posted
I don't always concur with what's in Wikipedia, but I do in this case. This is and indepth fair and accurate history of this term.....
Hamitic is an obsolete ethno-linguistic classification of some ethnic groups within the Afroasiatic (previously termed "Semito-Hamitic") language family.
The term Hamitic originally referred to peoples believed to have been descended from Ham, one of the Sons of Noah.
Over history, there have been several separate, but interrelated, interpretations of the term. In the Bible, the sons of Ham include peoples who were traditionally enemies of the Jews, notably the Egyptians, and the Canaanites.
While the Canaanites competed with the Israelites for the same territory, typically Ham's sons were said to have fathered the peoples of Africa.
Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites; Mizraim the Egyptians; Cush the Cushites and Phut the "Libyans".
During the Middle Ages and up until the early 19th century the term Hamitic was used by Europeans to refer indiscriminately to Africans.
In the 19th century, a "Hamitic language group" was proposed, uniting various, mainly North-African, languages.
A "Hamitic race" was also identified, referring to those Africans whom Europeans considered "advanced", or most similar to themselves and to Semitic peoples.
Today the Hamitic concepts have been widely discredited, and are often referred to as the Hamitic Myth.
The term Hamitic itself is sometimes considered pejorative. The Hamitic language group is no longer considered a useful concept, though the phrase Semito-Hamitic is a dated term for the Afro-Asiatic group.
The notion of a Hamitic race is similarly widely abandoned.
The Hamitic Myth was used as a justification for European colonial policy in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the slave trade in earlier times.
Early interpretations of the Bible led many Western scholars to believe that all of humanity was descended from Noah. Chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Genesis deal with the branching off and splitting up of Noah's sons into the world. The name of Cush, Ham's eldest son, means 'black' in Hebrew. Noah curses Canaan, Cush's youngest brother, saying that he and his descendants would be a "servant of servants". Hebrew scholars have used this passage to justify the Israelite subjugation of Canaan.[citation needed] These scholars, working around the 6th century AD, introduced the idea that the sons of Ham were marked by dark skin.
In the middle ages, some European Christians picked up on the idea. Again, the depiction of the "sons of Ham" as cursed, "blackened" by their sins, suited the ideological interests of the European elite; especially as the principal enemy of Christendom was Islam, which dominated North Africa. Despite the fact that Islam originated with the Semitic Arabs, European imagery often stressed the blackness of the Islamic Moors and associated them with the 'cursed' sons of Ham. Later, with the emergence of the slave trade, it justified the exploitation of a ready supply of black African labour.
After Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, European interest in that country increased dramatically. With the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the rapid increase in knowledge of Ancient Egyptian civilization, European academics became increasingly interested in the origin of the Egyptians and their connection to other groups to the West, South, East and North. The traditional Biblical genealogy associated the Egyptians with other descendants of Ham, notably the black-skinned Cushites in Ethiopia.
Non-religious and Darwinian writers also theorised that the Biblical stories contained an element of truth about the ancestry of some black African populations, who may have migrated into Central Africa from the North. These peoples were assumed to be racially superior to other Africans.
As a result of this reevaluation, Hamitic took on a new, more positive connotation for Europeans. During the 19th century Europeans explored more and more of Africa. In their travels, they found many different physical types, and they valued those that appeared most like themselves or had a redeeming cultural characteristic. These types were declared "Hamitic", e.g. the Tutsis of Rwanda (see below).
Soon the Hamitic theory became an important ideological instrument of colonialism, especially in German politics.
The term "Hamitic" is used for the first time in connection with languages by the German missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810-1881), but with regard to all languages of Africa spoken by black people. It was the Berlin Egyptologist Karl Friedrich Lepsius (1810-1877), who restricted it to the non-Semitic languages in Africa which are characterized by a grammatical gender system.
As racial theories became increasingly complex and convoluted, the term Hamitic was used in different ways by different writers, and was applied to many different groups Ethiopians, Eritreans, Berbers, Nubians, Somalis and many others.
Racial theory was very hierarchical; Europeans saw these peoples as leaders within Africa, "teaching" lesser peoples the ways of civilization, just as they saw themselves teaching the Hamitic peoples (See: The White Man's Burden).
However, the allegedly Hamitic peoples themselves were often deemed to have 'failed' as rulers, a failing that was sometimes explained by interbreeding with non-Hamites. So, in the mid-20th century the German scholar Carl Meinhof (1857-1944) claimed that the Bantu race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races. The 'Hottentots' (Nama or Khoi) were formed by the merger of Hamitic and Bushmen (San) races (both being termed nowadays as Khoisan peoples). Such theories are now completely outmoded.
In 1917 George Wells Parker founded the Hamitic League of the World. Its aims were:
"To inspire the Negro with new hopes; to make him openly proud of his race and of its great contributions to the religious development and civilization of mankind and to place in the hands of every race man and woman and child the facts which support the League's claim that the Negro Race is the greatest race the world has ever known." In Rwanda, the Hamitic hypothesis was a racialist hypothesis created by John Hanning Speke (Gourevitch 1999) which stated that the "Hamitic" Tutsi people were superior to the "Bantu" Hutus because they were more Caucasian in appearance, and thus destined to rule over the Hutus.
