Well, since one of the first posts to pop up on that bad history search is actually mine (it is not even that good but for some reason everyone jumped all over it) I want to take the opportunity to explain my understanding of Afrocentrism and the criticism surrounding it.

The oldest forms of Afrocentrism that I know of and that is accepted, basically follows the idea that Africa was the birthplace of civilisation and that Eurocentric Western thought buried its relevance, which is appreciable actually. This was an American-born ideology that arose alongside a Pan-African identity that emerged post Civil War. Molefi Kefe Asanti actually states this quite clearly in his article on Afrocentricity

the Afrocentrist does not question the fact that there is a collective sense of Africanity revealed in the common experiences of the African world.

I do not personally subscribe to pan-Africanism because much like pan-Europeanism it seems borne more out of racial ideology than out of historical precedent, however this is drawn out of a sense of lost cultural identity as a result of slavery and the African diaspora and can therefore not be separated from the duality of Eurocentric thought that you pointed out. This same article even presents this article as a refutation to a hypothetical argument as to why Africa did not achieve the same level of development as Europe. The construction of a new cultural identity that has value within the Western framework of culture is part and parcel of Asante's Afrocentrism and what he calls the "marking" of cultural spaces, and in this way a cultural space that is accessible to African Americans

The Afrocentric scholar or practitioner knows that one way to express Afrocentricity is called marking. Whenever a person delineates a cultural boundary around a particular cultural space in human time, this is called marking. It might be done with the announcement of a certain symbol, the creation of a special bonding, or the citing of personal heroes of African history and culture

Along with this establishment of a secure "African space" on a geographical, cultural and ethnic level is the idea of self-determinism and a shared heritage of value for Africans, as a unified entity distinct from Europeans and Asians, to contribute to human heritage.

This need for an Afrocentric identity is both what makes it as much a political and philosophical movement as a historical perspective and what explains its popularity in the United States.

That said, many modern groups and individuals who identify as Afrocentrists use the all too familiar "X was actually black" argument which has actually drawn criticism from more serious self-described Afrocentrists, so that the term itself is far-reaching and unwieldy in a way that Eurocentrism is not. I generally try to distinguish the Afrocentrism that is the parallel to Eurocentrism and values African history above all else, from the Afrocentrism that is Eurocentrism and attempts to colonise popular Western history. Indeed, criticism of Afrocentrism often forgets to make this distinction and it this is problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which being that it leads some to automatically categorise Afrocentrism with black supremacy and similar movements. To be sure many proponents of Afrocentrism associate with those ideologies but it is essential for academics to distinguish between arguments with such a diverse and conflicting group.

However, I would still consider Afrocentrism, that is the modern understanding of the 20th Century ideology, to be reactionary in relationship to Eurocentrism, were it not for the denial of any kind of history or heritage beyond "primitivism" by colonial European thinkers, Afrocentrism would have no place as counterargument. On the other hand, Afrocentrism can be seen as exacerbating the issue of chauvinism and racial biases in history by confirming and perpetuating the idea that history is a cultural space to be colonised or reclaimed by modern racial identities. It is this mindset more than anything else which has lead certain proponents of Afrocentrism to search for African heritage in European contexts, although the iconic proponents of that ideology such as Asante, Diop and Onyewuenyi emphasise the African history of Africa.

Black Athena by Martin Bernal is still quite controversial in academia but this actually tries to trace early Greek culture to North Africa which derives itself from a common component of Afrocentrism that claims that Greek culture was in fact dependent on Egyptian culture and that in this way European achievements are based on African history. But this is still different from the crazier elements within Afrocentrism but these would not gain any traction in academia and are perhaps unfairly prominent. In fact, most of the fringe elements of Afrocentrism are rather obscure, and a lot of the anti-Afrocentrist scholarship I have read almost takes it too far in the opposite direction and ignore legitimate claims with the label of Afrocentrism. Yaacov Shaavit's History in Black, although it covers much of the development of Afrocentrism quite well, takes a very patronising tone when comparing it to 19th Century Eurocentrism but asserting the racial and ideological components of the former over the latter which he characterises as being devoted more to cultural heritage

Despite the interest in the racial origins of the Greeks, the major focus in Western tradition was in the spiritual-cultural product of the Greek genius. However the current revival of Greece in Afrocectrist circles is a bird of a very different feather.

This claim is shaky at best given the overtly racial theories of many 19th and early 20th Century scholars such as Flinders Petrie but it helps the author to separate the two ideologies and deny their common origin and purpose, which is the construction and redefinition of a racial identity that can be retroactively applied to Antiquity. But it is part and parcel of defining Afrocentrism as a uniquely racist development in historiography and not an outgrowth of Eurocentrism. I find these claims and the criticism utilising them to be just as problematic as what they criticise in that they again approach the issue from a political stance.

That said, approaching a movement like Afrocentrism from a politically neutral stance may be challenging for some, but I believe it to be an essential method towards deconstructing and criticising it. This is where both academics and /r/BadHistory users fall short, they both approach it in the manner they would Holocaust denial or white supremacy, and bring out an ideological vehemence that combats it in an entirely ineffective manner that does not truly inform but can appear like chastisement and further denial of belonging for those of African heritage. Any ideology that values the achievements of one group over another, or uses current ideological rhetoric as basis for its claims is problematic but the manner of approaching it should be through as clear and balanced a lens as possible with the intent being to approximate a more holistic understanding of history.

African history is very full and shockingly obscure but Afrocentrism does little to remedy this, instead preferring to provide individuals with a Western background with a feeling of belonging, for this reason I do not believe that there will be any sea change in how seriously Afrocentrism is taken, but I hope that Afrocentrism will become obsolete as more research and prominence is focused on the varied and multicultural history of African societies and peoples.

The actual popularity of this particular variety of Afrocentrism is not something that I can tell you with any certainty, but it certainly does not warrant the attention it receives from /r/BadHistory, however any additional comments as to why it receives this attention would be speculative on my part.