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Post by Charlie Bass on Aug 9, 2010 2:15:51 GMT -5
I know I've been gone for a while and my health wasn't so great but my mind is still just as sharp as ever which brings me to this thread I created. The state of African anthropology and genetics, I've been reading some of the latest studies on Africans, particularly the genetics and it seems like whether intentional or unintentional these geneticists are using modern genetic studies to validate old anthropological theories of the past. I've noticed one geneticist saying that Beja came from Arabia, another said Fulani are descendants of Hyskos and or are descendants of Eurasians who migrated into Africa and even Passarino et al in 1998 saying that Amhara are descendants of "Arabian conquerers," this is ridiculous people. I used to hammer layman like Dienekes and Racialreality for their misinterpretations of genetic studies but now I'm placing the blame on the geneticists and anthropologists who author these studies, which means my focus has shifted, the truth is what we should all want but I've made it my mission to email every geneticist and anthropologist who publishes a study that includes Africans and to question them on every point they say about Africans. I recall Keita saying that when he questioned one of the authors about the sources used in one of these studies for historical purposes Keita found out that the author used dated history book from the 1950s or 1960s, this is unacceptable.
I personally don't have much faith in current academia to tell the story of Africans and our history the right way and I truly believe that only when we get more involve in telling the right story and questioning and critiquing those who right about Africans more often that the tide will turn. I find it somewhat ironic that all of these anthropologists and geneticist keep saying that Africans are the most diverse genetically and phenotypically, yet with the except of Keita and Tishkoff, they all still define "Africa" stereotypically. Its something that we at ESR need to hold these people accountable for and I have had email communication with some scholars, some reply some don't, but the point is that they do know that we here are watching what they write, nevertheless it should be pointed out that how ever biased some of these studies are they still have nuggets of truth within them so they shouldn't be totally abandoned, we need to just challenge these people when they obviously get it wrong. I believe very strongly in what Keita said in that Africans and Africanists need to step up and start telling the story the right way because we need to stop totally relying on European controlled academia to get it right and we need to quit playing by their rules.
Any comments?
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Post by truthteacher2007 on Aug 9, 2010 7:40:24 GMT -5
I know I've been gone for a while and my health wasn't so great but my mind is still just as sharp as ever which brings me to this thread I created. The state of African anthropology and genetics, I've been reading some of the latest studies on Africans, particularly the genetics and it seems like whether intentional or unintentional these geneticists are using modern genetic studies to validate old anthropological theories of the past. I've noticed one geneticist saying that Beja came from Arabia, another said Fulani are descendants of Hyskos and or are descendants of Eurasians who migrated into Africa and even Passarino et al in 1998 saying that Amhara are descendants of "Arabian conquerers," this is ridiculous people. I used to hammer layman like Dienekes and Racialreality for their misinterpretations of genetic studies but now I'm placing the blame on the geneticists and anthropologists who author these studies, which means my focus has shifted, the truth is what we should all want but I've made it my mission to email every geneticist and anthropologist who publishes a study that includes Africans and to question them on every point they say about Africans. I recall Keita saying that when he questioned one of the authors about the sources used in one of these studies for historical purposes Keita found out that the author used dated history book from the 1950s or 1960s, this is unacceptable. I personally don't have much faith in current academia to tell the story of Africans and our history the right way and I truly believe that only when we get more involve in telling the right story and questioning and critiquing those who right about Africans more often that the tide will turn. I find it somewhat ironic that all of these anthropologists and geneticist keep saying that Africans are the most diverse genetically and phenotypically, yet with the except of Keita and Tishkoff, they all still define "Africa" stereotypically. Its something that we at ESR need to hold these people accountable for and I have had email communication with some scholars, some reply some don't, but the point is that they do know that we here are watching what they write, nevertheless it should be pointed out that how ever biased some of these studies are they still have nuggets of truth within them so they shouldn't be totally abandoned, we need to just challenge these people when they obviously get it wrong. I believe very strongly in what Keita said in that Africans and Africanists need to step up and start telling the story the right way because we need to stop totally relying on European controlled academia to get it right and we need to quit playing by their rules. Any comments? I totally agree and have been saying pretty much the same thing