posted 24 March 2005 10:58 PM            

Here is one that I just came across thanks to PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3205_vinland.html

NARRATOR: “But Father Fischer's private scholarship was about to collide with world history. For in 1938, German forces marched into Austria, seized Stella Matutina College, evicted the priests and confiscated everything of value including art, rare books and, Seaver believes, Father Fischer's Vinland Map.
Hitler's campaign of world conquest was fueled by a belief in an Aryan master race, embodied by Germans who traced their cultural roots to the Vikings. In the hands of the Nazis, the Vinland Map would be a historic claim to America and a powerful political weapon.
If Seaver is right, Father Fischer used his knowledge of ancient maps and Viking history to draw the Vinland Map on an authentic piece of medieval parchment. Fischer's Vinland Map was then confiscated by the Germans, and after their defeat, the map found it's way into the hands of known fascist and Nazi sympathizer, Enzo Ferrajoli.”

posted 25 March 2005 04:40 AM            

Caucasian Group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region

Caucasian race - used almost exclusively in North America to mean "white",

It is a distinction based solely on skin color, and popularly is used for people of northern European origin, as distinct from those of Mediterranean origin.

Another, earlier use of the term, originally based on craniology, refers to various ethnic groups thought to have been originally from the region of the Caucasus mountains, itself imagined to be the location of Mount Ararat (where Noah's Ark eventually landed according to Biblical legend).

In Europe, "Caucasian" refers almost exclusively to people who are actually from Caucasia.

HISTORY OF A CONCEPT:

The concept of a "Caucasian race" or Varietas Caucasia was first proposed under those names by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840).

His studies based the classification of the Caucasian race primarily on skull features, which Blumenbach claimed were optimized by the Georgians, a people living in the Southern Caucasus.

The reason the Caucasus had such an attraction to Blumenbach and other contemporaries was because of its (imagined) proximity to Mount Ararat, where according to Biblical legend Noah's Ark eventually landed after the Deluge.

Later anthropologists such as Carleton Coon have further expanded upon the classification of the Caucasian race proposed by Blumenbach, and have subdivided the group into Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, and at times Dinaric and Baltic subdivisions. Nordicism, the belief that the blond Nordic sub-division constitutes a "master race", was influential in Northern Europe and the United States during the early twentieth century, eventually becoming the offical ideology of the Nazi state. It was used to justify eugenics programs and the persecution and extermination of so-called "inferior" races then living in Europe, such as Jews and Romans.

It is clearly observable that many people do not correspond easily to one racial/subracial type or another. There is currently extensive debate on the scientific validity of racial classifications, and many people reject systems of racial classification as inherently arbitrary and subject to wide divergences in most populations. Indeed, the advances in biochemistry over the past 30-40 years have revealed that the traditional racial divisions have extremely little genetic basis.

Caucasian
Definition: pale
Synonyms: achromatic, achromic, alabaster, ashen, blanched, bleached, bloodless, Caucasian, chalky, clear, fair, frosted, ghastly, gray, hoary, etc.....

The American Heritage Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary
Britannica
Wikipedia
Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition

posted 25 March 2005 04:55 AM            

Home > Blurbs > African Pseudo-History
Afrocentrist multicultural pseudo-historyStatementThe claim is that the origins of western, and perhaps all civilization is to be found in black Africa. The argument goes thus, Egypt is the mother of Greek and Roman civilization, Egypt is in Africa, hence Egyptians are and were Africans, and Egyptians were Blacks.

Extreme ideas include the assertion that Africans voyaged to America since before the time of Christ and influenced Indian cultures. Claims are made that melanin (the chemical that makes Blacks' skin dark, and whites' tan) has extraordinary capabilities making Blacks mentally superior and better athletes.

No scholar doubts Egyptian learning influenced classical Greek and Roman civilization. Egypt in turn was influenced by African areas further south (Ethiopia and Sudan), and by Asia, and in turn influenced the cultures of these regions. However, most serious scholars reject the idea that cultures of West Africa or of the East African lakes region were either the source of Egyptian learning, or were much influenced by classical Egyptian civilization.

Copyright 1992-2005, The Association for Rational Thought

posted 25 March 2005 05:12 AM            

The Self-Esteem Fraud:
Why Feel-Good Education Does Not Lead to Academic Success.

By Nina H. Shokraii.-Rees

Executive Summary

Which comes first, achievement or self-esteem? This question is at the heart of an important educational controversy. Traditionally, public schools have thought that students’ satisfaction will follow on the heels of their academic success. In other words, children who perform well in class will consequently feel good about themselves. But more recent educational theories have reversed this logic. They say that students must secure high self-esteem before they can hope to achieve. In other words, they must feel good about themselves before they can perform well in class.

For all of its current popularity, however, self-esteem theory threatens to deny children the tools they will need in order to experience true success in school and as adults. Compelling research from around the world lends empirical proof to the traditional claim that achievement precedes self-esteem. There is, in fact, almost no correlation between low self-esteem and any number of social pathologies, including poor school performance, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy.

Black children are common targets of self-esteem theory, which in their case often goes by the name of Afrocentrism. Yet they are also some of the most vulnerable, since many of them desperately require the same basic academic skills that self-esteem theory subordinates to a shallow, feel-good classroom experience. One study has even shown that inflated self-esteem among adolescent black males can encourage violent behavior.

Schools must abandon their mindless pursuit of empty self-esteem and return to the fundamental task of helping students do their best. Traditional academic preparation best teaches children how to achieve old-fashioned academic success.


p.s. Here is the link, in case you want to read the whole article!
http://www.ceousa.org/self.html

posted 25 March 2005 05:27 AM            

You are about to print an article from www.yaledailynews.com.

