itself has become an allegory for something as important as a debate itself academic insurgents have breached the ramparts of the a cadet academies high priesthood and the battle is as much for the authority to write history and for how to write history our task tonight is to ferret out the truth insofar as we can discern it but more importantly to question and challenge and we have four incredible people with us tonight and I'd like to introduce them to you and have them come to the stage as they're introduced already on stage is Professor John Henry Clark [Applause] [Applause] they were standing for you dr. Clark teacher historian writer lecturer John Henry Clark is a unique resource and a special institution in the African world beginning in his early years dr. Clark studied the world history of African people and became a master teacher he has authored and or edited more than 30 books short stories and pamphlets on African and african-american history and his distinguished professor emeritus of African world history in the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter Cultch professor John Henry Clark I'd like to ask to the stage dr. Martin burr now [Applause] dr. Martin Bernal has been a professor of government at Cornell University since 1972 and an adjunct professor of Near Eastern Studies also at Cornell since 1986 educated at King's College Cambridge where he earned his doctorate in Chinese Studies in 1966 and at Peking University the University of California and Harvard dr. Bernards works have been widely reviewed and criticized in many instances as controversial his chief publications of a two set volume black Athena the afro-asiatic roots of classical civilization and cadmium letters the westward diffusion of the Semitic alphabet before 1400 BC dr. Martin Bernal [Applause] I invite to the stage professor Mary Lefkowitz [Applause] [Music] okay nice to meet you thank you can sit right here merry Lefkowitz is Andrew Mellon professor in the humanities at Wellesley College she is the author of not Out of Africa how Afrocentricity came an excuse to teach myth as history and his co-editor of woman's life in Greece and Rome with fellow Lesley and guy MacLean Rogers she co-edited black Athena revisited a collection of 20 essays by scholars from a broad range of disciplines who take dead aim at dr. burnell's black Athena specifically but contend generally that the Africa centeredness of scholarship on the roots of what is called classical civilization is blatant revisionism dr. Mary Lefkowitz fine fight to the stage professor guy MacLean Rogers [Applause] professor Rogers as I said is also at Wellesley College where he is an associate professor of Greek and history with dr. lek Lefkowitz he co-edited black Athena revisited and his author of the sacred identity of a thesis foundation myths of a Roman city professor Rogers [Applause] so here we have a rather distinguished panel and I would like them first to begin with their conclusions they will have about no more than five minutes to summarize the major thrust this evening professor Clarke we will start with you single point I wish to get across before we start anything I am NOT here to debate with anyone I have devoted all of my adult life to this subject I only debate with my equals all others I teach [Applause] [Applause] [Music] shall we continue or what I'm not clear you trees broadly speaking honestly speaking the book not out of Africa a good South more effort is not really about not out of Africa last year it was the bell curve this year is not out of Africa next year it'll be something else this is part of a world war against the role of African people in the history of the world if we began history began mankind how is it that the last branch of the human race to enter that arena marked civilization now think they brought civilization now it is part of a war over and above professor Lester Wilson's book and over in above her political naivete so naivete is about what is happening in the Western world that was a recent book called the tribes it diagram every people major people on the earth searching for a piece of turf for themselves it left out the African people because the other people including Asian imperialists have plans to take over Africa there have been several articles in the New York Times advocating the recolonization of Africa this book and other literature of this nature need to prepare the world to accept a rationalization for the week enslavement of Africa now and when you deal with the black endorsers of the book running dogs of the New Imperialism professional fight behind kisses and as Carlos cook you to say a disgrace to the skin they wear these people if I'm be so kind to call them that a running from themselves and teaching us a lesson that we should have learned long ago sometimes white wannabes are more dangerous than whites and sometimes they'll fight you harder to be accepted by whites they are running from their own people and running from definition now what we need to look at now is how professor let's do it neglected the fight writers through history the radical European writers who wrote positively about burka and who dinner fide the relationship Africa to the ancient Greece now if given time and I probably won't be giving it this evening I can prove to you with your satisfaction if you are listening that Rome and Greece was not European creations these were Mediterranean inspired nations and couldn't be created by Europe because at the time there was no Europe [Applause] huh all right well let me just begin by saying what my book not out of Africa isn't about it's not an attack on Afrocentricity centrism means recognition of african achievements in the world it doesn't seek to deprive Africans of their rightful heritage Africans do not need Greece to have a cultural heritage they have a rich cultural heritage Egypt is just one part of it they don't need Greece I'm concerned because what is being offered in some quarters as African history is really a European myth and thus instead of getting real information about Africa what people are learning is something that's really 18th century French it's Eurocentric it's based on Greek and Roman myths I do not myself think that one should do that because Egypt itself is so fascinating so rich there is so much that you can learn and know and that I myself as a result of all this work that we have been doing for the last four years and more have come to know and understand about Egypt I would like to now spend a great deal of the rest of the time that I have learning about that because it is so different it's so different from the what the Greeks thought that it was Herodotus was very impressed by Egypt he wanted to say that everything in Greece that he could think of came or had some connection with Egypt he didn't really understand the depth and richness of Egypt which went in directions way beyond what he knew from his own experience in Greece so I am concerned about that in not out of Africa I've tried to explain why the notion of an Egyptian mystery system which is basically a French invention it's based on a novel that everyone has forgotten about but still you can find in some very obscure libraries get it up in Boston even and that that book which was by a French priest is based on Greek and Roman sources and tries to describe a greco-roman Egypt and that this myth was preserved in Freemasonry and thus came into American culture so I'm concerned that that myth not be taught the notion that there was an Egyptian mystery system instead I'd like to see people learn all people learn not just black people white people any people learn about Africa and the civilizations they're in and Egypt is particularly appealing because it's so old it's so impressive it's role in the Mediterranean was so vast and so many other civilizations were touched by it even if only slightly they did get touched by it and we have to work on that I would like to say just in my last two minutes that from my point of view and the point of view of my colleague guy Rogers the ancient world is multicultural and that one cannot study any one bit of it without studying every other bit of it and the debate tonight and I hope the debate will go on for many many years because so many of us will learn from it that debate should investigate the degree and extent of those links myself as I think you know I don't think the Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt I do not believe there is any evidence to show that I think that because Egyptian philosophy and there is such a as Egyptian philosophy and deep Egyptian religious thought which is very very complicated and I myself need to know more about it still but it's not like the Greeks it's it may in many ways be richer and better than some of the concept I agree with Professor Lefkowitz that Africa does not need Greece there are plenty of glorious African civilizations it just that it happens to have Greece or to a significant to have influence Greece to a significant thing this is not an issue of politics it's an issue of history the way things were now Greece is extremely important because it is the single greatest source of European culture and therefore we are concerned with it and it is very interesting to note that European culture did not begin in Germany or Sweden but at the extreme southeast corner of Europe and the reason for that is quite straightforward it was the closest area to the great civilizations of North Eastern Africa and Southwest Asia and these this east Mediterranean complex was the source of Greek and hence I believe European culture now there's not to deny that there was a great deal of local development within Greece and I certainly do not propose that Greek Greek culture was merely a projection or an imitation of Egyptian or Semitic culture it's clearly a very distinctive culture but to try and understand Greek culture without knowing the background of the ancient cultures behind it is would be as absurd as it would be to study Japanese culture without knowing the Chinese and Korean roots behind it and know East Asian specialists would dream of doing that that you have to see the cultures as interrelated and that the older cultures and the more elaborate cultures had the predominant trol influence I one of our basic disagreements is that marry Lefkowitz sitting in the 20th century feels that she knows better than the Greek historians of the fifth and fourth third century when they said that there were significant influences yes he was very impressed yes he was very Greek but what struck him was specific similarities and Herodotus were all applauding historian he said well what are what's the reason for these similarities I think they're too close for coincidence I don't think the Egyptians could have borrowed them from the Greeks because they've had so long they've had them so long therefore the most likely explanation is that the Greeks took them from the Egyptians and this is what I call the ancient model and this model was not overthrown until the early 19th century now mary Lefkowitz mentions the 18th century novels and at times despite the attention she's devoted to dismissing my book I sometimes feel she hasn't read it because I do devote some quite a few pages to the novel Seto's which she talks and I had to have read it it had to be sent by interlibrary loan to me and I do think it is important in the formation of Masonic thought but what she does not bring forward is the fact that this was perfectly Orthodox history as understood in the 18th century and going back beyond the 18th century to the view that the Greeks and Romans had of the Egyptian sources of their own culture now I think that the Greeks were on the whole are very intelligent people and I respect their philosophy their art their democracy their science but I also respect their history and this is a great anomaly in Merrell of covets his approach in that she says there were they're very good in these other respects but they cannot be trusted with their own history so that I want to bring that out that one has now she says that modern classics has dismissed all this and it's true that the predominant view of modern classicist is that the debts to Egypt and Phoenicia and I don't want to underestimate the importance of LaVon Tyne or Southwest Asian influences on Greece that these influences were exaggerated by the Greeks and I think that they clearly were a property no I think they were properly expect properly developed and to some extent the Greeks may even have played down because they were very conscious of being Greek and proud as being Greeks and they were affected by two forces on the one hand they wanted to plug in to the ancient civilizations and give themselves cultural depth on the other hand they were very conscious of being Greeks and wanted not to be surpassed culturally by the Egyptians and Phoenicians who are still very much around so they had two forces working on them modern scholars and modern scholars working in intensely racist 19th and 20th century had no double force they had the single force wanting to make Greece pure white and European and the ideological pressure that that put on the scholars led to what I see as the recent dismissal of Egyptian and Phoenician influences on ancient Greece thank you [Applause] professor Rogers please do present your conclusion in five minutes or less I'd just like to say from the beginning that Professor Lefkowitz and I are here precisely because we're open to debate about these issues three and a half years ago the University of North Carolina press asked professor Lefkowitz and me to put together a volume of responses to some of the questions which are either implicitly or explicitly raised by Professor Bernal in his work black Athena and what I would like to do for just a couple of minutes here and perhaps expand upon this a little bit later is to set out some of those questions and to give you some sort of sense of what the preliminary Thanks preliminary answers to the questions that the contributors to our volume found obviously among the important questions that people have been concerned with number one were the ancient Egyptians black - did the ancient Egyptians or the Hyksos colonize Greece did the three did the ancient Egyptians or the Phoenicians massively influence the early Greeks in the areas of