Background

Despite the ethnic changes in the population of the United States during the last 40 years, education has continued to be based upon a traditional Eurocentric model (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Black students have scored disproportionately lower on assessments of higher order thinking skills, such as standardized social studies examinations, due to cultural insensitivity in instruction, poor instruction, minimally qualified teachers, and weak literacy instruction (Zwick & Green, 2007). However, a recent study conducted at a charter school in Harlem, New York, showed the positive effects of an Africentric U.S. history curriculum on students’ standardized test scores, perceptions of self-efficacy, and emotional attachment to the curriculum.

Africentric vs. Eurocentric Education

Africentrism is the written expression of indigenous African ideology as personified by the lived experiences of generations of people within the African diaspora. Africentrism is guided by common African principles to empower and validate African diasporic history and knowledge. Asante (2008) defined Africentric as the conscious choice to position oneself within the historical narrative by using Africa as the perspective. His perspective was not race sensitive; rather, individuals of European descent were considered race-less (Asante, 2003).

Eurocentrism is the implicit assumption that all relevant modern concepts, practices, technologies, and capacities are essentially European. North American public education rests on a Eurocentric foundation, as does the reiteration of what instructors consider legitimate knowledge through items on standardized examinations. Any philosophy or ideology opposing the centrality of European dominance and superiority has been judged as deviant by the dominant educational culture.

While individuals with Africentric perspectives believe that education should result in self-sufficient, resourceful people who first look within their own culture instead of without for primary confirmation (Abdi, 2006). Education in the United States, at least for children of the African diaspora, has long been the opposite.