Are Eritreans, Ethiopians, Habeshas, Somalis, Horn of Africa people, and other East Africans “Black ?”
(Long Story Short, We’re “Black” but …)
- Eritreans, Ethiopians, Somalis, Habeshas, Sudanese-South Sudanese , Horn of Africa people, and other East Africans are “Black.” No one in these cultures and countries use the term “Black” to identify themselves though, it is actually a Western and Eurocentric concept. Most people in these areas and cultures use their pan-ethnicity, country, national origin, and/or ethnicity (when appropriate) to identify themselves.
- One reason why recent Eritreans, Ethiopians, and other Horn/North-East African immigrants don’t use the term “Black” is because they do not want to be associated with the false stereotypes on Black-African-Americans perpetuated by Western Media.
- Another reason could be because African Americans and West Africans deny our African/Black ancestry, culture, and heritage, because we do not look like the stereotypical African person perpetuated by the West. West Africans and African Americans dominate the perception of what it means to be Black.
- Some White-European-Americans, Black-African-Americans, Europeans, and West Africans believe that Africa is one homogenize place where all Africans look the same and have similar features. Even though Africa has a wider diversity than any other continent in the World.
- Most West Africans and African Americans have “kinki/nappy” hair while Most (not all) Horn of Africa peoples have both “kinki/nappy” hair as well as curly (or even sometimes curlier or straight) hair. Because the stereotypical West African look is more dominant in Western Culture, most people automatically assume we are not Black (also because this concept of “Black” rarely exists in these cultures, some people will mistakenly go along with this Western and Eurocetric idea).
- While if you see a German or Ukrainian with blond hair, then see an Irish person with red hair, then you encounter an Italian with black hair, you automatically say they are all White/European. Why can’t you use this same concept on Africa and Africans.
- On another note Eritreans, Ethiopians, and some other East Africans, and Horn of Africa people have completely different cultures from the rest of Africa which is mostly of Niger-Congo origin rather than Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan peoples like those found in North-Eastern Africa, the Sahel-Sahara, and North Africa, to the extent that some Westerners forget that they are even in what Westerners (Mostly European-Americans but also African Americans) think Africa would look like because most Westerners are only exposed to Black and African people of Niger-Congo origin rather than people groups of other parts of Africa.
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Are Eritreans, Ethiopians, Habeshas, Somalis, Horn of Africa people, and other East Africans “Black ?” (Long Story Short, We’re “Black” but …) [ https://medium.com/@habeshaunion/are-eritreans-ethiopians-habeshas-somalis-horn-of-africa-people-and-other-east-africans-9400dfbd616e ] .]
Videos That Explain This Much Better:
The title of the Video bellow “I’M NOT BLACK | Helen Haile” is sarcastic (she believes we are Black)
The title of the Video bellow is “Are East Africans Considered Black? Somali & Sudanese | Susu & Hibs”
The title of the Video bellow is “East Africans Aren’t Black? Really?”
The title of the Video bellow is “WHAT ARE WE IF WE’RE NOT CONSIDERED BLACK ? — East African Edition”
The title of the Video bellow is “Being Black In America | Ethiopian-Eritrean American Perspective | Black Experience | Call To Action”. The video is about the Black Experience in America from the perspective of an Ethiopian-Eritrean American as a 1st generation Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrant to the United States:
Being Black In America | Ethiopian-Eritrean American Perspective | Black Experience | Call To Action (By: Lila Talks)
This video is about my experience of being black in America, as a 1st generation Ethiopian and Eritrean. I share intimate stories about my upbringing, struggles with belonging, and finding my identity. Lastly, in my call to action segment, I share #3 things each person can do now to advance our understanding of the black community-at-large to strengthen unity amongst all black people and the human race in order to fight systemic racism, stereotypes, and biases. Change cannot occur without understanding each other. Peace & Love
#LilaTalks #BeingBlackInAmerica #BlackExperience #Blackness #BLM #African #EastAfrican #Eritrean #Ethiopian #DMV #DC #NorthernVA #Virginia #Norfolk #ODU #abyssiniabaptistchurch
Thank you!
Lila, Coach, LilaTalks.com
The title of the Videos bellow are “How America Invented Race | The History of White People in America” and “The Origin of Race in the USA.” Both talk about how races like “White” and “Black were invented by Westerncentics, Eurocentrics, and wealthy slave-owners to opresse people. It also show that before the 17th Century, “Black” and “White” as strictly defined races did not exist and that it was built on scientific racism and pseudo-science.
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The title of the Video bellow are “CAN BLACK PEOPLE BE RACIST?” and “ARE EAST AFRICANS BLACK?,” respectivly. In other words can the various Black/African ethnic groups be racist to each other or to other races and how does the System of Racism in the United States and Around The World affect people. Many issues are discussed in this video from multiple perspectives with somewhat differing conclusions:
CAN BLACK PEOPLE BE RACIST? (By: Miskeen Central)
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ARE EAST AFRICANS BLACK? (By: Miskeen Central)
Comments from the videos:
“What they means is that for them black, white, yellow or whatever does not reslly matter. They do not want to be confused with other group of people, just because them skin is dark. Them group of people is distingush. Created thousend years ago. The soo called habesha.”
“I am so ashamed when people are trying to say that we, Ethiopians, are not blacks. We are the original people in this earth as per the science. We are never colonized , first pan African country and so on. I hate these ideas of Ethiopians are not black thing . WE ARE BLACK.The real blacks actually. Kudos to the affluent lady. I think exactly like her regarding race.”
“In all technicality, nobody is really black. Race is a western concept, everyone has their own unique DNA and ancestry, it’s not fair to degrade yourself to a color and only that. HOWEVER, to fail to recognize that while living in america or any other western country is just foolish, more so to out right deny [that we are “Black’ according to Western ideologies] it and use it as an excuse to have some sort of superiority complex over others.”
The title of the Video bellow is “Are Habesha people Black?”. It talks about the the confusion caused by the term “Black” — ‘Is Black a skin color or is Black a culture, because we have a different culture from African Americans, Black people are not a monolith?, but we still care about and are thankful for all the things African Americans have done in order to fight for our rights in the West and also talks about how we all still go through the same racist system and society that hates and oppresses all Black peoples’.
Quotes from the Comments Section of this video:
I believe its a western system and it doesnt come from africans, so if we want to know who is part of the black group we should ask the creators :whites. We can debate all day but in the end its not our invention…so we have to ask them. I believe in our system we are african, habesha,our nation and our tribes. Thats the non-western african identity. Our skin goes from brown to black as people can clearly see. Its Important to not lose your own system. Because those who name you own you. Name yourself. 👍
To Selamawit Abebe: A lot of Ethiopians/Eritreans don’t claim there black because they say it was a word made by the western system . There basically saying “I’m not going to let someone from the western system label me when there not even from the same place as me”.
there is teddy afro music called menilik tekur sew means [King] Menilik [a] black man. we call our self black man but when ppl say i’m not black i’m habesha they wanna refer the fact they are not colonized and they don’t call them self by the name white ppl give them. believe me they are not talking about color of skin but rather self determination and having proud name called habesha. it’s there way of being proud to be Ethiopian. they know they r black in color but they r not black in sense of white ppl call them black.
Here is the video for the song “Tikur Sew” by Teddy Afro in which the term “Tikur Sews (Black Person [Black Man])” is used in referance to the anti-colonial and Pan-African context of a Black African nation like Ethiopia defeating a Fascist European nation like Italy in its attempt at Colonization at the Battle of Adwa:
The title of the video bellow is “HABESHA people that don’t think they’re BLACK / ሃበሻ ጸለምቲ ዲዮም | Helen Haile”, by Helen Haile is about how the racial term “Black’ is used differently, the confusion it creates between Western and Non-Western Cultures, and how all Black peoples no matter their cultural or ethnic heritage are affected by racism in the West and that they should work together to fight for each others rights. This video also explains to Habesha peoples (Eritreans and Ethiopians) that when the move to Predominantly White Western Countries that they will be labeled as “Black” and will eventually face racism.
Quotes from the Comments Section of this video:
I SEE NO PROBLEM with Africans who prefer to be referred to by their national identity as opposed to simply being labeled Black. To be considered Black is to simply be of African descent and Africa is not a country; it’s a continent with 50 + countries, hundreds of different cultures, ethic groups and history of origins. To simply label all Africans as being “Black” is to ignore all those differences and act as if they’re the same when they’re not.. Nobody in Africa refers to themselves as “Black” because they never created the term; the “White” man in America did. The irony is that to be considered “White”in America is to be of European descent and NOBODY IN EUROPE (British, Italians, Spanish etc.) CALLS THEMSELVES WHITE AND NOBODY ELSE DEMANDS THEY REFER TO THEMSELVES AS WHITES. It’s only diaspora Africans who try to place an umbrella term over all of our heads in order to be appease those Africans who lost their direct connection to an African identity because they were stripped of it due to the tragedy that was slavery. I also understand that a racist doesn’t care what kind of African you are; and that’s why ALL AFRICANS should be outraged over these cop killings and systematic racism here in America. BUT MISS ME WITH THE WHOLE “YOU’RE NOT ERITREAN, YOU’RE BLACK.” People need to stop pressuring others to think they have to discard their national identity in order to be down for the cause.
[ primoxxl7 11 month ago THANK YOU! I have been saying the same thing for years! Don’t try to cancel out my culture, my being to reduce me down to a color in a crayon box, due to your ignorance.]
Helen, growing up in Eritrea there was Christians and there was Muslims [differences were mostly on religious lines], [I had] no knowledge of different races and yes [we] used to hear about the existence of white people. when I moved to the UK my first racism experience was not from whites but from a group of Nigerian girls, the ring leader [falsely claimed and] said [that, in some sort of way] I was Arab because African people [according to the Nigerian girl’s racist Western-centric and Bantu-centric perception] don’t have light skin and long hair like mine, my Ethiopian friend told me she was being racist because I didn’t understand [what was going on or] where she [her thinking] was coming from, [I’d] never heard of the word racist or racism prior to that [encounter], so it’s not only people of [the] horn of africa that are racist to other Africans, we get it to, even to this day I still hear West Africans refer to us as “you people”, [racism is shared by both populations, both can be racist to each other].
To @Amena and Elias: …. Tbh, habeshas in general think they are black but they also think they are different than AA [African Americans] or West Africans. In fact when they speak about a black person, they always mean a non-habesha aka AA [African American] etc. When they say “she married a black guy” it means the girl married a non-habesha black guy. This is so wide spread. They talk about “african music” which means non-Habesha African music. Most of them say that not as bad thing but as something that is distinct from [their own] Habesha[] [culture]. [British people use the same wording when they say ‘the Europeans” or “those Europeans,” when they actually mean non-British Continental Europeans, the British are not denying their Europeanness they just refer to non-British/non-Irish Europeans in that way, why is there a double standard when certain African populations do the same.]. It is all a bit complicated. AA have gone through a lot, and ignorant people from all races [including other Black people groups] hate on them for no reason. We as black also get racism but I think not as harsh as them [African Americans]. We should all stand against any form of racism and have sympathy for our fellow humans. In this regard we as black share the same discrimination. But Identity is more than that in my view. As you said Africans including Habeshas identify themselves more with tribes, religion, culture and country than color. And I think people should be allowed to identify themselves as they have always did minus hating on others or discriminating others. I don’t know if imposing western style identity on our community is the way to go. Habeshas should be allowed to identify themselves as such with their unique culture and traditions.
West African here, unfortunately colonialism did us so bad some of us bit the bait of these racist European historians who said certain tribes like mine (Fulani) weren’t black because of our intelligence! Also the worse is when many of us try to ascribe Arab ancestry but even those Arabs were a dark skinned people ! Not the ones we see [in modern day Middle East] today….. In terms of east African Somalians and Ethiopians I just give them the benefit of the doubt and realize colonialism colonized our minds too.
Africa is the most diverse continent in the world. It’s unfortunate how some Africans try to claim outside origins because they have been told [by others that] they look different from the [so-called] “true africans”. The features others like to claim as non-African are actually amongst the oldest features [that originate among African peoples]. In fact others have these features because of their African ancestors [that migrated out]. We [all the various African peoples with all of our different features] gave rise to these other races. Don’t forget that. Black and proud.
Dragon 1 week ago (edited) American movies have all of the Black Kings and Queens of Africa [portrayed] as White people . And have the Black people [portrayed] as slaves. This is because the colleges/universities and schools [in America and the West] do not teach [the history]/black history [of] different countries … [enough] . So when Hollywood make the movies dealing with black history they white wash them [they whitewash our cultures].
The title of the Video bellow is “Q&A: Do Habesha Women Date “Black” Men? | Truths & Myths | Ethiopians & Eritrean Women | የኢትዮጵያ ሴቶች.” It talks about the misconception that … watch video to understand.
Comments from this video:
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Other Comments:
The physical appearance of Cushitic (Cushitic/Ethiosemitic/Omotic) people is unfortunately many times misunderstood as Afro-Arab, while in fact it’s not a result of intermixing. The ancestors of modern Berbers & Egyptians as well as those of modern Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis and (Northern) Sudanese are a distinct stock native to eastern and northern Africa which was historically referred to as “Hamitic”.
And no, I’m not talking about the racist “Hamitic Hypothesis” which portrayed these people as “dark skinned Caucasians” but about the simple existence of a distinct group of Black Africans like the Cushitic (Cushitic/Ethiosemitic/Omotic) peoples found between Niger–Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Mediterranean and Middle-Easterners populations.
Cushitic (Cushitic/Ethiosemitic/Omotic) peoples have reddish to dark brown skin, and their facial form is remarkably distinct from other African populations which are classified as either Bantu, Khoisan or Nilotic, which are also distinct from each other, the Cushitic (Cushitic/Ethiosemitic/Omotic) generally would have but not always have an orthognathic profile and a rather prominent, narrow nose (hair form often wavy and ringlety).
Response to the Question: “Why do people assume East Africans are mixed?”:
By “East African”, I am assuming you mean Horn Africans. East Africa is a region that includes Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar, etc but people seem to continuously use the term to specifically refer to people from the Horn (which consists of Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Ethiopia).
To answer your question, it is because of ignorance. The vast majority of people who claim this have never studied the history or genetics of Horners. There have never been invasions of Arabs or Desis [Indians/SOuth Asians] into the Horn of Africa. However, when faced with the diversity of native Africans, people mistakenly assume it is due to mixing with non-Africans. Africa is the cradle of mankind. Humans spread across Africa and, over time, differentiated into unique peoples with unique and varied languages, features, and cultures long before humans migrated out of Africa. Therefore there is more diversity amongst Africans than between Africans and non-Africans. It is immensely ignorant to assume native Africans, in all their diversity, would only possess a narrowly specific set of features.
For Example: The Khoisan of southern Africa have features that some refer to as “East Asian” yet there has been no interaction historically between East Asians and Khoisans. The similarities between these two groups can only be due to groups of Africans like the Khoisans being those who predominantly settled in East Asia.
Likewise, the similiarities between Horners and non-Africans are due to an AfroAsiatic people from Africa settling in West Asia. There are indications that Habeshas from the Horn of Africa had once ruled a part of southern Yemen and Somalis historically settled in Soqotra, an island belonging to Yemen. Therefore, it was Africans who are the source of these similar features. After all, non-Africans did not just appear out of nowhere. They are descended from Africans.
Are Eritreans and Ethiopians mixed? Eritreans and Ethiopians are not mixed, they just have a different phenotype from what most people think an African is supposed to look like. One has to remember, there’s more diversity within Africa than any part of the world.
This is a collage of 4 photo that show 4 women from Northeaster Africa or the Horn of Africa (specifically an Ethiopian, Eritrean, Sudanese — possibly including a South Sudanese — , and a Somali women). :
For more pictures of Habesha peoples (a.k.a. Ethiopians and Eritreans) click the link to the “What do you mean by Habesha? — A look at the Habesha Identity (p.s./t: It’s very Vague, Confusing, & Misunderstood) | @habesha_union [ https://medium.com/@habeshaunion/what-do-you-mean-by-habesha-a-look-at-the-habesha-identity-habesha-union-habesha-union-43f22ab8bc35 ]” Article and scroll down to the bottom to see the photo gallery.
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[Update 1.3.2019 (from Instagram Comments)| We (Habesha ሐበሻ people/Horn Africans/East Africans) are of course Black but the term “Black” as an ethno-racial identity is a western (mostly but not always American) political construct. Using the term “Black” as an ethno-racial identity in a small East African town is impractical because everyone is Black, people would uses more culturally appropriate terms like a persons individual ethnicity, nationality/national origin, a pan-ethnicity, the province they come from, or the general region they come from, (this is all dependent on the context of the situation), if you don’t come into contact with Westerners (Europeans and Black & White Americans alike) regularly, you wouldn’t have an experience with labeling yourself or being labeled by the socio-political constructed identity “Black”. Horn Africans who live in the West have to adapt to this new concept of a Black identity (like I have accepted), while the ones who live back home would rarely come into a situation where they may meet someone who thinks of race/ethnicity as Black-White binary (equating Blackness & Dark skin solely with African American culture). Sometimes some people don’t know that Black people (those with ancestors from Africa) come in many different types of features and not all Black/African populations look the same. The same way some Russians look different from tanner southerners Italians or that some Irish people have Red hair while some Italians have black hair or some Germans have blond hair. Some Africans have kiniki/nappy hair while other Africans have curly hair. Some people (some Whites, African Americans, and some West Africans) try to deny us (Horn Africans; Somalis, Amhara, Tigray, Afar, Saho, Oromo, etc.) our Black Africa heritage and identity by saying that just because we look slightly different that we must have some sort of Arab or (this is far fetched but some people actually believe this) or that we have some sort of White European blood in us, and then start to question if we’re Black, while in fact we are Black Africans (even though some people don’t always encounter that term as a personal racio-cultural identity).
I hate it when people say we aren’t Black / Black enough.:
Can these people stop with this fake thing saying that Northern Ethio-Eritreans (Amhara, Tigray, etc.) are mixed with Arab when they are not. Y’all, you guys should also know that ignorant West Africans, African Americans, and White people (Europeans/European Americans) believe that Somalis, Oromos, etc. are mixed with Arabs as well when they are not. Just search up “Are Somalis Black?” on Google, there are a bunch of ignorant people that believe that Horn Africans/East Africans (Amharas, Somalis, Anuaks, etc. alike) are mixed with Arab or White/European when in actuality we are Black and that Black Africans come in different features just like White Europeans come in different features dependent on which region of Europe they come from. Ethiopians look different from Nigerians the same way Russians look different from tanner southern Italians but both Russians and Italians are considered White while for Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Sudanese/South Sudanese people, our Blackness comes into question.
[Questions that came up in a post in which An Ethiopian was fed Eurocentric lies by European/Western Academics when studying abroad in the 19__’s, belived it and did an interview about it, seeping into society. This video does not reflect accuraces or the position held by Horn Africans, it was an old gottcha-question video that is now being used to discredit and deemen ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa region, it is semi-fabricated.
(https://www.instagram.com/p/CIfli88lB09/ and https://www.instagram.com/p/CIdQqRzgUIy/)
“Plus the whole “negro blood’ issue is even more confusing, becuase it was defined in so many ways. Some have described Negro Blood as being Niger-Congo only, while others say its all African/Afro-decent Black people, while others go further and include Australian Aborigines. This isn’t about Amhara nationalisim, its about Eurocentric academia pushing psudo-sciene into people’s thouths. Literally, I will not be surprised even if an Anuak let alone an Amhara or Somali or even Oromo say this at during that time period. Literally, I’ve seen idots ask if Nilotic people are Black becuase Nilotic people are not Niger-Congo speakers.”]
(2) “Why do you think people view East Africans as non-blacks?: ‘In terms of our physical features we [sometimes] differ from most other African countries so may be its this? But then you need to ask what black is and its definition. It’s like saying Chinese people aren’t the real Asians because they aren’t Indians. Since when did black mean one shade of skin, one type of facial feature [, or] one type of hair texture.’” (Article title: “YOU’RE NOT REALLY BLACK” | DAUGHTER OF THE HORN ; https://daughterofthehorn.blog/2016/03/13/youre-not-really-black/)
[Quote From Instagram: @habesha_union to @alefehelen & @_brook_y ]: No, we know we are Black, the West Africans and ~1890s Racist White European German Anthropologist (like Hiob Ludolf, Edward Ullendorff, Eduard Glaser, etc.) try to say we’re not Black when we actually are. {“Black” as a race or personal identity is a completely foreign concept for most average Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Sudanese/South Sudanese, and FOBs (Fresh Off the Boat: a North American English informal slang term for ‘recent immigrants’) who haven’t lived in the West or who haven’t come into contact with Western Media.}, {And the idea that ‘Ethiopians are mixed with Arabs’ is an unsubstantiated false claim made by German Anthropologist in the ~1890s (like Ludolf & Uledorf) at a time when White people thought that Africans/Black people were ‘uncivilized non-human savage animals’ and that Ethiopians didn’t fit into their stereotypes so the tried to make everyone think that Horn Africans aren’t Black instead of admitting to their mistake and even some Horn Africans believed them let alone West Africans and White people.} Then they end up indoctrinating Horn Africans (Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, /Habesha/, etc.) making us doubt our own Blackness/Africanness.”
[Quote From Instagram: @yelenyim ]: “This shit is embarrassing af!!!😖 “Habesha” similar to Hispanic/Latino is about a shared culture/region… it is not about race!!!! 👏🏿WE’RE👏🏾FUCKING👏🏽BLACK👏🏼Even with [supposed (but unsubstantiated)] admixture from Arabs, some with Jewish ancestry we tend to be mostly [if not all] sub-Saharan African…. when considering the population as a whole this is very apparent. Obviously there r exceptions but they r rare. So please stop bringing shame to us all with all this “I’m black not Habesha” bs and understand that you’re both.”
[@habesha_union addressing @lydia_michaellllll and @ladyelsabel]: “Y’all know that these Ancestry DNA tests always confuse/can’t differentiate between East Africans (specifically Horn Africans) and Middle Easterners/Western Asians (specifically Arabs). One of the reasons why is because they have limited data on Horn Africans and they compare Nilo-Cushitic (Northeast Africa-Horn of Africa) .
[ — — Quote from some on on Instagram: “Today’s generation of Eritrean and Ethiopian in the diaspora whom grew up in the Western Hemisphere do identify as ‘Black’. But it’s mainly for political reasons. It’s to feel connected to a struggle that’s romanticized and fetishized.” — —
(Most of these statements — https://www.instagram.com/p/BrqWxBPFfgA/ — comes from the comments section of BunaTime (@habeshacomedies)’s video post asking people to comment on this video. While others come from Elsabel @ladyelsabel an Eritrean of London, England, United Kingdom-UK’s post — https://www.instagram.com/p/BsK2wVKgnMZ/. ) ].
[Edit 2/21/2019: Comment taken from YouTube (link bellow)
By @habts02 (YouTube):
“This question is ridiculous. What is your definition of ‘Black’??? Please understand that ‘Black’ is a COLOR, and not a nationality or ethnic group!!! Race is a construct created by Caucasians. Non-Westerners do not understand and/or embrace this. It’s Americans that use color or ‘race’ to identify themselves, and most African-Americans identify themselves as ‘Black’. Look through the bible, and notice that you will NEVER see people identified by ‘black’, ‘white’ or ‘yellow’. The rest of the Non-Western world identify by your nationality or ethnic group. It is ridiculous to ask an African or anyone else this question. If you ask an Asian how they identify you will never hear ‘Yellow’. They will tell you Korean, or Japanese, etc… If you want to identify as ‘Black’ then that is your prerogative, but ‘race’ is not used or even understood in the rest of the world.
Then you’re asking him if Ethiopians and Eritreans are ‘mixed’ and not original Africans because they most are not as dark as some other ethnic groups? African-Americans are ‘mixed’. Your questions are very rude and intentionally divisive- “Why did Ethiopia and Eritrea war?” “Are you mixed?” “Why are Ethiopians the most arrogant?” “What are you stereotypes against Africa-Americans?” You want him to say he considers himself Arab, that he has no respect for African-Americans, that Ethiopians are arrogant and that as an Eritrean he hates Ethiopians- none of which he did. The bottom line is that ‘Black’ is NOT YOUR nationality, but if you choose to label yourself as such we will not chastise you, nor tell you that you lack knowledge of self and have an identity crisis. Africans know that we are labeled as Black when we come to America, but we know that is a way of wiping out our true identities which are linked to our ethnic groups, nationalities, language, cultures and customs.
The real issue/question is- Why is it sooo important for African-Americans to hear Africans identify as Black and not state our countries?
Caribbean people don’t have this issue. When Africans meet they ask each other where they are from and are never offended by their answers: Nigerian, Ghanaian, Ethiopian, etc.”
By @SylviasWorld (YouTube):
“I think Africans don’t see themselves generally as Black because their national and tribal identity is what defines them and it’s a foreign concept to be honest. The concept of Black in the west is BECAUSE there are lots of different races, so everyone has to have a compartment. Even Chimamanda Adichie said the same that she only heard the term Black when she came to America. I don’t think any Black American can really talk about and impose themselves as the custodian of who is black and who is not due to race mixing because most have a non African ancestor due to slavery no matter what skin tone they are today. In Africa Black means dark actually and not Black as a race as it does in the west.”
By @yorsalem ambasajer (YouTube):
“lol this is funny . i am fully eritrean ( i know my grandparents names and their grandparents names and so on and they are all eritrean names not arabic) . but i am light skin with long curly hair so i get mistaken for being mixed and my sister is brown with really long hair and when she straightens her hair she gets mistaken for being asian . my grandpa is light skin like me with green eyes . but his eyes pop out cause it looks unusual. Because of the climate in eritrea and ethiopia our skin tones vary even within our family. we are black . habesha is just a term to unite ethiopians and eritreans however some people mistake it for being a race .”
— — —
by Habesha Union (YouTube):
“Most of West-Central-Southeast Africa are mostly Bantu. There are pockets of Khoisan in South Africa. Most of the Horn of Africa/Northeast Africa (south of and excluding most of Egypt) is either Cushitic or Niolitic. In North Africa among the native Africans there, there are the indigenous Berbers, Copts, and a few others that in modern times are mixed Colonizing Arabs. Then you have African-Americans, Afro-Carbians, and Afro-Latinos who are mixed with African, European/White, Native American, and maybe even some Asian admixture. The Bantus, Cushitic Peoples, Niolitic Peoples, Berbers, Copts, Khoisan, among a few others that I might have missed are indigenous to Africa. Bantus aren’t the only Africans or Black peoples, that notion is racist, Bantucentric and Eurocentric.”]
The title of the video bellow is “What DNA ancestry tests can — and can’t — tell you”, by Vox. The video explains how DNA ancestry tests work.
This is the video description:
I [Vox employee in the video] took a DNA ancestry test. It didn’t tell me where my ancestors came from… Subscribe to our channel! http://bit.ly/video-lab At-home DNA ancestry tests have become hugely popular in recent years. More than 26 million have taken one of these tests. If their marketing is to be believed, they can help you learn where your DNA comes from, and even where your ancestors lived. But the information that can be inferred from your DNA is actually much more limited than testing companies are letting on. And that has lead consumers to misinterpret their results — which is having negative consequences. Further reading: The limits of ancestry DNA tests, explained https://www.vox.com/science-and-healt... Was I part British, part Dutch, a little bit Jewish? The oddness of DNA tests. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation... White nationalists are flocking to genetic ancestry tests — with surprising results https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar... Direct-to-consumer racial admixture tests and beliefs about essential racial differences https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/... The human genome diversity panel browser http://hgdp.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/gbro... Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com. Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
[Update 10.18.2019 Comment from YouTube:
The “mix” is ancient, probably before the white skin mutation accured in the fertile crescent or people from the extreme North came down. It’s not like Somalis or Habeshas are mixed with a “white” people, if that’s what you think. We just share this DNA with people who happen to be white now-today.
The mix doesn’t need to be emphasised because it’s ancient & has existed in the region for thousands of years but it’s important as it provides further specificity and allows us to distinguish between different groups that inhabit the same geographic region.
People just don’t want to see a vague “East-Africa” or “West-Africa” or “Middle-East” or “South-Asia” region…. they pay for these tests hoping there’ll be well defined regions, countries or populations.
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The problem is, there are two camps and they’re equally annoying (and wrong). Camp 1 says that if you don’t look like a Bantu you’re NOT a true African (which is a false and a racist statement). Camp 2 are White and Arab wannabe’s. These two groups are ridiculous beyond comprehension (and are both inaccurate, disingenuous, and racist).
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Ancestry (DNA Tests) is (are) not accurate for people from the Horn. It basically tells people from the Horn that they’re half Middle Eastern and half south eastern Bantu, which is (a) wrong (unfounded and totally untrue statement)!
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Nope their reference sample [for East Africa and Northeast/Horn Africa]is based on only 17/18 people from the South-East Africa region (Kenya most likely) who are evidently admixed as Kenya & South-East Africa received migrations from multiple groups including Indigenous Hunter gatherer groups, Cushitic pastrolists, Nilotic groups and Bantus. The Barchart belows illustrates the other regions found in the results of those 18 people tested. For example 44% of those included in the sample had some percentages of Cameroon-Congo which is associated with the Bantu expansion out of that region. 39% carried South-central Hunter-gatherer Ancestry which is linked to the ancient inhabitants of that region such as the Khoi-san. In addition to this, 17% of those included in the sample carry some Middle-eastern ancestry which is an indication of Cushitic admixture in South-East Africa owed to Ancient Agro-Pastoralists from the Horn of Africa.
blacksovereign.com
AncestryDNA have no reference sample for the Horn of Africa. The region is never highlighted and they’ve not created a reference sample for it. The South-Eastern Bantu result is simply a reflection of the Cushitic contribution to the South-East African gene pool. Groups such as the Masaai have up to 50% Cushtic admixture and some Bantu Kikuyu people have up to 20% . South-Sudanese people are also experiencing a similar thing, there are no samples for Sudan and as a result many (Nilotic) Sudanese people receive the South-Eastern Bantu result which again is wrong and is simply a reflection of Nilotic migration into South-East Africa, Many groups in South-east Africa such as the Luo people and also the Masaai have some Nilotic ancestry.
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Sample size doesn’t [is not the only thing that] matter at all. Ancestry[DNA] when analyzing East Africans takes as a reference (to whom to compare) Bantu peoples and Middle Easterners. Ancestry doesn’t recognize East Africans [specifically Horn Africans] as a separate group but looks at this population as [a] mixed group between [the Bantu subgroup (who are not representative of all Black Africans) of] … and Middle Easterners [most likely Arabs]. It is their approach which they adopted from scientific research of this area. 23andme takes different approach. It takes as a reference a Somali person. A Somali is a representative of all East Africans and equals to almost 100% East African. Then 23andme compares all other East Africans to a Somali person. .
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Surely then South-Eastern Bantus who have significant genetic contributions from multiple multiple multiple different people groups (Bantu, Nilotic, Cushitic, Khoi-san) are then super super mixed and shouldn’t be used as a reference sample as they’re far from pure.
Somalis & Horn of African are said to carry one ancestral African component (Ethiopic) and one ancestral ‘non-African’ component (Ethio-Somali) compared to the 5 (Bantu, Nilotic, Khoi-san) + Cushitic (Ethiopic&Ethio-Somali) all found in South-East African Bantus, logically making it far more problematic to use South-East African Bantus as a reference population for all of East Africa [for even those who aren’t even Bantu].
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Wrong, look at the people on the Swahili coast if you want to see the result of a mix between Arabs and Bantu people. They don’t look like Horners at all.
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We are not denying that there is West Eurasian DNA in our blood, but it’s not the same as the Arab DNA (of Arabs today nor the recent Bantu-Arab admixture of the Kenyan Swahili Arabs during the Arab Slave Trade that happened in South-East Africa) , that mix in our blood happened before humans learned to farm( over 10000 years ago) JUST to give you a perspective. IF anything, the Arabs look like us (Horn Africans) and when that’s said, there is a clear difference between the MiddleEastern-Semitic and the HornAfrican-Cushitic-Ethiosemitic features.
We’ve been around since pre-historic times, We’ve been around before some people in Eurasia developed the white skin, but you want to lump us together with Bantus or Arabs? Fuck off!! with the Ancestry DNA numbers, We are NOT a mix of Bantus and Arabs, End Of! .
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Ethiopians and Eritreans are consistently scoring (+20–30%) Middle-East & North-Africa. It has nothing to do with slavery :-/ ….. Ethiopia was never invaded by any foreign force or conquered…. In fact it was them “Kingdom of Aksum” that conquered Arabia for sometime.
Moreover, the Semetic languages spoken in Ethiopia don’t derive from “Old-Arabic” and are said to have actually existed in the region 2000–3000 years ago……. “contemporary Ethiosemitic languages of Africa reflect a single introduction of early Ethiosemitic from southern Arabia approximately 2800 years ago”, and that this single ancient introduction of Ethiosemitic underwent “rapid diversification” within Eritrea and Ethiopia.”
Therefore it can be concluded that Ethiopian & Eritreans can attribute their Middle-Eastern/North-African percentage to an ancient admixture event which occurred around 2,800 years ago between Cushitic people, Ethiopian & Eritreans are indigenous to the Horn of Africa.
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Your North African isn’t due to slavery. It’s really just how these results are made. To be honest, you’re pretty much 98% African (East and North), which makes sense for Ethiopians.
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People don’t realize our genetics go back thousands of years. Even if you knew your great great great grandparents “didn’t mix so much”, they only reflect a small percentage of what has been collected in our DNA over hundreds of generations. We are echoes of our very ancient ancestors. No human is 100% anything. We have been traveling and mixing all our existence. I think everyone should do thEse DNA kits and the kits also need to better explain human migration.
