Back in the 1820s, German idealist Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel argued that “Fro

Back in the 1820s, German idealist Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel argued that “From the earliest historical times, Africa has remained cut off from all contacts with the rest of the world; it is the land of gold, forever pressing in upon itself, and the land of childhood, removed from the light of self-conscious history and wrapped in the dark mantle of night. Hegel’s ideas are echoed in subsequent generations by other Eurocentric authors such as Andrew Johnson who, in 1867, opined that “It is vain to deny that the Blacks are an inferior race – very far inferior to the European variety. They have learned in slavery all that they know in civilization. When first brought from the country of their origin, they were naked savages and where they have been left to their own devices or escaped the control of the white race, they have lapsed, to as greater or less degree into barbarism.”
The above assertions misrepresent African and diasporic African people as stagnant, backward, sub-human and therefore incapable of making any meaningful and respectable contributions to world culture and civilization. Using Walter Rodney’s reading entitled “How Africa Developed Before the Coming of the Europeans up to the 15th Century”, pages 51 – 113 in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – (posted under Weeks 4-6 in the Modules tab on Canvas), discuss the ways in which Rodney challenges the misrepresentation of African people, culture and history in Eurocentric arguments of the nature cited above.