the mind-the music-the mystery-the MADNESS

12th April 2012

Link reblogged from Nok with 173 notes

Nok: The Origin of the Negro Myth. →

nok-ind:

Image.1 Negroid types according to Meyers Blitz-Lexicon, published in 1932. Images like this still propagate Racism, If you compare it to its European counterparts & Asian counterparts the people are wearing cloths.

The following is taken entirely from Cheikh anta diops book African Origins of Civilization - Myth or Reality .

The Origin of the Negro Myth:To answer the above query it is necessary to go back to Egypt at the time that it fell under the yoke of the foreigner. The distribution of blacks on the African continent probably went through two principle phases:

It is generally believed that by 7000 B.C., the Sahara had dried up. Equatorial Africa was probably still too dense to attract people. Consequently the last black who lived in the Sahara now presumably left left it to migrate toward the upper Nile, with the exception of a few small isolated groups on the rest of the continent who either had migrated toward the south or had headed north. Perhaps the first group found an indigenous Black population in the region of the upper Nile. Whatever the case, it was from the gradual adaptation to the new living conditions which nature assigned to these various black populations that oldest phenomenon of civilization, came about.

Image 2. Head bust of Menes/Narmer of the 1st  Dynasty

This civilisation called Egyptian in our period, developed for a long time in it’s early cradle: then it slowly descended the Nile valley spread out around the Mediterranean basin. This cycle of civilization, the longest in history, presumably lasted about 10,000 years. This is a reasonable compromise between the long chronology (Based on data provided by Egyptian priest, Herodotus and Manetho who place the beginning at 17,000 B.C.) and the short chronology of moderns – for the latter are obliged to admit that by 4245 B.C. The Egyptians had already invented the calender (which necessarily requires the passage of thousands of years.) Obviously, during that long period, the blacks could have penetrated deeper and deeper into the interior of the continental civilization analyzed in Chapter VIII. These African civilisations would be cut off from the rest of the world. They would tend to live in isolation as a result of the enormous distance separating them from access routes to the Mediterranean. When Egypt lost its independence, their isolation was complete.

Image. 3 An Ancient Egyptian and a Modern Ethiopian lady

From then on, separated from the mother country which was invaded by the foreigner, and withdrawn in a geographical setting requiring a minimum effort of adjustment, the blacks were orientated toward the development of their social, political, and moral organization, rather than toward speculative scientific research that their circumstances failed to justify, and even rendered impossible. Adaptation to the narrow, fertile Nile valley required expert technique in irrigation and dams, precise calculations to foresee the inundations of the Nile and to deduce their economical and social consequences. It also required the inventions of geometry to delimit property after the floods obliterated boundary lines. By the same token, the terrain in long flat ships required the transformation of the paleo-Negretic hoe into a plow, first drawn by men, subsequently by animals,. Indispensable as all that was for the Negro’s material existence in the Nile valley, it became equally superfluous in the new living conditions in the interior.

Image 4. Benin City 1670 (Nigeria)

Since history had disrupted his former equilibrium with the environment, the black now found new equilibrium with the environment, the black now found a new equilibrium, differing from the first in the absence of a technique no longer vital to the social, political, and moral organization. With economic resources assured by means that did not require perpetual inventions, the Negro became progressively indifferent to material progress.

Image 5. Don Alvaro King of Kongo giving Audience to the Dutch in 1642

It was under these new conditions that the encounter with Europe to place. In the 15^th century , when the first Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, Danes, and Brandenburgers began to set up trading post on the west African Coast, the potential organization of the African States was equal, and often superior, to that of their own respective states. Monarchies were Already Constitutional, with a People’s Council on which the various social Strata were represented. Contrary to the Legend, the Negro king was not, and had never been, a despot with unlimited powers. In some places, he was invested by the people, with the prime minister an intermediary representing the free men. His Mission was to serve the people wisely and his authority depended on his respect for the established constitution.

Image 6. [The City of Lovango.] (1670) Angola west Africa.

