Knowledge of Africa has shifted since Diop
Diop created something unique because, before him, how Africa was known to most in non-academic spaces was through the lens of spears and being discovered by Europeans and Arabs.
But I have to say, many highly educated European scholars had already accepted the foundational theories of Diop. Out of Africa and other positions were already established. But Diop kind of assembled them into a kind of “Afrocentric” study with a political purpose.
But Diop was writing in a time before DNA and all kinds of advanced science that we now have in our rearview mirror. Our understanding of “race” and a lot of these concepts has come such a long way.
A more nuanced read of where modern positions are Pseudoscience takes established facts and blends them with very inaccurate concepts. People keep saying “Africa did this first and Africa did that”. This is a ridiculous statement. I did not know North Africa and Congo were the same climate, so why would people have the same features there, or the same history, or the same culture? Did Southern Africa invent writing also? So why are the accomplishments of Egypt hugging Southern African history? Did Egypt invent the script before Mesopotamia? But I guess if people do not know, they can easily be tricked by this kind of ahistorical treatment. Maybe back then I would tolerate it; it would have been good stuff. But in 2026? And there is too much scholarship on these things to continue to view history through the muddy colonial lens of a “black Africa.” If we want to do that, then racist tropes like “African enslaved other Africans” become valid.
Black Africa vs what? White Africa, or Brown Africa? What confuses me is if there is a black Africa, then what other versions of Africa exist? What about White Europe and yellow China? But this is where it becomes problematic: for there to be a black Africa, it would mean Egypt must be outside of this black Africa. I hope this statement makes sense because it is deduced from the claim that there is a black Africa. For there to be yellow apples means some apples are not yellow. If there is a black Africa in the period of Nubia and KMT, it must mean there is an African history that is also not black.
If this is black Africa, then what Africa is the woman below:
