*"DNA. code[4]" to "DNA code.[4]" (the period comes before the reference link),
*"DNA. code[4]" to "DNA code.[4]" (the period comes before the reference link),
*"is however a minor" to "is, however, a minor" (this was likely intended to be an appositive, the current punctuation is ambiguous);
*"is however a minor" to "is, however, a minor" (this was likely intended to be an appositive, the current punctuation is ambiguous);
*and, lastly, the information derived from citation [4] seems, to me, to have been improperly interpreted. Without getting into any discussion of what I or anyone else believe to be true, and taking the article to be solid fact, the gist is that it is POSSIBLE for one base pair mutation to result in the opposite skin color (opposite of whatever the base pair had previously indicated, I'm not calling one genotype the "default"). The article says, "The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome," but goes on to mention that "Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations," stating that, in fact, more than one gene controls skin pigmentation. Moving away from the article, one gene to control pigmentation is ridiculous: ignoring blacks versus whites, the mentioned nearly pigment-less European phenotype is different from that of other whites, and is not alterable by increasing melanin production through exposure to the sun (or an equivalent). Stick this type of person in sunlight for a day, and they'll turn pink; not tan, and certainly not black. <small>—The preceding [[Wikipedia:Signyourpostsontalk pages|unsigned]] comment was addedby [[User:KyleP|KyleP]] ([[User talk:KyleP|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/KyleP|contribs]]) 23:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC).</small><!-- HagermanBot Auto-Unsigned -->
*and, lastly, the information derived from citation [4] seems, to me, to have been improperly interpreted. Without getting into any discussion of what I or anyone else believe to be true, and taking the article to be solid fact, the gist is that it is POSSIBLE for one base pair mutation to result in the opposite skin color (opposite of whatever the base pair had previously indicated, I'm not calling one genotype the "default"). The article says, "The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome," but goes on to mention that "Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations," stating that, in fact, more than one gene controls skin pigmentation. Moving away from the article, one gene to control pigmentation is ridiculous: ignoring blacks versus whites, the mentioned nearly pigment-less European phenotype is different from that of other whites, and is not alterable by increasing melanin production through exposure to the sun (or an equivalent). Stick this type of person in sunlight for a day, and they'll turn pink; not tan, and certainly not black. [EDIT: Whoops! Forgot my name!] — [[User:KyleP|KyleP]] 23:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Revision as of 23:29, 22 February 2007
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There are numerous citations in this article that completely lack content. My guess is that these were once second or later invocations of citations given in full earlier in the article, but someone removed the first citation and didn't move the content to the second one. Someone who is working on this article should sort through the history and restore these. The citations in question are the ones with the following names: DSouza, Boulaga, Risch, serre, Shahadah. - Jmabel | Talk01:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I removed latinos as brown latino doesn't mean nothing racially it only means someone from a coutry where a latin laguage is spoken!!. If you meant race mixed Mexicans, write the correct word "mestizos" or mixed —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.232.226.252 (talk • contribs) 28 December 2006.
Replace the Historical section with a couple of links. That would leave an article focused on modern definitions, and other modern viewpoints. All of the historical stuff exists in Race (historical definitions) and Hamitic myth. As written, what might be marginally useful background information dominates. Jd271818:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Superimposition of Eurocentric linguistics
Munto doesn’t mean black peole, it means people just like in Arabic zanj doesn’t mean black, this is a Eurocentric superimposition. i.e. European world view is imposed on African linguistics thus our word for normal people (as we see ourselves, everyone is different from us hence we are normal and they are white) however Europeans have imposed one standard on the world where their world view & perception is suppose to be everyone else’s. Hence people is African languages means "black people" as they see us. All of this is discussed in the linguistics article referenced on this site.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)19:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My brief review says that Bantu is the plural of Muntu (person or man/ people), though if it is not needed for the article, it doesn't need research. Jd271819:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
HalaTruth, can you point me to the referenced article you mentioned above that discusses this issue. Africans do have specific terms for white people. In the languages I understand there are such terms, ie mzungu in Swahili and other lanugages in East Africa. In Luo there are even synonyms, eg. munu (which means white person), or combinations of the words "white" and "person", eg. jo apar or jo mapar. There are certainly innumerable other examples. I am not entirely sure what point the "muntu" reference is meant to illustrate, but it seems somewhat astray.--Ezeu22:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Halaquh seems to be referring to this edit,[1] which seems to turn a sensible statement into nonsense. The original point was well expressed. Now we have the tautological assertion that the majority population of Sub-Saharan Africa is "African". The point of the sentence is to say that the word for person implicitly means what in in English would be called a black person, since there isa a separate term for a whitey. I don't know how true this is, but the point is clear and it has nothing to do with "Eurocentric superimposition". Paul B23:28, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
do not mistranslate words to mean wht europeans think thy r. In Wolof Tumbaa, the word for person is not black person it is person. imposing white thinking on African languages, like zanj means black . again in English it would be person. Mzngi would be white person-BAKA!--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)00:15, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You merely demonstrsate that you did not even understand the original paragraph, and insist on the unhelpful and unsupported claims about "europeans". The original para very clearly stated that the word meant simply person, but pointed out that it was used implicitly to mean a black person because a different term is used for whites - in other words the normative model of a person is black. If you want to argue against that you will have to show that this is not true of actual usage. Paul B00:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
then the correct word would be African people, because indians in Africa, tamils in Africa dont get called "people", and by the def of black people it is an inclusive term.so to avoid confusion, p,s i did understand it. but u did a good job re explaining it--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)00:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
From the above discussions I think we all agree in principal its just probably the wording. I understand the concept might be a little difficult to grasp. I included the information to add a local african perspective. In actual fact the word "african" is from latin and "black" is english. I can imagine before the europeans came to africa, africans would not describe themselves as blacks or even africans for that matter but as people. They would probably identify themselves with their empire, nation, tribe, language etc. When the europeans first set foot on african soil they must have looked odd and their ways strange-thus they were given a different name.
This legacy still remains in some african languages where in conversation, person(muntu) may implicitly mean black person when trying to compare or contrast with a white person(muzungu).
This is not eurocentric because all the words in question are african.
The opposite is in the US where society expects African-Americans to be labelled as so but does demand the same from "european americans". Muntuwandi19:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It still looks like original research to me (the part about "muntu" = implicitly "black person"). If it is true then there must be regional differences in the usage of the term "muntu". A reference would be nice. --Ezeu23:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
if one examines terms for black people in Bantu languages, many are simply derivatives of the word african eg swahili "mwafrika", which obviously entered the language recently after the arrival of europeans. Early africans viewed themselves as "the people" and the outsiders as foreigners(muzungus). This concept was not pejorative on both sides but just the reality of the demographics. Even a white person is a muntu, but if there is need for differentiation he is a muzungu. Interestingly the word "muzungu" has nothing to do with skin color but more with the behaviour of the european explorers.Muntuwandi06:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
External links (add link to Black Peoople)
I think my link should be included on the Black People page of wiki because the website has over 250,000 pages of information 100% of the content is about black people and by black people. The website has been on the internet over 10years. 100% relative to the wiki page content. Same content.
However interesting that website is, Wikipedia is not a link repository, and links to websites that do not add encyclopedic value, however interesting they are, will be deleted. You can rest assured about that. --Ezeu
Statistics Canada
The article currently says that "Statistics Canada uses the term Black as a synonym for African", and uses this webpage as its source for that assertion. Looks like nonsense to me--Ezeu22:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]
The rule on British spellings vs. American spellings is, if I remember correctly, that whichever way an article starts it should remain that way. Recently someone changed a spelling in another article, apparently just thinking that the American spelling was wrong. In that case I had no trouble being sure of which side of the pond the article had started on since I had created that article some time ago.
It would save me a lot of trouble if every article had a note (in "comment" format) at the top stating whether the spelling standard was to be American or British.
I have included a picture of a non-african black person from the south pacific. This article discusses who is "black", therefore pictures are helpful. Any suggestions on this
Find a more photogenic image. Though if we add this image to White people I'd have no problem with it.
An image where the person looks their best, is well lighted, and with a flattering expression on their face. This image represents a group of people. The current image is an excellent example of the right kind of image for this article. (Though, I do wish the Kenyan man was identified by name.)
If I added the homeless frenchmen to white people I know it would be removed for similar reasons.
The legal issues aside, the Wikipedia policy is that we can't use it under fair use if a free equivalent could be created. This article is about black people, and it's clear that photographs of black people can be obtained under a free license. — Matt Crypto14:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I stumbled accross the video of the carteret islands watching cnn. It was interesting because if anyone met the man walking down the street they would assume that he was of recent african descent. His appearance is almost indistinguishable from African people and yet he is not from africa but from thousands of miles away in the pacific. I think it is a good photo for this article in the discussion "who is black". I agree with ezeu, he looks dashing. I suggest we keep the photo until a more "photogenic" photo can be found.
I am also thinking we should re-establish the gallery with pictures of black people from all around the world (Africa, US, Caribbean, latin-america, brazil, europe, oceania). The previous gallery was too USA-centric.
Oprah Winfrey is black by all definitions of the term. According to genetic tests done by PBS' African Lives, she is 89% Sub-Saharan, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian.[1] which means that most of her ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, African-Americans have about an 83% African ancestry.[2]
Barack Obama self-identifies as black and could identify as black or multi-racial by many definitions, some definitions would dispute his right to identify as black because only half of his ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa[3].
Tiger Woods coined the term Cablinasian to describe his ethnicity. He could self-identify as black, Asian, Native American, white, or multi-racial, some definitions would claim that he is not black because only a quarter of his ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa instead of most.
As a child, Michael Jackson fit the dictionary definition of a black person because he was a dark-skinned person whose ancestors come from Africa. As an adult he is no longer dark skinned and thus does not meet the first part of the dictionary definition; however, he is still black according to census.
Nelson Mandela is the only living black person to have ranked among A&E's 100 most influential people of the last 1000 years. [citation needed]
Ideally any images we add should name the person in the photograph. Is it dehumanizing to simply present a series of random nameless people? What do you think? futurebird12:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Adding an image?
What do others here think about adding this image?
I am sorry to see that this page has languished and settled into a torpor of sorts. It could be far more interesting, but the vested interests have driven off all others. It makes me sick to see all the valuable content that has been placed here, then deleted, over and over for months and years. But oh well. I do not think much can be done about it since fevers run so high and each group is so convinced they are correct and no one else should have any input.--Filll21:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion the language of this article is very complicated and could do with some simplication. By reading this article, one would think that only someone with a PHD degree could understand who black people are.Muntuwandi00:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever I tried to simplify the English, I was attacked. This is not rocket science. It is not that complicated. But people want to make it complicated. And certain people have decided they own the term. Unfortunately all the people that feel they own the term "black people" disagree with each other. So, it just devolves into a nightmare. And droves of editors leave. And huge amounts of great material get thrown away. Because who wants to waste time fighting about nonsense when it is of no consequence anyway? It is unappreciated. There are better ways to spend one's time. Too many people with agendas who are too angry. So...I just have given up. Too bad, because this could be a fascinating subject.--Filll01:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you look in the history of the talk page and the article, you will see all kinds of great stuff. Tons of amazing pictures and material. Scientific stuff. Social stuff. Historical stuff. Different views from around the world. Amazing and interesting. However, the subject is too politically charged to allow anyone to write it, except a very few people who have taken ownership of the article off and on. And so, that is what we get. For example, I loved the idea that Jablonski's recent work could be featured here with at least a sentence or two. Nope. Not allowed. I wanted to have some discussion of the science of genetics. Nope. Not allowed. I wanted some discussion of blacks in history around the world. Nope. Not allowed. Discussion of disagreements over definitions? Nope. Not allowed. I wanted a family of pages where all the material could be collected and featured, since we had so much. Nope. Not allowed. Now of course there are tools like RfC etc to settle these, but who wants to get involved with that nightmare? If someone is so angry and determined, let them have it. I dont care. I will work on other pages.--Filll01:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is one of the most objective articles on Wikipedia. This was extremely informative. there may be a few things to touch up- like more clarification about the poltical term Black in the Civil Rights Movement. But for the most part, I though this article really covered everyone's side and the history behind the term very well. Dkceaser02:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)Dkceaser[reply]
Gallery
I am not sure why the gallery even exists. But the current version is awfully large and awfully homogenous. It looks like every person in it is of at least partially Bantu origin. The heading "famous people" is hopelessly POV. Is there a reason to keep it? And if there is, could we get a few (not 16) photos of people from the different groups that this article is claiming may be called Black? Jd271800:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A picture is worth a thousand words-
This article is about black people, not just about Africans or African-Americans that have their own seperate articles. I felt reinstating the gallery would be a good idea particulary if it showed notable people considered Black from each continent or sub-region of the world.Apparently President Bush once asked Brazilian President Cardoso "Do you have blacks too"[2]. Muntuwandi00:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But the current gallery does not show anything close to that variety. Fewer, but more diverse, that would be better. Jd271801:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That was attempted earlier on but we had some controversies regarding using fair use images. My efforts to find free images of black people from the Australia and Oceania region have been thwarted by complicated image laws and policies that only a supreme court judge could understand.Muntuwandi01:43, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If I recall back a few months, there was also a lot of hostility to various images. After a while, it becomes too tedious to fight any more about just nothing. I start to understand why so many have suggested to just AfD this article. It just makes too many people too angry about almost nothing. And it is tiring.--Filll01:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Muntuwandi, if I had only understood your intention in adding that image I might not have given you such a hard time. I thought you were a white supremacist who was trying to make it seem like black people never bother to shave! I rushed to judgment, but in the end, we don't have the copyright for that image. So, let's move on and find one that we do have the copyright for. Maybe we could inquire at some international message boards. I bet someone would want to offer up their picture. But, they have to be photogenic!! :P futurebird20:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was disturbed to see Deeceevoice remove the single best definition of a black person from the article by libeling this professional academic as a racist. Rushton is a professor at one of Canada's top universities and a member of the American Association of Advancement of Sciences. He was recently a guest on CNN's Paula Zahn discussing sex differences in intelligence, so I guess we're going to try to claim he is a sexist too. Rushton has devoted the last 20 years of his illustrious career studying racial differences in behavior, intelligence, brain size, genitalia, DNA, and hormones. His ideas may be provocactive, but there's not a shred of evidence to justify libeling this man as a racist, and even if he were, an unpopular ideology does not justify excluding his views from the article. If that were the case then we should remove all the Afrocentric opinions from the fringe pseudo scholars who are mentioned in the criticism section. It's bad enough that Rushton's widely cited theory was removed from the article. I'm willing to let that slide, but to remove the single best definition of a black person from the article simply by libeling the source is completely unaccepatable. Kobrakid
I suspect this user to be one of several sockpuppets/meatpuppets, namely User:Timelist, User:Editingoprah, User:Gottoupload and User:Kobrakid. This person/people have been trying to peddle this same tired old line, against consensus, for quite some time. They disappeared for a while recently when the going got quite heated, but now they seem to have made a reappearance, presumably thinking that the coast was clear. I think this user is using sockpuppets to try to create the appearence of support for their dubious POV. I think there is and always has been a consensus on this page that people like Rushton, and his ilk are not reliable sources and do not constitue authorities in this field of research, indeed most academics shun people like Rushton because of the overt racism of their conclusions. It is clear that Rushton is not actually a biologist, and so certainly does not constitute an authority for biological definitions anyway. I also think there is no consensus that only people with a recent African origin are considered Black people, which is what the definitions this user included state, these contradict the rest of the article. I am going to look into this group of editors histories and determine if I can get a case of sockpuppetry against them. Alun18:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am not anybody's sockpuppet or meatpuppet and don't appreciate the PC police using the same tired personal attacks to silence a diverse range of view points. Fill has also complained about the PC police removing cited reliable information from the article. How can you speak for what most academics think of Rushton. Anyone who comes to the conclusion that race is a meaningful biological category is smeared by people like you. Well I've had it. Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral in view point and I'm tired of you silencing, smearing, and censoring accomplished academics simply because they don't support your narrow view point. Your charge that Rushton is racist is the most serious violoation of wikipedia's civility rules I've ever seen. Please think about the consequences of your personal attacks as this forum is read by many people. Gottoupload
What do you mean, the personal computer police? Several people think Rushton is rascist and that clearly doesnt even violate civility rules as these apply to editors only. I think people will draw their own conclusions, SqueakBox18:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not true. You're not allowed to use wikipedia as a vehicle to make seroiious career threatening smears against people, regardless of whether they are users or not. This is very very serious. Gottoupload
Before making claims that make you look like an idiot I suggest you check my contribs, Gottoupload. What you just did is incivility, please desist your aggressive attitude. Freedom of speech meansd if we think an academic is rascist we can say so and use this to justify their non inclusion in an article, SqueakBox18:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Freedom of speech used as an excuse to censor Rushton. LOL! If that's not an example of talking out of both sides of one's mouth I don't know what is. In any event I want Rushton in the article because he represents the view that MOST of your ancestors must be from a certain region of the world to be considered black as opposed to the one drop rule cited above and as opposed to the extreme 75% of your ancestors cited by Levin. His more controversial ideas are not being pushed, but his definition represents one view out of many on what it means to be black and in order to build a better encyclopedia, it should be included. Gottoupload
