Talk:Afrocentric historiography

HELP!!

There has been some consensus that an article on this topic should be created, to accommodate discussions not being allowed on related sites for various reasons.

I have the week off, so I have started the article. This is my first attempt at creating an article, so please all assist if you have the time.

In particular, how do I create the intro paragraph???

Wdford (talk) 10:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Intro sorted. Should we add a list of African people who are recognised to have made a contribution to world history, such as Nelson Mandela and Chris Barnard? Wdford (talk) 11:35, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Setting out the scope
Ok, here we go. This a valid topic but we need to get the scope sorted. "Historiography" refers to studies of the writing of history. Studying the writing of history is something Afrocentrists do rather a lot, essentially pointing out how, allegedly, traditional Western scholarship has marginalised the contribution of Africans due to racism, intentional or otherwise. Clear? There's a whole BIG essay about this in Black Athena Revisited, near the back, which talks about the Afrocentrist take on past historians. Obviously if it's in BAR then Bernal must talk about the issue in Black Athena itself, and I assume other Afrocentrists (Diop etc) did as well. That is the correct scope of this article, and while references exist to write it properly, you will not get them simply by forking the current Ancient Egyptian race controversy article. Moreschi (talk) 20:55, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * And before anyone asks, the the other major hole in our coverage of Afrocentrism is Afrocentrism and Ancient Greece (or some similar title), and yes, that is an equally valid article that needs to be written separately from this one. The sources exist for all of this. Get a copy of Black Athena Revisited and then get hold of the scholarly works that that references. Kindly do not plunge in medias res without having done the proper basic research. Moreschi (talk) 21:00, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Why is there this massive passion to rehash the "history" of the debate over and over in article after article, but a continual evasion of actually debating the evidence for and against???? Surely an encyclopedia can deal with an "undecided" subject by giving the available evidence and letting the reader make up their own mind, rather than just rehashing what others have said but censoring out the actual evidence itself?


 * My idea is as follows: Afrocentrism is an important debate, which needs to be debated. The existing article on Afrocentrism outlines the principle standpoints (and their history), but does not allow them to be debated (and consequently the “facts” are under dispute). My interest is primarily Egypt, but in the Ancient Egyptian race controversy article we are only allowed to outline the history of this debate, but not actually the evidence for and against. In the many existing articles about Egyptian issues where Afrocentrism arises (Tut, the Sphinx etc) we are allowed to debate the issues but not properly because of WP:UNDUE. I hope that this article will allow the actual evidence to be debated, for and against, and anybody who only wants a potted history without being bothered by the detail already has other sites to refer to.


 * I originally made the article about Afrocentric historiography in general, and I originally had a section on contributions that were recognized (e.g. Mandela etc) as well as a section about claims that are disputed, but somebody already deleted the “recognized contributions” section because of OR. I propose however to make the article about Afrocentric historiography generally, including referenced material and links on agreed and recognized contributions, and then a range of separate sections on the different “radical” stuff, with each “example” thereof actually debated with evidence for and against (Egypt is only one of these, as it happens to be my interest area, but I agree we need additional sections to deal with the Greeks, Beethoven etc as well). I will refer the reader to the Ancient Egyptian race controversy article to get the history of the debate – I want this article to be about considering the actual evidence, not about which pseudo-intellectual gave what unsupported opinion in 1746AD after four bottles of wine at the Mena Hotel.


 * We can then go back to the individual articles and reduce those sections to three lines each, mentioning the mainstream view, mentioning that the alternative view exists and referring the reader to a range of sites to get the full picture (unless they just want the mainstream info and don’t have the incliation to think about the bigger picture).


 * I'm not happy to have the "scope" of the article changed so as to delete the evidence yet again - I feel this evidence needs to be debated somewhere, with all the appropriate caveats about it being undecided etc, so that readers can see the evidence for themselves and make up their own minds. I think we have enough articles about the history of debating the history, now we need to debate why we have disagreement about the history.


 * If your narrow personal interpretation of afrocentric historiography cannot allow you to include this evidence, than please clarify what heading will allow that particular scope (IYHO)?

Wdford (talk) 07:11, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

it may be a valid topic, but it would best be incubated at Afrocentrism in a "historiography" section. Once this section becomes lengthy and well-referenced, it can always be split off. An empty stub serves no purpose. Wdford, you can't have an article "considering the actual evidence" when this is a pseudohistory topic beginning to end. This falls under WP:FRINGE and must be treated based on notability in popular culture or African American activism, not because any of it is "plausible" in any historical sense. --dab (𒁳) 21:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I would happily move the whole debate into the Afrocentrism article (to which it is certainly relevant), if you could guarantee me that it won't immediately be deleted because of "scope" issues or UNDUE or some such. I have been down this route before, and I only created a separate article because the material was repeatedly banished from existing articles. If you check at the Ancient Egyptian race controversy, Moreschi is recommending we fragment the issue into a number of smaller articles - which exactly contradicts your advice. What's a fella to do?? Wdford (talk) 00:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)