This is the reorientation of history and cultural studies to situate the origins of African American identity (and other cultural features) in Africa in opposition to “Eurocentrism.” Although interest in Africa was apparent in earlier intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and participants in the Harlem Renaissance, this was more clearly a revindicationist movement of black nationalism after civil rights. Among its major proponents are professors Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University, author of The Afrocentric Idea (1987) and Leonard Jeffries of CUNY. Another heated debate, suggested by Martin Bernal’s Black Athena (1987), emerged over the claims of African origins for “Western” civilization. Historical revision, unfortunately, has sometimes been clouded by interethnic debates, as well as by dubious scholarship, although discussion has gnawed away at the implicit and accepted centrality of northern European experiences and perspectives.

See literature, race and ethnicity.