Did the election of Barack Obama to be President of the United States signal real progress in bridging America's longstanding racial divide? In this profound study of systemic racism, Molefi Kete Asante, one of our leading scholars of African American history and culture, discusses the greatest source of frustration and anger among African Americans in recent decades: what he calls "the wall of ignorance" that attempts to hide the long history of racial injustice from public consciousness. This is most evident in each race's differing perspectives on racial matters. Though most whites view racism as a thing of the past, a social problem largely solved by the civil rights movement, blacks continue to experience racism in many areas of social life: encounters with the police; the practice of red lining in housing; difficulties in getting bank loans, mortgages, and insurance policies; and glaring disparities in health care, educational opportunities, unemployment levels, and incarceration rates. Though such problems are not expressions of the overt racism of legal segregation and lynch mobs--what most whites probably think of when they hear the word "racism"--their negative effect on black Americans is almost as pernicious. Such daily experiences create a lingering feeling of resentment that percolates in a slow boil till some event triggers an outburst of rage.
Asante argues that America cannot long continue as a cohesive society under these conditions. As we embark upon new leadership under America's first African American president, he urges more public focus on redressing the wrongs of the past and their continuing legacy. Above all, he thinks that Americans must seriously consider some system of reparations to deal with both past and present injustices, an apology, and our own truth-and-reconciliation committee that addresses both the history of slavery and present-day racism. Only in this way, he feels, can we ever hope to heal the racial divide that never seems to be erased. This is a powerful, deeply perceptive analysis of a crucial social problem by one of America's leading thinkers on race.

The new edition of this comprehensive survey of African history provides an accessible overview of the continent’s narrative, focusing on the autonomy and achievements of the African people. The book brings readers closer to an authentic Africa by paying close attention to the lives of everyday people and highlighting insights and ideas that are often missed in typical survey texts. The fourth edition offers expanded coverage of smaller linguistic and ethnic groups in Africa in order to provide a more inclusive history, noting a few individual groups while also analyzing their contributions to the overall narrative and African culture. Liberia’s hidden history is given greater attention in this updated volume, as well as the ethnic and religious tensions in Nigeria and Sudan. While the book emphasizes that African history is always being made, the fourth edition brings the record up to date and grapples with contemporary issues in culture and politics. The History of Africa is an indispensable text for students and researchers in African history, cultural studies, philosophy, and politics.

Ama Mazama: The Ogunic Presence in Africology is a critical analysis of the ideas of Ama Mazama, a prominent and leading female theorist in Africology and African American Studies. Molefe Asante studies the creative and productive power of Mazama's intellectual work as it emerges from the personal wrestling with spiritual elements of consciousness as well as Mazama's attention to ancestral and perhaps epigenetic relationships to African spirituality in the making of theory and practice. Painting a picture of an activist intellectual concerned as much with mental as well as spiritual liberation, Asante demonstrates how and why Ama Mazama has evolved into one of the most popular Africologists in the field.

White on White/Black on Black is a unique contribution to the philosophy of race. The book explores how fourteen philosophers, seven white and seven black, philosophically understand the dynamics of the process of racialization. Combined, the contributions demonstrate different and similar conceptual trajectories of raced identities that emerge from within and across the racial divide. Each of the fourteen philosophers, who share a textual space of exploration, name blackness/whiteness, revealing significant political, cultural, and existential aspects of what it means to be black/white. Through the power of naming and theorizing whiteness and blackness, White on White/Black on Black dares to bring clarity and complexity to our understanding of race identity.

Transcultural Realities is an important collection of essays written by an outstanding cast of critical scholars who discuss the importance of transculture in interdisciplinary contexts. The primary goal of the contributors is to help the reader to understand that a state of "community" or "harmony" cannot be achieved in the world until we are all ready to accept different cultural forms, norms, and orientations.

This anthology of black writers traces the evolution of African-American perspectives throughout American history, from the early years of slavery to the end of the twentieth century. The essays, manifestos, interviews, and documents assembled here, contextualized with critical commentaries from Marable and Mullings, introduce the reader to the character and important controversies of each period of black history. The selections represent a broad spectrum of ideology. Conservative, radical, nationalistic, and integrationist approaches can be found in almost every period, yet there have been striking shifts in the evolution of social thought and activism. The editors judiciously illustrate how both continuity and change affected the African-American community in terms of its internal divisions, class structure, migration, social problems, leadership, and protest movements. They also show how gender, spirituality, literature, music, and connections to Africa and the Caribbean played a prominent role in black life and history.

The Global Intercultural Communication Reader is the first anthology to take a distinctly non-Eurocentric approach to the study of culture and communication. In this expanded second edition, editors Molefi Kete Asante, Yoshitaka Miike, and Jing Yin bring together thirty-two essential readings for students of cross-cultural, intercultural, and international communication. This stand-out collection aims to broaden and deepen the scope of the field by placing an emphasis on diversity, including work from authors across the globe examining the processes and politics of intercultural communication from critical, historical, and indigenous perspectives. The collection covers a wide range of topics: the emergence and evolution of the field; issues and challenges in cross-cultural and intercultural inquiry; cultural wisdom and communication practices in context; identity and intercultural competence in a multicultural society; the effects of globalization; and ethical considerations. Many readings first appeared outside the mainstream Western academy and offer diverse theoretical lenses on culture and communication practices in the world community. Organized into five themed sections for easy classroom use, The Global Intercultural Communication Reader includes a detailed bibliography that will be a crucial resource for today's students of intercultural communication.

