Like so many other garbage, extremely revisionist, new-age historical trends, no. Of course that's just my opinion. The Africans living in Egypt were ethnically, and pigmentally (is that even a word? ) different from the "black" Africans. I don't really see why people feel the need to make things like this up. After all, if one wants examples of black African achievement one has only to look at the Kingdom of Ethiopia (Axum), the city of Timbuktu (albeit a bit later), etc.
Define Afro-centricism. Its rather alarge umbrella term with some good
and some out right silly under it. Not that much different from any
other ethno-centric approach in other words.
Part of the whole notion of Afro-Centricism (especialy as it manifests
itself in English speaking countries, the US in particular where the whole fuss over Egypt is most pronounced), is
that it is stuck with an ironicly (albeit somewhat outdated)
Euro-centric notion of colour, thus for some Afro-Centrists, African =
Black therefore Egypt = Black.
Credit where its due though there are other self-styled Afro-Centrists
who see the falacy of both this and the obssession with colour, and see
Africa as a whole, and thus accept and insist that Egypt is no more or
less African than any other part of the Continent, and don't need to
prove its 'blackness', whilst at teh same time pointing out that Egypt
has been a crossroads of different influences and peoples. An altogether more sensible approach IMHO.
The Africans living in Egypt were ethnically, and pigmentally (is that even a word? ) different from the "black" Africans.
Technicly thats not entirely true, Egypt is and always has been the
place where Black and Olive and met with a gradual bluring from one to
the other.
The problem with the extreme centricisms, is that they can't accept this, everything must be absolutes.
I guess if you were gonna play the colour code game, Egypt has been
mostly an Olive to Brown affair, with peroids of Black rule. But the
three have always been there, and still are.
There have been people who would today be decribed as "white" in Egypt and still are. What I mean is all the nonsence about Menses/Narmer and co being balck, the Sphinx being that of Black man.
Correct me if I am wrong, although Egypt is not in black africa, it is in Eaatern part of the continent and there has always been a difference between the Eastern and Western part of the continent right, so American blacks who are decended from the West Africa.........
We must understand the point of Afrocentrism. It is not really about history but about group and personal self-respect.
African Americans in the U.S. have been put down for as long as they have been in this country. Their claim for a black Egypt is an attempt to claim a generally well respected civilization as part of Africa and as part of their past.
Even though many of the historical facts of some branches of Afrocentrism are wrong or improperly qualified, the intellectual movement has created real interest among Americans, from African descent or not, towards the study of Africa.
The invention of a glorious past to boosts one's self-esteem is a common practice among people, especially when they have been put down by more powerful groups.
After all, many Southerners in the U.S. also create distorted versions of their past--i.e. "Gone with the Wind", "Birth of a Nation"--that creates a picture of themselves as more noble, more powerful, and better than the actual reality was.
Fortunately, most Southerners have already moved on from this stage, where re-establishing self-worth was the most important thing, and now most Southern history buffs will stick to as close to historical record and evidence as they can.
Today, I personally believe that white Southerners are, as a group, some of the most historically sophisticated Americans.
With time, the extreme historical Afrocentrism will lead to a vast majority of African Americans having the same historical sophistication about their past as White Southerners have of their own. And this is already happening.
We should be tolerant and understanding of these intellectual movements. Those who adopt them are thirsty for self-respect and knowledge for their past. Rejecting them wholesale is a mistake.
Tolerant, yes. Respectful, yes. And I can only hope that this intellectual movement will eventually come back to the historical record. Until that time, it is the duty of historians to correct points at which these movements distort the historical record. I think my biggest concern would be that Afrocentrism, Gynocentrism, etc. enjoy a great deal more respect within the historical community than their trains of thought deserve.
Their seem to be two standards for scholarship; those outside of these movements/groups criticize them at the risk of being deemed racists, sexists, and all sorts of other "ists." If I have to hear once more "Well you just don't have the right to comment on this," I think I'm going to puke. There is a difference between respecting and endorsing. The way to get back to the truth and understand the past is not to distort it until it seems more fair, cuddly, fluffy, etc.
That said, I'm all for understanding where these groups come from (I think your assessment is accurate), as it is only through doing so that we will ever be able to reconcile them with mainstream history.
Well, Eurocentrism does have a lot of prestige. More than it should probably, considering that our subcontinent has only produced a handful of peripheric civilizations before the Renaissance.
In this sense, Afrocentrism, with its surely exaggerated revision has helped to challenege many stabilished viewpoints and ponder many things again. For instance now it's much less likely that somebody appears saying "Egyptians are Aryans/Whites/Nordics" or nonsenses of the like. We know now that Egyptians are an extremely mixed people and were so since their genesis. They are not just black, but they are close to mulatto, what in the USA s exactly the same as black.
