What race do you think Ancient Egypt was?

It tells use that they weren't cold-adapted people like Europeans and when considering the totality of the evidence from anthropological, archeological, linguistic, cultural and genetic sources the limb proportion data indicates that the Ancient Egyptians descended from people living in a near by tropical environment somewhere in Africa.

 

So the ancient Egyptians were Egyptian. Fascinating.

 

The ancestors of the Ancient Egyptians came to the Nile Valley from the South. The architects of Ancient Egyptian civilization were tropically adapted, dark-skinned Africans. What we today call Black.

 

No evidence for this has been presented. We do not call tropical body planned individuals with dark skin black. That's a metaphor for recent SS African ancestry.

 

We do in fact call dark-skinned Africans Black and dark-skinned people on the continent of Africa are not limited to the Sub-Saharan region. There are indigenious dark-skinned people of Supra-Saharan Africa including the Tuareg, Haratin and fellahin Egyptians, the most direct descendants of the Ancient Egyptians.

I provided plenty of evidence in post #3 and #22.

 

Keita's reasoning is entirely bogus and he looks at ancestry uninformative traits and flawed DNA studies. This was explained in detail on thephora.net and posters can google for more details.

I think it's rather sad that Black scholars like Keita and Graves are known only for pseudoscientific Black advocacy. I for one would like to see a Black biologist contribute something useful to the field.

 

You're just repeating yourself now. Why not post a counter study to Keita instead of relying on the unqualified opinions of racists on The Phora?

 

Establishing the true bio-cultural origins of Ancient Egypt after a great deal of controversy and refuting racist myths is contributing to the field.

You will call any opposition to your beliefs pseudoscientific but you can not demonstrate that they are.

By the way Sussman has agreed to come here to debate. I would like to see how you and Rayznack do in that discussion.

 

What chutzpah!

I look forward to Sussman's contributions.

 

As far as i know the local population was made most of light dark skinned people, with mediterranean /north african traits. There were the nubians who were the dark skinned blacks as we call them today ( the " negroes " yes ). There was a white greek minority ruler class, remarkably that of the ptolemaioi, the descendants of ptolemy, one of alexander's generals during his conquest campaign in middle east ( including the conquest of egypt ). These men were probably white caucasians but by merging with local population they became gradually a little darker skinned, like today's egyptians. There were also many gallic mercenaries who settled there after military service to egyptian rulers so there was also a small percentage of white nordic people.

The pharaos masks we have today depict the faces of basically middle eastern people, they looked like today middle easterners. They were not dark blacks, nor caucasian whites.

 

This is the truth. They were "egyptian" and middle eastern. Firstly, I don't think you can lump all "black" people together even to the extent as to say those people had dark skin, and I have dark skin, so we have a lot in common and those were "my" people. I don't think sub-Saharan Africans are the same as West Africans as the same as North Africans as the same as Indians and so on, just as I don't think Italians are the same as Norwegians or Russians. In fact, genetics are so spread out across the globe a black person may be much more closely related to a white person than other black persons who are for example in Africa perhaps.

The people who built and ruled over the Pyramids were not "black" in fact, its safe to say you could not even call them "middle eastern" as that has changed over time. They were a specific people from North Africa at the time, and I think that's as far as their individuality should be diluted.

It is also, safe to say for anyone wondering, that Egyptians likely did build the Pyramids in Giza and most Pyramids in Egypt.
However, the misunderstanding of many that the Hebrews were reported to build these Pyramids does NOT come from Judaism or the old Testament. It is a new Testament and European error based on poor translation and coopting.

In fact, the Hebrews were not really "Jewish" at that point anyway, they were a group of people from the middle east. It is very possible and probable that this group of people who became the Jews was a group of mixed ancestry either deriving from Egypt, or brought to Egypt (after a war) as endentured servants, not slaves. It is quite probable that this group helped build the city/town of Ramses and not the Pyramids FOR Ramses. It is also quite probable that the leader of this group (perhaps moses) was Egyptian in origin and a believer in the Egyptian monotheistic god/religion that reigned over Egypt for a short period. The Rulers after this period did their best to wipe out remenants of this monotheistic religion and did a decent job of it leaving behind only recently discovered information.