for years. I first started suspecting things were fishy way back in high school when we had to fill out our race on tests and such. I couldn't understand why it was that you could have two people who looked exactly the same, yet if one spoke English as a first language they were black, if the other spoke Spanish as a first language they were Hispanic or Latino. Then the one drop rule was explained to me. Once again I was confused. If you spoke English and you had one drop of African blood, then you were black, no matter if you looked white. If you spoke English and you had one drop, then you were Latino, because that drop somehow disappeared, even if you used the whole damn bottle plus you borrowed some from your neighbor next door cause you ran out and you needed more because one bottle wasn't enough..... Okay you get what I'm saying. Then I went to Egypt and Morocco for the fist time and landed right in the middle of a whole bunch of folks that looked like me and my cousins. Come to find out, that if you are North African, you're not "really" African. So according to the US government, if you are from North Africa and you have one drop, or even if you are the factory that makes all the damn drops and bottles it, then you are WHITE! So when I see studies based on this logic... Well yes, its frustrating because the whole premise is based on a flawed foundation. The problem is that this whole business is a game. A game in which the rules always keep changing to insure that the ruling classes win. I think that the only way to win such a game is to stop playing it. I often get into it with Afrocentrics, or should I say the radical fringes of the Afrocentric cloth with regards to Ancient and modern Egyptians. The whole premise of their world view is based on a Eurocentric model. Africans never identified as "Black". They had no concept of biological race. They identified not on appearance, but on geography and culture. Now sometimes physical appearance is an indicator that a person is not part of their group. Say in the case of a Berber from Algeria. If they go to Benin, they will stand out as being foreign. But this is not the same thing as our race concept. If that Berber marries into the local community and raises their children within the culture, their children are seen as members of that community. There is no concept of hypo-descent. Nationality, language and culture trump physical appearance. So even if that person is described as "white", it is only a literal description of what they look like, not what they are. So when they claim that modern Egyptians are not the real descendants of Egyptians because they are not "black" they are making a host of mistakes based on a Eurocentric model. #1: who decided what an African is supposed to look like? Who was the one who ran around measuring skulls and who gave them the authority to draw a line on a map and declare what was above it was fake Africa and what was below it was real Africa? Who was it that decided that to be African, you had to look a certain way? It was Europeans. They are the ones who created these concepts. #2: The idea that two individuals who show different external characteristics cannot be related to each other. To suppose that North Africans are not Africans because they don't look like people in Cameroon or Congo, or that there is no way they are related to people who look like those Africans below the line is false. If that were the case, then my brother and I are of different races. We see this in our families all the time, yet we assume that it can't have happened on the other side of the Atlantic. So if they dug up my brother's skull and my skull, they would ascribe us to different races, not realizing that we were in fact close blood relatives. #3: All Africans below the line are exactly the same. There is only one way to look and be African. Your skin is either black or its not. No one has laid down the rule explaining how dark you have to be to be black though. This shows itself particularly with a lot of these DNA studies where they compare Egyptians to Africans below the line. The question should not be are they related to those Africans, but which one of those Africans are they related to?
. People tend to be more closely related to the populations nearest them. So to compare Egyptian DNA with the DNA of Pygmies and South Africans and then come to the conclusion there is no relationship is false. To use just any group of Africans below the line to be a representation of the whole region is flawed since Africans below the line with the greatest distance between each other will also often time show no close relation. We have to realize that what we were taught about Africa, who and what they are, was given to us by the colonialist world view. Therefore, if we continue to use their model, we will be in error, no matter if we claim to be using it to uplift our "race". How can we benefit from something that was design to subjugate us? We need to look at things from a different perspective. Since the Eurocentric community is unwilling or unable to represent the truth of our reality, we need to do it ourselves. Instead of arguing over DNA studies of Egyptians and other Africans, we need to become geneticists and anthropologists and create our own studies. It is up to us to speak our own truth, not wait for someone else to get it right. |
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Post by gigantic on Aug 9, 2010 8:10:33 GMT -5
I thought academia was backing up the Afrocentric view. I re-call some of you claiming that a majority of scholars and scientists vindicate the Afrocentric point of view. What happened?