language religion science or philosophy for did 18th and 19th century scholars obscure the afro-asiatic roots of classical civilization for reasons of racism and anti-semitism let me give you some sense of our conclusions number one the scholars who have looked carefully at the first question have concluded that the attempt to fit the ancient Egyptians into a modernizing category of either black or white do so from a perspective which lacks both historical and biological justification did did the ancient Egyptians or the Hyksos colonize what would later become Greek lands in the second millennium unambiguous archaeological evidence to that effect is lacking in the Mediterranean did the ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians massively influence the Greeks in the area that I outlined there is no doubt and no one has denied for at least 50 years that I know of that there was Egyptian influence on early Greek culture in several different areas in areas actually that curiously professor Bernal skips over like art and architecture the real scholarly question is can that influence be described as massive in the sense that professor Bernal means and the conclusion which scholars from many different sub disciplines and not just classicist but Egyptologists submit assists and African historians have reached is that the case cannot be made for a massive influence furthermore students of the ancient world proposed a very different model of interaction among the cultures of the ancient world in the time period that we're discussing instead of seeing a one-way street leading from Egypt to Greece scholars now are shaping a model which includes many two-lane highways going from Egypt to Greece going from Egypt to the Near East - West Asia and bath in the other direction as well what about racism and anti-semitism in 18th and 19th century historiography yes there were some scholars who operated from a framework which we would consider to be both racist and anti-semitic but an undifferentiated picture of racism and anti-semitism cannot be sustained on the basis of the evidence conclusions as we go on in the evening but I wanted first to ask each of the discussions tonight how they came to this particular area of study and how scholastically have they undertaken comparative analysis in this particular area of study how in effect are you preparing I'll have you prepared yourself you'll start at this end of the table and go straight down yes or what our scholarly preparation was both okay you exert influence yes by virtue of your scholarship in this area I'm asking how do you defend your scholarship in this area how did you acquire your scholarship in this area okay in a way I am I think an example of the kind of training that Professor Bernal has been calling for because I have the advantage of not having an undergraduate degree in classics but an undergraduate degree in ancient history which included where I was taught not only Greece and Rome but also Egypt and Persia and Phoenicia and Palestine so that's my preparation how do I defend my scholarship I don't have to defend all of the different areas which are raised by black Athena or issues that we're talking about the whole point of putting together a collected volume with scholarly views by different people is to offer different perspectives on these questions my own particular expertise happens to be in the eastern part of the Mediterranean from about 1200 BCE to 300 C so are you saying that you were a facilitator of a frontal assault a frontal assault on as opposed to in this book black Athena revisited if you're saying that you're not yourself prepared to defend the scholarship in this book no I'm not saying that at all I'm saying I'm certainly prepared to defend the scholarship in in this book but I don't claim and I don't think that anyone else would claim to be an expert at the in the 27 different fields which Professor Bernal raises in that sense all but if you'd pardon me professor Brunel will defend his own work I'm saying that you as a co-editor of this book I would have assumed perhaps its naivety on my part the part of your role is also to inspect the scholarship of contributors to your book as well as to exercise some kind of scholastic judgment as to their expertise on the subject I think your question is now a little bit clearer and my answer to it is that I stand completely behind our conclusions and I take full responsibility for them is that clear enough well I was under the impression I was saying what I had to say quite well you evidently having difficulty trying to understand and that's an entirely different problem one which I'm happy to say belongs almost singularly to you professor Lefkowitz how did you come by your scholarship in this area and how do you defend your scholarship in this area well I come by my scholarship in this area as a classical scholar I was I have an undergraduate degree in classics and a PhD in classics my work has been widely through the whole field of Greece and Rome I became particularly interested in a neglected field it was neglected entirely when I came to it which was the study of women in the ancient world half of the women in Greece and Rome and I think elsewhere in the ancient world as well we're simply half the people were ignored so I became very interested in that and spent a lot of time on that which involves many different periods of of antiquity I got interested in this subject because I was asked to write a review for the New Republic magazine of Martin burnell's two volumes and at the same time I was asked to consider such influential and important books as George GM James's stolen legacy so that's how I got into this my perspective is simple that of a person who seeks to understand history and who uses evidence I defend myself by citing my sources and the materials anyone can check these references my goal is not to stifle discussion or to do anything - and I do not seek to indoctrinate I have no agenda even though many may be imputed to me I have none you may say that but how do you know what is in my mind if I if I am a white person or a Jewish person does that mean that someone has told me what to say or told me what to think professor well that's Kuwait's have you been to Africa no I have not been to have you have you studied in Africa no I have not studied an apricot never said I did can you tell me the African scholars to whom you have referred in your scholarship I have referred to the writings that are in black Athena revisited by some distinguished Egyptologists such as John Baines and David O Connor and Frank York oh I I can only refer to those in detail I have read many other things but I do not pretend at any time to be a scholar of Africa and Egypt I must rely on others for that including Martin Bernal whose work I in spite of his suggestion I read and I know I could find the pages very easily under us all that he mentions and he it is an example of the comprehensiveness of his work that he knows this obscure source in writing as prolifically as you have on ancient Greece have you been to Greece yes many times I thought sir I would like to ask the same question of professor Bernal it was in East Asia Chinese Japanese and some extent Vietnamese and the one advantage of learning Chinese in particular Chinese writing system is that it makes you somewhat less frightened of others I had done a very little Greek at school and I try to teach myself more as I did Hebrew but essentially over the last twenty years I have been an autodidact that is teaching myself but in a very privileged situation in that I was a teacher at a university so I could go to the experts asked them naive questions about the new subject that I was looking at and they were extraordinarily generous in responding to me so that I did get information in this way I was also given a very broad historical background by my father who read me HG Wells his outline of history over six years with various glosses so that he gave me a sense that one could understand history one could see things in larger context and sometimes even in global contexts and that I found very useful and confidence-building but I always insisted and I say this in the introduction to Volume one that I am trying to open doors for people who have more or better equipped in a specialized sense to go through because there are many areas that I look at and touch on but cannot follow through so I wouldn't claim a deep expertise yes I have been to Greece yes I have been not only to Egypt but to Tunisia to Malawi to Zambia to Zimbabwe so I have some experience of Africa so I have that background and I think that has helped me in my general approach in in your book your two volumes professor by now the black Athena volumes are you suggesting that you initiated much of this information or are you picking up for where others have left off well I mean I start off looking at the ancient sources the ancient Greek source is their view of their own history but I don't take them on face value I then tried to check looking at archeological linguistic Celtic information or from other sources so I was using a multidisciplinary approach and I am eclectic and I've been accused of that but I think in these areas where there's so little information that one cannot follow the rigor of of pursuing one particular discipline like linguistics or something like that one has to look across the board I was referring specifically to the scholarship of African scholars yes I mean although I must confess that I came to them rather late on in my study and to some extent I found that I had reinvented the wheel that there was a great deal of what I had laborious Lee tried to assemble for myself had been assembled and this was very straight striking in the case of scholars like Du Bois or Sinclair Drake but also many of a counter job and others provided extraordinarily useful avenues for me to pursue I wouldn't call myself an after centrist except to the extent that I believed that Africans and peoples of African descent have played many significant roles in world history and that these have been systematically denied by European and North American scholars in the 19th and 20th century I think that the degree of racism in our society can hardly be overestimated we all have it and it's very very difficult to see past it all right thank you very much professor Clark I came to this subject before I was 10 as a Baptist sunday-school teacher I wanted to teach junior class in front of school so I learned to read there early but baffle me from the beginning was the Bible itself I could not find my people in a book that's supposed to be about all mankind and what call my attention to the neglect of Africa was the Sunday School lessons with all those white angels when they said god is love God is kind God has no respect of kith or kin I kept wondering why didn't he let at least one or two little brown a black angel sneaked into heaven so I began to suggest that somebody else had tampered with God's book in favor of somebody else and the tabara to greatest it was a rationale for European domination but had been used as such then coming to know after leading Georgia after a white man that I've worked for if he's alive today he has he's a liberal with a capital L his name was gag Steiner I asked him about some books on the African people in ancient history and in the language of the South he let me down slow I mean he spoke kindly he said you know Jonah I'm sorry thet you came from erased has made no history but if you persevere if you obey laws and study hard you make history and you personally might one day be a great Negro like Booker T Washington look at T Washington was the one thing wife's approved of at that time alright while doing chores at a local high school holding the coat and the books of a recital is the book I opened a book called the new Negro and I found it essay by Puerto Rican of African descent Arthur Schomburg the essay was called the Negro digs up his past now I knew I was not only older than slavery I was older than my oppressor and mouth Tessa was the last branch of the human race to enter that arena mock's civilization don't get mad get smart through me wrong [Music] now in the old Harlem history Club and the Williston Hogan's long since dead John Jackson died only a few years ago we had to take up a collection to bury Charles ciphered J Rogers under all of these teachers wanting me to good material Arthur Schomburg telling me go study the history of your masters stead of the people who took you out of history then you'll understand your history I started on an old chestnut recently mentioned HD wells outline of history it is still worth reading it is a good basic outline his basic facts are in order when he tell you about the Crusades he's not he's not off one I ordered but his interpretation is basically Eurocentric to the point of being a prejudiced document now I was reading these kinds of books I was reading Spingarn decline of the West when I was 18 years old so I began to read European masterpieces and I began to read European curiosity about Africa general masses six-volume Egypt life of the world to volume not just Genesis 2 volumes book of the beginning to volume now I began to read general masses added two on religion in his idea that nearly European concept of religion was stolen from outside view of he was not in his dark he was not an Egyptologist he was an agnostic fighting the arrogance of the European of that day see in the history club led me to not only reading masterpieces by black quite radical riders who set the black radical riders in motion a whole lot of claims like did not make until they saw the documents in what's written by Europeans and these Watchmen by Europeans what black had the time and the money to sit down into a six-volume world well dr. Clarke I would like you to hold it right there again stake holder right there and sometimes your regret having to ask a question that is so obvious that it almost hurts okay now let's get into the fray we will have the scholars asking questions of each other and I'd like to start with Professor Lefkowitz asking a question of Professor were now I'd like to ask professor Bernal if he could point to some specific instances which he could cite where egyption thought influenced Greek philosophy directly and if he could discuss some of