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North African doesnt mean your Arab, Ethiopians and Somalis are actually the original black ancient Egyptians and this has been scientifically proven
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let me explain this to you all about this genetic matter … firstly the term Africa was first used to indicate only Tunisia and parts of Libya. the usage of Africa to mean the entire land mass is recent and that is part of the confusion.
secondly the genetic evidence shows that north and east Africans who belong to the E haplotype are related to semites who have the J haplotype and they were the same group but split in the levant and semites (J) spread into iraq/iran (Mesopotamia) the levant and the Arabian peninsula while the E haplotype spread through north and east Africa. thirdly they are both share something other than common ancestry they also share a language connection as they both the Semitic branch and african branch are in the language group called afro-asian language family and this goes back to berber/ancient Egyptian/ Nubian languages. I hope this clears up some confusion.
but of course there are tribes that are from inside the continent
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As you correctly pointed out there were much earlier episodes of migrations into the Horn of Africa which accounts for the majorty of admixture in Cushitic people and Horn of Africans. Below are extracts from a research paper (2014) that explores the topic of Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa.
When analysing the African & Non-African ancestral components of the Horn of Africa, scientists found their results supported the hypothesis of distinct African ancestry with a long history in differentiated HOA populations . “The African (Ethiopic) ancestry is tightly restricted to HOA populations and likely represents an autochthonous (indigenous) HOA population.” As for the non-African ancestry in the HOA which is dubbed the (Ethio-Somali) component, scientists found it to also be “significantly differentiated from all neighboring non-African ancestries in North Africa, the Levant, and Arabia.” They estimated it to have “diverged from all other non-African ancestries by at least 23 ka,”. (23,000 years ago)
What is the source & nature of this non-African ancestry ? Researchers found that although the Horn of Africa shares a close geographic proximity to Arabia, the non-African ancestry in HOA ethnic groups isn’t closest to ethnic Arabs. “we would expect the highest levels of pairwise gene identity to be between HOA and Arabian populations, but this is not the case. The highest levels of shared gene identity are between HOA populations and the Levantine Palestinian and the North African Mozabite population samples”. Scientists also made the discovery that “the Arabian lactase persistence allele that arose 4000 years ago and is present in high frequencies in Arabian populations (>50%)” is virtually non existent in the Horn of Africa. “This Arabian allele is also almost absent in the Somali (1.6%)”.
Their research was pretty conclusive and supports past findings and their hypothesis that “gene flow from Arabia within the last few thousand years cannot explain the non-African ancestry in HOA populations.” As for when they believe this back migration occured based on their research and other previous findings they state: “Taking into account published mitochondrial, Y chromosome, paleoclimate, and archaeological data, we find that the time of the Ethio-Somali back-to-Africa migration is most likely pre-agricultural.”
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004393
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The research has been done and documented, archeological proof, genetic and linguistic. The admixture in the region was ancient and involved ancestral groups different to those present today. Ancient people were free to migratr around the world…there were no borders or boundaries. People weren’t restricted to their respective continents hence why there’s so much variety and diversity in the world. Ony Ignorant people take this diversity and label it as “Invasion, slavery or blah blah when infact most of it is ancient”…..What’s funny is most people falsely labelling this diversity are African diaspora descendants of slavery or people from a region with a history of being enslaved…. they think it’s the same story with every admixed region not realising that virtually every human population is a product of ancient admixture, migration and differentiation to some degree.
Infact most indigenous populations appear to look somewhat admixed or intermediaries between different groups….. The Khoi-san of Africa appear admixed, Australian aborigines appear to be admixed and Ainu people of Japan also appear admixed…. but all are indigenous populations.
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It’s only AncestryDNA that give Horn of Africans 35–55% Middle-Eastern & 10–15% North African… because they have no samples for the region.
On 23andme a Somali might get 98% East African, why ? because 23andme actually have Somali samples in their database. So that 98% Simply means you’re share alot of autosomal DNA and match with other Somalis in the database.
I’ve seen a North African take an AncestryDNA test and were only 24% North African the rest predominantly Europe and Middle-East. On 23andme they were +90% North African. Again, it’s because AncestryDNA only samples Mozabites who are one isolated group and not representative of all North Africans, whereas 23andme actually has samples from more or less every country in North Africa.
I’m guessing they just don’t have enough samples from Eritreans/Ethiopians in the database…. they have multiple ethnic groups which may not be accounted for in the sample….. but when 23andme get more samples, then they too would be +90%.
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They have Masaai samples and samples from other East Africans.
You do realise….. just because a Kenyan or Ethiopian or Somali person all score +90% on 23andme, it doesn’t mean they share the same Ancestry. Just shows that an individual shares ancestry with atleast one sample population used for that region….They’re not testing how much of your DNA comes from the region, just how closely you much up against others in their sample.
For example 23andme have a North-African/Middle-East Sample…. a pure Saudi could get +90% North African and a Mozabite Algerian may get 90% North African…. It doesn’t mean they share the same Ancestry. It’s because 23andme’s North African sample include the Arabian peninsula.
http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/showthread.php/43508-my-Saudi-Arabian-mother-s-23andme-test-results
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What’s black DNA? can you proof that the ancient people who had to come together to form the Cushitic/Somali people were black and white thus making Cushitic people a black and white mix. Bare in mind the Semitic-Cushitic “mix” happened in pre-historic times, the mutation that caused the white skin in Europeans, modern day Middle Easterners, and non-African semitic peoples, happened after the Cushitics were already mix (without the white skin gene). You’re pushing an agenda. What’s your point? You keep repeating a mix that happened literally 10s of thousands of years ago to split the identity of a people. By these standards the whole fucking world is mixed. We are not Bantu or Arabs, nor are we a mix of both,nothing against either of them, but that’s just how things are, WE ARE HORN AFRICANS.
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in fact the Askum Empire (an African Empire) conquered Southern Arabia, and the area known today as Yemen. This is where the outside DNA come’s from.
Also, most North Africans today of “ All Races “, carry the Ancient Black African Haplogroup ( Y — Male E1b1b ). Which has Origins in East Africa dating back to 22,500 BC.
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comments from video “https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VtfbNYQKStI” ].
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“You’re looking at skin tone as a race mixing thing (very western world centric). Skin tone in Africa is just a fluentuation of melanin levels, that’s all.
There is no solid ‘Black’ Skin tone in Africa. And West and South Africa and East Africa have diverse ranges of skin pigment. Just like melanated groups in India. The woman you posted is a South Sudanese Nilote who are known for being darskinned, thin and tall. Most west Africans don’t have her tone, even when darskinned, and aren’t mixed with a thing. There are dark and light skinned Africans. Just different shades of brown.”
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“98% East African but I have 130 neanderthal variants? How?” — By: u/im-so-special
(https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/comments/9ike6y/98_east_african_but_i_have_130_neanderthal/)
MelissaMee (1 year ago):
Because your ancestors were the ancient Humans that went back to Africa after they left (see back to Africa migrations). They supposedly mixed with Neanderthal. It’s not uncommon to see Neanderthal DNA among Africans (especially East Africans). The common idea that Sub-Saharan Africans don’t carry Neanderthal DNA is wrong.TOK715 (1 year ago):
That whole area (Mediterranean side of Africa) has been mixing with Europe and the middle east for more than 4 thousand years, 6000+ probably, that’s plenty of time to pick up neanderthal DNA. I guess sub Saharan Africans are likely to have far fewer, though still probably some. Very interesting though, thanks for sharing!
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[Update 10.19.2019
Part 1:
- In Response To The Question: “Are Somalis a combination between Bantus and Arabs/Caucasians/non-Africans?” (Ancestry/Ethnicity Estimate DNA Testing Issues for Nilo-Cushitic/Horn African peoples, Part 1). : https://medium.com/@habeshaunion/in-response-to-the-question-are-somalis-horn-africans-northeast-africans-eritreans-2be71f54a763
https://miro.medium.com/max/5200/0*iL9LWfcMjSOtGyFn
Most-if-not-all Ancestry/Ethnicity Estimate DNA Tests misrepresent Nilo-Cushites (Nilo-Cushitic peoples: Nilotic peoples & Cushitic Peoples (including Ethiosemitic-speaking Cushitic peoples), Horn Africans-Northeast Africans) as “a combination between Bantus and Arabs [or] Caucasians.” One thing for sure is that most of them don’t test/look for Nilo-Cushitic markers, (1) because they have limited data, (2) it was originally meant for European Americans (U.S. White Americans) descended from colonists, indentured servants, and those various European ethnicities that asimilated with limited traces into the White population, so they can find out/corroborate weather their ancestors came from a certain part of Europe that they have lost a connection with/forgot about (as Ancestry/Ethnicity Estimate DNA Testing Companies advertise, for some European Americans it can not only tell them about their ancestors’ ethnicity but can supposedly also pinpoint from which village or town in a specific European countries’ province their ancestors come from; this has not been adequately verified though) and secondly meant for African Americans (U.S. Black Americans) descended from West-Central African peoples sold into slavery via the Transatlantic Slave Trade (with some populations going through Central-South America & Latin America before reaching the United States), (3) in most cases it can’t tell the difference between an East African and a West Asian, (4) it doesn’t even consider Nilo-Cushites as a unique group of peoples but brands them as ‘“‘Southeast Bantu + Middle Eastern’” = a bunch of random people who say they come from an imaginary place called the Horn of Africa.’ On Ancestry DNA’s map of Genetic Group Estimates, they didn’t even highlight the Horn of Africa (more specifically any place from Central Sudan to as far south as Somalia), the map makes it look like the place is uninhabited and dosen’t even give it a Genetic Group Estimate name. In the picture bellow, the part of the map circled in red should be the Nilo-Cushitic Genetic Region (I had to circle this myself, because they never took this area into consideration, when it comes to DNA Genetic Ancestry Group Estimates)
THE AREA CIRCLED IN RED IS SUPPOSED TO INCLUDE NILOTIC AND CUSHITIC PEOPLES AS AN ANCESTRY CATEGORY (WHICH THESE COMPANIES HAVE IGNORED).
NILOTIC AND CUSHITIC PEOPLES SHOW UP AS BI-RACIAL BANTU-ARABS BECAUSE THESE ANCESTRY DNA COMPANIES ARE CUTTING CORNERS, DON’T HAVE ENOUGH DATA FOR THE HORN AFRICA/NORTHEAST AFRICA REGION, AND HAVEN’T MADE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN NILOTIC-CUSHITIC PEOPLES (MISTAKING THEM AS BI-RACIAL BANTU-ARANS) IN CONTRAST TO OTHER PEOPLE GROUPS THUS ONLY RECOGNIZING THEIR GENETIC SIMILARITIES TO OTHER PEOPLE GROUPS IN THE REGION (LIKE THE BANTUS TO THE SOUTH AND ARABS TO THE NORTH & EAST).
Ancestry DNA Map of Africa. The part of the map circled in red should have been Nilo-Cushitic instead of a blank space left there by the Ancestry DNA Testing Company.
In response to comments:
This may be true, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt when you say ancient admixture, but generally speaking these commercial DNA Tests are supposed to show only recent ethno-genetic marchers. For example Southern Europeans (in this example, this double standard is visible in Italians) have a huge amount of admixture that is way more recent than Horn Africans’ “Ancient Admixture”. But with this Italians having a lot more recent Arab, other Middle Eastern, and Magrabi/North African proper (Berbers, both Arabized NAs and non-Arabized Black North African populations) admixtures but are still categorized as Italians and Southern Europeans. While, when it comes to Horn Africans (genetically speaking Sudanese/South Sudanese are included), there are no categories (possibly for a lack of Data, they partially admit to this), Horn Africans are categorized as biracial Southeastern Bantu & Arab. There are no catagories parameters like “Horn African,” “Cushitic”, “Nilo-Saharan,” “Nilo-Cushitic,” “Somali,” “South-Central Ethiopian,” “Highland Ethio-Eritrean,” “Lowland Ethiopian-Eritrean,” etc. In retrospect, Italians with fairly more recent admixture, are considered Italians within their own right, even to the extent that these Commercial DNA tests can name exact ethnic groups like Sicilian, and while ethnic Sicilians have the most non-European admixture among all other Italian ethnic groups. For their lack of data and commercial monetary profit interests, these commercial DNA tests can’t tell the difference between Nilo-Cushitite (Horn Africans/Northeast Africa south of Egypt — the area between Sudan to the north and Somalia to the south), and Southeastern Bantu of Kenya, Uganda, etc. and Arabs of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc., while it can easily tell the difference between a Northern Italian and an ethnic Sicilian (and other Southern Italians), plus when it comes to the British Isles, they can even pinpoint exact villages let alone a geographic region, ethnolinguistic groups, country, or ethnic group, which it can’t even do for Horn Africans. Also with this Ancient Admixture talk, ethnonationalist African Americans and West Africans have used this minuscule notion as a way to deny that Horn Africans are truly African or Black enough.
On the other hand 23andMe’s 2019 update is a lot more accurate than Ancestry DNA when it come to Horn Africans.
“23andme and DNA tests for Eritreans and Ethiopians” — By: Cheshire Cat (Link: https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/23andme-and-dna-tests-for-eritreans-and-ethiopians.2348949/)
I know one of the more controversial topic is whether Eritreans and Ethiopians have admixture or if they’re considered black or other such questions that I rarely encountered until I came to LSA tbh.
Now a bit of background. I belong to several online habesha groups and a couple of people took the 23andme test which they displayed. We were not impressed with the results because for a continent as vast as Africa, to have only three subgroups was pathetic and not impressive.
Contrast that with the fact that we know who our ancestors are due to traditions like recording births in family bibles, all kids (including yours truly) being drilled into their heads to recite and know paternal family 7 generations back, your village, etc. We knew the 23andme tests weren’t going to tell us anything that we didn’t already know.
I read that 23andme managed to get larger datasets due to getting more genetic info from under-served regions and they updated their categories to be more granular.
More recently, a Business Insider segment popped up on my timeline regarding commercial DNA testing companies for Eritreans/Ethiopians.
The producer and host of the segment, this Eritrean American man, contrasted his father’s knowledge of his family ancestry with the results from Helix and 23andme. His father was interviewed (and was such a habesha dad) and also re-iterated what I said above about already knowing family history and lineage.
I checked other 2 other habesha’s 23andme results and the same thing (see number 2 and 3).
All three have very very high African DNA, like over 95%. Highest that has ever been seen with these sort of tests. Also entirely Eritrean or Ethiopian.
The DNA tests confirms what we knew about ourselves.
1.) Click on link below for video. Not sure how to embed. The producer’s 23andme result is at 2:49 although the entire news segment is cool to see.
He was 94.6% Eritrean Ethiopian.I tried 23andMe and Helix to find out which DNA test would guess my ancestry more accurately
2.) Another Eritrean Ethiopian showing his updated results (via Twitter). His old results said 35% Arab 65% East African. His updated results now show it’s 99.7% Eritrean/Ethiopian.
3.) Eritrean Ethiopian redditor’s result from 23andme. His result is 97.8% Eritrean/Ethiopian.
From stellamaris: Glad to hear they updated it. There’s no way my family is mixed, my father has 22 generations of his family down to one place. It just happens to be that Ethiopian/Eritrean people have extremely old DNA and that these DNA tests don’t have much of our DNA tracked appropriately.
From Cheshire Cat: I think this is a pretty new angle actually as 23andme is confirming that we are not mixed. Something that us Eritreans and Ethiopians knew but for some reason so many people refuse to accept.
Exactly. I thought of posting this info as I believe it would validate what we as Eritreans and Ethiopians already knew. These hotly debated conversations and debates about what we are just amused me in the past because we know who we are and it’s good that those commercial DNA testing companies have finally caught up to what we always knew.
If people wish to think otherwise, they are free to do so as it’s no skin off my nose.
I’ve never tested with any DNA testing company but the guy in my first example, the businessinsider.com link, he tested with two companies; Helix and 23andme. Helix gave him very broad results like 50% East Africa, 30% South west Asian, 11% Northern African, 7% Asia Minor and 2% Mediterranean. Not far off from the old 23andme results actually. It’s just way too broad and doesn’t ring true. Helix probably doesn’t have enough data yet.
From Kalashnikov: We Ethios and Eris don’t have to defend who we are to anyone, especially to people who have living white and other relatives as we speak lol. You and I know that in our communities, not a single person claim to be anything but whatever ethnicity they are. If we in fact were mixed, it happened thousands of years ago, hell the majority of us never even seen outsiders until recently let alone to claim them. So my point is that although it’s kinda good to see our unique and ancient markers finally being recognized, we have nothing to defend. We are who we are, unapologetically. Those who are hell bent on proving our mixedness are those who struggle to accept human diversity and documented historic migration. In addition, those obsessed with this DNA bs are those with extreme insecurities and want to bring everyone down with them. The majority of the black diaspora is of Central and West African heritage and were only exposed to only to that [type of Black people] and had concluded that was what all Africans look alike. Though race isn’t something I readily identify with since it isn’t something important in my everyday life, I’ll be damned if someone will tell me who I am and trying to project their 21st century nonsense on to our ancestors from 3,000+ years ago, please!
Kalas, don’t waste your energy.
Umm… because we are 10 miles away from the [Arabian] Gulf and are obviously gonna be more related to them than say Bantu languages. That’s in addition to the fact that during Sabean Empire [of South Arabia], … [South Arabian Gulf States] were under [African Control — the African Civilization that Controlled South Arabia was the Kingdom of Axum which was the predecessor state of Ethiopia and Eritrea // The Axumite empire of Ethiopia and Eritrea (an African Civilization) had colonized Yemen and most of western South Arabia]. [the peoples of South Arabia at that time (which were genetically and phenotypically similar to Black people) were] our closest relatives. We also speak Ethiosemitic languages (similar to the pre-Arabic, South Semitic languages of the native non-North Arab peoples of Yemen and other parts of South Arabia) as well as Cushitic Languages (with Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic languages being part of the Afro-Asiatic Language Family that originated in Eastern Africa), which are related to but are farther away in relation from say Arabic or Hebrew which are also Afro-Asiatic Languages. In the Horn of Africa, Nilotic languages of the Nilo-Saharan Language Family are spoken along with the major Afro-Asiatic Languages.
From Yingyang: I don’t know why Horners [Horn Africans] bother with these tests. They’re intended for New World people to see how they match up to modern populations outside the Americas, not for us.
But if our people insist on taking them, 23 and Me is definitely more accurate for us than some of the others simply because they actually have our DNA samples as a reference point. Otherwise, they’ll just be off point and match you up with whatever similar samples they have.
I’ve seen some where they have the African component as South Eastern Bantu and we know for a fact that our population’s presence in the region preceded the Bantu migration so that cannot be accurate.
Nah, the Ethiopian/Eritrean category includes Ethiosemetic, Cushitic, Omotic, Nilotic language speakers of those regions as there is little to no genetic variation between the them. … There’s no bright line genetic distinction ( there is very little genetic variation) between those who speak Ethiosemetic languages vs those who speak Cushitic languages in Ethiopia.
“The Ethiopian similarity with the Yemeni detected throughout the genome could be explained as an Ethiopian contribution to the Yemeni gene pool, consistent with that observed with mtDNA.”[177]
“Aksum in late antiquity played a considerable international role. As a power controlling the African shores of the Southern Red Sea, it served as an intermediary between the Byzantine — Arabic trade routes and the Indian Ocean — and thus became an interesting potential ally to Byzantium. To give one example : several sources mention the wish of the East-Roman emperor Justinian to control the route to India via the Red Sea in the 6th century [9]. With the help of its ally Aksum [Ethiopia-Eritrea], the Persian incursions into Southern Arabia were then, in fact, halted ; South Arabia was occupied by the Aksumites and trade routes were secured” [ https://journals.openedition.org/cy/33 ] .
“Yes, you are pure Black. Before you take ANY DNA test make sure they have samples from your region. Ancestry. com did NOT have any Northeast African samples so you ended up with proxies such as Bantu and the Middle East. These ancestry tests were really for West African and European populations when it first started out. Since they did not have Northeast African dna, and maybe it looks a little bit like ME or Bantu then they had to give you something. You are NOT a mixture of those two. But you have no real connection with the Middle Easterners of today in those regions. Just because it says Middle East does not mean you have Middle Easterner, but that you share similar DNA with those people. It was a problem and people complained about it. 23 and me had samples but very few. now both companies have samples from that region now. If you checked to see if they had samples from your region, then you probably would not have taken the test. Good news! Ancestry has updated their database with Northeast samples, and the Ethiopians I have seen scored 100%.”
“Eastern and Saharan Africans shared the most alleles absent from other African populations examined” ~Sarah A. Tishkoff (The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans).
“What are you considering as mixed ,???No most are not mixed or on the same level as black Americans and black Carribeans . Additionally alot of West Africans or Africans in general may not be 100 percent either.”
“Most of the worlds populations have been slightly mixed with other groups. Northern Europe is mixed with Asia. Ie. Russia and Eastern Europe . North Africa and the middleeast is triracially mixed. South Asia is super mixed,etc.”
“It depends what you mean by Arab and “East African”. Gulf Arabs owned slaves and most of those slaves were Bantu and came from the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts. Some were Central African.
Lebanese and Syrians, for example, are Arabized peoples, not actual Arabs. Same with the Arabized Berbers of North Africa.
Finding old bones of a specimen that resembled other primates of that time has nothing do with the modern human populations of that region.”
“Mixture that may or may not have occurred millennia ago have no relevance to populations in the here and now. We are fully indigenous to the Horn of Africa and the history of our peoples are tied to that region of Africa, no where else.
The supposed “Middle Easterners” we are “mixed with” don’t even exist today, and anthropologists and genealogists have even admitted they are not fully sure whether the mixing occurred since genealogy/DNA testing is in its infancy. It’s just an educated guess at this point.
I get you’re thirsty to be seen as a biracial, but the history and facts just don’t line up with your wishes. Sorry Abel.”
“There are West And Central, Africans similiar looking to horners. Ie. Rwandans, Fulanis, Chad, Nigerian Igbos, Hausas, Guniea Bassu, and black Tauregs. The saharan region of Africa has different climates.
I general Horners have more subsaharan African dna than African Americans and Black Carribeans.
People just like to stereotype Black Africans to what the see among black Americans but Black Americans are only a small part of Africa mainly from 3 countries.”
“I’d like to drop in and correct some misconceptions. I’m a genealogy/archaeology nerd so I extensively read up on the genetic diversity of my ancestral continent.
DNA testing sites like 23&me and ancestrydna do not classify ancient admixture as mixed. They read horn african dna as 95–100% [insert ethnicity] because our genetic makeup was mixed thousands of years ago and became distinctive as the sole ethnicities we now are. We have been homogenous and unchanged for thousands of years to the point our ethnicity is just simply recognized as somali, amhara, etc. These ancestry sites only flag mixed ancestries as mixed if their mixture was within the last 500 years.
To see the true admixture in ones genotype, one would have to plug their dna results into gedmatch and see what their ethnicity is comprised of. Many I’ve seen have done this and were understandably shocked at seeing their results.
Not many people know this but horn africans dna is a combination of ancient nilotic and ancient natufian dna (north african/levantine). Both these populations that we’ve descended from no longer exist in their pure form and we carry distinctive dna separate from modern day nilotic and west asian populations. Depending on the horn african ethnicity, we carry varying ratios of both these ancestries. Semitic speaking groups tend to have more recent input adding onto the west asian ratio than cushitic speaking groups but the difference is minimal.
Back when the dna sites were getting popular early in the day, they didn’t have a sample size of horners so the tech would pick up on our subsaharan and west asian genetic components and incorrectly state our ethnicities as recently mixed rather than simply stating our ethnicity. But now it’s been corrected. Friends of mine who’ve taken the test on ancestry.com went from being classed as 55% subsaharan 45% middle eastern to 99% eritrean.
As for west african ethnicities like the fulani and taureg, they also carry ancient west asian ancestry from north africa and nilotic dna from the sahel which explains the overlapping similarities in features and culture/religion.
Although Rwandans like the Tutsi are admixed with bantu, they have a lot of dna from the horn (specifically from Ethiopia) so it’s understandable why they look like horners. I’ve seen many Tutsi that I thought looked indistinguishable from us. I like to believe they’re just family that are far removed from us lol
It would be ignorant to consider us more African genotypically speaking than the average African American. It would be doing a disservice to those who are unambiguously black.
Hope this cleared things up ❤”
.
South Arabian people are actually phenotypically similar to their Horn African neighbors to the west of them.
New African & East Asian Details in 23andMe’s Latest Ancestry Composition Update (Published: August 21, 2018) — By: 23andMe under 23andMe how to, Ancestry Reports [ https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/new-african-east-asian-details/ ]
“Prior to this update, our Sub-Saharan Africa region had just three subgroups, belying the tremendous genetic diversity within the continent,” David said. “Humans were diversifying In Africa for hundreds of thousands of years before anyone left to colonize other parts of the world.”
These changes are currently available for customers [under the new more accurate update] on the latest version of the company’s genotyping chip. Our team is working to make this update available for all customers soon.
The addition of these new reference populations comes on the heels of 23andMe’s update earlier this year. That update increased the number of countries and regions included in Ancestry Composition from 31 to 151. The company is constantly striving to help customers access, understand, and benefit from the human genome. The updates are a step forward in achieving these goals.
The updates were made possible by three rich data sources: the African Genetics Project, for which 23andMe provided DNA kits to individuals with four grandparents born in the same African country; customer-supplied information; and the 1000 Genomes Project, a public repository of diverse human sequences.
For 23andMe, this is just the beginning of a series of updates that will increase the number of populations covered by Ancestry Composition over time. “The Global Genetics Project is an ambitious initiative that will fuel future updates,” said Poznik.
“We have a list of around 60 countries that we’ve identified as top priorities,” he said. “These are countries with fairly large populations but that aren’t well-represented in our database. We’re giving away kits to people with ancestries from these countries because we’re eager to collect data that will enable us to improve our product for other people from these regions.”
Comments from the Video “ERITREAN TAKES A DNA TEST **SHOCKING RESULTS** 😱🤦😮” — By: SuperGebar:
Comment By D B: Ethiopian Jewish DNA means Agaw/Bilen/Northern Cushitic and generic Habesha (Ethiopian-Eritrean) DNA. That Asian DNA is rare though, that’s probably your ancestors from the Axumite empire traveling and trading around the world and bringing wives back home to Africa.
Comments from the Video “ETHIOPIAN GENETICS RESULTS | 23ANDME” — By: ThatGirlWossen:
Review Sam: Horn Africans do not have Arab ancestry. Not sure where you are getting that from. The only group that has recent Arab ancestry are Afro-Arabs. Horners have ancient Middle Eastern DNA dates back 10.000 years ago. They (Horners) have been relatively homogenous for 10,000 years or longer (in contrast to African Americans with recent European/White ancestry). You have to keep in mind that 23andme just started getting Horner DNA when she took this test. I can guarantee she is 99% or higher Sub-Saharan African with more samples coming from Horners as of today. I have seen many DNA results of Horners and its ranges from 99.5% -100% SSA.
K Right Carr: Great results! I like…and disputes Western academia classification of Ethiopians as “Dark Caucasians.” Clearly, you have an overwhelmingly predominant African genome. On top of that, your mtDNA L2a1 is a pan-African mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. It is the most widely distributed mtDNA haplogroup on the African continent — East, West, South, and North. Congratulations, my sister!
Responses to questions like “Why are Somalis black if they are Cushitic speakers (related to Agaw and Beja race)?” [ https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Somalis-black-if-they-are-Cushitic-speakers-related-to-Agaw-and-Beja-race ]:
Race is a cultural social construct founded on European scientific racism. That is why it doesn’t exist in regions where there is little European or Western influence, like Somalia. In other words, race does not exist in actuality. In Somalia, there is not really a concept of being black and it is not central to people’s identities like in the West. In other words, in Somalia, there is no sense of “blackness” like there is in America. That is not to say that they are not indigenous Africans or that they are mixed.
We can say with certainty that the speakers of Cushitic languages are native to Africa and that they are related to one another. Cushitic languages are a branch of Afroasiatic languages, which originated in northeast Africa. Cushitic languages also originated in northeast Africa and are native to this general area. Its speakers live in the Horn of Africa (ie. Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti), Egypt, north Sudan, northern Kenya, as well in smaller communities throughout East Africa. They did not originate outside of the continent. So Somalis, Agaws, Bejas, and other Cushitic peoples are all indigenous Africans.
This means that Cushitic speakers other than Somalis are not mixed with non-Africans. They are related most closely with each other, which is evident through our languages, cultures, histories, genetics, and features.
None of these people seem to be mixed race or of a different admixture than any of the other Cushitic ethnic groups. So Somalis are both indigenous Africans (like their neighbours) as well as a Cushitic people.
Truth be told, Cushitic is language group not a race. Race does not exist, it is only Western Colonial ideology used not only to dehumanize but to divide and conquer, don’t fall for it.
Responses to questions like “Why do Somalis look white?” [ https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Somalis-look-white ]:
If by “white”, you are referring to skin tone. Somalis are typically brown-skinned, although it is not uncommon for Somalis to be light-skinned.
But if you are referring to their features, then Somalis may appear to have similar facial and other features to non-Africans due to Afroasiatic Africans having settled in West Asia and other parts of the world. So-called “white features” originated in northeast Africa, just as so-called “Mongoloid features” originated in southeast Africa. After all, non-Africans did not just appear out of nowhere. Humans originated in Africa.
In my personal opinion, Somalis do not look white or Arab. They come in all shades yet have distinct features that is more similar to other Cushitic peoples or Berbers than to any other as the following Somali people below show.
You mean why do whites have Somali features?
Somalis and Ethiopians are the oldest races on Earth so whites look like Somalis.
East Africa is very close to Eurasia where caucasians come from so if you connect the dots you can see East African migrants and Caucasians have a genetic link.
While Somalis do have a distinct look, there is no one universal “African look”. Instead, there are varieties of looks found among indigenous Africans. After all, Africa is the most diverse continent in the world and it is the second-largest continent in the world.
Somalis look similar to other African groups such as other Cushitic peoples (who inhabit the Horn of Africa, north Sudan, and southern Egypt) and Berbers (who live across the Sahara, in Central and northwest Africa).
Somalis, like any other ethnic group, look different from some ethnic groups because of endogamy: the act of marrying within a specific ethnic group. Because clans were so central to Somali societies throughout the history of Somalis, it was taboo to marry outside of certain clans, let alone outside of the ethnic group.
Their gene pool was also geographically isolated from that of West Africans for thousands of years, up until roughly 1000 AD, when the Bantu Expansion that began from West Africa reached southeast Africa. Before then, most of East Africa was inhabited by Cushites and Khoisans who either moved further south, mixed with the new inhabitants, or eventually disappeared. Endogamy led to Somalis into look distinct from neighbouring groups.
Are Ethiopians really Caucasian? (Social Construct and Mental Gymnastics):
Race is mostly a social construct. It really depends on context and which myth is being reinforced by a confirmation bias. Ethiopia is located further south than Egypt, 200 miles north of the equator.
The Ethiopians are not immigrants, they are some of the earliest humans on the planet. However, these populations did become admixed to varying degrees with non African migrants (Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa) but this is too ancient and is irrelevant just like ancient admixture is irrelevant when talking about other populations.
It’s quite peculiar however, that these indigenous peoples, would contemporaneously be categorised by European anthropologists et al. as belonging to the racial classification of the non African, foreign immigrants, as opposed to the classification of their origination and shared genetics, history and culture of their source continent of Africa and other African relations.
However, admixed groups can be categorised as one thing or another, based on the circumstances and the prevailing racial mythology of the day. The difference is in Horn African populations the admixture was very ancient and doesn’t reflect modern day realities.
For example, Africans in the diaspora (African Descendants of Slavery in the Americas) are generally descendants of slaves. These are also admixed populations (African Decendants of Slavery in the Americas ACTUALLY HAVE MORE AND RECENT ADMIXTURE THAN HORN AFRICAN/NORTHEAST AFRICAN POPULATIONS), ADOS/African Americans/African Diaspora sharing European and West African genetics. However, diaspora Africans are not categorised as Caucasian. The racial mythology varies from country to country, depending on how the post slavery society elected to use racial ideology and discrimination to maintain white supremacy.
Likewise, when Ethiopians were in the throes of disaster and famine, media reports were silent on their ‘Caucasian’ racial classification. Ethiopia country profile Ethiopia country profile
During times of difficulty and trial, Ethiopia became the face of Black/African poverty and hunger. At less distressed times, Ethiopians tend to more easily fit the Caucasian profile as a racial category.
Racial classifications are more than fact, genetics, culture and history. Race is a construct which was created to serve a purpose in a society shaped by racial hierarchy. The higher ranks are framed as closer to white and the lowest ranked are unambiguously black and African. I guess from the perspective of the bigot, it’s either a glass half full or half empty scenario, but as always, they are 100% right.
Battle of Adwa (Adowa), 1896 • BlackPast
Quoting “Victory at Adwa sealed the unification of Ethiopia and solidified Menelik’s claim to the title of Emperor. Europeans and European-Americans interpreted the story of Adwa in different ways. For some, it was an opportunity to discredit Italy militarily. For others, it was important to advance the view that the Ethiopians were not black, thus explaining away the significance of white and European defeat.”
Ethiopian Emperor Menelik who is visibly Black and African (https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5a6e232ec5d9c7544b2d4e9658fd896d) defeated the Italian forces at the Battle of Adwa.
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Race is a social convention.
The event:
Ethiopians were considered black until 1 March 1896. (Battle of Adwa), when an Ethiopian army destroyed an invading Italian army. The victory was complete.
