Talk:Black people/Archive 11

message: From Kobrakid: But it's okay to violate the purity of the African ancestry people  
What the heck does THIS mean? How "pure" do you think the "African ancestry people" are? Starts to sound a little bit like the pure Aryan race of the Nazis. Or like that great quote from Dr. Strangelove, about the 
::::international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
:::--Filll 21:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am definitely being sarcastic here. My comments were definitely meant to highlight the irony of the situation, with someone claiming that his "race" is "pure" somehow, whatever that means. I do not claim that Kobrakid is a Nazi. After all, it is not necessary to brand people as Nazis when we have had some people that really claimed to espouse Fascist and Nazi goals here on the page, and were proud of it, although we do not seem to have heard from them lately since one of their group was banned from contributing. But racial purity arguments really reek, for the reasons I stated. Others who want to get so worked up about racial purity have not had the best of intentions. So I do not think you will find this a very fruitful line of argument, if you want to pursue it. But be my guest, if you want to find out where it will lead. Proclaim yourself as championing the interests of Black Racial Purity. Maybe you can even start a new page about this? I would be glad to help you if you need help. Kubrick was making a wisecrack to demonstrate how stupid statements about purity were in his Strangelove film, which is why it is such a well-remembered quote. It demonstrates how ludicrous these kinds of claims are. So tell me Kobrakid, since I seem to be so stupid that I misunderstood, what do you mean when you talk about "black racial purity"? Explain yourself and enlighten the rest of us uneducated unwashed masses.--Filll 22:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Purity of African ancestry people

message: I just took that race test you provided.  It was fun and entertaining but not particularly relevant.  The photos they asked us to classify were not randomly selected.  It's very easy to find exceptions to a general rule and then conclude that the rule is not valid, but you could use such faulty logic to disprove anything.  The people they selected for that test were selected BECAUSE they are hard to classify.  It wasn't a random sample.  If I took a photo of the first 20 people who walked into a shopping mall and then asked each one what their race is,  and then created a test on-line, I guarantee people would score close to 100% on my test. Why? Because my test would be based on a random selection of people.  I would not be selecting the most hard to classify, most racially ambiguous people I could find, just to make a point. The people in the test you cited represent probably less than 1% of the population.  The vast majority of us are very easy to classify Kobrakid
: Of course that is not a random sample. Of course they were chosen to be hard to classify. The point is, people like that exist. I have met many in my life. I do not care if 1% of the population is hard to classify or 0.1% or 10% (although I suspect it is higher than that, because I have personally met several people like this). The point is, our cherished idea that we can always tell others of another race is wrong. Even if it is in a minority of cases. I have seen pictures of Berbers that look awfully white to me. I would not have a clue that they were not regular white people of European extraction. I have seen many "black" models that I would not have known if they were African American unless they told me. Colin Powell looks a heck of a lot whiter than most Italians I know, and a fair number of white members of my family. Ask most Japanese, and they claim that it is obvious that Koreans look nothing like them, but genetic tests and reality demonstrate that this is not at all true. The autochthonous people of Japan, the Ainu look awfully European, but genetically they are quite distant. Although the Lemba (who look just like a Bushman tribe) look far less Jewish than the average white Italian, they are in fact far closer genetically by some measures. Kennewick man appears to demonstrate that Caucasians were present in the Americas 10,000 years ago. The indigenous people of the Arctic are all supposed to be darker skinned, but the Saami do not fit this model. The point is, things are more complicated and ambiguous and contradictory than we want to believe with our nice neat models. There are counterexamples. There are intermediate cases. Our racial groups are not discrete and well-separated. It is naive to believe that things are so nice and neat, the way the Klu Klux Klan claims, and the way Black Pride activists want to claim. Sure one can tell some people by their looks. But it is not quite that simple, and to claim it is, is to be mired in the past, and sort of wishful thinking. --Filll 04:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fill all you are saying is the totally obvious point that human races blend into each other.  But this is true of ALL biological classifications and proves absolutely nothing.  The existence of intermediates like Lemas, Ethiopians, and Blasians no more disproves the existence of race then the intermediate shades in a rainbow disprove the existence of color.  The overwhelming majority of people can be racially classified just by looking at them and those racial classifications have exceedingly high correlations with actual DNA.  Kobrakid 04:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would beg to differ. It is more complicated than just saying they "blend  into each other". But they do "blend into each other". A lot. That is the whole point of the "within group variance" and the "between group variance". And even if only a few percent are difficult to classify by looks alone, they still exist. Ever talk to one of them? Get their views on "race"? I suspect not. You cannot equate something discrete like the three types of cones on the back of the human retina with the far more complicated situation with genetics, in very high dimensional spaces and intermixed human populations. They are not even at all comparable. Sorry. And what is your purpose to divide people up into "races"? How many races should there be? 4? 6? 50? 100?  It can be done of course. I can come up with some fairly complicated and detailed criteria to make some arbitrary division. And what is the purpose of this exercise? What is usually done is to do that to prove that one group or another is inferior and deserves to be treated more poorly than other groups. So what is your purpose? As I said above, one might have been able to make the case for possibly different medical treatments, but this window will soon be closing with individualized and far more accurate treatments in very short order. So it is basically of no value except for the purposes of discrimination, fighting for resources and spreading hatred.--Filll 05:03, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are moral arguments not scientific arguments. You have no scientific arguments. And if you feel classying people as black serves no purpose, then what purpose does this article serve? __Whatdoyou 00:18, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes there are both social aspects to this, and scientific aspects. I think this article be valuable for historic reasons, and for social reasons. It might have some importance in the history of science, and if people can ever stop fighting so much, we might get a bit more modern science into it as well.--Filll 18:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fill that test proves NOTHING

