In this episode I host none other than Dr. Mary Lefkowitz an author that I have read since my early teens and we delve into two controversial works that she published titled Not Out of Africa: How ""Afrocentrism"" Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History and Black Athena Revisited.
Not Out of Africa has sparked widespread debate over the teaching of revisionist history in schools and colleges. Was Socrates black? Did Aristotle steal his ideas from the library in Alexandria? Do we owe the underlying tenets of our democratic civilization to the Africans?
Mary Lefkowitz explains why politically motivated histories of the ancient world are being written and shows how Afrocentrist and naturally Eurocentrist claims blatantly contradict the historical evidence.
Not Out of Africa is an important work and viewpoint (though controversial) that protects and argues for the necessity of historical truths and standards in cultural education.
In this video Dr. Lefkowitz revisits her work that was written to confront the claims made by Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. In that work, Bernal proposed a radical reinterpretation of the roots 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. The contributors to this volume argue that Bernal's claims are exaggerated and in many cases unjustified.
Topics covered include race and physical anthropology; the question of an Egyptian invasion of Greece; the origins of Greek language, philosophy, and science; and racism and anti-Semitism in classical scholarship.
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Not Out of Africa Book: www.amazon.com/Not-Out-Africa...
Black Athena Revisited: www.amazon.com/Black-Athena-R...
Faculty Page: www.wellesley.edu/classical/f...