Again, it is quite likely that the "hebrews" were a mix of people who came together because of an idea and not because they were all related. It is also quite probable that they became "Jews" in part because of this monotheistic Egyptian religion. It also can be said that the dates in the old testament can not be used to prove or disprove any of this as they are not accurate. Those that would tell you the dates ARE accurate are not basing what they know on evidence but pure faith and like all people of pure faith should be ignored when discussing actual history. To say that the old testament is not an accurate historical document would be very true, but to say that it has nothing historical about it would be false.

Furthermore, Egypt as most places in the middle east and northern Africa was ALWAYS a mixed gene pool post Greek period and possibly before. Alexander had a lot to do with that, but Egypt and the surrounding countries certainly became a "melting" pot at that time. Based on location one would think it was always a melting pot, all though of this I am not sure of the evidence.

What I am saying is though, that just because darker skinned people possibly built the pyramids in egypt does not mean they were "black" nor does it mean they have any relation to modern day African Americans.

 

I do not think all black people that you might classify as black should be classified so. Ethopians are vastly different to West Africans who are different to Sub-saharan africans. All people in the middle east are darker than their European counterparts, it is not a surprise to link the Pyramids to a darker skinned people. It is quite a surprise to associate those people with ALL Black people, and to lump them in to the "black" community. And if you are comparing to the African American community, then I think you are even further off as there is likely little relation between African Americans and the people of Egypt at that time. Not only was it so long ago where those genetic lines have mixed and mingled with most others creating completely new people, but the genetic lines brought in to America during slavery were not closely related with people of that area regardless of skin color. In fact I may have white skin but might be more closely related to those ancient Egyptian "black" people then any of my American "black" neighbors.

I really don't see the urge by many to claim credit over things that happened throughout history, like having Jesus be white or black when he was clearly a middle eastern Hebrew (if he existed at all), or claiming any historical figure as "one of your own" when there is likely little to no connection.

 

There is no historical evidence whatsoever that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt except for the story contained within the New Testament written by Moses, which is not a historically admissible source. 35-43% of all Jewish men belong to Haplogroup J and its sub haplogroups and 15 to 30% of all Jewish men belong to E1b1b (E-M35), while 38.8% of the modern Egyptians belong to E1b1b and the frequency of Haplogroup J is 31.9% in the Egyptian population. The genetic profiles of two peoples closely resemble with each other and it's plausible that the ancient Egyptians were genetically akin to the Hebrews with Haplogroup J1, the Cohen gene. Moses could have been an Egyptian prince who founded a new kingdom after breaking away from his mother country and he authored the founding myth of Israel to unite his people. The Hebrews did not exist as an independent ethnic group before the Exodus story and Moses may have invented a new ethnic group to distinguish themselves from the ancient Egyptians. Taken together, the ancient Egyptians could have been 30% Arab and 40% African and it's plausible that they were genetically related to the Jews, which explains high African admixture rates in the modern Jewish people.

 

That doesn't tell us much about what they looked like. They were "Egyptian" in the sense that they were residents of what we today call Egypt, although they themselves did not use that word. Egypt today is regarded as a Middle Eastern country but I don't think it is any more accurate to say Egyptians were Middle Eastern as it is to say that Aztecs were Latin American. That terminology and concept did not exist at the time. The Ancient Egyptians were African as they lived within the geographical confines of Africa. They did not come from Southwest Asia, what we today call the Middle East.

You might not. Some might feel strongly that this is correct and it is ingrained in our culture to feel this way so who is to say which perspective is correct? I think this discussion should really stick to "What did the ancient Egyptians look like" because what they looked like is an objective fact. How we lump them is irrelevant.

The scientific evidence I have provided indicates that the looked like ethnic groups such as the Somali, Oromo and Nilotic people who are considered to be Black today.