Go back to article: Afrocentrism in 'Lear' overlooks native people

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| JAMES TERRY

Published Thursday, March 4, 2004
Afrocentrism in 'Lear' overlooks native people

The production of Shakespeare's "King Lear" currently playing at the Yale Repertory Theatre is set among the Olmecs of ancient Mexico, and the cast is entirely African-American. One might mistake this for a misguided attempt at surrealism, but the program tells us otherwise: "Although the Olmec origins are still a mystery to us, archaeological evidence indicates that Africans made their way to the New World thousands of years before European colonizers and formed the civilization's foundations." In fact, we are told, "The Africans who made their way to Mesoamerica thousands of years ago created a prodigious civilization."

Indeed, something is prodigious here, but I'm afraid it isn't just the accomplishments of the ancient Olmecs. Claims that Africans "created" complex societies in ancient America may come as a surprise to those who have studied the archaeological evidence, as that evidence indicates nothing of the sort. But these claims will come as no surprise to those familiar with popular strains of archaeological fraud that look beyond the Americas for the origins of complex American societies. The Afrocentric pseudo-history accompanying the Rep's "King Lear" takes its place in a long, ignoble history of fanciful theories involving Vikings, Phoenicians, lost tribes of Israel, refugees from Atlantis or the lost continent of Mu, and of course those ever-popular extraterrestrials. What these theories have in common is the assumption that Amerindians on their own could not have risen above the level of "savagery," which is the level to which they were assigned by racialized theories of cultural evolution during Europe's colonial expansion. Only outsiders, it was held, could explain the existence of "high culture" among the savages. The racism underlying this assumption is one of the hardiest of Eurocentrism's many weeds, and what we see on display at the Yale Rep is merely a newer, Afrocentric variety. Unfortunately, the Afrocentric narrative is neither more credible nor less offensive than the Eurocentric predecessors on which it is modeled.

Director Harold Scott and lead actor Avery Brooks credit Ivan Van Sertima as the primary source for their ideas regarding the Olmecs. In his 1976 book "They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America," Van Sertima argues that African voyagers came to America around 700 B.C., conquered the "less advanced" natives and introduced them to the arts of civilization. For their part, the conquered indigenes came to "revere" their African overlords. Van Sertima's theory has been debunked elsewhere. What should be stressed here is that Van Sertima has no grasp of Mesoamerican religion or cosmology and even seems a bit confused by the region's chronology and cultural geography. Methodologically he is unscrupulous; works of art supporting his argument are held to be realistic portraits of Africans; those that don't are too "stylized" to be analytically useful. His narrative proceeds with a willful indifference to archaeological data; it relies mostly on secondary sources, most of which were discredited or outdated even before he wrote his book in the 1970s.

But evidence and logic have little to do with the Afrocentric argument that the Olmecs were African. The impetus here is racial chauvinism. Van Sertima's narrative of conquerors carrying civilization to grateful natives should seem familiar: it was -- and remains -- one of Europe's self-aggrandizing myths, used to justify colonization and slavery across the globe. That fantasy has now been assigned to black actors, but nothing else has changed. Eurocentric methods, categories and norms are put to Afrocentric ends. Van Sertima's statement that the ancient Americans were "less advanced" bears the stamp of Eurocentric theories of cultural evolution. Many of his secondary sources come from this same tradition: they are Eurocentric attempts to prove that "Caucasian" Egyptians founded ancient American "civilizations." Van Sertima merely replaces "Caucasian" with "black," "Nubian-Egyptian." In this case Afrocentrism is just what scholars such as Gerald Early claim it to be: Eurocentrism in blackface.

Contrary to the crackpot fantasies of Afrocentrists and Eurocentrists, archaeological research in Mesoamerica suggests, unequivocally, that indigenous cultures developed in situ. To date no artifacts from across the seas have been found in controlled archaeological context in Mesoamerica; no transfers of technology from Africa or Europe, such as metallurgy or the wheel, were present when the Spaniards arrived, and none have been excavated. What we do find, however, is ample evidence for cultural change, from hunter-gather societies, to villages, to cities. It is a history of population growth accompanied by increasing social complexity. There are no sudden, mysterious florescences, no ex nihilo creations requiring recourse in diffusionist myth-making. The ancient Mesoamericans, it turns out, were much like humans everywhere: sometimes noble, sometimes savage, often ingenious; they created art and cities and elaborate philosophical systems. And they did it all on their own.

Unfortunately the program for "King Lear" tells another story, one that is an affront to the First Peoples of the Americas. Worse, that affront is now being distributed to New Haven schools as part of the Rep's outreach program. It is a sure bet that nobody associated with this production would tolerate claims that Africans did not build Great Zimbabwe; but apparently the legacy of Native Americans is still available to be plundered. None of this is as bitter as the original Eurocentric version, but that hardly makes it palatable.

James Terry is a graduate student in the History of Art Department.

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Go back to article: Afrocentrism in 'Lear' overlooks native people

posted 25 March 2005 05:43 AM            

Spreading Scientific Illiteracy Among Minorities
[Part 1] [Part 2]
Bernard Ortiz De Montellano

The key idea of the melanin scholars is that melanin, a widely distributed pigment in the natural world, found in all humans, has a number of extraordinary properties that are best manifested in black people. They claim that melanin is a superconductor, that it absorbs all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, that it can convert sound energy to light energy reversibly, and that it can function as a minicomputer to process information. According to the group, in addition to the skin, hair, and eyes, melanin is widely dispersed in the human body, for example, in twelve sites in the brain, in all the major organs, and in all muscles. The group claims that melanin is involved in the regulation of all psychological and physiological processes of the human body. They state that because of this people with high melanin levels have better muscular coordination (which makes them better athletes), are mentally superior, have unusual faculties, such as ESP, and are influenced by the magnetic fields of other humans and of the earth (Montgomery 1989). They attribute to melanin numerous other properties. Lectures about melanin are replete with scientific sounding terminology: substantia nigra, solitons, phonons, electromagnetic radiation, melanocyte, extrapyramidal tract, pineal gland, hypothalamus, and so on. This creates the impression that there is a scientific base for the claims.