In the movie Hotel Rwanda, a native Rwandan explains to caucasian reporters that people were determined by the Belgians to be either Hutu or Tutsi in a very subjective way, such as the width of the nose or other physical characteristics. One of the reporters asks two girls if they are Hutu or Tutsi, and they respond that one is Hutu and the other is Tutsi. The reporter notes that they look so much alike that they could be twins.
Although the actual origin of the Tutsis is disputed, if they had once been a ruling-class of invaders, they had long since lost that social position.
This hypothesis was a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide. Because of the wide-spread racism in the area, and the belief among Tutsis that they were superior to the Hutus, the Hutus began to see the Tutsis as an outside invader to their land. One Hutu political activist suggested that the Tutsis be floated down the river to Ethiopia, which Speke claimed was the ancestral home of the Tutsis.
Although this hypothesis is often compared to the ideology of Nazi Germany, it should be noted that in Rwanda, the genocide was conducted against those the hypothesis described as superior, whereas the victims of the Holocaust were seen as the inferiors by the Nazis.
In this way Europeans again justified their own exploitation of the African continent. These ideas were still in wide circulation until the mid 20th century. The Hamitic hypothesis is widely rejected today on a multitude of grounds. Most "scientific" observations of the time were heavily culturally biased and generally returned results that suited European prejudices. Many observations of the time have been corrected since then to reveal a much more complex picture of ethnic groups than was initially thought. Nonetheless, the term Hamitic is still used in some anthropological nomenclature.
The term's linguistic use was effectively terminated by Joseph Greenberg (The Languages of Africa) in the 1950s, who introduced the use of geographical rather than racial terms for Africa's language families.
References:
Gourevitch, Philip (September 1999). We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Letters From Rwanda, 1, New York: Picador, 368. 0312243359.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamitic"
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
I thought this piece, posted in another thread, may well belong here too, based on its tone, and what the claims stand for ...
“…the Deir el Bahri reliefs do show a number of African people and apparently African animals, such as at least one rhinoceros and a giraffe. For Bimson, and for many of his readers, this was decisive evidence in proving an African location for the territory. Decisive enough to make them ignore or forget all the other evidence that clearly located Punt/the Divine Land in Palestine/Phoenicia. But if Punt really was Phoenicia, why then such an African influence? Why the large amount of space devoted to seemingly African animals and people with clearly Negroid features? This is a question that cannot be ignored. Velikovsky himself suggested that the African elements were imports, and stressed that the Puntites themselves **were not Negroes**, but Semites or **Hamites**. This in fact is true. The Puntites look very much like the Egyptians, and curiously enough, sport long pointed beards of a type worn in Egypt only by the pharaoh. (It should be noted also in this regard that the earliest Egyptian monarchy, the Horus kings of the First Dynasty, claimed to have originated in Punt: and this **incidentally provides yet another dramatic connection with Asia**; for, as David Rohl has illustrated (Legend: The Genesis of Civilization: 1998), the god Osiris, form whom the Egyptian royalty claimed descent, was not only specifically linked to Byblos, but was himself in origin a Mesopotamian god named Asar. Rohl also shows, in the same place, how the peoples of Lebanon also traced their origin back to Mesopotamia).” - by Emmet Sweeney
^Quite laughable, including the comedic claim about Ausar (Osiris), but this here, is typically what "Hamitism" is all about.
Ps - even "Semitic", at one time, was used as a euphemism for a "race" from southwest Asia, but now of course, it is utilized within linguistic circles strictly as a linguistic construct rather than a "racial" one.
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It's time we call these Eurocentric fallacies out for what they are-- B.S.!
Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Now, I stated in another thread that Hebrew folk ethnology is very useful - i'm somewhat hesistent to pursue this because experience has shown that it's a delecate matter.
If in the secular world of scholarhip we accept that we are discussing mythology - which tells with great accuracy - how the Hebrews viewed the world - then we can gain much knowledge.
If on the other hand we view it *literally* [as one supposes a devout Judeo-Christian must], then we end up inserting mythology into history, which is to say confusing myths and facts.
Having said that...once more into the breach....
Horus kings of the First Dynasty, claimed to have originated in Punt: and this **incidentally provides yet another dramatic connection with Asia.
This is and important fact, and notice that European scholarship mentions it - as long they can associate Punt with Asia.
Now in present scholarhip it is essentially acknolwedged that Punt must be in Africa - ie - the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt notes that Punt was traveled to from Kemet also by land - and via Sudan, not just by sea.
However once it is admitted that Punt is in inner Africa - it is forgotten or ignored that the Km.t claimed that this is from whence they originated.
Likewise the most significant fact about the Hebrew Hamite catagory is that it clearly placed the AE in the same class as the Ethiopians with other Africans, and *spcifically not* with the Hebrews [semites].
This is contra' to what Eurocentric scholarship has dedicated itself to fostering.