 

Yes I think this is the closest to truth we will come to any time soon. There are numerous reasons there is no "evidence" of Jews in Egypt at that time, first off because they were not yet "Jews" as you say. They became Jews post "Exodus". It is also an error to look for evidence of the Hewbrews in Egypt at the times and dates noted in the bible. These dates, probably more so than the instances themselves, are not accurate. So theoretically if everyone is looking for evidence of Hebrews in Egypt within a specific time period connected to the old testament it is very unlikely they would find evidence as again the dates in the old testament are not accurate. Hebrews could have been in Egypt 500 years before or after the supposed Exodus event and likely went by a different name originally. As you state the similarities in the genetic pool and the history of the area lends itself to the idea that the Jews could have very well originated in Egypt as a group, but not as a genetically separate or completely separate group. In all likelihood "Moses" would have been of Egyptian origin as you say. Whomever adopted the biblical stories prior to Moses, was just adopting certain Myths that were prevalent around the area at the time as I believe there were many who thought themselves descending from the Abraham figure (Which comes from a story that was meant to illustrate the end of Child Sacrifice which had been prevalent for a time) and from Noah, who was also a figure of the region and not a necessarily Hebrew figure. It is also more probable that if the Hebrews were a people in Egypt they helped more building the city of Ramses, and not the Pyramids of Giza. In the old testament, to my knowledge it says that the Hebrews worked with stone and mortar or something and built bricks. I don't believe it explicitly says they built the pyramids as slaves, I believe going back to the oldest texts, these translation errors will arise and assumptions were made based on this improper translations.

I think the genetic study shows, what archeological study does not, that the Jews of today are similar to the people living in that area of the world today and do have African admixtures as well as middle eastern and European, basically every where they "traveled" and admixtures from anyone who migrated to that area for whatever reason. This completely destroys the attempt by bigoted conspiracy theorists claiming Ashkanazi Jews are not actually Jewish, but the descendants of Kazars, or the Israelite argument that Jews are today's American black community or were ALL black at that time. It is quite probable that they had influence as far as Ethopia as well as a shared in trading and possibly military as they did with Tyre. Even to the point where some few thousand or so Ethiopians were found practicing ancient Judaism and brought into Israel in the 70s I believe. Not to make this about the Jewish people, but similarly to Egyptian genetics, Jewish genetics are a bit of a mishmosh as stated above.

It would make sense that the similarities between them derived for the same reasons and living in a specific region where many groups filtered through. And the small percent of sub-Saharan genes in either the Egyptian or Jewish population, or other countries like Oman, would lead one to believe that the Sub-Saharan migration to Egypt was never very pronounced. There was a much higher influx of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Persians and Eurasians, which shows in the gene pool of pretty much ALL the people who's ancestry derives in that region.

This is also why Jews, or at least many Jews, don't consider themselves "white" outside of their skin color, which still comes in many different tones, just as Egyptians generally don't consider themselves "white" in that nature and definitely don't consider themselves "black". In fact, if you call any Egyptian living in the US an "African American" they usually refute that statement and yes, sometimes to the point of being racist, which just goes to show how diverse the culture of skin color can be, and sometimes how bigoted.

 

If you want to find out what they looked like then you must look at bones, and bones suggest they were similar to people today that we would consider "brown".

As far as which perspective is correct, that is an easy one. The perspective that actually exists in the genetics. So if you take a dark person from africa and a dark person from Sri Lanka, they could be a very similar tone but I would not group them together. That is because more than just skin color is behind the racial breakdown we unfortunately use today. "Black" as we know does not just mean you have black skin, but certain features as well. These features tend to be more prominent in West and Sub-Saharan African than they are in North or East Africa. I would not say the people in Somalia or Ethiopia are "black" then as we know "black". Based on proximity and history, the people of these areas have dark skin but influx of Eurasian and west Asian bone structure and other genetic influence, meaning they are nearly as close to those of Saudi Arabia (which makes sense if you just look at a map) and further north the ancient Egyptians were closer to that structure than today's Egyptian but they still were not necessarily "black". Now the people of Somalia and Ethiopia and Sudan and such have changed over time because of migrations from the south over the years also. At different times these regions had migrations from the North and east changing their genetics and at other times from the south again altering their genetics.