The alleged properties of melanin, mostly unsupported, irrelevant, or distortions of the scientific literature, are then used to justify Afrocentric assertions. One of the most common is that humans evolved as blacks in Africa, and that whites are mutants (albinos, or melanin recessives) (Welsing 1989; King 1991). No one disputes that humans evolved from Africa, but the rest of the statement profoundly distorts genetics. Afrocentrics treat skin color as if it was governed only by one gene, and thus subject to absolute Mendelian dominance / recessiveness. If this were true, humans could only be black or white. However, skin color, like intelligence or height, is controlled by several genes, which explains why humans exhibit a wide color spectrum. Whites do not exhibit a total absence of melanin, but only a lesser amount. That is why whites can increase the amount of melanin in their skin by exposure to the sun. There is also no evidence that the amount of melanin in internal organs correlates with the amount of melanin in the skin. For example, the amount of melanin in the substantia nigra is normal in albinos (Siegel et al. 1989: 755).

Welsing (1989; 1991) uses the notion of whites as melanin recessives to explain white racism on a "scientific" basis. She professes that white men have to destroy black men in self defense because black men have the potential to destroy white men genetically. According to Welsing, a white child can only be produced by having a white mother and father. She claims that all other combinations can only produce black children, and that black men are considered dangerous because they could force white women to have sex. These ideas are easily acceptable in parts of the African-American community where there is broad support for theories that claim the existence of a conspiracy to destroy black males. The high rates of murder, of imprisonment, and of drug use, as well as the high rates of unemployment among black males, are cited as evidence for the conspiracy. The seemingly scientific explanation and academic credentials of some of the speakers are impressive to audiences uneducated in science. This appealing "scientific" explanation for white racism, in turn, makes other melanin claims more likely to be accepted. For example, Barnes (1990) argues that cocaine is part of the racist plot because melanin and cocaine are both alkaloids and have a high affinity for each other. Barnes also claims that blacks can test positive for cocaine even a year after its most recent use, because cocaine co-polymerizes into melanin. Melanin is not an alkaloid and there is no evidence whatsoever for melanin co-polymerizing with cocaine in vivo.

The idea that melanin is an essential component of humanity and that it confers many desirable powers is expanded by others into classical racism. Wade Nobles (1989) states that whites stopped evolving with the development of the central nervous system (CNS), but that blacks continued to evolve an essential melanic system (EMS). From this he develops an "equation": CNS + EMS = HB (human being) - that is, whites are not fully human. Others, such as Richard King (1991), express the same idea by their repeated use of the term hueman instead of "human," with the connotation that only people with color are truly human. The idea that people to be discriminated against are not fully human has always been used by racists as a justification for their actions. It is sad to see it being used by people who have suffered so much from racism themselves.

The ideas of the melanin scholars are being spread in a much more insidious way. The melanin scholars are the theoreticians behind the Science Baseline Essay; its author, Hunter Adams, is one of the principal members of the group. It is interesting, however, that Adams does not use melanin as the basis for many of his examples. Maybe the claims for melanin are so radical that the association of the African-American Baseline Essays with melanin would hinder their adoption by school districts. However, many assertions in the Baseline Science Essay that seem incongruous or are asserted without any rationale can only be explained or put into context by referring to theories espoused by the "melanin scholars." For example, the Essay claims that Egyptians in antiquity were black, that Egyptians were far in advance of other civilizations, and that Egypt was the origin of most scientific inventions. The explanation of the melanin scholars for these statements, unstated in the essay, is that melanin confers a mental advantage upon its possessors. Because melanin is the reason for their achievements, it is essential that Egyptians be black.

The claim in the Science Baseline Essay that Egyptians (i.e., blacks) have extrasensory powers is based on work by Frances Cress Welsing (1975). Welsing proposed that a correlation between high blood pressure and blackness of skin was due to the fact that melanin picks up energy vibrations from other people under stress. The darker the skin, the more melanin, and thus the more vibrations would supposedly be picked up. In turn, this higher sensitivity to vibrations of others would lead to higher blood pressure in the recipients. Welsing (1989) expanded this idea to explain why George Washington Carver was so successful in discovering useful products from plants. According to Welsing, Carver owed his success not to his master's degree in chemistry, but to the fact that he was very dark. She states that Carver discovered the components of plants and their uses because the plants "talked to his melanin and told him what they were good for" during his early morning strolls in the woods. The consequences of a wide acceptance of this notion by AfricanAmerican schoolchildren could be quite damaging. Children could reject appeals from teachers to study hard for years in order to be prepared to become scientists. Black children could respond that in order to be a scientist all they need do is "Let my melanin pick up the vibes."

Welsing (1989) also provides the explanation for another of the Baseline Essay’s disturbing statements. Adams states that the Dogon of Mali discovered a dwarf companion of Sirius, Sirius B, which is invisible to the naked eye. He also claims that they knew that it is extraordinarily dense and that it has an orbital period of 50 years (Adams 1990a: 60). Adams presents this theory without explanations or justifications, even though he is aware of Welsing's explanation. This leaves the reader wondering how the Dogon were supposed to have accomplished these feats. According to Welsing, the Dogon's melanin functions in a manner similar to an infrared telescope, and they were able to detect Sirius B through the melanin in their pineal glands. Welsing claims further that everything that happens on Earth is converted to energy and beamed up to Sirius B. She maintains that the high melanin content of black people enables them to tap into that information. She alleges that Greek oracles were black and that their melanin enabled them, as it does present-day blacks, to foresee the future.