Calling him rascist isnt censoring him and anyway his not being included here would not be censorship. I see he has his own article, it would have been helpful to link to it in the first place. His ideas look very extreme and he hardly comes across as either pro or even balanced abouit black people. I think we shouldnt include this section about him, SqueakBox19:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree we shouldn't include his controversial views in the article and I'll support you in keeping those out, but simply citing a basic textbook definition of a black person that a lot of people agree with makes sense to me. Why the resistance? It's no secret that are many different ways to define a black person and his is no more offensive than any other. There's really no reason for your resistance Gottoupload
Rushton is a quack when it comes to race, and he is a psychologist, not a biologist. His methods were faulty, and his conclusions have been widely criticized by other academics. He promotes what has been called scientific racism. Even the highly-whitewashed J. Philippe Rushton article (and the links on that page) point out that he has an undeniable political agenda. And again, he is not a biologist so should not be cited as an expert on biological matters.~~
You might want to tell the University of Western Ontario and the American accoociation of Advanacement of Sciences and academic journals like Intelligence, Personality & Individual Differences, which regularly publish his work, that he's a quack. Rushton is what's known as a sociobiologist. The article makes clear that biological definitions of blacks are controversial and Rushton is not given undue weight. However it's important to represent the view that MOST of your ancestors must be from sub-Saharan Africa to be black because this view is quite common and not currently represented in the article. Gottoupload
1 white quak out weights the entire African world, this in itself is racism. One White person in Oxford can re classify Ethiopian and khoisan people if and when they want, they can redefine us out of history out of our own identity. Trying using a "black" source and leave the white academics to define white. crazy!--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)15:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2 types of editors
There are 2 types of editors I see in this article. Those that contribute to the article by adding information, and those that narrow the article by removing things. When I added Rushton et al to the article I didn't remove any of the opposing views, I simply added a different perspective not already represented in the article. All views should be heard. Why would anyone want it any other way? Gottoupload
The view that most of your ancestors must be from sub-Saharan Africa to be black is very mainstream. Besides there is no single univerally agreed standard for deciding who is black Gottoupload
Rushton is from Britain and lives in Canada. So the view is obviously mainstream in far more than just America. And I don't think we can argue that just because a certain view-point may be offensive to a certain segment of Australia's population, that therefore the idea should not be permitted to be expressed. I want this article to show the full range of views. Kobrakid
agreed it isnt mainstream at all, just another US POV which the entire world must swallow as reality. another pan-American export. if there is no agreement then we must treat all who are called "black" as equal not give bias to people of African biology.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)23:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The definition was not even created by American, but a British-born South African Canadian. And we're not giving bias to people of African biology, we are simply documenting the existence of this perspective along with extensive criticism. What's the problem? You want a one sided article? If black people come to this article trying to get a broad perspective on how black people are viewed and defined, we are doing them a disservice by excluding a whole branch of opinion in this area Kobrakid
Did I say the view should not be presented? What the article does need to say, is that mainstream or not, this view is limited in scope, and that other black people exist. This is an encyclopedia, not a mouthpiece, and the article should take a broader position than that of the people whose views are presented.Trishm21:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Viva la difference
To me what makes the article fascinating is the diversity in view points. I think it's interesting that some people define black people as anyone descended from an equatorial region of the world, others are a little more narrow and limit black people to those from Africa, and some are more narrow still and limit black people to only those from sub-Saharan Africa. But then regardless of which of these 3 camps you fall into, another debate runs parallel. How much black ancestry does one need to be black? Is any known black ancestry enough as the one drop rule suggests? Do MOST of your ancestors have to be black as Rushton suggests? Or is do almost ALL of your ancestors have to be black as Michael levin and Brazilian culture suggests. These types of disagreements are what makes the article fascinating so I don't understant the resistance to including this diverse range of opinion. Gottoupload
When I edit capitalization I get gallery etc, something is wrong with the formatting and needs to be fixed. ic ant figure out how to myself, SqueakBox20:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After some digging, I found that all three supposed experts in the Biological section - Michael Levin, J. Phillipe Rushton, and Sally Satel - are not biologists (Levin's a philosopher, Rushton is a psychologist and Satel is a psychiatrist), and all three have blatant right wing political agendas. Levin is anti-gay, has written for right wing libertarian publications, and has spoken at events for the white separatistAmerican Renaissance (magazine). Rushton is the head of the anti-immigrant and racist Pioneer Fund. Satel wrote a book against political correctness and doesn't think social justice should be a part of the medical field. Considering all three support only one side of the issue, and none of them have the academic credentials to speak on biological topics, I suggest deleting all three - at least until credible sources (i.e. actual biologists) are introduced into the section. Spylab22:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And don't get me started on the likes of Dinesh D'Souza -- a self-loathing, true-believing, far-right right-wing brown-skinned East Indian. deeceevoice04:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What does being anti-gay have to do with anything? So only people who are socially progressive are allowed to have an opion. I thought liberals were supposed to be against fascism yet here you are promoting it. Who says the Pioneer-Fund is antigay and anti-immigrant? Rushton was asked to be in charge of it only because he's the most credible scholar on the race realist perspective. Rushton himself has repeatedly denied that he or his ideas are in any way racist and his been backed by eminent biologists such as E.O. Wilson. As for Satel, once agin who cares if Satel is against political correctness. The very fact that Satel takes the concept of race seriously proves Satel is against political correctness. I find it very disturbing and very fascist that you are trying to exclude reliable cited scholarly sources from the article on ideological grounds. And your argument that thye must all be biologists to be cited is equally desperate. First of all, Rushton is a sociobiologist which is the most well suited field for this discussion. Second, insisting that they all be biologists to be cited for biological definitions would be like insisting that everyone cited in the sociopolitical section be a professional sociologist. Absurd. Without the biological definitions the article is extremely unbalanced. We have an entire section following it blasting these definitions as racist and too narrow by scholars (or pseudoscholars) of much lesser reputation, yet we're not allowed to include the definitions themselves. The fact of the matter is these definitions exist, they're actually very mainstream, and trying to exclude them from the article as if they don't exist is a disservice to the reader. Kobrakid
This is an example of why this article is a sad parody of itself. And why so many other editors have given up on it. Aggressive attacks between the 5 or 6 major viewpoints has just discouraged anyone with anything constructive to add. And in fact there is aggressive disinterest in having a suite of articles to explore this area fully. It just makes me amazed.--Filll17:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is indeed amazing. I'm with you, Fill. All major viewpoints MUST be represented including the view point that Blacks are a biologically meaningful race defined exclusively by being mostly of sub-Saharan African descent. Wobble wants this view censored because he's pushing the POV that race is a meaningless concept and he pushes this POV in several articles. Deeceevoice is trying to censor this view because it conflicts with her agenda that ancient Egyptians were black or that the great civilizations of South Asia were black. Again we have a bunch of editors who are more concerned with protecting their respective agendas than writing a thorough balanced article. It's a horrible abuse of wikipedia. Kobrakid
I'm not sure who you're calling aggressive, or which side of the argument you are taking, but having the entire biological section made up of views by white right-wing racist (or borderline racist) political activists, who aren't even biologists or geneticists, doesn't seem to be fulfilling the goal of having diversity of views. As for Kobrakid's rant, obviously he has an specific political agenda that he wants to promote in the article and on the talk page, and he doesn't seem interested in providing neutral facts backed up by reliable sources (nor in discussing these matters in a civil or intelligent manner). Spylab17:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely agree with Spylab. But I would go a step further. I would maintain that it is impossible to have a "biological" section and would remove it all together. This article is not about a "race", it is not about any single biological population, it is not about any population from a single part of the world. This article is about "Black people", people in North America may have a parochial view of what it means to be Black, that is that one needs to have a recent African ancestry, but this does not apply universally to all Black people. Just because a definition is true for North America does not make it true for any other part of the world. It is therefore impossible to biologically define Black people. Black people are Black because of the colour of their skin, some people who are Black come from Africa, some come from Australia or other parts of the world, these groups of people do not represent closely related populations. What they do have in common is social, in that they are discriminated against because of their skin colour. I would support the inclusion of a section that discusses the historical exploitation of various groups of Black people by White people all over the world, I think this would make for a much better section than a pseudo-scientific section about "biology". This has got bugger all to do with biology. The only important thing we can say about biology is that all humans are biologically very similar and are all part of the same subspecies. Anything else is parochial, and this is not US or North American Wikipedia. I would also point out that the sock/meat puppets User:Timelist, User:Editingoprah, User:Gottoupload and User:Kobrakid seem to want to push a far right racist point of view against the consensus on this page. At the least they are editing against consensus, at the most they are a group of meatpuppets (or a sockpuppet) who are trying to make an artificial consensus for a racist point of view to be included on this page. Either of these is a clear breach of wikipedia policy. This sock/meat puppet group disappeared from wikipedia mysteriously a little while ago when I told them that I planned to report them for this exact same behaviour. Well I'm going to check their user histories and file a complaint at Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets. I'm sad because I've never done anything like this before in nearly two years, and I've met some pretty obnoxious people in that time, and I had hopped never to have to get any other editor blocked, but it is impossible with people who seem to be just so intransigent. Alun17:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The stuff from Rushton needs to be cropped to one sentence at best, he is not a main stream or accepted source. Giving him undue prominence is unbalenced.
Alun You make some great points I support removing the biological definitions section from this article. That solves the problem of Rushton too. futurebird02:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Alun can rationize all he wants and he can make all the personal attacks that he wants. The fact of the matter is that we three reliable sources (one of them a sociobiologist at a top university and a member of American Association of Advancement of Sciences) all claiming that the blacks are biologically meaningful category defined by having most of your ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, and all Wobble can do is come up with one lame excuse after another to censor this information because it doesn't conform to the political agenda he's pushing in a multitude of articles. The biolical view is real, it's extensively documented, and no one who is interested in providing a complete view on this subject to the reader would try to remove it. It's clear that Alun and others have strong ideological views on this subject and they are allowing it to cloud their respect for wikipidea NPOV policy. I've seen editors write articles in a biased way but the total removal of an entire school of thought backed and documented by several scholars is the most disgusting display of fascist censorship I have ever seen. Kobrakid
The fact of the matter is that we three reliable sources
No there aren't. These sources are certainly not reliable, they are neo-nazi racist scum. No respectable encyclopaedia would include their spurious nazi claims in an article about Black people. Youl be damanding that we cite Mein Kampf next or March of the Titans as Dark Tea has on White people. Alun16:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sidenote: to be fair, I wouldn't describe them as neo-Nazis without evidence from a reliable source. In fact, Leven is a Jew, and his Wikipedia article says he stopped his relationship with American Renaissance after he got fed up with the anti-Semitism of many of those involved with that magazine. However, his Jewishness does not preclude him from being racist against non-whites and bigoted against other groups such as gays and feminists (as his article points out) Spylab16:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It has been clearly explained why those three non-biologists/non-geneticists cannot be considered reliable sources on the topic of the biological/genetic definition of black people. Their credentials do not qualify them as experts on that topic. Their work on that subject come under the description of academic racism and scientific racism. Those three non-experts do not qualify as reliable sources under Wikipedia guidelines. Spylab16:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rushton is considered a reliable source on race by the University of Western Ontario and is a member of the American Association of Advancement of Sciences. Anyone who takes race seriously is immediately stigmatized as a scientific racist so your claim means nothing, but if the article is to be NPOV we must show this perspective as long as we do so in a balanced way. Kobrakid
Anyone who takes race seriously is immediately stigmatized as a scientific racist
This is nonsense, I have read a number of serious scientific papers about race recently.[3][4][5][6][7][8] The thing is that Rushton is not interested in "race", his fantasies revolve arround trying to show that there are real and measurable differences in the intellects of different human groups. He is actually interested in Eugenics and not "race", in this he is frighteningly similar to the nazis. Indeed much as Rushton thinks that some races are superior to others, the nazis believed that Germans were superior to Russians, and actually believed that science proved it. Well we all know what the "inferior" Russians did to Paulus's Sixth Army at thr Battle of Stalingrad and later did to Berlin. Indeed Rushton's his "definition" of Black is extremelly odd. For example In both everyday life and evolutionary biology, a 'Black' is anyone most of whose ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa, well it may be news to Rushton, but all of us have ancestors exclusively born in sub-Saharan Africa. Or this a Negroid is someone whose ancestors, between 4,000 and (to accommodate recent migrations) 20 generations ago, were born in sub-Saharan Africa, well I am British, the southern part of Great Britain was part of the Roman Empire for over 300 years, the first African people to come to Britain came at this time, no one in Britain can claim absolutelly that they do not have an African ancestor from between 4,000 and 20 generations ago because if they did they would be lying, the truth is we no one really knows. On a related note, in his book "Blood of the Isles" the geneticist Bryan Sykes claims to have encountered a Scottish woman who had mitochondrial DNA of recent sub-Saharan African origin. This woman was not aware of any African ancestry in her family. Sykes postulates that she may be the descendant of an African woman who came to Britain at the time of the Romans. According to Rushton, this woman is "a Negroid". And anyway this article is not about what Rushton calls "Negroid" people, it is about Black people. Rushton's definitions are not only not biological, they make no sense. Alun17:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wobble I find it very disappointing that you would compare Rushton to a nazi. Not only are you incapable of refraining from incredibly libelous personal attacks against other people, but you are minimizing the seriousness of the Holocaust when you toss such loaded rhetoric around so casually. Rushton has no interest in eugenics. Rushton is an eminent sociobiologist studying the world around him. Simply because you are offended by his conclusion that peoples of predominantly sub-Sahran descent are sexually more endowed on average to Whites and North East Asians gives you no right to libel him as a nazi. Such behavior is way beneath the standards of wikipedia’s discourse. Rushton does not make the simplistic argument that some races are superior to others. Indeed he claims that each of these broad groupings is perfectly, beautifully adapted to its own ancestral environment.
None of your arguments hold upon scruitiny. Of course ALL of us have ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa. All of us have ancestors that were born in the ocean if you go back far enough. You’re just trying to confuse the issue. It’s obvious that Rushton is talking about recent ancestry. And of course virtually all of us have some recent African ancestry if we analyzed our family trees closely enough. That’s the whole reason definitions like Rushton and Levin fill a void in the article. Rushton emphasizes that most of ones ancestors must be of sub-Saharan extraction while Levin goes further requiring 75%+ ancestry.
Rushton uses terms like Black and Negroid interchangeably. Negroid is a modified version of “Negro” which means black in Spanish and Negro is synonymous with black person according to many dictionaries.
Rushton’s definition is simple, clearly worded and to the point, and speaks to how millions of people conceptualize black people. Anyway you look at it, a professor from a respected university who is a member of the American Association of Advancement of Sciences, and has published in many peer reviewed highly respected academic journals is a reliable enough source to be briefly cited for a basic definition. We have an entire section devoted to criticizing Rushton’s perspective on what it means to be black, so we need to document the perspective itself. Kobrakid
Quit throwing around loaded words like "eminent" and creditials that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. You're not fooling anyone. Rushton, Leven and Satel aren't biologists or geneticists, and are not credible experts on the supposed biological/genetic definition of blackness. Rushton is a psychology professor, Levin is a philosphy professor and Satel is a psychiatrist. And you are wrong that he has no interest in eugenics. Look at his article and follow the link to the group he is the head of. Finally, millions of people do not use Rushton's definition of blackness. Most people define a person's status as black or white by sight (and maybe accent) alone.Spylab00:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not only are you incapable of refraining from incredibly libelous personal attacks against other people,
Firstly it's an opinion. I'm entitled to an opinion, ppinions are not libelous. You are a hypocrite, you claim that you support "freedom of speech", but apparently this only applies to your opinions, and not to the oppinions of those who disagree with you. Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
you are minimizing the seriousness of the Holocaust when you toss such loaded rhetoric around so casually
I never even mentioned the Holocaust. You are putting words into my mouth now. The fact is that Rushton seems to hold the same opinions as the nazis, that certain people are "inferior" to other people. it's not rocket science, work it out for yourself. If it looks like a dog and barks like a dog, chances are it's a dog. Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Simply because you are offended by his conclusion that peoples of predominantly sub-Sahran descent are sexually more endowed on average to Whites
Eh? Where do I say this? This is your fantasy not mine. Again you are claiming I have said something I have not. What is your problem, you caim tha I am "libeling" someone, then you state that I have made statements that I clearly have not. If you want to criticise what I say, that is fair enough, but you are not, you are attacking me for things I certainly haven't said. This is just daft. I'm not offended by what Rushton says, I just think it's crap. It's not scientific and it has no basis in reality, just like the "science" of the nazis had no basis in reality. Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Such behavior is way beneath the standards of wikipedia’s discourse.
Eh? Piffle, I am entitled to thnk this is not a reliable source. I am entitled dispute this gibberish masquerading as research. What is below the standards of any reliable dictionary is the inclusion of pseudo-scientific racist claptrap. Go and use it fr a cite on the racism article where it belongs. But it doesn't belong here. Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Of course ALL of us have ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa. All of us have ancestors that were born in the ocean if you go back far enough. You’re just trying to confuse the issue.
No I'm not, I'm showing categorically that Rushton's definitions don't make any sense. He defines "Negroid" in one way and he defines a Black person in another. Neither of these definitions is actually very good, a Black person, he claims only needs a majority African ancestry, so that would be every human then. A "Negroid" he claims needs to have ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa from 4,000 to 20 generations ago, actually this means from 100,000-500 years ago given a 25 year generation span, well there must be millions of indigenous Europeans who have an African ancestry from this time (it's a massive time scale), but who just are not aware of it, gene flow between populations has been extensive, like it or not. Many of the proper scientific papers that I show above indicate the massive amount of gene flow between so called "races", we are not, and have never been, discrete non-interbreeding populations. Humanity, by it's nature, is promiscuous. These definitions seem to be the ones he uses in his book, all well and good, his book may display internal consistency in that he always uses Black person to mean someone with majority recent African ancestry, this does not necessarily make it a suitable definition for this article because whereas he seems to be only interested in Black people from North America, and so takes a parochial point of view, this article is not about Black people in North America, that article would be African American. I suggest you go there to spout your racism. His definition of "Negroid" is irrelevant as this article is not about "Negroid" Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rushton emphasizes that most of ones ancestors must be of sub-Saharan extraction
Rushton uses terms like Black and Negroid interchangeably.