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jari
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Posts: 289
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Post by jari on Aug 9, 2010 10:25:32 GMT -5
I thought academia was backing up the Afrocentric view. I re-call some of you claiming that a majority of scholars and scientists vindicate the Afrocentric point of view. What happened? It depends on the subject, but overall the Academic world is Eurocentric. |
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Post by truthcentric on Aug 9, 2010 15:28:39 GMT -5
Charlie Bass, I share your frustration with so-called "mainstream" scholars. This is one of many areas in which we suffer from the legacy of a racist past.
I am also frustrated with supposedly liberal, non-racist people who nonetheless deny a black African ancient Egypt. It has been my experience that they can be as stubborn and arrogant as white supremacists when it comes to this issue. Why they're like that, I have no fucking idea, but it's very upsetting to me.
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Aug 9, 2010 16:25:18 GMT -5
No one has made any such claim on ESR
that a "majority of scholars and scientists
vindicate the Afrocentric point of view."
There is no monolithic Afrocentric view.
Afrocentricity has a right left and center
as do other cultural philosophies.
In my opinion an Afrocentric viewpoint is
as much to be avoided as an Eurocentric
one and for the same underlying reasons.
Noting that no researcher or scholar can
be totally free of viewing things though
the lens of their cultural environment
their reports and studies need to be rid
of ethnocentric bias as much as possible.
Some try to do that. Others simply import
old school blatant ethnic biases into their
discussion and conclusions often supplied
by the historian on the team implementing
outdated works for inclusion into the scientific
reports in order to lend them some new found
but pseudo-scientific credibility and acceptance.
It should also be noted that a researcher
of a given ethnicity may be privvy to facts
inaccessable to outsiders and such facts
can lend decisive insight on some matters.
This is when viewing thngs through ethnic
eyes becomes valuable and transcends
ethnocentricism.
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Post by Charlie Bass on Aug 9, 2010 16:38:53 GMT -5
Charlie Bass, I share your frustration with so-called "mainstream" scholars. This is one of many areas in which we suffer from the legacy of a racist past. I am also frustrated with supposedly liberal, non-racist people who nonetheless deny a black African ancient Egypt. It has been my experience that they can be as stubborn and arrogant as white supremacists when it comes to this issue. Why they're like that, I have no idea, but it's very upsetting to me. I pretty much agree and this is why I said we at ESR need to challenge these scholars and anyone else who has any agenda to distort the truth. Keita pretty much confirmed my suspicions when I watched one of his youtube videos and he said some of the same things I said and he is among those who email these so called scholars and takes them to task and we need to do the same. |
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Post by seekeroftruth on Sept 22, 2011 0:10:45 GMT -5
Maybe credible anthropologists, geneticists, historians, and scientist who promote pure truth should form an institution that calls into question these bias practices used in these studies.