Seeing past the Eurocentric fog, we can thus discern that both the ancient Hebrew and Ancient Egyptians agreed - AE were Blacks of Africa, not Asiatic Semites.
I think the African scholars who want to make use of "Hamite" simply want this understood. (?)
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posted
^That seems to be what African scholars want since in any other use of the myths would be anti-African in nature.
It's sad but true how modern Western scholarship is virtually silent on many things that overtly show kinship to Africa, even though back then they tried to ridiculously tried to show a connection to Asia instead. Not to mention embarassing. But again, I must point out that not all Western scholars are like that, and there are many who break away from the tradition of racism and quite simply idiotic pride (I stress the idiotic) that characterized Eurocentric thought.
Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by rasol: Now, I stated in another thread that Hebrew folk ethnology is very useful - i'm somewhat hesistent to pursue this because experience has shown that it's a delecate matter.
If in the secular world of scholarhip we accept that we are discussing mythology - which tells with great accuracy - how the Hebrews viewed the world - then we can gain much knowledge.
If on the other hand we view it *literally* [as one supposes a devout Judeo-Christian must], then we end up inserting mythology into history, which is to say confusing myths and facts.
Having said that...once more into the breach....
Horus kings of the First Dynasty, claimed to have originated in Punt: and this **incidentally provides yet another dramatic connection with Asia.
This is and important fact, and notice that European scholarship mentions it - as long they can associate Punt with Asia.
Now in present scholarhip it is essentially acknolwedged that Punt must be in Africa - ie - the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt notes that Punt was traveled to from Kemet also by land - and via Sudan, not just by sea.
However once it is admitted that Punt is in inner Africa - it is forgotten or ignored that the Km.t claimed that this is from whence they originated.
Likewise the most significant fact about the Hebrew Hamite catagory is that it clearly placed the AE in the same class as the Ethiopians with other Africans, and *spcifically not* with the Hebrews [semites].
This is contra' to what Eurocentric scholarship has dedicated itself to fostering.
Seeing past the Eurocentric fog, we can thus discern that both the ancient Hebrew and Ancient Egyptians agreed - AE were Blacks of Africa, not Asiatic Semites.
I think the African scholars who want to make use of "Hamite" simply want this understood. (?)
posted
Today there is considerable debate about the racial validity of the term Tutsi as distinct from Hutu. Some researchers believe there is no genetic difference between the two supposed groups, and that what difference did exist can be explained by social and procreative patterns within the Great Lakes region. At one time, there may have been economic and cultural differences in the Rwandan population, although this is also disputed. One such difference was occupational. Some people were farmers and ate a varied diet. Others were cattle keepers and had a diet that consisted of mainly dairy and meat products. The so-called "Hutus" were formerly associated with the former characteristics, and the so-called "Tutsis" with the latter characteristics. Since there weren't any blood or cultural differences between the two "groups", it was easy for them to change their supposed identity or to confuse the two. A Hutu could become a Tutsi simply by raising cattle, and a Tutsi could become a Hutu by working in agriculture. In most circumstances, a foreigner (and even native Rwandans and Burundians) cannot tell the difference simply by looking at a Tutsi or Hutu. This view has become popular since the genocide, with the current regime at pains to portray itself as being merely one group within a homogenous population, rather than an ethnic minority dominating an ethnic majority.
posted
empirical evidence... I recently was watching (again)"King Solomon's Mines" on TCM cable; in the battle for the BaTutsi throne, there is the scene where the king is surrounded by his court, and I noticed for the very first time that the gentleman standing to the far right of the scene had on apparel that looked strikingly like that worn by the Ethiopian (Amhara) coptic priests...
This reminded me of a conversation I had once with an African-American brother who had spent some years in Ethiopia. We began discussing the migrations of the Tutsi from this part of Africa, to which he explained to me that the BaTutsi's migrations could be traced by the remnants of peoples left behind in settlements at different locations in their trek southwards...
Of course, this didn't come as a surprise, since this has been the pattern within Africa since forever, it seems - the migrations of Black African peoples from place to place...
Posts: 3344 | From: Berkeley | Registered: Oct 2003
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The reason is obvious: the vast majority of research of any kind on Africa and its progeny anywhere was/is done by Europeans and most people just fall victims to the European view of things--especially if it portrays them somewhat positively.
I am sure that many Tutsis still belive that they are "caucasoid" simply because it's there in the European books.
But you have to give them their ill-gotten due. The Europeans do know how to develop and wield tremendous self-serving intellectual power. The payoff is that it makes them masters of the material, intellectual and psychological lives of non-European others.
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quote:Originally posted by lamin: To Prince of Punt:
The reason is obvious: the vast majority of research of any kind on Africa and its progeny anywhere was/is done by Europeans and most people just fall victims to the European view of things--especially if it portrays them somewhat positively.
I am sure that many Tutsis still belive that they are "caucasoid" simply because it's there in the European books.
But you have to give them their ill-gotten due. The Europeans do know how to develop and wield tremendous self-serving intellectual power. The payoff is that it makes them masters of the material, intellectual and psychological lives of non-European others.
