Talk:Black people/Archive 9

message: WE huh? I see. And who is this we and how did they come to be in charge?--Filll 05:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: We will remove cited information if its long winded and off topic

message: Someone new (?) with username Camelback99954 deleted material and left the edit message: "Delete Rajasingam comment- Nirmala Rajasingam is an unknown obviously biased activist. Why not give the opinion of an activist KKK member?"
Nirmala Rajasingam is a person with an international reputation (even if she has not made a big splash in USA mass media). She is a Tamil who opposes anti-black activities in her home, Sri Lanka, and she is someone who opposes the Tamil Tigers.  
As Samuel R. Delany says, politics is what you have to deal with. One of the things that people with darker skin have to deal with is "doing xyz while black." Anybody, be s/he Tamil, Shan, San. or a student from Malawi is a school in a small town in Iowa, must deal with abuse and the ever-present possibility of abuse because of his/her skin color.
Why would someone suggest giving the KKK perspective on this problem in preference to the perspective of someone who has commented on the American experience (as well as the Tamil experience) from the standpoint of someone who has a measure of acquired sensitivity to the problem and a measure of distance and objectivity regarding those manifestations of the problem that do not directly bear on her and her family members?  
On top of that, her analysis of the functional reason originally in play when the idea of creating a positive black identity is (IMHO) penetrating and relevant to solving the social problems (racism) faced by black people the world over. P0M 18:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're not deleting anything. Just chill. Kobrakid 18:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I did not delete. Camelback99954 deleted and I put it back. P0M 19:54, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 
what do you mean by Nirmala Rajasingam fighting against anti-black activities back at home?.Do you mean to say there is problem in srilanka because of Colour of the skin???.There is no such problem there.Tamils and Singalese do look alike and they dont have any problem based on skin color.The division is based on the language they speak!!!!.
I am a srilankan  and she is not considered to be a notable personality within our community.What do you know about Srilankan problem to talk about it here?.If you dont know anything then its better for you to keep quiet..This black people article has become
crap just beating around the bush.By the way who on earth told you 
that tamils are having problems based on colour???.Why are you people picking up tamils only.The whole Indian sub continent has
some dark skinned people belonging to various groups like Telugu,malayalee,Kannada ,Singalese,rajastani ,bengali etc etc.
This shows your damn ignorance.No one considers themselves black
and all will be shocked if you say so!!!except some out of moon people like Nirmala Rajasingam!!!!!
Sria
----Sria 04:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  re: deletion of analysis by Nirmala Rajasingam 

