User:Zaphnathpaaneah
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Background
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Black_People and Talk:Black_People
Let us black people tell you what it means to be black. No longer is the black side of this defensive. I spent enormous amounts of time giving the Eurocentricists all the leverage they are going to get.
1. Black identity is not based on the conclusions of non-black intellectuals. That means that, like Jews and like other cosmopolitian groups with a long and complicated history, black people are not defined in the context of White or non-black scientists, anthropologitsts. No, instead, those scientists must do what scientists do. They must investigate the subject matter themselves. That means they must ask the members of the all-inclusive identity. Of course that means that only reputable sources are justifiable in the Wiki-context. However, that does not give the white contributors or moderators carte-blanche to unilaterally reject any second or third tier reference that does not agree with their already forumlated opinions. (The catch-22 ends here). The legacy of whites making the deciding factor on defining black people ended years ago.
The next few points I am going to take the "nots" and further down I will put in the affirmatives in order to remove any loopholes.
2. Black identity is not limited to a geographical origin. This is important to understand, because if you put a geographical limitation, you create a contradiction. The contradiction is as follows: Geographical origins are thrown out the window for the descendants of slavery, although not for independant groups. (I.E. the Siddi of India would be considered black, but not the Dalits.)
3. Black does not Equal African. Africans are one aspect of Black people, and the most significant and the core component, but not the exclusive aspect. This is a misunderstanding specifically by Americans. A misunderstanding that is even carrying down to Latin America and the Caribbean.
4. Colonialism and Racism must be included in this article (on BOTH sides). Racism and Colonialism played a role in defining Black people as "Africans" and played a role in encouraging people outside of Africa including among the direct African diaspora in Latin America to renounce their black idenity.
5. Black power, pride, Afrocentrism must be included in this artilce (on BOTH sides). These positiosn are legitimate although not integral. They played the most recent role in reviewing the Black identity across the world.
6. Black Identity is not based on skull shapes. Skull shapes only point to a belief in the inherent intellectual differences in "races". The shape of the skull implies a shape of the brain, which has been used time and time again to indicate the intellectual focus or charisma of differing people.
7. DNA never played a role in determining who is and who is not black. Visual cues did. Visual cues is not DNA. We cannot force "DNA" into the historical aspect of the conversation when DNA was never used as a litmus test.
Black people are so far clearly people of Equatorial Africa, people whose DNA diverges wildly across the human spectrum, people who are not necessarily dark, people who inherently recognize and hold up the darkest skinned heritage as a meaningful part of their history, a people who share social and cultural peculiarities (some of which have not been articulated in the article), people who have shared a social stigma because of racism, people who are not necessarily historically related to each other, people who are for the most part indistinguisable in appearance and can be easily mistaken for each other in different social contexts. Black "African-Americans" defy all of the assumptions made in defining old-world black people, in that their skull shapes, skin tone, features, and other considerations fall outside the definitions whites impose on us. So an black American is still black while still surely can have a caucasoid skull, light skin, a nose and features that would classify him as "not black" if he were Ethiopian, or East Indian. (I will call this the African-American Paradox, or the AAP for short) This proves more than anything, that Blackness is more of a social group and not a race or a biological entity. In fact, the Eurocentric adherence in classifying mixed black US citizen Americans (particularly the descendants of slaves) as unquestionably black (regardless of their features) is a prime example of the bottom line acknowledgement of the diversity of the black race. There is no scientific basis to exclude African-Americans from the "rules" that the white amateur ethnographers here in Wikipedia insist on.
Black People are people who may or may not choose to recognize this identity (it's more volunatary like Jewishness).
Black identity has been historically found in cultures historically unrelated or loosely related to Equatorial Africans. Kushites, Egyptians, various groups in India mentioned numerous times in here, Aeta, Melanesians, Aboriginals, Andemese, Sentinelese, Taiwanese aboriginals, etc. We cannot dismiss that when the historical context clearly indicates their presence and their identity as black (in their local or regional dialect).
I post this on my user page. Any sensible reasons to disagree post in my user page. Requests for references will be honored and respected. Mutual respect requested where references are used appropriately. --Zaphnathpaaneah 03:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