message: So this is how I see it. There is no consensus here and we have two very different points of view. We need to include both points of view, I don't care if some people are "offended" by this, it is clear that wikipedia policy encourages all significan points of view. There is no doubt that the point of view that Black people do indeed form a "race" that is of recent West African origin is prevelant in North America, all of the genetic data used are used from this point of view. So I suggest we broadly split the article into two. We have a section about the idea that Black people are a specific people with recent origins in West Africa, we can include much of the genetic data and other definitions of this more exclusive concept in this section. Then we have an equal section wich gives the other point of view, that Black is also used, usually outside of North America to mean diverse and non related groups of people from various parts of the world that happen to share the traight of having dark skin. Given that we have to include all points if view I don't see that there should be a problem with this. There is no point in arguing about who is right or wrong, there is no right and wrong, there are merely different points of view. We could even have two sets of galleries. How does this sound? Alun 06:45, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there are more than 2 different views here to accommodate. The entire point of the article is to demonstrate that NO ONE AGREES ON WHO IS A BLACK PERSON. Now the arguing on the talk page is with people who want to push one particular definition over the others. I would prefer giving everyone and all points of view an airing.--Filll 07:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well it's just a suggestion, there are clearly two general positions here. Some people equate Black with a recent West African origin, other people take a different view. There are other points of view, to be sure, but from what I've read of the talk page these are the source of  the greatest disagreements. Alun 07:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text: No offense but I think this project is fastly becoming a fool's errand, people keep falling into the trap of equating blackness with dark-skin pigmentation tout court, for the majority of people across the world blackness is equated with (recent) SubSaharan African origin. Why's it so difficult for some people to understand this? I repeat Ghandi was not black, Gaddafi is not black, nor are Rushdie or Naipaul. I do concede that in America the definition of blackness is more inclusive but only to the extent that people of partial (known and/or evident) African ancestry are automatically determined "black" (e.g. Barack Obama), not even Americans go so far as to include Indians or Pakistanis or Filipinos or Australian Aborginals in there definition of blackness, so why do we?--Cupidon 06:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ghandi was not black, and neither are Gaddafi, Rushdie or Naipaul, and no one ever claimed they are. How Americans decide to use the term "black" does not dictate how it is used in a global perspective. --Ezeu 07:03, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's my point exaclty. Glad we agree (with Ezeu I mean). By the way are you black or African-American (just wondering)? Regards.--Cupidon 07:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm African. --Ezeu 07:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Please do not confuse systemic bias and your POV for a global perspective, read the dictionary definitions. And yes, in many ways the whole of wikipedia is a fools errand. We come here to make an encyclopaedia, but the vast majority of articles are rubbish and will probably never be any good. There are all sorts of people here who want to push their own personal opinions, or who want to impose a specific point of view. We reach consensus by cooperation and compromise. You need to accept that your point of view, while a valid point of view, is not the only point of view. You may fervently believe that Black people are all of recent West African origin, you may even believe that this is a global view, but you need to accept that this article is not only about what you believe. There are other people out there who actually do hold different points of view, and hold them strongly, equally as strongly as you. You must see that your point of view about Black people is not  universal, the people here who are giving the opposite point of view are proving this too you again and again. We do not hold our different points of view just to upset you, we do not hold them because we want to be difficult. We hold them because many of us come from different parts of the world, where there are different people who have different perspectives. Because more than one point of view exists (and it does) we need to include all  significant points of view, this is wikipedia policy. You may not like it, it may offend you, but there you are, you cannot change it. There are plenty of sources that contradict you when you claim to have a global perspective, not least the OED, which is by no means the font of all knowledge, but certainly shows that Black people does not specifically refer to a "race" of people form West Africa. You can have your point of view in the article, be happy about that, do not try to tell other people that their point of view is not correct, this is an encyclopaedia, it contains all relevant points of view, in many ways there is no right and wrong here. Alun 07:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text: How do you know this? If you want to claim this in the article you need to find a source that supports it, the source would need to be a global one and not one only for North America. Even if it's true, we need to include minority opinion here anyway, as per WP:NPOV. Alun 07:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a nonsense statement. We have had other African American editors here claiming the opposite, also with no references quoted, just as fervently. And also using the race card and throwing tantrums when others did not just roll over and agree with them, and allowing them to write a single POV article. The real answer, which I have been arguing for months, is what I believe is obvious:NO ONE AGREES ON WHO IS A BLACK PERSON. Maybe if I repeat it enough, some of the people fighting this so desperately might absorb the reality of the situation, instead of insisting that the entire world is the same as East St. Louis or Compton, California, or the South Side of Chicago. I have seen this where I live near Washington DC as well. Since African Americans are the majority of the population here, they assume that all of the US and in fact all of the world must look exactly like this area does. And when I mention to them that African Americans only represent about 10% of the US population, they are stunned and they refuse to believe it because that is not what they see around them in this immediate area. They had thought that the reason all the people on the television were not black was because of those disgusting racist whities and "mofo" crackers that were keeping the black man down. And when someone goes to China or Japan, they assume that those societies revolve around a conflict between blacks and whites, because that is all they can understand. The idea that there are different places in the world with different dynamics is just beyond them. They cannot grasp any type of conflict anywhere in the world that is not between blacks and whites. They cannot understand tensions over religions or  languages or between other groups, because all they are familiar with is a division into blacks and whites. So they make these sweeping generalizations based on almost zero knowledge.--Filll 07:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