Adams (1990a) claims that astrology is scientific, but again does not provide an explanation. He presented his rationale in lectures at the 1987 Melanin Conference (Adams 1990b). The ability of melanin to absorb and respond to magnetic fields is a key component of his explanation of astrology. Adams also claims "that movement [magnetic motion] is reflective of the movement of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. Thus, at birth, every living thing has a celestial serial number, or frequency power spectrum. This is the basis for astrology right here."

The melanin scholars have managed to avoid public scrutiny because of the manner in which their message has been disseminated. Leonard Jeffries has aroused the most publicity because of his position in media intensive New York City (see, e.g., Tierney 1991) and his propensity for openly racist statements. However, the racist views of this group can potentially increase further the racial hostility in this country by providing a supposed "scientific" rationale that in one stroke explains white oppression and the genetic superiority of blacks. As the theoreticians behind the Portland Baseline Essays, they can increase scientific illiteracy among those poor urban children who are most in need of better science teaching. These children do not need pseudoscience traveling under the guise of multiculturalism.

posted 25 March 2005 02:44 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:

Mose careless scholarship on the part of Thought. First of all the arrival of the Vikings in the new world around the year 1000 is not is doubt. Secondly, the Columbus discovery is still 'the' discovery BECAUSE it led to European arrival and conquest of the two contients. It is the vayage that has 'consequences' for history. Remember that the qustions of history deal with 'change and continuity'....what stayed the same as a result of an even and what CHANGED.

---

You can add the above to favorite Eurocentric 'fraud's.

posted 25 March 2005 03:02 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:

Read up on it super car...you might learn something. lots of excellent books on Vikings in America....much archeology as well. By the way, the Celts were here before Columbus as well.

---

posted 25 March 2005 03:08 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
in other words, very little, as usual.

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posted 25 March 2005 03:16 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
Knowing you , you might be able to spin the Vikings and celts into being black Africans.

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posted 25 March 2005 03:18 PM            

- Susan Sontag

posted 25 March 2005 03:45 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Obenga:
[b]"the truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."

- Susan Sontag

Eurocentrism often hides this truth from the masses.[/B]

---

Appreciate your addressing the topic.

Notice the frustrated-hysterical reaction of Eurocentrists who immediately spammed with off topic replies.

posted 25 March 2005 03:58 PM            

quote:

---

you don't like the west.

---

quote:

---

Nobody cares

---

Sure you do which is why you are reading our opinions on this topic 'eurocentrism' which you claim does not exist:

Eurocentrism: belief in the preeminence of Europe and the Europeans The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

Like Susan Sontag, they should know. So just keep reading, and spare us the faux disclaimers.

posted 25 March 2005 04:05 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
without Europe we would all be living in the woods throwing rocks at each other, stop sounding ignorant to make a political point. Nobody cares that you don't like the west.

---

"woods throwing rocks"? - are you talking about the neolithic age?

Look at that curriculum again, and see where the process that led to the modern era (the hegemony of the West); it began in Africa, don't you see...

posted 25 March 2005 04:54 PM            

Modernization and progress for who?

Thats the important question that many blinded by Eurocentrism fail to see is there and never ask. Ask the question and take a look around...the answer is obvious.

posted 25 March 2005 04:59 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
If you want to see a troll super car, look in the mirror. If you want to know about Vikings and Celts in America there is a vast amount of scholarship on it. Knowing you , you might be able to spin the Vikings and celts into being black Africans.

---

posted 25 March 2005 05:15 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
without Europe we would all be living in the woods throwing rocks at each other, stop sounding ignorant to make a political point. Nobody cares that you don't like the west.

---

posted 25 March 2005 06:39 PM            

quote:

---

without Europe we would all be living in the woods throwing rocks at each other,

---

Horemheb doesn't understand that the world could've progressed in any number of ways without europe (as it did pre-europe). The *least* likely scenario is that it all would've stagnated, (e.g. we're all "in the woods throwing rocks at one another").

Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. Some socio-anthropologists (e.g. Marvin Harris) believe we're now living in a civilization "bubble" that will "burst" at some point. ...So we may yet end up in the woods throwing rocks at one another.

posted 25 March 2005 06:59 PM            

quote:

---

windstorm.... second paragraph is an interesting thought.

---

posted 25 March 2005 10:25 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ABAZA:
Here is another one obvious frauds of Afrocentrism, that really hurts Black Students.
=============================================
CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

[b]The Self-Esteem Fraud:
Why Feel-Good Education Does Not Lead to Academic Success.

By Nina H. Shokraii.-Rees

Executive Summary

Which comes first, achievement or self-esteem? This question is at the heart of an important educational controversy. Traditionally, public schools have thought that students’ satisfaction will follow on the heels of their academic success. In other words, children who perform well in class will consequently feel good about themselves. But more recent educational theories have reversed this logic. They say that students must secure high self-esteem before they can hope to achieve. In other words, they must feel good about themselves before they can perform well in class.

For all of its current popularity, however, self-esteem theory threatens to deny children the tools they will need in order to experience true success in school and as adults. Compelling research from around the world lends empirical proof to the traditional claim that achievement precedes self-esteem. There is, in fact, almost no correlation between low self-esteem and any number of social pathologies, including poor school performance, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy.