message: I don't understand why Rushton's daft idea is given space in the "are Africans the first humans" section. Firstly it is not relevant to the section, his ideas about evolution being progressive are far far from mainstream and are irrelevant to the section. Secondly his ideas can not even be called marginal, let alone a significant minority POV, it seems to be the pov of a single rather confused and certainly biased fascist academic. Including this pov is a clear breach of the WP:NPOV policy, which doesn't allow the inclusion of all points of view, only significant minority points of view. Besides which no other pov is given, if we want to claim that evolution is progressive then we need to state categorically that most biologists don't agree. This guy, Rushton is neither a biologist nor an anthropologist, he's a psychologist and so does not count as an expert on evolution. It is clearly biased and POV to include his ravings. The whole article is a mess with various bits cobbled together with no consistency, for someone to claim that it is "stable" is ludicrous, how can it be stable when there are so many edits being made to it. I also received a warning against vandalism for some good faith edits I made to this article. I stand by my edits, and if someone else wants to accuse me of vandalism I'll be happy for them to take their spurious allegations further. By accusing other good faith editors of vandalism you damage your own credibility and the community as a whole. NO one "owns" this article, and attempted intimidation of other editors will not succeed. Alun 03:59, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I have objected to both Rushton and to Carleton Coon. P0M 04:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes you make a good point about Coon. Indeed the whole section on Ethiopians is extremely poorly written. I suggest that if it needs to be there at all then it should reflect the fact that humans do not live in "exclusive populations" and that attempts to categorise them as such lead people living in certain geographical regions not corresponding to any of the defined "populations" (or more prosaically "races"), this is true for Coon's attempts at categorisation and for more recent genetic attempts. It should be noted that many researchers maintain that this is because humans do not actually live in descrete genetically isolated "populations" but form a global population continuum, with genetic (and therefore physical) variation being geographically variable on a clinal basis, rather than a discrete basis. It is therefore true that people living in east Africa, and indeed people living on the Indian subcontinent do not "fit" into the arbitrary and "exclusive pigeonholes" of "population/race". Genetic variation in humans is sometimes described as being discontinuous among continents or among groups of individuals, and by some this has been interpreted as genetic support for "races." A recent study in which >350 microsatellites were studied in a global sample of humans showed that they could be grouped according to their continental origin, and this was widely interpreted as evidence for a discrete distribution of human genetic diversity. Here, we investigate how study design can influence such conclusions. Our results show that when individuals are sampled homogeneously from around the globe, the pattern seen is one of gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that major genetic discontinuities exist between different continents or "races."....The absence of strong continental clustering in the human gene pool is of practical importance. It has recently been claimed that "the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level" (Risch et al. 2002). Our results show that this is not the case, and we see no reason to assume that "races" represent any units of relevance for understanding human genetic history.Alun 07:17, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Has this quotation been worked into the race article? I spent hours trying to get the point across but didn't have this neat quotation to use. P0M 03:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Looking at the article in more detail, quite frankly it's bloody awful from start to finnish. The photographs at the end have some very offensive and antiquated phrases associated with them. The section on Black people being the first humans is awful, basically the following entire section: 
However, creationist views were still dominant at the start of the enlightenment. Blumenbach believed that humans were originally white, having populated the world after the Biblical flood from Mount Ararat (at the modern Turkey/Iran border). The white race, characteristic of this locale, was thus the closest to the original type, central to humanity. He believed that hot climates subsequently degraded some whites into browns who degraded into blacks at one extreme, and other whites were degraded into reds who degraded into yellows at the other extreme[2]. In the post-Darwin era, Carleton Coon believed that different races evolved into modern humans independently and that Caucasoids were the most advanced because they were the first to become modern humans. 
does not belong in this section. The section should be devoted to an analysis of whether the proposition is supported by modern science, not a potted history of what people used to believe, or what some wingnut racist psychologist believes about "progressive evolution". I think there is a section in the Human skin colour article about this, where they say something along the lines that one of our pre human ancestors probably had pale skin colour like chimps, but that when they/we lost their/our body hair, selection due to strong sunlight probably lead to an increase in protective pigmentation. This is a reasonable comment about skin pigmentation and the African ancestors of us all. All the other stuff there seems like little more than the gratuitous inclusion of irrelevant and deliberately offensive material. Alun 18:20, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried to put in a section on up-to-date science, and it was promptly reverted. I think Filll saved it somewhere. You are working on the basis of someone who keeps current with the professional literature whereas I have just tried to accumulate the best current books. The problem is that there are many people operating on an emotional level and few people who want to look at the science. 加油! (Put the pedal to the metal!) P0M 03:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Why is Rushton's wingnut idea given space?