[See painting of the Battle of Adwa: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4c7dd5f70b8840c149285f4cc7761185.webp]
The Italians, to the right, started the day as whites but ended it as mixed race. The Ethiopians, to the left, started the day as blacks but ended it as whites.
Racism in 1896:
Racism was political correct in 1896. It was considered a natural conclusion of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The theory of White Supremacy was the foundation for European colonialism in Africa.
When Ethiopia destroyed an Italian army the ideologes were in shock. Could they be wrong? Or could their theories be saved?
The solution was simple:
Ethiopians were promoted to whites. Just look at their noses!
Italians were degraded to mixed race. Todays Italians were properly descendance of the ancient Rome but they had properly been mixed by other people (God know what people). Just look at the low rate of literacy! Clearly not one of us.
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No! Ethiopians are not Caucasoids, that is a lie spread by some old time anthropologists whom at one time included any straight-nosed human, narrow-feaured groups as “Caucasoids”! The Ethiopian or rather Abyssinian race is purely African or “Africanoid”. One of the earliest anatomically modern humans (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) sites were discovered in Ethiopia! Ethiopians are probably the group of Homo Sapiens Sapiens who left Africa to populate the planet. Well in those days, they weren’t Ethiopians by name yet.
In Ethiopia and surrounding areas of Eastern Africa, which differs from other parts of Africa, the same way the Nordid of Northern Europe differs from other types of Europe. So why should we make the Ethiopian Caucasoid? That is great nonsense!
The classic Ethiopid is authentically African or Black by race.
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Well, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, and Ertrea is proximate to the Red Sea, parts of western Asia, and not far from some north African countries. Because of the genetic intermingling over the centuries, many people of North-East Africa, Horn of Africa, North Africa, Middle East, West Asia, and nearby areas have had connections with each other weather economic, political. social, and/or martial (military) relations with each other and have a high chance of admixture.
Additionally, the question is reminiscent of the colonial times. Ridiculous theories were put forward by Europeans to explain that peoples such as the Maasai, were not Africans, because of their elegant looks. Unscientific explanations include, “the children of Ham,” and the creation of a fictional race known as Hamites.
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We are blacks..for some ridiculous reason ; Africans which are the oldest race is not offered widespread phenotypically diversity; compared to other races. This question is often ask to me by whites . Yet it is ok .. for Nordic man and Italian man to differ.. yet not , Africans which have been here longer . Absurd . Our features differ to we have had the longest time to adapt. It is very simple . Ethiopians share the deepest subclade to the oldest race Sans . Scientist believe the Sans originated in East Africa, later migrated southward.
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You need to read about Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. He theorized about classifying the world’s population into 5 groups, one was called caucasian, historians say it was because he thought that the people from the Caucasus region were beautiful. His concepts were misinterpreted and misused as so-called scientists of the day started measuring shapes of heads, facial features and such. His original work actually made the point that there was a continuum of humanity with all sorts of mixtures, of equal potential based on opportunity. All of that has been lost to those who continue to define & divide people by color…and even minuscule external factors…. the Hutu’s can tell a Tutsi, a Russian can distinguish a Ukranian from an Azeri, Scot from Irish. Its a racial madhouse.
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No. The idea stems from caucasian bone structure.
You must realize that the word caucasian *NO LONGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!* refers to skintone. The bonestructure of the ethiopians is closer to other bone structerally caucasian ethnic groups. The ethiopians weren’t ever originally white. But they were and are caucasoid by bonestructure. The caucasoid bonestructure via nature selection can easily change skintones. The caucasoid bonestructure is found throughout the world, in indignous African, European, and West Asian people groups. They aren’t originally white. But they can be clasified as caucasoid acording to certian definitions while acording to other’s they are no whear near caucasoid. The term causasian is heavily missused, vague, has many conflicting definitions, and is mostly based off of pseudo-science.
REMEMBER WHEN SOMALIS WERE “WHITE” (https://temple3.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/remember-when-somalis-were-white/)
[When Racist White Europeans tried to Claim and Whitewash Black African peoples and history]
Anthropologists really should attend more meetings of the Aryan Nation. There is a clear and present danger to the myth makers. This is a time sensitive issue and scholars must proceed with all deliberate speed. The recent skirmishes in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean (formerly the Ethiopian Ocean) has threatened to pop the lid on one of the oldest scams in the pseudo-science business of race-baiting. Some reactionary “whites” all over the world have taken to derisively labeling the Somalis in exactly the same anti-African terms used for Blacks all over the planet. In their anger and frustration at being called to account for things like stealing fish and illegally dumping nuclear waste, these people have gone off the deep end and lumped Somalis with the rest of the folks in Africa — and even many of the people in Yemen and the southern Arabian peninsula. They ignored the murder of two Italian journalists who were investigating this very same story. (Perhaps those Italians were from the South and a bit too swarthy for authentic empathy.) They’ve ignored the pseudo-scientific lessons of their youth which lauded the accomplishments of dark-skinned “white” Hamites who were architects of Nile Valley civilizations.
Carleton Coon, the dean of American white-supremacist anthropologists, is turning over in his hell pit.
Somali Racial Type:
Image: https://temple3.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/1hdoom.jpeg
[By Carleton S. Coon. The Races of Europe. MacMillan, 1939: “FIG. 1 (2 views). A Somali from the tribe of Mahmud Grade, British Somaliland. This Somali represents the closest approximation to a white man found among his people. The extreme narrowness of his head and face, the straight nasal profile, and the prominence of his chin, mark him as less negroid than many of his fellows. At the same time his skin is nearly black, his hair curly but not frizzy. The type to which this Somali belongs is ancient in East Africa, as shown by the excavations of Leakey in Kenya. It is a specialized, locally differentiated Mediterranean racial form.”]
Coon, like so many others, put the cart before the horse. He wildly asserted that Africans had Caucasoid features, rather than recognizing the obvious. These features which he and others labeled “Caucasoid” were not actually derived from or a function or so-called “whiteness.” In fact, those features pre-date the emergence of so-called “white” people. It should have been painfully obvious — but it wasn’t. For him, the truth of the matter was just painful. The truth was that a “Caucasian” could be as Black as night — as long as they were part of a civilization to which a claim might be made. If the group was an unaccomplished as the British were for so many centuries (thank God for the Romans and the Norman French), the group with the same features would be labeled “Negro.” That Johann Blumenbach created the term “Caucasoid” which immersed in a fantasy over the skull of a young Georgian (as in Russia) girl was of no consequence. Coon and other so-called scholars simply leapt to conclusions that look fairly ridiculous today.
To suggest that the man in the picture posted above has a differentiated Mediterranean racial form says more about the presence of Africans in the Mediterranean (on both sides) than it does about the presence of so-called “whites” in the Horn of Africa.
Coon’s angst at viewing these images pushed him beyond the brink of logic.
So it is with the outraged Europeans and Americans who have taken such umbrage at being called to account by the lowly Blacks of everyone’s ancestral home.
There is a good deal more information about recent events in Somalia on this site. Feel free to look around — and take a lot at these links from The DailyKos for more information.
Somalians have never been “white.” They’ve never been “Caucasoid” after all the term didn’t even exist until the late 1800’s. Maybe those people called Caucasians — who choose to answer to such an absurd appellation actually have Somaliloid features as the historical reach of Somalis extends much farther than that say, Sweden or Bulgaria or anywhere else in Europe. The son looks like the father — don’t get it twisted. They are a people in need whose story is being framed improperly for nefarious reasons. Don’t believe everything you read — even here.
Question and confirm…and question again and again and again.
Finally, it’s not that Carleton Coon didn’t have enough of a credibility problem, he also worked as a spy during World War II.
How do Horn Africans treat other Africans? (https://www.quora.com/How-do-Horn-Africans-treat-other-Africans)
By: Françoise Marie
Horners are another variation of black Africans. They are also called the elongated type of Africans.
Elongated Africans are found not only in the Horn of Africa but in Central Africa among the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi. They are also found in West Africa among the Fulani. They are also found as far as Tanzania among the Maasai.
How do Horn Africans treat other Africans ? It all depends of the person and the group of Horners.
Some Horners recognize our difference as part of the great diversity and complexity of Africans. We are the other African Blacks. They interact with us quite easily.
Other Horners would rather not interact with us at all. They rather stick to themselves and stay away from the other Africans, Bantu speakers particulary. Some Bantu ended up as slaves in Somalia. There are Horners (Somali) in Kenya who are Kenyan citizens. Some of them complain that they suffer various froms of discrimination.
I still wonder why Horners are singled out in many questions about how Africans treat other Africans. It must have something to do with their induction into the extended family of Caucasoids by delusional Eurocentrists. They say that Horners have the “Caucasian” skull.
I maintain that this induction has nothing to do with their skull shape but their geostrategic location and brilliant past. Queen Sheba of Ethiopia was building temples when Paris did not exist. The Horn of Africa is of utmost importance as it is a key passage to the so-called Middle East.
There are different types of Africans. Nilotes and Pygmies do not look alike. I have yet to see a question on how Nilotes treat Pygmies. There are Nilotes as far as the DRC, my country. The Alur of the Ituri province are Nilotes. There are Pygmies in Ituri called the Mbuti.
What is your opinion on the unique look of Somali people? Do you think they are not considered black? (https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-on-the-unique-look-of-Somali-people-Do-you-think-they-are-not-considered-black)
By: Hayyat Adam, Somali who is tired of being asked if Somalis are Black
First, Yes Somalis are Black. We are Africans of African descent.
Second…
The problem is that unfortunately, due to massive slave trade and then the prominence of the West and its culture, the majority of the world’s definition of ‘black’ is confined to what were called the guinea people from West Central Africa. Which is the part of Africa that was most colonized and used for European slave markets. Because of this the majority of the African diaspora whom are descended from captured slaves can trace their roots to West Central Africa.
Because of the West’s prominence in the world the black people who are most seen, most noticed are those who live in those areas. African-Americans, European Blacks descended from ancestors who were wrongfully taken. Thus, when you say Black the majority of the world will refer to the diaspora of Africans who are usually descended from ancestors who were from West Central Africa.
Also, because of the fact that people still subconsciously see Africa as one gigantic country, with one huge group of people, we don’t tend to look into the people who live in this giant fucking continent (2nd largest). There are 54 countries and usually even within these countries there are different ethnic groups with different languages. You cannot group an entire damn continent and say they should all look alike.
Do Chinese, Thai, Malay, Filipino, Indian, Indonesian, Korean, Cambodian… etc look alike? No. However they are all Asian. If we can accept that why is it that we cannot do the same for African people?
I believe it has to do with the fact that the black populace are often ‘othered’. Instead of being seen as individuals (groups/ppl) we are put just as ‘black’. Which is simply astounding because our continent is the one with the most genetic variation.
Somalis are of the Cushtic branch as are Ethiopians, Eritreans, Djiboutians. (note: Some of the ppl in your pics are Somali, some are Ethiopians. Why aren’t Ethiopians asked if they aren’t black? Because they are a Christian country? Are we associated with Arabs because we are a muslim-majority country? An interesting hypothesis to consider.)
Genetically, as Dick Raphael said, we are generally from Haplogroup E. Caucasians are not from this haplogroup and neither are Arab peoples. So Somalis are not Arab or ‘dark-skinned white people’ as I disbelievingly heard once.
Once again, as I’ve mentioned already before Africa is a continent, an incredibly genetically diverse continent, one where the entire human race came from. Like I said before the majority of the world only sees a certain group of Africans. And the whole world also tends to subconsciously regard Africa as a country with one huge group of people who all look alike.
Look at all the differences of this small subset of African ethnic groups that I found. Look at the long-limbed elegance of the Dinka people. Look at the “looser curled” hair of the Fulani and Tuareg people. Look at the beauty of the Maasai people. Look at the ‘narrower features of both the Tuareg people and the Fulani/Wodaabe people.
As you can see we Somali people are not ‘unique’ at all.
If you see and understand Africa as a continent instead of seeing black people as ‘one group’, you’d understand what an ignorant question this was.
Why do Eurocentrics claim Ethiopians Somalis and other East Africans are not Africans? (https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Eurocentrics-claim-Ethiopians-Somalis-and-other-East-Africans-are-not-Africans)
By: Françoise Marie
Because they don’t fit the Negro stereotype only being south of the Sahara created by the worst enslavers of Blacks in order to get rid of feelings of inferiority towards the most powerful Blacks in world history : the African Moors; Nilotic Egyptians and Kushite Horners. Eurocentrism is based on a false sense of superiority. The Moors, the Egyptians, the Kushites must be de-blackened to prove that Whites were always superior to Blacks. None of them should be black people.
A Negro is not only a stereotype but also a caricature.
Who wants to be a Negro?
Who wants to be related to Negroes?
“Negroes” are the true Africans; others are “brown Caucasoids” of Africa (Kushite Horners) closer to Whites and Semites than “Africans”. Kushite Horners were reclassified from Ethiopoids to “brown Caucasoids”. However, Kush refers to a land inhabited by Blacks. Kushites are the Ethiopians of the Bible. Can an Ethiopian change his skin?
Negroes are Eurocentric creations. They only live in the minds of racist Whites.
The Negroid race, the race of Negroes, is a totally fabricated race.
The so-called Negroid traits are also found among some Native Americans (Olmec), Hawaiians, Polynesians and South East Asians. None of them are categorized as Negroids let alone Blacks. The Melanesians, the Blacks of the Asian Islands, are not called Negroes.
Only Sub-Saharans are Negroes. Why?
Because of black slavery and the Scramble for Africa.
A Negro is detribalized African slave from Africa south of the Sahara.
A Negro is an uncivilized African from Africa south of the Sahara.
The Blacks of the Asian Islands are called Melanesians.
…………………………
African Moors, Nilotic Egyptians, Kushite Horners are not Negroes. They wrote the most brilliant chapters of African history (Golden Age of the Moors, splendor of ancient Egypt, Axum, etc.).
African Moors were described as black as night, as black as cooking pans, as black as Nubians for the great heat of the sun.
http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/M/MAU/mauretania.html
Mauretania, or Maurusia, as it was called by Greek writers, unquestionably signified the land of the Mauri, a term still retained in the modern name of Moors, and probably meaning originally nothing but “black men.”
Responce To “Are Somali people Caucasians with black skin?” (https://www.quora.com/Are-Somali-people-Caucasians-with-black-skin)
By: Devin Tomas’
This question requires a long response and I need to tear down some common misunderstandings, so disclaimer, this is going to be long. So if you are reading and disagree, make sure you read till the end and look at the research articles I have posted so you do not ask a question I have already answered.
SKULL CLASSIFICATIONS:
Caucasian is a misnomer just like Negroid and Mongoloid based off of a German pseudo scientist from a couple centuries ago. He looked at a couple of skulls and assumed he could determine all peoples(yes all 7 billion of us on multiple continents) ancestries based off of the few skull shapes he saw, which is what people are really talking about, because they know they can not use actual genetics to prove the existence of a Caucasian race, so they resort to skull classifications. This is despite when you look at a skull it tells you absolutely nothing about the tissue or fat composition on that persons face, what their hair looked like, their skin color, the thickness of said skin or muscles that lie underneath, what color eyes etc. Can you argue the shape of a Caucasian skull exists? Yes. but it is not confined by a racial group or the “Caucasian” race, because it is not exclusive to them as if they alone own it, nor do all people within the “Caucasian” race have so called Caucasian skulls. Just like skinny limbs exist but are not confined to one racial group or gene. And what people try to do is argue that because a population has a Caucasian or Negroid skull feature, they MUST have it from admixture from one of the only three main and exclusive “Pure races of man”.
This hierarchy was created because skull shape was assumed to regulate varying levels of intelligence, even though now we know it is not the size of a brain that determines intelligence, or that there is even a one size fits all for a “race”. This idea assumes that there were clearly defined and separate races throughout man’s history and that if any population does not fit into this dichotomy perfectly it is a mongrel breed of the three in some capacity. This view is entirely wrong because not only does it incorrectly assume at one point there were three entirely separate and very different humans that only came about and their homelands and spread elsewhere(like a Negroid, Caucasian and Mongoloid homeland), but also because humans have never been so separate that we formed genetic races the way we view them. We formed certain demographic clines yes, and I am not denying that certain physical traits show up in certain regions, this is likely because of genetic drift. But that is not limited to a “race” or continent and there is even more difference within a “race” than between them and that is because there is no gene or commonality between large swathes of people that number in the billions.
For instance there is a stereotype that Africans are just naturally faster or better at distance running than most other races. But if you take a Cameroonian man whose ancestors have historically been sedentary fishermen and farmers in low elevations and put him in a marathon race against a Kenyan man whose ancestors lived in higher altitudes and have longer frames, or even a Nepali man who also lives in higher altitudes, the Cameroonian guy would likely get smoked by both, yet both the Cameroonian and Kenyan are “Negro” and the Nepali is “Mongoloid”, yet racial theory assumes both the negros naturally have a predisposition to higher speed or better endurance running. In terms of Europeans, did you know at one time Irish and Iberian people were classified as being descended from some kind of ancient Negro race? They barely made it to being white if even that, even though today we know Irish people are probably some of the whitest people in Europe with no genes that cluster with other “Negros”, yet today no one would call an Irishman Negro.
This was created during a time when Irish and Iberians were seen in a negative light by English, French and German people which tells you there is a political motive behind these classifications and that they are not clearly defined and always changing to suit the times. Basically with Caucasians on the top of the hierarchy all or mostly beautiful with the same features and most intelligent, meanwhile Negros are the bottom of the barrel, ugly and unintelligent with no redeeming qualities. Not only does this assume that “Negroid” features are inherently ugly or that they are just genetically stupid, but that Caucasian ones are beautiful and inherently intelligent, when you can find attractive and unattractive, smart and not so much in either of the two.
This theory also does not take into account that something called convergent evolution can and has occurred in both human and nonhuman history multiple times for various reasons. What is convergent evolution? It is where two different populations or species that are not related evolve to show the same traits. For instance, fish evolved to have fins, yet dolphins which are mammals, also have fins. Do they have a recent common ancestor? No, they do not, but because they are in a similar environment, the pressures of said environment caused a certain trait to become prevalent in both unrelated species. This can be because of sexual selection, random mutations, or how certain populations live in similar regions of the world and therefore develop similarly but are not related at all.
For instance what race do you think these people are? Where are they from? Negros from Africa right? Maybe Tanzania or South Sudan?
[See link for Photos: https://www.quora.com/Are-Somali-people-Caucasians-with-black-skin/answer/Devin-Tomas-1 ]
— They actually are from the Sentinal islands not too far from India. They are extremely distant from the Africans who are stereotyped as Negro and have formed an isolated community genetically. They have the same chromosomal haplogroups and genes with people who were apart of the out of Africa migration. Yet if you met one you would assume they are from South Sudan or the DRC.
What about these people? Their blond hair MUST be because of European admixture right? Actually no, the gene that is responsible for blond hair in the solomon islander population is entirely different than the one responsible in Europe as they have no relation to them. And btw they are not similar to Africans either and are genetically distant from them as well even though they have dark skin and afros. —
— And this guy kind of looks Somali right? Those loose curls and blondish brown curly hair. Is he Somali? Or maybe a mixture of Caucasian and Negro? Actually he is also a Solomon Islander, again an extremely isolated population of people who have nothing to do with either Africans or Europeans for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years and cluster with other islanders around them .—
— Or what about the Ainu of Japan? They look “Caucasian”, yet their dna has nothing to do with people from the Near East or Europe and it clusters mostly with themselves or other Asians, yet they don’t display stereotypic “Mongoloid” features. —
— Interestingly on stormfront, a white supremacists website, they are still arguing over whether or not Irish people are descended from Negros because they apparently display prognathism(Supposedly an exclusively Negroid trait that every single African descendant below the Sahara has where the jaw protrudes past the coronal plane of the skull) and used these guys to show or argue they have some ancient negroid dna. This is essentially the same argument from the first picture I showed. —
— These women are also from the solomon islands but if I did not tell you that you would think they are “Negros”, who are only supposed to be in Africa, and I bet you assume they are maybe African American or West or Central African. —
— What about these people below? Are they “Negro or African? I mean it looks like the baby is holding an Afro pick hence the long teeth in the combs right? They are actually from a population of people called Negritos and are indigenous to the Philippines. Are they a mixture of Africans and someone else? They again are extremely distant from Africans and cluster with other islanders or Asians in the region. —
— What about Australian aboriginal people? They have large noses and lips, round faces, but straight hair, they must be a mix of Negros and Caucasians right? Actually they are probably the most distant population from Africans as they were a part of the first smaller migration out of Africa. —
Now you could argue that maybe some of these features for the “Negroid” looking people are left over from Africa, but my point is, these are all very different populations who are extremely distant from Africans and each other, more distant than many “Caucasian” people. Meaning Africans or people frequently called Negro are more related to Europeans than they are to them, these other “Negros”. So genetically Caucasians are closer to African Negroids than these other Negroids. Yet these non African Negroids still look stereotypically “Negroid” like Africans are supposed to be. What I am trying to get you to see, is that very different populations can have the same features apart from admixture because of convergent evolution. These Negroid features do indeed exist, but they are not limited to Africans, nor do all Negroid features look exactly the same.
GENETIC DRIFT:
Now another possibility which is big is something called population bottlenecks or founder affects from genetic drifts. I want you to pay attention here because this will piece the puzzle together as I go deeper into population migrations later. Basically as populations move from their source, their genetic variance decreases and certain genes from the old population become more prevalent and/ or amplified in the new population, but the overall diversity is decreased compared to the parent population. In terms of humans this is crucial when we talk about out of Africa migrations in terms of the founder effect as we know much of the world was populated from a small population of humans who left Africa from East Africa. This is also how scientist know genetically humans began in Africa because the further you move from Africa the less diverse it gets. Can you guess what peoples are the least genetically diverse? It is Native Americans, because the Americas were populated last and by a small group of people from Asia. This also means there was not as much time for them to diversify as their Asian ancestors, yet both Asians and Native Americans are less diverse than Africans.
Basically how it works, is that as populations migrate, all of the people or genes do not come with them as they found a new population because only a few people venture away. Only certain genes are brought along. In the example below, the original population had red and orange beetles, yet mostly red beetles left and because of the fact there are more red beetles and even sprinkle in some allele frequency randomness and maybe dominant or recessive alleles, only the red traits show up in the new populations. So what I am saying, is that it is likely these less curly haired and thinned nose out of African migrants likely had both Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid features as all can be found in Africa, but for whatever reason, the Caucasian or Mongoloid features overtime became more prominent in specific areas while the other ones were left behind or became far less common.
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— Now a population bottleneck is when a population experiences a sudden dip in its overall population which means fewer traits are available in reproduction. This can be from predation, environmental catastrophe, famines, droughts etc. This greatly decreases the diversity of the said population. This likely happened within and outside of Africa. However, the combination of this and the founder affect likely means out of Africa became even less diverse, and we can see that. Now it could also be affected by the fact that some traits are more favorable, and it is likely as humans left Africa and got closer to ice caps and new environments we had to adapt to, only those who had genes which were more suitable for this new environment (our ancestors were not used to as we evolved in the savannah of Africa), survived to reproduce affectively breeding out genes that did not produce viable offspring causing even less diversity and causing certain traits to become magnified or more common. Maybe dark skin becoming less common in populations that did not get enough vitamin D in their diets and their limited sunlight, so their skin lightened slightly to get it from the smaller amounts of sunlight and then over time only their genes survived and reproduced with each other causing it to become more common hence dark skin becomes light skin and then white skin over generations, though diet may have also been a cause. It could also work in the reverse. A modern day white population could easily become black thousands of years from now. Or it could be as we left, new predators made it difficult for us to survive and certain humans were picked off decreasing the diversity even more. Or maybe a random earthquake or volcanic eruption devastated the human population decreasing the diversity. —
— The point is, both of these happened as we left Africa, so certain traits that were simply just one amongst many in Africa became amplified as we left to populate the world. These non African populations with reduced variants and a smaller sub set of genes, reproduced with themselves causing certain traits to become more and more common and even amplified as time went on. The new populations could very well develop new mutations not seen in the parent populations as well, but they would still be simply a subset of what was given to them from their parent population.
Let me give you a real world example, showing you how this works and how to identify if a trait is from genetic drift or from a new mutation.
There is a population of rabbits that have lived within a forest, swamp and grassland that are relatively close to each other for the past 2000 years, called region 1. They have fur colors ranging from black, brown, white, gray, stripped and spotted, most of which have bushy long furred appearance, with a few having short fur. Strangely enough, short fur seems to be predominately common, but not limited to, the gray rabbits, but long fur is still most prevalent among the entire rabbit population. These different colors and fur lengths may help them blend in with the environment in different seasons or times of the day each having their own usefulness hence why it is still present in the genome as natural selection has found it beneficial. Or maybe they help with mate selection. Regardless, there is a diverse range of furs that can produced within the population. —
One day the rabbit population explodes, and they leave their native habitat and begin to move onto a drier area with less vegetation called region 2. However, the rabbits who leave are largely composed of the brown, black, and white rabbits meaning the gray, stripped and spotted rabbits were left behind (Founder Effect). In this new population, the primary rabbits you would find are the colors that came, with the previous colors maybe springing up every once in a while but will fizzle out if not found useful. In other words their population is less diverse. In this new environment, due to the color of the soil and the lack of snow fall, white rabbits begin to get picked off by predators as they are more visible and have a harder time blending in the surrounding environment. A local flood also occurs exacerbating the problem even more causing rabbits of all kinds to die, but because before the flood there was already a decrease in white rabbits, now only the brown and black rabbits remain (Population Bottleneck). Over time in this new hot environment, the black and brown rabbits, who came from a population that preferred long fur, begin to show a new trait of preferring significantly shorter fur due to the heat of the region. This is strange, because previously brown and black rabbits preferred long fur(though short fur was rare), but the ones in region 2 now have short fur, like the gray rabbits they left behind in the original migration from region 1. Now the region only has brown and black short furred rabbits, somewhat different from their long haired cousins in region 1, sharing one phenotypic trait but not the other. Eventually spotted black and brown short haired rabbits show up, never before seen in any significant number in the rabbit population. Some of them even had blue eyes, which was found to be linked to a specific mutation only found in region 2.
A biologist begins to survey region 2 and notices that there are more brown rabbits in the over all population in region 2 than in region 1. He also notices that short fur is more common in the overall population of region 2 than in region 1. Where did short fur and brown fur originate? The answer is both originated in region 1, even though both are more common in region 2. Genetic drift and natural selection made them more common due to the available genetic pool and preferred traits. Someone might argue, that region 1 had gray rabbits that preferred short fur unlike all the other rabbits, and therefore the short fur in region 2, MUST come from the gray rabbits. What that person would be forgetting, is that short fur, was not exclusive to the gray rabbits even in region 1, and still showed up in other colors, in smaller amounts because there was more of a variance in the parent population. The brown and black rabbits developed shirt fur without ever having to mix with gray rabbits. There were also no environmental pressures that selected for short fur in region 1 the way it did in 2. If we wanted to go even further, there is a common ancestor of all rabbits in region 1, that short fur originated with, so we can say short fur predates modern region 1 and modern region 2, but is linked to an ancient region 1, even if it is common in a modern region 2. for our purposes, what we identify as Caucasian features, predate modern African people and out of African people, but is linked to an ancient African precursor, even if it is more common in non Africans.
He also notices that there are spotted black and brown rabbits in region 2. Where did spotted fur originate? Well, spotted fur is not new, as it was present in region 1, but the specific spotted gray and black fur, is new. Is it a result of a new genetic mutation? Or is this just the result of a mixture of the less amplified sub set of genes already present from the parent population that came about due to the new circumstances? It would be hard to tell, and further interrogation would be needed, but it is likely the answer is the smaller sub set of genes allowed a new combination that was not as prevalent or seen before, yet, all the traits are not new.
Finally, he notices that blue eyes are not found in region 1, or even in solid brown or black rabbits in region 2. It is exclusively found among spotted rabbits in region 2. Where did the blue eyes originate? The answer is, since we know the specific mutation and it is exclusive to the brown and black rabbits spotted, never before seen, it is a new trait, not associated with the parent population or even those around them. However, it could be, that white rabbits in region 1, eventually develop blue eyes as well. This mutation would be separate from the brown and black spotted rabbits in region 2 who would not be closely related to each other, yet they show the same phenotypic trait that arose under different selective pressures.
I am sure that was all very confusing, but that is the piece work geneticist have to do. it is not as simple as these people look similar, they must be related. When we talk about Africa, many of the traits we associate with non African people, have an ancient presence in Africa, but are not as noticeable because there is more variance within Africa and nothing selected them to become preferred over others. Certain traits within Africa also became more prevalent in certain regions for many reasons, as even Africans have changed over time, yet they still show overwhelming diversity compared to the rest of the world having traces of precursors for all people. In our case, Africans are all the rabbits in region 1, non Africans are the rabbits in region 2, short fur would be “Caucasian” features, and blue eyes would be specific genes that are only associated with non Africans.
GENOTYPIC/ PHENOTYPIC DIVERSITY IN ANCIENT AFRICA:
Here is one map of migrations into and out of Africa. Notice how all the migrations out of Africa are from one source, East Africa or more specifically the horn or the north eastern part. This means, the non Africans will have been affected by the founder effect of East Africans as only some of them from that one region left. So what I am trying to say, it is very possible this “Caucasian” look is just another African look already present that was simply effected by genetic drift, especially since we can find these features in other africans who are from regions that have been stereotyped to be Negro yet have non “Caucasian” DNA
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— Look at this woman, is she Caucasian? She is from the Igbo people in Nigeria, many of which were taken in the transatlantic slave trade. I have significant Igbo ancestry and I am a descendant of slaves, yet no one has confused me for a Caucasian, ever —
— What about this woman, a Bambara from Sierra Leone, yet many were taken in the transatlantic slave trade. —
— What about this Bamileke man from Cameroon? — , — Fula woman from West Africa —
— Prince Abdul Rahman was a fulani prince taken to the new world. His ethnic group in West Africa is very diverse and settle in various different regions. Yet, his people were “Negroid” enough to be taken into the same slave trade with Bakongo, Mande and the like and many African Americans, myself included, have a decent amount of Fula ancestry. —
— Kanuri from Niger and Nigeria —
— They do not have huge lips, pitch black skin, round flat noses, round heads or anything of the sort, yet their Y chromsomal DNA of E1b1a is purely “Negroid”, their mtDNA is of the variants L which is “Negroid”.
What about these people below? They are from the darkest nilotic populations on the planet but you can see high cheek bones and small lips that do not jut out Their hair is also not as kinky as what you would find in certain west african populations. Yet at first glance you would call them Negro. I mean seriously though, if you were to use a program and make their skin white and hide their hair most people would think they are from somewhere in Eurasia. Not only that, but they have Haplogroups that are far older than “Caucasian” people, haplogroups such as B, the second oldest surviving macrofamily of the Y chromosome predominate in the Nilotic populations, and this haplogroup predates any Eurasian haplogroup by far. Yet they display what you would call Caucasian bone structure —
— Or what about the collective groups of Southern African peoples who speak languages collectively known as Khoisan? Sure I have seen SOME DNA studies that do not represent literally every Khoi or San person, about certain sub groups within the KhoiKhoi or San populations, say they have a very small amount of Eurasian DNA, even though their basal lineages of A are some of the oldest ones that predate Eurasians and even most other Africans. Certain groups such as the Kung! display this look and carry no Eurasian DNA whatsoever, so this look can not be explained from admixture. Their DNA is even older than B in the Nilotic people I mentioned in the paragraph above, yet those that have that autosomal DNA is not from south East Asia, where the typical “Mongoloid” look(squinty eyes, flat faces) is supposed to dominate. It is from the Near East(supposedly Caucasian), yet they frequently display mongoloid features. So their minority non African dna is from supposedly Caucasian people, with the rest being entirely African and no “Mongoloid DNA” whatsoever, yet they look Mongoloid and apart from their hair you could mistake for an east Asian. Sometimes I wonder to myself, if the East Asian look bottlenecked from these people. —
— Neither are these slanted eyes or epicanthic folds unique to the Khoisan, other Africans have these features too, it is just because they have darker skin, people tend to not associate it with a “non African” look. And again, none of these Africans have any detectable recent South East Asian ancestry. —
— Interestingly enough, the Hadza also carry some of the oldest haplogroups of humanity. So when people use the Khoisan as reference panel for what all the ancient humans looked like, I tell them to take a closer look, because the Hadza are darker and look quite different from the Khoisan. The Khoisan and Hadza are just some of the older groups that survived to today, that doesnt mean they were the only ones or we all directly descend from them as most people today are pretty divergent from them. This shows that even in prehistoric Africa, there were plenty of phenotypes that differed. Hadza below —
— Speaking of people who carry the oldest haplogroup lineages, Haplogroup A00, which was first found in an African American man was traced to West Africa in Cameroon to the Mbo people, goes back to over 300,000 years ago, and they generally look like your stereotypical Negro. Yet, they are not the only older lineages of man as A and B from the Khoisan and Nilotic people also exist, showing how there was significant diversity in even the first African populations. —
— Yet, most African males from west and central Africa today belong to haplogroups that are derivatives of E, which is much younger than A00, A or B which I previously mentioned, yet you would classify them all as the same or very similar because they all look “Negroid”
And finally, actual pictures of Somali people. What I have found interesting is that people tend to show only certain pictures of some Somalians such as the ones below [Image] —
— When they do indeed look this but they also act like all Somali people look the same and that the Somali people below do not exist. —
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Even in the pictures above if you look closely, you can find people with Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid features. Some of them look like west Africans and some of them do not. And some west Africans look like them, some do not. Heck some of them do not really look like any of the three.
