At least three streams of Afro centrists can be disaggregated: the Pan-Africanist scientists trend (Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop and Dr. Theopile Obenga), the pan africanist anti-segregationists/anti-white imperialists (Dr.Maulana Karenga, Dr. Molefi Keti Asante, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Tony Martin, Dr. John H. Clarke, Dr. Jake Carruthers, Dr. Oba T'Shaka, Dr. Asa Hillard, Dr. Ani, Dr. Chancelor Williams, Dr. Amos Wilson, etc.), and the integrationists/diffussionists (Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. Ben, etc.).  These works must be studied carefully; though most are dated, they are the best of the best in the academy.  Only Dr. Clarke dealt firmly with Arab slavery/islam and invasion/occupation degeneracy in the destruction of African civilization.  Most Black academics give these degenerate enslavers a free pass.  The rotten white/jew enslaver were just as murderous as the rotten arab enslaver.  All of them---along with rotten sellout African tribal chiefs and their lapdog askari mercenaries---have destroyed and distorted African history, life and civilizations. 

There are many more outside of the whiteman's educational institutions, but these are/were the leading edge advanced theorists allowed to present their ideas within the established parameters.

Generally, the theorists listed above have led the progressive elements of the African centered movement---although still not in the trend of Diop, they have made lasting contributions in their particular areas.  But there is a regressive element which actually dominates the process of research transferring it into simple infusion, integration, and "Black-believe-it-or-not" feel good history.  Whereas Cheikh Anta Diop (among others) established KMT as the foundation of African civilization, scholars philosophically, theoretically, and practically wedded to anti-segregation-ism and integration-ism, critiqued the absence of black people in mainstream discourse and academe and sought to insert themselves into the knowledge-producing institutions of the dominant race, class, and gender.  Though their efforts have been interpreted in many ways by numerous of supporters and critics, when all the layers are peeled away and the essential features exposed, the efforts of this group can be described as a contemporary extension of the civil rights movement, of which de-segregation and integration were central. 

A close and critical analysis of the historical conditions within which the afrocentrists and their work developed provides clear evidence for this.  Rooted in the civil rights period of the 1950s and 1960s, the Afrocentric movement in academe evolved in response to conventional articulations of Africa and African people in history and social relations during the mid-20^thcentury.  Authors on Afrocentrism often situate the work of Cheikh Anta Diop at the core of the movement, however his work is of a different nature than that of the contemporary Afrocentrists.

The Americanized Afrocentrists that set the parameters for the field of study mostly grew up during the civil rights period (1950's, 60's, and early 70's) and were involved in one way or another.  There were very specific conditions that ushered in movements around civil rights, which had their roots in the shifting relationship between labor and technology.   

It was during that period in history that each institution in American society had to be integrated in accordance with the needs of production, its level of importance to white capitalist national security, and its specific degree of segregation. 

In order to achieve this integration and modernization of exploitation, the strategy was multi-faceted: boycott, sit-in, participate in freedom rides, carry out mass marches, and pray.  In other words, march, beg, take brutal beatings, crawl, lobby, plead, and appeal to white gods-in a word, "guilt-trip" the larger white population into accepting a type of social integration which actually benefited them economically, but at the same time eroded the psychological basis for their beliefs of innate superiority over African populations. 

The Civil Rights Movement of 1950-1975 used the same organizational formula which was applied during the 1830-1867 abolitionist movement in the US:

• 1. Depend solely on white middle class liberal leadership, contacts, beliefs, philosophies, and programs;
• 2. Solicit white financial backing by showing how in that moment in history, change benefited both rich exploiting whites and poor exploited Africans;
• 3. Employ activities of begging, pleading, appeals to morality, appeals to a slavemaker's democracy, appeals to constitutionality, and praying to the larger white population in order to convince them to accept minor concessions which would also benefit them;
• 4. Lobby for favorable federal Supreme Court decisions from newly chosen liberal judges; and,
• 5. Make sure that all of this is done nonviolently, and with no anger toward whites for having brutalized them for over 360 years.

The lower section of the African middle class, specifically preachers, teachers, small business owners, labor leaders, comedians, comics, clowns, singers, actors, trumpet players, athletes, and other entertainers were to be the raw material out of which this movement was to be fashioned, directed and controlled. 

This minuscule lower middle class would lead the mass of poor working class Africans in head busting marches, sit-ins, crawl-ins, beg-ins, boycotts and other forms of civil disobedience.  At the same time, lower middle class Africans were being led by white liberals and sometimes by those calling themselves radicals, social democrats, socialist and even sometimes white communists. 

It was within this context of struggle and change that the Afrocentric movement in academe evolved.  It was a reform movement.  It was an infusion movement.  Its stated goal was not stand alone African Humanities/Sciences curricula, but was to integrate and infuse Afrocentric ideas into the white supremacist curricula.  Most never even critiqued the Arab supremacy process of slavery and miseducation.  The Arabs were given a free pass by Blacks running around with arab names, holidays, languages and korans.  Whites (including Jews), and Arabs organized, financed, created, managed, militarilly protected, religiously sanctioned, and benefited from enslaving hundreds of millions of innocent Africans.   Blood is on their hands.  None of them, including the ignorant/backward African tribal chiefs who helped the enslavers, will get a free pass in this period.  