Then why do we have 'very different definitions for them. This is just plain wrong, academics do not give different definitions for concepts if they intend to use them interchangeably. Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
is a reliable enough source to be briefly cited for a basic definition
Actually he is not. If you actually knew anything about this subject at all, you would know three important and fundamental facts, all of which are covered extensively in the papers I link to above. Firstly there is no generally accepted definition of race (or subspecies), or of what constitutes a race (or subspecies) in the field of biology, let alone any defined races. Secondly most definitions of race are ultimately social and not biological. Thirdly there are many biological definitions of subspecies (that is race), the human species does not display any of the necessary biological diversity to be taxonomically categorised on the subspecific level. Hence we are all Homo sapiens sapiens, the third designation would be different if we were biologically recognised as "races" or subspecies. Given that we are not, there is in actual fact no general recognition in the science of biology of any human racial groups. There are however social races. Rushton's definitions do not even constitute biological definitions. His definitions are based on ancestry and not biology (and none of us knows our ancestry, even if some people think that they do). A biological definition would be based either on physical appearance (Phenotype, the traditional method for taxonomy) or on genetic differences (Genotype a more modern method for taxonomy). Neither of Rushton's definitions fit these criteria. And to repeat because you seem to be unable to understand this very simple point this article is about the term Black people, it is not only about people of African descent.Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rushton’s definition is simple, clearly worded and to the point,
section devoted to criticizing Rushton’s perspective on what it means to be black,
I am not against a section about how Black peoples from all over the world have been discriminated against by White people, or have suffered racism from apparently biased and very stupid "academics" (sic). Alun06:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yet these sources are considered mainstream?
I find it truly amazing that people have problems with allowing Rushton (a sociolobiologist, top university professor, and member of the American Association for Advancement of Sciences)provide a brief definition in the article, yet look at all the undue weight given to the following pseudo scolars:
There are objections to the standard definitions of black people, as well as criticism of the term itself.
Cultural writer and filmmaker Owen 'Alik Shahadah says "as a political term it was fiery and trendy but never was it an official racial classification of peoples who have a 120,000 year old history. Indians are from India, Chinese from China. There is no country called Blackia or Blackistan. Hence, the ancestry-nationality model is more respectful and accurate: African-American, African-British, African-Brazilian, and African-Caribbean." 'Alik Shahadah also objects that "in addition, because it is a term placed on us, we have no bases for its control, and hence they are able to say; 'Ancient Egyptians weren't black.' Black has no meaning; except the meaning they place on it, if and when they chose."[5]
Owen 'Alik Shahadah states "the notion of some invisible border, which divides the North of African from the South, is rooted in racism, which in part assumes that a little sand is an obstacle for African people. This barrier of sand hence confines/confined Africans to the bottom of this make-believe location, which exist neither politically or physically". Shahadah argues that the term sub-Saharan Africa is a product of European imperialism, "Sub-Saharan Africa is a byword for primitive African: a place, which has escaped advancement. Hence, we see statements like 'no written languages exist in Sub-Saharan Africa.' 'Egypt is not a Sub-Saharan African civilization.'[5]
Activist Nirmala Rajasingam considers most standard definitions of black too narrow: "It was a failure because it divided the Black community into its constituent parts.. into Jamaican or Punjabi or Sri Lankan Tamil and so on, rather than build up Black unity.. But you know, there are young Asians who would like to call themselves Black, but the African youth will say 'You are not Black, you are Asian. We are Black'. Similarly, there are young Asians who will say 'We are not Black, we are Asian.'. So it has all become diluted and depoliticized."[6]
Lewis R. Gordon (Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought at Temple University) says "Not all people who are designated African in the contemporary world are also considered black anywhere. And similarly, not all people who are considered in most places to be black are considered African anywhere. There are non-black Africans who are descended from more than a millennia of people living on the African continent, and there are indigenous Pacific peoples and peoples of India whose consciousness and life are marked by a black identity".[7]
Psychiatrist Ikechukwu Obialo Azuonye says "being dark skinned is a widespread phenomenon which does not define any specific group of human beings. The tendency to reserve the designation black to sub-Saharan Africans and people of their extraction is manifestly misinformed".[8]
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop also feels that the standard conceptions of black people fall short, stating: "There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."[9]
I'm not sure if all of those people are reliable sources, but note that those people are talking about cultural and historical definitions of blackness, not biological or genetic definitions. Culture is not a science, and there are many different opinions about the sociopolitical definition of specific racial/ethnic groups. When it comes to controversial scientific topics, only people qualified to talk about science should be used as sources. Spylab16:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rushton is a member of the American Association of Advancement of Science so I think he's qualified to talk about science. Kobrakid
According to the American Association of Advancement of Science website, anyone can join that group if they pay the membership fees, to that does not count as a qualification. Sorry, try again.[9]Spylab00:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
biology means biology, if it is a biological definition then the people talking about it must be experts in biology. imagine if Noam chomsky as expert as he is started giving biological def for black people? a critic of the general term is one thing but to offer biological definitions is a specific thing. U need a genetic person to talk about genetics, someone who understand genetics.skylab is correct on th epoint cultural opinions or politics isnt an imperical science. --HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)19:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In an effort to reach compromise I moved the definitions to a new section called race realism definitions so they wouldn't be confused with genetic authorities. My goal is simply to show the full range of definitions of what it means to be black. Not everyone usese arbitrary social criteria or self-identification. Some people believe being black is based on genes, not social constructions, and this view should be documented in the interest of creating a fuller article. Kobrakid
Then that would be better but to use the word biology makes it seem like an serious study and we all know there is no biological Black race. and it shouldnt be a collection of racist opinions "black people are close to the apes" like what Darwin and friends would say.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)19:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well it may be your POV that there's no biological race but a lot of scholars would disagree with you. I'm not interested in opening that can of worms, so let's stick to what's best for the article and keep our personal POVs out of it. If you read the section I did my best to make it clear that race realists are outside the mainstream and are not endorsed by biologists. In any event we have a whole section criticising the hell out of race realists so we need to document the perspective, otherwiese when you read the criticism, it's hrad to know what view point they're criticising. Kobrakid
Excuse me for coming on hard, but the thought of going through this crap again displeases me. Quoting Rushton is equivalent to using Ann Coulter as a prominent reference in the Kwanzaa article, or (if you still do not get the point), allowing a well educated klan member (on the basis that the concerned klan member is well-known) to claim that "niggers are monkeys". What is the difference? Should every stupid opinion be included merely for the sake of balance? Perhaps yes, but there are (or should be) limits. What annoys me most is that Kobrakid (and company) probably do not intend it, but succeed so well in disrupting this article.--Ezeu20:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well there's a big difference between Rushton and Anne Coulter. Rushton is a serious scholar who publishes in peer reviewed academic journals. Rushton is a professor at one of Canada's top universities. Rushton is a member of the American Association of Advancement of Sciences. Rushton is treated as an expert on CNN and Rushton's book was well reviewed by the New York Times. Further, Rushton only became controversial when he released a study claiming black men had larger penises than White men, and much larger penises than East Asian men. But he's not being quoted based on such controversial views. We are only quoting him to represent the view that you need to have most of your ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa to be black. This is an enormously common view about what it means to be black, so I don't see the problem with having a tiny section devoted to it, especially since we have an ENORMOUS section disputing it. Simply put, Rushton is the best source I know of that represents this major view point, and the article would be incomplete without that view point being represented. As for the claim that black people are monkeys. That's an extremely fringe view. Less than 1 in a 1000 people would seriously entertain that view and you would not find a scholary source in any area supporting it. But the view that most of your ancestors must be from sub-Saharan Africa to be black? That's actually a very middle of the road view. In fact in Latin of America they would go further and say ALL of your ancestors must be from sub-Saharan Africa to be black and call many of America's blacks mulattoes. Kobrakid
You were making a good case, and I was rather agreeing with you until you started going on about monkeys. Isn't it rather obvious that my reference to monkeys was meant as a rhetorical device? If Rushton's conclusions are so obviously astute, shouldnt his conclusions also have been made by at least other scholar? In which case shouldnt there be someone else less contentious to quote? --Ezeu21:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer to quote someone less controversial than Rushton, but it's very difficult to find cited definitions of what a black person is (aside from basic dictionary definitions) so I'm reluctant to delete Rushton until we can find a replacement making the same point. I guess your probably thinking if Rushton's definition is so mainstream it should be easy to find another but the reality is people seldom explain in words what they mean by a black person. It's one of those terms that's implicitly understood but seldom discussed in a formal way. In fact the reason there has been so much debate in this article is because we have so few reliable sources to cite. But the reason I know Rushton's definition is mainstream is because it's so middle of the road. On the one hand you have many Americans saying if ANY of your ancestors are black you are black, but then you have Latin America going to the opposite extreme and saying if ANY of your ancestors are not black, you are NOT black. Rushton's right in the middle of the road by saying most of your ancestors must be from sub-Saharan Africa. He's essentially saying the same thing as the U.S. census map says however he's being clear about how much African ancestry you need so it's very easy for mixed race people to decide if they're black or not and giving us an alternative to the extremes of the one drop rule and Latin America's reverse one drop rule. He's a moderate common sense voice on the question of where to draw the racial line. Kobrakid
content first, he pales in comparison to Hume and Kant and look at the madness they wrote on Africans. The content must drive the debate not who?, who must be 2nd.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)21:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I dont know this Rushton charecter, but you are dead on point because i edit on Kwanzaa and i know the point you just said about Ann Coulter and we deleted her silly opinions in 2sec flat. see wiki policy on extream sources, hence famous, well know means nothing if you are a know racist. --HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)20:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But when you start deleting people because someone claims they are racist you're on a very slippery slope. For example we cite a lot of Afrocentric people in this article. Not only are they not in most cases considered serious scholars by any university, but you could probably make the case that most of these people are racist against Whites. Do I advocate they be deleted? Hell no. They represent a movement, a school of thought, and the reader will get an incomplete understanding of the topic without reading the perspective they bring to the debate. Kobrakid
Huge difference between Rushton and David Duke. First of all Rushton is a SCHOLARLY source and wikipedia considers scholarly sources to be the best sources of all to use. Second Rushton is not a racist. Sure people who disagree with his views have accused him of being racist, but Rushton himself denies that he or his ideas are in any way racist and there's no documentation of him ever saying anything racist. By contrast Duke was a member of the Ku Klux Klan Kobrakid
Duke was a member of the Ku Klux Klan which is a racist organization. Rushton is a professor at a prestigous university in a country with strict laws against racism. In the U.S. people are free to have racist opinions but in Canada there are strict laws against hate literature and Rushton had to be cleared by the Royal Canadian Mounty Police to prove that none of his thoughts or ideas are in any way racist. Rushton's whole career depends on him not being racist because he studies the races as an objective scientist. In order to do that you have to be neutral and can't bring any preconcived bias to your studies. Rushton is far too intelligent to be a racist. Although Rushton believes the races do differ genetically in many important ways, he insists that these are only average differences and much smaller than the racists actually believe. Rushton is intelligent enough to know that nearly the full range of human traits and abilities is present in all races and that there's ENORMOUS variation within the races. Rushton also believes that white people are less intelligent on average than Orientals which is the opposite of a white supremacist. Kobrakid
your argument has nothing to do with him being a racist, he goes to nice UNI dinner parties, you have however proven, he gets paid, he is popular, he like all racist denies being racist, he is intellegent, kant and david hume were intellegent as well, mayb he isnt duke, but that makes him worst because people then take him seriously, while he makes even more dangerous and harder to spot racist statements. i really dont care where he puts "orientals" in his little world, the irony is the African is at the bottom. we all know US academia has a legacy of racist academia, naturally most Europeans disagree with this view, an association of pretigious racist is still racist--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ)22:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This article is about black people. In order to discuss black people intelligently we have to cite scholarly sources explaining who black people are. So far all the sources are from the social constructionist camp. They believe that being black is simply a matter of self-identification and such standards vary from culture to culture so in one cultuire Halle Berry is black, in another culture she is white, in another culture she is mulattoe. That's a valid view but it's a little too wishy washy for me and showing that view and that view alone makes the article incomplete because millions of people believe that race is a valid biological concept and that depending on where most of your ancestors are from you are either white, black, Oriental etc and that it doesn't matter how you self-identify or what culture you live in. All that matters is your DNA. Rushton is the most scholarly proponent of this view point I know of. Most proponents of this view are going to be labelled as racist because they believe race exists and are probably studying races in their profession and that makes them by definition extremely politically incorrect. Perhaps there's a less controversial source out there somewhere but for now let's stick with Rushton because we're not quoting him saying anything controversial (just a simple definition) and straightforward definitions of black people are so difficult to find that I'd like to document all of them (unless it's something really offensive). Kobrakid
Good. I congratulate him. Point remains that Wikipedia is not a forum to promote Rushton's racialist views. The place to mention his fringe views is (if at all) in an article titled Rushton's opinions or equivalent. --Ezeu23:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll repeat a few points and expand on them because they may have been missed among the many comments on this page, and Kobrakid keeps repeating certain talking points that need to be shot out of the water: quit throwing around loaded words like "eminent" and creditials that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. You're not fooling anyone. Rushton is a psychology professor, so that's what the university pays him to do, and that's what he may be considered an expert in (although he may have strange ideas in that field too; I haven't looked into it). Also, according to the American Association of Advancement of Science website, anyone can join that group if they pay the membership fees, so membership does not give anyone special credentials.[10] Sorry, try again. Also the term "race realism" or "race realist" are weasel words that imply that certain views are realistic and correct, when the evidence may show otherwise. Finally, does anyone know how to take this to arbitration? An administrator should make a final ruling verifying that Rushton et al aren't reliable sources according to Wikipedia guidelines. Spylab00:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Two things we can do I think. We can open an RfC here on the talk page regarding the inclusion of facist sources. Or we can open an RfC on Kobrakid and POV pushing. POV pushing and editing against consensus are serious breaches of wikipedia policy. If we opened an RfC about his/her behaviour we can get the wider Wikipedia community involved to scrutinise his/her behviour and the community would decide if there is a case to answer. I've seem RfC's opened about editors for far less than this blatant POV pushing. This user is clearly has a right wing racist agenda to push and is not interested in creating a balanced encyclopaedia, but wants to create some sort of platform for the white supremacist movement. I would say this is a clear attempt to damage the credibility of Wikipedia, and therefore it constitutes complex vandalism. Maybe we should start with an RfC on the talk page. Alun07:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Request for Comment
Do we need a section regarding "Biological definitions" for Black people? Certain editors feel that only people of a recent African origin are Black, and would therefore like to include a "biological definition"/"racial definition" section that states that Black people are always of recent African ancestry (this is in fact an ancestral definition). Other editors feel that this is a North American point of view, and that the term Black people includes many different groups of dark skinned people that are not all of recent African origin, and do not represent closely related descendants from a recent discrete single population. This group would like the "Biological definitions" section removed altogether, and the article to include a broader perspective. Alun08:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am in concert with the latter group. My opinions and contributions in this regard are on record in earlier versions of the article and on the article talk page. As an international enterprise, Wikipedia should reflect a broader notion of "black people" than is represented here. I left this article in disgust after several of my adequately sourced, documented edits repeatedly were block-reverted without any attempt at justification by those refusing to accept anything but an extremely narrow definition of the term. deeceevoice08:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Hi. By "biological definitions", are you referring to the subsection under section 2? That subsection seems well-balanced and fair-handed; it seems both sides are given their due (albeit in a rather cursory manner.) What precisely is wrong with it? .V. -- (TalkEmail)08:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While the section about biology (excluding the definitions for descent by the three non-biologists) is OK (and I wrote most of it) I doubt it's relevance, it is a general observation about "race", it is not really about Black people.Alun11:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The alternative versions (part 1) are not biological definitions, and refer to a colloquial usage of the term Black people, rather than the broader scope of this article. Alun11:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not needed or Should stress problems - I do not feel such a section is needed. If present it should begin with historical attempts to define race biologically and then compare and contrast them to present efforts by small, widely criticized groups in the scientific community.futurebird13:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why should
why should brown people (Punjabi, Tamils,.. Indians in generell) be mentioned in the black people article when Nirmala Rajasingham thinks she's (we are) black? her voice is not more important than that of any other SouthAsian. Just because she's in some way "famous"?? If I say; I think we Indians are all from Antarctica and write a book about it, does is make it true?....No.
Thats her POV, and shouldn't matter about the definition of black people.****Asian2duracell00:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)****[reply]
U could use that argument for every single citation in wiki, then what would be the point, if she said that then it is valid as a critic. most statements including yours are a POV, it is your take on you being brown, some say there is no brown race, some say there is no black race--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)00:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Black is a social contruction, you dont need to study race to make the statement she made. Diop, Shahadah, and the other guys definately dont represent all Black people, actually ones says he dont support the term. so your argument for exclusion isnt valid. Her statement is valid on content as well. Black identity was born out of the civil rights, and in the UK Indians are called BLACK. in South Africa they were called Black.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)00:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Indians are called "brown" or "Asian" in UK and in most African countries. Where u get that Idea from we get called black? Black is a social contruction... yes absolutely, like "white" is or like "brown" is. you dont need to study race to make the statement she made.. yess I dont need to study to make MY statement either. doesnt mean I'm right. Black identity was born out of the civil rights.. once more ur right. But It was In the USA. What has India to do with Us-domestic policy?
