Tyrannical wrote:Black, White, Yellow are what I would call informal names. I will sometimes use Negroid, Caucasian, or Mongoloid when I feel the need to get specific. The reason being that some dark skinned people that could be called black such as Australian Aboriginees or people from southern India are not Negroid, and I wish to avoid confusion.

No, those are racist 'names' don't be confused, call them 'people.'

Morien wrote:The question then becomes; if the Phoenicians reside in an area that is now known as Africa, and can trace their ethnic origins to a place which ias within what can be called Africa (the Maghreb)...what else should they be called? Or, is it the mesmerising and hypnotic quality of their predominantly olive-brown skin-shade necessitate one, for reasons of 'racial' categorisation only' wish to take them magically out of Africa and place then in a newly coined and politically (tracially) expedient region known as the 'Middle East' - which, by even modern assignation occupies Africa.

Morien, have you read my posts at all or only skimmed over them? I'm certainly not mesmerised with skin colour or racial categorizations, I think they are a big steaming pile of nonsense, especially when used to argue anything remotely connected with culture (and that's precisely why I criticized Ch. A. Diop earlier in the thread).

I'm only arguing that the "origin" of Phoenicians as Phoenicians, i.e., the place where they arose as a specific group of people distinguished by their language and probably other common cultural practices, is ancient Canaan, whence they later sailed across the whole of the Mediterranean along the North African coast, establishing colonies and settling there.

As for the rest, from your answer to Tyrannical I suspect we agree on more than you think.

katja z wrote:

Morien wrote:The question then becomes; if the Phoenicians reside in an area that is now known as Africa, and can trace their ethnic origins to a place which ias within what can be called Africa (the Maghreb)...what else should they be called? Or, is it the mesmerising and hypnotic quality of their predominantly olive-brown skin-shade necessitate one, for reasons of 'racial' categorisation only' wish to take them magically out of Africa and place then in a newly coined and politically (tracially) expedient region known as the 'Middle East' - which, by even modern assignation occupies Africa.

Morien, have you read my posts at all or only skimmed over them? I'm certainly not mesmerised with skin colour or racial categorizations, I think they are a big steaming pile of nonsense, especially when used to argue anything remotely connected with culture (and that's precisely why I criticized Ch. A. Diop earlier in the thread).

I'm only arguing that the "origin" of Phoenicians as Phoenicians, i.e., the place where they arose as a specific group of people distinguished by their language and probably other common cultural practices, is ancient Canaan, whence they later sailed across the whole of the Mediterranean along the North African coast, establishing colonies and settling there.

As for the rest, from your answer to Tyrannical I suspect we agree on more than you think.

I'm reading, katja, and I believe we agree in the main. The only thing I'll not subscribe to is the arbitrary and racially motivated movement of Egypt, the Levant and the Maghreb out of Africa.

Truth be known, I believe we are ALL Black. The Whiteness some of us aspire to is but a genetic mutation perpetrated by climatic adaptation due to a lack of vitamin D, which was alluded to earlier.

We are all HUEman.

Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

Morien wrote:

katja z wrote:

Morien wrote:The question then becomes; if the Phoenicians reside in an area that is now known as Africa, and can trace their ethnic origins to a place which ias within what can be called Africa (the Maghreb)...what else should they be called? Or, is it the mesmerising and hypnotic quality of their predominantly olive-brown skin-shade necessitate one, for reasons of 'racial' categorisation only' wish to take them magically out of Africa and place then in a newly coined and politically (tracially) expedient region known as the 'Middle East' - which, by even modern assignation occupies Africa.

Morien, have you read my posts at all or only skimmed over them? I'm certainly not mesmerised with skin colour or racial categorizations, I think they are a big steaming pile of nonsense, especially when used to argue anything remotely connected with culture (and that's precisely why I criticized Ch. A. Diop earlier in the thread).

I'm only arguing that the "origin" of Phoenicians as Phoenicians, i.e., the place where they arose as a specific group of people distinguished by their language and probably other common cultural practices, is ancient Canaan, whence they later sailed across the whole of the Mediterranean along the North African coast, establishing colonies and settling there.

As for the rest, from your answer to Tyrannical I suspect we agree on more than you think.

I'm reading, katja, and I believe we agree in the main. The only thing I'll not subscribe to is the arbitrary and racially motivated movement of Egypt, the Levant and the Maghreb out of Africa.

Nobody 'moved' them 'out of Africa.' In the days of the very early civilizations they traded with and fought each other and no one was exactly sure what the geography looked like. Hecataeus of Miletus drew what is regarded as the first map of the world, you can see from that they had no idea where it all fitted in and because of how they travelled, they thought they were on the same landmass. And for this reason, ancient historians classify them together with all of the Near East.

Truth be known, I believe we are ALL Black. The Whiteness some of us aspire to is but a genetic mutation perpetrated by climatic adaptation due to a lack of vitamin D, which was alluded to earlier.