those for us well the Greek philosophers were extremely respectful towards Egyptian philosophy and particularly Plato in particularly Plato in his later dialogues the emphasis on geometry which was the great strength of Egyptian mathematics and was the center of the Platonic educational system I think is one example I would also think that the system of ideas or forms which Parmenides and Plato pushed looks extremely Egyptian to me but I can't prove it I also think that the distinction between worlds of being and worlds of becoming which fits Egyptian grammar extremely well and Egyptian cosmological notion is extremely well look very influential I think that the Greek tradition which was that Pythagoras and Plato had drawn from Egypt seems altogether plausible but what I insist and here's our major methodological difference is that I don't believe one can establish proof in these distant areas of history one has to work on a system of probability or what I call competitive plausibility what is less unlikely than the other given the closeness of the two countries geographically the contact that we knew no was taking place in the 6th and 5th century when Greek philosophy began to be formed the likelihood of contact is extremely high and I think if anyone should have to prove anything it should be those who would deny that there were significant Egyptian influences on Greek philosophy at this time as the Greeks themselves associated the word philosophy with Egypt in their earliest references to it it seems very strange that the chair the people who maintained the Greeks own tradition on this subject should be asked to prove their case rather than those who challenged [Applause] [Music] well I think those are some interesting ideas and I would like to think very hard about them but I think we must also think about the things that are very different in very very confusing in the tradition such as some of the things that are said about that Pythagoras learned in Egypt he couldn't have learned there because they aren't Egyptian particularly there are some mistakes that are made in the Greek understanding of Egypt and one problem is in thinking about this contiguity very few Greeks could get to Egypt over a long period of time safe in the 10th century to the seventh century then there is a window of opportunity but then again the Persians moved in kept the Greeks from getting there in any great number and really until the conquest of Egypt by Alexander I hate to interrupt you professor left quits but the idea here is to not just explain the question that you yourself have asked but to follow through based on the response you've got well I thought that's what I was doing there but all right well then actually we differ there professor Lefkowitz would you like to ask a question I mean professor Bernal would you like to ask a question of professor fether Lefkowitz yes as she and the predominant viewer classicist at the moment concede that Egyptian art and architecture and she's just written an article in The New Yorker showing a particular medical view was taken by the Greeks from Egypt why is it so implausible to suppose that the Greeks took other aspects of their culture particularly in this period I believe also much earlier as well what is the reason for denying the possibility which was brought up by the Greeks themselves of transmission of mathematical and philosophical ideas at the same time there's no reason to deny it it's just simply to try and find what these ideas were now in the case of the medical thing that you mentioned it happens to be a particularly wrong idea and of course wrong ideas can be transmitted as well as right ideas and this is one thing that in tracing the history of the world we tend to concentrate so much on the glorious achievements and the glories of Greece you know the glories of Egypt there are also some non glories and some of the medical ideas are one of them I think we're all very lucky not to have been living at that time but I would say there's nothing implausible about it at all and there is a great Greek interest in Egypt as you say and that surface is very clearly in the later dialogues of Plato but I think that if you're going to talk about stealing ideas from Egypt which I know you are not but others have then you really have to show some parallel text and show what is done I think the idea of some influence is something they could fruitfully be discussed and preserve and pursued and I would like to continue to do that and to and to continue to encourage others to work on that you get to ask professor Clark a question yeah I hardly know where to begin [Music] one thing I'm curious about I had a quick look actually at the introduction to the second edition of Bradley's The Iceman inheritance a very interesting book with a lot of interesting hypotheses about the origins of cultures and civilizations professor Clarke wrote an introduction to the second edition to it in which he stated that the first show of European literary intelligence surfaced around 1250 BCE with the publication of two books of folklore the Odyssey and the Iliad and that struck me as somewhat curious because in fact as far as most scholars seem to be able to tell the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed actually orally and didn't reach a literary form if you mean by that written form until probably the 6th century BCE in Athens there are obviously text from Mycenae and Crete and elsewhere with real Greek in a literary form from before 1250 in fact going back probably to 1600 or so but this has significant implications for the idea which some scholars have put forth that Egyptian language was deeply influential on the first form of Greek that we have that is the linear b tablets so I'm awaiting the question but that is my question I present Clark has stated that this is the first form of literary intelligence that surface around 1250 and in fact it did not and I'm curious how he is maintaining that all right it is the first book and it's a book of folklore and we really don't know for the Homer wrote it over the homeless man a woman it's the first book to become known basic to the West in the form that we could study and conjecture about it it emerged at the time Europe was beginning to show some intellectual maturity and if you deal with this you have to deal with what Professor les with accuse me of not paying attention to historical chronology and if she read it of my text into my numerous guys and curriculars and lecture notes you know that I'm especially some chronology I know that one comes first and to come second but what I'm what I was trying to to get across is that in the eighth century to the twelfth century so the intellectual emergence of Europe at the time Egypt was in its 23rd dynasty in dying after nearly ten thousand years of some forms of organized society Europe intellectually was just being woman and I further maintain that Europe in general had nothing to do with the creation of Rome and Greece and yet the challenge of Rome and Greece created Europe because they were scattered tribes and the challenge Rome and Greece brought them together and they became a people strong enough to create a state if anybody got any information to the contrary state the information to the contrary I maintain that there was no you're you're giving Europe credit things that happen before the first European borshu are lived in the house to their window and I'm saying that you have not read not just Massey Joe Massey his his European disciple Elvin means shut wad signs and symbols of primordial man the origins of of religions and his extensive work on female-centric cannot read the American disciple of the open of Massey Alvin Boyd Q is who who is this King of glory one of the best written books on the Christ story with he proves that you the basis of European spirituality was taken directly from Africa professor Rogers would you like to follow on your question we know one is actually maintaining that literary Greek culture pre-existed any number of Near Eastern cultures again I find it a bit curious by the way except each of his Near East except each of his part of physically a part of Africa created by the alpha female in the South even if even if you even if even if I concede or admit or agree with you that Egypt is part of Africa what I'm about to say [Music] [Applause] there will be order thank you there will be order thank you very much do I do I detect some disagreement here by my point was going to be that the most recent scholarship about the genesis of the those two oral epics the Iliad in the Odyssey points in fact in another direction to influence and that is in fact the Hittite Empire whose documents we can read very easily and there may well be independent confirmation of the historicity of some form of a Trojan War in those documents and so what I'm really asking is why is it that we're just really looking in one direction when we're talking about the origins of Greek civilization fresh Clark put el examen into egypt he wrote home to his mother and said that he at last reached the land for the Greek gods began Apollo and Zeus and he wanted to consult one of the great African teachers of Oracle's and the Oracle asked how old is this man is a 32 they said in 20 years maybe he'll be wise enough to ask me a question that I can't answer professor Clark would you like to ask professor Rogers a question all right we are waiting professor Clark yes it is your turn to ask professor Rogers a question the main my main concern is that they seem to have equated the civilizations of the Tigris and the Euphrates with the civilization of the now what proof do you have that the civilization of the Tigris and the Euphrates predated the civilization of the Nile I don't think that I said that and I don't think that anyone maintains that I think that the Hittite Empire obviously comes at a much later period I know very clear when the Hittite Empire came I know what damage they did because I maintain that every people who came into Africa Greeks everything from modern-day Englishmen everybody came into Africa did have become more harm than good if Africa owes nothing to outsiders in regard to development because all of them declared war on African culture won't when African civilization wrong own African ways of life they began to bastardize Africa and confuse and create a kind of historical sketch so premia the DAO African had even got rid of to this very day they created homeward they did not previously exist like Middle East middle from Wow in round two we will continue professor Clark you will ask the first question in round two of professor mary Lefkowitz professor left which at your own admission you encountered Jenny Rogers four or five years ago Jay Rogers didn't say he was a historian he was such a trying to find the role of the African personality in world history he worked over fifty years of his life gave a service died broke what gives you the gosset to think that you can dismiss Rogers out of hand and what gave you the maturity the thing did you can't judge a writer that she cared ideal the finest historical writer we are produced in the 20th century [Music] I try to ask questions of all the material I read I try to answer those questions on the basis of the evidence the historical evidence at all in my view comes down to that and I do not wish to criticize any individual at all I am dealing only with written work the people who write that I do not always know and I have no individual or personal criticism of them this is the way scholars I'm sure as you know proceed and that is simply what I did in my book I will leave it to everyone who reads the book to judge what I did I think you have emphasized too much the word black and we made the same mistake black tells you how you look but it don't tell you who you are the proper name of a people must always relate to land history and culture I did not say Cleopatra was black I quoted someone else who inferred that my defense of Cleopatra is not only her blackness but on no matter whatever she want she was born in Africa she defended she was the her manipulation of Mark Antony and Caesar kept the worst aspect of Roman rule from the backs of Africa I defend hugging African nationalists and that's a good good defense no matter what she did with her Wales in and out of there there's a whole lot of people got their spawn professor Lefkowitz you may ask a question of professor Clark [Music] professor Clark do you think that we should always judge history in terms of race look there was no such thing as race in the psyche of the world until the Europeans put it into the psyche of the world [Applause] the applicants knew nothing about race and didn't think they belong to anything called a race and when the Africans saw the Europeans because they have a traditional hospitality to strangers they didn't fight them they didn't kill they were curious about them and with the African explorers and especially mundo pop with him to Africa if nobody heard it mean nobody shot at him nobody showed the arrows at it then Europeans went in peacefully but the Africa's heard that mondo pop was a pork eater most people don't know it but Africans were not great for eaters and they're not great for Gators today Polk was a meat you ate in the sarah said ceremonies same times a year but we were not great for Keita's but we came to the United States over force to the United States but in the United States we had to eat the part of the pig that white folks threw away so we made delicacies out of it and survived I had this argument with Malcolm X I said having one for the black one by making delicas out of pig feed pig here the guts gentlemen will you will you and I would be here argue to play I'm afraid that you're not only a delinquent in African history you're delinquent in African folklore so much of our history is tied up with our folklore but you can't reduce worries that didn't exist in anyone's vocabulary before nobody ever thought of anybody being inferior or superior intelligent people don't even devote a human being can be you can't fall into that category and nobody had the extensive probably Europeans had with women because in the period of feudalism in Europe the last 1000 years the white woman in Europe was a vassal but they also someone who's never been a bachelor in that sense then