This is a perfect example of what an awful mess this article is, of conflicting angry agendas of authors who are not able to take a global encyclopedic view. Which is why I do not help any longer. You are free to tear each other to shreds angry and bitter. Good luck.--Filll00:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why are extremist non-scholary sources like Miss Rajasingam allowed in the article while scholary academic sources like these were forced out of the article:
According to Michael Levin "Ordinary speakers acquainted with the out-of-Africa scenario are most charitably construed as intending 'Negroid' to denote individuals whose ancestors 15 to 5000 generations ago (with Harris & Hey, 1999, counting a generation as 20 years) were sub-Saharan African...Hybrid populations with multiple lines of descent are to be characterized in just those terms: as of multiple descent. Thus, American Negroids are individuals most of whose ancestors from 15 to 5000 generations ago were sub- Saharan African. Specifying 'most' more precisely in a way that captures ordinary usage may not be possible. '> 50%' seems too low a threshold; my sense is that ordinary attributions of race begin to stabilize at 75%.[10] University of Western Ontario professor J. Phillipe Rushton states "a Negroid is someone whose ancestors, between 4,000 and (to accommodate recent migrations) 20 generations ago, were born in sub-Saharan Africa.[11]
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Sally Satel of the Policy Review stated “The entities we call ‘racial groups’ essentially represent individuals united by a common descent — a huge extended family, as evolutionary biologists like to say. Blacks, for example, are a racial group defined by their possessing some degree of recent African ancestry (recent because, after all, everyone of us is out of Africa, the origin of Homo sapiens).[11]
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Page 42 of the abridged version of "Race, Evolution, and Behavior" states: "In both everyday life and evolutionary biology, a 'Black' is anyone most of whose ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa[12]
And just so you know, Indians in South Africa were called colored not black Iseebias
I tried to make this article more inclusive of a wider range of viewpoints from around the world and to have a family of articles that explored this. I tried to make room for scientific material as well as cultural and social material. However, the agenda of a certain class of Black Americans did not match with this, and the angry edit warring and visciousness among the black americans of disagreeing views, and between black americans and all others just became unbearable. And many good people have been chased away over the months and years. And if you look in the histories, you will see huge volumes of material has been flushed down the toilet as well. All so a tiny group can act like jerks and bullies. --Filll01:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. The article is total garbage. It gives huge weight to unscholarly extremist opinions that make it sound like Gandhi was a black man, but wont allow mainstream scholarly opinions like Sally Satel to have any voice at all. The article's a total joke. Iseebias
In most of Colonial Britian many people who were not African were called black. Black is a word used for non-White people, in the Black History month in the UK it is used to included Indians, and even Jewish issues. this article reflects all def of black some you may agree with and some you may disagree with. Ghandi was called Black by White South Africans (Black Bast you know the rest, thats what he was called), the Austrailian poeple were called Black by white settlers. Arabs are called Sand N&&g by American whites. Clearly Blackness is not limited to Africa, actually Hausa, Fulani, Amhara etc etc do not call themselves black, Somali people in the UK have a special box called Somali they do not tick the Black box, while Ethiopians do. so respect it isnt a "black and white" issue.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)02:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But the article does not include all definitions. the definitions by Sally Satel and others were removed because they didn't fit the POV of the bullies who dominate this board. Put those definitions back if you truly believe in a plural article. But if you guys continue to remove definitions that don't fit your POV, expect others to do the same to your definitions. Iseebias
Well i dont know about that but they should be included, I know the biological stuff got chopped because Biology is a science and if these people are ranting about Sub-Saharan genetics that is false science especially if they arent into genetics. Politics and social defs should be included. everyone is a scholar and they might be a scholar in genes but not understand race, many of these white academics are know racist. But i will look at the comments and see why they were deleted because plurality is better.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)02:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This person is giving a scientific definition:
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop also feels that the standard conceptions of black people fall short, stating: "There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."
Why is he allowed to talk science when far superior scholars are taken out? It's because he supports the POV of the bullies who dominate the article. Iseebias
If you have a legitimate reason for removing a source (based on Wikipedia guidelines), please do so, and clearly explain why. As for your so-called "far superior scholars", being removed, the reasons have been clearly explained several times on this discussion page. The three non-biologists were removed as sources in the Biology section because they aren't reliable sources according to Wikipedia guidelines. They are not experts on biology or genetics, and all three are white conservatives with blatant right wing and/or racist political agendas. Wikipedia is not obligated to publish marginal propagandistic opinions that pose as scientific fact. Spylab12:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
All 3 are experts on race and deserve a place in this article. The others being quoted are not academic experts in anything and you only keep them in because they support your POV. And not all support right wing or racist opinions and even if they did, you don't take scholarly opinion out of an article just because the scholar doesn't share your politics. Most of the people quoted in the article have a left wing black power political agenda but you don't remove that as marginal propoganda.Iseebias
They are not experts on biology, and if you read their individual articles, you will see that all three support blatant political agendas and are not reliable sources for Biology of this article. Like I wrote, if you have a legitimate reason for deleting other biased sources, go ahead and do so, as long as you provide a clear explanation that conforms to Wikipedia guidelines. Spylab13:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rushton doesn't support any political agenda. True a lot of racists exploit Rushton's work to justify their disgusting political agendas, but Rushton himself does not publicly support any political agenda. There's not even any evidence of Rushton being right-wing in his politics. In fact he's stated that he finds it very difficult to relate to political debates because he only looks at things from a scientific perspective. Have you ever seen Rushton on TV? He's not at all the raving right-wing racist you make him to be, but instead he's very calm civil open minded academic. And even if he did have a political agenda, 90% of people quoted in wikipedia probably have political opinions. So once someone makes a political statement they can never be quoted in wikipedia. In that case we should edit out everyone from this article. So Rushton's good enough to be published in peer reviewed academic journals but he's not good enough to be briefly quoted in wikipedia? Yet people who couldn't get published in a peer reviewed academic journal if their life depended on it dominate this article. The bottom line is this article is one sided because it claims black people are nothing more than a social construction and acts as though no other views exist. That's extremely dishonest and extremely misleading. There should be a brief sub-section at the end of the socio-political definitions section that's called alternatives to social constructionism that simply makes clear that some people define blacks as a racial category where Rushton, Levin and Sally are quoted. Otherwise the article is just promoting one sided anti-racialist propoganda and that's very POV. Iseebias
The J. Philippe Rushton article clearly demonstrates that he has a political agenda, and that he is a head of the Pioneer Fund. Just because he doesn't rant and rave on TV doesn't mean he lacks a blatant political agenda. One can be calm and still promote a fringe or extreme view. And again, he is a psychology professor, not a biologist or geneticist, so he should not be cited as an expert on biology or genetics. Maybe he can be considered a reliable source on other topics, but not science. Please explain your comment about the article being "anti-racialist propaganda." Spylab20:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So what if Rushton is president of the pioneer fund. The pioneer fund is a perfectly legitimate organization, and its tax exempt, a status it would be denied if it promoted political propaganda. True some of its founders in the 1930s were racists, but was there anyone who wasn’t a racist in the 1930s? In the past several decades the pioneer fund has been leading the way in advancing the study of human genetic diversity, brain size and intelligence, twin studies. Two of its grantees are among the most cited psychologists of all time (Hans J. Eysenck, Arthur R. Jensen). One won a Nobel Prize (William B. Shockley). Three are Guggenheim Fellows (Arthur R. Jensen, Ernest van den Haag, and J. Philippe Rushton). Pioneer grantees have been elected as the presidents of the American Psychological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the British Psychological Society, the Behavior Genetics Association, the Psychometric Society, the Society for Psychophysiological Research, the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology, and the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. Grantees currently serve on the editorial boards of major academic journals, including three on the board of Personality and Individual Differences, and three on the editorial board of the journal Intelligence.
Again, you can’t just go around censoring well-cited scholarly material from wikipedia because you feel it could in some way be used to support a political opinion you don’t agree with. As editors we must be non-partisan and allow in all notable opinions, and Rushton is certainly notable. Even if you think someone’s racist, that’s not a good reason to censor them from this article because racism has played a huge role historically in defining contemporary black identity, and you can’t have a complete understanding of black identity unless you understand how racists identify someone as black, and so precise definitions should never be removed.
Rushton has published a blizzard of scholarly articles about black people in peer reviewed academic journals so his definition of black people is obviously accepted by much of the academic community. It’s fine to have a section explaining how black-power activists define a black person, but people should know that that’s not how the term is defined when used in academic research. Iseebias
If you read the talk page, they took out Satel, Rushton, and Levin because they are not geneticists, even though Rushton teaches a university course on race. In other words they expect people giving opinions they don't agree with to be experts in genetics but they let any extremist political activist act like a sociology expert or anthropologist. Please support a plural article. Iseebias
That's absurd. How are definitions of black people off topic in a black people article? What was marginal about them? Some of the people being quoted may be controversial but the definitions being quoted are consistent with how the term is used in the real world. If you want to see marginal look at the quotes claiming that Dravidians are black. That's marginal in the extreme. But that's allowed in the article because it supports the POV being pushed Iseebias
I recommend that you, and others asking questions about why the three non-biologists were removed as sources in the Biology section, scroll up this page to see the explanations. It has been clearly explained several times why they aren't reliable sources according to Wikipedia guidelines. Spylab12:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They were moved out of the Biology section and into a race realism section but you still found and an excuse to remove them. And what about all the non-sociologists giving opinions in the sociology section? Apply wiki standards consistently or don't apply them at all.Iseebias
Race realism is a weasel term, and even the race realism article shows that there are two definitions; one being a racist ideology. Sociology is not a science, and one doesn't have to be a sociology expert to have an opinion on sociological topics. However, when it comes to scientific topics such as biology or genetics, it is imperative that the people commenting on it be experts in those fields. Also, the three non-biologists in the Biology section were not placed there for balance. They dominated the section because they were the only so-called experts cited in the entire section. That is not logical or academically sound. Spylab20:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just because Rushton is a psychologist does not mean he can’t give an opinion that relates to evolutionary biology, because evolutionary biology is a multidisciplinary field which includes evolutionary psychology. If peer reviewed academic journals allow him to express his opinions on evolutionary biology, then who are we to censor Rushton? It’s absurd to imply that all opinions given in wikipedia must be confined to the precise field where someone got their degree. No field is precise, and all academic disciplines overlap and blend into one another. And what’s with your double standard of claiming any wacko can be an expert on sociology but only a biologist can talk biology. Such a condescending attitude is a major insult to all the bright hardworking sociologists who invested a life time acquiring expertise in their domain and wouldn’’t appreciate you implying that expertise in their field does not exist. And Rushton is a sociobiologist because sociobiology is a multidisciplinary field that includes evolutionary psychology. And if you felt the biology section was dominated by one POV you should have balanced it by adding alternative definitions of a black person from a biology perspective. I doubt you would find any though, because “black” has a very precise meaning when applied in science. But I’m not even arguing there should be a biology section, only that the definitions be included somewhere in the article. If you don’t like the title race realism definitions, then perhaps racialist definitions would be more appropriate? I just want the definitions included because as it stands now, the article is only promoting the view that blacks are an arbitrarily defined socio-political group, and this ignores the fact that most people believe that blacks are an objective category of nature with an exact definition Iseebias
Most people, do not in fact, think blacks (or whites) are an "objective category of nature with an exact definition." Most people judge one's blackness or whiteness by how they look, not by genetic tests. Spylab11:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well neither of us has done a scientific poll of what most people in the real world think, but I've very frequently heard comments that imply many people believe that it's possible to look black without actually being black. People say things like "Oh I thought all these years she was black but it turns out she's biracial" or terms like quadroon and web sites like halfblack.com or people who say Tiger Woods is a quarter black. All of this implies that millions of people believe that being black has an exact definition determined by blood quantum. That’s why I think it’s important and interesting to have a racialist section where people can spell out exactly the precise type and amount of ancestry racialists believe makes you black. It’s boring for the entire article to just be social constructionists who argue blacks are whoever looks black or whoever identifies as black. People expect more exact information from an encyclopedia and people coming here will want more specific answered. Iseebias
If you feel there should be more scientific information, feel free to post legitimate information from reliable sources who are experts in the field of science. Rushton and the two other politically-motivated non-scientists do not meet Wikipedia's guidelines for reliable sources on the scientific definition of race. Also, after looking at Wikipedia's article on racialism, I'm not sure why you think that racialist opinions would be a positive addition to this article. Spylab15:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve already explained to you that Rushton is indeed a scientist who teaches a course on race at a prestigious university, publishes scientific articles on race in peer reviewed academic journals, and although the pioneer fund has been maligned for funding politically incorrect research, it is tax exempt and thus does not meet the legal definition of a political organization. My goal is not to add more science to this article but rather to make sure all notable perspectives on who is black get documented. I came to this article to find out exactly who people are talking about when they use the word black and so it’s imperative that we include as many different kinds of perspectives as possible. Rushton, Levin, and Satel were not quoted saying anything derogatory about black people, they were simply quoted saying which people they considered to be members of the black category, sometimes with a degree of precision not seen in any of the other definitions in the article. As a user of an encyclopedia I want to see a complete discussion on who is black and I want specifics. If some notable figure thinks Dravidians are black I want to know about it. If someone thinks all non-whites are black I want to know about it. If someone thinks only people of recent African descent are black, I want to know about it. If someone thinks you need to have most of your ancestors born in sub-Saharan Africa to be black I want to know that too. And if someone like Michael Levin thinks anyone with less than 75% sub-Saharan ancestry is not black, then I want to know that. If the South African government under apartheid thought that only people with hair curly enough to get a pencil stuck in were black I want to know that. If the state of Mississipi thought that anyone with more than 1/128th sub-Saharan ancestry was black I want to know that too. But people keep removing fascinating information because it doesn’t conform to whatever agenda they’re supporting and robbing the article of diversity causing editors like Fill to leave in disgust. As Paul B stated, all notable opinions are welcome in this article and this knee-jerk tendency to impulsively remove anything that is even remotely politically incorrect is ruining this article. Iseebias
Rushton is a psychology professor; he does not have biology or gentics credentials. Regardless of the Pioneer Fund's tax-exempt status, it has a blatant socio-political agenda, i.e. scientific racism and the promotion of eugenics. They aren't a neutral scientific body that researches for the sake of inquiry, to advance technology or to cure diseases. Perhaps the opinions of the three non-scientists could fit into this article somewhere, with the disclaimer that they are not scientists, and that they are associated with specific political agendas. However, they should absolutely not be included as reliable and neutral experts on biology or genetics, becuase they do not meet Wikipedia standards for that. As I mentioned earlier, it would be nice if a Wikipedia administer could settle this once and for all, so I don'y have to keep explaining why non-bioligists and non-geneticists cannot be presented as reliable sources on those scientific fields. Spylab12:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Psychology is a valid science and psychologists who study evolutionary psychology qualify as evolutionary biologists (and sociobiologists) because evolutionary biology is a multi-disciplinary field not confined to genetics only. The pioneer fund was founded in part by eugenicists but that was back in the 1930s when virtually all academics were racists. It's been accused of scientific racism but that's an unfair label that gets slapped on any researcher who dares to suggest that races may differ in intelligence just as afrocentric is an unfair label that gets slapped on any researcher who dares to suggest that black people had an early civilization. But unlike the so-called Afrocentric scholars, Rushton is published in peer reviewed academic journals which means he meets the highest standards of objective scholarship. Now I agree that none of these people are geneticists and so putting them in a biology section just because one of them is an evolutionary biologist gives the a little too much credibility which is why I'm insisting we just put them in a section called racialist definitions or alternatives to social constructionism. Now in that section we can put a disclaimer that they have been accused of scientific racism or whatever other accusation you can find a source for(in fact I'll even find the sources for you). I don't care. Again it's not my goal to give these people credibility, but it is my goal to make sure all notable opinions about who is black get documented in this article because I come here to find out exactly who is considered black and how the standard varies accross cultures, time periods, ideologies, political perspectives, etc. So it sounds like we agree that these definitions can be included in the article, just not in a biology section, and with strong disclaimers accompanying them. Because let's get real. People come to this article not just to see who black people consider black. Black readers already know that. They want to know who white people consider black, and even if you think some of these whites are racist, people especially want to know who white racists consider black because white racism has informed so much of the identity of black people around the world. Now I'not suggesting we open this article up to racist or racialist opinions of black people (that would indeed be off topic), but I do think it's imperative that we document who racialists consider to be black because that's really the question we come to this article to get answered: Who is considered black? Iseebias
what does..
What does what white peoples called others to do with black people article? White's called allmost everyone black or dark even their own (SouthernEuropeans).****Asian2duracell21:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)****[reply]
Err, which white are those? North Europeans? I dont think Southern Europeans call southern europeans black, nor do their ancestors get called black in the US, SqueakBox21:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well Northern or Western Europeans called SouthernEuropeans dark, sometimes black. Some still do. But my point is this article isnt about who did the whites called black. And what the f*** has US to do with it?
Asian2duracell21:59, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You mean North Western as probably half of Western europe is also Southern Europe. There is some truth in what you say. I agree with you that we arent interested in what white people call bl;ack people, though, SqueakBox22:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well yeah North-Western Europeans. But it seems like some editors define it that way. Especially that HalaTruth guy. What Americans call the offspring of any race has nothing to do with it. Asian2duracell22:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
scientific definition
This person is giving a scientific definition:
also feels that the standard conceptions of black people fall short, stating: "There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."
Well my version; "There are two well-defined European races: one has a white skin and straight hair; the other has brown skin, often exceptionally brown, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidians.
You wanna say that this Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop's deifinition is scientific? Seriously, he is very Afrocentric probably even a Black supremacist. An his definition is outdated. Asian2duracell22:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, why is a Black person intersted in adding Brown people into the Black people article? I'm not a scholar. But noone of the editors is either. As I am Brown and not Black I dont want to mentioned in that article, thats why I'm here Asian2duracell23:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I dont see any mention of Asian2duracell in here, you should probably just stick to what you know and make sure no Black people get mentioned in your brown section. P.s can someone report this user for 3RR as it is counter productive, and we have enough issues.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)23:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that Diop is hardly an authority on scientific definitions. Indeed, the quoted words above seems to have little relation to science at all. But it doesn't matter in the slightest how you, mr Duracell, want to be described. You know very well that other Indians think differently (especially as you're currently arguing with one over on the Talk:Australoid page)). The article should incude and discusses all notable points of view. Paul B23:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Paul. All notable points of view should be expressed, and that's why I'm disgusted by the bullies who censored the definitions by Rushton, Levin, and Satel from the article. Perhaps putting them in the biological definitions category gave them a bit too much credibility, but they should return to the article, perhaps under racialist definitions. Diop should stay in the article too but he and others should be moved to a section called Afrocentric definitions or perhaps he should be in the racialist definition section since he seems to be advocating that races are real. Iseebias
First of all. Oh my f****ng god. I cant bellieve that some people think that my first comment on scientific definition was seriously. It just should show that hes comparison of Blacks and Dravdians is absolutly loosly. Like one has bright nose the other hasnt. One has curly hairs the other has straight hairs. And one has fat ass the other hasnt any at all... and so on. And saying that both have dark skin, thats why they have to be from the same "race". My statement is more BS than his was. Hell no I'm not European, and I dont want to be. I could have used EastAsians as an example that those Afrocentrists dont go fury.