So your saying that the Europeans told them they originate from the Horn of Africa?
Even if they did originate from the horn, which they don't according to some recent research, that still does not make them in any way superior or related to Europeans. As Horn Africans are obviously black Africans aswell!
Its a shame how Europeans robbed and raped Africa, a Shame!
Posts: 265 | From: UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote: Even if they did originate from the horn, which they don't according to some recent research, that still does not make them in any way superior or related to Europeans.
Carleton Coon, the nefarious racist American Anthropologist claimed that they originated in Arabia - from there to Ethiopia, and thence to Rwanda. That's the basic, and obviously incorrect, idea.
quote:But you have to give them their ill-gotten due. The Europeans do know how to develop and wield tremendous self-serving intellectual power
This is why we all as African scholars have our work cut out for us.
He have to be creative and develope new ways of viewing the world, that do more than attempt to invert the biased conceptions of Europeans.
That approach is futile because you still end up playing their game by their rules.
And this is exactly the case with African attempts to utilise the Hamite myth.
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posted
I concur. They certainly have no oral history of any extra Rift region homeland. Tutsi and Hutu originally were "caste" related terms until the Belgians applied Speke's Hamtic Hypothesis to them.
In the past a Tutsi could change rank to Hutu and Hutu could change rank to Tutsi. In the very recent past, genocidal Hutu demanded ID to distinguish their Tutsi victims from themselves.
quote:Originally posted by rasol:
There is no evidence that the Tutsi came from Ethiopia...empirical or otherwise.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
They bought in on the colonial myth and the socio- political privileges it entailed. Even now some Tutsi are claiming ancient Israel/Judea origins because a secular Jewish organization will grant certain privileges to those who do (this is not to discount the possibility that Jews may have had trading contacts with the Tutsi/Hutu kingdom entailing marriages with subjects of both classes).
quote:Originally posted by Prince_of_punt: ^^^Some Tutsis tell you themselves that they originate from the Ethiopia and Somalia.
I wonder why that is when obviously they don't?
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posted
One thing that suprises me, is that If Tutsis and Hutus were so closely related, then how comes they have obvious phenotype differences.
Eg Rwandan president Pual Kagame. He could easily pass for a Horn African Cushetic!
Former president Juvenal Habyarimana whose plane was shot down, consequently triggering the Rwandan genocide. He looks very different to Paul Kagame as you can see!
There is an obvious differences in the way Hutus and Tutsis look. There are many Hutus who claim to be Tutsi, but I have been informed that they are commonly known and not really accepted.
Any answers to this........
Posts: 265 | From: UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Prince_of_punt: One thing that suprises me, is that If Tutsis and Hutus were so closely related, then how comes they have obvious phenotype differences.
All Africans don't look alike, even within individual ethnic groups.
quote: Eg Rwandan president Pual Kagame. He could easily pass for a Horn African Cushetic!
I agree, obversely many Ethiopians or Somali could easily for Fulani of Taureg or even Hausa. Cushitics are just Africans, just like Bantu, and they don't all look alike anymore than Bantu.
quote:Former president Juvenal Habyarimana whose plane was shot down, consequently triggering the Rwandan genocide. He looks very different to Paul Kagame as you can see!
There are lots of Tutsi who also look different than Paul Kagame. There are lots of Hutu who look different than Javenal Habyarimana.
quote:There are many Hutus who claim to be Tutsi
Why would they do that? Tutsi were targeted for mass murder, after all.
quote:but I have been informed that they are commonly known and not really accepted.
quote:One thing that suprises me, is that If Tutsis and Hutus were so closely related, then how comes they have obvious phenotype differences.
Just a quick question.
Why are you basing this off of two hand picked pictures? Are we supposed to just take these two pictures and run off and believe that these people are different.
I have to say this: That is very unscientific and quite frankly just plain dumb.
From my limited reading the differences were occupational with the Batutsi being cattle herders and Bahutu being farmers.
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posted
There are differences in appearance between Hutu and Tutsi on average - but, as with most things, one can choose to exaggerate them or downplay them.
The thing is, there is so little fundamental ethnic difference between the two of them - such as language or even accent, so it's possible that the ethnic labels came into being post facto consequence of occupation 1st, and appearance second.
In other words - tall lanky cattle herder....then you are a Tutsi.
Short stocky farmer - then you are a Hutu.
Perhaps as much likened to the difference between Samauri and Farmer castes in Japan as anything else.
Anyway, it's very telling that there is no language difference. You would think that if the Tutsi were a dominent caste with a different 'Ethiopien' based language they would have held on to at least significant components of it.
Wally, don't you think that's the least bit odd?
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posted
Again, why then did genocidal Hutu have to check government issued ID cards in order to pick out their Tutsi victims?
quote:Originally posted by Prince_of_punt:
There is an obvious differences in the way Hutus and Tutsis look. There are many Hutus who claim to be Tutsi, but I have been informed that they are commonly known and not really accepted.
Any answers to this........
