Hi salimonu
I am afraid of responding to your points by wrangling, which becomes unproductive, and I am not sure how to get past wrangling. In soyinka's telephone conversation poem the English landlady says something to the Soyinka character in the poem when he is calling about renting a flat. Hearing his accent, she suspects he is black and asks him if he is dark. He responds, depends on which part of my body you are referring to, and then goes on, in typically soyinkan irony, do you mean my this, my that, my face, my hands, and then concludes (am doing this by heart, so not really precise) by stating, but my bottom, madam, is pitch black.
I feel I am being put in the same position as Soyinka in the telephone booth, the closeness and sense of embarrassment that he affiliates with sensing his breath, not believing his ears at her indiscreet questions.
Being caught, he put it.
If I say x, will I be caught? Will I be found out? I as what? White, Caucasian, jewish, male, height this, weight that, eyes, ears, etc etc.
No, there is no profit in this. if it isn't an idea the discussion of which is profitable, this turns into accusations and denials. Maybe we could try to turn to issues amenable to reflection, in which case I would happily reengage.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday 28 January 2018 at 05:59
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari's Cattle Colony Policy
Thank you for your diplomatic question No.1 which nullifies your Wikipedia definition of Caucasian and tacitly upholds Eugenicists and social anthropologists definition of it.
Concerning your other questions, I am aware of the sufferings of the Jews in the hands of their fellow Caucasians. However, in the annal of human history, no race has suffered so much persecution and injustice as the Negroid race has been obliged to do in the hands of the Caucasians. When all is said and done, the fact is plain for everybody to see that besides the annihilation of the American and Australian aborigines by the Caucasians, the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated by the Caucasians was the capture and carting away of the Negroid race from Africa to America and West Indies as slaves. Unfortunately, the enslavement of the Negroid race by the Caucasians is still in operation today by other means.
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Skickat: den 27 januari 2018 20:41
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari's Cattle Colony Policy
Dear solimonu
Did I say races didn't exist, or that they were social and historical constructs? I said the latter, not the former. my reasons for disliking Caucasian have to do with the thinking of the racist supremacists who invented the term. Am I supposed to be defending a position here that I never espoused, or should I ask you where in my statements you found the points for which you are criticizing me?
Lastly, jews in the 15th century oppressed black people??
Do you know anything about what the jews suffered in the 15th century?
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 27 January 2018 at 09:41
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari's Cattle Colony Policy
Your Wikipedia definition of Caucasian prompted me to search for other definitions. Since Wikipedia is an on-line free dictionary of which no person can be held responsible for its contents, I opted for a dictionary whose authors are identifiable and could be held responsible for its contents. Otherwise, there are many books on Eugenics and social anthropology, both old and new, that contain the division of human races. That you don't like it or object to it does not mean that the division of human being into races, and the exploitation, persecution and oppression of one race by another, does not exist. It is true in history that racism has been used to commit heinous crimes but you need not remind us, negroid race, of the evil of racism when up till now our race is still at the receiving end of the racism commenced by Caucasian Europeans, Americans, Hebrews and Arabs in the 15th century. If, according to you, the division of human beings into different races no longer exist after World War II, why is Barrack Obama, and people like him in the USA, identified as African-American, whereas George Bush (both senior and junior), Jimmy Carter, Bil Clinton, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, to mention few, are never identified as European-Americans but simply as Americans? Why are over 50% of USA prison inmates Black when their population is said to be about 20% of the total population of USA? What necessitates Black lives matter in your USA but not White lives matter? Why is Ku Klux Klan accepted in the USA as a democratic organisation but not as a terrorist?
You asked, "Why do people use 'Caucasian'?" And you provided the answer, "Because they want to avoid the directness of saying white."
I think, you are trying here to cover nakedness with a fig leaf. Eugenicists say the division of human race into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid is scientific and it makes sense to me. This is because Caucasians embrace various degrees of lightness in light-skinned people. Moreover the designation of any human being as white is not only false but untrue, since we all know that snow is white but no human being looks like snow. From your question and answer above, it would appear as if you prefer to racially define a race as white but not as Caucasian. In doing so , you tactically limit white skin colour to the people of Europe and their descendants in other parts of the world while regarding indigenes of North Africa, Southwest Asia and India subcontinent as non-white people. The idea behind your limiting white skin colour to Europeans and their descendants elsewhere alone, is intended to invalidate my assertion that Christianity and Islam are Caucasian's religions of Hebrews and Arabs origins. In your country, the USA, human beings are still publicly identified or referred to as *coloured people* and I hope that you will agree with me that there is no *colourless person* anywhere on the planet earth. In view of this, I want you to inform me, which racial colour should be ascribed to the Hebrews and Arabs the progenitors of Christianity and Islam respectively?