I googled that Mr. Diop and what do we see.... Dalit: The Black untouchables of India,The African origin of Civilization , and so on. Im not sure if everything what they show was written by him. But thats a sign of Afrocentrism for me. Why dont we go back in history and mention those racist white "scientists" who thought Blacks are in between Monkeys and Whites. Or those who thaught everyone with darker skinclouor is inferior. That Mr. Diops "scientifical" cognitions are outdated some generations ago. They aint as much absurd and inacceptable as that of those white racists but still not authentic.
Come back to u Mr Paul B, u seem to be interested in any article about race. Ur everywhere, Australoid, Dravidians, Black people, and so on. As an expert u are. Why dont u make a contrubution to the Black people article. Btw I'm not arguing with an Indian on the Ausrtaloid page, hell he asked me how many Hindu-speaking Indians there are in Bollwood. Then he said that why are there no real Indians in Bollywood. I replied that they are real just fairer than average. And that guy still dont understand. Do u think that he is Indian?.....The article should incude and discusses all notable points of view. Well who is going to decide what is notable and what is just someones fu**in POV. In this sense ****Asian2duracell19:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)****[reply]
If the person has a wikipedia article, he or she qualifies as notable. Iseebias
Everyone can make articles about anything and anyone. U can make one about urself. But I dont think ur that stupid to tell the world who the f*** u are. Asian2duracell23:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
S/he's lots of people. I'm who I say I am. Mr anonymous on the Australoid page claims to be a Dravidian who was present at the time of the Killevanamani massacre (which was in Tamil Nadu, 1969). I don't thnk he currently lives in India. Writing 'Hindu' instead of 'Hindi' is not so surprisng if he is not a native I-A speaker (after all, Hindi is aso called Hindustani). I agree however, that you are rational in comparison to him, which is not saying much. Paul B23:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well everyone in India, maybe in SouthAsia as a whole, knows the diffrence between "Hindu" and "Hindi". Even if u arent a native IndoAryan speaker. And every Indian knows that there are dark and light skinned Indians. Hindustani is a group of languages who are allmost the same. Like Urdu, Hindi and others. About "Killevanamani massacre", I havent heard about it before. But I'm not saying it doesnt happened. He or maybe She says that "Aryans" slaughtered "Dravidians". But on a wikipedia article, we see that some landlords murdered some labourers. Well that means "Dravidians" on "Dravidians". Well I'm not sure if he was there or just read something about it and try to act like he was there. Asian2duracell18:51, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well if you can write "hole" for "whole", perhaps Mr Anonymous can be forgiven for mistyping Hindi as Hindu. At least the U is next to the I on a keyboard. Paul B10:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well smartass, if u think so... asswhole lol. (was a joke, Mr. Serious). The Hindu-Hindi
matter is not the only thing. There are more things which shows that he cant be Indian. Read the "discussion" urself.Asian2duracell20:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Afrocentric or just valid
I dont like how this word Afrocentric is used, let me exaplain "Egypt is African"--Afrocentric, "Africans are noble civilized people" Afrocentric. U c the pattern, when non-Africans see any empowering statemnts bout Africans it becomes Afrocentric. So why in the def we dont have Eurocentric, or in the slavery we dont have Eurocentric opinions of slavery? or In WHITE PEOPLE have an Afrocentric section there? I call this thinking a product of being in a racist controlled society, we actually dont even realize what we are saying is so corrupted. So i am just laying out. Just because someone says something good about Africa doesnt mean they need a special label like "Psudo-historian". --HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)10:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see your point. Virtually anyone who believes that any early civilation in the world was black gets labled as Afrocentric. It's used as a way of marginalizing them. But it might not be that these people are Afrocentric, it could be that mainstream history is Eurocentric, so relative to the majority of scholars, these people are Afrocentric. We probably should make clear that these opinions are not considered mainstream, but calling them Afrocentric implies that black scholars who believe blacks played a role in world history are somehow biased because of their race. Seldom is the term Eurocentric so used to marginalize white scholars documenting the contributions of whites. Iseebias
Its Afrocentric when Africans claim others history. But it isnt if they praise their own. Every civilisation had his contribution to the human evolution. Some Afrocentricts dont realise that some cultures increased independent. Asian2duracell19:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
lets avoid the term unless it applies. many say good things about Africa and should be weighted on content not origin or implication. To thus speak of glorious Africa is just factual history, to speak negative of Africa as pre-civilized is Eurocentric, let the content determine the label. --HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)11:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Black isnt only Africa
The term "blacks" has often been applied to indigenous Australians. This owes rather more to racial stereotyping than ethnology, as it categorises indigenous Australians with the other black peoples of Asia and Africa, despite the relationships only being ones of very distant shared ancestry. In the 1970s, many Aboriginal activists, such as Gary Foley proudly embraced the term "black", and writer Kevin Gilbert's groundbreaking book from the time was entitled Living Black. In recent years young indigenous Australians have increasingly adopted aspects of black American and Afro-Caribbean culture, creating what has been described as a form of "black transnationalism."[2] (i dont know if this is in the article but it should be)--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)11:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It goes back further than that. If you have ever seen an aboriginal, especially from the north, you will understand that black can a very appropriate descriptor for skin colour. "Black fellow" was a term used by both Europeans and Aboriginals themselves. Here is an primary-source example from 1832. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trishm (talk • contribs) 23:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]
Population Estimate
This article clearly asserts that there is no agreed upon notion of who is Black and who is not. In that context, a population estimate table does not make sense. Perhaps the numbers for individual, identifiable groups would be ok. Just perhaps. Jd271803:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. I guess we can use it if they explain exactly who they are counting as black. Iseebias
But then they are counting something other than "Black People" and the numbers belong in the appropriate articles, not here. Jd271802:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They're counting whoever THEY consider to be black people. The world population of black people will vary depending on what definition they use. For example they might be limiting it to people of sub-Saharan descent in which case they'll get a lower population then if they include people of Oceanic descent and still more if they include South Asians and/or North Africans. And then there's the question of how they define descent. Do they go by the one drop rule, or does the person need most of their ancestors belonging to a black ethnicity. And how do they define most? More than half? More than three quarters? Or maybe anyone who self-identifies as black is considered black by their count. To me their figures are not of much interest unless we state how black was defined for the purpose of their study. But if we can provide their methodology, I see no problem in keeping it in the article, just so long as we make clear that it was how THEY defined black people. Iseebias
Some numbers are necessary to add meaning and context to the article. Without them we could be talking about 2 people or 6 billion people. Being "black" is subjective and there is no agreed upon definition, but that should not stop us from making estimates. The US government takes statistics on black people so it is not an impossible task[11]. Basically by breaking down the table further it is possible to arrive at different numbers depending on one'e desired interpretation.Muntuwandi20:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes but the chart as it is now gives only 1 interpretation, provides no explanation for that interpretation, and appears to be based on original research (that is your interpretation of who is black that creates those numbers which imposes your POV on the article) Iseebias
Iseebias's edit (descriptive paragraph instead of a table) is an improvement, mostly because it is less specific. However, it still includes only 3 or 4 of the possible interpretations of who is Black, and the numbers are a little soft (I enjoyed reading the source, however, it appears a little wacky). In the end, an article about a social group in one country could make some attempt at definition to use for a count (census definition in the US, perhaps trickier elsewhere). For this article, however, we have social constructs in 200 countries, many of which are not legally defined, many of which use words other than "Black" which we are taking the liberty of assuming mean "Black." There is no way under these circumstances to have anything approaching sourced population estimates.
One could get the number of sub-Saharan Black Africans, and put that in an article on sub-Saharan Black Africans. But that is not the article we have. I'd happily merge the content from here into several specific articles, and then put this up for deletion, but that's already been tried. So it is going to stay, but that makes including any population estimates a mess. Even the improved paragraph should go. Jd271814:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you think my edits are an improvement but there aren't that many possible interpretaions of who is black. The main populations that have historically been considered black are peoples of sub-Saharan ancestry and in some cases also peoples of Pacific Island ancestry and in rare cases peoples of South Asian ancestry. My summary covered all of the above. The only real uncertainty in the numbers are how multiracial people are assigned in different cultures, however multiracial people are still relatively rare so the numbers should give a very rough and ready estimate.Iseebias
Multiracial people are relatively common in the Americas and the Caribean, no? And there are, as you note, whole countries that cannot be automatically assigned. Jd271815:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No exact figures are possible, but I think it might be reasonable to provide a range (i.e. Depending on which which ethnic groups a culture considers black and depending on how mixed race individuals are socially assigned, the global black population is anywhere between half a billion and 1.5 billion people) I've now found 3 independent sources all converging on the idea that blacks are roughly a tenth of humanity (true, one of the sources uses the term negroid, and the other 2 take the POV that sub-Saharan = black) and although none of the sources acknowledge the ambiguities created by admixture, the fact that the ~10% idea keeps getting alluded to is notable Iseebias
I am not convinced, but it appears that there is at least some consensus in favor. As well, I want to be carefully not to just rehash my arguments in favor of deleting (as that failed). With those two givens, I support what you have done and advocated in relation to the population section. By the way, you mentioned "Pacific Islanders" above, and I would guess that you were talking about natives of Australia and New Zealand and a few other places, and not Polynesians. I think it is the wrong term. Jd271819:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your reservations to the section but if there have been attempts to estimate the global black population (my latest source even used the term "global black population") I think that's interesting to note, just so long as we put it into context and make clear it's only one of many alternative figures based on alternative definitions. It's also important to document that several sources are converging on one figure because this implies that one definition of black is more mainstream than the others which is important for readers to know. I, like you though, am against putting in a chart, (unless it's a very flexible chart like I'm advocating below), because it gives undue weight to a single perspective. As for Pacific Islanders, it probably was the wrong term. It's hard to pin down a precise location for what is commonly described as "australoid ancestry" as this group includes not only the australian aboriginals but probably also the aboriginal tribes that were pushed to the fringes of India and South East Asia Iseebias
The article asserts that the population of black people is half a billion. This is not possible as the the population of sub-saharan africa is $767 million. Though ethnically heterogenous is almost entirely black. The exceptions include about 4 million whites in south africa and about 1.5 million peoples of Indian descent. Sub-saharan africa should be the least controversial when it comes to defining who is black. There will definitely be some controversy in the americas as not everyone of african descent there will define themselves as primarily black. The information in the new chart does not include the distribution ie where black people are to be found. Without it we could assume that there are a half billion black people living in russia or japan.
As mentioned earlier a table is useful because if a reader decides that he or she has a different interpretation of what black is then they can simply remove or add a row from the table. For example there are about $80 million people of african descent in brazil. Of that about 11 million define themselves as primarily black. One can decide for themselves how to interpret this information but is useful and relevant if displayed.Muntuwandi15:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But you're not displaying the information in a way that people can interpret. It simply states the percentage of black people by country. What source claims those countries have that many blacks? If the source is you, how did you determine the black population by country? And the article now asserts that people of sub-Saharan ancestry are about 10% of the world (i.e. 600 million people). As for the population of sub-Saharan Africa, you not only have to exclude non-black residents (i.e. whites, Asians, some coloureds, and South Africa's not the only sub-Saharan country where non-blacks live) but you may also have to exclude entire countries like Ethiopia which some would consider multiracial instead of black. Iseebias
I do not have a problem with modifying the content. But including certain information in a visually friendly manner is important.Distribution is necessary because it provides information on where most likely you will find black people. If i am walking down a street in siberia will I meet a black person?. The whole issue of racism is very much linked to numbers-minorityMuntuwandi15:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you're going to include charts, you need to have a chart that gives separate numbers based on each of the major definitions of who is black. Iseebias
Yes that is the goal.
90 % of white africans live in south africa.
Ethiopia we could add a footnote indicating that some consider it multiracial. In any case there is certainly a black element with ethiopians. they are definitely not white.Muntuwandi16:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well experiment with possible charts on the talk page but I don't think enough work has been done to add this to the main article. Also, your figure for the black population in Australia? Are you including Australian aboriginals in that figure? I suggest 2 charts. One chart that defines blacks as negroid, and another chart that defines blacks as negroid + australoid (and possibly South Asian ancestry). And I also suggest, though this may not be possible, within each chart I suggest you list numbers in 2 categories: blackness defined by preponderance of ancestry and blackness defined by any known black ancestry. You can probably find genetic studies that would allow you to create such sub-divisions. Iseebias
I think one chart is enough. some issues
Africa population
According to the UN the population of Africa in 2004 was 905 million page 2 of report
The population reference bureau has 924 million in 2006. page six of report. The report has the population of sub-saharan africa as 767 million. The population of North Africa is at 198 million. However this figure includes Sudan's population of about 40 million which is also included in the population of sub-saharan africa.
Sub-saharan africa
Sub-saharan africa should have the least controversy regarding who is black. Essentially the whole population sub-saharan population can be considered black less white africans -5.8 million and the Indian/Asian diaspora -less 2million. This figure also includes at least 4.5 million Coloureds who are concentrated in South Africa but are present all over africa. This leaves us with a figure of about 760 million. Though some may see ethiopians are multiracial, I think this pic says it all. The complexions are in similar range as much of sub-saharan africa.
Yes but the facial features are 100% caucasoid . Also, many Ethiopians have much fairer complexions. Still I wouldn't subtract all 75 million Ethiopians from the 760 million figure. Cavali-Sforza claims that the Ethiopian gene pool is 60% black, 40% Arab, so I would subtract 40% of 75 million people or 30 million people. This brings the figure for sub-Saharan Africa down to 730 million.
Thats academic. They may have a multiracial element but there is definitely a black influence. If one saw one of these boys walking down the street I don't believe anyone would mistake them for white german, swede or a russian. They can be added to the total black population and noted as being multiracial. As mentioned earlier black Africa is ethnically heterogenous and genetically very diverse.
But adding them to the total black population is POV because it's an implied endorsement of the segregationist one drop rule which asserts that any black influence is enough to be black. Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia himself claimed Ethiopians were not black. I personally would consider them black, but many people would not. See the poll cited in the article that showed that even most Americans no longer label multiracials like Barack Obama black, and see the varying standards in other places like Brazil, the Caribean, and South Africa all mentioned in the article. The fact that the cited estimates I was able to find for the worldwide black population give numbers that are smaller than yours shows that the way you are defining black people may not be mainstream, and even it is, it imposes one definition out of many. I suppose you could come with separate charts for the global black population based on separate definitions, but such charts would take up a large amount of space, be charged as original research, and are strongly opposed by some editors. Iseebias
please do not add any multiracial madness to habasha people, this has been an ongoing war on this page, dont start it again. see the previous talk comments. How Selassie say that and still be the king of Rasta people, does it make sense. Selassie was one of the key Pan-Africanist who said Africa unite because we are teh same people... come on?--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)22:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The rasta movement was not for black people only. It has millions of Afro-multi-racial followers. Each Ethiopian is intelligent enough to decide for his/herself whether he/she is black, muti-racial, ect. I respect them enough to allow them that choice. Iseebias
But your implication that Afro-Latinos be counted as black is just as POV especially since Afro-Latinos themselves do not consider themselves black. So why is one POV but not the other? Iseebias
The americas
due to significant mixing the americas have the most controversial and flexible definitions for blackness. However we can start with the figures for the African diaspora which are far less controversial.
North america - 40 million
Latin america - 100 million. Includes 80 million Afro-Brazilians, 11 million afro-colombians, 4.5 million venezuelans( egHugo Chavez, Mariah Carey[12] ), 6 million cubans, etc.
This is approximately 150 million. Not everyone in the african diaspora identifies themselves as primarily black. In the US the one drop rule meaning one is black if they have one drop of african blood. However the reverse is true in much of latin america where one drop of white blood could make you white.
Where does the 80 million Afro-Brazilians come from? According to this source, only 4.9% of Brazil (roughly 9 million people) are officially classified as black.[[14]]. So the official numbers are only about a tenth as big as your African diasporas figure. If this is true all over Latin America, that gives us only 10 million for all of Latin America. Iseebias.
Yes up 6.2% classify themselves as primarily black another 39% is multiracial of some african descent. see Afro-Brazilian or cia factbook or Brasil ethnic groups. As is often said brazil has the second largest African population at 80million in the world. Nigeria has the largest at 129 million. At this stage in the article I would assume this to be common knowledge.Muntuwandi15:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well there seems to be a lot of resistance to including this section and it will be hard for us to defend because it's original research. We can add direct quotes from people discussing the world wide black population like the source I found claiming Nigeria is one fifth of the global black population, but once we start creating the estimates ourselves the numerous editors who oppose us will cite wikipedia original research policy. Iseebias
Afro-European
England - 1 million split evenly between afro-caribbeans and africans
France - 2 million of sub-saharan african descent
Netherlands- 300, 000 of surinamese descent.
To reduce controversy on defining who is black I have added figures on the African diaspora that are less controversial. This can serve as the upper limit of who is "black". For example if there are 40 million people of african descent in the US, then there can be no more than 40 million Black people of African descent in the USMuntuwandi20:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Total
total figure extends above 900 million. This however has not included black populations in North africa the middle east and South India so the figure could be higher. ( eg Egypt and Saudi Arabia)
Muntuwandi04:17, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Population estimate continued
"The above chart is an unpublished synthesis of published sources, and is inconsistent with published estimates. For example it asserts that indigenous sub-Saharan Africans and their Diasporas descendents around the globe number 917 million or roughly 14% of the now 6.555 billion people on Earth. This figure is inconsistent with journalist Jon Entine’s, claim that persons of sub-Saharan African ancestry comprise 12 percent of humanity[13](roughly 787 million people). The total black population of 923 million is especially inconsistent with reports that the people of Nigeria are one fifth of the global black population[14]. Nigeria currently has 140 million people implying the global black population should be only 700 million (a discrepancy of 233 million people). The Nigeria-based estimate may be lower because it only counts peoples of sub-Saharan descent as black (excluding the 6.5 million Melanesians and Australian aboriginals) and also because its excludes populations sometimes viewed as multiracial such as Ethiopians[15] and many Afro-Latinos. "
Dear Iseebias,
I think it is a little odd to make criticisms right in the article. It shows conflict and disagreement. If one disagrees, which is expected,then it is more appropriate to provide alternative or better sources.