The problem comse in the fact that US-Americans can hardly tell the difefrence between a pureblood Black African and a person that has some Black African ascendance in any degree. That makes that in the USA there are no mulattoes but that Egyptians are blacks for them (not for the rest of humankind that would say they are clearly mixed with probably a Caucasoid predominance).
In the end it's a problem of how the USA percieves races: for US-American culture there's black and white, just that, and they don't admit admixture of any sort. While in reality there's no black nor white, just different tones of brown-beige in an infinite array.
Unfortunely Afrocentism is a big issue as about the Hellenic heritage.FYROM propagnda and some historicians (Stefou or Stefov) distorted some points of the Afrocentrism theory.
The question of who in the ancient world were and who were not African blacks in the modern sense of blacks or Negroes has given rise to considerable debate. What does the ancient written and iconographical evidence reveal about the physical characteristics of the Greek mythicalheroes such Achilles ? <:namespace prefix = o ns = "urnchemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />>>
>>
FYROM Diaspora propaganda (Stefou)recently touches the Bernal Theories and the supposing connection of the ancient Hellenic Heritage and the African. When Bernal said African meanEgyptian. But when Stefou mean African mean African by skin colour. To the extent that Stefou (and his students)has contributed to the provision of an apparently respectable underpinning for Afrocentric fantasies, he must be held culpable, even if his intentions are honorable and his motives are sincere. But not even he has dealt with the racial issue squarely .>>
>>
Arthur Schlesinger says in The Disuniting of America: >>
The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible.>>
>>
But we the Greeks what must we be done? One strategy is to ignore the geographer (Stefou )who teaches (Propaganda books and Internet)that the earth is flat (the Slav the continue of the chemas-microsoft-comfficemarttags" />LACE wt="on">t="on">MacedoniaLACE> heritage) . >>
>>
Of course, teaching false information about Alexander and Aristotle will not put anyone in immediate physical danger. But nonetheless these untruths do injustice, not only our Heritage ancestors (ancient Greeks) who have been falsely maligned, but and us, the modern Greeks. Why deprive the Greeks of their heritage, particularly if the charges against the ancient Greeks can decisively be shown to be wrong? Why encourage hostility toward any ethnic group? Haven't we seen enough examples in this century of the horrific results of teaching hostile propaganda? >>
Propably Stefou forgot that skin colour and ethnicity are two different thinks. >>
But what did the ancient Greeks look like? From portraits on seal-rings, paintings on vases, and sculptures in clay and stone, it is possible to get a good sense of how they saw themselves.Written texts describe a variety of hair color, ranging from brown to black, and skin color ranging from light to dark. Vase paintings, because of the limited colors available to the potters, give a more schematic impression. Women are usually portrayed with white faces. If the background of the vase is black, the men have black faces; if the background is the color of the clay from which the vase is made, men have reddish-brown faces. They distinguish themselves clearly from Egyptians and Ethiopian peoples in their art and literature. The Africans have flat noses, curly hair, and thick lips; their skin color is portrayed with black glaze or, on occasion, plain unglazed terra-cotta. They regularly speak of the Egyptians' dark skin, and sometimes of their curly hair. Herodotus supposed that the Colchians (a people who lived on the eastern coast of the LACE wt="on">Black SeaLACE>) were Egyptian because they were dark-skinned and curly-haired. He identifies a pair of doves as Egyptian in origin because they are "dark". >>
>>
In summary, despite abundant textual and iconographic evidence to the contrary, Stefou andhis students have used "black," "Egyptian," and "African" interchangeably as the equivalents of blacks/Negroes in modern usage. According to this misinterpretation, ancient Egyptians were blacks, and their civilization, an important part of the heritage of blacks of African descent, has been "covered up" by white racists. The twentieth century has already seen sufficient proof of the dangers of inventing history. >>
What will be the effect on future generations, black and white alike, Slavs ,Greeks, Albanians, Turks e.t.c.if the present "mythologizing"Stefou trend continues, and if the historical record is not rectified? The time has come for scholars , educators , common people like usto insist upon truth, scholarly rigor, and accuracy in the reconstruction of the history of Stefouin the ancient Mediterranean world and not only. >>
Tolerant, yes. Respectful, yes. And I can only hope that this intellectual movement will eventually come back to the historical record. Until that time, it is the duty of historians to correct points at which these movements distort the historical record. I think my biggest concern would be that Afrocentrism, Gynocentrism, etc. enjoy a great deal more respect within the historical community than their trains of thought deserve.
