Behind The Eurocentric Veils

A contribution to the rapidly developing field of Afrocentric studies, this book is a thoughtful critique of Eurocentric traditions of social and historical analysis - principally Marxist and liberal orientations - and an argument in favour of studying African history and culture from a specifically Afrocentric point of view.

" ... a major work ... an intellectual and cultural tour de force. [Loutzenhiser's] range in the world of the metaphysicians is sure. [His] sections on the arts [are] most penetrating and offer original ideas and insights." -Edward Bruce Bynum, author of The African Unconscious, Director of Behavioral Medicine, University of Massachusetts Amherst "I was impressed with the range of issues and thinkers covered ... It is a rare thinker who can find the thread that connects hegelian phenomenology, transpersonal psychology, holonic theory, the chakra system, the [prose] of Jack Kerouac and the music of Sun Ra." -Samuel Oluoch Imbo, author of An Introduction to African Philosophy " ... thought-provoking ... thoroughgoing " -Nikitah Okembe-ra Imani, associate professor of Sociology-Africentric Critical Studies, James Madison University " ... brilliant and intriguing ideas. [Loutzenhiser's] mind is amazing, vigorous and rich." -John Davis, professor of Transpersonal Psychology, Naropa University " ... important." -Molefi Kete Asante, author of The Afrocentric Idea

The fourth edition of this dictionary includes substantial revision of the entries, fully updated lists of further reading and new entries including black feminism, environmental racism and many more.

The book comprises essays, each highlighting a particular word or term germane to the study of race and ethnic studies.

Since the 1993 publication of the third edition of the Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations, events have continued to change the way in which race and ethnicity are viewed. The trial of O. J. Simpson; the publication of The Bell Curve; and the continuing attacks on Affirmative Action have all affected the ways in which race and the surrounding issues of racism and identity have been reported in the media and studied in the classroom. The Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations covers a range of national and international topics which have been written by a distinguished group of experts on race and ethnicity. The reader will find new articles covering recent events, historical and theoretical perspectives and important figures. Over half of the book has been revised or rewritten and all of the articles include fully-updated lists of further reading.

In a thoughtful and engaging critique, geographer Martin W. Lewis and historian Karen Wigen re-examine the basic geographical divisions we take for granted. Their up-to-the-minute study reflects both on the global scale and its relation to the specific continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa actually part of one contiguous landmass. Photos. maps.

In the early 1990s, Classics professor Mary Lefkowitz discovered that one of her faculty colleagues at Wellesley College was teaching his students that Greek culture had been stolen from Africa and that Jews were responsible for the slave trade. This book tells the disturbing story of what happened when she spoke out. Lefkowitz quickly learned that to investigate the origin and meaning of myths composed by people who have for centuries been dead and buried is one thing, but it is quite another to critique myths that living people take very seriously. She also found that many in academia were reluctant to challenge the fashionable idea that truth is merely a form of opinion. For her insistent defense of obvious truths about the Greeks and the Jews, Lefkowitz was embroiled in turmoil for a decade. She faced institutional indifference, angry colleagues, reverse racism, anti-Semitism, and even a lawsuit intended to silence her. In History Lesson Lefkowitz describes what it was like to experience directly the power of both postmodernism and compensatory politics. She offers personal insights into important issues of academic values and political correctness, and she suggests practical solutions for the divisive and painful problems that arise when a political agenda takes precedence over objective scholarship. Her forthright tale uncovers surprising features in the landscape of higher education and an unexpected need for courage from those who venture there.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic for Time magazine comes the tremendously controversial, yet highly persuasive, argument that our devotion to the largely unexamined myth of egalitarianism lies at the heart of the ongoing "dumbing of America." Americans have always stubbornly clung to the myth of egalitarianism, of the supremacy of the individual average man. But here, at long last, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic William A. Henry III takes on, and debunks, some basic, fundamentally ingrained ideas: that everyone is pretty much alike (and should be); that self-fulfillment is more imortant thant objective achievement; that everyone has something significant to contribute; that all cultures offer something equally worthwhile; that a truly just society would automatically produce equal success results across lines of race, class, and gender; and that the common man is almost always right. Henry makes clear, in a book full of vivid examples and unflinching opinions, that while these notions are seductively democratic they are also hopelessly wrong.