The African American People is the first history of the African American people to take a global look at the role African Americans have played in the world. Author Molefi Kete Asante synthesizes the familiar tale of history 's effect on the African people who found themselves forcibly part of the United States with a new look at how African Americans in later generations impacted the rest of the world. Designed for a range of students studying African American History or African American Studies, The African American People takes the story from Africa to the Americas, and follows the diaspora through the Underground Railroad to Canada, and on to Europe, Asia, and around the globe.

Including over 50 images documenting African American lives, The African American People presents the most detailed discussion of the African and African American diaspora to date, giving student the foundation they need to broaden their conception of African American History.

"Rooming in the Master s House" is an analytical narrative of the origins, evolution, and development of a political and cultural sector of the African American community that abandoned the idea of collective liberation for the idea of individual salvation. It is a penetrating examination of the psychological and social disorders of self-negation, self-hatred, and group disdain that have affected the most extreme elements of the black community, especially as seen in those who share identification with the oppressing class more than with the oppressed. Discovering the seeds of this attitude and accompanying behavior in the antebellum period the authors, Asante and Hall, demonstrate that the legacy continues today in the modern day black conservatives who espouse versions of the arguments offered by house Negroes during the enslavement. Using Malcolm X s notion of a dichotomy between the house Negroes and the field Negroes the authors show how the current black conservative movement is organically linked to this social division."

"Rooming in the Master s House" is an analytical narrative of the origins, evolution, and development of a political and cultural sector of the African American community that abandoned the idea of collective liberation for the idea of individual salvation. It is a penetrating examination of the psychological and social disorders of self-negation, self-hatred, and group disdain that have affected the most extreme elements of the black community, especially as seen in those who share identification with the oppressing class more than with the oppressed. Discovering the seeds of this attitude and accompanying behavior in the antebellum period the authors, Asante and Hall, demonstrate that the legacy continues today in the modern day black conservatives who espouse versions of the arguments offered by house Negroes during the enslavement. Using Malcolm X s notion of a dichotomy between the house Negroes and the field Negroes the authors show how the current black conservative movement is organically linked to this social division."

As I Run Toward Africa is the extraordinary memoir of a boy from a small South Georgia town and its antebellum traditions, seductions, and malices to his eventual position as the most prolific African American author. Asante s experience in the Geechee-Gullah milieu of Georgia s coastal plains with its mystic and plaintive longing for Africa propelled him toward a conscious grasp of the meaning of loss, displacement, and dislocation, leading him to develop ideas that would reorient what he called slave thinking toward a more useful centered thinking for peoples of African descent worldwide.One of the most poignant memoirs by an African American, this book takes the reader on a journey from the experiences of growing up black in the American South to the homes of presidents and kings in Africa. Born into a family of 16 children living in a two bedroom shack, Asante rose to become the first permanent director of UCLA s Center for Afro American Studies, the editor of the Journal of Black Studies, and a full professor at State University by the age of 30. The government of Ghana designate Asante officially as a traditional king in l996. During his journeys Asante recounts his interactions with many personalities who assisted him in focusing on restorative culture: Billie Sol Estes, Wole Soyinka, Maulana Karenga, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, Cornel West, Mary Lefkowitz, Sidney Willhelm, and others. As an intellectual who has met presidents, kings, queens, in Africa, Asante s compelling story is uplifting, instructive, and revealing about the nature of the human condition. "

As I Run Toward Africa is Molefi Kete Asante's memoir of his extraordinary life. He takes the reader on a journey from the American South to the homes of kings in Africa. Born into a family of 16 children living in a two bedroom shack, Asante rose to become director of UCLA's Centre for Afro American Studies, editor of the Journal of Black Studies and university professor by the age of 30. The government of Ghana designated Asante as a traditional king in 1996. Asante recounts his meetings with personalities such as Wole Soyinka, Cornel West and others. This is an uplifting real-life story about hope and empowerment.

The new edition of this comprehensive survey of African history provides an accessible overview of the continent’s narrative, focusing on the autonomy and achievements of the African people.

The book brings readers closer to an authentic Africa by paying close attention to the lives of everyday people and highlighting insights and ideas that are often missed in typical survey texts. The fourth edition offers expanded coverage of smaller linguistic and ethnic groups in Africa in order to provide a more inclusive history, noting a few individual groups while also analyzing their contributions to the overall narrative and African culture. Liberia’s hidden history is given greater attention in this updated volume, as well as the ethnic and religious tensions in Nigeria and Sudan. While the book emphasizes that African history is always being made, the fourth edition brings the record up to date and grapples with contemporary issues in culture and politics.

The History of Africa is an indispensable text for students and researchers in African history, cultural studies, philosophy, and politics.

