Diop on the Origin and History of the Black World - Essay Example

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.