Going through the forum's archive, I found a post titled : The Most Racist areas in the United States (dailykos) & the 5 year old that NY police placed in handcuffs and shackles (Guardian - UK). Discussion on this matter caused you to write to Kwame Zulu Shabazz thus :
Dear Kwame,
Just had a long discussion with a young colleague, a woman of colour, and she was much more in agreement with you than with me. That was your post on this forum on 7 May 2015. When I challenged your expression, with which you referred to your colleague as a woman of colour, as being racist, your response contained among others the following, "In Cameroon when we were there in the 1970s, Mabel Smythe was the U.S. Ambassador. To the Cameroonians, this light-skinned African American woman was white! Not mixed, not black, white. They were astonished, when we said she was black! To an American it was obvious she was black! If it had been in the Caribbean, they would have not only called her a femme de couleur, a woman of colour, but more an octroon, or one of those horrible terms designating how much white or black blood she had." This was part of your post on 9 May 2015 in response to my objection to your reference to a fellow human being as a woman of colour. !970 was 25 years after World War II ended and 2015 was 70 years after the end of the World War II, which according to you obliterated the division of human race into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Yet you found it appropriate in year 2015 to racially classify a U.S. Ambassador as light-skinned African American woman, not white but black, and an octoroon, beside describing your colleague as a woman of colour. Earlier, on 8 May 2015, Mr. Ogugua Anunoby had queried you about what you meant by the expression, 'a woman of colour' in referring to your colleague when it would have been sensible of you to refer to her as, 'my colleague or my female colleague'. On the same day you wrote Mr. Anunoby:
Dear OA,
... But in this case, persons of colour, women of colour, are commonly used respectful terms. You might not like them, but an individual dislike doesn't constitute grounds for determining a term derogatory. We don't invent a vocabulary, it is shared, and its value are shared ones. That's how language works. May I add that, that is how language works for a man of pale colour.
Although I referred to the division of human race by the western eugenicists into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid and expatiated further that a child parented by a Negro and a Caucasian, is called a Mulatto; a child parented by a Mulatto and a Caucasian is called a Quadroon; and a child parented by a Quadroon and a Caucasian is called an Octoroon, neither did you object to any of the aforementioned shared vocabularies nor invoke Wikipedia definitions to invalidate them. You dared not do that because it would have amounted to sneezing and closing your mouth at the same time and thereby causing self-asphyxiation. The validity of your claim to use the terms, woman of colour, not white, black and octoroon would have crumbled if you had objected then to the terms, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid races.
I am not a racist as you tried to paint me. In my mother tongue, we have equivalent word for God. If that that God has any message to the people of my mother tongue, He should communicate that to us in the language into which He has created us. For what is racist to me is when an Arab or a Hebrew comes with sword in hands to force me to accept Allah or Jehovah as the name of my God and if I don't accept, I can be killed or incarcerated. The God of black Africa does not speak Arabic or Hebrew and no sane black man will go around killing his fellow blacks for refusing to adhere to Islam or Christian religion. Saying that does not constitute racism or hatred against the Caucasian Arabs or Hebrews and their religions. During the trial of late Mohammed Ali for refusing to be drafted to the US army for onward service in Vietnam, the presiding Judge asked him, "Do you hate whites?" Mohammed Ali answered thus, "Your honour, if a lion suddenly enters into this court room, we will all jump out throughout the windows. Not because we hate lions, but because we know what lions always do." When victims of racism complain, it is unfair for perpetrators to accuse victims of racism of being racists. Some liberals, I am sorry to observe, are two persons in one, they are Judas and Jesus at the same time.
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Skickat: den 24 januari 2018 18:01
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari's Cattle Colony Policy
Dear solimonu
I wonder if I asked you to construct an argument against the division of peoples into races if could do so with as much energy as for constructing it?
I wish I could say that what I will write is dispassionate, but it is not. I feel quite strongly antipathetic toward the notion of race. Partly because it has been mobilized for evil purposes throughout history.
You are going by definitions that you find in a dictionary. Of course you can define the term. Does that make it a reality? Look up unicorns in the dictionary: they are there too.
In the 19th century, jews were also considered a race. Not white.
In the u.s. irish were not considered white, and until world war 2, neither were Italians or Portuguese, and certainly not mexicans.
The definition of race has changed over time, and the reference to Caucasian is based on the same kind of illogic as the Nazis' who decided they belonged to the superior race, the Aryans. For them, Slavs were not a race on their high level.
