Opinion on Diop Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Opinion on Diop - Essay Example He was obsessed by the same self serving misinformation held by racist white scholars implying that Africans had no significant civilization and strongly opposed their notion. He argued that the civilization was started by the Egyptians who were black and not by foreigners who trekked into Egypt as suggested by the white scholars. He proposed that Africans could not be categorized into one group that existed in the south of the Sahara. This was in opposition to the claim by white scholars that the inhabitants of Egypt in North Africa were white. He argued that rather, Africans had a wide variation in skin color, hair type and facial shape just as happens among other human races. I believe Diop was as racist as the white scholars. His perception was that the scholars conveniently selected white pharaohs and ignored the original black ones to show Egypt as a white civilization. Diop did researches determined to prove that ancient Egyptians bore similar physical traits as present day black Africans. He went further to claim that, linguistically, ancient Egyptian was related to his contemporary Wolof language of West Africa. In conclusion, I believe most of Diop’s efforts and work were aimed at wrestling civilization claims from the Western world. He was filled with an inferiority complex and tried to overcome it by attempting to link his Wolof ethnicity with the Egyptians. I also believe that is the reason he insisted on placing the human civilization credit upon the Egyptians, whom he claimed to be black.