So I am saying these features are not “new” to Africa. They have been here all along. The problem is because they are more prevalent from being bottlenecked to other non african populations and people think that because of that anytime you see it another population it HAS to be from admixture because the other people own those features. I am saying although that is the case sometimes, it is likely not the case with Africa as we as a species spent a lot of time on the continent allowing us to develop a great deal of diversity before we left. Especially when you can find these features far away from the horn in people who are not related to horners. So even if back migrants came back to Africa, those features were not new to the region.
Now concerning Somalis and Horners, the assumption is that Somalis look the way they do because they are a mix of Negro and Caucasian or that they were Caucasians who simply moved into Africa and got darker. What I find interesting is the average African American is far more mixed then the average Somali with about 1 fifth to quarter European(Caucasian) DNA on average and the rest or about three fourths to 80 percent is African(Negro) from various regions in mostly west and central Africa, yet no one has ever called us Caucasian and people have gone out of their way to make sure we are classified as Negro, but Somalians who are more African than us(just not west or central African) are somehow Caucasian.
Nor do Somalis generally look like African Americans or even like biracial black people. The assumption is just because they do not have extremely curly hair or more slender frames or pitch black skin(even though most West/ Central Africans or descendants of slaves have various shades of brown to caramel skin, and you can find extremely dark somalis) that they can not be African or Negro(even though many populations dubbed “Negros” in west or central Africa display those looser curled or thinner framed features as well). The problem is people have this cookie cutter view of what an African is supposed to look or be like because of colonial thinking of how all Africans are the same. Sure there is a degree of similarity, but Africa is the oldest inhabited continent and we as a species have actually spent more time on it than outside of it, explaining why there is so much variance in Africa, not because of admixture, it is very possible these looser curls and thinner frames developed on the continent and spread elsewhere.
The average Somali DNA test I have seen(From companies that actually recognize the horn as its own genetic region as the horn is unfortunately a genetically underrepresented region in Africa for genetic companies because the most people who do dna test are south, west, central and north africans. DNA tests, like ancestry are not good for horn Africans to take because they do not even have reference samples from the horn, usually 23andme, Family tree or My heritage is better as they have representative samples from the horn, if not it is usually misread as south African or middle eastern) say they are almost entirely East African. See Somali DNA tests below.
On 23and me, my heritage and ancestry I as an African American, range from about 71 to 75 percent African with about half of my ancestry coming from West Africa and the other 25 percent African coming from North, East and South Africa in varying amounts as well as some very small amounts of Austronesian or Malay ancestry. The rest is European from the British isles. I even carry a West European Y chromosomal haplogroup R-L21, even though I am black or “Negro”. My mtDNA is from North Africa, U6a5, yet most of my autosomal DNA is from West Africa and below. I am more “mixed” than a Somalian, I even have visible cheek bones, yet no has ever called me or the ethnicity I belong to “Caucasian”. This shows the ridiculousness of this entire discussion and I sometimes wonder why we in the west still cling to these post colonial classifications.
NOTE: The strange east asian DNA could possibly be from malagasy ancestry. I have this also on multiple DNA tests as people from madagascar are an actual mixture of Bantu speaking and Austronesian peoples and Somalians were apart of the Swahili states who may have had contact with Madagascar as maritime travelers.
Not only do the Somalians cluster with other Cushitic or Horner people by and large and NOT with Arabs, Levantine people or even other non Cushitic Africans such as Bantu, Niger Congo Speakers or North Africans( I saw some guy above say they cluster with Arabs with no evidence, people just say that because it is assumed since Somalians are Muslim and do not look like a stereotypical Bantu), they also display by and large indigenous African DNA.
See chart below. I saw a guy above use this same chart to somehow argue they are mixed with Arabs when it does not even reflect that. The article did indeed say there was ancient back migration into Africa, but this was not a significant enough impact to change the indigenous African haplogroups and DNA (A, B, E for YDNA and M, L for mtDNA). And, we do not know what these back migrants necessarily looked like or what their entire genetic code looked like. To use modern Levantine or Arabic populations as a living proxy for ancient migrants back into Africa is extremely disingenuous precisely because those populations have undergone many mutations with the advent of things like agriculture, pastoralism and more. The Blue triangles which are the horners are clustering with each other and other sub saharans more so than the people outside of Africa, who all cluster with each other.
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— Another study showing horn Africans cluster with themselves and other Africans, not Eurasians, Levantine people or even North Africans. —
— On a side note, interestingly enough, the Fulani and Maasai are both “Negroid” people with one being a literal Niger-Congo speaker from west Africa ho were taken on the TA save trade and the other a Nilotic speaker from East Africa and the Sahara, yet see horner africans clustering between them and North Africans, and even still more so with each the other. It is also interesting to see how when there is overlap, it is with primarily other sub saharan Africans and to a smaller degree North Africans(notice the left blue triangles which equals horners cluster around the gray squares or sub saharan populations and how some of the Somalians are more sub saharan or supposedly Negro than the actual Negros such as Fulani and Maasai, supposedly Negroid people). Only a very small amount of non African Arabs(light blue diamonds) cluster with Horners, especially when compared with other Africans. Yet even still most of the Cushites cluster with each other and most of the Arabs cluster with other non Africans. And also notice how all the non Africans cluster on the same side of the chart closer to each other in the same general region while it is more spread out as you get closer to the African side, this is essentially showing a population bottleneck as you get further away from Africans. This also shows how horn and north africans are the bridge between sub saharan and non africans.
Another good example is that most Somalians belong to Y chromosomal Macrogroup E and more specifically a subclade known as haplogroup E1b1b. The Y chromosome is passed down from fathers to son from generation to generation, unchanged in the genetic reshuffling during meiosis of the autosomal DNA, useful for telling us migration patterns. Macrogroup E is most common in Africa by far.
However, concerning Macrogroup Haplogroup E, some have argued E is from a back migration into Africa, as subclades of its progenitor DE, can be found in both African and Asian individuals in people from places like Nigeria and Tibet, yet strangely enough it is not found anywhere in between those regions such as the Near East or central Asia. DE gave rise to haplogroup D, which is most common in East Asia, and E which is most common in Africa. It has been proposed by some genealogist that because of certain basal markers being in Asia alone that DE is Asian in origin. Because of this, many have argued that this points to the non African origin of Somalis even more. But if that is the case, E is the most common macro haplogroup not just in the horn but all of Africa; “Negro” Africans also belong to E, just a different subclade, many of which are older than the Somali ones. So you could just as easily argue Negros or west, central and southern Africans are supposedly “Caucasian”. Yet, in the past genealogists have not been able to agree on the origin of DE, as certain basal lineages have also been found in Africa, making DE an enigma as its immediate descendants D and E are very spread out and have the YAP mutation that DE does not have, making it difficult to ascertain as to whether it originated in Africa or Asia. What is clear however, is that carriers of DE, D and E did indeed leave Africa at one point as it can be found outside Africa. Below are the two assumed models based on certain studies. —
However, in 2019 a new study was released the seems to put the case to bed and provide new insights to the ancient migratory patterns of man and more specifically DE. Nigerian men who were initially deemed to belong to haplogroup D, had their DNA reanalyzed and were found to have a separate and unique deep rooted branch of DE dubbed D0.
“HUMANS outside Africa derive most of their genetic ancestry from a single migration event 50,000–70,000 years ago, according to the current model supported by genetic data from genome-wide (Mallick et al. 2016; Pagani et al. 2016), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) (van Oven and Kayser 2009), and Y-chromosomal (Wei et al. 2013; Hallast et al.2015; Karmin et al. 2015; Poznik et al. 2016) analyses. The migrating population carried only a small subset of African genetic diversity, particularly strikingly for the nonrecombining mtDNA and Y chromosome where robust calibrated high-resolution phylogenies can be constructed, and in each case all non-African lineages descend from a single African lineage, L3 for mtDNA or CT-M168 for the Y chromosome. Yet there has been a long-running debate about the early spread of Y-chromosomal lineages because their current distributions do not fit a simple phylogeographical model………………
In conclusion, sequencing of the D0 Y chromosomes and placement of them on a calibrated Y-chromosomal phylogeny identify the most likely model of Y-chromosomal exit from Africa: an origin of the DE lineage inside Africa and expansion out of the C, D, and FT lineages. It suggests an exit time interval that overlaps with the time of Neanderthal admixture estimated from autosomal analyses, and slightly refines it. These findings are consistent with a shared history of Y chromosomes and autosomes, and illustrate how study of Y lineages may lead to general new insights.”
The first paragraph even mentions how most non Africans derive their lineages from a small subset of Africans which for the male line is CT primarily and the female line is L3(I will talk about the female lines later). This again points to a founder affect and population bottleneck as humans left Africa. Both CT and L3 are African haplogroups, but they have specific haplogroups subclades that were responsible for leaving Africa and gave rise to other non African haplogroups, where as others such as A or B for males or L0, L1, L2, L4, L5 and L6 never left Africa in significant amounts.
In the conclusion of the paper after analyzing the data, they reached the verdict that DE, based off this new discovery of D0 in Nigerian samples, is African in origin, meaning that E, D, FT, C and all have an initial African origin. This subsequently means that by default E1b1b is of African origin. In the graph below, the further you go clockwise, the younger the haplogroups get. Notice how they placed D and D0 older than E.
Now, concerning E1B1B distribution which Somalis have the most, notice how it peaks and is most common in the horn, even though it can be found outside of Africa. Most studies I have seen say Somalians are about 80 percent E1B1B
A minority of people say this haplogroup evolved outside of Africa, as a guy in another comment said to try to prove they somehow are not African as it can be found in pretty large amounts in certain places in Europe. But the vast majority of scholars I have seen say it originated in either the horn, or sometimes North Africa as it is most prevalent in those two regions, so basically even though this is not a sub saharan haplogroup, it is still indigenous to the African continent(and it can still be found in sub saharan populations). The argument for the non African origin of E1b1b to me is weak because it hinges on primarily the fact it can be found in trace amounts in certain European or Asian populations, and this is not even including the findings from YDNA D0. Yet if you look at the map, E1b1b is also found in South and parts of West Africa(Negroid peoples), so one can just as easily argue it is sub saharan on that premise. However it is likely it originated in the horn as you can tell it is most concentrated there more than anywhere else, and that it spread elsewhere becoming less common as it spread further away, almost like a raindrop losing its energy from the original point of force. And generally in biology where you a see a concentrated amount of a gene in one place, that is where it began as genetic drift causes it to become less common as you move from its source, though it can sometimes be from other factors.
Not only that but E1b1b has a brother haplogroup E1b1a which is common in “Negro” or sub saharan west and Central Africa, and both share a common ancestor, E1b1 which also arose in Africa as E is an African Haplogroup. This is also why I tend to agree with most genealogists who say it likely originated in Africa and potentially even sub saharan Africa, because its living brother is sub saharan or “Negroid” and both its brother and itself also have a sub saharan or “Negroid” immediate ancestor(NOTE: I am only using Negroid because people think sub saharan means negroid and I am using what is familiar to destroy misconceptions, I hate the term Negroid, we aren’t freaking aliens or Cybertronians from the Transformers franchise)
— Besides YDNA, passed from fathers to son exclusively, we also have mtDNA, passed from mothers to all children. The oldest mtDNA is L0, dubbed mitochondria Eve. Because of this, most Africans belong to haplogroups of mtDNA that belong to L such as L0, L1, L2, L3, L4, L5 and L6. In terms of the mitochondria dna, passed down from mothers to children, Somalians carry about 60 percent of specifically sub saharan African lineages diverged from L. M and N is also common in the horn and in out of Africa populations in a way it isnt in other African populations, but this makes sense, as we know those who left Africa will by default have more in common with East Africans than any other Africans. M and L are descendants of L3, only one of the many African mtDNA haplogroups, and therefore is the progenitor for non African mtDNA. Scholars do not agree on whether or not it developed on the African continent or outside, as it is common in both places, but to me it is irrelevant in this case because regardless it is essentially a bottle-necked portion and first descendant of L that can be found outside of Africa. And since it is the first descendant out of Africa, it is not likely the stereotypical “Caucasian” features became as prevalent as say the ones that arose in Anatolia that had been through multiple founder effects tens of thousands of years later, so again we do not know if the M and L people really differed from each other all that much. When a new haplogroup arises, it is a random genotypic and not phenotypic mutation marker, and visible changes from the parent marker dont become apparent until thousands of years if even that. If my ydna mutated and become different from my father making me the first carrier of that marker, I still very much look like I belong to the same ethnic group of my parents who are both African American. Could a descendant thousands of years later look different from us? Sure, but also maybe not. It should also be noted, that mtdna M has been found in certain areas of west and central Africa just in small portions, yet they all look no different from the L carrying populace around them. —
— The image below shows the distribution of the major haplogroups of the world for mtDNA(It is important to also recognize this is not Y chromosomal haplogroups, so B in YDNA is not the same B in mtDNA, the B I mentioned earlier is not the same as the B here). Notice how M and L are both found in Africa including the horn(parent populations), with M being primarily in the horn and also found outside, but L was left behind and M alone left Africa. I forgot to also mention, all the other non L haplogroups you see on this map, literally every single one outside of Africa: N, T, U, X, V, W, B etc. are descended from M and M alone, essentially meaning that M was the founder effect population and left behind all the Ls. This decreased the variance, meaning some of those people were left behind, or if they did come, because of the founder effect, became far less frequent. So really all non Africans have to work with, is what was given to them from their M ancestors, and they would not have the variance from L or even M. —
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The quote below speaks of the Somali haplogroups.
Forensic and phylogeographic characterisation of mtDNA lineages from Somalia.
“The majority (60.5 %) of the haplotypes were of sub-Saharan origin with L0a1d, L2a1h and L3f being the most frequently observed haplogroups. This is in sharp contrast to previous data reported from the Y-chromosome, where only about 5 % of the observed haplogroups were of sub-Saharan provenance. We compared the genetic distances based on population pairwise F (st) values between 11 published East, Central and North African as well as western Asian populations and the Somali sequences and displayed them in a multi-dimensional scaling plot. Genetic proximity evidenced by clustering roughly reflected the relative geographic location of the populations.”
I think it is interesting they say genetic proximity clustered relative geographic location, essentially saying the further you move away the less they cluster, which again points genetic drift all the more. It is also interesting to note, that most of their lineages are sub saharan African or L0 through L3. However I have to say what also bothers me is that just because something is not in subsaharan Africa DOES NOT MEAN IT DID NOT DEVELOP IN AFRICA. Just because something arose in North Africa, the Sahara, the Nile, or the Horn does not make it any less African. I hate how people use sub saharan as a synonym for “black Africa” because there are indigenous black Africans in and above the Sahara. Now it is true, that certain Africans especially in the north along the coastlines are descended from primarily from back migrants whose haplogroups came from outside Africa to North Africa(Berbers typically, but more specifically from Morocco, for instance have the same indigenous haplogroup as horners but their females lineages are all over the place. But there are berbers in Algeria or Tunisia that have significant non African haplogroups for both sides), Somalians and other horners are mostly derived from African lineages, and even these non african lineages are more ancient than what we think of as Caucasians ever became a significant thing.
Yes the horners may carry some ancient dna from outside of Africa, and there are a small minority of tribes in east Africa that historically have recent mixed ancestry, but by and large the vast majority of horners are not mixed by the standards we use today. If we go by the standards of mixture for ancient admixture, then every African is mixed. It is presumptuous, to assume that horn africans look the way do entirely or even mostly because of admixture, especially when you have people who are not horn African with similar traits. As I mentioned that African Americans are more mixed than the average Somali. About 1 third of African American men even carry a Western European haplogroup, while Somalis have a purely African y chromosomal haplogroup, yet we still by and large are said to be Negroid in features and have been classified as such. Somalis are assumed to be a mixture of Negroid and Caucasian as many African Americans are, yet we do not look Somali, which to me shows a double standard about how and when people are classified as Caucasian when it is convenient for certain socio political reasons.
ANCIENT EURASIANS:
So let me get to the part where there is some contention. I am not denying it is true that thousands of years ago, Eurasians, simply meaning humans who inhabited the Eurasian continent, migrated back into Africa in different waves for various reasons(Migration back to Africa took place during the Palaeolithic: International research has retrieved mitogenome of a fossil belonging to the first Homo sapiens population in Europe). Even I as an African American carry a mtDNA of one of these migrations associated with North Africa, U6a5, but interestingly enough, my ancestors were “Negroid” people from Nigeria. How can this be? Here is a clue, the ancient Eurasians who migrated back into Africa 10 to 30 thousand years ago, did not look like your typical present day Eurasian, so much so many of them diverged into the phenotypic look for current African populations. Nor is there a mutation that can be specifically pinpointed to Eurasian populations that gave rise to the so called Caucasian phenotype. What likely happened, is modern day carriers of this proto-Eurasian DNA, have diverged from their ancestors as ALL humans have, with some of them becoming modern day Eurasians, and others becoming modern day Cushites, yet both would have been different from their parent populations.
Jay Rob left an interesting link under one of my comments and I would like to give him credit for it. The study he found is getting at exactly what I am saying. Basically, that this supposed Caucasian look was already present in Africa and later diverged into somewhat different forms in Eurasia and the Horn, but this does not mean that it is due to admixture.
“These studies suggest a recent and primary subdivision between African and non-African populations, high levels of divergence among African populations, and a recent shared common ancestry of non-African populations, from a population originating in Africa. The intermediate position, between African and non-African populations, that the Ethiopian Jews and Somalis occupy in the PCA plot also has been observed in other genetic studies (Ritte et al. 1993; Passarino et al. 1998) and could be due either to shared common ancestry or to recent gene flow. The fact that the Ethiopians and Somalis have a subset of the sub-Saharan African haplotype diversity — and that the non-African populations have a subset of the diversity present in Ethiopians and Somalis — makes simple-admixture models less likely; rather, these observations support the hypothesis proposed by other nuclear-genetic studies (Tishkoff et al. 1996a, 1998a, 1998b; Kidd et al. 1998) — that populations in northeastern Africa may have diverged from those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa early in the history of modern African populations and that a subset of this northeastern-African population migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the globe. These conclusions are supported by recent mtDNA analysis (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999)……
“are thought to be found in high numbers in Ethiopia either as a result of substantial gene flow into Ethiopia from Eurasia (Chen et al., 2000; Richards et al., 2003), or as a result of having undergone several branching events in demic diffusion, acting as founder lineages for non-African populations”. The researchers further found no association between regional origin of subjects or language family (Semitic/Cushitic) and their mitochondrial type:
Short Tandem-Repeat Polymorphism/Alu Haplotype Variation at the PLAT Locus: Implications for Modern Human OriginsThis study concludes, that admixture models are less likely and that North East African genetics are a result of demic and local fusions within those regions opposed to to other African regions, that later went onto colonize the rest of the world. As you can see, it is not clear if what is seen as south west Asian genetics truly originated in South West Asia or Africa. It is very probable, that these genes now commonly associated with non African populations developed within Africa as a subset of African genes, but later became more prominent outside of Africa due to genetic drift. What IS clear, however, is that present day people, within and outside of Africa have changed from what their ancestors looked like, with those who ventured outside of Africa likely changing even more so due to genetic drift and our species leaving our niche of the savannahs. And those same people who ventured outside of Africa would not have been classified as “white” or “arab” because modern day race classifications and the presumptions that go with them can not be applied to ancient populations, not until thousands of years of genetic drift leading up to today. We are still changing to this day as a matter of fact.
The best evidence for this is in the Maghreb. The earliest known ancestors of Moroccans are said to be related to the Natufian hunter gatherers who came from the Levant and Southwest Asia sometime around 10,000 BCE and another Neolithic culture that came around 6500 BCE. Around 3000 BCE, we start to see Iberian influence from Europe in these populations. Yet, we know from various studies, that ancient Mesolithic Eurasians especially before agriculture were deeply pigmented. Analysis of Natufian remains show they lacked the genes most responsible for depigmentation in human skin color which are SLC24A5 (rs1426654), SLC45A2 (rs16891982), and OCA2 (rs1800401 and 12913832).
One study, tested two locations with salvageable DNA from North Africa, Ifri n’Amr or Moussa(IMA) which was dated to 5000 BCE. The DNA from this region showed relations to the Levant as with the Natufian populations that can be seen today in Berber populations. The second was Kelif el Boroud (KEB) which was 3000 BCE, still showed relations to the previous populations but now with Iberian input. This is what else they found:
Lastly, although limited by low coverage, phenotypic predictions based on genetic variants of known effects agree with our estimates of global ancestry. IAM people did not possess any of the European SNPs associated with light pigmentation, and most likely had dark skin and eyes. IAM samples contain ancestral alleles for pigmentation-associated variants present in SLC24A5 (rs1426654), SLC45A2 (rs16891982), and OCA2 (rs1800401 and 12913832) genes. On the other hand, KEB individuals exhibit some European-derived alleles that predispose individuals to lighter skin and eye color, including those on genes SLC24A5 (rs1426654) and OCA2 (rs1800401) (SI Appendix, Supplementary Note 11).
Ancient genomes from North Africa evidence prehistoric migrations to the Maghreb from both the Levant and EuropeSo essentially, in North Africa, it was surmised, that they were dark skinned until about 3000 BCE with the introduction of European gene flow which had the depigmentation genes, even though they were primarily of Southwest Asian descent. But when is the proposed ancient significant back migration into Africa from South West Asia? Roughly around 10,000 years ago with the Natufians. This is long before the introduction of lighter skin complexions associated with non Africans, meaning, the ancient West Asian admixture in both North and East Africa did not change the skin color of the populations because they did not differ compared to the natives.
But wait I am not done, because many will say “Caucasian is bone structure not color”, as if bone structure actually means anything in terms of population genetics. Hold your horses, I am getting there. Facial reconstructions of a skull called Jericho man sometime around 9000 BCE from the Levant show an individual that looks like this
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Though I am no huge fan of facial reconstructions as I mentioned earlier, I will humor the idea for a second to use racial theorist logic against them. If we are to assume this is correct, it is not hard to see this man displays stereotypical “Negroid” features. Now lets piece this together with what we know about ancient Natufians concerning their skin color and this facial reconstruction. This man is said to have lived around 9000BCE, before the lighter skin in South West Asians would have developed, and he has Negroid features. Would he be Negroid? You tell me? If I darkened his skin to his actual complexion for people in his region at that time, he literally would look almost exactly like some people you can find in countries such as Nigeria or Congo. By our modern definitions he would be Negroid. But wait, he is west Asian, he isn’t a sub Saharan Negroid, how can this be? Because again, skull classifications especially of ancient populations and genetics are not correlative to the same as modern populations. And you know what is funny? This is not even absent in Eurasians today, you can find people with those same features in modern day populations, you just don’t recognize it because you are used to associating negroid features with dark skin and Africans.
— It should also be noted in Taforalt in eastern Morocco, the oldest known DNA analysis has shown that at this location 15,000 years ago, the people living in the area shared DNA that was 2/3 Natufian and 1/3 of a genetic mixed component of West and East Africans, with no European admixture which we can find in North Africans today. Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations
This also shows, there was an ancient presence of what we call sub saharan Africans in North Africa, and that therefore, black Africans are ALSO indigenous to North Africa, instead of being recent transplants via slavery. Not to mention, the Natufians who lived in North Africa, may have looked “Negroid”. Over time, they received European and other west asian gene flow from what we think of when we say modern Eurasians, likely starting around 3000 BCE continuing today. This can also be shown by the same study which shows Taforalt individuals lying somewhere between modern North Africans and modern sub saharan Africans. Interestingly enough, they are not too far off from Somali and Afar people via this graph. It is also interesting to see how modern North Africans cluster more with no Africans then their predecessors. —
So we know light skin developed fairly recent in human history and even more recently in south west asia and north Africa. We also know that Negroid features have also been present in both regions. But when did the Somali and North African YDNA of E1b1b originate? 26,000 years ago, far before we begin to see anything of what looked like your stereotypical modern “Caucasian”. Do not even get me started on how old the mtDNA of L3, M and N are.
We can even take ancient admixture in central and west Africa and apply the same. Look at this genetic map of R1b, which I have seen from different studies evolved in western asia and then spread to various places with certain portions of its descendants bottlenecking and becoming more common in Europe. It is normally a western European haplogroup. Yet genealogist started doing dna test on Cameroonians, Chadians and Nigerans and found it is also very common in many of these Africans who live in these regions.
Yet, look at what they look like, are these people Caucasian?
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Now as you can see, there is a great deal of variance between these different people, yet, people from all those countries are stereotyped as “negros’ so much so a lot of them were taken in the Trans Atlantic slave trade and I as an African American actually have ancestry from many of these groups. So what I am trying to get you to see, is just because you had a minority of ancient ancestry from the Near east, it does not mean that it significantly led to a change in looks, because we do not know what those ancient people looked like and even within the same haplogroup or genes you can have variance because there is no Caucasian or Negroid gene, these looks can show up for various unrelated reasons. Especially because you can not use modern people as a proxy for their ancestors who lived literally 20,000 years ago because people have changed significantly since then. Eurasian people 20,000 years ago would not like what you think of typically when you hear the word Caucasian.
Certain mutations such as blue eyes and white skin etc associated with Caucasians, we can pinpoint to a specific gene which did indeed evolve outside of Africa, but Somalis and horners do not have that at all(except in rare mutations that are out of the norm, blue eyes aren’t exclusive to east Africans as a mutation its found in west and central Africans too, but it is mutation that has not become normalized by the same gene as it did in Eurasia). The only thing supposedly “Caucasian” about them is their bone structure and hair texture. Neither have I seen one person point me to a gene that causes less curly hair or thinner frames that can be linked to non Africans the way we can do for blue eyes or one of these other “Caucasian” genes. As a matter of fact thinner bones is not even unique to Somalians, non Africans or horners. Many Nilotic people are extremely thin in bone structure and tall, as are many west Africans who live in the Sahelian regions and this is likely because all those regions are extremely hot and the bones thin to dissipate heat. I mean seriously, look at these maps of Africa. This is the second largest continent on the planet and our branch of the hominid species(homo sapien sapiens; compared to neanderthals, denisovans, homo erectus etc) is about 200,000 to 300,000 years old. We did not leave this continent until about 70,000 to 50,000 years ago or practically only a third of our entire run as a species at most, meaning we had at least 130,000 years to travel around and adapt on this continent, running into other ancient hominids, surviving through the various climate shifts, natural disasters and experimenting with new technologies such as proto agriculturalism, fishing, different hunting techniques, clothing etc. There is no way you can tell me with a straight face, you believe all Africans looked the same in a span of 130,000 years going through all these different climates and topographical regions. In the past 10,000 years, we have managed to look extremely different from each other, how much more over 100,000 years? By the time we left Africa, there was already an extreme diversity in looks and genes, as I showed you from the Nilotic, Hadza, Cushtic, Khoisan etc people who carry the oldest haplogroups of humanity.
Seriously look at how big this continent is, it is HUGE, it runs across the northern and southern hemispheres. And the climate, fauna and landscape has definitely changed a great deal over 200,000–300,000 years.
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In short, I think the real reason why Somalians look the way they do, or should I say non Africans look the way they do, is simply because east Africa is the route humans by and large left Africa, therefore, non Africans will have more in common with East Africans by default than other Africans. So it is not that Somalis look kind of like non Africans, its that non Africans look somewhat like Somali people. This does not mean that east Africans look the way they are because they are mixed, East Africa is strange in that its people cluster with themselves, different from other Africans and different from non Africans. It just means that the features or genes common there bottlenecked to out of African migrants, while the “Negro” genes and looks somewhat stayed behind, yet you can still find Negro looks in non Africans which may or not be related to the genes that cause negro looks in Africa. If the world was populated from west Africa into Europe and then the rest of the world, maybe it would be different, but honestly, maybe not. So essentially, non Africans have horner genes, not the other way around. Your question should be “Why do Non Africans look like horner Africans or Somalians” or “Do Caucasians look like White Somalians”, seeing how non Africans descended from a small group of people who left the region Somalians and other horn Africans currently inhabit today. The attempt to call Somalis Caucasian is left over Hamitic hypothesis colonial thinking that separated Africans into a hierarchy and consequently led to things such as the Rwandan genocide. Somalians are Somalians. They are not Bantu, the are not Arab, they are not mixed. They are black Africans who are Somali. The same goes for other Cushite Africans such as Ethiopians, Sudanese, certain Kenyans, Eritreans etc..
Responses to the statment “ SO East and North africans aren’t even REALLY african! (https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/so-east-and-north-africans-arent-even-really-african.632326/)
THIS WHITE TEACHER TEACHING MY AFRICAN HISTORY CLASS!!! Had the damn nerveeee!!!! He told me libyans algerians egyptians, Morrocans, people from chad, Northern people of niger and Mali arent even black or african that they are all arabs from arabia.
Then he had to the nerve to say ethiopians somalians, eritreans, kenyans, Sudanese, and Tanzanians arent black or african either because too many are mixed with arabs.
THE FXCK!!!???
So who is african in the diaspora? he said fulani nigerians are not black or originally african because they are mixed with berbers. He said the MOORS were arabs. So that means the ONLY real africans are some central africans and some west africans?seriously i cant stand this course, he didnt even major in africana studies, he a fxxcken history professor! No damn africana studies teacher wanted to teach in the winterm so everyone has to listen to him and his BULL!!!!”
—
My “mid-east politics” professor tried to say the same thing but I called him out immediately.
Me: do the people of those nations consider themselves non-African or is that a Western: thing?
Him: well…umm…that’s a good question…it’s “generally accepted”
: that they are considered to be more middle eastern because of their politics
: and culture.
In which ethnic group are Ethiopians placed: Negroid, Eastern Caucasian, or Mongoloid?
By Deidra Ramsey McIntyre, Founding Admin at Black People & Cryptocurrency:
Let’s address the flaws in the categories first. These terms are rooted in racist-based European created mythological categories. First, Negroid. There has never been an African nation nor ethnic group that called itself “Negroid” or even addressed themselves in relation to the color of their skin. This “Negroid” term actually has roots in Roman usage — Nigritae — and was specific to ethnic groups living along the Niger River. The term’s etymology itself had nothing to do with skin color but — as per the later Leo Africanus’ writings — had to do with adapting a name in use by the Tuareg that referred to what we now call the Niger River as Egerew n-Igerewen that eventually is shortened to ger-n-ger then n-ger with the term meaning “river of rivers” (or great — as in size and importance — river). So, the first term “Negroid” is about a river not ethnic groups of people. So technically, anyone on the Nile River is “Negroid” as well. The fact that later Europeans associated Negroid / Negro as in a specific phenotype really doesn’t even match Roman and Greek usage that used Melanchroes and later Mauros / Moros / Moors for both the color black and words to describe other black nouns (i.e. melas / melano / mora / moreno, etc.). Not to mention in antiquity, European literature and maps associated the term “Ethiopians” with contemporary Sudan, Western African / Sahel (same location as later “Negroland” and was also labeled “Sudan” by Arab writers), and Abyssinia (that would become modern Ethiopia) at different points in history. So, all these foreign labels were quite fluid with one another. Hence, “Negroid” is a synonym of “black people” but not any real ethnic group as Africans did not originate the term for people as Europeans did. With that said, Ethiopians are “black people” and therefore “Negroid” based on European usage.
Now, Caucasoid is another fallacy. It is rooted in the presumption that the white phenotype originates with ethnic groups in the Caucus Mountains region and/or that all “white people” originate from ethnic groups there. There is zero genetic evidence to support such a claim among white people. Not to mention that the “white” phenotype exists with genetically older Central Asians from Afghanistan to Pakistan who do not genetically descend from people from the Caucus Mountains or from any ethnic groups in Europe. So, that is another arbitrary term that does not encompass an origin point for Europeans in terms of either genetics or phenotype. Ethnic groups such as Kalash, Khyber, and Pathan are genetically older than anyone from the Caucus region, but exhibit all the phenotypes of Europeans in addition to phenotypes of central Asia that are darker than most Europeans. In any case, these people do fall in the “Caucasian” / “white” phenotypes even though they are not Caucasian and “white” is relative.
Then there’s the last term of Mongoloid. Another arbitrary choice of selecting the Mongols as a phenotypic representation of Asians whose actual phenotypes are as diverse as resembling Africans to as seen above as resembling Europeans and they are still are genetically Asian. I mean Jarawa, Solomon Islanders, and Papuans do not resemble Mongolians but both are genetically and phenotypically Asian who resemble indigenous Africans. Oh wait, there are the arbitrary “Negrito” and “Melanesian” terms that are supposed to cover indigenous Asians who are black like indigenous Africans, but then again there is the problem of using those terms that really don’t characterize their origins as indigenous to Asia when it is.
Then there are the terms missed such as Australoid (someone appearing as an Australian Aborigine) or Dravidian (a darker skin toned Indian with non-coarse hair). Again two more phenotypes that can appear in various places but don’t necessarily denote origin in those places.
So the question of what to classify “Ethiopians” is equally problematic when one has no clue that the countries ethnic groups who are Ethiopian are phenotypically diverse and mirror all the rest of Africa that is considered “Negroid.”
Ultimately, those contemplating what category to place a nation that has many different phenotypes only reveals that person has no clue as to that nation’s diversity nor the world’s diversity for that matter.
By Matthew Downhour:
No one places people in those groups anymore, since they sound scientific but have no scientific basis.
Ethnicity is generally defined by language, religion, and culture. Most Ethiopians speak Semitic or otherwise Afro-Asiatic languages like Amharic, which is related to Hebrew and Arabic. They are closely connected religiously to Egypt via Christianity and Arabia via Islam (both common religions there). Historically there have been movements of people between Ethiopia and southern Arabia, to the extent that it’s not always clear whether ancient place names refer to Ethiopia, Somalia, or Yemen.
