Originally published September 27, 1990
The American educational system has deceived us all. When we learned about Global History in elementary, junior high and high schools a very large continent was very conspicuous in its absence from our textbooks. Our informal training in Iife has taught us that if it is not in print then it did not happen. This thinking has set a huge portion of our population into a mind frame that European culture was the start of all civilization and if it were not for the Europeans life would not be as great as it is today. These people have been cheated and they should be upset at that fact. The proper way to rectify this situation though is to learn what has been hidden from them. This can be achieved in many ways, but the easiest is to take some courses offered by the AFS Program.
Athens, Sparta and Rome are often used as models of of ancient civilizations and sometimes they are called the first real cities of the world. The former is acceptable but the latter is but the latter is truly a myth. In Africa there were civilizations that flourished thousands of years before those Greek and Roman cities did. Mesopotamia was a thriving city that can honestly lay claims on being the first city with a government and a trade structure. This example is rarely used in classroom textbooks and a question you must ask yourself is why. Why have people tried to discount the skill and technology of ancient Africans by claiming that the great pyramids must have been built by aliens because their structure is a mystery to present-day man? Why is it that Africans like King Tut and the workers who built the Sphinx are not included in our curriculum? Why is it that Cleopatra can be portrayed as a white woman in film even though she was an African queen? When these questions are asked and when proper history is revealed, some people who are not of the African diaspora, (for example some people in one of my classes this semester) get offended and even upset. When the facts are revealed and it is realized that Africans have been responsible for many of the great achievements that other cultures have laid claim to, there is no need to get upset. The only reason a student should get upset is because he or she has been lied to. Just as easily as African history has been omitted from the history books your, the reader’s, history can be deleted too. Plato was not the father of philosophy and Hippocrates was not the father of medicine. Both of these men learned valuable lessons from Africans, and then spread this knowledge in Greece. Our educational system has spoon fed us half truths about history for most of our lives and that should be the only reason one would be upset once shown the facts.
It is always amusing to notice how something does not exist in our history books until a European discovered it. The classic case is Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the “New World.” How can a man discover something if the Native Americans were already here? Just because one-half of the world does not know about something, does that mean that it does not exist? Hardly. There were other travelers who came to the continent now known as North America way before Columbus did. Saying Columbus discovered America is a slap in the face of the Native Americans (as is calling them Indians). It is felt by some that places like North America, Africa and South America were not civilized until the Europeans came to settle on these continents. Civilized is the key word in that phrase: civilized by whose standards? If European trade civilized places like Africa, why was trade the slave so uncivil? Why are South America’s main forests being depleted by the second if the Europeans civilized that continent? Why are there Native Americans living in grim poverty on reservations if the European society civilized North America? The notion of European discovery qualifying something for existence is absurd and must be eradicated immediately.
Contemporary African history is also something that needs to be understood Current state of affairs in Africa would make one believe that Africans are not equipped to run their own countries and they were better off when they were colonies. If a student of history does a little research he or she would realize that in most African countries, colonists raped the land of all its resources and then let the Africans have their freedom. A student of history would then be able to understand the sheer greed of the European settlers and have a dear perception on the events that occur in Africa today.
A program like the AFS Program is the exact vehicle for people of all kinds, including those of African descent, to obtain knowledge of the hidden past. When the wails of ignorance are knocked down, maybe then understanding can be achieved. At an institution where DIVERSITY is promoted by way of cute buttons, a full scale commitment to a diverse curriculum must be implemented. The AFS Program is mentioned here because it is a structure that is already in place and it is a familiar topic. Other courses must be created to acknowledge the contributions that ALL cultures have made to the collective society we need today. Once this mechanism is in place, we all will be enlightened and the truth shall be revealed. Until that time, there will still be squabbles about history and our society can never truly call itself a diverse one.
FOOTNOTE: I’d like to thank fellow students Joe Mignon and Adrienne Hawthorne for giving me inspiration for writing this article.