Reflective of the period within which modern foundations of Afrocentrism were born, its central efforts consist primarily of critiquing white mainstream ideology, theory, methods, and practice, while seeking insertion/infusion into the prevailing order and mainstream historical summations.  They let the murderous Arabs get away with enslaving hundreds of millions of Black people in the Eastern Hemisphere---not even a word is mentioned in most afrocentric tracts.   Any critical assessment of a theory of rational thought reflective of objective practice/reality should be made by using a method of assessment that is reflective of the application of the new theoretical framework to the problem of analyzing and synthesizing reality.  As there is negative in the positive, there is positive in the negative.  The questions posed here is how do we think?  Where do thoughts come from? What are the most concrete scientific thoughts reflective of objective reality?  How does one achieve these thoughts as to apply them to changing reality in a positive way?

The best of African thought is all inclusive of facts verifiable in practice; theory is summarized practice concentrated in formula/symbolic equation, compressed into scientific procedure. Traditionally, in the reactionary aspect of African-centered thought, scientific assessment of reality is dominated, not by independent scientific assessment of factual data over time, but often by mystical incantations of obsolete speculative Christian-Islamic dogma/filler whose scope rarely leaves the idealistic discussion of abstract spirit, religion, saviors, and bankrupt White critiques of history and imperialism.  Lacking power, they seek spirits to fill the void.  The weight of a history of domination holds the key to this problem.

Therefore, apparently every significant fact of African history must be used by them to show how Africans (quite ignorantly and disgracefully) influence the growth and development of White slavemaking civilization:
(1) ancient African Kmt helping Greek, Roman, and Arab invaders to take North Africa;
(2) North African Moors helping predatory Imperialist Western European Spaniards, Portuguese, French, and Englishmen to become civilized;
(3) indentured Negroes helping Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and British conquerors/imperialists (Columbus, Pizarro, Cortes, Balboa, De Leon, Coronado, Courtier, etc.) to pillage, rob, loot and commit genocide in the Western Hemisphere and the world;
(4) Negroes as "Buffalo Soldiers" killing indigenous people as to secure land for Whites, during and after a civil war that Whites controlled and organized, and
(5) Black preachers teaching innocent Black millions to take beatings from brute whites and Arabs to get civil and citizenship rights from historical enslavers.  The integration of the exploited with the genocidal deeds of the exploiter is the reactionary immoral equivalent of seeking credit for helping a convicted murderer or rapist to murder and rape. 

This blind, classically conditioned, subservient, opportunist, compromised, unprincipled, weak method of "bluffing-screaming-scaring-guilt-seeking for the purpose of negotiationfor tokens is still being practiced, even though this is not a period of economic expansion, which was reflected in political and social liberalism (1950's-1970's), but a period which is reflected in political and cultural conservatism/nazism (1980's-2008+)---a period that neo-nazi militias grow daily. 

In sum, ambiguous class, race, gender/sex, cultural, and generation perspective of the reactionary aspect of the African-centered movement is best explained by the contradictory position of wanting "to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds." 

Afrocentric Argument Against Eurocentrism

Overtime, White racism became an extremely well constructed ideological European worldview which, in the process of Europe and its Diaspora ascending to world domination (1500-1900's), became an accepted worldview.  It is the capstone of a five-tier pyramidal scaffold in the ideology of White supremacist thought: according to the mainstream educational structure, the origin of all human populations had to begin with Europeans from the development of (1) prehistoric hominid formations, (2) modern homo sapiens sapiens, (3) the intellectualization of homo sapiens sapiens, (4) the first class-based advanced forms of ancient society and civilization, and (5) the most advanced forms of classical ancient society.  Although there is no significant material evidence to prove such assertions, it is a standard operating procedure to preserve their existence nonetheless.

The question of Greek civilization, its "miraculous" achievement of the arts and the sciences in relatively short historical time frame, which is unprecedented in the annals of human history, is at the heart of the justification for White supremacy.  Therefore, it is the single most important ideological basis for White racism.  Nearly 500 years of intellectual careers went into evolving this anti-history.  Rigorously, since as early as 1750bc, big names such as Friedrich August Wolf, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hegel, Hume, Marx, De Gobineau, Barthold Niebuhr, Maspero, Breasted, Toynbee, all consciously or unconsciously had an early hand in furthering the misconception that everything, including KMT (Egypt), was a metaphysical mess until scientific Greece came along and created science, research methods, philosophy, mathematics, architecture, writing---everything of significance to world civilization. 