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:You would think that if the Tutsi were a dominent caste with a different 'Ethiopien' based language they would have held on to at least significant components of it.
quote:You would think that if the Tutsi were a dominent caste with a different 'Ethiopien' based language they would have held on to at least significant components of it.
Well, Tutsi is a single ethnic group, "Horner" is a geographic reference to diverse ethic groups. Many "Horners" are also nearly or entirely African in terms of genetic lineage. Conversely - many Bantu have Non African lineages.
The fascinating [horrific] thing about Tutsi vs. Hutu is that in a sense - it takes the 'horner' vs. 'bantu' travesty of African 'tribalism' to it's ultimate point of insanity, where it involves no 'horners' and only Bantu.
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posted
Imo Tutsis look nothing like "horners", Paul kagame might have some Pseudo oromo look, but i can still see he's a Tutsi and would never confuse him for an oromo.
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quote:Africa: by the way there is also a big difference between Tutsis and Horners since the former are genetically 100% African genetically ...
Atleast 80% of somalis are also genetically 100%african, then the rest we have the banadir and bravan who have recent persian and omani ancestry.
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posted
No different than before 1959 and certainly no different back in the kingdom days when a person went from being Hutu to Tutsi or Tutsi to Hutu without "mixing" anybody. Did their looks change along with their caste/class?
quote:Originally posted by Africa:
quote:Again, why then did genocidal Hutu have to check government issued ID cards in order to pick out their Tutsi victims?
quote:The fascinating [horrific] thing about Tutsi vs. Hutu is that in a sense - it takes the 'horner' vs. 'bantu' travesty of African 'tribalism' to it's ultimate point of insanity, where it involves no 'horners' and only Bantu.
quote:Imo Tutsis look nothing like "horners", Paul kagame might have some Pseudo oromo look, but i can still see he's a Tutsi and would never confuse him for an oromo.
quote:No different than before 1959 and certainly no different back in the kingdom days when a person went from being Hutu to Tutsi or Tutsi to Hutu without marrying anybody. Did their looks change along with their caste/class?
Sorry, English is my second language, can you rephrase your post? But I will try to answer it, it is true that Hutu could become Tutsi socially especially in Rwanda compare to surrounding regions like Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, but looks don't change if you change your social status...Tutsis from Rwanda are just a minority among Hima and the Tutsi from the Great Lake region. Obviously some posters are not familiar with the region and rely on articles or study focusing on Rwanda only. Tutsis are not located in Rwanda only and they are much less numerous than non Rwandan Tutsis and the Bahima, allegedly their ancestors.
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I, personally, haven't come across any substantive material that tells me Hutus and Tutsis are 'generally' phenotypically distinguishable. I am open to reviewing objective sources on this.
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I, personally, haven't come across any substantive material that tells me Hutus and Tutsis are 'generally' phenotypically distinguishable. I am open to reviewing objective sources on this.
Nevermind, I suddenly recalled Hiernaux's observations on this; I guess, going by this, one would have to view Tutsis as generally being relatively taller, if not perhaps lanky, as a product of the so-called 'elongated' body build.
-------------------- Truth - a liar penetrating device! Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
And so we understand that the challenge is not so much to treat 'words' as inherently good or bad, but rather to address concepts being related by the terms....
The tyranny of the Hamitic hypothesis, which sought to explain all civilisation in Africa as the result of a resident population of Caucasians, led R. Gates to conclude that Bantu speakers were Hamites with a 'slight admixture of Negro blood'. (3) Perhaps the best example of this scholarship comes in C. G. Seligman's Races of Africa. Justice to Seligman can only be done by quoting him in full:
"Apart from relatively late Semitic influence . . . the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history the
record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali . . . The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'Europeans'--arriving wave after wave--better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes." (4)
Races of Africa, according to Sanders, went through several editions and was reprinted until 1966 virtually unchanged. Much of the more vulgar scholarship on the 'racial' ancestry of the ancient Nile valley Africans can be traced to the intensity of racism in Europe from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Its decline after the second world war has been similarly convoluted, as the following survey of some of the more important scholarly positions taken illustrates.
Diop's Nations Negres et Culture
Cheikh Anta Diop's 1954 work Nations Negres et Culture stands out as perhaps the most brilliant condemnation of Eurocentric historiography in the anticolonial literature of the black world. (5) Conceptualised at a time when 'the political problem dominated all others', (6) it remains a landmark work in the struggle against the western hegemonic worldview and the distortion and caricaturing of the history of colonised people. Restoring a sense of historical consciousness to a people in the process of emerging from colonialism required, for Diop, a look at the three formative characteristics of a people's 'collective personality'; the psychic, historical and linguistic factors. Diop's approach to the historical and linguistic factors--the two he saw as capable of scientific apprehension--led him to the recovery of ancient Egypt as a black African civilisation, a link without which the history of Africa cannot be meaningfully reconstructed.