So if you wanted to say to whom Ethiopians are ‘ethnically’ closest, I would say either Yemenis or Coptic Egyptians — but with a long history of connection to the entire Indian Ocean.
From LSA:
“Why do Black people from America feel like they must enforce their racial worldview/perspective on other people?
Some places operate on tribal [national origin, nationality, and/or ethnicity],and not generic, often meaningless, race labels.”
“I have encounter some Somalis like that on the internet. Some of them consider themselves Muslim first. This is when I realized that not everyone in the world align themselves with Western standards of race. Really, its mostly people in Western countries and South Africa that take race labels seriously. Most Somalis and Ethiopians will mark themselves as black when they enter the USA or any Western Country but in their homeland, tribe affiliation, nationality and religion matters more. If the Atlantic slave trade and mass European colonialism in Africa never occurred, I doubt we even would be talking about black people this and black people that.”
“Continental Africans are not without race consciousness. They were never completely separated from their ethnic affiliations and were always in mostly Black environments; that is the ONLY reason that ethnic affiliations carry more weight with them than with us. They come to the United States and they realize they are Black because that’s how we roll here. Nobody gives a crap that you are Hausa or Oromo because you’re “ethnic” affiliation here is Black. That’s why Black people here got pissed when Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa like Amadou Diallo have been victims of police injustice because they saw they were Black before they saw their tribal origins.
Despite that, they are not immune to thinking in terms of the same race/color hierarchies as Black people in the States.”
“Offtopic but I have to say this, My father is Ethiopian(My mom is Black American) and his side and him all consider each other black. Ethiopians, Somalis that don’t are stupid, period. I mean how can you say you’re not black when you clearly are. A small nose is NOT a white feature anyone can have a small nose. I have seen whites with small,big, or wide noses. And also not all Somalis or Ethiopians have small noses. My father who I mentioned before has a small nose from his mother his father has a wide nose. And not all Somalians have small noses either I know a few Somalians from my uncle dating one and her nose wasn’t small at all and neither were her family members I saw a few with small noses but most of them had wide noses.
I’m tired of people being white washed ( I understand because of the fashion industry and everything but damn do some research.) There is no such thing as white features anyone can have a small nose anyone from any race can have a huge nose, anyone can have colored eyes (except for East Asians, I wonder why).”
“Only on the internet does something like racial or even continental pride exist. Generally speaking most Africans in their own countries don’t care about Africans from other countries. And what’s wrong with that? People identify with their own ethnicity/nationality first and foremost. Why should an Amhara from Addis Abeba feel kinship with a Yoruba from Nigeria when the only thing they even have in common is skin colour, some cultural values and in certain cases religion. The sooner y’all understand this, the better it will be.
But this thread will turn in another typical ‘East Africans hate black Features and don’t want to be called Africans/feel like they better than other Africans when in reality it’s mostly foreigners who are obsessed with dictating how we should identify with and what we are.”
“I have literally never met an Ethiopian that does not consider themselves as African!
Their is ignorance in the part of Ethiopians who are not really exposed to the world including to other African countries (the exception being bordering countries). When Ethiopians call other Africans “African” it s not somehow implying they are not African but they recognized them as one and wanted to acknowledge it. They usually do this because they can not tell what African country they are from so they say African. They wont say it to Africans from Sudan, South Sudan or Somalia etc because they have been exposed to them and can easily identify them, while they may struggle to identify someone from SA or Uganda so they say African.
They do this with Everyone. For example Asians no matter their origins are called China. All of North africans and Middle Easterns are called Arab, white people are called Ferenj, which means foreigner. Most Ethiopians would not identify south Americans at all and would simply fit them in one of the above category.
There is real is no malice in their categorization, they simply were not expose to these groups until very recently and are just now learning the right language to use.
Tbh it will take a long time for Ethiopians to be PC. There is no significant pressure to learn because 99.9% people in Ethiopia are Ethiopians and has only have to learn the 80 ethnicities in the country.”
“Ethiopians from the same family can run the from very dark to very light so why would they segregate dark people. There is legitimate argument to be made about colorism without resorting to insane lies.”
“Lila, yene konjo, they are spreading some crazy proganda. We are some of the most diverse people with over 80 ethnic groups. I have found us to be very open minded about what beauty means (as in colorism is not as common). My father has told me so many times that dividing ourselves up by color and features is a fool’s errand as it distracts from the important at hand (building wealth, infrastructure, etc). Not trying to trivialize people’s pain or experiences but it would be nice to come together to discuss things that can help lift up Black people as a whole.
Also, no the majority of us do NOT have any arab blood. We are able to trace back our lineage many generations. There are different looks among all races, not sure why that is scrutinized when it comes to Africans.”
“As far as racism. Listen, one thing about Ethiopians is that many do believe they’re superior to all forms of creation. And they couldn’t give a rat’s ass what anybody thinks about that, tbh. It’s a type of unconditional, profound love of self that’s hard to explain. And that’s vis-a-vis everyone: white, black, yellow, and purple. I just assumed everyone felt that way about themselves.
They’re hardly ever rude and obnoxious about it tho. They just tend to keep that to themselves, lol.”
“I didn’t know how to explain it. Having pride and self-love does not equate to being racist. We also know we are just as Black as any other African group lol. Everyone should be proud of who they are and where they come from.
Lastly, our history, culture and language are ancient which just makes our community more insular. That again, has no implication on how we feel about our fellow brothers and sisters from other African countries or in the Diaspora.”
“I think the reason they call it racism is because a lot of other Africans will be the first to say we’re not “real African” or “real black” like them. So when they witness Ethiopians expressing self-pride and a preference for their [own community’s] appearance, it has to be racism” as people outised the cultural community may percieve it to be.
“Wogene, just what exactly does it mean to be “real African” and “real black”. We have been on the continent for eons and are an SSA [Sub-Saharan African] Black group. Where does the doubt come from?
Just not understanding this whole thing b/c more or less Black people have unifying features but have our own individual looks region to region. Isn’t it natural for each culture to gravitate and uplift it’s own image? That is how legacies are carried on.”
“Not sure. I know a lot of West African and I hear this often “oh but you all are not quite…”. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have the same opinions elsewhere.
I just think if a Nigerian went on a rant about how much they love their tribe and features and think they’re the best thing to hit the continent, no one would think to call them racist.”
“Ok but here is the thing: why don’t other different looking groups such as Cape Verdeans and Mauritanians get the same scrutiny? Makes ZERO sense. This must go beyond looks. Not sure what is at the heart of it.
Exactly! I always cheer on pride of fellow Africans of their lineage. It would be nice to be extended the same courtesy.”
“Tribal/ethnic rivalries are common on the African continent as they are anywhere else. And this idea that everyone is in one big motherland has been shown to be untrue. The only time I hear about them really coming together and linking up under the umbrella of “Africa” is when they come to the US or there is some major crisis/celebration.
There is no “race.” Whites, Asians, and Black people have different ethnic groups that are culturally and linguistically distinct. They only come together under a race if there’s a political or monetary benefit.”
“No one can match our [Ethiopia’s] record on the continent in terms of supporting African liberation and cooperation. Period. There’s a reason the AU is headquartered in Ethiopia. It is what it is.”
“We are, always have been, and always will be “actual Africans””
“Lets be real! Shall we, what continent on this earth is really united? From my observation none! The European union is about to fall apart, especially with the advent of brexit, and many of the Nordic countries has not adopted to the Euro currency. Asia is far from being united. In fact, there is a possibility that some of the countries may go to war with each other for example China vs Indian, China vs Japan, North Korea vs South Korea, India vs Pakistan. There is no unity of countries in that region. Same for the South Pacific Islanders Polynesians, Melanesians among other, and definitely the same in Americas North & South American and the Caribbean. The only thing i can see happening within the African continent is regional integration.Which some countries has already formalized. West Africa has Ecowas, East Africa has the East African Union(Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Rwanda) and i understand Southern African countries has such agreement. The Nile Valley region, Horn of African and the Al Magreb regions, in all honesty, i have not heard anything but “talk”, and no legislation of united integration. Off the books both countries mainly Egypt, Sudan and Libya at one time conduct business with each other.”
“Honestly, its getting tiresome how Eritreans and Ethiopians get so much scrutiny from everyone else, for no reason! I’m beginning to understand @Kalashnikov ‘s impatience with this topic.
We mind our business in the Diaspora, you barely hear a peep out of us. Now other Africans are starting to nitpick, which is galling coming from a place like South Africa that literally sets on fire other Africans instead of looking to the white power structures that still have their boots on their necks.
This constant fixed belief perpetuated so frequently that we are mixed with either Arab or Italian when that is offensive to us and despite us telling you repeatedly that it is untrue to cause we know ourselves, our lineages, our culture, our languages and our history.
The projection of American based black racial hierarchies onto to us that is mind-bogglingly crazy.
As another font said, why don’t the Cape Verdeans and others get that level of scrutiny.Ethiopia has been a huge sponsor of so many African movements. The African Union is based in Addis!
Eritreans and Ethiopians are insular people and have always been quietly proud of their cultures and their histories. They genuinely do like themselves and each other. They find themselves and each other to be attractive people and why not? That is as it should be. Everyone should find their own people the most attractive.
It’s not our fault that other people think we are attractive and then hate our guts when we agree. Strong self-esteem is good in a people.
When we hear Nigerians talk about their achievements in the West we are not jealous. We admire the incredible self-confidence I see in our Nigerians brothers and sisters. We admire and love the kindness and hospitality of our Sudanese brothers and sisters, which I say as an Eritrean as they hosted so many of us during the war.
And we are not loud about our pride. We are rarely loud about anything. It’s a quiet dignified strong belief in our cultures and our people. But so many others resent that.
Why?
Question yourselves.”
“Cheshire, you have laid it all out here; definitely starting to understand @Kalashnikov’s feelings too. We mind our business, are proud of ourselves and are supportive of our brothers and sisters from other African countries and Diaspora.
I can’t speak on South Africa’s current condition but do know that many business owners from other African countries have been attacked while the majority of wealth is in white hands. That does NOT happen in in our countries. We know that the real enemy is “economic colonialism” and the goal is our own rapid development (of the continent).
I REFUSE to entertain ideas about “admixture” because 1) the majority of us are not mixed and 2) if we go back 3000 years, then everyone would have some sort minor level of it. This scrutiny does not seem to be about “racial” differences but cultural ones. Every group should put themselves first and revere themselves. Self-love, self-preservation, pride and uplifting one’s own image is the NORM for every ethnic group and/or nation. Also, being “insular” does not equate to xenophobia.
SN: I only hear these arguments about “Horners” not being full SSA. Yet, you don’t hear Asians question why a Korean looks different than a Malay or Brits side eyeing dark haired southern French people. Why aren’t Black people allowed to look different from one another?”
“This becomes laughable and outright silly at this point, and you sound really desperate. This is called human variation. You see this among people groups throughout the world. The problem with some of you is the acceptance of eurocentric scientific racism. It is not only American thing, this foolishness infected nearly every corner of the world [through colonializim and Westernization]. Which brought alot of division within the African continent.”
“People are xenophobic all over Africa. You only highlight it now because the people in question have a different phenotype than you. It’s not right, but people will always find something to discriminate others on.”
“Ethiopians are blacks but are not Bantus [or Niger-Congo]. Clearly, people from the Horn are a sub-group within the African tent.”
“I know my forefathers many generations back and I have no non Somali let alone non African in my family so how far back are we talking?
Some Somalis claim Arabic descent but a lot of them are not serious and it mostly has to do with [Islamic] religion, heck even Bengalis and Indonesians claim to be related to the prophet [Muhamade] lol, don’t take these people seriously.
I asked my mum and she laughed about it. I can’t speak for other horners but Somalis have always married other Somalis”
“Ethiopians are very chill and mind our business — that seems to be a problem for those who accuse us of being “insular”.
We have many tribes and languages; some of them tie us to neighboring countries. Every country has unique aspects that differentiate them from other nations. Shouldn’t we all be proud of where we come from? That is not “emphasizing otherness”. We can love our own [culture, heritage, people, or] image and respect/love/welcome other Africans; these are not mutually exclusive.
SN: Again, the VAST majority of us are monoracial. We need to respect the diversity in phenotype within the Black race.”
“I know the vast majority of Ethiopians are pure Africans, ancient Grecian [Greek] scholars described Ethiopians, as having the same phenotype as they currently have today. That is why I never mentioned the country in the mixed African nations. I don’t know where all this hate and infatuation with people from the Horn of Africa comes from. I think certain [***] backed trolls, started this nonsense. Ethiopians are pretty calm people, very polite too.
My own mother worked for the African Union in Ethiopia, and never had any problems with the locals.
I replied to you because you kept on mentioning Western Asia. My point was they aren’t mixed with people from Arabia as you were stating, obviously Africans of various phenotypes mixed with one another, that’s a known and visible fact.
Please leave these people alone, it’s so embarrassing how some Africans are obsessed with Horn Africans. Ancient Roman and Greek scholars described them as having the same features they have today.
My problem was the Western Asia you kept on mentioning. I used Europeans as an example because, nobody questions racial purity of Europeans when they have curly hair, juicy lips, curvaceous bodies, but let an African have a straight nose or long hair, and all of a sudden they have to be automatically mixed with caucasians or semitic people. That was my point.”
“This was also my experience — I got to cut lines at Bole International Airport and when coming from Sudan because they thought I was Ethiopian, in Sudan I was also treated better because they thought I was Ethiopian because a lot of Ethiopians own the few hotels and stuff.
I am a dark skin [African American Decendant of Slavery] ADOS but I get mistaken for Ethiopian quite often.”
“This marrying thing that [Western World] Black people are obsessed with has got to stop.
It’s something I’ve noticed, especially with [Western World] Black men. They’ll determine ‘racism’ by if the get a gf/wife from a certain ethnic group. It’s weird, pathetic and it makes black peoples look like we’re obsessed with diluting blackness. This isn’t directed to a specific black group but moreso black people complaining of racism and using black men’s (In)ability to have a harem of multicultural women as proof.”
“It is what it is, i dont know why people acting surprised AFRICA IS HUGE”
“People from the same ethnicity let alone the same race don’t look exactly the same.
As long as people procreate with non family members there will always be different features.”
“Technically everyone in this goddamn world is “mixed”. This how genetics shit is complicated but we all have ancestors that came from different parts of the world.
Most Somalis who get a genetic test get 0 to 25% Arab/North African blood. Somalis were traders and sailors back in the day and our most trafficked places were Arabia and Indian. So it makes sense that Somalis intermarried with the locals and traders that came to the Somali lands.
And I’ve never seen a Somali that denies that some Somalis have a few Arab ancestors. That’s a known fact because Somalia was a seafaring country and naval power in its history.” (… https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/africans-on-twitter-describe-xenophobia-and-racism-they-received-in-ethiopia.3561363/page-10)
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“I am Ethiopian. All of my grandparents and their parents are black too. We have no admixture I am tired of people saying we are mixed. We are full black. Stop comparing us to mixed people. We are no less black than west and south african blacks. I don’t know why people think we are mixed. We literally look full black. Yet they will call barely mixed Mariah Carey and Amber Rose black women while calling our full black looking asses mixed. Hilarious.”
“If we’re being honest, the only people I’ve seen adamantly claim East Africans aren’t black are racist non-blacks trying to cope with the knowledge that black people don’t all have their idea of stereotypically black features. They cling to this conviction so hard, it’s pathetic.”
“I never said I [forcibly] wanted them to identify as black. I have already called them black which is what many of them call themselves. Yes, there are a few of those that don’t call themselves black, but even a percentage of those few have explained their reason for not calling themselves black. They have stated, at least those that have talked to me, that they don’t want to be labeled [with] what white people labeled them, but they clearly understand that they are African in appearance, mindset, and culture.”
“I deal with this complex. It’s a touchy subject. Whenever I say I’m black, my black friends look at me funny and say no you’re not really black. I want to claim black, but it’s like I’m not “black enough”.
So I just go back to claiming my East African culture and just say black on census reports. If a white person asks me I just tell them I’m black, it’s not like they can tell the difference [between various Black and African populations] anyways.”
“You learn something new every day. I definitely thought many of them had heavy non-black admixture.
They don’t. That’s just what the white power structure wants you to believe, so they can keep perpetuating the lie that we are not diverse; and certain features are unique to them. It also proves more that we are the original people.
Certain black people get in their feelings about this for several reasons: 1. They feel and have bought into the stereotype that all Black and African people look the same or look a certain way with no diversity within these populations. 2. They have deep rooted self esteem issues and want to disregard other Black populations, usually Black populations with looser hair and slimmer features.
In my post, you can clearly see that the top four women are dark. Haters will bring down anything. Both light-skinned and even other dark-skinned people who don’t fit their perceived stereotypes of what all Black people are supposed to look like.” … (https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/why-do-some-people-disregard-east-africans-as-black.1421788/page-3)
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— — —
[Update:
Racism within the Racial Justice Movement: The Whitewashing and Erasure of Black & Indigenous African Peoples and Cultures of Northeast Africa — The Horn of Africa and The Sudans, etc.
Racism within the Racial Justice Movement (espcially against the peoples of Northeast Africa like the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti; and The Sudans — Sudan and South Sudan):
There is a lot of racism within the Racial Justice Movement and People Who Claim To Be “Woke” especially against people, cultures, and on issues related to certain Indigenous African Peoples and Black Africans that do not fit into a Western (Eurocentric), West-Central-Southeast African normative, and/or Niger-Congo peoples-normative (including Bantu-centric) definitions of Blackness and Africanness. This can be seen in the comments quoted bellow that racist Eurocentric and Niger-Congo peoples-normative views that claim that certain Black African populations like Cushitic-Nilotic peoples of the Horn of African-Northeast Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea. Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, and South Sudan) have a so-called “proximity to ‘Whiteness’” due to them having distinct cultures, phenotypes, features, and languages from that of the Niger-Congo peoples that make up the majority of West Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, Southeast Africa, and a bulk of the African Diaspora, Multi-Generational Peoples of Black and African Descent in the Americas, African Americans (American Descendants of Slavery-ADOS / Foundational Black Americans-FBA), and like populations.
“Those men are trash. I think there’s needs to be distinction on “East African” because those type of men aren’t referring to Rwandan, Ugandan women. They’re referring to the Horn of Africa countries (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia) because of their proximity of whiteness.” Joshua Kissi (Twitter:@JoshuaKissi)
“I’m sorry? Proximity to whiteness?!?!?” Martin Router King (Twitter:@Coco3yoon)
“We’re all African here so i can explain this to you in layman’s terms, East Africa aka The Cradle of Life, historically considered to be the birthplace of man, to get to the point we were here first, Eurocentrism can not apply to a race that was around before Eurocentrics !!” *Something Creative (Twitter:@fueledbyberbere)
“So Eurocentric features is the word we’re looking for? Which again, is frustrating because what is Blackness? Do we all have to have the same features to be considered African? I’m fully aware that we’re seen as ‘different’ & put on some kind of nonsensical pedestal because of it.” Martin Router King (Twitter:@Coco3yoon)
“‘Whiteness’ is a structural concept that produces things like white privilege” Joshua Kissi (Twitter:@JoshuaKissi)
— “I’m very aware of the terminology and what it means and what it results in. I whole heartedly disagree. When other Africans speak like it just perpetuates the idea that we’re not African/Black enough as if we’re some kind of monolith.” Martin Router King (Twitter:@Coco3yoon)
https://mobile.twitter.com/JoshuaKissi/status/1244238711228858369 .
The views that were expressed claiming that Northeast African (Ethiopian, Eritrean. Somali-Somalian, Djiboutian, Sudanese, and South Sudanese) people(s) have a supposed “proximity to ‘Whiteness’,” ‘are not Black (enough),’ and ‘are not real/indigenous Africans,’ is a claim based on racist Westerncentric (Colonial, Eurocentric, and Afro-DiasporaCentric) views that hold to the idea that African/Africans (including Black people) are a monolith and people who don’t fit into that monolith based on African American and Niger-Congo cultures, phenotypes, features, and languages is deemed non-Black, non-African, and have their indigenousness questioned through unsubstantiated, minor, or outright false perceptions that these people groups as a whole are mixed-race although such instances are minor-to-nonexistent in these population while the Peoples of the African Diaspora are far more recently mixed-race than their Northeast African counterparts. But even if that was the case being mixed-race does not forfeit the indigeneity of people or people groups as race itself is a racist colonial, New World, Eurocentric, Westerncentric concept invented to uphold White Supremacy.
Here are some comments people have made on this issue
Something that pisses me off is when ppl say that east Africans have Eurocentric features.
literally what about our faces are Eurocentric? We are proud of our east African features. stop trying to make yourself feel comfortable by telling us we have Eurocentric features and trying to deny our blackness. it’s embarrassing.”
“West Africans tell East Africans they have ‘Eurocentric Features’ East Africans GET MAD. East Africans then go & tell North Africans they have ‘Eurocentric Features, North Africans GET MAD But no one ever calls out SOUTH AFRICA? who are WHITE. We all share one thing. STUPIDITY”
The thing is she’s African with African-like bone structure. The problem lies with the fact that you think her bone structure is “European-like”. There are a lot of East Africans that look like her. Let’s look at African beauty as is, not w/ respect to Eurocentric standards.”
“D I V I N ESparkles @divineneza98 · Mar 10, 2020
Tired of this idea that East Africans have Eurocentric features, just because we don’t look West does not now automatically mean we look any less black, let alone European Face with rolling eyes.”
“N. Castro da Costa @nmdccastro · Mar 10, 2020
There’s no such thing as “Eurocentric” features I really want you guys to throw this term away right now. No black people especially East Africans have “Eurocentric” features.”
“Bethlehem / በትልሄም Sparkles @bethlehemwm · Jun 23, 2019 Replying to @ernel4k
But they’re not Eurocentric features. You and every other black person has been told that they are because black people aren’t allowed to have a different facial structure. So again the root is colonialism and white privilege.
Somalis and East Africans are Black period. We don’t want to be Eurocentric not in the slightest. Black features can’t even be compared to Eurocentric coz that’s you being divisive w/o even knowing it.”
“♑︎ @nilual · Dec 10, 2020
y’all associate everything ‘black’ & ‘african’ with west african features and wonder why people say east africans have ‘eurocentric features.’ it’s because we’re never being acknowledged :/
always gotta remind everybody that Africans can have small dainty features, sudanese women for example, and it not be considered ‘eurocentric’.”
“adna @adnaxali · Jun 28, 2019 Replying to @levis_twt
Africans don’t all look like each other and the assumption that east africans have eurocentric features because at the end of the day what does a racist white person see when they look at me : A BLACK PERSON . stop trying to justify your ingrained racism please”
“BWA @blackkwolfee · May 11
East Africans get called eurocentric for their very much African features but any white girl with curly hair is suddenly black, if i was EA i’d be so annoyed Loudly crying face”
— — “Jammin. @JammmJaz · May 11
But when I said West African features were the standard for blackness, I got backlash. It’s obviously true if a white girl with full lips and broad nose is being accused of being Black.”
“Aurum Amare @aurumamare · Jun 29, 2019 LMAOO
East Africans beauty often gets lumped with Eurocentric features. Do y’all know we were the first people on this earth? If anything, they have our features, any other opinion is anti-black, (https://twitter.com/aurumamare/status/1145025761285251072).”
“blacklivesmatter @hooliganpowers · Aug 3, 2020 Replying to @beyonddaangel
How about we stop giving yt ppl credit for small features by calling them eurocentric lmao let’s not forget that the first human beings were black therefore we created these features that still exist in some african countries sooooNail polish”
“Nkem @Vincredible__ · Mar 10, 2020
The term Eurocentric feature is funny First off every race descend from Africans. So all features from most races come from Africans Europeans/Arabs inherited their features from East Africans who migrated out of Africa Even Asian features are found in the a Khoisan ppl, (https://twitter.com/Vincredible__/status/1237328611906064384).”
“NoshiDragon @Gazellese · Oct 7, 2020 Replying to @codeinecruiser @prettyyyybaby2 and 3 others
Westerners just assume what afrocentric features without stepping a foot in africa. Millions of black people here have thin noses and loose curly hair thin lips etc before even white people having them yet yall always want to call them eurocentric. Its annoying”
“Nala @thebestnegress · Apr 23 Replying to @thebestnegress Somalis are also notoriously known on continent as being extremely tribalist and taking pride in their ethnicity & ( never being mixed with anything else historically ). So of course going to be pissed off when a black American that is likely part white is telling them that they are mixed. Also I’ve noticed that rarely anyone call the distinct East African feature of a large forehead as Eurocentric. Somali peoples features would look weird on a white person large forehead larger eyes even down to the nose shape.”
“@ZENOSlTE · May 19
Constantly contradicting themselves always pushing the narrative that africa is the most genetically diverse place and black people can have any genes but as soon as somalis uplift ourselves all of the sudden yall strip us from our blackness and reduce our beauty to looking white”
— — “gacaliso @hurrtailz · May 19
So if we’re glad our kid has soft hair it’s antiblack u see how this further pushes the idea that black people can only have one hair type which is 4c”
— — “@ZENOSlTE · May 19
It’s so annoying wlhi bc i can never see somali ppl praising ourselves without things like this. any other african or aa [african american] can do this and yall say nothing and praise them but as soon as its a somali comments are like “its bc yall have eurocentric features” “featurism/texturism””.
“#FreeBritney @Smooth__caramel · Aug 29, 2019 Replying to @sandiesideup and @therealkurlykyy
Many people think West African feautures = black features due to heavy influence of African Americans who are mostly from West African descent. East Africans do not have ‘’eurocentric” features, Europeans came after East Africans.”
“Just observing rn @nancy_koi · Oct 11, 2020
Most south Sudanese people have 100% African ancestry so I don’t understand the Eurocentric features part…”
“𝐸𝓂𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝒶Cherry blossom @Veraciouslia · Dec 11, 2020
What confuses me even more is that they’ll say “decolonize your mind” yet are obsessed with relating/comparing everything to white standards. If multiple monoracial Sudanese (example)have a small nose, why are their original features Eurocentric? It’s just Sundanese features.”
— — “the Sun with rays @astralislunar · Mar 10, 2020
Americans on Twitter are wild because last week the Romani were white, this week it’s the Palestinians/basically the Middle East that are white, and now they’re saying South Sudanese models like Adut Akech have “eurocentric features”. Make it make sense y’all”
“l.m. @len0ya · Jun 28, 2019
I don’t understand ppl that expect all Africans to have the stereotypical wide noses, 4c hair, and curvy bodies. some Africans have 3b/c hair, small noses, and are skinny. that doesn’t mean they have eurocentric features. they still have AFRICAN features and that’s that”
“MeridazmachuPrince @Dengeysatking · Mar 29, 2020
Y’all non-horner Black people really need to stop talking for us and our “proximity” to blackness [or supposed “proximity” to whiteness]. It is MEGA annoying How on earth do you have the energy and audacity to be lecturing and dictating to us about our own history and identity? Getting a bit comfortable methinks
Its crazy how you come into our spaces and lecture us about our identity & this myth you concocted about our supposed proximity to whiteness when you’re deluded into believing we’re all light skinned & that not having stereotypical “African” [West/Central African & Niger-Congo peoples] features makes them “Eurocentric”.”.”
“#JUSTICEFORSHUKRIABDI @4m44linn4 · Mar 10, 2020 Replying to @Ejiketion
This!!The diversity of black people is most times mentioned and acknowledged during a blackfishing issue to combat the delusional who bring forth a reverse argument.
Just to clarify colorism is real and it comes from Eurocentric beauty standards.Which is why it makes no sense to further perpetuate a system by calling African features Eurocentric features.”
“miya @miyaabashka · Jul 9, 2020
This whole East African Eurocentric thing is anti black our features aren’t white they’re black because we are Idk why it’s hard to grip, https://twitter.com/miyaabashka/status/1281263783990657024 . ”
“Miss Resting Bitch Face @immasmolphish · Feb 18
People will really try to claim an African woman has Eurocentric features to justify her beauty while insisting the light skinned biracial with 3a hair and green eyes looks like a black woman, I’m tired of people’s nonexistent logic. ”
“Nala @thebestnegress · Apr 23 Replying to @thebestnegress Eurocentric features considering the amount of Racism and Discrimation they faced from the North Sudanese government and People that were literally trying to kill them off for being too black [being a darker complexion than other group not fitting into the dominant culture of the countries; but both are Black either way] and non Muslim.
South Sudanese people to do not have Eurocentric features they just don’t have West African features. Saying that their features are Eurocentric is a result of many Americans narrow worldview of Africans.”
“@heauxsvengeance · Jan 5
We as a black people should stop telling other black people that they are considered pretty because they have “Eurocentric features” and change it to “acceptable features”. They are black African people who have what y’all call “Eurocentric features”. I know y’all intentions when y’all say that but your also implying that European features are prettier. That’s why we should just say they have ACCEPTABLE FEATURES.”
“Nas ia @sogoldenhz · Dec 11, 2020 Replying to @sogoldenhz
How do you want to break out of the Eurocentric beauty when you keep mentioning Eurocentric features ? Eurocentric features are not a thing , Eurocentric beauty standards are . Also how can I a black African have Eurocentric features ? When the features you’re talking about originate from Africa.”
“Paragon @LordDeshaun · Feb 15, 2020 Replying to @poppedamolly_x @damlove1053
These features from the post are from this persons ancestors. Her ancestors were African. Her features are strictly African features. How would her features be eurocentric. Especially when Europe is a blend of people.”
“Riya @xoriiya · Mar 29, 2020
Eurocentric features on Africans is a made up concept. It’s such an odd conversation point. What makes the features Eurocentric? Who made who in charge on what proper African features really are? I’m actually tired of this conversation. It goes no where and it’s annoying.”
“Tobí Rachel @TobiRachel_ · Mar 10, 2020
This convo about African “beauty” & “eurocentric” features is a bit alarming. A country like Nigeria ALONE has 300+ diff ethnic groups. In some pics people mistake me for East African & that’s because I’m part Hausa-Fulani (a nomadic ethnic group historically hailing from East).
So to completely disregard the fact that Africa is extremely ethnically diverse (why? because blackness is often homogenised) and to credit a black person’s attractiveness to whiteness is very absurd and backwards. Let that poor woman be beautiful on her own. Such a weird debate.”
“Kovie Biakolo @koviebiakolo · Dec 27, 2020
I am begging you all to stop referring to black people whose features are deemed desirable under the gaze of Eurocentric beauty politics, as having “European features.” African features vary, within and between groups.
Whiteness’ conditioning is a helluva drug especially in the seemingly “easiest” thing people believe they understand/control: appearance and attraction. But the intricacies are profound and have the power to destabilize our proclaimed politics and self-conceptions.”
— — “Tasha Williams @riseUPwoman · Dec 27, 2020 Replying to @koviebiakolo Yes, framework for talking about colorism + anti-Blackness needs to evolve to be less eurocentric [and westerncentric], and more astute regarding Black diaspora. So how DO we DESCRIBE disdain for wide noses and full lips vs preference for more narrow noses and not too full lips in western society?”
— — “Kovie Biakolo @koviebiakolo · Dec 27, 2020 Perhaps an upending is needed rather than a reframe. The prototype features people refer to also end up narrowing Africanness. Describing features requires new language + new imaginations based in our anti-black realities but not consumed by them. But rn, specificity is best.”
— — “Tasha Williams @riseUPwoman · Dec 28, 2020 I reflected a bit a more on your statements. There are somethings missing for me. By the logic, we should also stop using phrases like “Black hair” or Black anything since Black is so diverse. Yes, specificity is always best but context is factor, too.”
“jalen amir @jaalenking · Dec 16, 2020
The idea of Black people having “white/Eurocentric features” is related to people’s limited perception of Africa as a monolith where, in their minds, the dominant features are West African and therefore deviation comes not from African diversity but white proximity.
Btw, this is not an argument against featurism. Featurism is real. Very real, but most people’s understanding of it is ahistorical, ironically white supremacist, and then US centric as African Americans with an implicit West African bias [and socio-political dominance in the Black Community] continue to manage the [overwhelmingly skewed] metric [of what it means to be Black and African].”
— — “♀ @saoirse_reina · Dec 16, 2020 Replying to @jaalenking
The genetic difference from two people in Africa can be larger than the difference from one African person to one European person because of the amt of genetic diversity in Africa Relieved face.”
“grace⁷ @jooniesgemini · Jun 30
It’s sad how every day i see ppl having to prove their ethnicity to strangers who think you’re not black enough, your eurocentric features don’t make you a poc, you’re yt passing and all that bs. man when will y’all stop policing ppl identities?? just fuck off already.”
romemcguire rome · 1–9–2021
“I’m mad sick of the word “eurocentric” being used to describe black ppl with differing features from person to person #fyp
Scenario:
— White ass looking Biracials with 2c hair and green eyes: Breathes / Exists.
— Black Community Response: OMG Black people are so diverse.
— Monoracial Black people with natural upturned almond eyes, small nose, long natural hair, and prominent cheekbones or nose bridges: Exhales / Exists.
— Black Community Response (at least the Westernized/Western-influenced Black people Response): Why are you Eurocentric? Oh, he’s so anti-Black, he mostly dates people from his own ethnic or cultural group. *Cough Cough-Whispers Under Breath* Her very existence is anti-Black, look at the way she looks, she’s not a real Black person, she’s a ‘Caucasian dipped in chocolate’ / ‘White women dipped in chocolate’ *Cough*.”
“When are we going to cancel the term European features?”
“Most with that opinion know nothing about Africa or Africans. They use their own ethnicity as a de facto blueprint to what is “an African phenotype”. The irony in this is a simple search on this very forum will show you endless threads going on and on about how different they look from Africans.
