UC Santa Barbara Professor agrees

[samuel]

www.news.ucsb.edu/2020/020030/african-egypt

[anansi]

Hi Samuel pls in the future, don't just drop a link we might auto delete it as spambot so, interact more with your thread, quote a passage or two along with the link,will make it more likely for members to respond.

[ Sturt Smith a UC Santa Barbara professor of anthropology and one of the country’s leading Egyptologists, will deliver the inaugural W.E.B. DuBois Virtual Lecture for Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. His Zoom lecture, “Black Pharaohs? Egyptological Bias, Racism, and Egypt and Nubia as African Civilizations,” will take place Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 1 p.m. Pacific Time. Register here to attend.

Smith, who has been excavating the ancient site of Tombos in modern Sudan (Nubia) since 2000, has focused his research on questions of identity, especially ethnicity, and intercultural interaction between ancient Egypt and Nubia.

In the 8th century BCE, he noted, Kushite rulers were crowned as Kings of Egypt, ruling a combined Nubian and Egyptian kingdom as pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty. Those Kushite kings are commonly referred to as the “Black Pharaohs” in both scholarly and popular publications.

That terminology, Smith said, is often presented as a celebration of black African civilization. But it also reflects a longstanding bias that holds the Egyptian pharaohs and their people weren’t African — that is, not Black. It’s a trope that feeds into a long history of racism that traces back to the some of the founding figures of Egyptology and their role in the creation of “scientific” racism in the U.S.

Drawing on some of his own research in Sudanese Nubia, Smith said he will first discuss the question of ancient Egypt as an African civilization.

“Then with examples from our ongoing excavations at Tombos, I will discuss Kushite civilization as a sophisticated African neighbor that adapted Egyptian kingship and other cultural features, making them their own,” he said. “Within these discussions, I will take Egyptological bias and racism into consideration, and will conclude with some remarks on why it is important in the context of anti-racism today to acknowledge the Black African foundation and origins of both Nubia and Egypt.

“It has always struck me as odd that Egyptologists have been reluctant to admit that the ancient (and modern) Egyptians were rather dark-skinned Africans, especially the farther south one goes,” Smith continued. “As Bruce Williams pointed out years ago, an ancient Egyptian transported to the American South in the days of segregation would not be allowed to sit at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, would have to go to the back of the bus, would be barred from facilities reserved for whites. The same applies to most of the modern Nubians, Sudanese and Egyptians that I know and have worked with.”

Smith, who is also director of UCSB’s Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research, noted that the work of early American Egyptologists was used as justifications for American slavery, segregation and anti-blackness in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“This has been an interest of mine for a while,” he said, “and I recently have been exploring this topic in more depth, especially relevant and I think imperative in the context of anti-racism today.”]

I think rabid anti- Black racist would dismiss him as an SJW despite his creds and facts on the ground.

[anansi]

And btw we have a topic on this lecture vid he did with Gates and others.
egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/thread/3219/black-pharaohs-egyptological-bias

[zarahan]

Yep, just posting a link without any content/context adds little value..
Smith is without a doubt, an establishment Egyptology guy who rejects
various rigid "racial" classifications in Kemet, so he is no
friend of extreme "Afrocentrists." But he took a fair-minded look
at the data and just did good science. This of course is quite
unwelcome to hard-core ideologues particularly white ones, who
find their claims debunked by science at every turn. They have
taken to duplicating shaky Wikipedia articles- which they continually
doctor and distort with "stealth" edits to remove or obfuscate genuine
scholarship as to the African character and diversity of ancient Kemet.
Now they are finding "mainstream" scholars confirming some key points
the old-time "Afrocentrics" had made all along and its like a blade between
their ribs.

But all their activity has been for nought. All their duplication and
underhanded "edits" have failed to stifle the massive amount of hard scholarship
now available on the web- direct quotes people can verify from real scholars.
In fact they could have avoided that massive flood if they had let alone
valid scholarship on those obscure, low-readership article pages on the topic.
The data would have remained buried in those pages with little exposure.

But their unscrupulous "edit" activity only led people to post tons of removed
material on credible, alternative forums, accessing a world wide audience, with massively
more page hits and readership such as ES which gets hundreds of hits every DAY,
compared to mere tens per MONTH or less on the doctored pages. All their "stealth"
has backfired on them, even as they continue to "guard" laughably weak and obsolete
pages, imagining that they are "guarding" something significant.

And if people get riled enough they will begin to port all the info to big
forums like Facebook, where indeed some can be seen already on some groups.
Continued underhanded activity, far from deterring people, will rile them
enough to create another flood, that debunks the very claims the underhanded
distorters are trying to push.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Thanks for the Stuart link Shmuley an
excellent followup to yr 5 yr old post.

egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/post/12739/thread

It was enheartening to read

“Black Pharaohs” in both scholarly and popular publications.

That terminology, Smith said, is often presented as a celebration of black African civilization. But it also reflects a longstanding bias that holds the Egyptian pharaohs and their people weren’t African — that is, not Black. It’s a trope that feeds into a long history of racism that traces back to the some of the founding figures of Egyptology and their role in the creation of “scientific” racism in the U.S.

and to see someone in the academe recognize
white-washing racism tainted, and continues
to taint, ancient Nile Valley studies w/o
mincing words or fumbling around with hi-
falutin euphemisms for the word racism.

Also not pussyfooting around with 'Africa'
considered 'white' where it's countries
border the Mediterranean and only black
elsewhere. I applaud his directness in
equating Africa with black, the majority
of the continent's peopling, in the case
of ancient Egypt and Sudan. Even here on
ESR it's been proposed African is preferable
to black when describing political ancient Egypt.
I find that facilitates obscuring the responsible
geo-ethnic origins of the civilization's creators
and co-opting one grouping as replacements
for the originators -- still despised due to
what Volney deduced over 200 years ago.


Minus the 18th century hype of course.

Even though the word Africa derives from
an ancient coastal N Afr ppl, even these
modern N Afr ppls for the most part disclaim
African identity except ironically for Amazigh
nationalist who are anti-black racists.

Ah. Africa to mean white. Africa to mean black.
Seemingly simple yet presented in paradox, so
requiring complex interpretation per contextual
reading. Me? I prefer black. It's point-blank.


Got any more similar links, ... please?


BTW since Reisner started out yte-washing
Nubia, the attempt continues to this day.
As you feel about Dyn 25 so I feel about
Bir Kiseiba & Nabta Playa, another case
of yte-washing Sudanese. I was outraged.

egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/post/18586/thread

www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=010066#000028