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Post by imhotep06 on Oct 1, 2011 15:48:07 GMT -5
To add my two cents, ultimately what really is going to have to happen is that you, I, we are going to have to get off our asses, go to school and get degrees in these subjects. It doesn't matter if you find "fault" with any bit of their papers. Unless you are a living, working, teaching geneticists, linguists, anthropologist, geologist, or any other ologist, it is going to fall on deaf ears and they don't have to respond to your critiques publicly. Until you get into the field and are publishing scientific papers, it's useless. It's a shame that S.O.Y. Keita is the ONLY African-American anthropologist doing the kinds of work he is doing. Dr. Keita and I were discussing this privately at the Nile Valley II Conference recently in Atlanta. What's needed is QUALIFIED African/African-Americna historians to publish major works in these areas. Not people who flirt with the subject who post on ESR or any other online forum. If you want to take them to task, you write the papers and challenge them at major conferences like Drs. Beatty, Bilolo, Diop, Keita and Obenga do. You'll get no where on this forum. You must publish textbooks on the subject like Dr. Asante did with African-American history to be used in schools. The time for laziness is over. If this is your field of interest, find a way to get a degree in it and challenge them from the standpoint of an insider where they cannot easily dismiss your arguments as you being a "layman" on the subject.
So if we are serious, let's be serious and do this right.
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jari
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Posts: 289
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Post by jari on Oct 1, 2011 20:23:15 GMT -5
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jari
Scribe
Posts: 289
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Post by jari on Oct 1, 2011 20:24:09 GMT -5
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Post by sundiata on Oct 3, 2011 21:43:14 GMT -5
I know I've been gone for a while and my health wasn't so great but my mind is still just as sharp as ever which brings me to this thread I created. The state of African anthropology and genetics, I've been reading some of the latest studies on Africans, particularly the genetics and it seems like whether intentional or unintentional these geneticists are using modern genetic studies to validate old anthropological theories of the past. I've noticed one geneticist saying that Beja came from Arabia, another said Fulani are descendants of Hyskos and or are descendants of Eurasians who migrated into Africa and even Passarino et al in 1998 saying that Amhara are descendants of "Arabian conquerers," this is ridiculous people. I used to hammer layman like Dienekes and Racialreality for their misinterpretations of genetic studies but now I'm placing the blame on the geneticists and anthropologists who author these studies, which means my focus has shifted, the truth is what we should all want but I've made it my mission to email every geneticist and anthropologist who publishes a study that includes Africans and to question them on every point they say about Africans. I recall Keita saying that when he questioned one of the authors about the sources used in one of these studies for historical purposes Keita found out that the author used dated history book from the 1950s or 1960s, this is unacceptable. I personally don't have much faith in current academia to tell the story of Africans and our history the right way and I truly believe that only when we get more involve in telling the right story and questioning and critiquing those who right about Africans more often that the tide will turn. I find it somewhat ironic that all of these anthropologists and geneticist keep saying that Africans are the most diverse genetically and phenotypically, yet with the except of Keita and Tishkoff, they all still define "Africa" stereotypically. Its something that we at ESR need to hold these people accountable for and I have had email communication with some scholars, some reply some don't, but the point is that they do know that we here are watching what they write, nevertheless it should be pointed out that how ever biased some of these studies are they still have nuggets of truth within them so they shouldn't be totally abandoned, we need to just challenge these people when they obviously get it wrong. I believe very strongly in what Keita said in that Africans and Africanists need to step up and start telling the story the right way because we need to stop totally relying on European controlled academia to get it right and we need to quit playing by their rules. Any comments? Keita brought up the Fulani = Hyksos thing before and upon questioning the geneticist, the geneticist responded with a citation from an old history book from the early 20th century. What we must realize is that we cannot rely on geneticists to do the work of the historian. Any historian of Fulani culture would laugh at the idea because the historian must rely on an array of sources, including, but not limited to genetics in order to build a proper narrative. Obviously if we want to study African history we must do history. Geneticists aren't trained at constructing narratives through multi-disciplinary synthesis and therefore, they come off as quacks more often than not when they attempt to do so. Also, by design anthropologists are more Eurocentric than historians since they rely more on patterns and processes [that are identifiable in Europe] as opposed to human agency, environment, and chronology. I think the goal should be to stop putting stock into what geneticists and anthropologists are saying in their silly attempts at constructing history, since that is not their job. www.h-net.org/~africa/africaforum/Vansina.html |
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