please check under the office the culture unity of black Africa dealing with the history of the matriarch we got all evidence right there but we were the first people to support a woman as head of state with the first people to poor women this is riding ahead of her army with the first people to make women of God I'd like to ask dr. Bernard Bernal to ask of dr. Rogers a question I agree I hadn't read black Athena revisited I haven't yet received my copy but I do know who the contributors are and I have read the reviews they wrote and these reviews I'm told are very similar to the ones that originally appeared so the title revisited is slightly misleading because these were immediate responses in the heat of polemic now I have no doubt that the conclusions he summarized are the conclusions found in the book but I'm not sure whether they're the result of an impartial selection because having read most of the reviews not all reviews my work I find a pretty systematic selection for black Athena revisited from the hostile ones and other ones which were more balanced or more friendly to me have been prettiest in fact completely systematically not requested or if requested refused and these include the three experts on Egyptian Greek relations not Egyptologists not Helenus but specialists and the interrelations between the between the two cultures and these three scholars works were in fact excluded and it seems I wonder if there's any other explanation for their exclusion than the fact that they would have appeared too friendly or to have taken my work too seriously and serious is a word repeated in these reviews thank you I'm afraid I have some rather bad news for you professor Bernal professor Alette quits and I actually didn't read just some of the reviews of your work we read them all we collected them all there's 50 pages of bibliography at the back of our book with asterisks next to the current outstanding reviews of your work from 19 seven until just a few months ago as for the selection process of the essays that went into it I have to say to you that we in fact do believe that we have given a representative sample and here's where the really bad news is we actually excluded the ones that attacked you personally or intact your competence for this field as far as the three experts on Greek Egyptian relations are concerned two of them that you referring to must be Eric Cline and Stanley Burstein Eric Klein has written several articles about those relations we in fact did ask him if he wanted to contribute but he couldn't meet our deadline when he eventually did I'm afraid to tell you that his essay did not actually agree completely with your conclusions but the reason why it wasn't in the collection was that it came in too late as far as professor Bernstein is concerned I'm afraid that his essay was much more critical than you seemed to believe so that really is the explanation I think for those omissions I might say that as far as our editorial posture was concerned we realized that these are sensitive difficult issues and we fully expected that we would be in this room here tonight we didn't know the date but we knew we'd be here and so what we did what we tried to do was we try to have what we call full disclosure it's the reason why the book turned out to be not just another 150 page book with some essays sort of thrown together but a book which attempts to give summaries of comprehensive accounts of the questions that Brenau raises and we give for now full credit for raising those questions I think that Professor Clark and other are quite correct professor Bernal is not the first person to raise those questions but in fact he raised them in a compelling and interesting way and we feel that we are giving him and those of you who are interested in these problems as we are complete respect both by answering them in full and by being here tonight to defend our views I if I might can I come back yes please do I'm sorry I don't expect any scholar to agree with me entirely and what I found with the reviews he say is that they did not agree with all I said but they took what I said seriously and they did agree with some significant things I don't want total praise and I'm sure they're right that the predominant reaction from the disciplines which I am challenging is hostile I don't question that for the moment but the selection does include I'm told personal attacks on me as being a baby and various other things so I don't think they've been quite so scrupulous as far as that is concerned I'm also intrigued because one person who had attended the meeting the party given for the contributors to the book which of course I was told nothing about described it as a lynch mob another mutual friend of Mary's and mine refers to it regularly as the [ __ ] on Vernell book that there's a and so I think there are very different perceptions of this book yes is that a title that you come up with on the spot or is it something you've been thinking about no it's it's a title that a mutual friend of Mary's and mine uses regularly he's a colleague at Cornell it's not I wouldn't have thought that up I think that if you look carefully and I'm sorry that you haven't had an opportunity to work through the book carefully yet I think when you do you will see that there are not very many ad hominem attacks in it although I find your defensive nough somewhat curious since in black Athena volumes 1 and 2 part of your methodology has involved actually contextualizing people and talking about their family relations their own personal backgrounds and so I I'm a little bit puzzled by that kind of response I have no objection to people attacking me personally I what I would like to see is a all-round collection and I think that as I live by the sword of sociology of knowledge I must be prepared to die by it and I think that people will see in 20 years where I'm coming from or what my personal problems or axes were but and I think that's part of the story of the book but I think there's also the substance of the book and I would have hoped to have found more a wider scan and we've had many collected volumes on this I mean I don't think this is the first response to my work there have been three four journals now have had selections of articles and my responses and their responses to my responses and there has been real dialogue this was a book which I was not told about till long after it had begun and when I was told about it and asked if I could see the pieces to write a response I was told there was to be no response and furthermore that their responses that I had published to the articles criticizing me were not to be included this does not seem to me opening the debate debate it seems to be stamping out heresy by response back Mara that respond to that briefly we will have a free-for-all in a minute okay that's I wanted to follow up on a phrase that you said and I didn't want to leave it unaddressed the issue of full disclosure and it is to that I'd like to ask the question of Professor Lefkowitz are you comfortable with the famously were comfortable with the fact that your book not out of Africa subtitled how Afro centuries and became an excuse to teach myth as history was under write written by several foundations that have reportedly rightist leanings I wondered whether this was a reflection of your own personal or ideological view or whether you were just so cash-strapped that you took money from anyway [Applause] [Music] no one tells me what to think and no one tells me what to say except me and the main financing of this book was out of my own pocket but surely you can appreciate the the color of accepting funds from foundations that do not enjoy wide acclaim and receptivity and I thought that maybe there was some concern on your part and as much as you interested in integrity scholastic integrity and all that you might have for God the grants in the interest of academic and scholarly integrity if they had asked me to do anything I would not have accepted these grants they did not do that therefore I didn't the grass did not go to me they went to Wellesley College which had no objection to taking the money but still the question remains you have a duty do you not in as much as you are preparing work the aim of which is to overturn the revisionism you say that it's going on in Black Studies particularly in African Studies this whole battle that you have been dealing with in terms of Afrocentricity do you not regardless of where Wellesley chose to accept money from do you not as a scholar have an obligation to discern where this money's coming from to see whether the source is compatible with your own views as a scholar I did not see anything in the conditions of the grant that inhibited what I did and what I meant to do or say or think I believe that I acted with perfect integrity now you may disagree with that and you may disagree with the aims of those foundations and other foundations and that is what we do in a free country until they are outlawed I don't see what can be done well let me ask you the question perhaps more directly had there been a foundation to wipe out scholarship of any sort if such a foundation were to have given money to Wellesley College would you have found it equally acceptable to take money from such a foundation to further your work I don't know what foundation you're talking about this seems to be it was a hypothetical question it's totally hypothetical I don't know what you're trying to force me to say or to compel me into these people understand you're chanting to put me go ahead and attack me I'm just trying to elicit a cogent response from you well you be the judge of my response all right okay in this last round before we get to questions and we will get to questions but let me warn you you ought to have questions that are questions not lectures and there are straight to-the-point in this round it will be a free-for-all in which all of the discussions are permitted to ask questions of each other and to chime in responses whether they are asked the question directly or not yes you treat I think we should I just wanted professor lest you wish to know some basic information about the concept of Afrocentricity there's a lot of people who believe in the African Awakening and discovering of their history and their culture who do not accept the word Afrocentricity because it's a compromise with the world Africa is either African centricity or it's nothing and if she attacks Afrocentricity as the teacher of myth have she attacked the nonsense about Columbus discovering America [Applause] because he discovered absolutely nothing and he committed an act of genocide he set in motion an act of genocide ten times worse than the act of genocide in Europe called the hollow house and though that was the only that event in Europe wrong and even if only six people were killed it was wrong but it was a matter started in Europe by Europeans that should have been solved in Europe by Europeans I'm sure that you're aware as we are that there is a spectrum of afro and African centric views I'm a little bit curious what you think then of the work of Asante who as far as I know does call himself an afro centrist are you saying that Professor asantos work actually is flawed conceptually I'm saying that all work under the guise of afro centric is not perfect but it is an art that earnest effort to restore Africa to a proper commentary in human history I think professor Sanchez work is written too fast and there's some things he hadn't checked out as well as the need to and I think too many times Afrocentricity becomes a personality cult but that don't mean that I'm against African people discovering that the history that literature that plays and the political science of the world that don't mean that I have not played a role in encouraging people to write about Africans and all the societies of the world see your talk keeps telling me what you have not read you could not have been asking these questions about Afrocentricity if you have not read an eclipse Asst toolbar you deem with the massive explosion of African people throughout the whole world you could not possibly read with any degree of understanding three volumes Africans and early age Africans are very Europe Africans in early America we're not talking about no hearsay we're talking about documents or JR Professor Joseph Harris's book given the global dimensions of the African Hollow this boy I don't know mean you keep telling me you keep confessing your ignorance with your questions you have not read i'm telling me before Afrocentricity radical europeans had pioneered in this world I haven't even mentioned the radical Black Riders then you probably have not read enough you read Chancellor Williams chapter 2 in the book destruction of black civilization read that chapter took of Egypt Ethiopia's oldest daughter and it deals with the southern African origins of Egypt if you read a book called Nubia corridor to Africa once more you got tricked also you got the early Arab slave trade I keep saying nobody came into our frontier African people any good after the Romans had disgraced themselves trying to be early Christians the African saw that by accepting Islam they could get the Romans off of their back they were right they did get the Romans off their back but the album replaced the Romans on their back and the ABS are still on their back speaking of book-reading I'm a little bit curious then one book I have read is civilization and barbarism in which a scholar that we've talked a little bit about has written that the 18th dynasty in Egypt quote colonized all the Aegean Sea and consequently brought the region of the world out of proto history into the historical cycle of humanity by the introduction of writing linear a and Linear B and I'm quite curious what Professor banal thinks of such a hypothesis are clearly linear a and Linear B do not come from Egyptian hieroglyphics it is an Aegean and an Anatolian script on the other hand there's no doubt that Egyptian relations with the Aegean intensified a great deal during the 18th dynasty and we have documents and paintings representing what the Egyptians interpreted as people from the Aegean bringing tribute to Africa we also have scholars like professor Redford and Toronto who takes it for granted that there were reg there was regular correspondence