Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I am curently doing research on the Pan-African movement, and this book provides an excellent background of the Afrocentric critique of European imperialism and racism.

To the other reviewer who said that the moral equivalent of this book would be "A eurocentric critique of African thought and behavior", I would like to say you are wrong, for two reasons:

1. If Africans had enslaved and denigrated Europeans for five centuries, Europeans could legitimately write a book with the title you suggested, and it would be highly moral.
2. In the current situation, most mainstream social science is eurocentric and criticizes African culture and behavior. This is immoral, because it justifies crimes against humanity.

Remember, morality is on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressors. There must be justice in this world!

Rating:
Summary: Pure Racism
Review: In Othello, Shakespeare bemoans the fall of an African nobleman who once great and highly praised, becomes lowly and despised, by acting in a manner not befitting a person of his station. There are two types of experience open to man, one sensation, an attribute of mind, and the other possession, a physical act. The individual obsessed about their race and tribe becomes possessed by the notion, losing self esteem, developing mental attitudes contrary to reality and defending their beliefs derived in this way through the use of violence or the threat of violence. Actions are addictive, and racist acts once repeated become habits, an example being the use of demeaning terms to describe members of other races in the language used by the individual holding racist misconceptions. Emotional responses issue from the central nervous system, so where the individual's experience has not provided them with a blueprint for how to act towards members of other races in everyday life situations, the individual is unable to express their feelings through appropriate action and destructive pathological tendencies involving the deriving of pleasure from the ill treatment of members of another race may develop. The challenge to the individual is how to place black cultural experience within the context of European culture, and addressing the need for a building of perspectives representing the limits of experience, and the fact that an individual cannot exchange their reality for another.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a MUST READ!
Review: Marimba Ani provided a tool to lift the "veil" of reality that has been draped over our minds during the last 2 mellinea. She was formerly known as Dr. Donna Richards, "Let the Circle be Unbroken", wich is also short necessary reading. As a prequel New readers might also want to obtain: "Psychopathic Racial Personality" --Dr. Bobby E. Wright "The Falsification of African Conscious" --Dr. Amos N. Wilson "Chains and Images of Slavery"--Dr. Naim Akbar "Community of Self"--Dr. Naim Akbar Dr. Amos Wilson's Books (the remaider)are must reads! Along with the Compliment book by Oba T'Shaka "Black Male/Female Equality[sic]" (even though the title should read "...Complimentarity". Please feel free to email me for discussion of the topics or help through them. P.S. don't forget to read Obenga's, "African Deep Thought" for a discussion of the Affirmative African Thought Structure/Science. "Reality Revolution" (Koffi Addae), "African Personality in America" (Kobi Kambon). Damu...

Rating:
Summary: If you want to believe . . .
Review: Marimba Ani takes the reader on a journey examining the thoughts of European thinkers. She exposes those Europeans who are racist for what they are. In this scholarly work you will be introduced to the structure of Eurpoean thought; you will also see how religion is used as an ideology and the power of symbols [white, good and beautiful]. You are introduced to self image [how europeans see themselves], and the image of others [how Europeans see others] as well. You will also read about rhetoric and behavior [ hypocrisy as a way of life], European behavior towards others and Europeans usage of the term Universalism [cultural imperialism]. In this work, you will read about these topics and more. This work will make you THINK!

Rating:
Summary: check the method
Review: The beauty of this book lies in Ani's methodology. Her critique extends to the Western intellectual tradition and its objectification of people of color. This tradition contributed to the process of creating the 'other' and to the more generalized devaluation of non-white people, and thus reinforced the imperial impulse of various European nations. The anthropologists played their part in reinforcing this impulse by 'studying' these people and 'justifying' their inferiority to Europeans. Ani documents this among such fathers of the field as Henri St. Simon. She then uses a similar methodological formula, that such fathers established in western universities, to critique European culture. As such, an admirable quality of the book is Ani's own ability to "turn every stratagem of the destroyers against themselves," by using a similar western methodology to construct the critique. The research spans from platonic discourse to the contemporary AIDS `crisis.' I recommend this book to any student wishing to learn about ways to do an overtly political type of anthropology.

Rating:
Summary: check the method
Review: The beauty of this book lies in Ani's methodology. Her critique extends to the Western intellectual tradition and its objectification of people of color. This tradition contributed to the process of creating the 'other' and to the more generalized devaluation of non-white people, and thus reinforced the imperial impulse of various European nations. The anthropologists played their part in reinforcing this impulse by 'studying' these people and 'justifying' their inferiority to Europeans. Ani documents this among such fathers of the field as Henri St. Simon. She then uses a similar methodological formula, that such fathers established in western universities, to critique European culture. As such, an admirable quality of the book is Ani's own ability to "turn every stratagem of the destroyers against themselves," by using a similar western methodology to construct the critique. The research spans from platonic discourse to the contemporary AIDS 'crisis.' I recommend this book to any student wishing to learn about ways to do an overtly political type of anthropology.

Rating:
Summary: Not Racist
Review: This book has nothing to do with racism. This a cultural critique of a system of thought which has historically oppressed every indigenous group it has come into contact with. To call it racist is to miss its point entirely. This is the groundwork for deconstructing the Western worldview for African peoples so as to enable the reconstruction of a value-system more in harmony with life and human dignity for all peoples. Though Dr. Ani does not hide her Pan-African sentiments, she offers her thesis in a very cogent and, for its subject matter, concise way. Her thinking and effort is to be commended by all those who persist in the recognition of universal human dignity.

Rating:
Summary: An articulate and voluminous work of racism
Review: This book should be essential to any library of a student serious about Afrocentric thought. Mama Marimba Ani gives a blunt and scholarly approach to the effects the european race has had on African people worldwide. The book may be a bit intimadating for students new to this school of thought. You should be well versed in the ideologies of Plato to even deal with the first chapter. However, there is imformation in this book that can be an asset to any degree of knowledge. She sets into motion an all out attack on christain ideology in the second chapter. In the thrid chapter she gives the workings of the europeans since of arts and fashion opposed to the africans since of style. Every moment of this book is explosive. I recommend this book immensly.