Part of our repair in the reparations movement is to correct blatant white supremacy distortions of histor. Case in point: Egypt belongs to Africa!

Until recent years, there had been a scholarly debate among European intellectuals, joined by some Blacks, on what they referred to as the peopling of ancient Egypt. What this question really posed was, “Who were the ancient Egyptians?” Were they Black, white or mulatto, etc?

This issue has been at the core of European history or better yet European historiography (the science of how history is written) for more than two hundred years. The framework of European hegemony over the history of the world has had a devastating impact on African people and on the African mind.

It is in this context that we understand the intellectual devastation of the European conceptualization of the world order. We should understand this in relation to our movement for an African Centered Education and our Reparations Movement that are aimed at helping our people come out from beneath this European intellectual assault and educate and repair ourselves.

Let me use renowned African deep thinker and scholar, Jacob H. Carruthers, to help clarify this subject by revisiting a paper he wrote entitled, Race of Ancient Egyptians. This paper gives us the insights we need to understand this dilemma.

Carruthers observed, “The doctrine of white supremacy was launched by philosophers like David Hume who asserted in 1749, ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites.’ This position was expressed in a different context by Montesquieu about the same time.”

We are guided by Carruthers when he says, “In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu asserted, ‘it is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.’ Montesquieu was justifying the enslavement of Africans, which was one of the major reasons for inventing the doctrine of white supremacy.”

Upon further examination, Carruthers says, “Obviously the emerging doctrine could not gain credibility among those who were familiar with the traditional wisdom among Europeans that the ancient Africans of Egypt had achieved a very high level of civilization and had transmitted to the ancient Greeks many of the major ideas considered a part of Greek civilization.”

Carruthers says, “Several decades after the founding of the concept of white supremacy George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel supplied the solution of this latter difficulty when at the beginning of the 19th century, he asserted that Africa was ‘not a historical part of the world.’”

Finally, Carruthers quotes Hegel to demonstrate the ultimate in European intellectual arrogance, Hegel stated, “Historical movement in it, that is in its northern part, belongs to the Asiatic or European world… Egypt will be considered in reference to its western phase, but it does not belong to the African spirit.” Through this conceptualization Carruthers reveals, “Thus, Hegel took Egypt out of African and Africans out of Egypt. He also removed Africans from history.”

As an outgrowth of this kind of thinking by European scholars, the field of Egyptology began to emerge. Egyptology as a field of study is the creation of the European mentality, which seeks to gather evidence (artifacts and antiquities) that supports the idea of the European origin of civilization. Egyptologists have literally attempted to remove Egypt from the geographical confines of Africa and re-deposited it within the geographical domain of Asia, in an area that is even now referred to as the “ Middle East.”

The removal of Egypt from Africa serves a twofold purpose. Firstly, it leads to the obvious idea that Egypt is not a part of Africa and therefore its population could not have been Black. Secondly, it serves the purpose of implying that civilization did not begin with the Black race.

Fortunately, we have always had Black scholars among us who did not get trapped in the European conception of the world. It started with men like Hosea Easton, Henry Highland Garnett, and Martin R. Delany who “took the biblical myth of Ham and used it to establish Blacks as the authors of the great Nile Valley civilizations.”

Also, “They… used ancient European works such as Herodotus, Diodorus, and whatever modern works they could find. This tradition has been an honorable endeavor and has taught us much.” The old scrappers, according to Carruthers, “are still among us slugging it out as per our beloved Professor John G. Jackson.” Through the works of Senegalese scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop, Theophile Obenga, Yosef ben Jochannan, Chancellor Williams and others, the origin of the ancient Egyptians should never, ever be a question for African people. This question has been resolved. We should be clear that ancient Egypt or Kemet (as the people who lived in this area called it. Kemet means the city or community of the Blacks) and the ancient Egyptians, or more properly, the Kemetic people were Black.

Diop points out that Herodotus “after relating his eyewitness account informing us that the Egyptians were Blacks, then demonstrated, with rare honesty (for a Greek), that Greece borrowed from Egypt all elements of her civilization even the cult of gods, and that Egypt was the cradle of civilization.”

Our scholars, deep thinkers, and researchers should never again raise the question of who were the ancient Egyptians. This question has been resolved. Clearly the people of ancient Egypt/Kemet, were Black people!

This article originally appeared in the Philadelphia Tribune.

BlackCommentator.com columnist Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

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