Their seem to be two standards for scholarship; those outside of these movements/groups criticize them at the risk of being deemed racists, sexists, and all sorts of other "ists." If I have to hear once more "Well you just don't have the right to comment on this," I think I'm going to puke. There is a difference between respecting and endorsing. The way to get back to the truth and understand the past is not to distort it until it seems more fair, cuddly, fluffy, etc.
That said, I'm all for understanding where these groups come from (I think your assessment is accurate), as it is only through doing so that we will ever be able to reconcile them with mainstream history.
-Akolouthos
I understand your desire to stick to historic facts, and I actually believe that we have a duty to try to bring people who believe in these mythological pasts into historical accuracy.
And the best way of doing it is not by telling people that they are wrong, but by gently pointing them in the right direction so that they can reach a closer historical accuracy by themselves.
After all, when was the last time that any of us changed our opinion because someone bluntly told us that we are wrong
P.S. I don't believe that there are too many historians who accept afrocentrism. In fact, most of them dismiss their beliefs.
Afrocentrism thrives in politically charged departments like ethnic or American studies, but is rejected as a historical account.
<FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>Unfortunely Afrocentism is a big issue as about the Hellenic heritage.FYROM propagnda and some historicians (Stefou or Stefov) distorted some points of the Afrocentrism theory.
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-ansi-: EN-GB">The question of who in the ancient world were and who were not African blacks in the modern sense of blacks or Negroes has given rise to considerable debate. What does the ancient written and iconographical evidence reveal about the physical characteristics of the Greek mythical<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>heroes such Achilles ? <:namespace prefix = o ns = "urnchemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB"OFONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2></O/SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">FYROM Diaspora propaganda (Stefou)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>recently touches the Bernal Theories and the supposing connection of the ancient Hellenic Heritage and the African. When Bernal said African mean<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Egyptian. But when Stefou mean African mean African by skin colour. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>To the extent that Stefou (and his students)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>has contributed to the provision of an apparently respectable underpinning for Afrocentric fantasies, he must be held culpable, even if his intentions are honorable and his motives are sincere. But not even he has dealt with the racial issue squarely .<O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB"OFONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2></O/SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">Arthur Schlesinger says in The Disuniting of America: <O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible. <O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB"OFONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2></O/SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">But we the Greeks what must we be done? One strategy is to ignore the geographer (Stefou )<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>who teaches (Propaganda books and Internet)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>that the earth is flat (the Slav the continue of the <?:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urnchemas-microsoft-comfficemarttags" /ST1LACE wt="on"ST1:COUNTRY-REGION wt="on">Macedonia</ST1:COUNTRY-REGION/ST1LACE> heritage) . <O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB"OFONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2></O/SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">Of course, teaching false information about Alexander and Aristotle will not put anyone in immediate physical danger. But nonetheless these untruths do injustice, not only our Heritage ancestors (ancient Greeks) who have been falsely maligned, but and us, the modern Greeks. Why deprive the Greeks of their heritage, particularly if the charges against the ancient Greeks can decisively be shown to be wrong? Why encourage hostility toward any ethnic group? Haven't we seen enough examples in this century of the horrific results of teaching hostile propaganda? <O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">Propably Stefou forgot that skin colour and ethnicity are two different thinks. <O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">But what did the ancient Greeks look like? From portraits on seal-rings, paintings on vases, and sculptures in clay and stone, it is possible to get a good sense of how they saw themselves.</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="COLOR: blue; mso-ansi-: EN-GB"> </SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">Written texts describe a variety of hair color, ranging from brown to black, and skin color ranging from light to dark. Vase paintings, because of the limited colors available to the potters, give a more schematic impression. Women are usually portrayed with white faces. If the background of the vase is black, the men have black faces; if the background is the color of the clay from which the vase is made, men have reddish-brown faces. They distinguish themselves clearly from Egyptians and Ethiopian peoples in their art and literature. The Africans have flat noses, curly hair, and thick lips; their skin color is portrayed with black glaze or, on occasion, plain unglazed terra-cotta. They regularly speak of the Egyptians' dark skin, and sometimes of their curly hair. Herodotus supposed that the Colchians (a people who lived on the eastern coast of the <ST1LACE wt="on">Black Sea</ST1LACE> were Egyptian because they were dark-skinned and curly-haired. He identifies a pair of doves as Egyptian in origin because they are "dark". </SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="COLOR: blue; mso-ansi-: EN-GB"O/O/SPAN> <P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="COLOR: blue; mso-ansi-: EN-GB"OSPAN style="TEXT-DECORATION: none"FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2></SPAN/O/SPAN> <P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB">In summary, despite abundant textual and iconographic evidence to the contrary, Stefou and<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>his students have used "black," "Egyptian," and "African" interchangeably as the equivalents of blacks/Negroes in modern usage. According to this misinterpretation, ancient Egyptians were blacks, and their civilization, an important part of the heritage of blacks of African descent, has been "covered up" by white racists. The twentieth century has already seen sufficient proof of the dangers of inventing history. <O/O></SPAN>
<P style="MARGIN: 5pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" ="Default"SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-: EN-GB"><FONT face="Book Antiqua"FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>What will be the effect on future generations, black and white alike, Slavs ,Greeks, Albanians, Turks e.t.c.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>if the present "mythologizing"<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Stefou trend continues, and if the historical record is not rectified? The time has come for scholars , educators , common people like us<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>to insist upon truth, scholarly rigor, and accuracy in the reconstruction of the history of Stefou<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>in the ancient Mediterranean world and not only. <O/O></SPAN>
Akritas,
Anyone who spends anytime learning about Greek civilization understands that the claims of African influence with Greek culture cannot be taken seriously.