message: This article serves or can serve two purposes. It can describe black people, in terms of what is known about them. Like, they have dark skin (no surprise here!) and distinctive facial feautures, etc.
It can also talk about how people have regarded blacks - in terms of "race" or even just "skin color". For example, "light-skinned blacks" are often more popular (as entertainers or sports celebrities) than darker skinned ones. Is that too much for the present article to handle?
I hesitate to go over to Race because it's filled with discontent and fights over whether there even *is* such a thing a race, a dispute which drowns out every calmly-voiced attempt to describe the general *attitude* toward black people. 
Both whites and blacks have a "concept" of who black people are, and what their "value" is. Is this something Wikipedia can handle?--unsigned contribution by Ed Poor
: I hope that we can present a diversity of opinions here. I will point out that only some blacks have distinctive facial features. I will also point out that "black" is often not about "skin color" even. Many people classified as "black" actually have paler skin than many caucasians and east asians. It is true that there is a bit of bias within communities of black people as well of course. I hope that this can be mentioned in the article. I also would like to see material that supports the notion that there is a black race, and all the disagreements about who is in that black race. I also would like to see scientific material that counters this viewpoint. What is wrong with having ALL of these in the article? Because a reader will want to have access to it all. --Filll 19:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Implications and interpretations

message: The term "black people" is used, or has been used, to refer to many different groups. Unfortunately, there is no uniformly accepted definition of who is a "black person". Therefore, this article describes several different perspectives on the word "black" (and its equivalents in other languages) when this word  is used to describe people. This word is used currently and it has also been used this way in the past. There are a variety of definitions of "black people" that are based on racial, socio-political, lexical, biological, and other factors.  
The concept of "black" people has been traced to the ancient Greeks and Romans who labelled dark skinned peoples from North East Africa as "Kushite", "Nubian", and "Ethiopian"...
I think it is clearer English and simpler. What is wrong with it?--Filll 23:01, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If no one objects. I will put it in the article.--Filll 01:15, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What's wrong with the intro we've always had? It summarizes the whole article. Gottoupload 01:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  tell me what is wrong with this introduction 

message: The term Black was soon replaced (in the U.S.) by Negro but by the 1970s African-Americans reclaimed the term Black.[3]
This sort of is a stupid statement, at least without careful scholarship to back it up. At least in the last 100+ years, the linguistic sequence in the US was colored (think NAACP) to Negro (think United Negro College Fund) to Black (think black is beautiful) to Afro American (think platform shoes and afro hair styles) to African American (think Jesse Jackson). I am not sure what was the politically correct term before colored, but this is an example of the linguistic process known as "pejorization". I know why it was said this way. This bears the fingerprints of the blacks writing the article who took black studies in college and want to scream about "black pride".--Filll 15:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another example of a problem sentence 

message: As I had suggested before, it is almost impossible to "improve" this article. There are strong forces of various kinds that do not want the article changed, and any changes will be reverted, as we have just seen. I was amazed that it was claimed that the statement "The concept of "black" people has been traced to the ancient Greeks and Romans who labelled dark skinned peoples from North East Africa as "Kushite", "Nubian", and "Ethiopian"." which has a good reference associated with it, and I tried to retain through the edits, was just personal opinion. Efforts to clean up the English, or remove "racism" or put in other sources, or include science will fail. The only way to do this is to start fresh and write another article from scratch. Then at that point, invite scrutiny and potential merger or whatever. There are too many disparate points of view here and too many people believe their point of view is more important than anyone else. Which is exactly why I have done very little editing, but just tried to keep people calm if possible instead.--Filll 21:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the problem is too many people are trying to change so much so quickly. This article was very stable for a very long time, and suddenly there's a massive influx of new users who are trying to chnage everything all at once and there's so much activity on the talk page that no one has time to take it all in.  Also the people who are trying to add real science to the article seem to be doing it incorrectly. In any even this is not a scientific article.  It's simply an article about how the concept of black people was invented and defined through the ages.  Timelist 21:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes

message: Please include who you think may be a puppet, so we can request checkuser. Thulean 21:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sockpuppets