Who is considering those people black? Why do they get lumped into being black? Do Sri Lankans? Do Southern Indians? I think the real problem is trying to create definitive guidelines and attributes when in truth the lines are very very blurry.

It is convenient for the sake of racial arguments to consider all people of color in one category, even people of a specifically darker color. But that doesn't mean there is any actual relationship between the groups nor does that mean there is any true link. I think it is a huge mistake to lump any colored people into one category based on that color and yes I think it is WRONG because the genes tell us so. The genes tell us these peoples are not related, no more than a Native American from North America is related to one from Argentina in relation to one from Mexico. Yes, they have a bit of a shared lineage as do ALL people on Earth at some point or another. And if you looked back throughout all our genetics black, white or whatever you will eventually find many crossovers and links. So yes, not only do I think it is wrong and not just a matter of perspective to call this one similarity a false bond when we have hard no nonsense proof of ancestry in DNA.

As far as what people looked like and look like, specifically the ancient Egyptians in this case, that should be determined by the actual facts and not just a lose association. Which would mean that ancient Egyptians had darker skin than they do today perhaps, but more similar bone structures and features to the modern day Egyptian than the modern day West African.

Do I consider Obama black"? Sure, but do I also consider Obama white? Yes. So what does that make him? That makes him a mix, but not because I look at it that way, because his genes say so.

So yes they were African. But African means something very different today than it did back then. Whatever they called themselves seems irrelevant though. What they looked like is hard fact though, and while we may associate certain aspects of the way they looked to today's Somali or something, that too would be misleading because they were genetically unique at that time and genetically where are their descendants now?

I have seen Latin Americans that look like Asians and vice versa. Would you or anyone ever lump them into one category based on appearance ? Why is doing so taboo except when discussing black or white people? When discussing black or white people, the tendency is to lump them into two groups, meanwhile no one lumps Chinese and Indians in the same category, or Chinese and Mexicans, or what have you. This is cultural because we are taught that there are two colors in this country black and white. And that is no one's fault. That is a product of race division and bigotry on BOTH sides of the argument.

 

Which people would those be exactly? Can you name specific ethnic groups?

Consider for a moment the words of a Biological Anthropologist who has studied their bones.

So Keita says two important things about the Ancient Egyptians' appearance:

1. The typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the model in most of the country

2. The Ancient Egyptian statues resemble ethnic groups such as Oromo, Somali and Nilotic folk.

We don't even have to debate whether these people are brown or black we can look at pictures.

Upper Egyptian



Nubian



Somalian



Oromo



Nilotic




I would consider all of these people to be Black. Perhaps you disagree but the point is that these are the ethnic groups that the Ancient Egyptians resembled.

Genetics doesn't have a perspective. I would advise you against trying to use genetics to make subjective proclamations of how you categorize people. That's racial thinking.

Which features? The true Negro stereotype?

You really should read this paper:

http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita-1993.pdf

As you know Black. My understanding of Blackness is from an American perspective that anyone with detectable or known Sub-Saharan African ancestry is Black. That means everyone from Wesley Snipes to Mariah Carey is Black.

The Black community in America is inclusive and Pan-African. Black people accept not only people of Middle Passage descent as Black but any dark-skinned indigenous African as Black including Somali and Ethiopians. In fact these people consider themselves to be Black both in Africa and in America. Facial features have never defined Blackness in America.

I get the feeling that people who say things that you are saying are really out of touch with people of African descent. This inclusive, Pan-African mindset is not unfamiliar to people who actually know and talk to Black people.

Look at this picture:



All of these models on the cover are considered to be Black in America. In the fashion industry they are regarded as Black models. It doesn't matter what their nationality is or what kind of features they have they are Black because they are of African descent. That's the only qualifier that African-Americans have ever considered for Blackness.

No.

Those features evolved in Africa they are not the result of admixture with Eurasians.