The social and moral order was on the same level of perfection. Nowhere did any pre-logical mentality reign, in the sense that Levy-Bruhl understood it, but there is no need to refute here an idea that it’s author rejected before his death. On the other hand, for all the reasons cited above, technical development was less stressed than in Europe. Although the Negro had been the first to discovery iron, he had built no cannon; the secret of gunpowder was known only to the Egyptian priest, who used it solely for the religious purpose at rites such as the Mysteries of Osiris (cf. Cornelius de Pauw’s Recherches sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois).

Africa was therefor quite vulnerable from the technical standpoint. It became tempting, irresistible prey for the West, provided with firearms and far-ranging navies. So the economic progress of the Renaissance Europe spurred on the conquest of Africa, which was rapidly accomplished. It passed from the stage of coastal trading posts to that of annexation by Western international agreements, followed by armed Conquest called “pacification”.

Image 7. British troops after the burning of Benin  1897

At the beginning of this period America was discovered Christopher Columbus and the overflow of the old continent was dumped on the new world. The development of the Virgin Islands required cheap labour. Defenceless Africa then became the readymade reservoir from which to draw that labour force with the minimum of expense & risk. The modern Negro slave trade was considered economic necessity prior to the advent of the machine. This would last until the mid-nineteenth century.

Such a reversal of roles, the result of the new technical relations, brought with it the master-slave relationships between whites and blacks on a social level. Already in the middle ages, the memory of a Negro Egypt that had civilized the world had been blurred by ignorance of the antique tradition hidden in libraries or buried under ruins. It would become even more obscure during those four centuries of slavery.

Inflated by their recent technical superiority, the Europeans looked down on the black world and condescended to touch nothing but it’s riches. Ignorance of the Black’s ancient history, differences of morals and customs, ethnic prejudices between two races that believed themselves to be facing each other for the first time, combined with the economic necessity to exploit-so many factors predisposed the mind of the European to distort the moral personality of the Blacks and their intellectual aptitudes.

Image 8. Cecil Rhodes & the Scramble for African. 

Henceforth “Negro” became a synonym for primitive being. “inferior” endowed with a pre-logical mentality. As the human being is always eager to justify his conduct, they went even further. The desire to legitimize colonization and the slave trade- in other words, the social condition of the Negro in the modern world engendered an entire literature to describe the so called inferior traits of the black. The mind of several generations of Europeans would thus be gradually indoctrinated, western opinion would crystallize and instinctively accept as the revealed truth the equation: Negro=inferior humanity. To crown this cynicism, colonization would be depicted as a duty to humanity. They invoked “the civilizing mission” of the West charged with the responsibility to raise the African to the level of the other men [Known to us as “the white man’s burden”]. From then on capitalism had clear sailing to practice the most ferocious exploitation under the cloak of moral pretexts.

Reference:  Diop, C.A., African Origins of Civilization - Myth or Reality: Chicago, Ill, Lawrence Hill Books 1974.        

• On a side note you can tell the period of the book based on the language used, language such as Negro. The term Negroid has no anthropological or genetic meaning. As the term only came into use in 1859. Even the term Negro land was made up,  Yes thats what they called a proportion of west Africa. The term Negro only came into use in the mid 15th century with first contact with the Portuguese. 
• Furthermore apparently  definitively African groups such as the Ethiopians, Somali, Beja & some central African groups etc. are classified as Caucasoid. That Statement alone that East Africans are an OFFSHOOT of Caucasoid smacks of the “Hamitic origin theory in the face.  Although these groups in their own right are phylogentically unique as some of these groups are a admixture of much older Ancient African  and Arab ancestry. 
• Basically racial terminology is based on phenotypical differences not genotypical differences. Showing errors in current racial classification models

However if you notice now to a much lesser extent in popular culture that term has been replaced with African. With the reclassification of the north Africa as the middle east. For socioeconomic reasons this makes sense. Given the fact that many North Africans are descendants of Arab settlers mixed with a smaller admixture of African  with a definitively Arab culture Unique to each country.

Irrespective of where we go outside Africa as a Black African we still face prejudice (even in north Africa). To a similar extent Arabs are now being demonized & face prejudice.  

In essence the terminology African is better fitting & links Africans to a historical origin as they are the most racially diverse group given the constant in-flux and out of people to & from the continent which is still happening today.

Source: nok-ind