Ancient Greece, although capable, did not have much of a long history of scientific practice before its infiltration into Northern Africa. But miraculously, Greece did have a long list of scientific publications and scientifically verified theories (compiled during its occupation of Northern Africa, i.e., in what they came to called Egypt, specifically at Alexandria 450 BC to 50 BC).  This Aryan Model of White supremacy via the so-called "Greece Miracle" later came to serve as a foundation for almost every scientific discipline developed by Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Toward Afrocentric Research Design

African people must study the world, based on the most advanced scientific data at their disposal, stripped of its racist shell, with no mentor-ship from others.  Although science is neutral, its application is not, as it has historically been used to benefit one race over another, one class over another, one gender over another and one culture over and another.  The vast majority of the social science and cultural information about the world is not accurate, and is usually biased in the favor of the race, class, sex/gender, and culture that rule the material and intellectual means of creation around the world. 

Possessing the necessary scientific procedures, tools, and techniques to reveal and (re)interpret evidence is fundamental to Afrocentric scholarship seeking integrity and objectivity.  Therefore the construction of an Afrocentric Research Design consists of a combination of the best of approaches employed by Afrocentric scholars (from all streams, though primarily from Diop, Obenga), and techniques developed in various disciplines.

The central purpose of Afrocentric research is to correct the historical misinterpretations of African people throughout the course of global historical development, while developing meaningful strategies and approaches to address contemporary manifestations of historical wrongs.  

Although there are a number of activists and scholars who have been labeled Afrocentric, to this date, there has not been a clearly defined Afrocentric research design.  The lack of a systematic scientific approach to the study of African people's historical and contemporary realities by African scholars has left Afrocentrism open (rightfully so) to criticism. 

Although European and European trained scholars may oppose the conclusions drawn by Cheikh Anta Diop, and Dr. Obenga  given their level of rigor and thoroughness with regard to the collection and analysis of data, their work is respected in communities of their peers.

The Afrocentric research design process provides the necessary methodological tools and techniques to precisely and thoroughly raise questions regarding the past, present, and future conditions and realities of African people and civilizations.

PLANNING AFROCENTRIC RESEARCH

The Research Process

A structured, well-organized plan that enables the researcher to systematically examine evidence-weight is placed on evidence, rather than speculation

1. The research process must be fluid and comprehensive-often the subject matter of Afrocentric research requires that the researcher gather and process a lot of information and put it together (like interlocking pieces in a puzzle) and make sense of it, within its historical context-quiet a task
2. An architectural engineer will precisely design an entire house long before building and construction contractors ever begin to break ground.  The blueprint of a building structure is a necessary requisite before any materials or tools are purchased or labor hired.  Similarly, research must be this precise and systematic for it to have any meaning of substance.  And given the lack of precision in Afrocentric research, over preparation must be the order of the day. 
3. Develop a plan of action that outlines the entire research process.  In developing a plan of action, consider the research problem, begin to formulate a research question that will guide the research process, and think about the type of data needed to address the question.  Additional considerations include defining methods of collecting, processing, and analyzing data; assessing information and resource needs; determining available human and material resources; establishing a timeframe for all phases of the research process; and how findings will be used, by whom, and why.

Research Problem and Literature Review

Initially, the research problem may be a bit broad or ambiguous.  As the researcher engages in a further examination of the problem, it becomes clearer.

Given that Afrocentric research often addresses gaps in the articulation and analysis of African people's conditions and realities, whether past or present, the research problem must be discussed within the historical context that gave rise to it.

1. Once an area of interest has been selected, it is imperative to conduct a preliminary review of research materials and other documentation to get a sense of how others have discussed the same or similar issues.  It can be both helpful and instructive to observe how other "scholars" have defined similar problems, variables, relationships, and/or units of analysis. 
2. Conduct a comprehensive review of the literature, critically summarizing salient material and organizing summaries chronologically, historically, and logically. 
3. When reviewing the work of others, consider (document) the historical context within which she/he wrote (including the quality, quantity, and availability of technology), the source(s) of funding for the research,  Additionally, consider the theoretical, methodological, practical and historical meanings and implications of race, class, and gender of the researcher, her/his approaches, analyses, findings, and conclusions.
4. The Afrocentric researcher may also consider the absence or presence (and quality of that presence) of Africa and African people in research and forums within which research finds an audience.  It may be that a researcher may not find much on a particular topic or research problem; this does not mean that the matter is insignificant, rather that no one has studied it in that way or at all. 
5. Given the nature of Afrocentric research, the more organized and precise the researcher is in her/his comprehensive review of what has been previously done, more solid is the foundation upon which the research is built.

Theory

The Literature Review lays the basis for theory as it reveals relationships between various components of the research question/problem.  Additionally, researchers may find that additional factors or forces that were somehow missed or hidden are revealed.  Important in Afrocentric research are the roles that race, class, gender, generation, and ethnicity/culture play in shaping the study of African people's historical and contemporary realities and conditions.

1. Theory lays out the relationship between the various components of this study, as well as their interrelationships.
2. Establishing the relationships between the components of the research problem/question lay the basis for the Afrocentric researcher to clarify the research question and establish valid and reliable conceptual and operational definitions.