East Africans may be genetically closer to Middle Easterners than West Africans are to Middle Easterners but one can not deny that Egypt has seen an influx of foreigners since the New Kingdom period making modern Egyptians closer in genetic stock to people of Southwest Asia than to East Africa. No one is talking about West Africa. The Ancient Egyptians were indigenous Northeast Africans resembling the aforementioned ethnic groups.

Genetically he does indeed have recent African and European ancestry. We have words for that such as biracial and mulatto but according to the One-Drop Rule he's also Black.

Their descendants are in Egypt.

I would like to get away from racial labels and lumping people altogether and discuss real biological affinities and characteristics.

 

Do you mean the beings that actually built the pyramids? I have no idea, probably something that starts with Z like Zarnaks or Zonorians.

 

The sad thing is that the History Channel nowadays would actually endorse this.

Though on the other hand, since someone brought up the discredited "Hebrews built the pyramids" theory, I am surprised some Stormfront type has not earnestly put this forward already. If you seriously believe the Jews are orchestrating a PC multicultural conspiracy to destroy the white race, it's not much of a stretch to argue that they were really behind all that monumental architecture in Egypt, Sudan, Mali, Zimbabwe, etc. to imbue pride in African people.

 

ive always understood that Egyptians owe their light pigment to migrations from the Middle east such as the Carthaginians who settled in present day Tunis and the greek and Roman invasions. Prior to that it was a predominantly black culture? I am sure there blood has been muddled many times over by the taking of slaves from all over.

 

Ok to briefly respond as I don't have much time tonight. I have read quite a few studies about the "appearance" of ancient Egyptians and that seems inconclusive. The best I can tell, using the same source you did
In 2008, S. O. Y. Keita wrote that "There is no scientific reason to believe that the primary ancestors of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast Africa.... The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range of evolutionary influences over time, although researchers vary in the details of their explanations of those influences."[30]

The part there you are missing is "diversity" I believe.

Also, what about the R1b1a2 haplogroup found in ancient Egyptian DNA?

And no I would not personally consider all of those people in the pictures you posted as "black" , but as we have discussed "black" has little meaning and race itself has little meaning, and that DNA is the only way to really group human beings and yet at the same time you are grouping all of these people as "black" and saying that there is such a thing as the "black" community and that they are inclusive and "Pan-African"........

What I am saying is those things don't actually exist. I would hope the "black" community is inclusive, but what tone of skin exactly can be included? You say things like "middle passage" and anyone descended from dark skinned indigenous African can be included? Why not people with lighter skin who's ancestors were indigenous to Africa? At one point you claim to want to move past race and discuss things on a genetic level, in a more objective way I would imagine, and at the same time you are confining all people who have dark skin and are indigenous to Africa as black? That confuses me.

And no, I do not believe I am "out of touch" with the "black" community, I believe the "black" community a long with any other racially restricted community is a social construct with absolutely no real world value. I believe looking at things that way and dividing things up in such a matter does more to damage the future perspective of humanity than help it. It also goes against everything I personally believe about genetics and skin color.
And I thought you felt that way also, but you seem to be arguing on a fence and are not sure what side to fall on.

This is a criticism of modern thinking to the highest degree. I am saying that these constructs you are discussing, which don't actually exist but are created to fulfill political and economic purposes, are just plain poor ways to perceive the world. I don't care if 10 people are doing it or millions of people are doing it, I don't think it is correct. Not to mention I don't believe that ALL of these people from ALL of these groups do consider themselves "blacK", at least not in American terms. And yes, when I use the word "black" in quotes, I am obviously not discussing JUST skin color, I am discussing the definition and idea of what "black" means and what it means to be "black" compared to what it means to have dark skin. Sure all of these people are welcome to be recognized in what we are calling the modern black community, but again that is pretty meaningless in real life human terms. Also, you happened to show pictures of what many people in those areas look like, but there are many people in those areas who have "lighter" skin, but not white, and different bone construction that other Africans but also different than Europeans. I also am positive not every person with pigmentation wants to be included in that group and don't recognize themselves as part of that group, yet you recognize them as part of that group?