My motives are really simple- to indicate:
1)- how many people are of African descent in the world today?
2)- Where are they found?
This is useful information and tells us alot about world history and current events.It is not my intention to define who is black but there is a strong correlation between "black" and "african".
In an attempt to avoid disputes I looked for the most reliable sources of information, eg The United Nations.
By viewing your edits it seems as though you are uncomfortable with higher figures for people who are black or of African descent. I think we should let the numbers speak for themselves and not try to drive them up or down. Yes Nigeria is the most populous african nation but we should not be trying to manipulate the figures so that nigeria can have one fifth of the global black population.
Hi, I revised the section so that it doesn't come off so much as a criticism, but rather notes minor inconsistencies and leaves open the door for alternative interpretations. You say you are only interested in the number of African descended people in the world, but everyone has some degree of African blood (even if it's only 0.0000000001%)-there are no pure races left-so how do you define an African descended person? It sounds like you prefer the one drop rule, which you're entitled to, but it's useful to note that alternative interpretations of the data. And I'm not trying to manipulate the numbers so 1 in 5 blacks worldwide are Nigerian, I am simply noting that such a ratio has been estimated and that it yields an estimate different from yours. It's important that the reader gets all sides of the story. It makes for a more interesting article Iseebias
The problem with the sources that you have cited is that are from much earlier dates. John Entine's book was published in 1999 and the other nigerian economic report is from 2001. Africa is the fastest growing continent in the world by population adding about 100 million people every five years [15], [16]. The population of Europe is actually decreasing and the population growth rate in Asia is also decreasing. Therefore comparing figures from 1999 with figures from 2006 ( at least 7 years) will definitely yield different results.Muntuwandi05:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I thought of that but I'm not convinced that that's the primary source of the discrepancy. I've done a bit of research on how black populations are counted in Latin America and you get wildly different numbers dependening on whether you only count people of primarily African ancestry as black or whether you count people with only "some" African ancestry (whatever that means). As a result they often give a range between maximum and minimum. Are you telling me that in just the last 7 years Nigeria's gone from being 1/5th of the black population to 1/7th? If Africa's population increases so rapidly then shouldn't that apply to Nigeria too and hence shouldn't the ratio remain constant? Thus, isn't it more likely that the discrepancy is just because others are using a more conservative measure of who's black (i.e. primary African ancestry as opposed to any Afrrican ancestry)? If you have a break down from 2001 I'm more than willing to be proven wrong, but until then I don't think published estimates should be so easily dismissed when your original research is given so much weight. Iseebias
Well that's why I tried to balance it by including published estimate from the Nigeria report which explicitly stated that Nigeria is one fifth of the global black population (however they define black). He is doing original research in the sense that he's equating Afro-Latin American with Black Latin American even though Afro-Latinos include people who are ideentified in their culture as Afro-multi-racial, instead of Afro-black (he's applying America's one drop rule cross-culturally even though most cultures reject it, and even America's starting to reject it). But apparently a lot of editors find the information useful and I try not to remove content if it can be avoided Iseebias
hello, I believe we should work with current figures. In 1995 the population of africa was 719million, including North Africa, in 2000 it was 819 million, in 2006 924 million. The reports you have included are from 1999 and 2001, they do not cite where there information is from and what dates they are. One is a book about athletics and the other is about economics in nigeria. They are both not directly about population but mention these statistics in passing. As they do not cite dates they could be any dates from before 1999 and 2001. As you can see africa's population is growing fast and therefore the global black population is changing quickly. The weight of africa's growth is shifting away from Nigeria to other sub-saharan countries. There are about 26 african countries with faster growth rates than Nigeria(see List of countries by population growth rate) so it is likely that Nigeria's portion may fluctute with time. Current statistics show Nigeria is closer to one sixth of sub-saharan africa(134/767). Though your reports are interesting, they are not directly about population so we should use ones that are.
Because of the fast growth rate, in the future it is therefore possible that due to migration, many countries and regions that did not have a visible black presence will begin to do so. It is for this reason that talk of black population is very relevant.
Yes not everyone in the Afro-latin american diaspora identifies themselves as black. In fact most are multiracial mix of black, amerindian and white. They are still relevant to the discussion because they have a recent ancestor who was black from sub-saharan africa.Muntuwandi16:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But who are we to impose our U.S. centric definition of who is black on cultures that reject it and define entire populations as black whether they like it or not. You make some very legitimate points, I just don't see the harm in mentioning that published estimates of the global black population also exist as long we make clear that these may be dated. Also, you act like your figures are beyond reproach but yet I have seen very different estimates of the black population in Latin America, and it's not because the figures I've seen are outdated (indeed they give HIGHER numbers than you provide by about 40 million people). Your numbers are highly questionable because they are synthesis of different sources using different methodology for counting the black population and the methodology is not even relevant to the culture in question. At least the estimates I provide each come from a single published source (instead of a synthesis of sources that may not be comparable) and I made clear the limitation of my numbers by saying that they are dated. I just thing there's enough room in the article for alternative estimates and I'm not sure why you're so afraid of them-even if they may give obsolete data, readers may want a sense of how the black population has changed over time and those references may prove helpful. Indeed they may invite future editors who know more about those earlier estimates to provide additional references Iseebias
My main issue about the reports is that they are not directly about population. I would like to read john entines book about black athletes but the book is about the NBA and NFL. The second report is about Economic and Financial crimes in Nigeria. If i were attending an international conference on population i would not use these reports as references and I don't think you would either. I would use more credible sources. Yes no statistics are full proof and beyond reproach. but I would still trust those who dedicate their full resources to compiling these statistics than to one who is just mentioning it in passing and has other goals. Muntuwandi22:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not my intention to impose a US centric definition on who is black. By using the african diaspora we can determine the upper limit of who can be defined as black based on sub-saharan ancestry. Because latin america is largely multiracial, in most cases the black population is going to be less than the figures but it will not be more. At this point we should not completely exclude anyone of african descent from the conversation. For example Malcolm X's maternal grandfather was a white man so technically he is multiracial. He is to many the symbol of "blackness". Should we exclude him from the discussion. The same can be said about Bob Marley and even Louis FarrakhanMuntuwandi22:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
my main
Having a maternal grandfather of a different race does not make one multiracial. It's a vague, some would even say pseudo-scientific term, but for those who have attempted a definition, a multiracial is anyone with LESS than 75% ancestry in a single so-called race. And again, I'm not against you using the African diasporas to determine an upper limit, after all many Afro-multiracials are identified as black depending on where they travel, but you appear to have no tolerance for a lower limit-even though your upper-limit estimates are displayed far more prominently in the article. Now let me ask you this, if you were going to try to establish population figures for the worldwide white population, would you apply the same methodology? Latin America's hundred million Afro-multiracials are also Euro-multiracials, indeed they're far more likely to self-identify as white than as black. But what do you think would happen if you went to the white people article and dared to include all those partly black people in an upper bound estimate of the global white population simply because they have some white blood and often self-identify as white? But we've been brainwashed into thinking that 1 drop of black blood is so contaminating that Afro-multiracials can only be considered black or multiracial. Granting them membership in the white "race" is considered out of the question. Heaven forbid the purity of the white race be compromised, but the black race should consider itself lucky to have some white genes tossed in to improve it. All I'm saying is that we should be careful not to send the wrong message Iseebias
Actually my next issue is to estimate the population of white people. What is interesting is that throughout recent history(ie circa 500 years) people of European descent have consistently outnumbered people of African descent. This majority-minority relationship is very much related to racism. but now for the first time, the african population is about to equal and likely to surpass those of European descent. If we look at this UN chart of population projections for the next 150 years. we can see that by the year 2150 there will be more people in africa than europe, and the Americas combined. In the year 1750 Europe had 163 million and Africa had 106 million. Africa is 3 times larger than Europe which means that Europe's population was effectively 5-6 times that of Africa by density.
people of multiracial decent should be included and the individual readers can decide for themselves how to categorize them. Yes they should even be included in the amerindian tally and the white people tally.
sources
I have serious issues with the credibility of your [17]
, [18]
In my opinion it should be common sense that these are not reliable sources but i'll break it down
John Entine
dated 1999
personal book
is not an authority on population
book is a commercial product
No methodology on calculation
is mentioned only once in passing
Nigeria fight against economic crimes
dated 2001
Is a powerpoint presantation about financial crimes
scholarship states "The material has been thoroughly vetted by the scholarly community. This means published in peer-reviewed sources, and reviewed and judged acceptable scholarship by the academic journals."
Non scholarly sources-Expertise of the originator about the subject—An academic expert in one subject is more reliable when writing about that subject than when writing about another. For example, a biologist is more reliable when writing about biology than when writing about nuclear physics.
Editorial oversight—A publication with a declared editorial policy will have greater reliability than one without, since the content is subject to verification. Self published sources such as personal web pages, personally published print runs and blogs have not been subject to any form of independent fact-checking and so have lower levels of reliability than published news media (e.g. The Economist) and other sources with editorial oversight, which is less reliable itself than professional or peer reviewed journal (e.g. Nature).
Declaration of sources—A source which is explicit about the data from which it derives its conclusions is more reliable than one which does not. Ideally, a source should describe the collection process and analysis method.
Age of the source and rate of change of the subject—Where a subject has evolved or changed over time, a long standing source may not be accurate with respect to the current situation. To interpret utility one must appreciate how the subject has changed and if that change has impacted any of the salient points of the source information. Historical or out-of-date sources may be used to demonstrate evolution of the subject but should be treated with caution where used to illustrate the subject. If no newer sources are available, it is reasonable to caveat use of sources with an indication of the age and the resulting reduction in reliability.
online self published sources-Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published and then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal websites, anonymous websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources. See below for exceptions.
Accordingly the sources do not meet the standard of being a reliable source. If you dispute the information in the article I would suggest using current and reliable sources to back it up and not these. However we should not dispute the information for the sake of it. There must be good reason. I am fully aware that this is a very heated and sensitive article with passions running high. There is always a great amount of suspicion on anything new that is introduced.It is for this reason that I have attempted to include information that has the least controversy. I will not define anyone as black but leave that to the reader. I think it is time to move on there are alot more interesting things about the black diaspora that can be included.Muntuwandi04:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The population of Africa has been mentioned at least once above, but I do not see that the discrepancy between "Africa" and "Black" has been taken into account (ie. the fact that the population of Africa includes many people what are not black). --Ezeu23:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This article is racist
Why is it " a kenyan man" in the first picture on the artice on black people and then only stars in the hite people article. this is so racist.
i think this page need a reality check, but i also realy like the way wikipedia devide Black and White people. its sick. I think we need to discuss putting this page into Deletion or a total rewrtie/matrix17
Because he would be considered black by all definitions of the term, he's not someone famous so the topic isn't obscured by celebrity, he has very dark skin and hence meets the literal definition of black, he's photogenic and interesting, and it's a free photo Iseebias
Well their are many photogeniwue white people but anyway the photots only shows renowed people. /matrix17
Current state of this article
I commented in the population estimate section, above, without having carefully reviewed the changes introduced in the last month, and especially the last week. I must withdraw any supportive comments I made. The article has systematically been altered to introduce five races as fact. This strong POV must be addressed. Now I see, in this context, the population estimate section has served to reinforce this POV, and especially perniciously by bandying about "admixtures" and allocating parts of one person to different races. I am deleting this section, which serves as a proxy for introducing this material. There is much more clean up necessary. Jd271806:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Removal of some definitions
I have removed the definitions of "Negro" and "Negroid". The terms Negro/Negroid are not synonymous with the term Black people. Include definitions that refer to Black people, and not definitions that refer to sub-sets of Black people. Alun07:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Negro is Spanish for black. Negroid like black has varied in meaning. Some anthropologists felt only Africans were negroid but Australian aboriginals were also classified as negroid by some anthropologists. see australoidIseebias
Another example of the variable meaning of negro(id) is as follows: Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop feels that the standard conceptions of black people fall short, stating: "There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."[16]Iseebias
The definitions you give are only for African people. This is absurd. The article is not about African people. I'm really angry with people who want to turn this article into an article about people of sub-Saharan African descent, it displays a lack of objectivity at least, and downright ignorance at worst. Black people is not a synonym for African origin, whatever racists like Rushton might think. I see no reason why this bigot is even mentioned here. This is an encyclopaedia, not a manual for racists and fascists, it should not include this sort of gibberish. Furthermore, if you claim that Negro is a synonym for Black people, why is it that only definitions that include an African origin are mentioned? You appear to be Timelist/Editingopera. How many socks do you have?Alun08:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have any socks. Please don't get angry and hear me out. As I mentioned above, Dr. Chiekh Anta Diop is cited applying the term negro in a non-african context to describe the dravidians. User Asiandurcell found this offensive, just like you have every right to find Rushton offensive, and tried to remove it. People keep removing content causing the article to suffer. There's nothing to be angry about. Just because Rushton & others use the term black to identify a more narrow segment of the population than you and I use is no need to censor them. Words vary in meaning, and black is a constantly changing social category and I'd like to document the evolution of the term and how it changes depending on the context in which it's being used or the ideology of the person using it (even if the person's been accused of racism-indeed the term grew out of racism). I'd like nothing more than to add an australian aboriginals views on blackness to the article, but the fact that we haven't found one yet is no reason to delete what we have found Iseebias
A agree Negro and black are distinct terms... for one thing one of these terms isn't used much anymore, and, in any case, they do not mean the same thing...futurebird16:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But negro literally means black in Spanish. This is a worldwide article and should discuss black identity from a worldwide perspective not just using the termonology that is currently in vogue in the United States. Also, historically and even today the 2 words are often used interchangabley. You show me a group that has been historically identified as black and I'll cite an example of them being historically identified as negroid. Iseebias
Do you know what Black people are called in Cuba? Negro thats what they are called. Think about it. If you go to Cuba and say "where is that black girl" they say "?Donde nina Negroese?" or something like that. Why do people believe black and Negro are different. Negro is Spanish for black. i never understood why AA move from Negro to black, its the samething. That why i just use African-American.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)21:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Even Sub-Saharans may not be "black
Like many, I thought that Sub-Saharans could not contain different races in them, as on one show in the UK quoted Sub-Saharans were not very big travelers but looking at many articles say Arabs had coastal towns along the east coast of Africa in the early 10th century. Thus the native population could of not been as big as it is today so the Arabs must of caught a majority of the population and then untermixed with them. Also the majority of Africans taken by the Europeans in the 16th Century to the New World were from West Africa and had Arabic names. I know that is not proof but it is very likely they had middle eastern ancestry.Caribbean117:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Man so-called Sub-Sahara Africa has been home to native Arabs for yonks, pre-Islam all at the time of Axsum. The entire Swahili culture isnt just "black" people. So Sub-Sahara def aint just "blacks". More on that millions of native "blacks" live in North Africa. No they didnt move there to get into Europe, they have always been there, they are "black" and have no connection to Sub-Africa--NONE! they dont speak Bantu and they were not brought there as slaves. Why cant we get our heads around this fact? Arabs and white people came to North Africa with the greeks,Romans, Spanish Arab invasion in 9th c. and pushed the Africans down or mixed with them.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)21:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
New section required
I recommend we make this article more similar in structure to the white people article. In particular, we should include a physical traits section as that seems to be a significant part of race (as is seen in the white people article). A 'culture' section would also be a good addition. 212.139.248.22703:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some people are making out that the one drop rule is something unique to African blood, but if someone has a Jewish mother they are "Jewish", Robert De Niro is 1/4 Italian is considered an Italian American. The list is long of examples. --HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)10:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well the great thing about being one of the few non-blacks here, is I get to decide whether I want to claim my Italian ancesty, my Chinese ancestry, my British ancestry, and be respected by all those culture, or I could say I'm not Chinese, I'm just white. But I feel bad for the blacks. One drop of black blood and your black. You don't have a choice. Christmasgirl
Well technically I'm multiracial but I'm accepted as white. This is because whites worship the Chinese for our superior intellect and want nothing better than to get some Chinese blood in the family. But if I tried to marry a Chinese person I might get a bit of discrimination because of my white blood, but eventuially they'd come around. See race is decided by hypodescent. Christmasgirl
Not 100% true, tiger isnt "black", but Berry is, Bob is. Blackness is dominant so it isnt just some unfair policy. Many "mixed" poeple look like everyday non-mixed "black" people. This is the issue. I am from Africa and even with in one family you get people who are lighter than some mixed people, and in the same family you get dark people. So most of these "mixed" people look like Africans in Africa. So race is about how you look. Bob Marley looks Black, Berry looks Black. When she goes to Ethiopia or Rwanda or Mali she looks like them (and no these Africans are not mixed). Only when they tell you they are mixed do you know it. Just look at Lenny Kravitz (with Kinky hair), he is mixed, look at Prince, he isnt mixed, Vanessa Willliam (with Green eyes) isnt mixed. And again having Jewish blood makes you Jewish, you can worship Jesus all you like you are still Jewish. Indian and white = Indian as well (UK) --HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)22:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WRONG!!!! Tiger is 100% PURE black. All people with any African blood are 100% pure black. There can't possibly be mixed blood in Africa cause black blood don't mix. It stays 100% pure black. Only people who are a mix of non-black races have the right to be multiracial. All the different shades of color only matter to the blacks. Everyone else just sees one shade: BLACK! And European + Indian does not equal Indian, it equals the right to decide. The one drop rule never applied to Native Americans and till this day you have to prove you got a lot of Indian blood to get a government Indian card. One drop rule only applies to the blacks. The blacks are not even allowed to mention the fact that they have a non-black ancestor. ANd Jewish only Jewish if mother is Jewish. With the blacks it can be mother, father, or great great grandpa. Don't matter. One drop and your 100% pure black. Christmasgirl
"the right to decide" can i as an African decide to be not African? why not let everyone decide then. So next race box should be free to select what race you want to be. If you have 1/8 Indian in you, tick whatever on any given day you feel like ticking. Indian + White = INdian (UK not america)--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)00:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lenny Kravitz isn't Jewish he is BLACK. And there's no such thing as African. It's called BLACK! Most people can tick whatever race box they feel like, but that doesn't apply to the blacks. Christmasgirl
Actually the one drop rule makes perfect sense. It's extremely scientific. All humans come from Africa so if you mix with African blood it's like going way way way back in time. So far back in time that even one drop takes you way back. But when the other races mix, well there are no other races really. When it comes to science, there are only 2 races. Africans and non-Africans. So when 2 non-Africans mix they're not really mixing at all and since they're all the same race, we can decide which part of the non-African race we are. But when you mix with African blood, it's whole different deal. Christmasgirl
I hear statistics saying that the proportion of whites to nonwhites is decreasing in America and Europe, explaining it as differences in reproductive rates based on cultural whatnot, as well as immigration.. but considering the prevalence of the one-drop rule (SINBAD is black? How exactly is Sinbad BLACK?) it could just be the fact that any 'mixed race' breeding produces nonwhites no matter what, for dozens of generations.
