Book Review: Okafor, V. O. (2006). Towards an Understanding of Africology (2nd ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt

Abstract

In his 2006 text, Towards an Understanding of Africology, Dr. Victor O. Okafor, professor of african american studies at eastern Michigan University, contends that what was once called Black studies, africology, has evolved into a legitimate methodology and pedagogy within academia, despite its detractors. Okafor also challenges some of the arguments of the naysayers while presenting a document symbolic of the interdisciplinary nature of the "school." This text, as presented by Okafor, is an undergraduate-and graduatelevel introductory work designed "to enhance awareness of the significant role of Black Studies in the academy . . . and to clear up lingering criticisms about the desirability and legitimacy of the discipline" (p. xi).His first chapter, "an Overview of Primary Historical Themes," is a brief historical survey of the influential pre-european contact african civilizations as well as very brief introductions concerning the various resistance strategies of the african world, concluding with decolonization and the american civil rights movement, thus establishing a classical reference point as the methodology insists, as articulated by Dr. C. Tsehloane Keto in Vision and Time, a 2001 updated version of his 1995 publication Vision, Identity and Time.The second chapter, "The Roots of africology," is a discussion concerning the institutionalization of Black studies in 1968 at San Francisco State University; because of student activism, it is now offered as a doctoral curriculum in some of america's top schools. He also emphasizes the important milestone of his alma mater Temple University's groundbreaking doctoral program in 1988. He discusses africology's outgrowth of the civil rights movement that was contemporary with Black power and Black consciousness. The challenges and opposition to the concept of Black studies, paired with White guilt and "political correctness" within the power structure, are not understated in Okafor's presentation. Placing the development of africology within its proper historical context enhanced Okafor's ability to link the movements to Olaudah equiano, David Walker, W. e. B. Du Bois, pan-africanism, and others.The third chapter, "africology: a Discipline or a Collection of 'Black' Courses?" tackles that very question. Ultimately, he establishes that it is indeed a discipline with an established and evolving methodology and 92 Journal of Black Studies