So I am asking, who decides what skin tone is dark enough to be considered "black"? Who decides the definition of "black"?

When we are discussing "black" culture in America we are not discussing African culture nor are we discussing the culture of every dark skinned person living in the USA are we? So why lump them together at all?

Now if you want to talk about the DNA and genetics I think you will find far more diversity in the Egyptian population (both ancient and modern) than you will find skin tones. Meaning to classify all of these people as black is to in part, take away their unique genetics and their differences.

Now I know for a fact you don't speak for all people of color so I will take your statements about who is included as "black" and who identifies as "black" with a grain of salt. Clearly the definition changes by region and by the specifics of the situation. Also to say the Black community in America is inclusive would just be dead wrong in my opinion. It's far from inclusive on a real life level. Newly arriving Africans don't always get along with long descended African Americans nor are they always accepted in to " African American" or "black" communities. That statement is just not true.

If you are going by what the media portrays and what liberal "fascists" would have you believe then yes, people of color should stand together and consider themselves one group I guess. But you know that media spouted propaganda is pure BS right? It's another creation, the invention of a political faction with political and economic goals. Seriously.

If you want to talk about DNA though, again, North Africans are not the same as east Africans who are not the same as sub-Saharan Africans. The DNA shows that the ancient Egyptians were likely a diverse looking group, with numerous traits with different influxes of DNA from within and eventually from outside of Africa. To group them all as one thing is just meaningless to me.

And again, I am not "out of touch" with the culture or community. I just think creating such a divide is an awful mistake and disagree wholly with any group trying to segregate people into groups based on a physical but not necessarily genetic trait and attempts to coop all those with that trait. I disagree when anyone does it, it has nothing to do with their skin color, which is black but not necessarily "black". "Black" is the invention, "black" is the cultural phenomenon, but black is the skin color and I have no issues with black.

Hope you get what I am saying. What I don't understand though is for someone trying to get away from racial labels and lumping people together, who wants to have a real biological discussion, you seem to do a lot of running towards and seemingly agreeing with the perception of racial labels and lumping people together. I don't get that.

 

Black is a metaphor for SS African ancestry. There is a distinct genetic cluster and the term is thus informative for genes.

 

So you would define black as a metaphor for sub-Saharan African ancestry, which you are correct would be specifically talking about well, a sort of broad genetic cluster. But that means it is Not a metaphor, for you at least, for ALL people of color from anywhere in Africa? To my understanding that is the more popular definition of "black" as actually used by North Americans at least, and not to usually mean any person of color anywhere from Africa.

 

I've no idea what you are talking about.

 

That was brief?! What do your detailed posts look like?

I can tell you like to write. I will try to be brief in response as I have work in the morning.

No, I know full well what Keita is talking about when he speaks of diversity. He's talking about diversity in a variety of characteristics including craniofacial morphology, hair texture and perhaps skin color. I emailed him and spoke to him directly about this as I showed in my first post of this thread to get specifics about what he has said in literature and on video. Consider his statement that the typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the model in most of the country. Well why didn't he say that they would have looked the same as today or include Lower Egypt? Keita believes that the ancient Egyptians were primarily a dark-skinned population with tropical adaptations and relationships. He believes they gained Near Eastern and European affinity over time through invasions but that the physical diversity we see is still found in modern Egypt especially in the southern portion of the country. He avoids skin color and racial labels because he doesn't find them to be biologically meaningful but this physical diversity he talks about is indigenous Northeast African variation.


Another writer summarized Keita eloquently:

Were the Ancient Egyptians black? That is entirely up to you. But were they biologically African? It would seem that they were. After considering the full range of anatomical, linguistic, cultural, archeological and genetic evidence, Shomarka Keita feels confident in concluding that the original Egyptians by which he means the pre-dynastic people of Southern Egypt, who founded Egyptian civilization evolved entirely in Africa. Both culturally and biologically, he says, they were more related to other Africans than they were to non-Africans from Europe or Asia.