Do American blacks look most like Nigerians? Pics inside
Or check out those silly “what ethnicity do you get mistaken for” threads. The top two ethnicities lsa claims to get mistaken for are Ethiopian and Dominican or Latina in general.
What ethnicity have you been mistaken for?
LSA, What Ethnicity Do You Always Get Mistaken For?
The truth is… people who value certain features want to eliminate who they view as a competition from the “circle” and other then. It’s a silly attempt at reverse psychology.”
“I brought up Southern Africa too. Stop speaking for all Africans. South Africans dont look like the South Sudanese. South Sudanese dont look like Nigerians. Nigerians dont look like Ethiopans etc.
Indigenous Africans KNOW what their countrymen look like, even if “we’re all black”
Black people dont look the same and it’s not antiblack to acknowledge that. Reducing all the different ethnic groups into “just black” is whats really eurocentric if anything.”
— —
We need to unpack the damaging ‘Are Somalis black?’ rhetoric / The age-old ‘debate’ gets revived online consistently, but are we looking at the issue through a colonialist lens? — By Halimo Hussain (https://gal-dem.com/we-need-to-unpack-the-damaging-are-somalis-black-rhetoric/)
There is an exhausting recurring debate taking place online. In particular, on the new social media app Clubhouse rooms dedicated to a specific question have been created on a regular basis. The question is: are Somali people black? Simple enough as it sounds, it’s a question that generates differing opinions and passionate disagreement from Somalis and non-Somalis alike. As a Somali person living in the UK, it’s a provocation I’ve been exposed to more times than I can count, not just on Clubhouse or even Twitter. It’s a question I grew up hearing in school and it’s also a conversation I’ve tried to unpack on a number of occasions with friends and family.
It’s easy to see why this conversation emerges as much as it does. In the West, we are looking at race through a colonial framework that seeks to create hierarchies. As flawed as the question is, it may also reflect, at heart, a desire to understand how Somalis are situated within blackness despite religious and phenotypical differences from some other black communities in the UK. However, it’s unlikely that this can be resolved by a poorly facilitated conversation on social media. It requires space and time to learn — as I have attempted to over the past couple of years — that there is no definitive notion of blackness. There are only people that are racialised as black, and with that racialisation comes commonalities but also differences. Despite how contentious this argument may appear at times, there are many Somalis, like me, who identify as black and question why this is ever really up for debate.
If you have come across this rhetoric, you’ll know how it can often result in a trivial back and forth. Comments blur the lines between ethnicity and race. Some don’t even attempt to rationalise, saying “Somalis are just different!” At best, people try to make sense of the Somali genealogy; delving into the East Cushitic heritage, a term used to describe people who are primarily indigenous to the Horn of Africa and tribal groupings of people in Somalia. Once in a while they’ll make reference to the introduction of Islam in the Middle Ages and the impact of Arab trade and migration. At worst, comments dance on the border of racial essentialism, by insinuating that physical appearance, such as the size of a nose or hair texture are true measures of someone’s blackness.
“These discussions are rarely good faith attempts to build a shared understanding; often veering into anti-blackness and Islamophobic territory”
Predictably, these discussions are rarely good faith attempts to build a shared understanding; often veering into anti-blackness and Islamophobic territory. Being Muslim and black seems to be a primary source of contention. Instead of acknowledging that neither identities take precedence and both can co-exist, people seem to create a sense of competition between them.This primarily stems from some Somalis actively arguing that they see more of an alignment with Arabs than with other black ethnic groups because of migration or faith. It’s an argument that is used cynically to distance themselves from what they consider to be ‘blackness’. It’s not unusual for non-Somalis to absorb these narratives and weaponise them to also exclude Somalis from blackness.
It feels at times that the blackness of Somalis is uniquely scrutinised and it’s not only happening online. Only a few weeks ago, a government department in Canada chose to reject a funding application by a Somali organisation in Ottawa — its reason being that they were not considered to be “black enough”. Its criteria for making this decision is still not clear.
Formations of race and identity are complex ideas to grapple with. Still, each time I come across this question, I’m struck by the way historical legacies of race and racialisation are misunderstood. In its simplest form, perception of race, and in particular blackness, is linked to skin colour and connected to African heritage. Yet, even though Somalia is situated in East Africa and Somalis often have dark complexions, for some this isn’t enough to validate their blackness.
As is often the case with online conversations, personal feeling and opinion takes precedence over fact — that fact being that racial identity is dictated by historical and political processes such a colonialism and slavery. The history of modern racism shows how concerted efforts were made to create racialised categories. For example, the Age of Enlightenment saw eugenicists such as Francois Bernier pioneer ideas of racial superiority and inferiority which helped justify the unspeakable violence during the transatlantic slave trade. Unfortunately, this kind of scientific racism continues to inform much of the way we view race and blackness. Ultimately, if we are to unpack these harmful narratives, we have to reckon with this history and conceive of race as a top-down, state-led process. Somalis, like many other black ethnic groups, have very little autonomy over opting in or out.
“Existing at the nexus of anti-blackness, xenophobia and Islamophobia increases the visibility and vulnerability of Somalis”
While the process of racialisation can come across as abstract, its manifestation and impact is easy to observe. For many Somalis, being racialised as black continues to determine disproportionate negative outcomes in terms of education, housing and the criminal justice system. In particular young Somali men, like many other young black men, are over-policed and over-represented in criminal justice systems throughout the Global North. Data is generally obscured by the lack of differentiation between POC communities in government statistics, however research led by Somali organisations speaks to these unfavourable outcomes for the Somali community.
What’s more, existing at the nexus of anti-blackness, xenophobia and Islamophobia increases the visibility and vulnerability of Somalis. This has in part led to cases such as the tragic deaths of Shukri Abdi and more recently, Mohamud Hassan, a 24-year-old man from Cardiff who died shortly after coming into contact with the police. Their deaths serve as reminders that institutional racism and state violence are harsh realities that Somalis encounter alongside other black communities in the UK.
The Black Lives Matter movement this summer seemed to take account of this. Chants and placards demanding Justice For Shukri Abdi could be found throughout the organised protests. Likewise, messages such as Black Lives Matter could be observed at recent protests outside the Welsh police station for Mohamud Hassan. It’s an indication that wider society has made progress in making the connection that Somalis do face anti-black racism.
In the face of racist attacks on our communities, my hope is that we shift towards more productive questions that facilitate struggles for equality, such as ‘how do we fight for our rights?’ and more importantly ‘how do we build solidarity amongst racialised groups to collectively resist racism?’
—
On Being Somali: Not Black Enough, Not Muslim Enough — By
Fahima Hersi (https://www.amaliah.com/post/21386/there-is-no-racism-in-islam-but-there-is-racism-in-the-muslim-community-being-somali)
Being a Somali woman in the West is not easy:
From trying to explain to the black guy you’ve been sitting next to in class for the whole year that you are definitely black and ‘no, I’m not Asian because I’m wearing a scarf on my head’ to having to explain that there is a race issue within the Muslim community.
‘No, I’m not Asian because I’m wearing a scarf on my head.’
From adopting a habitual eye roll when engaged in a discussion about mainstream feminism because you know your black women related issues are not up for discussion at this table that’s overcrowded by haughty angry ‘free the nipple’ chanting white women, to trying to understand what this word ‘Intersectionality’ means for you.
The very people I identify with seem to disregard my struggles and outcast me from their communities.
‘My unique character makeup of fitting into various communities confuses those in these societies.’
They do not know whether they should hate me or embrace me because their own preconceived notions and bigotries are too strong. Despite the daily struggle born from external prejudices coupled with us being unfathomable intersectional people, we are still trying to make a change for ALL OF US.
On the subject of me being black enough:
As someone who stands in solidarity with her Black brothers and sisters in the west, more exclusively with the United States, in this fight for equality and justice, I live by this slogan.
‘This hashtag is more than just an internet craze; it is a resurgence of a dialogue that has not been talked about in mainstream media.’
The blatant and public injustices committed by the white American police force have been active in the States since the birth of this very institution.
— The harsh treatment of Rodney King in 1991 by a policeman had been the most notable example of police brutality that had been talked about on mainstream media since the Civil Rights Movement.
— The beating had sparked the L.A riots of ’92 that ended in 53 deaths. Between then and 2012 when the movement was born there were hundreds like Trayvon, Sandra Bland and Mike Brown.
“This movement ‘is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society. It demands for there to be a change in the institution that was created to protect the people of the land but instead chooses to terrorise.”
Despite my waving this slogan with me wherever I go, I often wonder if this movement is also a fight for the freedoms and acknowledgment of the injustices of people who look like me.
“I contemplate on whether I am the right kind of black whose life should be fought for.”
Before I get attacked by social justice warriors on this statement, let me explain my stance.
Abdirahman Abdi:
That name itself should be enough for my thinking. Abdirahman Abdi was a 37-year-old Canadian who died at the hands of police brutality. He was mercilessly killed by officers during a violent arrest. He had been suffering from a mental illness, was nonverbal and on the autism spectrum and had been repeatedly beaten by the officers. The officers had not tried to revive him once unconscious and he was reportedly dead 45 minutes before he had arrived at the hospital.
This should have been all over the news. This should have been a cause for a march by BlackLivesMatter protesters.
“This should have caused an ache in the hearts of many all over the world especially by the black people of America who have been fighting for the end of police brutality.”
Instead, it was met with silence. My understanding of why this was the case is because Abdi was Somali.
Now I’ve heard time and again that I don’t look black, this statement thus leaving me perplexed because I have a dark brown complexion. Nonetheless, this has led me to believe that when I hear this statement is that the person is referring to my features or my head covering.
“There seems to be this paradigm of what a black person looks like, this person having archetypal West African features.”
This is my reasoning as to why this is the case. I think because of the transatlantic slave trade and most slaves being taken from West African countries, most African-Americans have these same features, therefore, they associate black people with having these features. Likewise, black folk from the Caribbean were taken as slaves from West African countries thus exhibiting these facial features.
So, when my east African self comes into the equation, despite my having black skin my blackness is questioned because I do not share these archetypal West African features.
“I think our distinct facial features have created a wall between us and our black brothers and sisters.”
Our slim noses, curly hair, slim build and thinner lips are not seen on the stereotypical black characters we see in history books (the very few we see) and in mainstream media, therefore, our blackness is always held into question by blacks and non-blacks. As well as this, our features are often called European looking which has our black identity questioned too.
“I must add that Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on the globe therefore we must acknowledge that black people aren’t all going to look like they come from West Africa.”
As well as this, the fact that science has suggested that we have all originated from Ethiopia, Africa, it is Europeans that have east African features and not the other way round.
“It seems our black identity cannot be stretched far enough for it to create a bond between us and the rest of the wider black community.
I think it is our uniqueness in the fact that most Somalis are Muslim that has created our dissociation from the wider black community.”
Although most, if not all, North African countries are Muslim, many of the people from these countries consider themselves Arab and not black (many look it too). However, Somalis in the diaspora do identify themselves to be black. I’m referring to Somalis in the diaspora because in Africa, generally people do not specify and identify with being black. This is understandable as they are living in a society where people differentiate themselves by ethnicity and tribes and not by the colour of their skin as it would be pointless.
“As well as this, it should be noted that race in general is an ideology created to create a visible hierarchy in western society.”
It is an ideology that has bled into the foundations of other societies in the world as well e.g. the caste system in Asian countries and colourism in the black community.
It is the experiences of our mothers and fathers coming to the West as refugees and being racially attacked when coming here which has made us identify with being black. When the white man is calling us ‘Niggers’ we can try as much as we want to try to explain that we are Somalis, it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day we have dark skin.
“To know that your black brothers may not fight for you because your faith compromises your validity as a black person is difficult to swallow.
Fact: Black Muslim Lives don’t matter in the Muslim community.”
My Somali friend from secondary tells me about her time living in Egypt. She tells me about the locals insisting that she must be from Sudan and not Somalia because of her fluency in Arabic. She tells me about hearing slurs being sprawled out of the mouths of locals and spat at in the face of the Black people of the country.
“They replace Abdi with Abeed” (Abeed means slave)
—
Are Somalis Being Isolated From The Black Community? — By Jermaine Haughton of The Voice (https://archive.voice-online.co.uk/article/are-somalis-being-isolated-black-community)
As well as dealing with racism from their white peers Somalis also face pressure from their fellow African Caribbean and African migrants.
Abdul Omar Rahman, a 22-year-old public service worker, from Walthamstow, east London, says he and his Somali friends faced verbal abuse from black kids, in particular, when he was growing up.
“When we were at school it was weird because people would be asking you if Somalis are black and stuff. Some of the other kids from Jamaica and Nigeria would always cuss us about how we look different,” he said.
“They would say our dads were refugee warriors and pirates. In hindsight, it was really bad stuff, but it was just the way it went.”
Despite Rahman’s nonchalance regarding the verbal exchanges with fellow pupils, the problem signals a wider problem, which is not helped by the school performance of Somali children.
In 2010–11, a third of Somali pupils achieved 5 A* to C grades in their GCSEs, including mathematics and English, compared with 59 per cent of Bangladeshi pupils and 78 per cent of Nigerian kids.
—
Feds deny Ottawa Somali centre funding claiming it’s not Black enough — By Priscilla Hwang of CBC News (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/somali-centre-family-services-ottawa-rejection-black-funding-1.5879506)
Leaders of a Somali organization in Ottawa say their relationship with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has been severely damaged after the department rejected its funding application by arguing it’s not Black enough.
“At this day and age, to come across something like that was very, very, very shock[ing] and somewhat uncalled for,” said Mohamoud Hagi-Aden, one of the founders of the Somali Centre for Family Services. The centre is among hundreds of organizations the government rejected, claiming they failed to meet its Black leadership criteria.
Hagi-Aden said he was in disbelief when he read the rejection letter, which claimed his organization was not sufficiently led by Black people. The centre’s founders, management and board are all of Somali background, according to the centre.
“The people who have been making these decisions [are] either from another planet, or they’re not from the [Black] community,” he said.
The letter recently sent by my department to unsuccessful applicants for funding was completely unacceptable.- Families, Children and Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen
Executive director Abdirizak Karod applied last summer for the federal funding, called the Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative, after learning it was for Black groups looking to improve their work and community spaces. He said he wanted to use the funding to buy laptops for clients so they can access services and training remotely, as well as refurbishing the organization’s 28-year-old office building.
The funding guidelines say the groups must be focused on serving Black communities, and that at least two-thirds of the leadership and governance structure must be made up of people who self-identify as Black.
“I got an email saying our organization is not a Black-led organization,” Karod said. “I didn’t believe that what I [saw]. And believe me, I read it three times.”
A letter to the centre dated Jan. 12 states that “information provided did not meet this eligibility criteria or was insufficient to clearly demonstrate that the organization is led and governed by people who self-identify as Black.”
A second letter was sent the next day to correct the first letter. It said the group was rejected because “ESDC did not receive the information required to move forward with your application.”
“They never tell us why we got rejected. They never tell us anything,” Karod said, explaining how he answered all the questions on the application.
“How we can trust this department again?” he asked. “I can’t trust them…. It was not an honest mistake.”
Letter ‘completely unacceptable’: Minister
ESDC declined an interview with CBC News, pointing instead to the minister’s Twitter thread.
“The letter recently sent by my department to unsuccessful applicants for funding was completely unacceptable,” Families, Children and Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen tweeted. “As soon as it was presented to me, I quickly demanded a retraction and met with my officials to discuss how such a mistake could have happened in the first place.”
Hussen, who was born in Somalia, said he will “make sure it never happens again,” and vowed to work with Black-led organizations to improve.
But the statement isn’t good enough, according to Hagi-Aden.
“How will [ESDC] repair the damage they’ve done to the Black community? We have so many barriers and so many difficulties,” he said. “The trust that we had in the system has been so severely damaged.”
Comments from Twitter (https://twitter.com/CBCOttawa/status/1351826897437601794):
“Was Minister of Families (Ahmed Hussein) not black enough when he would be carded by police constantly or always being assumed to be a defendant instead of a lawyer when in court”
“Getting the black discrimination but not the benefitsFace with tears of joy. We need a new category then.”
“So Somalis are Not black enough Nor white So who are We then?”
“WTF “it’s not Black enough” SOMALIS ARE FUCKEN BLACK”
“So this guy was black enough for Ottawa cops to beat to death,
#DoubleStandards”“We need our own category as Somalis or Cushites cause what’s the point being labeled black getting black treatment from time to time and not benefiting from it…if we not get that black money then fuck the whole label wallahi I’m Somali n Somali only. White mans label ain’t mine.”
—
Ilhan Omar: On the Pluralisation of Black Identity and Politics — By Faisal Devji of the University of Oxford (https://www.hurstpublishers.com/ilhan-omar-on-the-pluralisation-of-black-identity-and-politics/)
George Floyd’s killing and the protests that followed it are being described as the latest episode in a centuries-old history of racial conflict. Both anti-racists and white supremacists, for very different reasons, concur in this vision of a race war where blacks and whites are the rival protagonists. True as this account may be when viewed in the long run, there is something different about the present situation. And this has to do not with the revival of the far-right in government and on the street, but a redefinition of America’s racial identities through immigration.
This difference can be seen in the circumstances of Mr. Floyd’s death. He went into a shop owned by someone of Middle Eastern descent, where an employee working the cash till called the police upon suspecting Mr. Floyd to have paid with counterfeit currency. The event could have been part of a familiar story, in which immigrant entrepreneurs catering to African American customers side with the authorities. But this did not happen in Minneapolis, where both the shop’s owner and other immigrant-owned businesses in the neighbourhood came out in solidarity against Mr. Floyd’s murder.
From the retired Somali woman who owned a Minneapolis bakery attacked by protestors, to businesses in Chicago which displayed signs proclaiming they were black or minority owned so as not to suffer a similar fate, a tense solidarity has emerged among African Americans and immigrant entrepreneurs, reflecting that among the racially mixed protestors on the streets. Yet this is not a story of alliance-building among coloured folks, or between them and whites, telling us instead about a far-reaching shift in the meaning of race relations in the United States.
Reading Ilhan Omar’s life story This is What America Looks Like in the current climate makes one wonder about this shift in race relations, as the title of the book itself indicates. Herself a native of Minneapolis, Omar’s Somali American narrative shows us how immigrants from Africa are redefining what it means to be black in the US, and in doing so destabilizing the old duality of black and white together with the historically fraught relationship it represents. Barack Obama, whose father was also an immigrant from East Africa, provides only the most spectacular example of this process.
When I left the US for Britain ten years ago, a friend in New York described the different meanings race possessed in these countries. In America, he said, if you’re not black you’re white, while in England, if you’re not white you’re black. Because race in America is founded in slavery, in other words, African Americans represent its negative pole, allowing everyone else to be hierarchically incorporated into a positive white politics. This is why immigrants from the Middle East to South and Central Asia have at various times been officially labelled white in US law.
In Britain and elsewhere in Europe, where white populations anchor race, it has occasionally been possible to build a black political identity which includes people of African as well as Asian and Middle Eastern descent. But then non-white people there are all classified as immigrants, unlike African Americans in the US. Already in the 1980s, however, when the term African American was popularised by figures like the civil rights leader and politician Jesse Jackson on the model of immigrant identities, this distinction was breaking down.
From national identifications like Italian American to racial ones like Asian American, such names define immigrant communities in the United States but not Britain. The term African American appears to belong in this group yet cannot include an Omar or an Obama. While the descendants of enslaved and indentured people from the Americas dominate the globalization of black identity in cultural terms, African immigrants, closer in background to their Asian and Middle Eastern peers, are altering its politics alongside Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin people.
When Obama faced a storm of racist claims about his allegedly Muslim identity and Kenyan birthplace, a former teacher of mine at the University of Chicago told me that such notions had also ensured his election. It was because Obama is not African American, but, more importantly than his mixed-race parentage, the son of an immigrant, that he was able to garner the white votes necessary to become president. Whatever the truth of this statement, its delinking of black from African American identity is evident in Omar’s autobiography.
Omar’s first experience with race in America happened in middle school, when she “became fixated on two sisters, one in my grade and the other in eighth grade, who had actual Somali names. But that was the only Somali thing about them. They identified as black, a concept I had no understanding of at the time.” In high school she describes how “African Americans and African immigrants fought over who was blacker.” Blackness here has already ceased being an African American characteristic and started to destabilize the black-white binary of US history.
Omar’s first political act also occurred in high school, where she organized a group that made peace between students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. And that is the extent of her dealings with African Americans in the book. Her heroes are immigrants, who in Omar’s view are the only ones to understand the value of democracy. Shocked by the squalor and poverty she saw when first arriving as a refugee in New York, Omar thinks the image the US exports abroad is its true ideal. “We want to export that image to the rest of the world, because that is ultimately what we want for ourselves.”
It is the immigrant who represents America more than its natives, with Omar writing that “I worry, though, that the striving aspect of the American spirit is greatest in our new immigrants, because many of us already here have become complacent.” Yet this is not a story about the immigrant’s hereditary virtues, since Omar is forthright in blaming her own Somali community for the most vicious political attacks she has received, while the only account she gives of an Islamophobic encounter involved an African cab driver who “had an African accent that made him sound like some of my relatives.”
What Omar finds liberating about America is that “there are stronger bonds than identity.” She describes herself as possessing several identities that bring her into contact with many disparate groups, a fragmentation that rubbishes both the singular “identity politics” those on the right accuse their opponents of pursuing as well as the Manichaean one that pits white against black. Being black allows Omar to go beyond her own background and make common cause with African Americans among others. In doing so, she participates in the problematic freeing of black politics from African American identity. Are we seeing the consequences of this freedom on the streets of America today with the slow pluralization of black identity and politics? And will it alter the long history of conflict between black and white there? African Americans once sought to mediate if not break their dualistic relations with whites by turning to the world outside, whether in Pan-Africanism or Islam. That world has now arrived in the United States, and like Barack Obama before her, Ilhan Omar has become its political representative.
— —
Egyptian Immigrant Wants to be Reclassified as Black / Mostafa Hefny feels he’s been black his whole life. The U.S. government doesn’t agree. — By Aylin Zafar (https://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/07/egyptian-immigrant-wants-to-be-reclassified-as-black/)
Anyone who’s ever filled out a census document or taken the SATs is familiar with that odd moment when you have to bubble in your racial classification. For many, the choices are confusing, limiting, and problematic. In the end, each person bubbles in what they best feel represents their identity. But when Mostafa Hefny immigrated to the United States from Egypt in 1978, he didn’t get a say in that decision.
“The government [interviewer] said, ‘You are now white,” Hefny told CBS Detroit.
Since the 1980s, CBS reports, Henfy has been fighting to have the U.S. government reclassify him as black, which is how he’s always seen himself. “My classification as a white man takes away my black pride, my black heritage and my strong black identity,” Henfy told the Detroit News.
Hefny, 61, filed a suit in 1997 against the U.S. government to be reclassified, but his case was dismissed. Hefny has also reached out to President Obama for help, writing him a letter on June 29, the Detroit News reports, as well as the Justice Department and the United Nations.
“I have been awarded, inadvertently, the negative effects of being black such as racial profiling, stereotypes and disenfranchisement due to my Negroid features. However, the legal demand of my racial classification of ‘white’ prevents me from receiving benefits established for black people, “ he told CBS. Hefny says he’s lost out on university teaching positions because they were positions designed for a minority and he did not qualify.
Currently, Directive 15 for the federal Office of Management and Budget Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity defines race by the following categories: Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black of African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific islander, White, Nonresident alien, Resident alien, and Race/ethnicity unknown.
“White” is defined as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa” — which is why the U.S. government classifies Hefny as such. However, the desgination for “Black or African American” applies to “a person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.” According to CBS, Hefny says that he is descended from the Nubians, the ancient group of Egyptians from the northern part of Sudan and southern part of Egypt.
An article by Charles Whitaker in Ebony in 2002 entitled “Was Cleopatra Black?” explored this topic of racial classification in Egypt, and found that, among scholars, “discussions of Cleopatra’s race were so couched and so guarded that professors even fear engaging in the discussion publicly.”
“Cleopatra is one of those figures whose race often depends on the lens you use to view her,” Julia Perkins, associate directors of community programs for the Art Institute of Chicago told Ebony. Whitaker talked to various scholars who all found classifying Cleopatra to be “full of complexity, full of odd historical twists, and that there was no real, easy answer.” Her father’s mother may have been a concubine from Nubia, Whitaker writes, so that would make her African Egyptian.
Hefny also classifies himself as African Egyptian, and has co-founded The Association of Black Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Nubian Advocates to drum up support for his cause. He’s posted a petition online, and currently has collected 188 signatures.
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[Update:
Sudanese and South Sudanese People, other North Africans, and the Dual Co-Existing Black African and Arab Identities
Sudanese and South Sudanese People are made up of roughly 67 or so ethnic groups. Most of the South Sudanese population is made up of Nilo-Saharan (mostly Central Sudanic, Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic peoples) speaking peoples and some Niger–Congo speaking ethnic groups. The Sudanese population also has a similar makeup but also includes a few other groups, like the Nilo-Saharan Nubian people, as well as some native Afro-Asiatic speaking groups like the Cushitics-speaking Beja people and Ethiosemitic-speaking Tigre people. Sudanese Arabs are the largest ethnic group in Sudan, it is an ethnic group made up of a combination of most of the larger groupings of ethnic groups already mentioned, notable mentions are that Sudanese Arabs are mostly made up of Arabized Nubians and Cushitic peoples, as well as other broader people groups that had a cultural and language shift towards adopting the Arabic language as their native language, aspects of Arab Culture, and an Arab Cultural Identity through Pan-Arabisim. Sudanese Arabs are just as Black and African as any other population in the region. Falsely calming that Sudanese Arabs and other Sudanese/South Sudanese people aren’t Black or African is being racist and xenophobic, it is equivalent to denying the Black and African identities of Afro-Caribbean people, African Americans, and Afro-Latinos, other descendants of the African diaspora, Nigerians, Cameroonian for adopting the languages and cultures of the countries that that they were colonized by or had cultural diffusion/cultural exchange with.
Some Comments from other people:
As a sudanese, I’ll admit yes our culture does have a mix of Arab in it of course because of arabisation but what people fail to realise that we still have things of our own which originated from Sudan before arabs came like our own musical instruments (which can also be found in East African countries like Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea) our own type of music and dances that are more similar horn of Africa, our own types of food and even in some places our own languages.
people just assume we’re culturally Arab because we speak Arabic the same way other invaded countries speak the language of their invaders (like how chad speaks french) and because our culture has a touch of Arab in it but we still share more in common with other African countries because the Africans were our neighbours long before arabs came and we have shared a lot and exchanged cultures. The fact that we have a touch of Arab in our identity doesn’t make us less African but it makes our culture unique to us.
“Too Black to be Arab, too Arab to be Black” — By: Leena Habiballa
Within every Sudanese diasporan is an unceasing internal dialogue about where we fit in the dominant racial order. Sudan is one of the most ethnically, culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse places on the African continent. It was also home to some of the most ancient civilisations in African memory. But today it suffers from the brutal legacy of Arab slavery, Ottoman imperialism and British colonialism.
My early childhood was spent living in various Arab countries, where I learnt from a young age that my darker skin tone threatened my claim to Arabness. To be authentically Arab, it wasn’t enough to speak Arabic or have facets of Arab culture syncretised into my own. My Blackness needed to be invisible. My identity as an Arab was, therefore, always contested and fraught, though nevertheless an important part of my being and, ultimately, self-evident. When others denied my Arabness I felt its existence affirmed, for how could something be stripped off if it didn’t exist?
It wasn’t until my mid to late teens that I was forced to see Blackness and Arabness as ontologically separate. This was the result of being introduced to the Western concept of race. Being racialised within this schema gave me a new sense of self, one which was innately linked to my skin colour and its difference to others. I had previously equated ‘Arab’ with Arab culture, and ‘Black’ with skin tone, not an identity. The concept of race, however, meant not only that I now saw Black and Arab as representing very different racial identities but also as invariably competing and mutually exclusive. I came to embody these two irreconcilable racial categories, and my body had become the site of a visceral and daily contradiction.
Too Black to be Arab, too Arab to be Black. This is the daily discourse that I grappled with. I was racially perplexed and traumatised.
My internal conflict was mirrored in the story of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old prodigy who was racially profiled and arrested in Texas, U.S., for bringing an alleged hoax-bomb to school. Ahmed is a Muslim Sudanese-American and has Black African ancestry and Afro-Arab heritage. You would not know this, however, if you listened to the majority of Western voices (including people of colour) who, in the absence of any ethnic subtext, read Ahmed’s body as Brown.
Online, arguments raged about which Western racial category Ahmed truly embodies. In polemical diatribes many continued the policing of Ahmed’s body to define him as either categorically Brown or categorically Black. Lost in all of this is the reality that White racial constructs and racial politics don’t capture the subtleties, complexities, and overlaps of ethnic identities, as with Ahmed.
Being a Sudanese who has fallen victim to this kind of racial policing, I am always curious to see in what ways non-Sudanese react to our racial ambiguity. By racial ambiguity I am not only referring to the colour of one’s skin or the texture of one’s hair. I am also talking about a person’s culture, religious affiliation and heritage. The Sudanese body is a rich and complicated constellation of meaning, a mosaic of identity that is often compromised in its translation into Western racial constructs. The majority of us carry different combinations of African, Arab and Muslim identities, rendering us incoherent to Western racial paradigms. This incoherence makes us suspicious under the globalised racial surveillance of Whiteness. In this sense, Sudanese identities/bodies threaten to harmonise the hierarchical, and therefore irreconcilable, racial dogma that one cannot be more than one thing at a time.
In the past, my Blackness and Arabness shaped my reality in mutually informing, albeit deeply disturbing, ways. The former inspired anti-black racism from non-Black Arabs, who used it as a way of denying me the latter: In non-Black, especially Arab spaces I was read as definitely Black, and in Black spaces I was read as definitely Arab. I was, in spite of myself, forced to embody alien versions of either, always at the expense of the other. So real was this process of racialisation and racial interrogation that I subconsciously internalised racist Western conceptions of what it means to be ‘Arab’ and ‘Black’. I reproduced them in public spaces as if to perform social scripts with racial sincerity. In non-Black Arab spaces I avoided speaking Arabic for fear of spawning confusion. And in Black spaces, I feared that my Arabness undermined my blackness.
Ultimately, Ahmed’s body was racialised as specifically Brown and not Black, and there are two reasons for this. First, in the context of the so-called US-led War on Terror, the term terrorist circumscribes Muslim and Brown bodies. To justify their indiscriminate bombing across the wider Middle East and North Africa, Brown Muslim bodies must be as broadly defined as possible. It’s for that reason that Ahmed, incriminated of terrorism, was profiled by his teachers and the police as a Brown Muslim man, not a Black Muslim boy.
Second, anti-Blackness within Brown and Muslim spaces constructs the victims of Islamophobia as exclusively Brown. To be Black (Muslim) is to be not a real, potential subject of Islamophobia. One ought to ask whether Ahmed’s talents would have been so widely celebrated amongst Brown Muslims if he wasn’t racially ambiguous enough to fit the few model minority tropes afforded to, say, male South Asian Muslims. Would the same numbers of Muslims and South Asians have shown their solidarity and outrage if Ahmed’s Black African heritage were more unambiguously available on his skin?
‘But Ahmed himself adopts the label “Brown” to describe his racial identity!’ I hear you say. Some have chalked this down to internalised anti-blackness. While this undeniably exists in Sudanese communities, we must distinguish between those instances and the struggle to self-narrate one’s body using a social vocabulary that is not one’s own. Being Black and Arab we are expected to communicate the nuances and histories of our bodies through the constraints of a specifically White colonial vocabulary. We fail to traverse the racial landscape because the language available to fuel such a translation is constructed around the White gaze, thereby rendering our attempts at articulation futile. If we do not consider this we risk reifying ‘Black’, decoupling ‘Black’ from social construction and using ‘Black’ in the service of Western cultural imperialism.
In this sense, Ahmed’s self-referential use of Brown reflects the struggle to approximate ‘Black-Arab’ and reconcile Africanness with Arabness. Like all of us, Ahmed has found himself caught trying to navigate a racialised world. The colonial, Western lexicon of race and racism has made it impossible to articulate Black Arab subjectivities. Its vocabulary can’t fathom Black-and-Arab except as a racial transgression, as anti-Black racial betrayal or categorical over-spillage to be mopped up, rubbed out, punished and policed whenever possible. It’s for that reason that our presence as Black and Arab is unsettling. Our identities are invisible, unthought of and unintelligible to the paradigms of Whiteness.
This failure is also strikingly visible in the coverage of the ongoing and everlasting conflict in Darfur, which has seen an unprecedented wave of destruction and organised violence erupt since 2003. Western media regularly paints the conflict as a race war between Black-Africans and non-Black Arabs. This locally non-existent binary has obfuscated the more complex causes behind the crisis, while revealing the hidden anti-Arab and anti-Black bias of the White imaginary. The rhetoric also mirrors trite representations of African wars predicated on primordial identities, in a bid to capitalise on the voyeuristic tendencies of Western populations, including those of non-Whites, who have failed to question this insidious narrative. What makes this process possible is the preexisting assumption that ‘Black’ and ‘Arab’ cannot co-exist in one geographical context, let alone one body.
Non-Black Arabs also operate on and benefit from this separation. They pit their Arabness in direct opposition to Blackness, thereby protecting their claim to Arabness, while gaining proximity to Whiteness.
My experiences and the discussions surrounding Ahmed’s body confirm that race is a Western fantasy maintained by a daily, violent socio-political choreography. In an attempt to comprehend Sudanese identity, Western racial classifications construct us as impossible paradoxes, alienating us from our bodies, histories and ways of being. The ever-shifting space between my estranged self and my legitimate self is where my trauma lies, and I will no longer nurture this space.