After a scathing attack on the premises of previous western scholarship on Egypt, Diop made his main claim for Egypt's Africanity in his chapter 'Arguments supporting a Negro origin'. The evidence presented by Diop focused on the similarity of cultural traits between sub-Saharan Africans and Egyptians, including totemism, circumcision, kingship, cosmogony, social organisation, matriarchy, linguistic affiliations and the relationship between the Meroitic Sudan and Egypt. It is, however, Diop's position on the vexed question of the 'blackness' of the Egyptians that has resulted in the greatest controversy, which is unfortunate since the more interesting question concerns the African nature of the ancient Egyptian civilisation. An early essay by Diop gives us a critical insight into his stance, as his views on the 'race' of the ancient Egyptians do not appear to have altered appreciably between its publication and his death. In an essay entitled 'Evolution of the Negro world' in Presence Africaine (1964), Diop provides a relentless critique of European scholars involved in their own 'separate evolution of mankind' theories of human development, which denied the African origin of homo sapiens. Berating the persistent quest of some western scholars to separate the populations of Egypt from the rest of Africa, Diop states:
"But it is only the most gratuitous theory which considers the Dinka, the Nouer and the Masai, among others, to be Caucasoids. What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognising as white only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular--the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? Just as the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries must be considered as two extreme poles of the same anthropological reality, so should the Negroes of East and West Africa be considered as the two extremes in the reality of the Negro world. To say that a Shillouk, a Dinka, or a Nouer is a Caucasoid is for an African as devoid of sense and scientific interest as would be, to a European, an attitude which maintained that a Greek or a Latin were not of the same race." (7)
This last passage points to what may be one of Diop's most significant contributions--his repudiation of the 'platonic ideal' of races, a contribution that has been cited approvingly by MacGaffey and Trigger. It also suggests an understanding by Diop that not all Africans are alike, while remaining African rather than members of another 'race' or a 'mixture' of races. This perspective is of critical importance for analysing the subsequent scholarly controversy on the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians. - Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko by Aaron Kamugisha (2003)
The above shows insight into Diop's thinking.
The problem is not simply - as Africanist advocates of typological race - or the platonic ideal of race would have it - with the way in which Europeans divide up the world into 'races'.
The problem is with the very assertion itself that the human population can be so divided.
The fallacy that Km.t [Ancient Egyptians] and Watutsi can be classified into a race with the European, is the same fallacy that would claim that Dravidians are the same race as the West Africans.
The problem lies at the core of the idea of race typology, therefore there is no way to 'bend it' into a proper afrocentric from.
Much of the confirming data for the above is post Diop's most important works. So and African scholar must be able to interpret new data and take Diop's findings to their next logical 'evolutionary' conclusions, and not just quote Diop and ignore recent findings.
Unless we do so, we fall prey to the following form of Eurocentric counter-argument...
In countering these positions, Diop suggested that the Egyptians were from two black races, one with straight and one with crinkly hair. Diop and Obenga's proposition of a homogenous population met with 'total disagreement' from the majority of scholars, who proposed a mixed population.
Note: Eurocentrists attacked the 'two black races' argument as a sign of clear rhetorical desperation.
If we chase after the European notion of race, this attack is effective.
Good luck proving that 'black' is a form of 'race' encompassing 'curly' hair and 'straight' hair Blacks..
Why not - straight hair is a form of race, encompassing the black and white 'Straight haired race'?
In fact, this is exactly the method that is propoased by Eurocentric advocates of race-tautology, but then for them, the European/EuAfrican/Caucasian/Hamite race has -
straight hair, wavey hair, curly hair blonde hair red hair black hair.
blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, green eyes, black eyes,
it is pale skinned, olive skinned, and dark skinned.
it is long headed and round headed, robust and gracile, pointy nosed and flat nosed, it does, or does not have prognathism, or has tons of body hair, or very little.
And...
it is indigenous to Africa, Europe and Asia!!!!!
If Diop's two Black races are a form of desparation, then how much more utterly dishonest must be Eurocentrism's endless different variations of so called caucasoid?
The most agregious example of this form of platonic race lunacy is the modern Medit race chauvenists characterised on the Internet by Dienekes et. al.
In this approach virtually every facet of human biology can and should be divided into caucasoid, negroid, etc., the evidence itself being a form of tautology.
That is....
If a Greek can be shown to be part 'jackass', then it must be caucasoid jackass.
If and Italian is part Guinea Fowl, then it must be caucasoid Guinea fowl. The 'proof' supposidly lying in the very fact that they have it.
In this approach Europeans can only constitute a pure race, and most other peoples can essentially only be hybrids, because whatever is common in Europe - is confiscated to the European race classication, imparted to others by race mixture.
By this reasoning
- Benin Hbs [sickle cell] is a caucasoid trait in Europe.
- King Tut's aveolar prognathism is a caucasoid trait.
- E3b East African Y chromosome is a 'caucasoid' lineage.
- And the Watutsi can be classed as Eu-African Hamites or some form of non pure Negro Hybrid, because the classification is not rooted in geographical origin or biological affinity, but rather platonic ideals, rendered as a tautology.
