390 CULTURAL WARS AND THE ATTACK ON MULTICULTURALISM An Afrocentric Critique MARTELL TEASLEY EDGAR TYSON Florida State University The need to maintain power relationships has caused many social conser- vatives and the American anti-multicultural movement to engage in cul- tural wars. This article offers an Afrocentric critique of cultural wars and multicultural discourse in some of their contemporary manifestations. The authors make the claim that Black studies and the Afrocentric para- digm should be concerned with the connection between anti-multicultur- alism, the cultural wars debate, and attempts aimed at derailing the Black studies project both inside and outside of the academy. Some contempo- rary challenges for the Afrocentric paradigm and its place in the multi- cultural project are discussed. The authors conclude that the burden of Afrocentricity is to define and develop African agency in the midst of the cultural wars debate. Keywords: diversity; multiculturalism; cultural wars; Afrocentricity; Black studies People who cannot suffer can never grow up, [and] can never discover who they are. —James Baldwin (1963) There is an ongoing dialogue in America today and throughout the Western world around the conception and construction of intellectual discourse on multiculturalism. Because Afrocentrists have determined that a multicultural education is critical to the development of a just and free world where European hegemonic tendencies give way to a celebration of variations in human diversity, JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 37 No. 3, January 2007 390-409 DOI: 10.1177/0021934706290081 © 2007 Sage Publications