Black children are common targets of self-esteem theory, which in their case often goes by the name of Afrocentrism. Yet they are also some of the most vulnerable, since many of them desperately require the same basic academic skills that self-esteem theory subordinates to a shallow, feel-good classroom experience. One study has even shown that inflated self-esteem among adolescent black males can encourage violent behavior.

Schools must abandon their mindless pursuit of empty self-esteem and return to the fundamental task of helping students do their best. Traditional academic preparation best teaches children how to achieve old-fashioned academic success.


p.s. Here is the link, in case you want to read the whole article!
http://www.ceousa.org/self.html

[This message has been edited by ABAZA (edited 25 March 2005).][/B]

---

http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jan00/graylit012400.htm

CHAPEL HILL -- Some early research on self-esteem, which involved having children pick from differently colored dolls the one they preferred to play with, suggested that black children in the United States had lower self-esteem as a group than white children.

A new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill investigation, however, strongly suggests that the reverse may be true.

UNC-CH psychologists analyzed 261 studies in which self-esteem in both white and black children was assessed. The studies involved more than a half-million participants.

"Our analyses revealed slightly higher scores for combined black children, adolescents and young adults than for their white counterparts," said Dr. Bernadette Gray-Little, professor of psychology. "The analyses further revealed that such characteristics as age and socioeconomic status influenced the size and direction of racial differences in self-esteem."

The complete report by Gray-Little and UNC-CH psychology doctoral student Adam R. Hafdahl has just been published in the January issue of Psychological Bulletin, a professional journal.

Differences in self-esteem were small, but statistically significant considering the large number of studies included, she said. The youngest black children -- those under age 10 -- tended to have slightly lower scores than the youngest white children, but this difference disappeared as the children passed age 10. Then blacks thought somewhat better about themselves than whites did. The self-esteem advantage for black adolescents was more pronounced in studies with more girls than boys.

"Provided that self-esteem scores for both black and white young people are equally variable with normal, or bell-shaped, distributions, our results suggest that the average black young person’s self-esteem is higher than that of about 56 percent of white young people," she said. "Put another way, the average black young person’s self-esteem falls at about the 56th percentile of self-esteem for white children and adolescents.

"The 50th percentile would correspond to no difference between the groups. Although this difference may not be large in any absolute sense, we are confident that it reflects a true difference that is consistent across a wide variety of studies."

Perhaps ironically, Gray-Little said, wealthier black children do not have the same self-esteem advantage as their less-wealthy peers. That might be because they often find themselves in school or other settings where they are relatively few in number compared to wealthier whites. Other studies have shown that both black and white children who constitute a very small minority in a school setting can suffer lower self-esteem than if they feel like they are part of a group.

Young blacks might experience slightly higher self-esteem overall because they often have a strong ethnic identity, while many young whites do not, she said.

The psychologists became interested in the topic because much research already has been done on racial differences in self-esteem. Many people assumed that blacks would have lower self-esteem because they belonged to a disadvantaged minority, and some research supported that view, while other work did not.

"We wanted to look at a large number of studies conducted over a long period to see if by putting them all together we would be able to detect consistent patterns," she said.

The researchers collected all the relevant studies they could, including unpublished doctoral dissertations from across the United States, to carry out their analyses. The better the test used to measure self-esteem in the various studies, the more likely they were to find higher self-esteem overall among blacks, Gray-Little said.

posted 26 March 2005 12:50 AM            

=============================================
Our Own Worst Enemies
by La Shawn Barber
5 December 2003

SCAM, by Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, is a well-documented and devastating critique about the havoc wreaked on black America by so-called leaders.


A book written with truth, wisdom and insight shouldn’t be revolutionary. Unfortunately, reporting facts about black America can be downright subversive. In his new book, SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson (“the other Jesse”) tells it like it is. He is the founder and president of the successful non-profit Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND), whose purpose is “rebuilding the family by rebuilding the man.”

Rarely do I come across writing as brutally honest as my own when dealing with the black community. Liberals in general won’t like it, liberal blacks in particular will hate it, and conservatives will wonder what took so long. SCAM is a well-documented and devastating critique about the havoc wreaked on black America by so-called leaders, which is why the book hasn’t and won’t receive the kind of media coverage it deserves.

Return to Our Roots

Rev. Peterson contends that black America’s biggest problem is not racism but its own immorality, and that it should reject self-appointed leaders and return to the values that once made it strong. “Because of Jesse Jackson and the [Congressional] Black Caucus and Farrakhan and others, we are more divided as a race than any other time in history,” Rev. Peterson told me in an interview last year.

Approval of Immorality

“If white Americans were to leave the country tomorrow, in ten years America would be a ghetto,” writes Rev. Peterson. Ouch! But one look at major cities run by black mayors, police chiefs and black-dominated city councils provides ample evidence to validate his assertion. In the District of Columbia, for example, incompetence abounds, crime rates are out of control, abortion and illegitimacy rates are high, and the number of new AIDS cases is higher than in other large U.S. cities. Blacks, who make up 61 percent of the D.C. population, represent 80 percent of AIDS diagnoses.

The solution? The irresponsible, bureaucratically inept D.C. government has decided to put condom dispensers in government buildings, encouraging a city rife with a multitude of sexually-transmitted diseases to continue having illicit sex.

In SCAM, Rev. Peterson deals firmly with black churches, once moral leaders in the community, and how pastors have abdicated responsibility for shepherding the flock in favor of promoting the immoral liberal agenda. He describes a program called The Balm of Gilead (headed by an advisor to the Congressional Black Caucus), which distributes free condoms and promotes “tolerance” for homosexuality. Over 5,000 black churches participated. Instead of following biblical teachings about homosexuality, some black pastors have become complicit in the movement. Did you know, for example, that Pentecostal preacher Al Sharpton supports homosexual marriage?

