At 7/22/08 01:11 PM, lapis wrote:
Armenia isn't geographically in Europe but it can still be called "European". When someone says (quoting LastSpartan) "... what has Africa done for society? What have they contributed to the advancement of the human race" I think it is implied by the context that he's talking about sub-Saharan Africa(ns) and not about all countries that are geographically in Africa and the people that inhabit them, because Egypt and Morocco and more "Middle Eastern" than "African", when it comes to language, culture, history and probably genetics.
I have always been taught, and have always used the term African to refer to the entire continent. If a specific region is what we're on about then refer to that sepcific region ie, ' Western Africa, Sub sharan Africa or whatever.
And since when has Armenia consdiered aprt of Europe? Just because it has a Eurovision entry? Never in my lfie have I seen anyone refer to Armenia as European. I dunno, maybe its different on the mainland, but in Britain ( and this may be because we're anti-Europe as an ideal on the whole) I've never really heard anyone refer to Armenia as being a part of Europe.
While I realise that the topic is called "white pride" and that this is slightly off-topic I still don't think his question about (sub-Saharan) Africans is really that idiotic. I'm sure that West-African societies, like those of the Malinese, the Songhai and the Ashanti, managed to develop semi-sophisticated forms of government but since those forms government were already developed thousands of years earlier in Egypt and Mesopotamia I don't think that that really proves that they "contributed" anything to humankind.
No, but it does actually show that they were not inferior peoples as Last Spartan has been making out simply because they were not white. The fact that the Ghanian Empire was able to utilise things such as Import and export tax whislt Europe was in the dark ages shows they were just as able to form 'civilised' socieities on level with, if not exceeding our own.
I'm even leaning towards the idea that they learned how to properly organise a nation from Arab merchants and Sufi missionaries that they dealt with after the Muslims had conquered the Maghreb in the late 7th century.
That maybe so, but most of Europe was only 'civilised' by the impact of the Roman empire conquering most of mainland Europe. If not coming up with stuff on our own means that a people is inferior then msot of Europe is Inferior to Italy to some degree.
I know that sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants have made a lot of contribtuions to modern music but I'm actually having a hard time thinking of anything scientific (be it exact or social) that's of any significance and to which one can point and say "hey look, that has invented by a sub-Saharan African". Maybe if we relax it to people of sub-Saharan African descent we could say peanut butter, but I still wouldn't consider that to be a milestone in human progress. I'm not slamming my hand on the table and shouting that I'm certain that sub-Saharan Africans have never contributed anything major to society but I'm personally a bit clueless.
Eh, as I said, when people say Africa I assume they mean Africa, as I tend to, and have really only ever heard the term Africa, used in regards to the whole contintent. But hell, even if there isn't anything that Sub- Saharan africa has contributed that does not mean they are racially inferior ( which is what my argument was agaisnt at the heart of it), just that their circumstances have not been conducive to their development.
There was a ' rule' put forward a while back ( its name eludes me) which says that the further away from the equator a nation is the more advanced it is. Obviously, as a general rule its not wonderful, but when you examine the fact that most prosperous nations are in areas that have quite hospitable climates for growing crops or whatever. Climate and whatever can have a drastic affect on a cultures development. In order to have what the West defines as civilisation you need to be statioanry. In desert areas where its not really possible to be stationary the people are forced to be nomadic, which shows how Climate affects the development, sort of ( in a loose way) proving the point behind that rule I mentioned.
I'm really annoyed I can't recall what the name of it is. Using the term Rule is wrong as well...maybe theory is better.
Also, I personally can't take someone whose surname is Zar-Zar Bargblor seriously (lol).
You should see the section of my uni library dedicated to Afrocentrism ( which in itself is an amusing term). The names their are rather amusing.
I hate to say it but I think that that's an oversimplification. Mali and Ethiopia, the pinnacles of sub-Saharan civilisation, weren't even colonised until the 1890s and the 1930s respectively. You're mixing up cause and effect: these regions in Africa aren't poor and backward because they were colonised, they were colonised because they were poor and backward.
Define poor. If a tribe found in the rainforest that has never had any outside contact is able to survive confortably, what need do they have of our values of money and the like? Western nations and the like have a very nice way of forcing our values amd definitions on the rest of the world. By our definition any person surviving on les than ( x) dollars a day is in poverty and needs help! But when a lot of people are just subsistence famers or hunters and don't need money to survive? How does our definition of poor fit?
Really, what we should be doing is looking, insetad at the levels of poverty in a nation but be looking at the levels of suffering. Millions of people in China are substisence farmers so are classed as being poor, yet theya re quiote happy healthy people.
And backwards is just a ludicrous term to use. what works in one culture and situation may not work in another.