I refuse to rehearse the logics of race-making or dance to the imperialist drum of racialisation. I will not become digestible to Westerners and non-Black Arabs alike. I will not dilute myself into something you can understand. My complexity is necessary, and it necessitates the abolition of racial orders. I assert Black-Arabness not as a plea to integrate into the race map or gain recognition from an oppressive institution, but to announce that I am here to rattle, shake and disorient a rigid and dogmatic racial hierarchy. I am Black-Arab and I will not uphold a narrative or politics that does not name my reality. I am Black-Arab and I exist.
“Why are some black Africans considered white Americans? Sudanese Americans do not fit neatly into the existing racial classifications of the American society.” — By: Hind Makki
I always knew I was black. My childhood was the scent of coconut oil hair cream and the taste of bean pie after Friday prayers in a Bilalian mosque on Chicago’s south side. I knew the words to Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and called Harold Washington my mayor, even though I lived in the suburbs.
My parents had immigrated to the United States from Sudan in the late 1970s and raised my sister and me to be comfortable in our skin. I spoke Arabic at home and English at school where it seemed no one else agreed that I am black.
Outside of the box:
When my father registered me for kindergarten, the school administrator told him that we had to select a box to designate our race.
My father — raised in a post-colonial Sudan mired in ethnic tensions and civil war — wondered aloud why the government was tracking pupils based on race.
The administrator recommended that since Arabic is the language spoken at home, we should mark “white”. My father, whose adolescence was shaped by Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X, laughed. He patted his conspicuous Afro and wryly said, “We may speak Arabic at home, but you can clearly see that we are black.”
My experience highlights the absurdity of US racial classifications. The US Census Bureau classifies all Arabic speakers as white, owing partly to the fact that the earliest Arabic-speaking immigrants to the US were Levantine Christians who could, and wanted to, pass for white [in order to prevent their forced deportation and disenfranchisement in the event they were racially classified as Asian during the Era of the Chinese Exclusion Act that applied to all Asians in which anyone classified as Asian would be barred from legal recendcy or U.S. Citizenship (Levantine Arabs and other non-Arab Levantine peoples didn’t properly fit into the already established racial clasification systems of the United States used to determin race) so were able to convince the governmnt to be reclasified as White instead of Asian to circumvent racist laws].
Becoming white [At Least Legally On Paper But Not In Reality]:
US history is defined by centuries of rigid racial hierarchy, with enslaved Africans and their descendants at the bottom of the heap.
Catholics, Jews, and southern European immigrants were not automatically granted whiteness and its legal benefits (PDF).
But by the 20th century, if a man looked white, he enjoyed full benefits of citizenship. But if he looked or was suspected of being black, then he would have to contend with racist laws designed to disenfranchise and terrify African Americans.
The immigration of non-Europeans threw a wrench into this system. Early 20th-century Arab immigrants were not interested in being on the wrong end of Jim Crow laws and did not want to live as non-citizens like some Asian immigrants. They petitioned the government to grant them legal whiteness and it did.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s began to chip away at systemic racism.
The Arabic-speakers who immigrated to the United States after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, including my parents, were much more diverse than the previous waves.
Most of the newcomers, who included people from 10 African countries, could not pass for white even if they wanted to.
Identity erasure:
My elementary school wanted to designate me as white because Arabic is my mother tongue, but no one was under any illusion that I actually was a white person. Rather, the question was: as an Afro-Arab, am I black enough to be considered racially black in America?
Sudanese Americans racial identities are often erased. Ahmed Mohamed, the so-called Clock Boy, was described as “brown” by many commentators as if he was South Asian.
Famously, Aziz Ansari, the Indian American actor, tweeted that he stands with Ahmed, “because I was once a brown kid in the south, too.”
I am a Muslim woman who wears a headscarf; I cannot point to an Afro to prove my blackness. Like Ahmed, my racial identity is often erased and transformed into an amorphous brown “other”.
Having your racial identity erased means hearing racial slurs against your community in your own language. It can also lead to absurdly ironic situations.
My family used to live in a predominantly African American apartment complex, whose residents were bused into predominantly white schools.
Once, a white woman stepped on to the bus with her blonde granddaughter and scanned the aisles. She loudly commanded, “Go sit with those Indian girls; I don’t want you to sit next to any n*****s.” It was only when the girl plucked herself down next to us that my sister and I realised that the older woman had meant us!
Sudanese Americans do not fit neatly into the existing racial classifications of our society. Though many identify as black, proximity to the Arabic language negates their claim to blackness in the eyes of others.
The artificial line between North and sub-Saharan Africa has followed us across the Atlantic. And during the Sudanese Civil War, journalists often described a conflict that pitted the “Arab North” against the “African South”.
For the reader, the word “Arab” conjures images of pale-skinned people from the Middle East, not images of my ebony-skinned great-grandfathers irrigating their farms along the banks of the Nile [in Africa].
[Arabs can be ebony/dark-skinned people, brown-skinned people, or pale-skinned people.].
This politicised language still reverberates, even though many Sudanese immigrants actively identify as black and are treated as such by the state, law enforcement, and society at large.
Intersectional invisibility:
There was an outpouring of support from American Muslim communities after three young Levantine Arab Muslims were shot dead by their neighbour.
Yet, the responses from African American and Muslim communities were tepid when three young men, Sudanese refugees, were also shot dead later that year.
The founder of the Muslim Wellness Foundation, Kameelah Rashad writes: “Psychologist Valerie Purdie Vaughns coined the term intersectional invisibility to describe the phenomenon that occurs within a subordinate group in which individuals with intersecting identities (black and Muslim, for example — embodying racial and religious minority identities) are not perceived to be typical members of that group and often erased from the collective imagination.” (PDF)
READ MORE: Race in the US — What if your identity was a lie?
Sudanese Americans, like all African American and black Muslims in the US, suffer from intersectional invisibility. One unexpected side effect of the #MuslimBan has been a larger platform for Sudanese American artists and commentators to grapple with their own intersecting identities. The diversity found internally in Sudan cannot be crammed into an American box.
In an era of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and the xenophobic, anti-Muslim Trump administration, Sudanese Americans are carving their own identities at the intersection of Islamophobia and anti-black animus.
Sudanese Arabs:
Sudanese Arabs are the majority population of Sudan. Most speak Sudanese Arabic. Sudanese Arabs have been described as culturally and linguistically Arabized (assimilated into the Arab World) indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nilo-Saharans, Nubian[5], and Cushitic[6] ancestry with varying cases of distant admixture from Peninsular Arabs[7]. The great majority of the Sudanese Arabs are split into four larger tribal groups: the Ja’alin, who primarily live along the Nile River but do include nomadic sections such as the Batahin, the Juhaynah who include the Rufaa people, the Shukria clan, and Kababish tribe who live east and west of the Nile, the Banu Fazara who live in Northern Kordofan, and the Kawahala who include the Ababda people, amongst others. The Republic of Sudan also houses other Arab non-Sudanese Arab populations like Hejazi Arab Tribes such as the Rashaida and Kenana that only recently settled Sudan in the 1960’s, after migrating from the Hejaz Region of the Arabian Peninsula[8].
Additionally, other smaller Sudanese groups who have also been Arabized, or partially Arabized, but retain a separate, non-Arab identity, include the Nubians, Copts, and Beja.
While most Arabs in Sudan are Sudanese Arabs, with most of Sudan’s Arab population speaking modern Sudanese Arabic, with western Sudanese province tribes bordering Chad like the Baggara and Darfurians generally speaking Chadian Arabic. Sudanese Arabs have large variations in culture and genealogy because of their descent from a combination of various population groups.[9] Most Sudanese Arabs are descended from culturally and linguistically Arabized or assimilated indigenous Nilo-Saharan, Nubian[5], and Cushitic[6] peoples of Sudan (predominantly from the Beja people and Nubian people who have a historical Pre-Arab connection to Egypt) with the addition of varying cases of distant admixture with Arabs of the Arabia Peninsula[7] that migrated to The Sudans in the 12th century AD during the introduction of Islam in the region.[10] Other Arab population in Sudan that are not ethnically Sudanese Arab, i.e. those that are recent arrivals to the region exist, and most of them such as the Awadia and Fadnia tribes, the Bani Hassan, Al-Ashraf and Rashaida tribes generally speak Hejazi Arabic instead of the more widespread Sudanese Arabic.
[Sudanese Arabs and Hejazi Arabs of the Republic of Sudan are two different populations. Sudanese Arabs are overwelmingly Arabized indigenous Sudanese people with some small varying amounts of admixture from Arabs proper (Arabian Peninsula Arabs) in the 12th Century CE/AD. The Hejazi Arabs of Sudan instead are recent arrivals from the Arabian Peninsula that settled in the 1860’s. The diff between t/2 is like Anglophone Black South African vs. White South Africans of English/British ancestry.].
Responce to the Question “Sudanese and Nubians are not sub-Saharan. However, a lot of them identify as black (e.g., Duckie Thot). Does blackness go beyond being sub-Saharan?” [ https://www.quora.com/Sudanese-and-Nubians-are-not-sub-Saharan-However-a-lot-of-them-identify-as-black-e-g-Duckie-Thot-Does-blackness-go-beyond-being-sub-Saharan ]:
Wait…..now people are claiming Nubians/Sudanese aren’t Sub-Saharan….. LMAO it never ends does it. Sudan is on the same latitude as Mali Niger and Chad. The reason why Sudan is not considered “Sub-Saharan” anymore is because of their obvious connection to Ancient Egypt.
The White supremacists know they’ve found themselves in a tight squeeze because of the “Southern Genesis” of Ancient Egypt and after many decades of casting Nubians as the “black slaves” of Caucasian Egyptians now they’re quickly trying to redefine what Sub-Sahara Africa is. Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia etc etc aren’t Sub-Saharan anymore but are in actually in North Africa despite Ethiopia/Somalia being on the same latitude as Nigeria, Northern Ghana Southern Mali, Senegal and Sudan being on the same latitude as Chad Niger and Mali.
As you can see from the map Somalia is not considered not Sub-Saharan but Ethiopia is. Sudan is not Sub-Saharan but Chad and Niger is. In other words it’s political masturbation which changes depending on the white supremacists needs and requirements for the day. White supremacists use to play the same game with “whiteness” back in the day.
Same thing……
Anyway On the Sub-Saharan term, yes blackness does go beyond Sub-Sahara because there is no such thing as a Sub-Saharan race of people, it’s a false term which means nothing from a racial standpoint. It is a geographical description nothing more.
A far cry from the stereotypical view many white academics and white supremacists on quora paint of Africa.
Anyway from a Genetic standpoint the Nubians are indeed black as are other Nile Valley Africans like the Beja and Masalit. While their paternal lineages are a little more mixed due to repeated assimilation of Bedouin Arabs their maternal lineages are generally 70- 80% African and the e1b1b and Macro L haplogroups still predominate these people even after centuries of admixture with Semites. Furthermore the Eurasian component within Nubians is subordinate to African DNA. Generally in academia this is taken Eurasian DNA was introduced into the African and not the other way around. Isn’t it funny how any amount of Eurasian admixture found within an African American never makes them “not black” but in North Africa the rules are reversed.
To quickly answer Mata Matosa the fact Nubians of Northern Sudan have fought against Southern Sudanese (nilotes) doesn’t take away from their blackness. In the same way Hutu’s fighting against Tutsi doesn’t stop them from being black or Hausa’s fighting against Yorbuas doesn’t stop them being black either. Not sure what point you’re trying to make there.
My prediction for the future is it won’t be before long that Mali and Mauritania won’t be considered “Sub-Saharan” anymore so get ready for the white supremacists to say things like “Why do Afrocentrists keep claiming Timbuktu when it’s clearly not Sub-Saharan in origin?” Like a friend of mine once said White supremacists won’t be happy until they’e regulated Black Africans to the Congo in a jungle somewhere. Even South Africa is off limits to the blacks and is the property of “Eurasian” Khoi Sans who are not black at all apparently.
Even these guys aren’t safe from being “white” LOL…….
Now can you see why Africans have such a negative view of Europeans and prefer to deal with the Chinese when it comes to Africa?
You see THIS is the danger of allowing another people to control your history…..
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Does blackness go beyond being sub-Saharan?
Questions like these suggest that there are “black free” regions in Africa in the Sahara and supra-Sahara. It is all a myth rooted in falsehood.
Africa is the aboriginal and ancestral lands of the Blacks.
That is why Africa is called the black continent.
Saharan countries like Chad, Mali, Niger and even Eritrea are inhabited by black skinned populations. The Sahara Desert is not some magic force field that keep Blacks south or out. There are indigenous black populations in the Sahara and supra-Sahara. The Sahara is an imaginary “racial” and genetic barrier, invented by outsiders, European colonialists, in particular. There is a diversity and family on both sides of this imaginary frontier.
The sub-Saharan divide is an invention. The Sahara does not divide Africa genetically or phenotypically. The e1b1b hg is found among the palest Riffians, the darkest Somali, the blackest Maasai and the yellowish San of Southern Africa. Delusional Eurocentrists created a fake Negro stereotype only being found south of the Sahara.
They also say that North Africa is different from Africa south of the Sahara because it was historically linked to ancient Rome and Greece. It is a logic fail. Romans were in Africa south of the Sahara. They visited sub-Saharan Africa and traded with sub-Saharans as far as Raphta, an island of Tanzania. The ancient Greeks recorded a large number of travels as far as present day Ethiopia, in east sub-Saharan Africa.
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Well your Question need a little clarification , What do you meant by “ Sudanese “ and “ Nubians ? A “ Sudanese “ is term for a Citizen who lives in a country called Sudan which is broader by Egypt to the North, Eritrea to East, Ethiopia to S.East, Chad to the West, Lybia to N.West and South Sudan to the South.
As you can see most of it lies in Sahara desert. So it’s fare to say it is a Saharan country. Do they identify as black ? NO, no one in Sudan identify himself as Black — because Black is a racist term invented by White Colonists. There are around 500 tribes in Sudan, each Sudanese identify himself with tribe, clan or sub clan. As for Nubians, they are a historical groups of people who used to live in what’s now called North of Sudan and South of Egypt. So I know nutting about them I have never met any. Some Nubians only identify as black in america for better assimilation under the american racial categorization.
“No Girl, I’m Not Your Nubian Sister.” The Plight of the Black Arab, by Ghost Cheeks & Media Showers ( https://medium.com/@GhostCheeksAndMediaShowers1/no-girl-i-m-not-your-nubian-sister-e83e965bc178 )
[African American cultural appropriation of Nubian/Sudanese, Somali, and other NorthEast African Culture, Tradition, and History]
Whenever you see a beautiful African-American woman walking down the street — film or not — the term “Nubian” begins to be thrown around. Consciously, I never really paid attention to this term because it’s meant as a term of admiration and positivity. And as a Black female, terms of admiration don’t come by that often. But as I’ve gotten older, hearing the term has begun to bother me more and more for several reasons.
Nubians aren’t just an ancient civilization, but they’re also a group of marginalized Egyptians who struggle with being valued as Arabs and Black people. Whether it’s Egypt or United States, being Black and Arab is still unacknowledged by both White and Arab people, more specifically Black people. If Black lives are meant to matter, why doesn’t the Black Arab remain unacknowledged both in the U.S. and internationally? The cultural appropriation of Nubian culture and ideas show the overall unacknowledged plight of Black Arabs in today’s climate.
Before I can get into the issue, let me give you a basic history of the Nubian people. Modern-day Nubians are the descendants of one of the earliest Northeast African societies to originate and to succeed in Egyptian and Sudanese history. Nubian began as archers and important traders in Lower and Upper Nubia, and eventually began to converge with similar people and culture in Naqada of Egypt. These two groups of people served as the gateway for Nubians and Ancient Egyptians to cross cultural and geographical boundaries. A great example of the merging of two groups are the Mejday. The Mejday went from being a distinct ethnic group of Kushites (early Nubians) to being a respected group of elite soldiers for the Egyptian royalty. At some point, “Nubian” became synonymous with “Egyptian,” and it’s clear throughout Ancient Egypt.
According to Timothy Kendall’s “Racism and the Rediscovery of Ancient Nubia,” Nubians “are now recognized as having sponsored an important renaissance of Egyptian art and culture; they developed an almost scholarly interest in ancient Egyptian traditions and language and have been called ‘the first Egyptologists’” (2). Nubian set a precedence for future Ancient Egyptian dynasties to continue promoting and preserving their history. They’ve played an important part in Egyptian history then and now, as Nubians are still very much part of Egyptian society. The descendants of Old Nubia have maintained their agricultural spirit and cultural heritage. And for those that have branched out into Egyptian city life, have paved their own ways, like Shikabala, Idris Ali, and Ibrahim Awad.
Unfortunately, the Nubian community modern-day achievements have not been recognized, and the community has dealt with forced relocations away from the Nile for a dam — A DAM. Their forced relocation and has led to rampant poverty and suffering that hasn’t been addressed in the 20th century. The large amount of poverty surrounding the community reflects the intense amount of racism from their fellow Egyptians and Arabs. According to the Guardian, Haife Wehbe, a famous Lebanese popstar, called Nubians or Black Egyptians “monkeys” in her song (3). Whether it be former Egyptian president (often called Nassar’s black poodle), Whether it’s President Anwar Sadat or Black Egyptians in general, light-skinned Arabs feel the need to differentiate Nubians from the rest of the Arab world despite their rich history in the country.
Not only have Arabs denied inclusivity to Nubians, but the same denouncement was also committed by European discoverers of Ancient Nubia. Nineteenth-century academics and Egyptologists, like Karl Lepsius, could not believe “‘negroes’” were capable of ruling an empire (2). Instead, Egyptologist Lepsius erased their blackness by referring to Ancient Nubians as “Ethiopians” or a “reddish-skinned people closely related to the Egyptians, who ‘belonged to the Caucasian race’” (2). Lepsius and several scholars misconstrued information and facts to deny Nubians their own unique history and culture among other Arab and African civilizations.
George Reisner, a famous Egyptologist (and terrible human being), believed wholeheartedly that the discovered monuments and achievements made by the Kushites could not be done by black people. Reisner believed, like his fellow Egyptologists, that “skin pigmentation was a determinant of intellectual ability and enlightenment” (2). The “dark-skinned native ‘negroid’ population’” and intermarriages were the ultimate downfall of the ‘Ethiopians’” (2). The Nubians only did as well as they did because “the superior Egyptian race…elevated [them] far above ‘the inert mass of the black races of Africa’” (2).
Reisner’s views reflected the blatant racism that existed at the time, and still manages to exist in the current Egyptian atmosphere. Decades later, Reisner’s work was recognized for its fallacies and falsehood. Modern-day Egyptologists understand the Nubians were the source of Ancient Egypt’s Renaissance. Their rule may have been shorter, but they left a lasting imprint on Egyptian culture still denied by many Eurocentrists to this day. But what Reisner did to diminish the role of Ancient Nubians, African-Americans during the Civil Rights movement did the exact opposite, stating Nubians were “the fountainhead of European civilization…[and] diminished the significance of Kush” (2).
The birth of Afrocentrism in the U.S. — established to counteract Eurocentrism — saw African-Americans take ownership over different Black experiences that disproved white privilege. Ancient Nubians became the foundation for Afrocentric arguments, but Afrocentrism makes a fallacy that Eurocentrism does as well. While white explorers denied Ancient Nubians their complexity and newfound blackness, Afrocentrists glossed over the same facts to prove a point. Hassim Mahanaim, (aka “The Angriest Boy In The World “), further highlights this point as “…Afrocentrists are not, by definition, primarily concerned with the truth, but rather the self-esteem and well-being of Black people” (1). The Nubian struggle — dealing with stolen land and immense poverty — is then whittled down to becoming a simplified support system, used to uplift the African American idea of Blackness.
These harmful Afrocentric ideas and tendencies are still very much a reality today. Beyonce’s Formation, Black Lives Matter, and stories told to represent the “full” Black experiences, lacks the essential diversity skimmed by Afrocentrists and Eurocentrists alike. The appropriated experiences of Nubians reflects the bigger issue of Black Arabs around the world. Nubians, as well as Somalis, Eritreans, Djiboutians, Berber communities, North Africans, and Ethiopians (fellow Northeast African countries) don’t have the same history period. We’re a group of people who have different origin stories, cultures, and struggles. We’re groups of people who have long, tough histories including tribalism, colonialism, sultanates, civil war, Orientalism, forced removals, relocations, racism, and the list continues. This history — our history — doesn’t seem to matter once we enter different contexts.
And in our globalized world today, how can Blackness still be determined by Eurocentric and Afrocentric ideas of the past?Blackness is still being treated like an exclusively African-American, West African, and Caribbean notion; while Nubians aren’t recognized for their both their Black and Arab identities in both Egypt and beyond. In the U.S. alone, Black populations have changed since the immigration of Somalis and other Black populations greatly. But for Black Arabs, like Somalis and Sudanese people, we don’t fit into the set groups of society. We’re at an intersection that hasn’t been recognized by not just Black people, but also other people of color. If you’re Black in America, you’re automatically African-American. If you’re Middle Eastern, you’re considered white (for some ridiculous reason). The associations and conclusions made reduce millions of identities to skin color and one history. These perpetuation of racial identity and ideas have then been continued by both people of color and white people.
As a Somali and Black Arab, my identity didn’t matter to African-Americans and white people alike, but I was still expected to accept and enjoy movements like “Black Girl Magic” and “Muslim Lives Matter.” People like myself are excluded from these conversations because we’re not “Arab enough” or “Black enough” or deemed “enough” of something to stake claim in any one group. And if you can’t be categorized or minimized into a category, then you just cannot exist unless you actively choose a group. For instance, many Somalis are Black-passing, so they identify as African or African-American in the United States. For those that aren’t Black-passing, opt for other groups.
The defined status quo and limitations of racial identity are extremely harmful to the growing communities that exist in the grey patches of our society. Blackness is not limited to West Africans, Caribbeans, or African-Americans; Somalis and Nubians have just as much claim to being Black and Arab without having our history erased or acknowledged to fit an agenda. Our voices need to be heard as the world and U.S. begins to embrace intersectionality and representation. In the words of Haasim Mahanaim, “honest, uncensored discourse of the kind opposed by Afrocentrists,” is the only we should move forward as a community, as a people (1).”
Footnotes:
1: Mahanaim, Haasim. “Debunking Afrocentrism.” The Angriest Boy in the World. The Angriest Boy in the World, n.d. Web. 1 Feb 2016.
2: Kendall, Timothy. “Racism and the Rediscovery of Ancient Nubia.” Black Kingdoms of the Nile. Public Broadcasting Service, n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2016.
3: Shenker, Jack. “Nubian fury at ‘monkey’ lyric of Arab pop star Haifa Wehbe.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 17 Nov. 2009. Web. 1 Feb. 2016.
Definition of African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans)[3] are a combined racial group and ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the racially Black groups of Africa.[4][5] The term African American as an ethnic group generally denotes descendants of enslaved Africans who are from the United States,[6][7][8] while the term African American or Black American is used as a racial group further encompassing some Black immigrants or their children who may come to identify (themselves), be identified (by others) as African-American, or be perceived as Black.[9] The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Black or African American refers to a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa, although not all indigenous African populations fit this description.[10][11][12]
African Americans constitute the third largest ethnic group and the second largest racial group in the US, after White Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans[13] (who can also be simultaneously Black, See: Black Hispanic and Latino Americans).[14] Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States.[15][16] On average, African Americans (generally those who are part of the African diaspora in the Americas and particularly American Descendants of Slavery) are of West and Central African and European descent, and some also have Native American ancestry.[1] According to U.S. Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities or national origins (≈95%); [17] including some immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, Central American, and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term[18] but are regarded as such by the United States Census Bureau[12]. According the United States Census Bureau, North Africans are de jure racially categorized as White, although most are of a lighter complexion, they are usually not accepted as White by the larger society, rarely regard themselves as White, several North African population groups are nearly indistinguishable from other Black people groups, and other North African populations have a wide range of complexions even within the same ethno-cultural communities that defy the racial classification system traditionally used in Western countries like the United States.[19][20][21][22][23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=African_Americans&oldid=1044277105 .
Definition of Arab Americans
Arab Americans (Arabic: عَرَبٌ أَمْرِيكِا or أمريكيون عرب) are American citizens of Arab heritage. Arab Americans trace ancestry to any of the various waves of immigrants of the countries comprising the Arab World.
According to the Arab American Institute (AAI), countries of origin for Arab Americans include Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.[2]
A number of native non-Arab ethnic groups in Western Asia and Northern Africa that may have lived in Arab countries and are now resident in the United States are not always classified as Arabs but some may claim a dual Arab-non-Arab identity; they include Assyrians, Arameans, Jews (in particular Mizrahi Jews, some Sephardi Jews), Copts, Kurds, Iraqi Turkmens, Mandeans, Circassians, Shabaki, Armenians, Yazidis, Balochs, Kawliya/Romani, Syrian Turkmens, Somalis, Djiboutians, Berbers (especially Arab-Berbers), and Nubians.
Arabs and Arabized people with origins in the Arab world, although most of the time are de jure (legally) classified as White Americans (like other North Africans and West Asians as well) by the United States Census Bureau, are not a single homogenous racial group with the same or similar skin complexions. Arabs are a racially diverse transcontinental ethnicity or pan-ethnicity, with several Arab populations being simultaneously African (some are Black or Black-passing, even meeting the U.S. Census Bureau’s criteria for being classified as a Black or African American person) and others are simultaneously Asian.[6][7][8][9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arab_Americans&oldid=1040493149 .
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Part 2: Controversial topic that needs addressing
*(TRIGGER WARNING: Open)
Habeshas are Black (and we kind of need to use that term when living in the West, because that’s what the Whites refer to us and we also need to make African Americans happy because they have more power than us and we need their help for our own survival in America. In order to be politically correct in America we have to adhere to Western Eurocentric concepts of race, and most people (both Black and White Americans) want everyone with dark/black/brown skin to use the term “Black“ as a racial identity, even if your own culture and ethnicity doesn’t use skin-color terminology to signify race and culture.
It’s not bad to call yourself Black, but understand that the term “Black” as a race or personal identity is a Western and Eurocentric socio-political constructed identity that is a completely foreign concept for most average Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Sudanese/South Sudanese, and other Horn Africans (or even other Africans with limited-to-no colonial history) that generally don’t come in contact with that many Westerners (Westerners as in Europeans as well as Black & White Americans alike) on a regularly basis. Most people in these areas and cultures use their pan-ethnicity, country, national origin, and/or ethnicity to identify themselves depending on the context instead of arbitrary notions of skin colour as is used by Europe, Black & White North America, West-Central-Southern African Countries with a History of European Colonization, and other parts of the West or Western Society that hasn’t been mentioned (and bizarre exceptions where skin color based classifications persists outside the West like in Muslim-majority Arab Countries and Israeli society that retains some elements of similar forms of racism Jews had faced in Europe under Nazi oppression).
*(TRIGGER WARNING: Close)
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[Update 6/16/2020:
Abstract from Goshu Wolde Tefera’s Journal Article on RACIAL AND ETHNIC IDENTITY WITHIN THE ETHIOPIAN DIASPORA IN THE UNITED STATES AND THEIR POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT IN ETHIOPIA: THE CASE OF THE WASHINGTON, DC METROPOLITAN AREA published at Syracuse University.
This research looks at ethnic and racial identities of Ethiopians in the Washington DC metropolitan area in relation to efforts aimed at upward mobility and regarding their political involvement within their country of origin. It is based on eight interviews with Ethiopian immigrants, a historical analysis, as well as my involvement with the wider
Disapora community through my internship with the Government of the District of Columbia Mayor’s Office on African Affairs (MOAA) during summer 2015. This allowed me to interact with local community groups and leaders, as well as observe public events held by members of the Ethiopian Disapora. The findings indicate that racial and ethnic identity can influence upward mobility as well as political engagement. It argues a sense of Ethiopian nationalism or ethnic affiliation is expressed in part through affiliation with, and display of, particular versions of their home country’s flag, providing a public yet low-key way of political engagement. World Systems and Marxist theories are used to show that ‘race’ is one of the major markers of identities in the United States, where the mode of production is capitalism. Ethiopians’ self-identification in terms of race and ethnicity does not matter necessarily because the state and the system of production in the United States locate them along a racialized spectrum of belonging. Since class is mediated by race, racial identity is not something they want to take on but it is forced up on them. As part of the larger population of Black immigrants, Ethiopians find themselves lumped into a certain category by the dominant society and thus bond along racial, regional or ethnic lines. As I observed during my internship at the MOAA, although Ethiopians tend to associate more amongst themselves socially, they appreciate their collective identity in the work place and other public spaces. The study also attempts to explore the connection between racial and ethnic identity and political engagement, particularly the politics of nationalism. Lastly, it draws on the broader implication of Ethiopia’s Pan-African consciousness claiming that the country’s development is closely connected to its ability to make a common cause — not just at political level — with African nations regionally, continentally and globally.
Work Cited
Tefera, Goshu Wolde, “RACIAL AND ETHNIC IDENTITY WITHIN THE ETHIOPIAN DIASPORA IN THE UNITED STATES AND THEIR POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT IN ETHIOPIA: THE CASE OF THE WASHINGTON, DC METROPOLITAN AREA” (2016). Dissertations — ALL. 505.
https://surface.syr.edu/etd/505 ]
[Update 6/19/2020:
Being Habesha in a Black and White World: A Racial Identity Crisis — by: Abigail Mengesha (https://medium.com/@habeshaunion/being-habesha-in-a-black-and-white-world-a-racial-identity-crisis-by-abigail-mengesha-6fa834132482)
By Abigail Mengesha:
Racial identity was never a problem when I lived in Ethiopia. I recognized and understood my ethnicity, and that was enough. However, once I moved to the United States to receive higher education, questions regarding my racial background and the meaning of the term “Habesha” resurfaced. This spark in curiosity can be credited to my exposure to the American Black/white binary model of race, the stereotypical portrayal of Blackness, and my striving to find a place in the various communities of the United States.
Habesha is a collective term for the native inhabitants of Ethiopia or Eritrea. Habesha is neither a race, nor an ethnicity, nor a nation. It is a way of living, a state of mind, and a collective of various cultures. It doesn’t have a common language or religion. Most young or Ethiopian or Eritrean Americans use the term to refer to themselves and others in a way that eliminates the distinctions between different tribes and ethnic groups, while also prompting pride and a discourse of a grander and united Habesha identity. So, the contemporary definition of Habesha is equivalent to “Latino” — a broad term, but also one that still recognizes its various ethnical and cultural constituents.
In the homeland, Habesha has never been associated with anything other than Ethiopian and Eritrean. However, whenever my people move to the United States of America, its racial component becomes hard to decipher within the racial binary construct of the dominant culture. I have experienced this sense of confusion firsthand and have noticed it in other Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants as well. I have noticed the way they try to assimilate the American constructions of race at certain times and generate counter-narratives at others, in an effort to defer the racial stereotypes and oppression that arise from identification with an undifferentiated Black identity. Some of these counter-narratives posit exclusive ethnic identities or hybridity, while others maintain purely national — Ethiopian and Eritrean — identities.
The stereotypical image of Blackness in the United States is largely responsible for the construction of an undifferentiated and structural identity. This ahistorical portrayal is maintained and fashioned by the popular Western media, which solely associates Blackness with African Americanness. Since Blackness is believed to be a direct opposition to Whiteness, rather than a diverse race that embodies numerous, distinct cultures and ethnicities, Habeshas tend to fear being branded with this label. I experienced this same fear whenever I felt the stereotypical obligation to speak in Black slang [African American Vernacular English], love Kendrick Lamar, and know how to twerk in order to feel Black. This resulting uneasiness forces other Ethiopians/Eritreans and me to identify ourselves as just Habesha, instead of Black. Consequently, our actions could be perceived as a way to distance ourselves from our Black roots, even though that isn’t the case. Our alienation from the African American community is a result of how we are viewed by its members. Being considered “foreign” tends to annihilate our sense of belonging in this fraction of American society. I experienced this firsthand when, during my first two weeks on Cornell’s campus, I was called “exotic” by a male African American after telling him that I was from Ethiopia. His comment shocked me to the core.
It wasn’t like my other experiences of being mistaken for a Cuban girl when I wore my hair wavy or an Indian girl when I straightened it. This one somehow felt like a betrayal. How could a fellow Black person believe that my identity was something other than Black? I was indignant: “Why would you think that I’m exotic?” And he gave me my answer: “Because you are from Ethiopia.” This last comment exposed how my Habesha identity alienates me from the African American community. And this revelation was proven and then made concrete as my stay on campus lengthened. In a matter of days, I got mistaken for a biracial and a Non-black by other Black people because of the texture of my hair and the shade of my skin. In their eyes, I was completely foreign, and that was completely dumfounding. Nevertheless, as much as I was foreign to Blacks, I was still Black to whites, and this left me in a very interesting place.
As the days turned into weeks, I searched for a group into which I could fit; I was convinced that Cornell’s community contained a space outside of America’s binary categorization. I found that I resonated with fellow international students and well-travelled people, since like me, they had been exposed to various cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, and philosophies that weren’t bound by racial boundaries. As a result, they weren’t used to the dualistic Black/white distinction portrayed in the States. They acknowledged the different aspects of what it means to be Black — that it was something more than identifying as an African American. These people accepted me for being a Black Habesha.