Personal issues
Can we avoid bringing our personal issues and feelings into this article. Though this is the talk page, it is not a social networking forum. some of the stuff i am reading is really quite embarrassing. we should stick to the facts ie, what can be defined, what can be proved and what can be measured. Muntuwandi03:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
STOP THE EDIT WAR
Deevoice and Xmas girl. bullet point the issues and discuss, i dont know why Xmasgirl is complaining about Deceevoice edits, you cant revert the entire thing, there must be some content which can be keep, and Xmas girl 3RR is a problem and you will be blocked, use the talk page to discuss. Let others understand the issues so a resolution can be gained, because all that will happen is the same why you can revert they can revert back, pointless.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)12:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reverting because he's hardly adding anything to the article, he's going on rampage taking stuff out. he removed a huge quote from the one drop rule section cause he though the opinion was biased. Well hello. I thought this article was about different view points. All he's doing is blanking huge parts of the article, but doing it one edit at a time so it doesn't look like he's doing it. He's throwing in a few grammar corrections to make his edits look legit, but that's just to take your attention away from what he's doing most: blanking quotes and opinions he don't like. Christmasgirl
just revert the problem areas, because it you revert everything it will vex him, he would be terribly vexed and the edit wars would begin again. Discuss the specific areas of issue and allow the minor stuff.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)13:30, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Girl, you've shown absolutely no indication you've even read my edits, block-reverting wholesale -- including typos, syntactical errors and errors of fact. Furthermore, my edits have each been accompanied by edit notes which explain the changes. You're edit warring -- plain and simple. After your vandalism at White people, you're most assuredly due for a block if you continue such unproductive, hostile behavior. Without explaining your edits and simply engaging in ad hominem attacks, there's nothing to productively discuss. If you take issue with my changes, then let us know what they are so that disputes can be resolved intelligently. (What a concept.)deeceevoice13:36, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
why was this taken out for example:
Although America’s one drop rule originated as a racist attempt to keep the white race pure of any black contamination, today some of it’s biggest defenders are African-Americans such as professor John Michael Spencer. According to American Renaissance :
Prof. Spencer is particularly touchy about the idea that some of the icons of black history might have been "multiracial" rather than black. Nothing seems to infuriate him more than the thought of the white parents saying to their hybrid children, "Colin Powell, Lena Horne, Alex Haley, and Malcolm X were multiracial, just like you." He thinks this is nothing less than the theft of black history, adding, "The United States has a history of this kind of grand larceny." "Is Black History Month to be replaced by Multiracial History Month?" he asks. For Afro-centrists this may be a real worry because without the one drop rule, not even the most brazen of them can claim that Nefertiti, Jesus, Rameses, and Beethoven were "black."[17]
I suggest, in the interest of thoroughness, we start at the beginning, edit by edit. XmasGirl's reverts begin with the first paragrah. What's the problem there? deeceevoice13:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But *sigh*, in the interest of cooperation, I'll start with your question, HalaTruth. My edit note explains: "There must be another way to make this point. The author being quoted is attributing emotions to this fellow rather than making a purely rational, dispassionate argument.Find another, more NPOV source."
The author's quote uses value-laden language to characterize the other person's views. The guy starts off calling the man he's criticizing "touchy." It means (going to the online dictionary) "marked by readiness to take offense on slight provocation." Already, he's engaging in a personal attack, ascribing his ideological opponent's views to some sort of character flaw or emotional imbalance, rather than simply a difference of opinion/perspective. The language is clearly polemical, argumentative and disrespectful, rather than objective; its obvious intent is to ridicule and denigrate/belittle.
Because of the nature of the www, all sorts of written material is readily available for use in articles. Some of it is noteworthy, analytical and useful. Some of it is deliberately argumentative, inflammatory, derisive -- pick an ugly adjective. As the society has become less and less civil, so has the level of public/political discourse. This is an encyclopedia, not a political journal. The sources we choose should meet a high standard.
I haven't taken issue with the point the editor rather obviously is trying to interject/make; I've taken issue with the source being used to do so. The writer clearly has an axe to grind -- as does the editor, Christmasgirl, as she has demonstrated with her non-stop edit warring and her declaration on my talk page that "Black supremacists. Afrocentrics piss [her] off...." My suggestion in the edit note was to find a NPOV source.
And the edit was made was before I checked into the nature of American Renaissance and this guy. The language immediately struck me as inappropriate for inclusion in an encyclopedia. It is clearly an ad hominem attack.
Similarly, Christmasgirl's edit notes -- when she's bothered to include them -- have been little more than ad hominem attacks directed at me, with no credible attempt whatsoever to justify her ongoing black reversion of material.
I did a very brief check on AR, the source of this quote and the author. The publication itself is a rag. The author is widely regarded as a racist and admits to being a white separatist. Yes, he's been published, but so has David Duke. There are plenty of people with degrees frontin' like authorities on this, that or the other thing. And in today's world where everyone has his/her 15 minutes of fame, and at a time when the mass media seem particularly driven by ratings based on battling, intemperate (usually) red-faced talking heads screaming invectives at one another, one can find just about anything on anything in print or online and claim it as a source. It does not mean, however, that we should, as editors, freely and irresponsibly cut and paste such garbage into an article because it is a convenient way of injecting our own biases into an article under the guise of scholarship. Such thinly veiled POV should fairly shout at any remotely sentient/intelligent, objective reader.
And we should call one another on such bullsh*t.
Wikipedia should strive for a high standard when it comes to sources. We should not give the impression that these mental cretins and beyond-the-fringe media whores are reputable, reliable, trustworthy sources -- merely because they have a vanity press, a podium (and there are thousands upon thousands of them -- millions, even, in cyberspace) from which to spew their intemperate venom/rhetoric. Let's not dignify their b*tchy, POV blatherings with inclusion in an encyclopedia, for God's sake. Find someone without an axe to grind -- at least someone with broad credibility. And not some racist lunatic frontin' like decency. U get my drift? deeceevoice14:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I could take or leave the minor wording changes you made here or there. That's not my beef and you know it. I got a problem with you taking out relevant stuff that's cited. What standard should wikipedia strive for and you gona define it? The one drop rule is very important for black unity and that quote made clear that it's not just racists who accept the one drop rule, lot a blacks do too. The quote made clear the consequences of getting rid of the one drop rule, that there's a down side too. It helped balance the article. And you want to toss it out just cause you don't agree with the politics of the magazine the quote happened to be taken from. HELLO! The section's called SOCIO-POLOTICAL DEFINITIONS, we're supposed to cite all the political opinions. Some of the Afrocentric shit is from people I think are cretins but I don't remove it from the article because wikipedia suffers when you remove content. Sure we should remove blatant racism, but the article had no blatant racism even if you think a source might be racist. So what if the quote was questioning the author's motives. The author wrote a book about controversial topic and so it's fair game for people to question him. It's a FREAKING book review for God's sake. You messed up all kinds of good stuff in the article, like taking a photo of South African coloreds and squashing it to the point where no one can see what they look like. Getting rid of the one of the race definitions just cause you think the guy's a hack (like none of the Afrocentrics are black supremancists or hacks) You got rid of a nice photo of the Sahara desert that drew attention to the Sahara desert criticism. I only read that section cause I was curious what the Sahara desert picture was all about, and I learned quite a bit. Lot of smart people in that section even if a few are Afrocentric. Christmasgirl
If you "could take or leave" my changes, then why did change them -- wholesale? Your argument is a cop-out, and it's evident. When an editor makes carefully considered edits, then you are obliged to state a reason for changing those edits. What you did was an unreasoned, knee-jerk, blanket revert of several changes that were accompanied by rational edit summaries, and you did so with nothing but dismissive, ad hominem language in your edit summaries -- when you bothered to include one at all.
Just as with your puerile vandalism of the White people article, this demonstrates an unthinking contempt for the wiki process and for the contributions of other editors. News flash: this is a collaborative process. If you are unwilling to work with editors in a mature, civil way to produce a quality product, then you'd best turn your attentions to one of the thousands of blogs in cyberspace where disruptive, intemperate, adolescent conduct and mindless demagoguery are accepted modes of conduct.
I stated my objections clearly to the quotation from that racist hack clearly. If you want to introduce information/a commentary regarding the opinion of a majority of African-Americans in this nation with regard to who is and who is not black -- because the majority of blacks in the U.S. think similarly to the "touchy" man referred to in the quote -- then there shouldn't be a problem finding something acceptable. The author's value-laden, smirking language is not. It's grist for a political rag, a blog, even -- but not for an encyclopedia. deeceevoice19:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, don't misunderstand me. There is a difference between being controversial and being a hack. Afrocentrist scholarship of the level of that of Cheickh Ante Diop is highly respected worldwide. When UNESCO undertook a project to present a comprehensive/exhaustive history of the African continent, Diop featured prominently in the epic, finished product. His scholarship had to be presented and defended to a rigorous review by a panel of eminent historians before inclusion in the multi-volume work. He proved to the satisfaction of those seated that dynastic Egypt was a black civilization, and this is what has been recorded in the finished product. There was no countervailing argument presented in the book. Why? because Diop's scholarship and documentation were unassailable. He not only successfully justified his findings, he completely blew away his detractors. He devastated them -- not with demagoguery, or artifice, or ad hominem insults; point by point, he presented the facts. Once the evidence was gathered and all the arguments were in, there was no credible opposition left standing. So, those of you who, knee-jerk fashion, discount outright the work of any and every historian, scholar, academician because you or someone else has slapped an "Afrocentric" label on it, may be closing your eyes to what was in the time of Herodotus, and is now accepted elsewhere in high academic circles the truth. Diop's status is already established. Is he controversial in some circles? Yes. But he was most certainly no hack. deeceevoice20:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Diop didn't prove anything. The UNESCO Symposium came to the conclusion that the criteria regarded as adequate for determining race by Professor Diop were no longer considered to be so by American specialists and that his anthropological documentation ante-dating about 1939 should be regarded as "of dubious reliability owning to its lack of scientific rigor". SecurID20:36, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the sahara image was cool but it must actually refer to the critic and not be an editor version, like maybe Some agrue against the term Sub-etc etc. I dont think the SA image should be made too small.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)15:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The family image is a great one, but it's way too large and completely out of scale with the other photos on the page. Layout wise (and print journalism is my field), it just overpowers the page. If readers want a larger view, all they have to do is click the photo. This is common, accepted practice on Wikipedia. The downsized version is certainly sufficiently large for the reader to see at even a cursory glance the obvious differences in skin tone, hair texture and facial features among the group, and that's what matters. deeceevoice20:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm crunching a deadline and haven't read the changes in detail. I'll come back when I have more time. But I did notice this in the summary from Christmasgirl in the edit history: "...but without the so-called personal attack against spencer that pissed off Deeceevoice" Once again, unproductive, inaccurate language. I'm not "pissed off." Further the nature of my objections were very clear. Quite the contrary. It is you who stated you were "pissed off" on my talk page. Do not attribute to me motivations which do not exist. I suppose, however, we are making progress. You're finally leaving edit summaries. Tone down the nastiness, girl, and try to behave yourself. deeceevoice20:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Population Estimates, redux
The population estimates are a problem. They use 2 of arguably (and in this article argued) many definitions of Black people. They have cobbled together numbers from many sources, constituting new synthesis and Original Research. This is not all that surprising; the article has been edited over the last few weeks to present Black primarily as a race - but there are not and will not be good sources to document world population by race. Jd271820:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I got no comment on that. It's written in such a way that I can't tell what parts are cited and what's not. If it's cited it should stay Christmasgirl
Most Wikipedia articles in general are "cobbled together" from a variety of sources. All the information is cited. To avoid controversy the information is more about the african diaspora. Not everyone in the african diaspora is considered black but they all have recent ancestors from sub-saharan africa who were black. Any other definition is bound to be problematicMuntuwandi01:07, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
all the information is cited from reputable sources like the UN and the Population reference bureau. There is no original research or manufacturing of information.Muntuwandi20:42, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I know you have expressed reservations about the population estimate. Also several times you have expressed your wish to have this entire article deleted. You are not giving sufficient reason as to why you think this is original research when all the information is cited from reputable sources. If you have any problems, let us use the talk page and avoid unnecessary edit wars. Please detail exactly what you disapprove of.For the moment the informatin should remain simply because it is cited. It is not mismatched because it is all concurrent.Muntuwandi20:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]
What's up with the incorrect citation of unspecific population numbers? This is an article about Black people and not about the world population in general. If you want to keep this section, then please introduce specific data - and cite them correctly! SecurID00:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Data is not incorrect but rounded off for the sake of simplicity. eg 485,000 rounded to half million. The goal should not be to establish an exact figure but to come up with a simple range and distribution pattern. This is simply an attempt to find out what is the probability of meeting a person who may fit the definition of being black in any location. By common sense we know that if someone was dropped in a random place in sub-saharan Africa the probability is close to 100% that the first people one would meet would be black. Conversly in Siberia the probability is closer to 0.
Furthermore we know by the very term minority that demographics and statistics play a key role in race relations. For instance the black population in the US has been around 1/8th of population for the last 150 years. The dynamics of race relations are thus different in Africa than in the US. The aim of the numbers is to provide raw but reliable data. Muntuwandi04:37, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Four or five races
The weight of this article has been tilted heavily towards the five race or four race point of view over the last few weeks. We need to reread for Reliable Sources and proper weight. Jd271820:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well then add sources that tilt it another direction. That's how wikipedia get better. When someone thinks an article has moved too far in one extreme they add shit to move it in the opposite extreme, and pretty soon you have so much shit that one article gives birth to several sub-articles. But just going on rampages taking shit out you don't like takes the article backwards. Christmasgirl
And btw, if we were gona go by proper weight all the socalled Afrocentics would be taken out of the article, cause that's an extreme fringe view. As sad as it may be to say, obsession with looking down at darker people has been the dominant view through history. But if you got another view that's so much more mainstream, you should have no trouble filling the article with new material. Very easy to take stuff out, much more helpful to put stuff in. Christmasgirl
And who prey tell is a reliable source for who a black person is? Someone who studies black people for a living? Wait a second I thought those people were all racists or black supremacist Afrocentrics? Have you now changed your mind? So the U.S. census? Then the article would be 1 paragraph long? Christmasgirl
Probably not one paragraph, but almost certainly shorter than the current article. There are different attempts at defining what "Black person" means, and they certainly should be explained and assigned sources. This article has no business attempting to reach a resolution, nor to promote minority theories with undo weight. Jd271800:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well someone today added back all the definitions of negroid which I just now removed because I decided Wobble & Futurebird had a valid point that we should stick to sources that use black as their termonology. It's relevant to note the entire history of how the social construction of blackness has been used and abused. I agree with you that the article should not imply that any one definition is superior to any other and the population section does imply that to a degree, which is why I did make some effort to remove it, and then when then failed, improve it to whatever extent possible. My vision for this article is to document exactly where this social construction called "blackness" came from and exactly how its evolving and changing all the time, so I totally agree with you when you say "we shouldn't attempt to reach a resolution" Iseebias
let just avoid too much multi-racial
Everybody is mixed to some degree, Spanish Italians etc, If we must discuss multi-racial limit it near mixed race, mom, dad, Else we will have to add that the Spanish arent white. The Ethiopian thing will start many problems again, just look at the edit history. Arabs are a Semitic people look up what racial semitic means. So how far back do we want to go, if we go back 70,000 years everybody is African.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)22:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well then calling people black causes just as many problems as calling people mixed cause like you say, everyone was black 70,000 years ago. Again this ain't a science article, it's about how we label people, usually for political reasonsChristmasgirl
The idea 'mixed' presupposes that there are defined races that can be mixed. This is starting to feel like a POV fork of the race article. Jd271823:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of calling of people black and white also presupposes races. What's the difference? Christmasgirl
The difference is we are debating established Blackness so we should avoid debating vality of race, that is a different article. So to introduce the fact that some Africans are mixed, from some very exotic lonely argument not found in popular history or culture is useless. Furthermore if you introduce those concepts then we have to debunk the entire thing as all Europe has African genes so they are of Sub-Saharan ancestry. There has to be a cut-off or then there is no basis for any discussion on human social-construction. By this argument even if some Swhahili people have "Arab" blood it has no bearing on the discussion of black people, since nobody is pure and then the big crush, race is all in our head, so to keep the debate in perspective these claims of mixed Ethiopians needs to be dustbinned as debated and agreed before. I really dont know what they could be mixed with, And i am part Habesha and have a geneology which goes back to the Axsum and dem is all Black.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)00:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But races are social constructions. Humans used arbitrary subjective biological logic to define blacks, whites, Asians ect. So if we socially constructed these categories then we can socially construct an intermediate between these categories. I think you guys have missed the whole point of the massive multiracial movement. These people are not saying races are scientific, they're saying if you insist on assigning people to races based on antiquated racist labels like black and white, they are going to assert a middle groind. They're refusing to be pigeon-holed, and I say more power to them Iseebias
{edit conflict} One problem is, and remains, someone who is Ethiopian is Ethiopian. There is no problem with that. This article demands that the person be categorized as Black or not as Black. That can be a problem. If the article were agnostic on race, then there would be no problem. We would not need to cope with or apologize for gaps in theory.