Since 1619, when Africans first came ashore in the swampy Chesapeake region of Virginia, there have been many individuals whose achievements or strength of character in the face of monumental hardships have called attention to the genius of the African American people. This book attempts to distill from many wonderful possibilities the 100 most outstanding examples of greatness. Pioneering scholar of African American Studies Molefi Kete Asante has used four criteria in his selection: the individual's significance in the general progress of African Americans toward full equality in the American social and political system; self-sacrifice and the demonstration of risk for the collective good; unusual will and determination in the face of the greatest danger or against the most stubborn odds; and personal achievement that reveals the best qualities of the African American people. In adopting these criteria Professor Asante has sought to steer away from the usual standards of popular culture, which often elevates the most popular, the wealthiest, or the most photogenic to the cult of celebrity. The individuals in this book - examples of lasting greatness as opposed to the ephemeral glare of celebrity fame - come from four centuries of African American history. Each entry includes brief biographical information, relevant dates, an assessment of the individual's place in African American history with particular reference to a historical timeline, and a discussion of his or her unique impact on American society. Numerous pictures and illustrations will accompany the articles. This superb reference work will complement any library and be of special interest to students and scholars of American and African American history.

The Global Intercultural Communication Reader is the first anthology to take a distinctly non-Eurocentric approach to the study of culture and communication. In this expanded second edition, editors Molefi Kete Asante, Yoshitaka Miike, and Jing Yin bring together thirty-two essential readings for students of cross-cultural, intercultural, and international communication. This stand-out collection aims to broaden and deepen the scope of the field by placing an emphasis on diversity, including work from authors across the globe examining the processes and politics of intercultural communication from critical, historical, and indigenous perspectives. The collection covers a wide range of topics: the emergence and evolution of the field; issues and challenges in cross-cultural and intercultural inquiry; cultural wisdom and communication practices in context; identity and intercultural competence in a multicultural society; the effects of globalization; and ethical considerations. Many readings first appeared outside the mainstream Western academy and offer diverse theoretical lenses on culture and communication practices in the world community. Organized into five themed sections for easy classroom use, The Global Intercultural Communication Reader includes a detailed bibliography that will be a crucial resource for today's students of intercultural communication.

The African American People is the first history of the African American people to take a global look at the role African Americans have played in the world. Author Molefi Kete Asante synthesizes the familiar tale of history 's effect on the African people who found themselves forcibly part of the United States with a new look at how African Americans in later generations impacted the rest of the world. Designed for a range of students studying African American History or African American Studies, The African American People takes the story from Africa to the Americas, and follows the diaspora through the Underground Railroad to Canada, and on to Europe, Asia, and around the globe.

Including over 50 images documenting African American lives, The African American People presents the most detailed discussion of the African and African American diaspora to date, giving student the foundation they need to broaden their conception of African American History.

In An Afrocentric Pan Africanist Vision: Afrocentric Essays, Molefi Kete Asante, engages the age-old debate on Pan Africanism by providing an innovative orientation to the established discourse developed during the twentieth century. Asante opens an interrogation of the Padmorian tradition of a socialist Pan Africanism by suggesting that a deeper entry into the histories and narratives of the literary, economic, social, and spiritual values of the thousands of African societies scattered throughout the world could sustain a different agency analysis of Pan Africanism without grafting an external idea on the unity of Africa. Using his vast knowledge of the history of Africa, Asante suggests that the African renaissance cannot take place unless there is a commitment to creating an African community conscious of its own myths, origins, and economic, cultural, and philosophical traditions.

Africana literary critic and cultural theory scholar, Christel N. Temple, whose groundbreaking books, Literary Pan-Africanism: History, Contexts, and Criticism (2005) and Literary Spaces: Introduction to Comparative Black Literature (2007), have been some of the most influential models of contemporary Africana Studies-based literary criticism, responds to the demand for a core disciplinary source that comprehensively defines and models literary praxis from the vantage point of Africana Studies. This highly anticipated seminal study finally institutionalizes the discipline's literary enterprise. Framing the concept of transcendence, she covers over a dozen traditional African American works in an original and thought-provoking analysis that places canonical approaches in enlightened discourse with Africana studies reader-response priorities. This study makes traditional literature come alive in conversation with topics of masculinity, womanism, Black Lives Matter, humor, Pan-Africanism, transnationalism, worldview, the subject place of Africa, cultural mythology, hero dynamics, Black psychology, demographics, history, Black liberation theology, eulogy, cultural memory, Afro-futurism, the Kemetic principle of Maat, social justice, rap and hip hop, Diaspora, and performance. Scholars now have a focused Africana Studies text-for both introductory and advanced literature courses-to capture the power of the African American literary canon while modeling the most dynamic practical applications of humanities-to-social science practices.

Although Africa is the world's poorest continent, it is a major emerging market and partner in the global village of the new millennium. This book presents a wide array of perspectives on the problems and prospects of developing Africa. Leading scholars in African studies and international communication analyze the socio-political and cultural experiences in various communities, focusing on key questions: What is development? What are the main issues surrounding development in Africa? And how can communication per se be used to address the persistent problems of underdevelopment?