message: Is this a "No Exit" case? Is there no way out of this imbroglio?  If so, what is the problem?
Western culture is strongly geared to dichotomizing. We not only "tomize," we even imply that there are natural divisions in the structure of the Universe. If you start out believing that there are discrete entities where none exist then one spends time trying to bring unity where none is perceived, and to explain a jagged collection of disparate beings in the "uni-verse."
莊子 (Zhuang Zi, or "Chuang Tzu" if you're a bit old-fashioned) saw past the Platonism that distorts our own thinking.  His description of the myriad phenomenal beings in the universe was "大同小異" (da tong xiao yi), which basically means that on the whole everything is the same and that in respect of minor features everything is different.  
All of this was brought to mind when something started nagging at my unconscious: There is no pre-existing boundary between "black people" and "non-black people."  Every person who asserts that a boundary exists has determined what that boundary shall be for him or her.  Having decided for myself where that boundary is, I then naturally tend to reject the boundaries drawn in other places by other people.
If we ever recover DNA from the earliest group of Homo sapiens sapiens we will discover that not a single one of u
s is "black" on the basis of that standard, and except for the aliens who monitor this debate (C'mon bems, 'fess up!) we are all "black" to some extent. 
How do you crowd all of the content about all of the "lighter shades of dark" into a single article? The first step is to outline the essential problem discussed here. Then second step is to farm out broad sub-groups to subsidiary articles. (Maybe one article for each group on the C-S square chart) P0M 00:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Several times in the past few months I have made this same suggestion.--Filll 00:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why don't so called politically correct editors like Wobble just have enough respect for African ancestry people to allow them the exclusive right to a black identity that most of the world acknowledges.  He's just on some crusade to deconstruct the concept of race by lumping unrelated people (Australian aboriginals, Africans) into 1 racial category so he can claim that race is nonsense, and he is robbing African ancestry people of their identity in the process. It's really an abuse of wikipedia.  I'm sick of black identity being exploited for everyone's political agenda. Why doesn't he use the White people article to pursue this crap?__Whatdoyou 00:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm guessing that the San, the Mbuti, the Nilo-Saharan, the West Africans, and the East Africans would each reject the company of all the others (and anybody not currently African) as "not truly black" -- unless, of course, they are more civilized than most of the rest of us. P0M 01:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a fantasy that African Americans have that there is one big happy family of Africans just waiting to welcome them into the fold, and only the White Man is stopping it from happening. This denies the wide number of wars in Africa right now, and the Hutus and the Tutsis slaughtering each other in Rwanda, and the warlords stopping the food shipments in Somalia to starve the citizens, and Idi Amin and the Darfur mess and the treatment of native Africans by returning freed American slaves in Liberia and many many other bad examples. All caused by the White Man of course, preventing them all from living together in peace and harmony and brotherly love. But they all are full of black pride and respect for each other. Obviously.--Filll 01:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All races have internal conflict, but it's nowhere near the amount of conflict BETWEEN races.  People have evolved to favour their own kind.  When everyone is African (as in Africa) there will be genocide between different kinds of Africans (i.e. Rwanda). However when Africans are placed in a multi-racial environment with Orientals and Whites and South Asians and Australian aboriginals, all teh African ethnicties tend to stick together and see the others as outsiders.  