- Published: August 31, 2022
- Updated: August 31, 2022
- University / College: King's College London
- Level: Masters
- Language: English
- Downloads: 26
Opinion on Diop From his days as a in Paris, Senegalese born Cheikh Anta Diop desired to prove to a cynical world that human civilization was initiated by Africans. He was obsessed by the same self serving misinformation held by racist white scholars implying that Africans had no significant civilization and strongly opposed their notion. He argued that the civilization was started by the Egyptians who were black and not by foreigners who trekked into Egypt as suggested by the white scholars (Diop 104). He proposed that Africans could not be categorized into one group that existed in the south of the Sahara. This was in opposition to the claim by white scholars that the inhabitants of Egypt in North Africa were white. He argued that rather, Africans had a wide variation in skin color, hair type and facial shape just as happens among other human races (Diop 86). This paper will give the writer’s opinion on the stand taken by Diop on the origin and history of the black world.
I believe Diop was as racist as the white scholars. His perception was that the scholars conveniently selected white pharaohs and ignored the original black ones to show Egypt as a white civilization.
Diop did researches determined to prove that ancient Egyptians bore similar physical traits as present day black Africans. He went further to claim that, linguistically, ancient Egyptian was related to his contemporary Wolof language of West Africa.
In conclusion, I believe most of Diop’s efforts and work were aimed at wrestling civilization claims from the Western world. He was filled with an inferiority complex and tried to overcome it by attempting to link his Wolof ethnicity with the Egyptians. I also believe that is the reason he insisted on placing the human civilization credit upon the Egyptians, whom he claimed to be black.
Work Cited
Diop, Cheikh Anta. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1989. Print.