And it doesn’t stop there. Not only do some black churches support pro-abortion Democrats and celebrate Kwanzaa -- invented by an anti-Christian convicted felon -- but black ministers have invited the anti-Christian, anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan to preach hatred of America in their pulpits.

Drinking Poisoned Kool-Aid®

In 1978, cult weirdo Jim Jones convinced 913 followers (mostly black) to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid®. The followers gave the poison to their children first, then drank it themselves. Rev. Peterson argues the same brainwashing process has happened to millions of blacks and that a “cult of blackness” has been created by “corrupt civil rights leaders, legislators, black journalists, and leftist black preachers.” The very word “racism” is a mantra used over and over again to condition blacks and link the word to whites and conservatives, no matter how absurd the linkage (think James Byrd).

Rev. Peterson chastises peddlers of dangerous and racist (and ignorant) notions like the phony Afrocentrism and ebonics (“gutter language” disguised as “black speech”) who continue to destroy the black community and foster racial tensions.

Back to Africa?

Rev. Peterson has spoken out against these and other ridiculous ideas only to be vilified and in some cases, physically assaulted. The truth hurts. He asks, “Instead of reparations, how about a ticket back to Africa?” Excellent question. Murderous dictators, slavery, famine and strife? No, thanks!

With uncompromising courage, Rev. Peterson asserts, “Black people should ask themselves what debt they owe to whites -- both Americans and British -- who lobbied and fought and died to bring an end to slavery...” Audacious and observant. To date, black Africans and Arabs are still in the human bondage business.

SCAM offers a compelling argument against racially divisive “leaders”, which I will address in Our Own Worst Enemies: Part II.

La Shawn Barber, a columnist for American Daily, reviews books for Townhall.com. Visit her weblog at http://lashawnbarber.blogspot.com.

posted 26 March 2005 11:06 AM            

Many of the things critiqued in that old magic Melanin post of yours were already debunked within the Afrocentric community by Dr T Moore who has a PHD in Physiological Psychology......who by his own words is an African Centered scientist and researcher. He points out where some Melanin advocates like Welsing and Adams are wrong and criticizes their lack of knowledge about the nature of Melanin.

In this book he responds too and destroys the article by Bernard Ortiz De Montellano
that u posted. You may want to keep up with the responses to critiques of Afrocentrism instead of just posting the critiques.

Those who run the white power structure commonly use reverse rhetoric to castigate the self-affirming viewpoints of African -centered scholars. In other words, whites project their own racism onto us in order to avoid their insecurities. Henceforth, many insecure white people believe that any black-african consciousness, history, or related information is "racism" in reverse. I have not written this book to persuade someone who may be conceptually, shall we say, incarcerated.

African And African American scholars must go beyond trying to change the mentality of people who have been indoctrinated from birth to believe that poeple of European descent are superior

- The Science of Melanin: Dispelling the Myths

He has also written a more recent book named

DARK MATTERS - DARK SECRETS is a continuing exploration into the area of melanin research. Melanin is commonly known as the substance that produces skin pigmentation, and this book will be valuable to any reader interested in the various effects of pigmented cells in the skin as well as in the central nervous system. Moore divides this book into two parts. In Part One (DARK MATTERS), a new and exciting perspective on the role of melanin in the skin is presented with a lengthy discussion on the pineal gland and the brain. In Part Two (DARK SECRETS), a biopsychosocial approach is presented to discuss drug addiction and how the drug binding capabilities of melanin can make a person more susceptible to the effects of some drugs.

Examination of the physiology of africans is all over the place from a european perspective which as we know is not always objective. Often anything negative is accentuated and anything positive is surpresssed.

Misleading Afrocentric advocates of what Melanin does are being debunked within the afrocentric community with true scholarship. Melanin research is growing and is valid.

East Asians hold on to the spiritual nature of some of there perspectives on Human beings by paying no mind to what westerners say about whats real and what is not. Belief in CHI is a part of acupuncture and East asian Martial arts....the west says CHI does not exist....you think Asians give a dam about what westerners think with regard to there being no scientific evidence to support the existance of CHI??

Now that many African proffesionals like Keita and Moore are on the job we can start to throw off the eurocentric view and investigate our African nature from our own African perspective.

Any intelligent person can see why that is the logical thing for all groups to do. Unless u have decided to identify with your own oppressor...which we see all too often.

posted 26 March 2005 08:05 PM            

Kwanzaa: A Holiday From The FBI

(Trent call your office, Christians are down memory hole) Coulter
anncoulter.org ^ | 12/24/2002 | ANN COULTER

Posted on 12/24/2002 2:16:22 PM PST by TLBSHOW

TRENT LOTT, call your office: Apparently some parts of American history can be sanitized and forgotten. Earlier this week, President George Bush issued a formal White House proclamation celebrating Kwanzaa.

Sounding like a "Saturday Night Live" send-up, Bush praised the "seven principles" of Kwanzaa, "known as Nguzo Saba," and discussed the "early harvest gatherings called 'matunda ya kwanza,' or first fruits." He included the usual claptrap about how Kwanzaa celebrates "traditional African values" and "uniting people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs."

It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.

In what was probably ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the '60s the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the organization, the better. Karenga's United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American '60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.

Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the '60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution. Those were the precepts of Karenga's United Slaves. United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, blowing away Black Panthers and adopting invented "African" names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named "Jamal" currently sit on death row?)

Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the "framed" murder of two whites included: "the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department" and so on. (He further noted that "the evidence was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt" -- an interesting standard of proof.) Karenga should know about FBI infiltration.