between the court in Mycenae and the court in Thebes and there's no doubt which was the more powerful state there is archaeological evidence of contact at that time but Greece was already literate in its own scripts of linear and linear be I was rather intrigued by Professor Rogers mentioning texts Greek texts in the 16th century I don't know what he's referring to there that the linear B techs are two or three centuries later but that's a side issue I agree actually it's not a side issue I'm afraid that chadwick and others have now updated the earliest linear b tablets but i would like to come back to you for a second now that we're talking about the 18th dynasty because as I'm sure you know the funeral Steeley of Amenhotep has been used to make some claims by some scholars about Egyptian dominion at that time over the Aegean but since you've mentioned professor Klein in fact both professor Klein and professor O'Connor at the Institute of Fine Arts here in New York I think have shown fairly clearly that this in fact is not the case so this leads me to like how about this leads me on to a point about source criticism and I would like to raise this as a general point that one of the very curious things to us about black Athena is that it does appear to us that the rules of the sociology of knowledge appear to apply to scholars of the 18th and 19th century but not for instance to Herodotus or texts which seemed to support professor burnell's point of view and I'm wondering then what since we're speaking of principles of selectivity what then the principle of selectivity for the sociology of knowledge might be the reasons why I mean I don't accept Herodotus uncritically I think one should try and check Herodotus wherever possible but I think one should also check the 19th and 18th 19th or 20th century scholars thoroughly the reasons why I on the whole inclined to believe her auditors more than the 19th century scholars eye out line before that is that Greeks were torn in their attitude towards Egypt and towards Southwest Asia Herodotus is main purpose was to illustrate the constant struggle between Europe and Asia between Greeks and others and so in a way his description of Egypt as a source of great Greek culture goes against his ideological aim and I find that more plausible than the 19th or 20th century scholars who were profoundly influenced by Eurocentrism and by the triumphs of Europe in their own epoch to push Greece into Europe and away from the Mediterranean and I feel that there was no countervailing force affecting the 19th and 20th century historians and the power of racism and later anti-semitism I think was extraordinarily effective I think it's I think it's also important for the audience to realize that while it's true that Herodotus is a very interesting and intriguing source for Egyptian and other cultures history in the Near East Herodotus also tells us that there were flying snakes in Arabia he also tells us that in the north of India that there were ants that were actually larger than foxes but smaller than dogs which dug up gold for their Indian masters to be sent to the Persian Empire as a form of tribute I think that these kinds of stories and Herodotus should caution us against using Herodotus at face value I think that people should think in a common sense sort of way about Herodotus Herodotus was a Greek who knew no Egyptian when he went to Egypt and asked questions about Egyptian culture he was unable to check any of the stories that were told to him about Egyptian culture he could read no documents in Egyptian if anyone in this room went to a country where they could not speak the language and they could not read any of the text of that culture would you necessarily believe everything that you were told about that culture sorry would you believe the reports rather than what you were told I there are many Western travelers who have done that edgar snow couldn't speak sufficient Chinese and certainly couldn't read Chinese and yet you wrote very interesting reports about China it is possible for an intelligent person with judgment living in the country and viewing it to get good views but I agree that Herodotus makes many statements that offend our laws of natural history and therefore they should be discounted immediately on the other hand the 19th century scholars believed in such things as races racial essences the bad effects of racial mixture all these things are much more relevant to the study of relations between Egypt and Phoenicia and Greece than belief in medium sized dance that these are the relevant issues and these are fantasies that were held by the 19th and early 20th century scholars I'm surprised that no one mentioned the book when Egypt ruled the East a Keith Seeley what you call Western Asia but what is the Western Asia mistakenly called the Middle East what's an extension about the itself would really not East Africa and the people were interchangeable we seem to neglected this very important aspect then in looking at Herodotus the Robinson was no fool Herodotus was a good reporter when you told him something he didn't believe he said he didn't believe but he said the tenth of the complexion of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians seemed to be the same so let us at least concede that's not an analysis now that's of observation let us concede in her robinus at least had good outside [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is his professor Clark claiming that Herodotus did go to Ethiopia he encountered Ethiopian as well as Egyptians of the people we missed you - what Egyptian anyway that's a Greek word and the Alpha will never call that country Egypt but he encountered both then ever other writers come Bonnie runs of empires and ellipses work on the comparative study between the cultures of the upper and the lower now me mean that you people keep telling me what you have not read well one of the things that we did read and we did actually put in our volume was a very long and comprehensive essay by Frank Snowden of Howard University cop-out although I'm afraid to say disagrees with you completely and cites many Greek writers and also Egyptian sources who make differences in their observations look [Music] Frank Snowden skip gates up here all these cop out running from black people and time to get accepted by white people we cannot be judged by these phonies now you cannot you will not dare judge the Jewish people in our plight in Germany by the deuteron these are the Jews police who chose other Jews to go to the gas chamber you will not judge Jewish people by that on that method and we cannot judge us by cop house and Runaways and profession of white ass kissers [Applause] [Music] [Applause] excuse me yes I you're quite right I don't make judgments upon people based on those kinds of slanders I judge their evidence but the question arose early in this conversation professor Rogers how prepared are you to be a judge that was the initial question that I asked you if you're saying that you're basing a conclusion on the writings of someone without yourself being able independently to assess the validity of what they say I'm not so sure that you are well equipped to judge I am judging based on the evidence and I think in discussing Herodotus I've given some very very good examples of my familiarity with that text and I really haven't had responses which show very much familiarity with the details of Herodotus's texts and his observations I'm afraid you've conducted how long have you been I hate to say that but how long have you been in this store five years sorry in this area of study I think I mentioned at the beginning that my undergraduate training was specifically in Near Eastern ancient history so that's about 20 years ago at this point my undergraduate training is in economics but I will not exactly say that I would go up against a real economist it still is a BA degree after all well my PhD is actually in classics in ancient history and I'm curious now that we're raising the question of qualifications and you're asking me about judging those texts whether in fact you do read Greek yes [Applause] then [Music] [Applause] I'm not at issue here tonight I'm not I'm not at issue perhaps then perhaps you would like to tell me that when Herodotus uses the term melon crow ways to describe Egyptians what he means I go back to my answer I'm not here claiming to be an expert on Herodotus or any the so-called Greek philosophers but that's a great question no it's not a great question at all it is a question that you ask an expert and I am NOT here claiming to be an expert I also in case you would like to know have a distinction in Latin and I speak German and French and Spanish and a distinction in English as well some somewhat literate I'm concerned though that so far I've been hearing bits and pieces of the discussion in specificity you take fact a and you argue fact a and you get a response based on fact a I'm not so sure though that you have accomplished the major objective here tonight which is to argue that bodies of work have no legitimacy I would like you in concluding to at least get to that issue that entire bodies of work have no legitimacy I don't know all right the order would be as follows we will start with we'll start with dr. Rogers and then we will go to dr. lek Lefkowitz to dr. Bernal to dr. Clark I'm baffled by that introduction about bodies of work I don't think that that has anything to do with anything that either professor Lefkowitz or I have said but since you've asked me to conclude something about what we are trying to persuade people of look what I would say is this but hold on please I just don't want you to conclude about something that was in our past so I would like to document it from the book you claim for example and I'm reading from the the cover of the back cover the contributors to this volume argue that burnell's claims are exaggerated and in many cases unjustified you say also in the work were now proposed a radical reinterpretation of the roots of class of classical civilization contending that ancient Greek culture derived from Egypt and Phoenicia and that European scholars have been biased against the notion of Egyptian and Phoenician influence on Western civilization since this is a twenty member compendium I think it suggests that they're attacking a body of work I hope I hope that in reading the back jacket cover in our description of Professor burn Al's enterprise that we've been fair to him insofar as what he takes his project to be about as far as I understand it I think it is fair my conclusion about that has to be framed in terms of what the object of that body of work is about professor Brunel says that his object the political the cultural purpose political purpose of black Athena is to lessen European cultural arrogance my question is does it lessen European cultural arrogance to argue that early Greek culture was derived from Egypt and or Phoenicia if we start out from the premise that we study Egypt or Phoenicia for what they contributed to early Greek culture my opinion is that we are under valuing Egypt and Phoenicia and therefore the project itself is in the end essentially Eurocentric and is its own refutation I think one can agree with the project of lessening European cultural arrogance completely and that we applaud all efforts to do so what we are concerned with is trying to establish what historical evidence shows the influence of what on what and this is not a project which any of us here can complete at all that many people must be involved in this and it requires the thought and efforts of a lot of us to do it we would like to think that it can be redone without rewriting history altogether or without claiming that there has been a huge European cover-up of information there is certainly true you can claim that but please remember you must also show that it has been done there are many things that Europe has been guilty of and responsible for and certainly the covering not the covering up I don't mean to say that but the absolute refusal to acknowledge the history of Africa which I made reference to in my opening remarks is something that we must continuously work on redressing much more must be learned much more it must be studied I am very much in favor of that and I believe that can start also in our teaching of American history where in many cases the whole history of the African American contribution to American history has been ignored and neglected and there are brilliant writers out there whose works are not being read I think we should change all that but we do not have to rewrite ancient history completely in order to do some of these important things I would just simply ask let us investigate carefully the degree of Egyptian influence on ancient Greece what we must also investigate the Near Eastern called such as Phoenicia and the Hittites after all Phoenicia gave ancient Greece her alphabet they didn't learn the alphabet from the Egyptians it was too hard it was easier to get it from the Phoenicians and we must begin to work on those lines I would like to see everyone work also on a period we haven't discussed much here tonight where we really do see Egyptian influence on Greek culture and that is in the Hellenistic period after Alexander got there and Greeks were living in Egypt a huge number of Greeks were living in Egypt there I think you can see some real influence [Music] having this is now the third debate that we have had and I'm very struck by what I see as a discrepancy between Mara Lefkowitz his speech and her writing [Applause] legend speech she is all sweetness and light and for open debate and openness in culture her writing is very different the title not out of Africa is extremely provocative and it reads they did the text carries on in the same way and I'd like to quote to you a letter I received from probably the most distinguished active classicist in the world today who actually agrees with her on acted on the academic side nevertheless he writes I do not find her exposition cool detached and reasonable despite her efforts to make it seem like it that it is in fact as I wrote in my review an impassioned polemic of course Mary wants to look scholarly and attached but hers is the scholarship of the National Association of scholars which is founded funded by the same people