message: :These arguments are amazing in several ways. Wow. Let me ask:
* Do we know what distance matrix CS used? Do we know their notion of distance? Does it make biological sense? I am quite suspicious of "genetic distance", frankly. Because any math done by a psychologist or a biologist or anthropologist is likely to be crap, frankly. People are attracted to those fields because they are math phobic and cannot cut the mustard in a real science. 
* Do we know how they "'transformed' the distance matrix"?
* How did they compute the correlation coefficients, which are 2nd moments, and which are well known to be badly biased in many cases. 
* Does anyone here even know what PC analysis is? 
* And varimax analysis is more like black magic for the soft sciences, in my experience, I will note. 
* No discriminant analyses was done, which would have been far more appropriate. After all, you want to find some method for separating these groups as widely as possibly right? Passing some sort of plane through a high dimensional space optimally dividing different groups?  Even if this was done, I would be highly suspicious of misspecification errors introduced. After all, there seems to be some huge effort to impose racial models on the data which does not appear to support it very well in many respects. So a scheme for testing for misspecification would have to be adopted. A bit past most biologist, geneticists, psychologists, anthropologists etc. 
:Let's try to calm down and relax a bit. There is nothing to fear from putting some science in here. It is a very strongly held position by most scientists that the concepts of race we are trying so frantically to push in this article are basically wrong and discredited. I see no harm in at least putting information in from these dissenting voices. Because they happen to be in the majority and have the science behind them at the moment. This is not political correctness. This is science.--Filll
::This article is not about science. It's about various view points on what it means to be black.  This whole discussion about genetics is off topic.  Now if some scientists come up with a genetic defenition about what it means to be black that should be noted because the article is nothing but a laundry list of all the diverse ideas on what it means to be black.  People are trying to transform the article into a debate over genetics, when genetics are just one of the many definitions of blacks that are mentioned in the article.  Fill if you're a true scientist you should be open minded to the possibility that race exists instead of jumping to knee-jerk emotional conclusions that anything race related is automatically suspect and pseudoscientific.  This idea that races does not exist is just a strange cultural fad.  50 from now we'll look back at this period as a stage of extreme denial of what's totally obvious.  Editingoprah 05:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I have said over and over, I believe that the other material should be included because it is important historically, because it is useful socially, and it has had an impact. Certainly race currently appears to be a social construct with little basis in the data (although I will concede that in 50 years we might have better data and might have changed our minds). All I am arguing for are the inclusion of some contrary opinions, or at least references, to show that Rushton and Coon and even CS are disagreed with by many. --Filll 06:05, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually race is supported by tons of data, and I have no idea where you get this ridiculous idea that it's been discredited.  Just because there are a few populations here and there who can't be easily pigeon-holed in no way contradicts the fact that broad genetic clusters exist and that they're correlated with geographic origin.  We already have a sentence asserting that Rushton is wrong.  The problem with adding more is that this article is not about the validity of race; such articles already exist.  This article is simply a list of all known opinions about what it means to be black. People keep complaining that the articles isn't neutral. It's not supposed to be.  It's about OPINIONS.  It's not the job of the article to provide criticism of every nutty opinion we present.  Rushton and Coon are cited because they have opinions on what it means to be black. If you want other opinions about black folks to be added then find them and quote them, but adding opinionions about the people being quoted or getting side tracked into a complex discussion about race is not wise. Editingoprah 06:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Fill I too strongly disagree with Rushton's view but if we add criticism of him we have to add criticism of every nutty opinion in the article.  What about all the ridiculous Afrocentric scholars who argue that Dravidians etc are black.  It's much better to just show all opinions and keep our opinions about who's a nut and a fruitcake to ourselves.  19:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Plea for science

message: I really DO NOT mean to be racist in ANY WAY at all, but to me that picture of an Afrocoid looks more like an ape than a human being, was he of monkey-human heritage, some so-called humans are really monkies in my hypothesis, please be sensible and discuss this reasonably.
: You really have to take this someplace else. And sign anything you write.--Filll 22:39, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Afrocoids and apes 

message: [] If you follow the link you can watch a brief clip of Rushton during his debate with David Suzuki Editingoprah 06:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Added critcism of Rushton from a respected scientist