In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga leapt in to denounce the idea publicly, saying, "Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents."

By now, there is no question that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot Black Panther Al "Bunchy" Carter on the UCLA campus. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.

Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.

When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the "best of" -- I'm not making this up -- "early Chinese and Cuban socialism," Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity "determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding." There's an inclusive philosophy for you.

Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umojo, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- precisely the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa.

With his Kwanzaa greetings, President Bush is saluting the intellectual sibling of the Symbionese Liberation Army, killer of housewives and police. He is saluting the founder of United Slaves, who were such lunatics that they shot Panthers for not being sufficiently insane -- all with the FBI as their covert ally. It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglica," and the president of the United States issued a presidential proclamation honoring the synthetic holiday. People might well stand up and take notice if that happened.

Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and United Slaves -- the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI's tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

Now the "holiday" concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation calling it a "holiday that promotes mutual understanding." A movement that started approximately 2,000 years before Kwanzaa leaps well beyond merely "promot(ing) mutual understanding" to say we are all equal before God. It is so inclusive, people get mad at it. That movement is also celebrated this week. But the Christian leaders at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements have been washed down the memory hole.

posted 27 March 2005 03:52 PM            

The only thing that I might agree with, is that Ancient Egypt did have a strong influence On Ancient Greece, but everything is either 100% FALSE or HALF-TRUTHS!!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
Abaza, I agree that some Afrocentrists were outrageous and looney, but when you think about a lot of the stuff they said was really no different from what Eurocentrists have said for centuries.

Long before the Afrocentric “melanin scholars” there were Eurocentric ones that came up with opposite theories! That the more melanin a person had the more inferior and vice versa, the less the more superior, which was why white peoples the most superior race of humans! There were also a pseudo-science that was also invented by Europeans, called phrenology. This so-called science suggested that cranio-facial traits and characteristics were intrinsically linked to personality and psychological traits. That said, it’s not surprising that the cranio-facial traits of Europeans were seen as superior and associated with superior personality and psychological aspects. Things like prognathism, wide noses, etc were deemed the opposite and primitive.

---

posted 27 March 2005 05:02 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ABAZA:
You're wrong again, because[b] Some is an Understatement. All Afrocentrics are Nuts and Wrong on most of their Ideas and Assumptions.

The only thing that I might agree with, is that Ancient Egypt did have a strong influence On Ancient Greece, but everything is either 100% FALSE or HALF-TRUTHS!!
[B]

---

Wrong, Abaza!! I have read many sources from Afrocentrics and while I disagree with some of the things they say, I can tell you that the majority of them aren't as crazy as you point out and only a few of them advocate ideas as nutty as the "magic melanin" crap.

As far as ancient Egypt, mainstream scholarship is more and more beginning to admit what Afrocentrics have been saying all along, and that is ancient Egypt was an African civilization!!

posted 27 March 2005 11:20 PM            

What triggered the revolution of exposing them, was the book by Professor Lefkowitz, because she felt insulted by their extreme arrogance and increduolus claims and poor scholarship.

Once the flood gates were opened, the rest of the academics starting speaking out and exposing the rest of their lies, namely that Ancient Egypt was not a Black African Nation.

That is the second book by Professor Lefkowitz, where she had the experts write and expose that particular False Claim.

The next step would be for the actual Colleges and Universities to start demanding that these same people, who parade themselves as learned scholars and Professors, actually be subjected to Peer-Reviews and Academic Scrutiny.

It is not an easy battle, because too many people have been silent for too long, but the battle can be won and the psuedo-historians expunged from our schools and universities.

This whole Ancient Egypt forum has been hijacked by these same people, who only care about The Science of Blackness, and nothing else of significance about Egyptology or Ancient Egypt.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
Wrong, Abaza!! I have read many sources from Afrocentrics and while I disagree with some of the things they say, I can tell you that the majority of them aren't as crazy as you point out and only a few of them advocate ideas as nutty as the "magic melanin" crap.

As far as ancient Egypt, mainstream scholarship is more and more beginning to admit what Afrocentrics have been saying all along, and that is ancient Egypt was an African civilization!!

---

posted 28 March 2005 12:07 AM            

Egyptologist have long admitted that ancient Egypt was an African culture and nation. This is not attested by many Egyptologist. Even earlier Egptologist like Sir Alan Gardnier admitted the Upper Egyptians were negriod.

Leftowitz wrote her first book Not Out of Africa to stop claims from George G.M. Jame's Stolen Legacy book that claimed Greek philosophy was stolen from ancient Egyptians. Her second book entitled Black Athena Revisited was against Martin Bernal.

Most modern scholars like S.O.Y Keita are peer reviewed and most of their work can be found in Physical anthropology journals.

However, the people who brought ''race'' into Egyptology are not the Afrocentrics you point fingers at but 19th century Egyptologist. Thus,Afrocentrism is just a reaction to overly racist scholarship direct at Africans.