We are all HUEman.

Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

If you read what I wrote on the previous page you will see it explained.

Morien wrote:Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

Are you claiming that racism is a modern phenomena and not one that dates back to antiquity?

Agrippina wrote:Nobody 'moved' them 'out of Africa.' In the days of the very early civilizations they traded with and fought each other and no one was exactly sure what the geography looked like. Hecataeus of Miletus drew what is regarded as the first map of the world, you can see from that they had no idea where it all fitted in and because of how they travelled, they thought they were on the same landmass. And for this reason, ancient historians classify them together with all of the Near East.


Interesting link, Agrippina; however, I see no mention of the phrases 'Near East' or 'Middle East'and suspect it has more modern origins....

Truth be known, I believe we are ALL Black. The Whiteness some of us aspire to is but a genetic mutation perpetrated by climatic adaptation due to a lack of vitamin D, which was alluded to earlier.

We are all HUEman.

Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

If you read what I wrote on the previous page you will see it explained.

Maybe...but I don't think you reduced it down as far as I did...

Tyrannical wrote:

Morien wrote:Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

Are you claiming that racism is a modern phenomena and not one that dates back to antiquity?

That's not what I said.

Tyrannical wrote:

Morien wrote:Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

Are you claiming that racism is a modern phenomena and not one that dates back to antiquity?

It is definitely a very modern phenomenon and it was originated in the days of modern slavery. It was the excuse that Christians used to justify stealing people from their homelands and packing them into ships like sardines with no air and proper food and sanitation taking them to lands far away and then mixing them with other people who didn't speak their languages.

Christians said that God said they were entitled to do that because they were the sons of Ham (Noah's son) Believe me I know. I lived under Apartheid for the whole length of it's life and I saw it being practiced first-hand. It is vile, foul, disgusting, and reduces the perpetrator to the lowest standards of human behaviour.

Morien wrote:


Maybe...but I don't think you reduced it down as far as I did...

Yes I did Read that post and look at the website I linked to.

And then read this post here, which explains racism.

Agrippina wrote:

Morien wrote:


Maybe...but I don't think you reduced it down as far as I did...

Yes I did Read that post and look at the website I linked to.

And then read this post here, which explains racism.

Please accept my apologies, sis.....

Morien wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Morien wrote:


Maybe...but I don't think you reduced it down as far as I did...

Yes I did Read that post and look at the website I linked to.

And then read this post here, which explains racism.

Please accept my apologies, sis.....

No problem! I write long essays all over the place, then I forget where I put them.

Agrippina wrote:It is vile, foul, disgusting, and reduces the perpetrator to the lowest standards of humaninhuman behaviour.

Fixed!

Yes, racism as we know it today is fairly recent. Xenophobia has probably existed since forever, but the particular idea of classifying people according to their looks (particularly skin colour) and assigning different values to these categories is a relatively new one. In France for instance the key theorist of racial inequality was Gobineau who lived the 19th century.

katja z wrote:

Agrippina wrote:It is vile, foul, disgusting, and reduces the perpetrator to the lowest standards of humaninhuman behaviour.

Fixed!

Yes, racism as we know it today is fairly recent. Xenophobia has probably existed since forever, but the particular idea of classifying people according to their looks (particularly skin colour) and assigning different values to these categories is a relatively new one. In France for instance the key theorist of racial inequality was Gobineau who lived the 19th century.

The Romans weren't exactly friendly about the 'barbarians' but it wasn't because they were another race but because they said that they were "uncivilized" meaning that they didn't have civil organisations in place. They took over lands and 'civilized' them i.e. by putting magistracies, laws and tax collectors in place. Of course modern man interpreted the idea of being 'uncivilized' with behaving in a socially unacceptable way and then they say that the Romans were 'racist' towards the 'barbarians' because they called them 'uncivilized,' The modern behaviour towards people with dark skin definitely comes from the interpretation of people who aren't Christians are 'less.'

Agrippina wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:

Morien wrote:Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

Are you claiming that racism is a modern phenomena and not one that dates back to antiquity?

It is definitely a very modern phenomenon and it was originated in the days of modern slavery. It was the excuse that Christians used to justify stealing people from their homelands and packing them into ships like sardines with no air and proper food and sanitation taking them to lands far away and then mixing them with other people who didn't speak their languages.

Christians said that God said they were entitled to do that because they were the sons of Ham (Noah's son) Believe me I know. I lived under Apartheid for the whole length of it's life and I saw it being practiced first-hand. It is vile, foul, disgusting, and reduces the perpetrator to the lowest standards of human behaviour.

Though I of course oppose slavery as I see it as an attack by the rich upon the poor, you can't lay all of the blame on the Christians. Muslims took plenty of Black slaves, and they certainly weren't known for their kindness. The Jews also played quite the prominent role in the New World slave trade, far more then you'd expect for such a small population percentage. Most prominent of course were their fellow Blacks that captured and sold them to both each other and to foreigners.