The prejudice associated with being Black has estranged Habeshas from their Black history. The term “Black” is viewed as a rigid representation of a specific culture — in this case, the African American culture — when in reality, it is a broad spectrum of diverse ethnicities, cultures, religions, and languages. The restrictions associated with being Black in American society are societal constructs built from stereotypes that view me as a girl who is neither “Black enough” nor “white.” Consequently, I identify as a Black Habesha because I refuse to let the overgeneralized definition of “Blackness” scare me away from accepting my true identity. I couldn’t imagine being Habesha without being Black, since my racial and cultural identities are interwoven components that serve as the building blocks of my individuality.
- From: Mengesha, Abigail. “Being Habesha in a Black and White World: A Racial Identity Crisis.” Kitsch, Kitsch, 18 Jan. 2017, www.kitschmag.com/2017/01/18/being-habesha-in-a-black-and-white-world-a-racial-identity-crisis/.
Don’t come at my blackness: Addressing misconceptions of ethnicity (by: Betty Araya of the Hofstra Chronicle -- Hofstra University)
I was with some friends a couple weeks ago when one of them made a comment along the lines of I’m “not black enough.” This demonstration of ignorance is not new to me; however, after making a conscious effort to leave my small town in Alabama for New York, I thought I could avoid it. No offense to my friends, I’m sure they had no idea the nerve they hit with their highly subjective and offensive opinion, and in their defense, I handled the situation the only way I’ve ever handled it — passive aggressively doing the fake half smile, and internally stewing. So, I really didn’t give them an opportunity for redemption. Now, I have accepted my fair share of racism from white people but blame it on my overwhelming optimism; I’ve always felt like they had no idea what they were saying. I give them the benefit of the doubt and attribute their superiority complex as a trait passed down for generations, but when a black person comes at me? Then I get mad. Then I tilt my head sideways.
For example, the classic, “You talk like a white girl.” So, a white man thinks proper grammar is a characteristic of a fair complexion. Shocking. But when a black person says I talk like a white girl … Are we really saying proper grammar is a white characteristic? Are we really about to do that? No.
I came to America when I was four and learned English through ESL. I speak English the way I was taught by the American school system, and the lady who taught me happened to be white, but that is completely irrelevant. The way someone speaks (slang, dialect, etc.) is based on where they grew up. If I grew up in a predominately white town and went home to an Ethiopian household where I never spoke English, then I would most likely sound like the kids I go to school with. My accent and choice of words have nothing to do with who I am, where I came from or my soul. I am black.
Beyond the way I talk, I was ridiculed for the way I chose to dress. How can someone dress like a skin color? The music I listen to? I grew up on Teddy Afro and Ethiopian Orthodox Christian church music. My “classics” will be different, because I am from a different culture. The African American culture I have grown to appreciate was because of my own desire to learn it, not because I was born into it. I love good southern cooking, but my idea of comfort food is injera. That is not because I’m not “black enough;” it is because I am not African American. I am African. Skin color and race are two different things. What brings people of color together and connects us despite our different cultures is the way we are all treated by the white man. It is the fact that our hair gets called nappy, and we are told that we are “pretty for a black girl.” It is because our men are told to never question an officer, and we are a victim to the newest form of slavery — mass incarceration. It is the fact that up against a white man, our credentials have to be twice as high to get half as far. It is the fact that for hundreds of years, we have been at the mercy of an imperialist mindset. It doesn’t matter if you’re dark-skinned, light-skinned, brown, African, Indian or Latina. You walk into a room, you are a person of color. Despite the fact that an African American might see me as too white, to a white person, I will always be a black.
I don’t believe in the term “colorblind,” because I will forever claim my skin color. In my perfect world, skin color would simply be a part of our unique beauty rather than a significant part of our identity. But due to the current status of people of color in this world, that is not the case. However, if a European were to grow up in Ethiopia his whole life, I would never deny him the title “Habesha” (a blanket term for those of Ethiopian and Eritrean decent). The various cultures we come from and practice should be a way for us to add to our intercultural social network. A way for us to learn from one another and bring new ideologies to the table. It should not be a way for us to separate ourselves from one another. There are enough invisible borders and scars from past genocides that accomplish that enough. At the end of the day, we are all people. We all came here the same way, though it might be at different locations, and we will all leave this world the same way, though it may be in different social classes. But since it is inevitable that I will be judged by the way I carry myself, I just want to make one thing clear. I. Am. Black.
- From: Araya, Betty. “Don’t Come at My Blackness: Addressing Misconceptions of Ethnicity.” The Hofstra Chronicle (Hofstra University). www.thehofstrachronicle.com, https://www.thehofstrachronicle.com/category/hofstra/2018/10/9/dont-come-at-my-blackness-addressing-misconceptions-of-ethnicity. Accessed 19 June 2020.
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[Update 8/10/2020:
Black or African American? — By: Elahe Izadi of DCentric-WAMU 88.5 (American University Radio)
(Link: http://dcentric.wamu.org/2012/02/black-or-african-american/index.html)
Quotes from the Comment Section:
As a Haitian-American from Miami now living in DC, I prefer to be called Haitian-American lol. However, I do realize that ethnic differences are not immediately obvious to others so the term black, although limited in its “one-drop” American context, is preferable when having to choose between 2 evils. I prefer not to be called African-American because it doesn’t correctly encompass my history or background. Additionally, there continue to be tensions between “member of the African diaspora, “exotic” blacks and African-Americans “regular” blacks. That often painful and tense history continues to prevent black immigrants from feeling as if African-American can ever be an all-inclusive term and, thus, makes “black” our default.
Guest (8 years ago):
This is purely an American phenomenon because America fetishes “race” (for obvious reasons).
The equal of “African American” is the term “European American”. Yet, we do *not* call White People “European American”. We call them White. We refer to them by their RACE.
Why, then, is it “wrong” to call Black People “Black”? Especially since “Black” is equal to “White” as a racial descriptor? Is there something wrong with being Black?
We can’t possibly know every White Person’s ancestry so we simply call them “White”. We don’t call them “European American” for a simple and obvious reason: not all White People are from Europe.
We refer to all people by their *COUNTRY OF ANCESTRY*, not their *CONTINENT OF ORIGIN*.
Hence, German American, Australian American, Icelandic American. How useless, innacurate, and offensive would it be to erase difference with “European
- From: Izadi, Elahe. “Black or African American? | DCentric.” DCentric-WAMU 88.5 (American University Radio), http://dcentric.wamu.org/2012/02/black-or-african-american/index.html. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.
Excerpts from “‘My race is Habesha’: Eritrean refugees re-defining race as pan-ethnic identity in post-apartheid South Africa” -By Amanuel Isak Tewolde [Excerpts for Black Racial Classification are found bellow while Excerpts for Habesha Identity are in this link: https://medium.com/@habeshaunion/what-do-you-mean-by-habesha-a-look-at-the-habesha-identity-habesha-union-habesha-union-43f22ab8bc35 ]
Abstract:
Scholars studying race and racial classification in post-apartheid South Africa have paid little attention to how African refugees navigate the South African racial classification scheme and how they self-identity in the face of their everyday encounters with imposed racial classification in South Africa. This paper addresses this research gap by exploring how first-generation Eritrean refugees self-identify in the context of an imposed South African racial classification system. The result reported here forms part of a broader research study that explored how Eritrean refugees in South Africa self-defined in the face of racialization. The broader study identified various themes but this paper only reports on those who defined their race as Habesha in the face of their experiences with racial classification. I argue that by defining their race as Habesha, participants re-defined race as a pan-ethnic identity dissociating racial identity from physical appearance and skin colour. Some refugees who never self-identified in terms of phenotype-based racial categories are nuancing traditional [westerncentric-influenced] definitions of racial identity in post-apartheid South Africa.
Research Article:
Most African refugees in South Africa originate from societies where social differentiation is based on, inter alia, non-racial systems such as clan, ethnicity, tribe, religion and language groups, (Vandeyar, 2012). When African refugees arrive in South Africa they encounter a classification system that is structured around race which is at odds with the classification systems they were familiar with back home. The South African racial system is structured along four major racial categories, namely Coloured, Indian, White and Black. Refugees must therefore find their racial place within this quaternary classification scheme that was initially invented to classify South African nationals (Abdi, 2015; Vandeyar, 2012). For example, Eritrean refugees in South African originate from a social classification system that is based on ethno-linguistic differentiation and when they arrive in South Africa, they confront a phenotype-based racial classification system that is incompatible with their home country’s classification system.
Scholars note that South African society is a race-conscious society where race-based identification is entrenched and socio-economic stratification is largely structured around racial groups (Hino et al., 2018). Academics such as Maré (2014) and the late Alexander (2006) contend that official use of apartheid-era racial categories further cement race-consciousness and race-based division among South Africans. As Hammett (2010) argued, South African nationals still classify themselves and others in terms of the traditional White, Black, Coloured and Indian racial categories.
A few studies have examined racialization experiences and self-identification of Eritrean refugees in their race-conscious host countries (e.g. Arnone, 2011; Habecker, 2012). In her study of how Eritrean youth immigrants define themselves in Italy, Arnone (2011) found that her participants self-defined both as Black and as Eritrean. They self-defined as Black because the Italian society racializes them as Black/African. Habecker (2012) examined how Eritreans in the US self-identified in a context where the American society sees them as Black due to their African origin. Habecker (2012) found that her participants … rejected defining themselves as Black and self-identified as Habesha.
Immigration and acculturation scholars also argue that the degree of compatibility between a host and a home country’s identity categories shape the degree to which refugees or immigrants adopt or reject social categories of the host society (Arriaza, 2004; Berry, 1997; Kusow, 2006; Rodriguez, 2000). If the social classification systems in refugees’ home countries are different from those of the host society, the refugees or immigrants might have a difficult time easily adapting to the identities of the host society (Arriaza, 2004; Kusow, 2006). If there is convergence between classification systems of the host and home countries, however, immigrants are more predisposed to adopt the identity label of the host country they are familiar with. For example, a person defined as White in the US might easily fit into White classification in South Africa due to the availability of a ‘White’ category both in the US and South Africa. On the other hand, an immigrant of Kunama or Nara ethnicity in Eritrea might find it difficult to identify as Black in the US, despite their generally African features, due to the unavailability of a ‘Black’ category in Eritrea.
Ethnicity-based social distinction in Eritrea is not based on phenotypic characteristics such as skin colour or other bodily features but on linguistic and cultural distinctions. Therefore, people use cultural and linguistic markers to differentiate between the different ethnic groups. There is wide phenotypic variation within most of the ethnic groups in Eritrea, such as the Tigrinya; therefore members of an ethnic group are not necessarily phenotypically homogenous (Woldemikael, 2005). Some of the ethnic groups in Eritrea are linguistically and culturally related to other ethnic groups. For example, the Tigrinya of Eritrea and the Tigre [Tigray or Tegaru] of Ethiopia speak the same language and exhibit almost the same cultural traditions and the Amhara of Ethiopia also share similar cultural traditions with the Tigrinya to an extent … .
When apartheid was established in 1948, racial classification became more institutionalized and policed and four racial categories, namely, White, Black, Coloured and Indian/Asian (Christopher, 2002) were created. These four apartheid categories are still in use among ordinary South Africans and on administrative forms long after the apartheid system has ended (Hino et al., 2018). The post-apartheid state maintained apartheid racial categories to correct past racial inequalities and injustices through affirmative action programmes.
Social meanings attached to the four racial categories reflect definitions given to each category during the apartheid era (Christopher, 2002).
As part of a larger research project, some participants defined their race as Habesha rather than neatly fitting into the traditional four South African racial categories. In the broader study, other Eritreans defined themselves racially in various ways such as Black and Coloured and non-racially in national, ethnic and cultural terms, but this paper does not discuss such themes. Participants did not associate race with phenotypic appearance or skin colour pigmentation but with a pan-ethnic group identity. The participants encountered racial classification both on official forms that asked them to check ‘their’ race and in everyday life where they were classified as Black, Indian and Coloured. Even though racial categories were imposed on the participants, they did not adopt ascribed identity labels but instead conflated their Habesha cultural identity with a racial identity. Asgedom constructed a Habesha pan-ethnic identity as his race even though he was often classified as Black by South Africans in everyday life.
“… Black South Africans speak to me in Xhosa. I mean, when I meet them for the first time, they think I am Black. I think, maybe they think I must be Xhosa like one of them. Even on the street when random strangers ask me for directions they speak to me in Xhosa. It didn’t happen once or twice but it happened so me many times … It is obvious, I look Black like them. You can look at my hair and my facial appearance. My hair is very similar to that of Black South Africans. Not only that, but also my general appearance is like them. My skin colour isn’t too dark as you can see. It is lighter like Xhosa people, but my hair is like other Black South Africans. Maybe they look at my hair type and conclude that I must be Black. But I don’t see myself as Black even though South Africans perceive me as Black. My race is Habesha and I don’t define myself as Black. Black and Habesha are not the same thing because we Habesha people are not Black but our own race. I mean, we Eritreans and Ethiopians define ourselves as Habesha not as Black or any other race because we are different.”
Even though Asgedom was constantly racialized as Black due to his physical appearance, he did not subscribe to a socially assigned racial identity. People drew on his physical appearance such as hair texture and facial features to ascribe a racial label of Black such phenotypic characteristics did not carry any racial meaning to Asgedom. He did not see an association between his phenotypic characteristics and Black identity. Asgedom constructed a novel racial self-definition as Habesha. By self-racializing as Habesha, an identity that does not refer to skin colour, he eschewed standard [western] definitions of race that are based on surface phenotypic distinctions such as skin colour. By re-formulating Habesha cultural identity as his racial identity, he turned the ethno-cultural social category into a race. Asgedom made a comparison between Black identity and Habesha identity and by doing so treated the two identities as racial constructions; he did not view Habesha identity as purely cultural but instead conflated it with race. Another participant, Eyasu, also redefined Habesha pan-ethnic identity as a racial group identity:
“On many occasions, Black South Africans mistake me for Indian and Coloured. ‘Are you Indian?’ is the kind of question that I always confront when I meet people in this country. Not only that, other times many people perceive me as Coloured also. For example, last week, when I went to East Gate shopping mall to buy something, a White clerk at a shop spoke to me in Afrikaans thinking that I was Coloured, I suppose. Of course she couldn’t think I was White because I don’t look White. As you know, I am in between. I mean people think I am mixed as Coloured people, and that is why they speak to me in Afrikaans … This could be because my physical appearance confuses them. I mean, to some I might look Indian, but to others I might appear Coloured. But honestly speaking, up until now I don’t know why they tend to see two races in me, I mean in one person; very surprising, ya? … I can’t really say I classify myself as Indian or I am Coloured just because I am perceived as such by South Africans; to me my race is Habesha because anyone can identify Habesha people just by looking at them. I mean, we can have this Habesha look that anyone can easily identify us as Eritrean or Ethiopian because of our appearance, you know. If people here can classify me as Coloured race because in South Africa I look Coloured, we Eritreans and Ethiopians identify each other as Habesha just by looking at the physical appearance, you know. I mean Habesha is also a race. So I define my race as Habesha not as Coloured, Black or Indian: these classifications do not adequately capture my real identity, you know.”
For Eyasu, the construction of Habesha pan-ethnic cultural identity as a form of racial identity emerged in reaction to his everyday encounters with experiences of racialization as Coloured and as Indian. Eyasu was classified both as Indian and Coloured due to his physical appearance but he did not self-identify as Coloured or Indian. Instead of fitting into the four standard South African racial categories, Eyasu usurped the South African racial classification order by inventing a Habesha racial identity.
Habesha peoples (Ethiopians and Eritreans) exhibit a wide range of differences in physical characteristics and skin colour. Habesha self-identification is often based on shared cultural traditions rather than similarity in racial phenotype.
…
Participants self-identified as being of the ‘Habesha race’ and by doing so rejected self-definition in terms of the standard South African racial categories. The Eritreans who defined their race as Habesha lived in urban neighbourhoods where many non-White communities such as Eritreans, Ethiopians, other African refugees and Black South Africans live. These are spaces where Eritreans and Ethiopians reside and socially interact and often use the collective Habesha cultural identity to define themselves.
Comments from other places:
You can be Black, not all black people are African American “Black”. There are many different kinds of Black people all around the world and they don’t share the same culture
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The White Supremacist created White/Black binaries do not have any significance as an Eritrean. I am an Eritrean male living in South Africa and I always get raced by lay South Africans. They ask me, “What are you? Are you Coloured or Indian?” I answer them, “I am none of these, I am Eritrean/Habesha etc” then they insist “But what are you back in Eritrea, within which race group are you classified?” ..I answer them, “ I dont think self-identify in terms of racial identities, back in Eritrean we do not have racial groups, we only have ethno-linguistic identities” ..this is my everyday experience. Yes I agree with the poster we race thinking isnt in our collective vocabulary as people.
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I am Black because I like to call myself Black and not because people want to categorize me as Black. If Black only refers to the color of a person’s skin then NO ONE is Black. I am beige, my younger brother is caramel, my sister is the color of cinnamon and my older brother is mahogany. I love the idea of being Black and Black Power. I love the Afrocentric culture and I enjoy the hate that I receive as a part of being viewed as Black. Black people are wonderful and so, I call myself Black. You can call yourself whatever you’d like. You are Eritrean. The only races that are named according to their skin tones are Whites and Blacks. Other races are named in regards to their homelands: Asian, Arabian, Indian, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Russian, Australian, Armenian, etc. These people’s races are specifically and directly related to their countries of origin. Thus, I don’t understand why your race cannot be viewed within the same category. I am American. Not African American- since I’ve never been to Africa- I am only American. If we could delete the Terms White and Black and just use titles based on regions alone, I believe that a lot of racism would be eliminated. Yellow, reddish-brown, light-brown, tan, honey-colored, cocoa, mocha, ivory, pink-skinned- these are not races. So, why is White & Black a race? This is completely inexplicable, or at least, it cannot be rationally explained to me.
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We are not African American but we are Black. a different looking black but still black..im eritrean too. my name is paulos, that should prove it. We are habesha but westerners dont know what that means. But our skin is not white..its many different shades of black..i even got straight hair which most habeshas do not have..but dont get mad over this man..just tell them u are eritrean, east african and forget about it..heray do. Abi neger aykonen. All Black people do not look the same.
“I didn’t know I was Black until I moved to Canada,” by Yamri Taddese (Canadian Brodcasting Corporation-CBC) | https://www.cbc.ca/2017/i-didn-t-know-i-was-black-until-i-moved-to-canada-1.4219157
‘It’s not the story Canada likes to tell about itself. But it’s a story that needs to be told.’
The first time someone called me the n-word, it literally stopped me in my tracks. I was a student journalist at the University of Toronto.
It was spring, 2009. I had just come running out of St. George subway station, late for an interview. I had a deadline that same evening. I came to a halt when I heard the word. There stood a white man on the sidewalk, inexplicably furious at me. I stopped for a few seconds, long enough to look directly in his face and then I kept on running.
I mentioned the incident to my father that night after dinner.
“Oh yes,” he said, suddenly recalling something he had apparently forgotten. “Someone called me a n — ger earlier today too.”
I was stunned.
“In Addis Ababa… since everyone is Black, nobody really is.”
He had been riding the subway when a white woman walked in and told him she wanted to sit on the chair beside him, where he had placed a shopping bag. When he picked up the bag and told the woman she may sit, she told him she wasn’t asking for his permission and called him the racial slur.
I wasn’t sure if I was more horrified by the story or the nonchalant way my father told it. There was no surprise in his tone, as if this was to be expected. To me, he had only ever been Dad. But in that moment, I saw him as a Black man, burdened with all the prejudices that entails. It was deeply disquieting.
The story of how I became Black is also a story about Canada. It’s not always pretty — it’s not the story Canada likes to tell about itself. But it’s a story that needs to be told.
I don’t get it:
I moved to Toronto from Ethiopia at 15, just a few years before the incident outside St. George Station. Life back home had taught me about differences along gender, class, religious and ethnic lines, but the nuance of racial difference was lost on me.
In Addis Ababa, having enough money and familial status and coming from a privileged ethnicity matter. Men and older folks are also afforded greater respect. People offer my father their seats when he walks into a room because he’s an older man.
But since everyone is Black, nobody really is.
So, when I came to Canada, I did not think much about being Black. I was largely oblivious to stereotypes about Black people, often asking people to explain their racist jokes to me. It felt as though people expected me to know my place and I sincerely had no idea where this place was.
Everyday racism:
Anyone would agree that what happened to me and my father is vile. Being called a racial slur was jarring and scary, but since coming to Canada this isn’t the kind of racism I’ve come to know and resent.
I’ve met people who deny the fact that they benefit from white privilege. They get to move through society with unseen advantages, without being prejudged.
Anti-blackness has caught me off-guard, in moments when I assumed consensus on my belonging in Canadian society. I was baffled when security guards followed me around the office building I often worked out of, and they later complained to management about how loud I was when I confronted them.
“I was largely oblivious to stereotypes about Black people, often asking people to explain their racist jokes to me.”
I felt the sting when, at an Easter mass in a downtown Toronto church, I reached out my arm to receive the offering plate but the woman who sat beside me skipped over me and my Black friend to pass the plate on to the next white person.
I was snubbed yet again at a professional mixer when I dared complain about the weather — a most Canadian of habits — and someone who stood beside me said “You’d think African immigrants would be more grateful.”
Even as Canada actively thrusts a racial identity on people like me, this country often denies it is doing so. Black people are gaslighted when we talk about discrimination. Too many people suggest we’re making it all up in our minds. Every “That couldn’t happen here” or “I don’t believe that, we’re a welcoming nation” pushes forward a volatile legacy. The more vehemently our society denies its anti-blackness, the more entrenched I fear the issue is.
No Black person’s responsibility:
In my late teens, I prided myself on being a walking stereotype-buster. I felt I was doing all of us Black folks a favour when I demonstrated that I am in fact intelligent and lovable. Now, I know that was naïve.
“Yet, despite the initial shock and consistent prejudice, becoming Black in Canada has also been about a new and profound belonging.”
I am no longer preoccupied with being likeable just so people won’t say I’m an angry, aggressive Black woman. Appeasing racists is exhausting. This impossible task should be no Black person’s responsibility, no matter how frequently society insists it is.
When I told a Black friend about the experiences I’m sharing here, he wryly pointed out that at least no one ended up dead. He was only half joking. As far as experiences with anti-blackness go, it’s tempting to say mine are pretty mild.
I don’t think experiences like mine should be considered mild. I understand the source of this sentiment, but the ubiquity of Black death in the news cannot mean that is where we draw the line. The standards should be higher.
It’s true that for me, a part of being Black on this side of the world has been about constantly grieving the deaths of people I’ve never met. I learned about Andrew Loku, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and many others after they became a hashtag, but I mourn their deaths still.
Each time a video of police killing a Black person surfaces online, I’m caught in the see-saw of anger and heartache.
But this is only part of the story. Being Black has also been about feeling alone in my sorrow and frustration in classrooms and boardrooms, spaces where I am often the only Black person. It’s about consistent isolation and second guessing.
Melanated magic:
Yet, despite the initial shock and consistent prejudice, becoming Black in Canada has also been about a new and profound belonging. I have found a community of Black women — on- and offline — who define themselves and affirm one another.
These women validate my stories and offer me courage because they refuse not to bloom. It’s in this communion that I have found the joy and beauty of Blackness. It was in the reflection of their light that I saw myself, Blackness and all.
Although I still refuse to “know my place,” I’ve found sacred spaces where I am both embraced and encouraged to make room for myself everywhere.
The story of how I became Black is also a story about Canada. It’s not always pretty and it’s not the story Canada likes to tell about itself. But it’s a story that needs to be told.
Comments on the Article made by others on LSA:
“I don’t know why this is still surprising to some ppl. Of course someone growing up in a world where everyone around them looks the same is going to feel different or come to understand the concept of racial stigmatisation when they migrate to a place where they are not the majority anymore.”
“Yeah this happens to a lot of people who are immigrants from almost exclusively Black countries, or in countries where racial perceptions are quite different than they are in Canada/ the US.
I’ve even heard of similar stories from other races of people. When you live in a homogenous society, suddenly being thrust into a heterogenous one causes you to become aware of your race in ways you never were before. I mean, obviously you are aware of what you look like, but that doesn’t really mean much when you’re surrounded by people who look just like you. In a society of people that are basically all black, you’re so comfortable that you never really have to think about how you’re different from others in a racial sense. I think that’s why you might notice that people from those places (although it’s becoming less like that now [due to Westerncentric Globalization]) might root their identity more in their ethnic group/tribe/clan/nationality/national origin than in their race.
For a lot of black immigrants What being black means in this society doesn’t really hit you until you’re suddenly put into situations where you are either being attacked for it, or your “otherness” is being highlighted.”
“It’s unsurprising that, as underaged person that spent most of their time in a black majority country, she wouldn’t identify with her race. Considering their history, I’m guessing they may not be as conscious of race as other Africans are. It’s unfortunate that she had to experience that, and I believe black parents need to prepare their children better for the racism that they’ll inevitably encounter.
Other than that, it was an interesting read. I’m glad she didn’t choose the easy way out of assimilating to the racism, rather than rejecting it. ”
“Ignoring the off topic, brain dead arguments here… I’m not surprised that she didn’t realize her own place in a white supremacist culture. I’m so glad she’s to share her truth.”
“What Does It Mean to Be ‘Black’ in Africa? (Let’s consider what race is on a continent where almost everyone looks the same)” — By: Beautyis Universal (https://zora.medium.com/am-i-black-rethinking-blackness-in-america-32cfb9132076)
[This is from the perspective of an African American/Black American (American Descendants of Slavery — ADOS) who moved to and traveled to several African countries, and realized that people rarely if at all base their identity with the color of their skin.]
I listened to Nigerian author and speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie during an interview with The Economist last night. She said that she didn’t know she was “Black” until she came to the United States.
The first time I pondered this thought, I was living in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The name Zanzibar is said to translate to “land of the Blacks” in Arabic. But no Zenji (or Zanzibar native) I’ve met thinks of themselves as Black. If they lived in the U.S., they would likely be labeled as Black, but generally speaking, the Zenjis I’ve interacted with claim Swahili as an identifier.
As an African American woman currently residing in East Africa for the last two years, I’ve often wrestled with how I should identify. What is Black? What does it mean to be Black? Who gets to claim Black? Who doesn’t? Because you look Black, does it mean you are Black? Am I reducing myself by self-identifying as Black? Am I Black?
I Googled, “Is black a color?” Google answered back, “No, it isn’t. Black absorbs light. It is not a color.” Anything associated with black in the Western world usually has a negative connotation: black cat, black as night, black comedy, Black person.
When were Africans in America first termed Black? Enslaved Africans have gone through many iterations of identification: Negro, Colored, African American, Black. At some point in our history, the location and ethnic group were no longer important. We weren’t people, we were property.
When a person of non-European descent is reduced to a color, they are stripped of their humanity, uniqueness, and culture. Their claim to a nation, clan, or definitive ethnic group is erased. And so, post-Civil War, formerly enslaved Africans began to label themselves. We were “Colored,” then we became “Negro.” Eventually, after the struggles of the civil rights movement and during the advent of the Black Panthers, Black Muslims, and Black Power, we began to claim Blackness with pride.
Since living abroad, I’ve learned that this isn’t the case in many parts of Africa. Racial labels don’t really exist because everyone there is Black. In most of Africa, specific ethnicity isn’t erased, it is celebrated.
Adichie went on to say in her interview that it wasn’t that she didn’t know she was of African descent and “chocolate” (and she would not want to be anything else), it’s just that in Nigeria, her ethnicity and gender led as opposed to in the United States, where race was at the forefront. In Nigeria, everyone is Black. Although colorism is present, there is no need to identify oneself based on the color of your skin.
The only Africans that I’ve experienced typically defining themselves as Black in large swaths are South Africans. This isn’t surprising since the United States and South Africa have very similar racial pasts. Boers learned their separatist Apartheid strategies from the American separate-but-equal playbook. In both cases, Black Americans and Black South Africans were given race labels by the very people who despised and oppressed them.
In Uganda, I am often asked, “What tribe are you?” and it doesn’t feel right to say “Black.”
Having lived in East Africa for two years, I have come to realize that many Africans define themselves by their tribe, clan, nationality, and religion. They have such pride rooted in their names which help to validate who they are and where they belong. Realizing this, I have struggled to think about how I want to define myself.
While living in Uganda, I was often asked, “What tribe are you?” and it doesn’t feel right to say “Black.” I typically respond, “I’m Black American or African American.” If I say that I’m American, they usually fill in the blanks for me. “So, does that mean you are niggaaa?” or “You are negro!” Sometimes they prod, “Okay, but where are you really from? Do you know where you are from?”
I do know where some of my ancestors are from in Africa. My family and I took a DNA test with AfricanAncestry.com, and the results stated that I was a descendant from the Mafa, primarily located in present-day Cameroon, on my matrilineal side and most closely related to the Mende patrilineally, who are indigenous to Senegal. When my answers don’t satisfy their curiosity, I default to those two ethnic groups or West African nations. But the truth is, many Black Americans have no idea where they’re “really” from.
When I was a teenager in the ’80s I was coached by my elders to claim Black whenever I was given the opportunity to choose. In school, at the doctor’s office, for employment, and on any form that was presented for me to identify myself, I had to select “Black” or “African American.” Even the NAACP would come to schools and churches to lecture us on the importance of checking the right box. I was told that if I didn’t, our community wouldn’t receive vital government funding. We needed all the help we could get lest those funds be earmarked for larger communities.
I loved my people, and I wanted us to have all that we deserved and more, so I always checked the “Black” box.
If you are of African descent in the United States and you don’t claim Black, you are viewed as a traitor to your race — an Oreo, confused. Similar experiences bind us: enslaved ancestors, grandparents from the South, the Great Migration, greens, cornbread, deep-fried everything, racism. Terrorism, Jim Crow, fear, lynchings, the hood, struggle, jazz, perseverance, invention, and triumph. Experiences solidify our Blackness. Racial solidarity is important. We are more powerful in numbers.
I am more than a color, more than a label. We all are more than the boxes society tries to put us in, and we should stand in our skin with pride.
In America, we have taken on Blackness with such pride that it’s a badge of honor — “I’m Black and I’m proud!” It is our identity. And we want every one of African descent to claim Black, but that’s not how it works. We also want them to be Black just like us in mannerisms, experiences, expression, and culture. We want them to be our type of Black.
On the low, African Americans want every person of African descent to regard White people the same as we do. We don’t understand why African students come to American universities and seek out White friends. What we don’t realize is that yes, slavery took place throughout east, west, and even some parts of southern Africa, but they didn’t experience Jim Crow, crack cocaine planted in our communities by the U.S. government, redlining, school-to-prison pipelines, widespread police brutality or gentrification. Again, South Africa is one of the few exceptions.
The United States has concocted a unique experience. It isn’t that racism hasn’t impacted people of African descent throughout the diaspora, but the way in which racism manifests in America is slightly different. America makes you choose. One parent might be Greek, the other Black, but in America, the one-drop rule is queen. It doesn’t matter how you choose to self-identify; if you’re not White, you are deemed “other.” If you are Black appearing, whether you like it or not, you’ve already been labeled.
Social scientists lament about how no one gets to truly be American except for White Americans. Everyone else is a hyphenated version of an American. Since living in Zanzibar and Uganda, my paradigm has shifted. Being labeled as Black seems to reduce me to a color — noncolor at that. But I don’t view myself as limited in complexity, variation, or dimension.
I view myself as someone with a proud heritage and a limitless future. I am a descendent of survivors who were stolen. I come from tribes and clans and lands with deep history and meaning. I am more than a color, more than a label. We all are more than the boxes society tries to put us in and we should stand in our skin with pride.
If we could all release ourselves from the false narratives associated with being Black, white, red, yellow, and brown I believe we could achieve so much more as individuals and as a nation.
Being Black is Not a Culture, Why it’s wrong to think that being black is an origin or a culture (by: Richardson Dackam https://habeshaunion.medium.com/being-black-is-not-a-culture-by-richardson-dackam-fcf8309cd1de )
Being Black is Not a Culture, Why it’s wrong to think that being black is an origin or a culture.
Most black people share the same skin, but not the same culture.
… [Read the rest at the link above].
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‘I Am Blacker Than You’: Theorizing Conflict Between African Immigrants and African Americans in the United States— By: Benjamin Aigbe Okonofua (doi:10.1177/2158244013499162 | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244013499162)
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Cushitic and Nilotic peoples of North-East Africa (Horn of Africa, The Sudans, and Surrounding Areas)
[Formerly Known as Edition 8 of the “What do you mean by Habesha?” Article]
Cushitic and Nilotic peoples of North-East Africa (Horn of Africa, The Sudans, and Surrounding Areas) [ https://habeshaunion.medium.com/cushitic-and-nilotic-peoples-of-north-east-africa-6dc99f8880b1 ]
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Related Articles:
- What do you mean by Habesha? — A look at the Habesha Identity (p.s./t: It’s very Vague, Confusing, & Misunderstood) | @habesha_union [ https://medium.com/@habeshaunion/what-do-you-mean-by-habesha-a-look-at-the-habesha-identity-habesha-union-habesha-union-43f22ab8bc35 ]
By: Habesha Gaaffaa-Geeska Yäafrika, PhD., [Habesha Union (ሐበሻ)], — — —
The Habesha Union and Habesha Union System of Universities & Schools| ሐበሻ:[💚💛❤️💙] 🇪🇹🇪🇷🌳, etc. [FOR THE ModernRealLife Pan-Ethnic #Habesha CULTURE+HISTORY+COMEDY] From Around The World [via: @habesha_union][Inspired by:BunaTime @habeshacomedies] — — instagram.com/habesha_union | medium.com/@habeshaunion | unu.academia.edu/HabeshaUnion | linkedin.com/in/habesha-union | linkedin.com/company/habesha-union-system-of-universities-schools/about .