The problem is a few people want to imply that Australian aboriginals because of their dark skin are part of the same club as Africans are part of. Nothing could be further from the truth__Whatdoyou 01:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes that is it. All the conflict in the world is black-white conflict. I have heard that one before. And I am sure that the Tutsis and Hutus did not see each other negatively. You just keep telling yourself that. And the whole problem can be traced back to the Aborigines and how they happen to have dark skin. Oh the shame of it !!!-Filll 01:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Just let the black people article be for people of African ancestry. Australian aboriginals already have their own article. South Asians can have their own article.  Who are these white people with so much free time that they are passionate about the right of Australian aboriginals and South Asians to be called black? The last time the article called a South Asian black a Tamil editor became so outraged that he unleashed a massive racial attack on people of African ancestry. HELLO! They don't WANT to be called black. I think you guys want to pit one dark skinned ethnic group against another and sit back and watch the sparks fly.__Whatdoyou 00:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the Black people article, not the African people article. This utterance is a remarkable example of both circular reasoning and conspiracy theory. "I define black people to mean group X only, therefore anyone who is not group X is obviously not black!". "anyone who disagrees with me is part of the Great White Plot to sow dissention". Of course our Spanish friends can do the same, inspired by the glorious theory of the Medish race. "I define white people as Southern Europeans. Anyone who denies this is attacking the right to self-determination to white people. If they are not Southern Europeans they can shut up, since - obviously - they are not white and have no right to say who is. That goes for the quasi-Mongoloid blodie Nordics as much as for the North African non-Europeans." Paul B 16:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: We are all of African ancestry. Ethiopians are of African ancestry. San are of African ancestry..... P0M 01:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We all lived in the ocean if you go back far enough in time. What's your point? Tired of the PC nonsense__Whatdoyou 01:22, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The article IS written with a variety of view points.  But I feel very strongly that most common definition of black (African ancestry) is not given enough weight, and there's a movement by Wobble to give fringe views such as Australian aboriginals being black, undue weight__Whatdoyou 01:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Who is more closely related to you, a second cousin all of whose ancestors 10 generations back are Ainu like yours, or your half-sibling one of whose parents is Chinese? P0M 01:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: That's because it's not a science article__Whatdoyou 01:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Nice of you to acknowledge that the article sounds like the rants of black racists. And I guess that was your intent. I know you have a bit of that in you, clearly. No one is that frantic for racial purity unless they have a bit of that in them. Maybe you could start a page on black supremacy? I will help you if you want. And you can spew there and spin your theories there.--Filll 01:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There already is one on black supremacy. It was created by deeceevoice. Paul B 13:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just skimmed it, but it looks pretty good.--Filll 13:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Having stared at that map a bit just now, I have to admit that you are correct, it is fantastic. I really like it.--Filll 19:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Way Out? 

