{"id":7604,"date":"2010-06-21T01:08:08","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T01:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=7604"},"modified":"2016-05-23T23:57:28","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T23:57:28","slug":"american-demands-african-treasures-mixed-possibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=7604","title":{"rendered":"American demands, African treasures, Mixed possibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

American demands, African treasures, Mixed possibilities<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The African Diaspora Archaeology Network<\/a>
\nUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
\nDecember 2006 Newsletter<\/a>
\nISSN: 1933-8651
\n16 pages<\/p>\n

Daniel R. McNeil<\/strong><\/a>, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
\nNewcastle University, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 1990s, many Americans sought to cast themselves as heroic defenders of the liberal arts by condemning Afrocentricity. This paper reveals how many such profiteers and schemers were invested in Eurocentricity, but it also critiques Molefi Asante<\/a> \u2013 the man who coined the phrase \u201cAfrocentricity\u201d \u2013 and points out his reliance on AfroAmericocentric norms.<\/p>\n

…Television history, employed by Gates in his PBS documentary, Wonders of the Ancient World<\/em>, \u201cwhile unquestionably powerful . . . is of necessity superficial . . . programmes have to be fast-moving if they are to retain their viewers\u201d (Kershaw 16). Producers often assume that their history programs require a respected narrator and perhaps a charismatic interviewer, as \u201cproblems of interpretation tend to muddy the waters, and to leave the viewer confused, baffled or at least unable to decide which of variant interpretations is the most valid\u201d (ibid.). According to cultural critic John Fiske, lumpers (broad synthesizers favoured by lay opinion) are preferred to splitters (narrow specialists favoured by professionals) because television history, like soap opera and sport, should be open and full of contradictions so that it invites \u201cviewer engagement, disagreement, and thus popular productivity\u201d (191). Perhaps ignoring the need to challenge the continuing deference to professors, such as Reisner, who considered Black Africa to be without history, Fiske also thought that televised history \u201cmust not preach or teach<\/em>\u201d (emphasis added; ibid. 196). Yet his comments remain important if curators and \u201cpublic intellectuals\u201d are to be encouraged to present themselves as possessors of technical competence whose function is to assist subordinate groups to use elite resources in order to make authored statements within the public sphere (Bennett 104). In this fashion, one can applaud Henry Louis Gates Jr.\u2019s attempts to use his position as director of the Du Bois institute at Harvard to encourage to African Americans to enter Ivy League universities, even if one doesn\u2019t support his desire to question Blacks of mixed parentage and\/or Caribbean descent that \u201cbeat out\u201d Black indigenous middle-class kids on the front page of The New York Times<\/em> (Rimer and Anderson)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American demands, African treasures, Mixed possibilities The African Diaspora Archaeology Network University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign December 2006 Newsletter ISSN: 1933-8651 16 pages Daniel R. McNeil, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies Newcastle University, United Kingdom In the 1990s, many Americans sought to cast themselves as heroic defenders of the liberal arts by condemning Afrocentricity. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,20],"tags":[2967,419,3160,3159],"class_list":["post-7604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-daniel-mcneil","tag-daniel-r-mcneil","tag-molefi-asante","tag-the-african-diaspora-archaeology-network"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47096,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604\/revisions\/47096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}