Another Reckoning for a Bad Idea? › American Greatness

The following remark by Roger Kimball struck a familiar note:

"In its extreme forms, anyway, Afrocentrism reminds one of nothing more than Evelyn Waugh’s portrait, in his novel Scoop, of the Consul-General from the fictional African country of Ishmaelia haranguing a passerby in Hyde Park:

‘Who built the Pyramids?’ cried the Ishmaelite orator. ‘A Negro. Who invented the circulation of the blood? A Negro. Ladies and gentlemen, . . . Who discovered America? . . . As that great Negro Karl Marx has so nobly written . . . Africa for the African worker, Europe for the African worker, Asia, Oceania, America, Arctic and Antarctica for the African worker.’"

I recall similar chauvinistic claims by an Indian character invented by G. K. Chesterton, IIRC. That chap claimed all of Western civilization stemmed in some way from India. I will have to try some research to pin down the source.