that funded not Out of Africa and that leads us back to where Professor Clark began on the general political context in which this book has appeared I will defend professor less to its his innocence because she is a pawn and somebody else's game as I said in the beginning it is beyond the lack and diss lack of Afrocentricity which has not even developed enough to be called a discipline it is a world war to prepare the mind to accept the reinstatement of Africa to remove from the mine of all people anything good that Africa has done and to ignore the fact that Europe set up Africa to fall apart by imposing on Africa to miss educated Africans a nation-state the nation-state is unethical the African thrive at his best in the territorial state many cultures many languages side by side challenging each other but realizing each other what you might call an empire to study the last thousand years before slavery the development of Independent States in the western Sudan Ghana Mali some gain destroyed by the invasion from North Africa by the Arabs the Arabs attacking the North African Muslims attacking the African Muslims in destroying the great universities sent Korean exiling its greatest scholar of me Barbour who admonished his students believe in God and science the Africa's never separated God from science the priests were scientists the priest was the most knowledgeable person that's why you had the concept of a priest God now if they wipe this out of the mind of our children and our children look at television and sound bytes in fact they were nothing but a nothing when they reinsulate Africa they're gonna say good but they're preparing us to accept it they're preparing the world to accept the reach enslavement of African people all over the world and I'm saying that this less which is a pawn in their game in the tragic irony of it she is the pawn in the game of people who turned their backs on her people and that to be killed by the millions [Applause] American intelligence French intelligence British intelligence the intelligence of the Western world knew exactly what was happening to the Jews in Germany we raised our voice against this in the old Harlem history Club 1939 to the death of the leader in 1941 if you think that all people if we could get into the nonsense about black anti-semitism blacks have always had a sentimental attachment to the Jews they actually believed the Bible you know we're the true believers we are Pope the Pope you're out Muhammad mama but religion has always been a political thing to European and still is and with it no longer serves them politically they're gonna discard it we turned our backs and let this help further now they're creating a new game they call Europe its Wars Europe they want to take some geography outside of Europe they saying the people they're gonna take the geography from unworthy they can't rule themselves of course they cannot rule themselves an artificial state set up by the Europeans first fish that I forgot to do is it dissing get rid of these borders reestablish the borders along the old lines and integrate Africans into Africa [Applause] [Music] okay thanks well now it's the time for you to talk and again I am going to be ruthless you should have questions and we're interested in dialogue not diatribe all right what are they setting up microphones I believe when you ask your question and hopefully it will be written down so you will not veer off the beaten path you will ask your question please of a specific panelist and we have such a line of people we want to move along so please do be considerate are we ready could you see whether that microphone is working please it's working okay [Music] okay let's settle down please as we come into this segment okay the first question could you identify the correct statement that was made on Fulton okay let me I refer you to the section of my book which has the footnotes in it and I would appreciate it if you feel these things are true that you write me about it and I'll respond but before you we did we didn't hear a response doctor electrical it's it would be very I certainly read quite a few books they are cited in the footnotes to the chapter where I discussed that I try to explain why I believe on the basis of the evidence that I have presented in the book that masonry the mythology that I believe is behind some of the ideas that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt come from an 18th century French novel and I put all the information out in my book if you disagree with my book there you are I mean that is the point of what we are doing is to argue and discuss and to proceed from there I should advise the audience the books are available right outside so you can pick up a copy of all books mentioned here tonight yes not all of them but you know hello yes thank you great got to your question no one won that's the quota tonight but what you can do is you can step to the side and then pick one just one question [Music] [Applause] thank you I believe that the ancient Greeks did not do that I believe that the ancient world in general did not have the problems with racism which our society is so fraught with today and that is one of the great reasons why I in many ways and happier what we start from and when men [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's again I must insist impressive I must [Music] okay all right thank you [Applause] I don't I don't think that anyone it maintains that ancient Egypt wasn't part of the continent of Africa so that's a sort of non-starter secondly secondly order please I feel like judge Ito secondly linguistically I don't think that anyone I know believes that ancient Greek in its majority is derived from the afro-asiatic language group I think that yes I think that the placement of Greek into the Europe indo-european language group sets it in a different context I have no problem acknowledging Greece's debts to many different Near Eastern cultures doesn't bother me at all professor Clark you might respond we're not analyzing the fact that at the time Greece and Rome was at their height the majority of their own people were slaves and that people create the word democracy and popularized the word Christians were neither democratic or Christians then are now and so we are following a myth they they created far worse than any mist Afrocentric help created up queues they have been created I my criticism about Pro centricity is it's in adequacy it hasn't gone far enough we not questioned well first of all that it was built in a city Alexandria which was built by the Greek or Macedonian conquerors of Egypt and the library was built in it now what the precedents for the library is difficult perhaps Aristotle's collection of books in Lyceum were were president but there were clearly Egyptian libraries per Hank - so the idea of a library I think is Egypt Oh Greek but the light that library itself was clearly constructed after Aristotle's death and by under the domination of Greeks anybody else I think the whole concept of the library at Alexander might be an often-repeated myth and it might not have existed at all we have not found any foundation now you can burn the building which came burning the foundation because that's on the ground well according to most information I know the library the books in the library consists of raping a lot of small libraries in Egypt and when they burned down the library they burned in lost to the world information that will never be recovered so I don't think the library was a service although it is spoken of as a high point of intellectual contribution it was not it was part of Greek imperialism the raping of the small African libraries he consolidated the book Teddy left them scattered in small libraries we might still have access to them but you put them in one place two got burned down and the world can never recover that information so I don't consider the library at Alexander in a complement to African people are Greeks when when one click one click addition to that the previous gentleman or the gentleman before raised the question of the gymnasium and this question is really about a library I quite agree with professor Clark that to think of it in terms of any notion of a modern library is fundamentally deceptive at the time that we do have literary sources for what was in the library at Alexandria most of that information talks about papyrus rolls furthermore a gymnasium and that time period is not a modern gymnasium but I think as the gentleman was implying was a cultural institution involved with education military training and a lot of other activities so thank you for your question hello so then don't state it just ask what No guess what you you will ask one question in one part [Music] oh because they all have really contributed much to our knowledge instead they act like those proverbial blind men holding on to different part of an elephant in saying I've got them and the question is why is it that you cannot appreciate each other instead of insulting each other no no no that's good a second or just a suggestion no no now first what what is behind I suppose is the political conflict and what I want to ask is no but you're asking a second question so you already asked your first yes just just indicate the direction okay did professor Clark or did not professor Clark State on WBAI or whether it's recorded that african-americans cannot be friends of the Jews in the United States because they are too powerful here I did not stay that far you know he said that I stated it yes I've never stated it I never stated it all I wanted to stay away from the tuition question because everybody's become a liar and a hypocrite when they discuss again they're dishonest I want to also stay away from the [ __ ] question because everybody's dishonest when it's discussed bad now I want to stay away from the fakir real louis farrakhan thank you thank you for your question next question please I yes that's super damn well first I just like to say a quick comment on the politics behind this book already at City College they're talking about closing down the ethnic studies programs and instituting it with an interdisciplinary program which they what will be so much better anyway I do believe that your book is a part of this whole scheme which I believe will be carried throughout this country but anyway that aside I'd like to get on to my questions I I did flip through your book and a meaning flipping through because I just found it very um the lack of words I would have to go back to mr. Clark dr. Clark's sophomoric book because it makes many holes and you contradicted yourselves yourself with the very same contradictions that you are blaming all these other authors for so the question is - was Socrates black and I felt that you were like beating a dead horse on on its head this is a rather than asked that question I would like to ask you from this quote it says I got it out of a book today's Southwest Socrates was prosecuted on a charge of impiety quote for not worshiping the gods whom the city worships for introducing religious innovative innovations and for correcting the young men now this was I believe in the trial of Socrates and the question being if so this is indigenous Greek philosophy coming out from philosophy and you was eventually put to death by talking about his philosophy and influencing the young minds of Greece Athens then unless sure if it was asked in this part Africa but then my question to you is what then is so Greek about Socrates so that's my question to my love [Music] okay I'm not sure I understand your question I'm certainly glad that I [Music] like so Greek about Socrates tonight mrs. Li really I think you've asked several questions there I'm sure glad you like my books so much but let me let me just say that Socrates tells us himself that he never really left Athens for except on military campaign and he stayed within Greece now introducing new gods I think was a reference to his own personal God and that's why he was tried for impiety people did not have their own personal gods they had to believe in the gods the city believed in it's a long story there's a considerable bibliography on that if you're interested I'm sure somebody at your University could tell you is for my being part of a conspiracy to destroy all sorts of things I am not part of any conspiracy at all dr. Clark mr. Boehner's father I think we many times asked the right question the wrong way the racism that we know today started in the 15th in the 16th century as a rationale for slavery whatever harm the Romans and the Greeks did they've had no racism compared to the racism of today otherwise why would that be three African Empress of Rome and why would they hit why would that be three African Pope's in the early Roman Church why would September saviors become the governor of England the country's going to become England I'm saying that if you charge the Greeks with the same kind of color prejudice we have today you're charging them wrong they've got enough crimes that they're guilty of without that they had respect for talent wherever they found it even among the people they conquered and the people they conquered had upward mobility to the extent they fit it into the Greek or the Roman political intentions of that date no I have gone to England and had the privilege of going in the basement of the British Museum as a commoner naturally I couldn't go but when they asked the other person with me what is your authority to enter and look at the sights in the basement of the British Museum he was a Caribbean person who lived in America most of his lively what a citizen so he had officially been knighted by the Queen and so he pulled out his car if the door to the basement open and we saw the pitch of Herodotus matted hair Pernod similar to mine it was in the statute was in the basement of the British Museum where it will stay playing but I don't argue for rodders on the base limit blackness anything else I argue about the fact that he had wandered away from his TV people he had done a concept and way of living a way of morality different from that of his people so just like Jesus Christ when he came back among his people he was preaching something that alien DiNapoli in his food he driving [Music] [Music] the Romans didn't won't have anything to do with so when the Roman