This article has been twisted to an explanation a race-based concept of "Black," the proposition that "Black" means
sub-Saharan African +
North Americans of 'recent' Sub Saharan ancestry (employing some US-influenced version of a "one drop rule,") possibly +
South Indians, possibly +
Australians and / or New Guineans.
This article should return to a description of the different meanings assigned to "Black" people, and drop the attempts to fully explicate any one of those meanings. In particular, reliable sources favor social construction over race; the article needs serious editing to reflect that. Jd271801:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What attempts to fully explicate any of those meanings? The article is simply a description of all the arbitrary ways people have been categorized as black in different times and places. The only sections that demand that someone be categorized as black or not black are the population estimates and the gallary, neither of which I endorse. Iseebias
My comments were directed towards the article, not towards you personally. Since the two sections you name are almost 40% of the article, that looks like a fairly large problem. In addition, undo weight is shifted on racial theories through the needlessly extended discussion of the one drop rule, and the extended discussion of racial theories of a psychologist and a psychiatrist. Jd271802:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The one drop rule is crucial to understanding how black identity has been historically defined in America and it makes the point that race is a social construction. What could be more arbitrary & unscientific then saying 1 drop of black blood makes you black. The fact that Brazil has the reverse 1 drop rule proves how unscientific and arbitrary it all is. The Yale lecturer psychiatrist is given a 2 or 3 sentence quote & she's just there to document the fact that some people use "recent African ancestry" to define black. And the psychologist who is a professor on race science is only now given a 1 sentence quote, now that I removed his definition for "negroid". And he's only there to document the fact that some people define a black specifically as someone who has MOST (as opposed to the 1 drop rule) of their ancestors specifically from "sub-Saharan Africa" (as opposed to any part of Africa). This is a crucial point to document because we have a criticism section where people dispute this limiting definition of blackness and indeed the term sub-Saharan itself. My vision for this article is to document all the inconsistencies and disagreements about who is black. As for the population section and the gallary, you have a point. Can't argue with you there. Iseebias
It's an article, not a thesis. The facts can be asserted with citations; these non-experts need not be quoted. And 1 drop is important; but that doesn't mean the discussion need go on for over a screenful. Jd271803:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it were a less controversial article I would agree that we could just summarize the various opinions. Checking the archives I believe that was tried but it lead to constant edit wars over exactly how to characterize the various view points and all kinds of POV pushing was being inserted by editors. Finally it was decided to just have direct quotes to avoid such disputes. As for your comment about this being an article not a thesis; I guess you and I have different philosophies. I see wikipedia as an excellent resource where people can get an unlimited amount of information about any topic. You on the other hand seem to feel that covering this topic in extensive detail is somehow inappropriate in which case I suggest you nominate it for deletion if you feel an extensive discussion is of limited encyclopedic value IseebiasIseebias
If you feel strongly that there is very little reliable material about what it means to be black, and that this article can basicly be summed up in a few paragraphs, then nominate it for deletion and reduce it to a sub-section of another article on race or social constructionism, or turn this into a disambiguation page. But if ít's worth having an article, it's worth having a good and thorough article. Iseebias
I see two weeks of questionable aggressive expansion of this article. The expansion looks neither good, nor thorough. Jd271804:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well if you don't feel it's thorough then add new perspectives to the existing material. But to say some of the perspectives are not good is POV. There's no right or wrong way to define blackness because it's a social construction that has been applied in different ways by different people including people with world views very different from your own. Iseebias
The day that color based racism ends I would be right up there in recommending this article for deletion. But until then not discussing the issues is being in racial denial.Muntuwandi04:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But by concentrating on biology instead of social construction, this article directs attention to petty racialist discussion of the color of Ethiopians, rather than what it means to be Black. Complex issues should not be reduced to a table or list. Jd271804:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Multiracial biracial interracial
These remain one of the most controversial issues in western society. Malcolm X talked about it extensively in his autobiography almost half a century ago. Today it is no less controversial. I just hope that we do not recycle old arguments that have been debated over and over again. we should move forward and bring new insights. What is tiger woods or Halle berry or ethiopians? are now getting stale. Maybe according to Chappelle, let us have a racial draft. Muntuwandi02:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Everything about black identity (or white identity) is controversial, that's why it's imperative that the article not endorse any 1 view point and simply document the various perspectives on what it means to be black.(Unsigned post.)
I can't believe you're bringing Ethiopians into this. For the most part, they're not mixed with anything. They're as black as the Kenyan man pictured in the article. deeceevoice06:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No don't start this debate again. There are extremely strong views on both sides, but we don't need to discuss it because the article mostly discusses race and multiracialism as social constructions, so no need to argue over biology Iseebias
Watch your manners, deeceevoice. Remember that you are on probation for racist behaviour. You are forbidden from commenting on this article for the next 24 hours. 24.16.29.14922:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
there is only one view on the topic of ET, then there is a few academics with their bin to remove the noblity of Ethiopian civilization from African claim. But 2 white people saying something outbalances 2 billion Africans opinion--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)20:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
i think its a double standard
its strange that someone get blocked from discussing on this page because wikipedia doesnt excepts racist behaviour. then why is this whole article about "black people" quite racist in my opinion. to define people in to races like black and white is just wrong. and to have a "kenyan man" on one of the pictures in the article and then have only celebrities in the "white people" section is just very very strange i think and wrong. i think we should discuss the deletion of this article bacuase i cant see any reason of defining people into races.. i dont see my friend as my "black friend" i see her as a friend i think this article is wrong wrong wrong...
/matrix17
I think these types of articles are a necessary evil. Of course we don't want to promote racism, but the other option is much worse. If there were no "race" articles on Wikipedia, then web-browsers would find less reputable articles about the subject. There are other articles about a "black" "race", but many of them invoke outdated scientific racism. The strength of the Wikipedian community is that it is open to everyone of all backgrounds and it maintains a strict neutral point of view policy and other policies designed to guarantee the balance of any topic covered. Although this article may give the impression of reifying "race", it actually decomposes the concept, incorporating all sides of the argument. In actuality, these articles show that race is a social construction, countering racism.--DarkTea15:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Gallery
I don't like the current version of the gallery. It's a more a showcase of our favorite black heroes that makes the article seem amateurish & adds little encyclopedic info. In addition, it displays only a limited spectrum of the people who could be considered black, & implies that some definitions are more objective than others by saying those people are considered black by a significant number of people (significant number of people is a weasle word). I'd much prefer a more diverse gallery that showcases the absurdity racial classification by drawing attention to all the inconsistencies & how blackness is a constantly evolving social construction that keeps redefining itself. The following is a very rough idea of the direction I'd like to take the gallery in & I'd like to get your opinions & suggestions (most of the claims are cited in the article):Iseebias
Chiek Anto Diop claims that the French, the Spanish, the Italians & the Greeks may all be considered black
I strongly disagree with the above, it is controversial and will not add anything to the view of blackness.The current gallery is people generally accepted as Black people. The King Of Kings is globally seen as a Black man, the king of Black men. so with just this example we are adding people seen by most as black. next thing someone would add Rosa Parks wasnt really black because she was light, this confusion is best avoided, when we try and sum up what we think people are. As it stands it is better, these are Black people, for more information read the article. everytime you add x you need to keep adding and cause a debate which is IMPPOSSIBLEEE to solve. Cathy freeman, what about in England? What about in India? Is she Black in Brazil? On and on and one. enought, leave it simple let the user decide. baka ! as we say in ET land.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)15:02, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The people in the current gallery are all generally accepted as black by WHO? Some are not even allowed to identify as black on the U.S. census. Some are not seen as black in most countries outside of America. Some are not even seen as black by most Americans. There is no generally accepted conception of blackness, no 1 definition, & to imply otherwise is to assert that race has an objective biological reality. Much better to expose race for the subjective nonsensical contradiction that it is. The fact that Barack Obama and an Australian obiriginal are not considered black by some while Tony Soprano would be considered black by others exposes race as a social construction and is a much less POV presentation of the subject.. I would prefer a gallergy that's more fluid and flexible, rather than a simplistic binary "only people who are considered black by a significant number of people (whatever that means) are allowed in" Complex socio-political topics should not be reduced to binary simplistic black/not black dichotomies Iseebias
Then delete the entire section, simple. leave it or delete it, decide. IT CANNOT BE SOLVED! so we either agree to let it be in its simple form, or delete it. To explain it away is not a solution because as i said then we can go on and on and nobody gains anything. Tony has a view and then comes African shahadah saying none of them are black, so where does that leave us? Ethiopians are considered black by most people on this planet, but you find one exotic def, same with the San, you can find someone to say "they aint black." Let the user decide as opposed to force feed them so unsolvable solution for black identity by adding every 2cent opinion from freak and funny alike, it is confusion not claity. MrT is black in areaC, but not in areaD, and semi black in areaE, was once black in areaf but now is mixed according to MRs G. all the more proof of the illogic of blackness. we all agree that we r human dont we? because it is real! put all these def into a math equation and the result is Zero content, pure maths. just look at where all of the work above ended up with population and crazy theories, one user came and binned it as OR. It is not maths and it isnt science. work smart and try to improve not cause controversy. --HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)15:37, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Iseebias. There is no generally accepted conception of blackness because it's a socio-political construct and not a biological one, and the gallery should reflect that. The Irish should be re-added to the gallery as well. Furthermore, the gallery isn't ment to be someones personal shrine and shouldn't be misused as a place of POV worship ("King Of Kings globally seen as the king of Black men"). SecurID15:53, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Black Irish are not considered black by any racial definitions of the term, however John Beddoe, the founder and president of the British Anthropological Institute, developed in his book "The Races of Man" (1862), an "Index of Nigressence", from which he argued that the Irish had craniofacial features close to Cro-Magnon man and thus had links with the "Africinoid" races.[19] Many dictionaries also define black as a synonym for swarthy, from which the Black Irish got their name
This page is black identity, so black people have heroes is that now banned by white people? The King of Kings is a globally Black symbol of a black united thinking. Just like bob marley, the gallery will only be deleted if it turns into a gallery of pov, leave it or delete it. I dont like trouble makers, let me b honest and you find this page was okay, then people show up with agendas and rattle everything. that entire time wasting section on population got cut with one edit, waste of time. the gallery has been stable for a long time, most editos have no issue with it. if it starts to be a controvesial shopping list of povs i will nominate it to be removed. see and disturb needs to be identified and curbed. what will be gained, read the article look at the gallery, people have brains let them decide. or will you put every view in the caption. Again none of those people are black according to some people.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)16:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But the article is about disagreement so the gallery should reflect disagreements. It shouldn't falsely present a consensus that doesn't exist Iseebias
Let me sums something by a question, with all the words in the english language we have failed to let anyone know what black is. correct. so how you going to add clarity in the subtext of a gallery? If i was a vulcan and read this page i would be no more informed. Adding confusion to the debate doesnt help, black is broad and not all agree everyone here is black by all definitions is enought for the gallery. Why go further you have already explained the disagreement.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)16:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ever heard the saying "a picture's worth a 1000 words?" Black is a highly visual concept Iseebias
Then leave just the picture let the user decide, stop trying to over explain what cannot be explained. And i dont like that EThiopian refernce as it is a POV from a minority source.by this argument white people are mixed race as all white people have African DNA.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)16:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You could try creating a Black heroes page... But this is about Black people, which is a tough topic... You seem to be assuming that Black is a biological race (mentioned DNA, in the comment above), but that's neither the only, nor even the majority view. I could see a (weak) argument for keeping a gallery to show the difficulty in deciding who is and who is not Black, but frankly, photos in the article itself would better serve that purpose. There are a number of related articles where the subjects are better-defined: galleries in those articles might make more sense. Jd271816:45, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Halaqah presenting photos without presenting disagreement is an implied endorsement of these people somehow being the posterboys (and girls) of blackness. It implies that some definitions of black are more correct than others because only some people are shown and not others. It further implies that cultures that don't consider some of those people black are somehow incorrect. Wikipedia should not take sides on complex issues, it should not try to force one definition of blackness down the whole world's throat. Iseebias
I would just like to say everyone is colored, There is no blacks or whites, because they are not colors they are shades. So if black people are colored that means white people must be colored. Kind of like native americans, there not indians to all idiots who say there indian still. They are just simply americans and not from INDIA!
White is the incorrect term for a "Caucasian"(note the asian part)
person just so you know, white people aren't actually white. Secondly any kind of racial pride is just plain stupid because it all goes back to the Only race,the Inferior race, THE HUMAN RACE!
Do u know there is only one biological human race? All children of one African woman. What would she say if she could see the world today? That her own children would come home and enslave their brothers and sisters. So as irrelvant as race is, it is relevant because we are defined by it, we are privalleged or not privalleged by it. the more we use it the more we have to use it.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ)19:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Miscellaneous Suggested Changes
(Disclaimer: I don't think anything POV slipped into this comment, and if something sounds POV, I certainly didn't intend for it to. Also, I would have implemented most of these changes, but I don't believe that the current restriction will allow me to edit the article myself.)
1. To preserve its relevance to the article, shouldn't the picture of "a Kenyan man" be changed to "a black man" or "a black Kenyan"?
(Note: I don't really care about that, it just popped into my head.)
2. There are multiple flaws in this quote: "The difference in skin color between black and whites is however a minor genetic difference accounting for just one letter in 3.1billion letters of DNA. code[4] [sic]".
Change "black" to "blacks",
"3.1billion" to "3.1 billion",
"DNA. code[4]" to "DNA code.[4]" (the period comes before the reference link),
"is however a minor" to "is, however, a minor" (this was likely intended to be an appositive, the current punctuation is ambiguous);
and, lastly, the information derived from citation [4] seems, to me, to have been improperly interpreted. Without getting into any discussion of what I or anyone else believe to be true, and taking the article to be solid fact, the gist is that it is POSSIBLE for one base pair mutation to result in the opposite skin color (opposite of whatever the base pair had previously indicated, I'm not calling one genotype the "default"). The article says, "The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome," but goes on to mention that "Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations," stating that, in fact, more than one gene controls skin pigmentation. Moving away from the article, one gene to control pigmentation is ridiculous: ignoring blacks versus whites, the mentioned nearly pigment-less European phenotype is different from that of other whites, and is not alterable by increasing melanin production through exposure to the sun (or an equivalent). Stick this type of person in sunlight for a day, and they'll turn pink; not tan, and certainly not black. [EDIT: Whoops! Forgot my name!] — KyleP23:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
^Vaughn L. (2002) Black People and Their Place in World History, Self Published (ISBN 0971592004 )[Black People & Their Place In World History], by Leroy Vaughn
^ abCite error: The named reference Rushton was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Rushton J. P. (2000) Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, Charles Darwin Research Inst. Pr; 3rd edition (ISBN 0965683613). Abstract available here
![Oprah Winfrey is black by all definitions of the term. According to genetic tests done by PBS' African Lives, she is 89% Sub-Saharan, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian.[1] which means that most of her ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, African-Americans have about an 83% African ancestry.[2]](/upwiki/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Oprah_Winfrey_%282004%29.jpg/94px-Oprah_Winfrey_%282004%29.jpg)
Oprah Winfrey is black by all definitions of the term. According to genetic tests done by PBS' African Lives, she is 89% Sub-Saharan, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian.[1] which means that most of her ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, African-Americans have about an 83% African ancestry.[2]![Nelson Mandela is the only living black person to have ranked among A&E's 100 most influential people of the last 1000 years. [citation needed]](/upwiki/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Mandela_minus_Clinton.jpg/77px-Mandela_minus_Clinton.jpg)
Nelson Mandela is the only living black person to have ranked among A&E's 100 most influential people of the last 1000 years. [citation needed]
Some scholars created controversy by claiming that ancient Egyptians, like King Tutankhamen, were black.![Warren Harding may have had black ancestry,[4] making him the first "black president" by some definitions.](/upwiki/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Warren_G_Harding_portrait_as_senator_June_1920.jpg/90px-Warren_G_Harding_portrait_as_senator_June_1920.jpg)
Warren Harding may have had black ancestry,[4] making him the first "black president" by some definitions.![Oprah Winfrey is black by all definitions of the term. According to genetic tests done by PBS' African Lives, she is 89% Sub-Saharan, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian.[1] which means that most of her ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, African-Americans have about an 83% African ancestry.[2]](/enwiki/wiki/File:Oprah_Winfrey_(2004).jpg)
![Nelson Mandela is the only living black person to have ranked among A&E's 100 most influential people of the last 1000 years. [citation needed]](/enwiki/wiki/File:Mandela_minus_Clinton.jpg)
![Warren Harding may have had black ancestry,[4] making him the first "black president" by some definitions.](/enwiki/wiki/File:Warren_G_Harding_portrait_as_senator_June_1920.jpg)
Colin Powell is described as black in America but would be considered creole in Jamaica.
![Barack Obama self-identifies as black and could identify as black or multi-racial by many definitions, some definitions would dispute his right to identify as black because only half of his ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa[3].](/enwiki//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?wpDestFile=SenatorBarackObama.jpg){kind=link}
![The Black Irish are not considered black by any racial definitions of the term, however John Beddoe, the founder and president of the British Anthropological Institute, developed in his book "The Races of Man" (1862), an "Index of Nigressence", from which he argued that the Irish had craniofacial features close to Cro-Magnon man and thus had links with the "Africinoid" races.[19] Many dictionaries also define black as a synonym for swarthy, from which the Black Irish got their name](/enwiki//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?wpDestFile=Parnellsitting.jpg){kind=link}