3. Cognitive Hiatus and the White Validation Syndrome: An Afrocentric Analysis

This chapter proposes the concept of “Cognitive Hiatus” to account for discursive and behavioral contradictions among Africans who seem and claim to be conscious of the need for Africans to protect themselves from the ill effects of white racism and white supremacy. These Africans are identified as having the fourth stage of consciousness, the Interest Concern stage identified by Molefi Asante in his typology of states of consciousness. This fourth stage precedes Afrocentric Consciousness. However, often times, these Africans fail to reach the last and final stage because they suffer from a White Validation Syndrome. This chapter thus describes and analyzes this phenomenon, but also makes recommendations to move beyond it via deliberate and systematic mental and cultural relocation, that is, Afrocentricity.