Understanding the above, we see that correcting the fallacy requires that we not make the mistake of attempting to argue that Tutsi, or Tut or E3b or sickle cell are 'negro' and not caucasoid, because said argument merely repeats in reverse the same tautology, and in so doing validates it.
The correct approach is too attack the fundamental illogic of race tautologies.
It is noteworthy that this approach is utilised by modern African scholars such as Keita and Kettles who have a hard science background.
The approach of regurgitation of race fallacy is most often associated with cynical Eurocentists and well intended but naive Africanists who lack and in depth grounding in said disciplines.
When these anthropology neophytes venture into public debate, they then proceed to make bad arguments, and are typically defeated by Eurocentrists.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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and rasol that is what needs to be said more often..
quote:Understanding the above, we see that correcting the fallacy requires that we not make the mistake of attempting to argue that Tutsi, or Tut or E3b or sickle cell are 'negro' and not caucasoid, because said argument merely repeats in reverse the same tautology, and in so doing validates it.
The correct approach is too attack the fundamental illogic of race tautologies.[quote]
o, and when I got to [quote]..Why not - straight hair is a form of race, encompassing the black and white 'Straight haired race'?
In fact, this is exactly the method that is propoased by Eurocentric advocates of race-tautology, but then for them, the European/EuAfrican/Caucasian/Hamite race has -
straight hair, wavey hair, curly hair blonde hair red hair black hair.
blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, green eyes, black eyes,
it is pale skinned, olive skinned, and dark skinned.
it is long headed and round headed, robust and gracile, pointy nosed and flat nosed, it does, or does not have prognathism, or has tons of body hair, or very little.
And...
it is indigenous to Africa, Europe and Asia!!!!!
If Diop's two Black races are a form of desparation, then how much more utterly dishonest must be Eurocentrism's endless different variations of so called caucasoid?
posted
^Agreed, what Rasol said couldn't be more true!
The utter nonsense of the Hamitic fallacious B.S. is also at the very root of the Egyptian "racial"/ethnic identity, which is why it pertains to the subject of modern Egyptology. Fortunately some Egyptological scholars get while others do not (refuse to).
Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I'm sorry Rasol but there most evidently are such things as Greek caucasoid jackasses. How can you even doubt it when you yourself have proven they exist?
The proof of a caucasoid being a jackass on the part of Greeks is A R R O W 9 9 as he has breyed and breyed and breyed some more.
[With a tip of the hat to SouthernWoman ]
quote:Originally posted by rasol: If a Greek can be shown to be part 'jackass', then it must be caucasoid jackass.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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Raikes (1986:139) cites the notes of a Mbulu District Officer in the 1920s who described a Bantu group as “exceptionally backward, unprogressive,” and characterized by “natural stupidity and laziness,” while the Iraqw were “steady, hard-working and people of their word,” qualities which were associated with their “nilo-hamitic origin.” Perham, who travelled from Iraqw country to that of the Bantu-speaking Mbugwe in the late 1920s, reveals her preconceived attitudes to the peoples she met in the area, “from bush to semidesert, from handsome Hamitic to squat-faced Bantu. Their tribal mark, a deep gash under the eye, makes them ghastly and they are sickly enough without this extra infliction” (Perham 1976:113). Earlier she has described the Iramba (Bantu-speakers to the west of the Iraqw) as “ugly” and “magic-ridden,” and the contrast to the Iraqw becomes marked “They, and especially the children, have a very spiritual look: the expression in their great eyes is of people who see more than plains and crops and herds. It was most exciting, after so many months of Bantu, with only a sprinkling of alien dynasties, to be among Hamites” (Perham 1976:94)Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
^No doubt such expressions were based on the belief that those so-called "Hamites" she spoke of were of "caucasoid" descent and so shares a common ancestry with her and other Europeans and not with Bantus or other "negroes". Yes, Eurocentrism is a wonderously hilarious. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
^Actually 'Indo-Aryan' refers to speakers of languages now found in India, but I agree alot of the stuff espoused back then has been shown to be nonense including the Hamitic-- black caucasoid myth.
Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Africa: Sometime I'm wondering if some posters really live it 21st century...that's why most of their references are so old...
I agree.
The problem is precisely that some refuse to make a serious effort at understanding modern science.
They use outdated racist anthropoogical definitions, and then try to back it up with references to the Bible - which has nothing to do with the racist Eurocentric definitions and concepts they are espousing.
The effort is then made to defense this contradictory position based on semantics.
But this will continue to fail because semantics do not cover for the lack of understanding of anthropology - which the definition they are promoting is rooted in.
Without understanding anthropology - they literally cannot understand either what they are saying, or what it means.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
^ From the Neolithic on, or possibly even earlier, the strategic location of Nubia, promoting contacts between various populations, started to bring about effects in the form of the civilizational development of this region.
Finally, these two factors led to the Hamitisation process, whereby superimposition of the Caucasoids on the Negroids took place." (Aleksandra Pudlo, Anthropological Review, 1999)Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Originally posted by rasol: ^ From the Neolithic on, or possibly even earlier, the strategic location of Nubia, promoting contacts between various populations, started to bring about effects in the form of the civilizational development of this region.
