Book Cover: Chancellor Williams (1987) The Destruction of Black Civilization	Race, Racism, Inter-racial Relationships, and African Vs. European Asili By Grisso I want to share with our readers 110 articles I wrote between January 25 and June 19, 1998. These articles all bore on the topic of race or racism, but more specifically on the concept of cultural asili, for which we owe Marimba Ani's (1994) Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. The articles were all posted on the usenet newsgroup soc.culture.african.american.moderated, and were contributions to a larger discussion which took place in that forum. The series of articles began when I joined a discussion on a topic entitled "On interracial relationships, or anything". I took exception to a Puerto-Rican brother asserting the non-existence of race, my main point being that, however wrong-headed the practice of racism, its wrong-headedness does not flow from the non-existence of race, rather a moral debility in those who find in the existence of race a basis for the oppression of others. This precipitated a long discussion that explored a variety of sub-themes. In an attempt to explore the moral debility that leads to racism, I introduced into the discussion the concept of cultural asili (see article 24), which led to further discussion and exploration. Could a case be made that there is indeed a fundamental difference between the African and European cultural asili that might help to explain white-supremacy racism? Many took issue with this view, not only the white contributors to the discussion. In the ensuing debate, the topics that came up ranged far and wide, and included the alleged oppression of women in Africa, female genital "mutilation", Hutu/Tutsi conflict, Zulu and Kamitic (ancient Egyptian) imperialism, lack of due process in African concepts of justice, etc. etc., all intended to show that the African asili was just as morally deficient as the European. The idea of an African Constitution, as advanced by Chacellor Williams' (1983) Destruction of Black Civilization, was put forward to buttress Marimba Ani's notion of cultural asili, and specifically the core constitutional notion found throughout Africa of the "right to land" as a fundamental basis for the ordering of society. Such a fundamental value is completely at variance with the contrasting European one which recognizes no such right, as was seen with the successive European socio-political institutions of feudalism, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, neo-colonialism, capitalism, neo-colonial capitalism, and communism, which are all based rather on the right of might. The reader is left to judge which view of the matter is left standing after the clash of spirited debate. I especially commend these articles to Black folk who are somewhat leery of the whole concept of Africentrism (see in particular articles 107, 108, and 110 for this discussion.) Grisso Contents | Next