governor was when he was put on trial for salsa Ric the brothers knew you wouldn't mom in the wrong see what he was preaching at the wrong Richard is all people see push them back and said he's your king and they pushed him back to the ropes in not my king but he coming with all those foolish ideas I don't know but he was influenced by African moral bow thank you your question please my mum I'm a student at um City College and um um I'd this questions for dr. Clark um please could you explain to the right your left what the right on your right the two so-called professors on your right well on his left on your right the agenda of the right of in the political context that that lets a president of my school Yolanda Moses dismantle and ethnically cleanse the ethnic studies and the black studies and Latino Studies Jewish Studies Asian Studies up at City College and because I have no respect for you because up at City College we're fighting every day all right for what for what the question is I want dr. Clark to explain how this is what what's this doing to the train of thought in all universities and how it lets people politically dis mail our universities as we know thank you for watching this this trend got it [Applause] soon after the Black Studies explosion whites begin to plan how to let them use this as a political plaything until they got their act together and that strength together in order to destroy it wasn't meant to be no one if you ever got this simple thing people never educate you in the technique you use you can use the take their power away from them see education has but one honorable purpose one alone everything is a waste of time that to train the student to be a responsible handler of power no one ever wants us to be responsible handlers of saying that it had nothing to do with political lines the left I want us to be responsible no more than the right but they want to dominate us in a different way from the right and they think they can dominate us better it's an argument if not of whether we will be free but who will enslave us and had we we should accepted the responsibility of making Black Studies strong enough to take this assault we could have anticipated it and argument but we speak with disability too much energy arguing among our selves over triviality we are partly to blame for what has happened thank you dr. Clark your question please my question is to doctors left the woods and Rogers I would like to information about the foundation and grants regarding the publication of the book how did University of North Carolina come to choose them did they make the application for the grants and what are the foundations thank you [Music] there's a simple answer there were none [Music] none none zero zilch none except for a grant from Wellesley College wait now listen you hear me Wellesley College Student Assistance to students who did research paid for by student research grants from Wellesley College we thanked Wellesley College for that no we had no outside grants to write that book at all the university of north carolina had nothing to do with funding the book they simply came to us three and a half years ago and asked us to put together the book so you side here you cite in the in the preface to your book we are let me see we thank Molly Levine of Howard University for generously allowing us to use the bibliography she had assembled and the Ford Foundation that's through Wellesley College Wellesley know the Ford Foundation End Wellesley College not through Wellesley cart for grants to support editorial well I'm sorry but the Ford Foundation has a standing grant with Wellesley College through which Wellesley College disperses money to student research assistants there is no political well right well that's the answer the answer is there's no direct foundation Lake exactly but that is as as it applies only to black Athina revisited and not to any other work by you dr. Locke of course yes okay my question is for Russell Rogers and left courts you claim to be in the interest of sharing knowledge and information for the betterment of the students that you teach and the people that you influence for the duration of this debate your colleagues on your right hand side have given you books and infamy that challenge what you've said I have not heard anything from you of a willingness to read or reassess some of the conclusions you came through with your book so what I'd like to know if now that you've been provided with that information and if you're truly in the interests of telling the truth and doing the right thing will you revisit some of what you've read we thank you for your question we wouldn't be here if we weren't interested in learning other people's views about these topics but I would urge you to go and look at the bibliography of the book which is very very extensive and does in fact include many of the titles that we've talked about here this evening but that's not the question the question was will you given the information that you've been given tonight by opposing views let's say are you going to take another look are you going to revisit black Athena revisited eventually where's my quest where we were told by professor for now that he is working on a volume called black Athena writes back or is that right so we're waiting for that we thought it was only fair to give him an answer my question well I think I think I did no I'm no disrespect I just want to know why are you once now that you've been provided with some of these books some of the information names and the interest of supposed scholarship would you take a second look at some of the things that they're saying it was noted that then that neither professor Lefkowitz know from restauranteurs seem to have written down any of the books I well that's that's not fair all right question please we didn't have to write down all the books because we have actually read a great many of them I wrote down several notes you I don't know if I do not agree with you it does not mean that I have not read the same books we'll move on next question all right I need clarification for us could I see the cover of not Out of Africa because I don't want to base my question on something I heard about okay since this work or what you do is based on just scholarship and what-have-you could you as a graphic designer could you explain that cover I mean you know I didn't I did I'm not a graphic designer the cover was the cover of the New Republic article the of the New Republic when my article that was a review of Martin burnell's black Athena first appeared but you used it on the cover of your book the the publishers decided to use it again because it was a New Republic book and because if they thought people might remember the original cover yes in 1992 it appeared in 1992 when the Spike Lee film of Malcolm X had been very popular and everyone was wearing X cap but I see since we're talking about not out of Africa how do you get an X cap the cover features a bust I suppose this is Socrates could be but I don't think I think it's generic philosopher much is it Plato is it it's it's not Herodotus he doesn't have wooly hair Oh neurologists wouldn't have had bulla here that was the call key and soon the Egyptians but it is a it is a bust of I don't know how to describe this other than you see this kind of a Homeric figure with a an X cap on anyway Thanks thank you question please good evening mr. Pennell and to dr. Henrik claw first of all mr. Pennell maybe you'll be willing to explain how anti-semitism got involved with black Athena I guess sir what is your name the lady I'm sorry Lefkowitz Lefkowitz you brought up the subject of anti-semitism I want to know what does that have to do with black Athena thank you know if dr. Henry Clark or dr. but nothing to answer that thing enrolled into the discussion at all because most people who accuse people man is symud being anti-semitic have nothing most people who Clues you are being anti-semitic have not even explained exactly what is a Semitic [Music] it started off as a linguistic term how did it become a racial term there semitic to speaking people of all colors so it's not an exclusive thing for the people who adopted the name Jew mainly in Europe because the word Jew will not use widely in the ancient world we knew people of Hebrew faith but there are people of the Hebrew faith in India China in a way it's a universal religion a lot of people belong to it including some misguided blacks who call themselves black black June now if you want to belong to the Hebrew faith you just belong to the equal faith this is the right why you have attached color to it the Indians don't call themselves you know brown brown Jews they just call themselves people belong to the people faith and when they went to to Israel they got the shock of their life by being reduced the second-class citizenship I think that black Athena has become involved with anti-semitism in two ways that is in my book I do spend about half the text almost half the text talking about Phoenician influences that is Semitic speaking influences on on Greece and how anti-semitism among European scholars in the late 19th and early 20th century affected the interpretation of that those influences on Greece so that has one big aspect and I've been attacked for that by Tony Martin and some others for spending too much time on looking at Jewish or Semitic influences not tuition for Semitic influences the other way in which it's become loosely attached to black Athena is the way in which some are very few of the people are they african-americans who are or claim to be anti-semitic have liked black Athena but that I think is a much less important issue I've been fighting anti-semitism in my book and I this is something that I find extremely extremely central it may not be central to this audience but it is very important to me and the way I wrote it yes we we share we share a professor pronounced view that there were some scholars in 18th and 19th century Europe who for reasons of anti-semitism sought to exclude all kinds of people speaking Semitic languages from the story of the origins of Greek culture thank you your question please yes just to a elaborately bronze wood tonight you'll check encyclopedia it specifically States afro-asiatic stretching all the way from West Africa into the eastern part of Africa with a total of approximately 300 million people now what I like to know is first off just one let me just read something here for you and this comes out of Aristotle okay it comes out of Aristotle we're talking about we're talking about a question and quickly please yeah quickly the military class and the farming class should be separate even today this is still the case in Egypt as it is in Crete the practice began in Egypt okay then you come back again it says it was this in southern Italy that a sudden sis system of common tables originated as we know that the population of southern Italy a black folks then the comes back and says the other institutional the other institution mentioned above the division of the body politic in the classes originated in Egypt not in Crete it continues get your question in Egypt attest the antiquity of all political institutions various Aristotle is giving his expertise on philosophy to the Egyptians yet you sit there and say that it had nothing to do with Egypt explained please I I don't I don't think that we have said that Greek politics have nothing to do with Egyptian politics in fact one of the more interesting arguments that I think you'll find in our book is Sumerian scholars believe that a form of what for want of a better term could be called democracy actually existed perhaps on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates in about 1800 BCE I didn't quite understand the comment about the encyclopedia definition of Semitic but I think I agree completely with professor Clark that Semitic is not a racial term it is not a it is not a term even a culture in principle it should be a linguistic term can I come back briefly yes I think one of the reasons why the title of my book is the afro-asiatic roots is because afro-asiatic is a super family which includes both ancient Egyptian and Semitic and many other African languages like the Chaddock group and house and all the rest of it and it was one of the reasons why I wanted to be able to include both the Semitic and the Egyptian linguistic and other influences on on Greece so that I think is important now yeah okay come back thank you your question please Hotel dr. Clark may I speak yes thank you sir we at Temple University the African American Studies department had taken serious doubt the clock question we're gonna be issuing within the two months a comprehensive document that go back thousands of years that includes scholars from every part of the African world including dr. Johnny and clock fan for know everyone from Shaw hotel so this would be coming out within two months so this was just were L so hard the question have been made today have you taken a scholarship series then what I'm going to do the question is - no - professor from was it I am kind of I find the book very disingenuous I found one a person that you mentioned in world inspirational in the book dr. Ben I would be loved doctor being Jackie Hammond and I known him for over 22 years your question anything about - being in in 22 years of being a Kemet ologist had never said one time that he was I asked for centuries I mean why did you say that dr. being speaking at Wellesley College with one of the leaves in it you picked up on this project to to to dis make the FO safely fly that disingenuous say like a being is never saying here's a flow sensor not one time in the 20 years I've known him and I know other people that know them like dr. Jeff was in here probably more years than that so look at this poor scholarship or this just an attempt to continue to attack on Africa why did you find out all right so thank you thank you very much a library would I was simply talking about an incident at Wellesley when dr. Ben Jochen on talked about the library at Alexandria and claimed that Aristotle had stolen his works from it I perhaps the term Afrocentric um too widely generate generalized we all are been discussing tonight a great many ways in which it's been used and misused professor Asante at Temple as you of course know