Distinguishing Afrocentric Inquiry From Pop Culture Afrocentrism

Abstract

The mainstream publicity garnered from Molefi Kete Asante’s Afrocentric paradigm has led to an often anti-intellectual and nonacademic misappropriation of its constructs. This approach fashioned out of mainstream sound bytes, commonly characterized as “Pop Culture Afrocentrism,” suggests that a discourse need only feature or mention people of African descent to be considered Afrocentric. Such an approach has often led to the application of base intellectual offerings by scholars claiming to utilize Afrocentric methodology. This article discusses how mainstream media sound byte–type approaches toward Afrocentricity has (a) led to a dearth of understanding of the concept and (b) created the need for contemporary intellectuals to produce research that critically applies the Afrocentric paradigm in alignment with Asante’s conceptualization in order to prevail over typical anti-Black mainstream contributions. To distinguish pop culture Afrocentrism from the Afrocentric paradigm, focus is placed on Asante’s location theory as one of the most essential aspects of Afrocentric inquiry.