message: This is the sort of thing we should be aiming for Black British. Alun 14:01, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This article is all wrong

message: It appears to me that she added a reference, and did not remove a reference. And what is wrong with the part she added?  Of course you can do whatever you want since you want to play the race card constantly and we all know that once someone has decided to call someone else racist, the person charging racism always wins. --Filll 00:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: She didn't add a damn thing. She removed content. Go back it check it agin, and stop posting nonsense. Editingoprah 01:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Madamwatson's edit 

message: When I went to the melanin theory part of the black supremacy article. It all becomes more clear.--Filll 05:58, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I got a little bit of an eye opener

message: I mean for real this is just crazy, can't black people have there own article and work on it in peace Whites seem to dominate just about every other article in wikipedia and now they want to control this one as well, call me paranoid but I think there's a conspiracy a foot to rob us of our right as afrowikipedians to present our racial and social povs which are in themselves informative and encyclopedic in a practical, street-smart sense.--OJPimp'son 11:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyone can contribute to any article. That's how it works here. If a Black person has contributions to make to the White people article, that would be great. Segregation is a bad thing, there's no ownership here. The biggest problem wikipedia has is systemic bias, but this affects us all. White North Americans are massively over represented on wikipedia, this is where the most internet connections are found, so this is the group that is most represented. North Americans contribute to articles about Welsh people and English people and all sorts, but we are all free to contribute to any article, no article is owned by any particular group. You are free to include any racial and social POVs in any article, no one will remove them unless they break content guidelines. Alun 11:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Can't we just get along?

message: Now that I am slowly starting to understand what is going on here, and at the white people article, I can see what to me is the underlying problem. Namely, metrics. When I looked up the Wikipedia article on genetic distance, it is an embarassment, but that is what everyone seems to be arguing about. Distance. And yet we have a very cursory treatment of this important concept. I guess people do not like math.--Filll 14:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean ebonics? The only problem I have with that is that many other people do not understand it. I did not create the text in the article myself. My only edits to try to improve the grammar were reverted. You will have to take it up with other people. --Filll 17:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Take no notice of "OJPimp'son". He is just an invention designed to parody Deeceevoice. Paul B 12:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A root of the difficulty

message: I've removed four non-free copyrighted pictures from this article, as they are being used on Wikipedia under fair-use provisions which do not permit their use in this article. Please do not add non-free pictures to this article. Please use some free ones. Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 12:57, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture removals

message: I'm going to do minor copyedit and grammar check. I just wanted to point out that I can't stop laughing about the template saying "To-do list for Black people" at the top. My dad would love it.
Resonanteye 00:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please be bold in making the necessary changes.  In my brief time reading this article I've noticed many changes that should be made.  The content is good but the presentation is lacking.  --ElKevbo 02:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: copyedit

message: I don't know what was originally there, but someone glossed "yellow" as "Asian"  and Kobrakid reverted it, writing: (revert, Asian is not a race.)" Even though "orient" just means "the East," Asian-Americans have taken great umbrage to the use of this word because (as Edward Said argued in his book Orientalism) so great a negative connotation has accreted to the word. Major universities have sometimes had to change department names because they originally contained the "O" word. Both "Asian" and "oriental" are flaky for another reason: Anything east of a certain north-south line a little to the east of Macedonia (forget whete the irrational thing is) fits into that category. People living in Afghanistan, for instance, would be "Asians" or "Orientals." 
Maybe we should key [race] names to the map rather than to emotion-stained words. P0M 03:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A PC point 

