Black orientalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black orientalism is a terminology that is used for an intellectual and cultural movement within primarily African American circles which, while similar to the general movement of Orientalism in its negative outlook upon Western Asian - especially Arab - culture and religion, is different from the same in its emphasis upon the role of the Arab slave trade in the historic dialogue between sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab - and greater Muslim - world.
The term was first used by Kenyan writer Ali Mazrui in his Internet critique of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s documentary Wonders of the African World, which he had criticized for having markedly deemphasized the history of Islam in Africa, to the point where the history of Nigeria - half of which population is Muslim - was all but absent from the general coverage by the documentary. The term was later used by Sherman Jackson in an article for Islamica Magazine, which criticized Black orientalism as a backlash from the oft-conservative Christian African studies scholars who have seen Black Islam as a political threat of sorts. The article was later included in his book Islam and the Blackamerican.