very well believes and I think this is quite true that he has invented that term but like all things that went in vents it gets out of hand so that's my answer I believe you're right that dr. ben refers to himself as a can--it ologist well so when George will in his review of your book a cited dr. ben and this incident in nineteen relieved it was 1993 when he was at Wellesley College did you correct George well I don't get much of a chance to correct reviews your book until after they're written but it's sent out as part of your promotional package well I don't send out my promotional package but I'm not responsible for what George will writes I mean you're making me responsible for absolutely everything in the whole world is very interesting I wish I had this power but I do with it George will said made the point that the question you made basically ascribing to dr. Ben Johann on this Afrocentric label and since the article is disseminated to the public and to people like me in media as part of a promotional package for your book I would imagine that had you had serious differences of opinion with George will a conservative writer about this particular label or association with dr. Johann on you may have either withdrawn that piece of literature from your publicity package or you may have read directly to mr. will and corrected him I don't quite see why George will shouldn't use the language that he wishes to use and be responsible for himself that is his that is his prerogative and his problem and don't you don't trying to you don't mind inaccurate information being associated with your book a great deal of inaccurate information about my book has been associated with it tonight okay you made it clear hello your honor you're on the air that's okay this is this is a simple question and this for all the panelists is Egypt is the country of Egypt do you believe Egypt is a part of Africa and if not can you explain why and can we start from here I think there's unanimous agreement that Egypt is part of our answer the question with a question have you ever seen a complete map of Africa let the microphone if you see a complete map of Africa Egypt is focused Oh then imagine a woman's body Egypt is the culture wounds of that body although its original population came from the south and there's so many documents to prove this is not even an arguable point if Egypt gave birth to a civilization the impregnation started in the South in Egypt became the beneficiary of the largest gathering of technology technicians in history because the Nile Valley stretches 4,000 miles into the body of Africa when Egypt discovered massive agriculture she could feed a lot of people she could house a lot of people and people with mixtures of bogs and beliefs brought it all together into one powerful belief Egypt was the culmination of several African civilizations and not just Egypt alone one of the main reason that Europeans can't leave it alone because he did not create it why would he come from Europe doing the latter part of the eyes a and create something in Egypt and go back and live otherwise a two thousand years before he bill European shoot come on it makes let this be real now let's be real Robert why they so generous to other people when they not generous to themselves you're from the feudalism was Europe for the slavery White's enslaving whites and you study the condition of the European woman doing feudalism thank heaven she never had any right they did but the so dr. burr now of course it's part of the high of Africa and I don't think anybody on this panel would disagree with that all right I just thought I would read this because some of you may think I was making it up it's from Newsweek magazine from February the 19th 1996 it's George Will writing in Newsweek titled the last word and the headline is intellectual segregation after a centrosome many myths constitute condescension he says George will evoke people toward African Americans and begins in 1993 dr. Joseph a a Ben Yohanan who was advertised as quote a distinguished Egyptologist unquote although he is not a scholar of Egyptian language or civilization delivered the Martin Luther King memorial lecture at Wellesley College unfortunately for him and for other afro centrists and that is quoted and fortunately for the rest of us Mary Lefkowitz a scholar of antiquity teaches there and attended the lecture so my question still stands if this is going out as part of your package this was faxed to me by your publicist today and I thought that if you disagreed strongly with mr. wills characterization then you would instruct your publicity department to not send this literature out next question could I answer that sure could I answer that I think you would admit that George Will has a right to interpret a text the way George Will feels he should is that right or not the point is I'm not disputing what George Will chooses to interpret or not interpret as a natural centrist my question was why endorse his view by incorporating what you now say you disagree with in your package for publicity I think it's a self answered question I don't I I disagree i sir I'm sure you do yes my question is hello yes my question is the doctor I'm wondering if you know people's work like Mary left the woods and others are going to be used as a time well an attack dog to resurrect things like three-fifths of a man keep penal slavery and and our geo global corporate terrorism what do you think it's a part of the concerted effort in the effort is international and it is part of the world war to prepare the mind of people to accept the re-enslave ment of africa and the irony and the tragedy for the left us is that the same people who go Rhian slave Africa in the morning might turn on her people in evening thank you very much I would like also to augment what I just read from George Will from from dr. Lefkowitz --is all work not out of africa how Afrocentric became an excuse to teach mythos history you said tonight that you didn't agree that dr. Ben Yohanan was an after centrist but you write in your introduction you said I didn't say let me read what you said you can read what I said normally if one has a question about a text that another instructor is using one simply asks why he or she is using that book but since this conventional line of inquiry was closed to me I had to wait until I could raise my questions in a more public context that opportunity came in February 1993 when dr. Joseph a a Ben Yohanan was invited to give well sleaze Martin Luther King jr. Memorial Lecture you've just heard the exact words in george will's column posters described dr. Benoit Halong as quote a distinguished Egyptologist unquote and indeed that is how he was introduced by the then president of Wellesley College but I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily described as an Egyptologist that is a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization rather he was an extreme after a centrist author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa how Aristotle robbed the Library of Alexandria and how the true Jews are Africans like himself now it's almost verbatim what George Will wrote and it was just there he said you so what didn't you disagree with with dr. ben johanna what would label would you now agree that he is not electric a--let's [Music] well I think you are trying to make me say what I didn't say I never said that I never I you read what I said that's what I stand by I use and maybe you don't agree with the way I used the term afro centrosome you think it's wrong you maybe no I'm not alright let's let's leave it right there for the moment so you make agitate upon that yeah you can read what I write and you can judge me and you are judging me so go right ahead be my guest I should mention that the books that are available tonight and we have this last question African origin of civilization black Athena volume 2 black Athena revisited dr. Lefkowitz is and dr. Rogers book available civilization or barbarism rape of Paradise also by yon kuru all available outside yes your question please good evening doctor left Woodson thank you for attending you had urged us earlier not to rush and the rewriting of history however I find that to be very disturbing because within the last 600 year I mean you can look at the last 600 years and you can find many many things that need to be revised you know in our history and the way we are teaching our history to our young right now if you don't see that okay let me ask you what what would you change what would you revise within the last 600 years of our history that is being taught now all right to our children all right that we have to come in what when our children come home every day and you know we see what they're being taught about Columbus they're still calling it natives Indians all right there your question what would you change and how soon would you think would be I mean what is quick enough for you I mean you know should we take 10 years to change these thank you every every time history must be rewritten and rethought and reconsidered and in the light of the progress if there is been it has been any progress I think there has then we can rewrite every history but we do not rewrite the basic facts of history which are things very simple let me just tell you things you have to stick by in writing the history of the civil war in this country either you have to say Lee surrendered to grant or grant surrender to Lee both didn't happen so that's the kind of thing I'm talking about I we can't rewrite those basic facts but we can rewrite interpretations and there's been a great deal emitted in the history and maybe you've you've cited some some terms that are condescending terms that should not be used anymore that's another example of something that can be done but I'm not going to be able to rewrite in my lifetime the whole of the school curriculum that's up to all of us I also think I think that that's a very good and fair question my answer to that is that what worries me the most is not rewriting history because history is always provisional we try as human beings with the evidence that we have to build up a picture which in the best circumstances is as accurate and is true to the evidence as we can find it what worries me and to speak I hope directly to your point is history which is being written for useful purposes what worries me about that is that when you say useful what is useful to one person may lead to very significant problems for someone else and in the and in the Helden it is in the nineteen in the 1930s and in the early 1940s there were groups of people in Italy and in Germany who wrote useful histories about minority groups those useful histories ended at places like Auschwitz and Treblinka and that is exactly the reason why that's exactly the reason why this may please we must have some order the standard the standard for our revisions has to be I believe accuracy and truth as far as we can establish it based on probability since history is not an exact science dr. Clark let's stop talking about usefulness and talk about honest stick let's talk about the making of the neon this state the design of this country when it was designed as a haven for free white Protestant males middle class enough those who grieve with the prevailing political state of school and who own property everybody else in this country who think this country was designed for them were telling themselves Allah the Jews were out of it the catheter out of it the Quakers were out of it now look at who's who's held power in this nation only one non protestant president how long did he last before the killed it when they said liberating justice for all best of all they were talking about what other people think they were talking about them [Music] the country have not betrayed into promise to you had he made any promise to you what even talking about you an advice play list of let's tell the real truth about all the founding fathers being slaveholders let's beat the level George Washington wrote when he wanted some special molasses from the Caribbean he offered to send one train [ __ ] as payment for the molasses let's not take George wash it out of history but let's put the blacks in history along with him just talk about James fortune who made it made the tense for George Washington then George Washington who found that those mad at wax method cloth of the tents was stronger than the club in the britches of his soldiers he asked James for tend to make some breeches of that same cloth those breeches made by a black man turned that terrible third and fourth winner of the American Revolution don't take George watching out for put they've bought in in with it thank you thank you dr. Bernard if you want to just add something if you had a chance I wish that we always still get all the questions no questions are done the question yes okay well I think this has been there's been some intellectual blood spilt but I find it very interesting but I'd like to end on a note that Mary Lefkowitz raises in her book a point raised many times by Arthur J Schlesinger jr. that a very centrist history is purely an attempt to promote group self-esteem whereas history and I'm quoting should consist of dispassionate analysis judgment and perspective in fact this desirable goal is very seldom reached in schools which nearly always stress the achievements of the dominant group or the majority group in school nevertheless I quite agree with them that one should try to transcend these intellectual or social environments and achieve objectivity as far as it's possible to do so however classics based as it in as it is in what I call the Aryan model with its insistence on a European and pure Greece is an extreme example of feel-good scholarship for Europeans well that brings us to the end of this meeting I want you to give yourselves a hand for hanging in here and our panelists a hand also for coming and on behalf of WBAI I want to thank you all for coming and keep listening to your favorite station which is WBAI 99.5 fm thank you and good night [Music] [Music] [Music] there's so many [Music] [Music] [Music] - suggest that you were [Music] [Music] [Music]

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Id: fmei-hUQUWY

Length: 175min 48sec (10548 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 27 2019