Tyrannical wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:

Morien wrote:Attempts to deny and refute this form the basis of modern day racism, a phenomena unkown until very recently, in the grand scheme of things..........

Are you claiming that racism is a modern phenomena and not one that dates back to antiquity?

It is definitely a very modern phenomenon and it was originated in the days of modern slavery. It was the excuse that Christians used to justify stealing people from their homelands and packing them into ships like sardines with no air and proper food and sanitation taking them to lands far away and then mixing them with other people who didn't speak their languages.

Christians said that God said they were entitled to do that because they were the sons of Ham (Noah's son) Believe me I know. I lived under Apartheid for the whole length of it's life and I saw it being practiced first-hand. It is vile, foul, disgusting, and reduces the perpetrator to the lowest standards of human behaviour.

Though I of course oppose slavery as I see it as an attack by the rich upon the poor, you can't lay all of the blame on the Christians. Muslims took plenty of Black slaves, and they certainly weren't known for their kindness. The Jews also played quite the prominent role in the New World slave trade, far more then you'd expect for such a small population percentage. Most prominent of course were their fellow Blacks that captured and sold them to both each other and to foreigners.

I'll say the same thing to you that I said to someone else about abusing little kids, just because someone else does it, it doesn't make it right.

Christians could've pointed out that it was wrong and then everybody would've stopped it.

Muslims still enslave people, and not necessarily Africans. India still has its caste system. And Jews in the new world were slave owners as much as everybody in the world were slave owners throughout history. The point is that the Christians used their religion to justify their subjugation of people and then they came to Africa and taught the Africans how to sell their own people.

Before slavery, Africans used to enslave people in the same way that the old world did, i.e. as spoils of war. So they didn't see anything wrong with sharing the spoils with the white people who came here and who brought them trade goods.

None of this excuses the idea that Christians used their religion as justification for doing it and conveniently forgot about "do unto others."

Racism is just wrong, there is no justification for it never, ever, anywhere.

I say it was "The Rich" that enslaved people through out history, and it is unfair to blame entire ethnic groups.

Slavery was present throughout much of human history, although not nearly on the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But modern racism (at least in Europe) seems to be more linked with the history of European colonization than with slavery. It served as a handy excuse to steal others' land, displace their political structures and so on, and still feel "civilized" and "superior" while doing it.

Tyrannical wrote:I say it was "The Rich" that enslaved people through out history, and it is unfair to blame entire ethnic groups.

You think?
So the plantation managers who beat and raped slaves, were they 'rich' as well?

Agrippina wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:I say it was "The Rich" that enslaved people through out history, and it is unfair to blame entire ethnic groups.

You think?
So the plantation managers who beat and raped slaves, were they 'rich' as well?

Hmmm...wonder if this is the time, or the place to outline the historical legacy of the slavemasters on the English lexicon...?

katja z wrote:Xenophobia has probably existed since forever, but the particular idea of classifying people according to their looks (particularly skin colour) and assigning different values to these categories is a relatively new one.

Homer talks about races in terms of appearance. I don't think visually based racism is as recent as you may think.

Racism can also be subtler and more pervasive than people realize. For example, based on the pictures early in this thread, people seem to be making the assumption that "mixed race" means a black/white mix. In fact, there are other mixes of races that don't include black, or don't include white, or even include neither (east asian/polynesian or east asian/australian aborigine), so that assumption is actually a racist one, even if it's unintentional.

Finally, I want to note that the genetic data is not nearly as clear cut as some people on this thread seem to think. The "recent out of Africa" hypothesis was popularized based on mitochondrial and Y chromosome data. Unfortunately, mitochondrial and Y chromosome lineages only branch and don't merge - unlike the other 97% of the human genome - so they can't reflect any mixing within larger populations. For example, if the multiregional hypothesis is correct, it couldn't be reflected in mitochondrial and Y chromosome data, because it would require the tracking of contributions from both parents, not just one parent at a time. As a result, that data has provided a rather distorted view of human lineages.

More recent autosomal data has essentially disproven the recent out of Africa hypothesis in its strictest form. East Asian autosomal genes contain some content - on the order of 20% - with a coalescence date not in the 100,000 years ago range required by the recent out of Africa hypothesis, but rather in the 2,000,000 year range corresponding to the homo erectus radiation. That would still be "out of Africa", but much longer ago. And of course if you go back far enough - around 10 million years ago - apes originally developed in south Asia and only then migrated to Africa, so we're all "out of Asia" too.

This is still an area of science where we know very little, and the confidence in any clear cut hypothesis is low. For example, there was a mitochondrial DNA discovery from Siberia very recently that's also rather difficult to square with "recent out of Africa". People who are interested should keep their minds open on the hypotheses and theory, and keep up to date with the new discoveries.