These people either do not know what the term means or they know and are deliberately trying to demean African history and culture. The term has been coming up a lot lately in regards to Umar Johnson. Umar has been in the headlines because he is currently under investigation and faces losing his psychology license. Umar has also been caught up in a feud with Tariq Nasheed, the director of the Hidden Colors series. Damon Young gave this definition of hotep:. As African people we have been subjected to having our history and culture degraded, distorted, and destroyed for centuries now.
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Sign Up Here. Hotep is used as a greeting among many Afrocentrists. Afrocentrists themselves are sometimes called hoteps , usually derisively. According to Dr. Reporter D.
Where does hotep come from?
Over the past several decades, the word has also been utilized quite frequently by black Americans who happen to be more Afrocentric. Why is this? Great question! Sometimes this belief was due to social class. Sometimes it was due to complexion. And sometimes it was a combination of both.
It's easy to understand why — black nationalism emerged as an empowering system of belief in the face of centuries of subjugation and systemic oppression. But online, where the word has proliferated in recent years, hotep signifies a faux-wokeness associated with misogynoir, homophobia, toxic masculinity, and misguided understandings of history and science. A neutral form of the word has been in use in some communities for decades. Look no further than the divide between people who earnestly identify as hoteps and those who use the word mockingly. But how did hotep come to be a modern buzzword anyway, and what about it has people up in arms? Like its surge in popularity, the evolution of the word can be difficult to pinpoint.
