The term "black orientalism" was first used by Kenyan academic Ali Mazrui in his critique of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s documentary Wonders of the African World.
--Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity (1988)Sociologist, historian and writer Chancellor Williams expounded on Islam and the Arabs' role in Medieval Africa in his crucial book The Destruction of Black Civilization.
Speaking on the Arab incursion in Egypt and North Africa whom Williams refers to in other chapters throughout his book as "Asians" from the Middle East, There were several consequences of greatest historical importance which are generally not sufficiently stressed...The first was that both Saharan transformation and the steady incursion of Asians pressure more Blacks back into the interior to concentrate in the already limited survival areas where just to subsist was a daily struggle.
He further assumes Islam to equate Arab, viewing it as an ethnic religion overlooking its universalism and as a mission civilisatrice of Arab imperialism for oppressing Africans through belittling and denying their identities, denigrating African traditional religions and cultures in the same vain as European Christianity which differs greatly from the ancient Christianity found in Ethiopia, Nubia, Egypt and Libya.
From the earliest times the elimination of these states as independent African sovereignties had been an Asian objective, stepped up by Muslim onslaughts after the Seventh century AD.
Chinweizu borrows ideas of oriental despotism in his perspective on North African and Middle East Arabs as secondary but long standing colonialists of Africa.
In his view Arabs are similar to and in some cases, trump European colonialists who are seeking to economically and politically control of Africa through interventions and tight hold on local leadership.
The term "black orientalism" was first used by Kenyan academic Ali Mazrui in his online critique of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s documentary Wonders of the African World.