Finally, these two factors led to the Hamitisation process, whereby superimposition of the Caucasoids on the Negroids took place." (Aleksandra Pudlo, Anthropological Review, 1999)
I'm surprised that such nonsense could be published as recently as 1999! No doubt this is the kind of garbage Stupid-Euro uses. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
^ He uses it because you can still fool some people with it.
Wally for example, thinks it's ok to put Tutsi into a caucasian racial catagory, because he says only the most extreme Eurocentrist would say they are white.
He refuses to grasp the fact that in the race catagory system he advocates 'white' is not a race, caucasian is.
Therefore extreme Eurocentrics do *not* claim or need to claim that Tutsi or Ancient Egyptians are white.
They only need to place them in the same racial catagory as Europeans, while placing the bulk of Africans in the juxtaposed 'negro' catagory.
Wally advocates the racial catagory system, yet doesn't quite seem to understand that in this system black and white are not the race catagories, but negro and caucasian are.
The manner in which I've tried to respectfully educate Wally on this is by trying to get him to see beyound triffling word/obsession and deal the actual meanings.
The meaning Wally relates places Tutsi and Germans, along with AE in one race [with all the native people of Europe], and Hutu in another race [with most of the native people of Africa, as well as African Americans...like him.].
In this meaning, which he mistakenly supports... African Americans, and Ancient Egyptians are *not* the same race, period, paragraph, case closed.
This is not what he wants to say, but it is what he ends up saying, in spite of himself.
It's the most stupifyingly self defeating argument imaginable.
Wally knows the notes of anthropology [the words], but doesn't quite 'get' the music [meanings].
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
any way why do some people blame the europeans for the masucure . its them who were crazy and beleved what the white man said.
Posts: 216 | From: london | Registered: Aug 2006
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I think this is the first time you've explained this so lucidly and indeed it is an eye opener that the caucasoid negroid dichotomy game has crept up and supplanted the white black game in the precise manner you've outlined.
Obviously now, it's been that way for maybe a century.
It's the old "black but not negro" game!
You can't say that in Spanish. Negro pero no negro is a nonsense sentence.
Hence the slew of "black thing" as human being words arising after the trans-Atlantic trade:
French ___ noir _______ negre German __ schwartze __ negger English __ black ______ nigger
posted
Anthropology did not define its race catagories by skin color for two reasons.
1) Skeletal materials have no skin and therefore their color could not be easily/directly assessed.
2) Extreme depigmentation is a rare trait that is predominent only among Northern Europeans - if race were defined by this trait, Europeans are somewhat isolated and have difficult time extending race-claims into history.
The second 'problem' was compounded by recent anthropological findings, because it is revealed all humans descend from tropically adapted 'black' Africans. White people are the result of recent adaptations to the low UV environment in northern Eurasia.
Therefore white people literally - fade out - in history and little or nothing can be sensibly 'claimed' in the name of whiteness.
This difficulty is made apparent when we see such lame assertions as footprints in the Sahara which are claimed to resemble the feet of the Fulani, and so feebly suggestive of 'whites'.
In a sense race-claims in history function as a kind of 'tribal' territoriality.
Whites have used this to lay racial claim to just about every civilisation in history.
Progressive African scholars have managed to deconstruct this mentality.
What I will call reactionary African scholars, only attempt to copy it, invert it, and then throw it back in the face of whites.
Hence we have the threads about the African Celtics and Yoruba Japanese.
Same with the notion of the Hamite African super-race.
It's important to note that Hamite is a term that Hebrews used for Blacks of Africa and that they:
a) considered this true of all Blacks of Africa, "Ancient Egyptian" and otherwise.
b) distinguished Ancient Egyptians from themselves and other 'semites' [which they orignally defined ethnically, not linguistically.]
c) distinguished both from fair skinned Northern Eurasian - Japhites.
The point is not so much that the Hebrew ethnic mythology is accurate - but rather that it is honest, and predates the anti-African racism that drives the Eurocentric race classification system - and extreme exhibition of intellectual cynicism.
The mistake occurs when we attempt to translate Biblical Hamite into a 'real' anthropological or racial catagory. This is the approach of Eurocentrism.
The result of this approach is the contrived division of Africans into justaposed races - one civilised, and one savage, one superior and the other inferior, one essentially and outpost of semi-European overlords in Africa, the other a native race of slaves.
And this is why the concept continues to be utilised by racists. It *is* racist. And that is why it helped unleash hell in Rwanda.
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quote:Originally posted by salah: any way why do some people blame the europeans for the masucure . its them who were crazy and beleved what the white man said.
Salah
You know how to end the Year with a BANG!! Posts: 2198 | Registered: Jun 2006
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It's sad but true how modern Western scholarship is virtually silent on many things that overtly show kinship to Africa, even though back then they tried to ridiculously tried to show a connection to Asia instead. Not to mention embarassing. But again, I must point out that not all Western scholars are like that, and there are many who break away from the tradition of racism and quite simply idiotic pride (I stress the idiotic) that characterized Eurocentric thought.
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