Through the years, Keita believes, the Egyptians appear to have blended with many immigrants and invaders, many of whom were lighter-skinned and more Caucasoid in appearance than the original Egyptians. Libyans, Persians, Syro-Palestinians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans all left their imprint on the faces of Egypt. But Egyptian civilization remained profoundly African to the very end.

Keita himself rarely resorts to such crudely racial expressions as black and white. But if we might be forgiven a momentary lapse into everyday speech, it would probably not hurt to conceive of Keita's theory as the polar opposite of the Hamitic Hypothesis. Whereas the Hamitic theorists saw Egypt as a nation of white people that was gradually infiltrated by blacks, the biological evidence seems to suggest that it was more like a black nation that was gradually infiltrated by whites.

Source: Black Spark White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? - Chapter 77. Black, White or Biologically African? Pg. 471

Which study are you referencing for this discovery?

I'm just telling you how African-Americans think about this.

Race is a social construct. In America Blackness specifically is socially defined as a descendant of dark-skinned people from Africa. Again this is how people here think. What I'm saying is that like Keita I recognize genetic diversity and it makes no difference to me how you label people I am specifically talking about how people look. You seem to want to talk about genetics but at the same time deny that certain people are Black. I am telling you that those labels don't matter but as far as social race is concerned I would regard those same people you deny being Black as being Black. So if we define Blackness differently we're not going to be in agreement on this topic but what the people actually looked like is an objective fact. That's what we need to ascertain. Forget about racial labels because they are useless. Focus on what the people looked like.

I'm not arguing on any fence. You seem to want to deny the significance of racial labels but then use them at the same time. That is what is confusing. You can't say the labels are useless and then give an opinion on who should be categorized. I'm saying that we shouldn't categorize at all because those labels aren't biologically meaningful but as far as how race is socially defined in common use it is very different from how you are using it at least as far as Blackness is concerned.

Then why are you trying to deny that the Ancient Egyptians are Black based on a restricted definition of Blackness which is not scientific nor does it fit the historical, socially defined definition of Blackness?

I'm not saying all of them do as people have different opinions but a lot of them do.

Any individual can have their own opinion but I believe it doesn't matter. You can debate definitions of labels but what a person looks like is objective.

Why, not? I mean at the end of the day why do you care how people are labeled?

You see you clearly DO NOT want these people to be labeled as Black. Why? It makes you look anti-Black. Why not just focus on the physical diversity itself and not fixate on labels?

Well I'm not trying to speak for everyone but I am telling you what is commonly believed. Iman makes the cover of Black magazines for a reason. It's because she is perceived as Black by many people.

It's complicated. African immigrants do face discrimination from African-Americans. I noticed this when I moved to an urban community (Washington D.C. metropolitan area) with a lot of Black African immigrants. But there is also colorism in the African-American community so there is discrimination in all directions. However not all African-Americans are so ignorant as to buy in to all of this discrimination garbage. Many African immigrants assimilate in to the African-American community and its cultural customs. They are accepted as Black and even when they are viewed as "African" rather than "African-American" they are still considered to be "Black."

I think people can do whatever they want. They can use whatever labels they want and identify however the hell they want without anyone telling them what to do.

OK but then why do you want to consider them to be non-Black? That's using categories as well being restrictive rather than inclusive.

Black vs. "Black"?

Why not just dispense with the labels altogether and focus on what they looked like? If we agree that they look like the ethnic groups I mentioned then there is nothing to argue about.

I'm not the one using racial labels to designate people only explaining to you what socially defined perception of Blackness means to people. You're saying racial labels are meaningless but seem to be inventing your own racial labels loosely based on genetic diversity which is eerily reminiscent of Charles Seligman's "True Negro Myth."

You can't have it both ways. The labels can't be meaningless and have meaning. You can't say that Black is useless as a category and then deny that certain people are Black (or "Black").

As I said before why don't we just forget about the label and focus on what the people actually looked like? If we agree on that then the debate is over as far as I'm concerned.