message: That last comment, edited out by Ezeu, definitely demonstrates that these guys are just trying to make a few jokes and pull our legs. There is no way they are serious. The problem with trying to be funny like that is if you go a bit too far, it becomes obvious that you are not serious. Next time, try to not to go to such extremes because you ruin the joke. Some of the other comments I see here as well are so outrageous and extreme that I do not believe they are real either. Just a good place to come and make fun of others I guess. But it would be nice to write an article too. --Filll 04:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They are obviously trolling. Their objective is to disrupt this page an nothing else. --Ezeu 05:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it is a bunch of fraternity brothers just having some laughs at out expense.--Filll 05:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are kidding yourselves. These people really exist, they really hold these views. We have mass graves and extermination camps to prove that these people exist. fascism may be nasty, but we shouldn't put it down to student high jinks just because we feel uncomfortable about it. Alun 05:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Falangists MUST be a joke

message: Whatdoyou's recent edits to the intro of Black people beg the question of what "Black people" actually means by defining it to mean people of (biologically recent) African ancestry. A central point of the article is that there is no generally accepted consensus about what "Black people" means, and by defining it in the intro of the article, you either create a circular argument, or much of the article would have to be deleted, as the discussion of other concepts of Black people would necessarily be moot. -- The Anome 18:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Two would be a good start. Black skin color and black ethnicity is a good start for a separation. Maybe even one on science of black skin etc. I see no problem with a suite of overlapping articles with cross references. Other groups do it, why not us?--Filll 19:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Begging the question 

message: What if we had a template for black and african people articles that looked like ? For blacks, what articles would you include? I have some ideas off the top of my head but there are probably many others. I might suggest:
===Overview articles===
*African people
*Black people
===Black and African people by region===
====Americas====
*African American
*Black Canadian
*Black Belt (U.S. region)
*Afro-Argentines
*Pardo
====Europe====
*Black British
*Black people in Ireland
*Afro-European
*Black European
*Afro-Germans
*African Italians
====Africa====
*Ethiopians
*San
====Asia====
*Afro-Asian
*Shan people (and other similar groups)
====Oceania====
*Aborigines
*Aeta
===Other related terms===
*Africoid
*Nigger
*Negroid
*Negrescence
*Negro
*Negritude
*Blackness
*Passing
*Negrito
*Australoid
*Colored
===Culture===
*Black rage (law)
*African culture
*African Ethnicity
*Black as a skin color identity
===Political and social movements===
====United States====
* American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)
*African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
* American Civil Rights Movement Timeline
*NAACP
*The Communist Party and African-Americans
*Historical Black Press Foundation
*Nation of Islam
*Black Muslims
*Black Panthers
*Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage
*Black Liberators
*Black Liberation Army
*The League of Revolutionary Black Workers
====South Africa====
*Black People's Convention
*Black Consciousness Movement
====Other====
*Black anarchism
*Neo Black Movement of Africa
*Pan-Africanism
*Back-to-Africa movement
*Black theology
*The 1990 Trust
*Black separatism
*Black pride
*Black Power
*Black nationalism
*Black populism
*Black supremacy
===History===
*African diaspora
*History of Liberia
===Science===
*Race
*Black skin
*Black genetic history
*Human genetic variation
===Assorted lists===
*List of Black/White people
*List of multiracial people
*Black billionaires
*:Category:Ethnic groups in Africa
What do you think?--Filll 20:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is all the same to me. Whatever people think is the most reasonable division. I think we have plenty of material. The archives and history contain tons of great stuff that was deleted. And we have barely scratched the surface I suspect. --Filll 00:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Example of what I had in mind can be found here for African american topics or here for Pan African topics. Now all we need to do is collect black people topics together in the same way and organize them. Since there is some overlap it has to be done carefully. I would suggest our template be for global black/african topics.--Filll 13:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Template