Here is the general consensus of modern academic archaeologist,Egyptologist,and anthropologist:

The existence of still earlier culture,called the Tasins,has been
claimed. This culture would have been chracterized by the pressure of
round based calic form beakers with incised designs filled with white
pigment,which are also known fropm contexts of similar date in
Nelothic Sudan. However,the exisdtanece of the Tasins as a
chronologically or culturally seperated unit has never been
demonstrated beyond beyond doubt. Although most scholars consider the
tasian to be simply part of the badarian culture,it has also been
argued that the tasian represents the continuation of Lower Egyptian
tradition,which would be the immediate predessor of the Naquda 1
culture. This however,seems rather implausible ,first because
similarities with the neolithic cultures are no
convincing,and,secondly,because of the tasins obvious ceramic links
with the sudan. If the Tasians must be considered as a specific
cultural entity,then it might represent a nomadic culture with a
Sudanese background,which interacted with the badarian culture
page 40

Ian Shaw

Oxford University of Ancient Egypt

The mid-twentieth Egyptologist Alan Gardiner, who was considered an
authority on the ancient civilization of Kemet, gave the following
report on the human remains of the pre-dynastic Badarians, Amratians,
and Gerzeans:
"These... were long-headed-dolicocephalic is the learned term-and
below even medium stature, but Negroid features are often to be
observed. Whatever may be said of the northerners, it is safe to
describe the dwellers in Upper Egypt as of essentially African stock,
a character always retained despite alien influences brought to bear
on them from time to time." (pg. 392; Egypt of the Pharaohs 1966)

In discussing the Badari culture, for example -- Egypt's earliest predynastic
civilization (4400-4000 BC) -- Shomarka Keita writes that many researchers
have found their remains to be "fundamentally `Negroid'."

Going back even further in time, Keita states:

"...late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which
distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000 and
20,000 years BP... These distinguishing characteristics, commonly called
`Negroid,' are shared with later Nile valley and more southerly groups...
Epipaleolithic `mesolithic' Nile valley remains have these characteristics
and diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in key
craniofacial characteristics."

(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological
Relationships", History in Africa 20 (1993), page 135).

The movement or diffusion of people out of and into Egypt during
this time span from before 4000 B.C.-2000 B.C. or later evolution of
this slightly negriod paedomorphic stock into Dyansty Upper
Egyptians was probably a local development from the unknown latest
hunters of the Lower Nile,while mixture of more massive and rugged
[and also negriod ] Nubians[Anderson,1969];Armelagos,1969] produced
some of the rugged Pre-dyanstic variants . Disease and dietary
selection would have affected the population probably more than
immigration and mixture. Lower Egypt may have had a slightly
different population,less linear in the skull variant but with
longer face,like the earliest farmers in Greece ,but also with thin
noses. But I have to use a IX Dyansty series [Woo ,1930] as a base
for this statement and almost certainly this group in the late third
milliennium B.C. shows minor effects of mixture with sea-trading
peoples from the Levant and Agean. Cyprus since the early Neolithic
[Angel,1953;Furst,1933] had both very lateral and some linear skulls
elements and could have been a source of change and there were
probably exchanges with Palestine[Korgman ,1949;Hrdlicka,1938] and
Mesopotamia [Angel ,1951],both with long [Angel,1951],both with long
headed populations with medium or low rather than linear faces and
some of the same lateral element as in early Anatolian[cf. the later
Hitties] and the Agean [Angel,1951]. The latter is supposed to have
increased in numbers [from what selective force?] in the Bronze Age
and perhaps to have affected Lower Egypt via the Hykos.
This is not enough evidence. But the intruders who appeared in
Greece at time of Indo-Europeans acceptance[Angel,1971] are fairly
robust Iranian[or Nordic Iranian] in form[Korgman,1940] with definite
short and low headed and also intermediate forms of skull: I think
that the Hykos wew probably a parallel blend and also may have had
little genetic effect in an area of high population density already.

page 310

J. Lawrence Angel

Divison of Physical Anthropology
Smithstonian Institution

Washington,D.C. 20560 ,U.S.A.
Received 18 April 1969

Biological Relations of Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean
Populations during Pre-dynastic and Dyanstic
Time*

Lower Egypt on the other hand was probally composed of more a mixture of Africans and non-African people. We see this from evidence from burial sites in the cultures of Lower Egypt.

See the following:

There was probably a break in occupation between levels I and II at
Merimda. Level II, known as the Mittleren Merimdekultur and considered by
the by the excavator to be related to the Saharo-Sudanese cultures..."
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
Pg 38
======================================================================
"The Fayum Neolithic should thus be viewed as a culture at the intersection
of three routes: one from the eastern Sahara, one from the Near East and one
from the Nile Valley itself."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 106
=====================================================================

Here is Midant-Reynes statement on the remains of a 40 year old
epipaleolithic woman from the Fayum Oasis in the same book:
" The body was that of a 40 year old woman with a height of 1.6 meters, who
was of a more modern racial type than the classic "Mechtoid" of the
Fakhurian culture, being generally gracile, having large teeth and thick
jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern "negroid' type."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 82
======================================================================
"The prognathism observed in the skulls from Maadi south and Heliopolis may
or may not indicate the infiltration of a negroid strain into the northern
region."
Most Ancient Egypt
By William C. Hayes
======================================================================

Fundamentally,the people with the most trace to ancient Egyptian culture are probabaly the Fellahin in both Lower and Upper Egypt. majority of the modern population of Egypt tend to come from the Fellahin with some exceptions of some elite Egyptians living in the city of Cairo because many of them can trace their ancestry from Mamelukes,Turks,and even some bedouin Arabs.

See the following link: http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DIGEST/V02/v02.n077
[scroll down to the thread by Peter Piccone]

Finally, let it be said that the ancient Egyptians were not white=20 Caucasians, nor were they Indo-Aryans. They were African, primarily a brown race, although fair= =20 skinned and leptorhine in the north, black skinned and platyrhine in the south, and= =20 various shades in the middle. They manifested all the physical differences you=20 would expect in so large a continent as Africa. Trigger (see below) uses the term=20 "Nilotic" to refer to their heterogenous character. When all is said and done, though,= =20 this whole question of Egyptian racial identity says more about us today than it does= =20 about the ancient Egyptians.

posted 06 April 2005 01:24 AM            

“The Peculiar Phenomenon of Pseudoarchaeology”

By Kenneth Feder