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« Have foreign intellectuals, who challenge our intentions and accuse us
of all kinds of hidden motives or ridiculous ideas, proceeded any
differently? When they explain their own historical past or study their
languages, that seems normal. Yet, when an African does likewise to help
reconstruct the national personality of his people, distorted by
colonialism, that is considered backward or alarming. We contend that such
a study is the point of departure for the Cultural Revolution properly
understood. All the headlong flights of certain infantile leftists who try
to bypass this effort can be explained by intellectual inertia, inhibition,
or incompetence. The most brilliant pseudo-revolutionary eloquence ignores
the need which must be met if our peoples are to be reborn culturally and
politically. In truth, many Africans find this vision too beautiful to be
true; not so long ago some of them could not break with the idea that
Blacks are non-existent culturally and historically.[…]
Our investigations have convinced us that the West has not been calm
enough and objective enough to teach us our history correctly, without
crude falsifications. […]
Ancient Egypt was a Negro civilisation. The history of Black Africa will
remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African
historians dare to connect it with the history of Ancient Egypt. In
particular, in the study of languages, institutions, and so forth, cannot
be treated properly; in a word, it will be impossible to build African
humanities, a body of African human sciences, so long as that relationship
does not appear legitimate. The African historian who evades the problem of
Ancient Egypt is neither modest nor objective, nor unruffled; he is
ignorant, cowardly, and neurotic. Imagine, if you can, the uncomfortable
position of western historian who was to write the history of Europe
without referring to Greco-Latin Antiquity and try to pass that off as a
scientific approach. »
-- Cheikh Anta Diop, The founder of African Historiography and Modernity,
july 1973 – In “The African Origin of Civilization”, p.xiii-xiv