The Hellenic heritage is not in any danger. As one of the pillars of Western Civilization, there are enough people who give proper credit to Hellas.
There is enough evidence, historical and archeological, to prove which contributions come from Greece. And even though Greece was very good at adopting ideas from other countries, they were transformed and Hellenized. Maybe the greatest example of this is Christianity. It was a Jewish sect until the Greek world transformed it into the religion that we know today.
Now, as Maju pointed out, Afrocentrist history of Egypt does bring up interesting points that otherwise would not be discussed. Maju pointed out that before, all Greek gods were depicted as Nordic people.
When Afrocentrists brought up the claim that Cleopatra was black, it made many of us to look at the record. Of course, she isn't black. However, many discovered that she wasn't a blue-eyed nordic woman either.
When one pays attention to the pictures, we actually see what real Greeks look like.
So the end result is a more Hellenic past, not less
I understand your desire to stick to historic facts, and I actually believe that we have a duty to try to bring people who believe in these mythological pasts into historical accuracy.
And the best way of doing it is not by telling people that they are wrong, but by gently pointing them in the right direction so that they can reach a closer historical accuracy by themselves.
After all, when was the last time that any of us changed our opinion because someone bluntly told us that we are wrong
P.S. I don't believe that there are too many historians who accept afrocentrism. In fact, most of them dismiss their beliefs.
Afrocentrism thrives in politically charged departments like ethnic or American studies, but is rejected as a historical account.
P.S.
I tried and tried, but I can't find a thing in there that I disagree with . Very good explanation of the reasons for being gentle; you've convinced me. Good show!
However, many discovered that she wasn't a blue-eyed nordic woman either.
How many assumed thats she was?
I've seen old Welsh language books on Greece and Greek legends made in the 1800s and they look, well, Greek.
The whole Blue-eyed crap is just a few movies which anyone with a brain
would realise is the result of Americans making movies for Americans,
not an ideotic conspiracy, and the most famous movie casting of
Cleopatra was Liz Taylor. Some Afro-Centric types simply use this to
justify their own position.
Define Afro-centricism. Its rather alarge umbrella term with some good and some out right silly under it. Not that much different from any other ethno-centric approach in other words.
Part of the whole notion of Afro-Centricism (especialy as it manifests itself in English speaking countries, the US in particular where the whole fuss over Egypt is most pronounced), is that it is stuck with an ironicly (albeit somewhat outdated) Euro-centric notion of colour, thus for some Afro-Centrists, African = Black therefore Egypt = Black. Credit where its due though there are other self-styled Afro-Centrists who see the falacy of both this and the obssession with colour, and see Africa as a whole, and thus accept and insist that Egypt is no more or less African than any other part of the Continent, and don't need to prove its 'blackness', whilst at teh same time pointing out that Egypt has been a crossroads of different influences and peoples. An altogether more sensible approach IMHO.
The Africans living in Egypt were ethnically, and pigmentally (is that even a word? ) different from the "black" Africans.
Technicly thats not entirely true, Egypt is and always has been the place where Black and Olive and met with a gradual bluring from one to the other. The problem with the extreme centricisms, is that they can't accept this, everything must be absolutes. I guess if you were gonna play the colour code game, Egypt has been mostly an Olive to Brown affair, with peroids of Black rule. But the three have always been there, and still are.
However, many discovered that she wasn't a blue-eyed nordic woman either.
How many assumed thats she was?
I've seen old Welsh language books on Greece and Greek legends made in the 1800s and they look, well, Greek.
The whole Blue-eyed crap is just a few movies which anyone with a brain
would realise is the result of Americans making movies for Americans,
not an ideotic conspiracy, and the most famous movie casting of
Cleopatra was Liz Taylor. Some Afro-Centric types simply use this to
justify their own position.
I actually grew up with images like those in textbooks in Mexico and comic books.
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