Racists like to use skin color to define race, at least nowadays. Indians, despite being Aryans, are too dark for racists of today. Why are they a little dark or very dark? Why are arabs and berbers light skinned or dark skinned? Why are Sudanese light or dark? Why are south Asians and people from the islands, west indies, malaysians, and endless other people lighter or darker?
Either there has been mixing going on, since forever, or god made a mistake.
Try the first option.
And secondly, where did the people from the Caucasus come from? Where did you and I come from? How long did humans have to be separated from their east African origins to become races? And when they moved, intermingled, reformed, which race did they belong to?
Lastly, the key question, because all the above are merely rhetorical questions intended to challenge racist thinking, why would you want to affirm the existence of race? Before you answer, with respect, I suggest you read appiah's work In My Father's House. Not simply because he celebrates mixed-race, but more because he debunks the notion of race.
"Race" as a category has been constructed for a reason. Until the 20th century it was to keep "us" pure, and there is only one way to do that, to exclude "them." Even if that means ethnic "cleansing" and genocide. Purity at all costs.
Now whose side do you want to be on in this dispute? Trump's or Appiah's?
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 24 January 2018 at 10:52
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari's Cattle Colony Policy
General Consultant to the Publication of: COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY - THE AUTHORITY ON CURRENT ENGLISH - is J. M. Sinclair, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Birmingham. The dictionary has a long list of Editors who are Professors in various subjects. Thus, the contents of the dictionary is highly authoritative.
Here follows the definition of Caucasian according to Collins Dictionary. CAUCASIAN : Another word for Caucasoid; A member of the Caucasoid race; A white man.
CAUCASOID : denoting, relating to, or belonging to the light-complexioned racial groups of mankind which includes the people indigenous to Europe, N. Africa, S.W. Asia and the Indian subcontinent and their descendants in other parts of the world(p.257).
Furthermore, MONGOLOID is defined as: denoting, relating to, or belonging to one of the racial groups of mankind, characterized by yellowish complexion, straight black hair, slanting eyes, short nose and scanty facial hair, INCLUDING MOST OF THE PEOPLES OF ASIA, THE ESKIMOS AND THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS (p. 1008).
NEGRO : A member of any dark-skinned indigenous peoples of Africa and their descendants elsewhere. A member of the Negroid race. NEGROID: denoting, relating to or belonging to one of the major racial groups of mankind, characterized by brown-black skin, tightly-curled hair, a short nose, and ful lips. This group includes the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF AFRICA,SOUTH OF THE SAHARA, THEIR DESCENDANTS ELSEWHERE,AND SOME MELANESIAN PEOPLES (P.1045).
It can easily be deduced from the above definitions that Islam and Christianity are Caucasian religions. The Bible was originally written in Hebrew while Quran was written in Arabic. Both religions originated from the same geographical area of the world. That explains why the two religions share names of the same religious deities for instance, Christian's Moses is Islam's Musa; Islam's Isa is Christian's Jesus; Christian's Abraham is Islam's Ibrahim; Islam's Yusuf is Christian's Joseph; and Christian's Mary/Maria is Islam's Miriam/Mariam etc. Since, parts of the Bible and Quran sanction slavery, it has historically been established that the Caucasian Arabs began raiding Africa for slaves long before Caucasian Europeans. In fact, the genocide committed by Caucasian Arabs in Africa gave birth to Arab countries of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan.
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Skickat: den 23 januari 2018 22:56
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari's Cattle Colony Policy
One man's white is not another man's white. Caucasian is one of the worst signifiers imaginable, but as a synecdoche for white it is even dumber. Here is a defn of Caucasian from Wikipedia, one man's truth: In the United States, the root term Caucasian has also often been used in a different, societal context as a synonym for "white" or "of European ancestry".[6][7]
By that common usage defn, neither of the definitions of islam or Christianity (much less Judaism) could remotely be termed caucasian.
What is Caucasian, outside of that simplistic wiki usage? Well, it is people from a region who became slaves in Egypt, mothers of the rulers, etc.
Why do people use "Caucasian"? because they want to avoid the directness of saying white.
But I think it is truer to say, one man's racism is another man's source of pride.
I would add, All racisms are harmful in the end—even when in the service of self-defence.
I prefer fanon to armah, in that regard
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 23 January 2018 at 16:22
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari's Cattle Colony Policy
Therefore, it is not strange that the Caucasian Arabs were the first to begin raiding Africa and capturing the negro people as slaves only to be followed later by Caucasian Europeans.
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