message: Regardless of what our politics or who our friends are, I think we can all agree that what we're sorely missing is the "big picture." First: there are undoubtedly certain "sociological facts" regarding "race and space" which this article must both contend with and dutifully represent, these "facts" all relate to the long and widely held belief that to be African is to be black and that blackness is proof that one is African. To be sure, most of us here do not subscribe to the myth of African négritude, we know that Africa does not magically turn one black and yet we dispute among ourselves whether dark pigmentation was a necessary adaptation on the part of our first human ancestors to conditions in an African equatorial environment (so it seems that the myth does contain some truth after all), likewise we argue about whether Ethiopians, Khoisans, and Somalis are really black, yet I suspect that no one here would seriously consider not mentioning at least one of these three controversial groups in this an article on "black people." My point is this: our problem is not that we do not as a group know what to include or what the relevant "issues" are, it is that we can not seem to agree on how these "issues" should be presented, we do not seem to be willing to either make the effort or take the time to consider that "problems" which some see as "white" and others as "black" are in reality "grey," and should be depicted as such.--Albinomite 19:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. For example, I (and many with me) am of the view that black people are not necessarily Africans (I consider indigenous Australians and the people of New Guinea to be black), but I have abandonded my attempts at making that point because most people associate blacks to Africa – so even though I believe people are missinformed, I have to yield. Those pleading for (in my view) unreasonable ideas (ie. Ethiopeans are white) should likewise desist and allow the article to reflect generally held views. The main problem is that this article has become a referendum for promoting contentious beliefs, rather than a neutral encyclopedic description. Even the gagged up opinions can be mentioned in the article, but they should be done so without e.g. the prominence that this article gives to the Ethiopian issue. --Ezeu 20:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article does reflect the fact that Ethiopians are considered black. For God's sake the first section is called THE ROLE OF ETHIOPIANS IN DEFINING ACIENT BLACK IDENTITY and the huge puicture of Ethiopian boys is one of the first things readers see in the black people article. That sends the message loud and clear that Ethiopians have been considered black.  But in order to provide balance, as well as an interesting twist on the story, we should also mention that not everyone agrees Ethiopians are black.  Unfortunately providing this bit of a balance has been controversial among 2 groups A) insecure blacks who feel they are nothing without being associated with the cultured and nice looking Ethiopians, and thus must resist any hint that Ethiopians might not be entirely black, and B) white supremacists who can't stand any suggestion that a dark skinned people, especially an African dark skinned people like Ethiopians might have some genetic links to the white race.  I've seen both types of editors cause disruptions in this article, and to them I say "get a life". As for Asutralian aboriginals, they were once considered black and may still be identified as black in Australia, but because African American culture has been so influential, when most people think of blacks, African descended people are the first group that pops into mind.  Add to that the fact that we no longer accept a close relationship, culturally or genetically, between Africans and Australoids, and it just creates confusion to call 2 different ethnicities by the same name and since Africans have monopolized the term, they've come to own the exclusive rights to it.  Not sure why you wish to wish to lump Australian aboriginals and Africans into 1 category or why you wish to blur the distinction between them Timelist 22:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The good looks of Ethiopians is not, and has never been an issue (and neither have the good looks of Sudanese or Swedes), and I am not particularly impressed by the achivements of Ethiopians vis a vis other black people. Furthermore, I am not a white supremacist, and I have a life. --Ezeu 22:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The big picture is grey