message: *List of Black/White people
*List of multiracial people
*Black billionaires
*:Category:Ethnic groups in Africa
What do you think?--Filll 20:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is all the same to me. Whatever people think is the most reasonable division. I think we have plenty of material. The archives and history contain tons of great stuff that was deleted. And we have barely scratched the surface I suspect. --Filll 00:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Example of what I had in mind can be found here for African american topics or here for Pan African topics. Now all we need to do is collect black people topics together in the same way and organize them. Since there is some overlap it has to be done carefully. I would suggest our template be for global black/african topics.--Filll 13:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Assorted lists

message: According to this article, the names of ethnic groups should be capitalized[].  So here's a solution, how about 2 separate articles. One called Black people with a capital B, and the other called black people with a lower case B.  So all the people who are interested in writing about the people of African descent who define the black ethnic group, can write the capiatl B Black people article, and all the people who are interested in writing about all dark skiined groups collectively can edit the lower case B black people article.  
Because the 2 terms have very different meaning and were created for very different purposes.  For example Australian aboriginals are black (with a small b) but they're not Black (with a big B) Michael Jackson is Black (with a big B) but since his skin has become lighter he's no longer black (with a small b).  Now within the subject of Black people (with a big B) there are all kinds of controversies about who is black, so there are enough topics to argue over without giving us the added burder of mixing 2 completely different definitions of B/black into the same article Gottoupload 00:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds good except it might be confusing to some people. We would have to explain it very carefully in the articles.--Filll 00:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No where near as confusing as things have been so far. I'm from North America so this whole idea of calling non-African dark sinned people black is very new to me. I'm used to people making a clear distinction between someone who is very dark (Australian aboriginal, Southern Indian) and someone who is black (of African ancestry).  So it's been terribly confusing to me to come to wikipedia and see Australian aboriginals and Southern Indians discussed as though they were black because I've met many dark skinned people from India who looked like they could have African ancestry and have asked them about it.  Invariably they tell me "No I'm not Black, I'm just very dark skinned".  But now I see from these discussions that there may be some people in some parts of the world who use black as a synonym for dark skin, while I have always known it as a synonym for African ancestry.  This is especially confusing because I knwo a lot of people who are only HALF African-American who describe themselves as "Light skinned Blacks"  So really these 2 different conceptions of what it means to be black need to be separated as quickly as possible Gottoupload 00:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What makes it even worse is when people who are of 1/64 African extraction or 1/128 African extraction or even less are still called "black". This entire issue is very confused and as I have said over and over NO ONE AGREES ON WHAT IS A BLACK PERSON. Just acknowledging that simple fact would solve a lot of these arguments.--Filll 00:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No one agrees on any one single definition of a black person but we all agree that there are many different definitions of a black person and so the 2 main ones should get there own article.  I'll start creating Black people (with a capital B) and black people (with a small b) now.  The two articles will start off very similar since they're both branching off of the same parent article (this one) but overtime the two articles will diverge (just like different races) and then this parent article can go extinct (deletion).  Everyone on board? Gottoupload 01:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, lets see how it goes. Seems like a constructive solution. Lets not throw out the baby with the bath water. --Ezeu 01:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I've notice the only way to get things done on wikipedia is to just do it.  Often people have to see an idea in action before they're willing to give it a chance.  Anyway not sure what the big deal is. Wikipedia has lots of articles that share the same name.  This one's simply making a distinction between the use of a capital B to denote ethnicity Gottoupload 01:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I am certainly willing to try anything to try to calm the rancor on this page. I have suggested something like this myself a few times in the past, so I am glad to support an attempt.--Filll 01:28, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: black people VS Black people

message: This page was duplicated/forked to Black people (ethnicity) today with the apparent intention to split the article into two separate topics.  Please discuss whether this is necessary on that article's talk page.  Thanks!  --DachannienTalkContrib 01:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why can't 2 articles just have the same name?  Lots of wikipedia articles have the same name, especially when it comes to people Gottoupload 01:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Black people]] versus [[Black people (ethnicity)]] 

message: We now have 3 articles. This one, the 'capital b' one and the 'ethnicity' one. If this keeps up the admins are very likely to blow the forks out of the water and push everyone back into here to thrash it out on the talk page. If this keeps up we'll have a version of 'black people' for every editor/school of thought and thats a POV fork violation for sure. exolon 01:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Getting out of hand