message: I hope we can at least get the convoluted language out of the article. I have made an effort to make the introduction a bit clearer with more straightforward language. It needs more effort however. Hopefully it will not all get nuked as it has the last several times I tried. --Filll 21:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed the reference to "Negro", as this is too specifically an American (read USA) issue to be included in the introduction. Also removed the unnecessary and not so subtle attempt to equal ancient pre-humans to blacks. However, I do not harbour the illusion that the edit wont "get nuked", as attempts to bring balance to this article are almost always suppressed. --Ezeu 22:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Clarification: The issue of the birthplace of mankind belongs in the article named Africa. Black people are no more or less related to pre-human humanoids than any other people – unless one is suggesting that black people are a prior advancement of modern humans. I assume that is not what one wants to say, but if that is what one wants to say, then do not insinuate, say it out loud. --Ezeu 22:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you remove the discussion of "negro", I would suggest you include it someplace else in teh article. I am not sure it is only american, but even if it is, it is a very important word to discuss. --Filll 22:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I don't think that should be removed either.  Just because its specific to America?  The whole concept of being black is pretty much an American invention.  People in other other countries are only black to the extent that Americans call them that.  It's not like other countries used the term black to any great extent without American influence. Timelist 22:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Who said anything about pre-humans?  The first fully modern humans were blacks.  Keep in mind that modern humans only emerged 200,000 years ago.  That's a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms.  In the last 200,000 years there's been very little genetic evolution, hence the fully modern humans living in Africa 200,000 years ago, are pretty much the same as the modern humans that are living in Africa right now.  The humans who left Africa as recently as 50,000 years ago to form other races are also pretty much the same as the first modern humans who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. The only difference is they evolved trivial adaptations to different climates, creating the trivial racial variation we see today. But since everyone on Earth was black until as recently as 50,000 years ago, it makes sense to say blacks are the first race, and that all modern humans are essentially African under the skin.  Timelist 22:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to admit that Timelist makes a lot of sense. We are all one species. The "races" are sort of trivial differences. And from what we know about biology, it is hard to avoid the claim that our ancestors a short time ago all had dark skin, or else they would not have survived in the African climate. Maybe if you go back further, our ancestor's skin was lighter. But were those light skinned creatures human? Of course we cannot know for sure. But probably as our forebearers lost their fur, they became darker skinned. And then when humans migrated to the higher latitudes, some light skinned mutations were able to survive. --Filll 22:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: One of the reasons that discussions about Black people are so heavily loaded with affect is that so much damage has been done to the natives of Africa by slavers and colonialists, people who had reasons to rationalize their taking advantage of other people and to discredit any indications that the people of Africa had their own culture.
Two things are missing in the education of most if not all of us.  
One thing missing is a clear knowledge of the genetic history that relates all of us. Many people do not want to admit that some of their ancestors are also the ancestors of the people of Africa.  Clarifying that picture can make it much clearer in what sense a Shan tribesman is black and in what sense his genetic heritage includes some wrinkles that (without saying whether they make him better or worse) differentiate him from the descendants of those same ancestors who remained in Africa.
The other thing missing is a clear knowledge of the cultural accomplishments of the black peoples of the world.  Racists would like to make it appear that "culture" is something limited to European society, with, perhaps, a bow to ancient Chinese poetry, early Japanese novels, or whatever. But culture is, in essence, inventions that people make to smooth and regularize human interactions. All societies have a culture. In addition to the everyday institutions of culture, which may be the most important, it is important to understand the cultural features such as music that each group and each time contributes. The music of Africa is, to my ear, highly evolved. It may grow out of a continuous tradition reaching all the way back to the earliest Homo sapiens to rest around a campfire after the sun goes down.
What have been the civilizations of Africa? Most people, myself included, received no instruction in this matter at any time from kindergarten to graduate school.  The time of human beings in China is not so long as that of humans in Africa, but I do not think that is the reason that one could fairly easily produce a series of maps at intervals of the centuries perhaps, showing the locations of human habitations, the character of architecture and cityscapes, etc. Starting from around 1000 B.C. information taken from written accounts could be added to this picture.  
The maps that Cavalli-Sforza produced (see above) show some indications of migration paths in Africa, but that information is already pretty old. Perhaps there are more detailed accounts available now.  
In my understanding, the development of cities of greater and greater size and having greater internal structure (e.g., areas for boat building, areas for markets, etc.) is a pretty good indication of the general level of civilization in the society of the time, the reason being simply that large city require not only large resources in the material sense but also large resources in management skills and thriving economies to support their existence.
Depicting the African peoples not only by their genetic (fuzzy) categories but also by their accomplishments would be a much more objective presentation. It is extremely reductionistic to limit the description of a group or an individual to inherited traits. P0M 03:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Benevolent Spiral