I decide to title the thread in this way due to the hassle that I (and Belowjob2.0) got when it was claimed that western history tends to get “White washed” with “blacks” routinely being edited out. I personally believe that this happens less so in current times due to the civil rights movement and the western world’s own growing sensitivity and confrontation of racism and past racial norms. However, I have seen (and continue to do so) people (even on this very board) make anti-black/African claims or statements based on these historical ideas. My examples in the previous thread was a quote from Lust4Life [
Today, I just read an interesting news article linked from a favourite popular science blog of mine. The story is about how during WW2, around two-thirds of Free French forces were made up of Black Africans from France’s various colonies; but that’s not everything… [
I know it doesn’t make it right, but surely this has gone on throughout history? You praise your own ethnic / whatever group and subsume or politely ignore others at best. History is written by the victors.
I think this is accurate. Humans naturally give their allegiance to their own group, and regard others with suspicion and often hostility.
An interesting question would be: where in history do we look for conspicuous examples of the inverse behavior - cases where “outsiders” were freely welcomed and treated as equals? There surely must be some, but the opposite seems vastly more common.
Well, my point in the other thread was that I believe history, as evidenced by popular culture, has been painted in an **exceptionally **anti-African/black slant (opposed to anti-China, anti-India, anti-Spanish, etc). That in western societies it was common to exceptionally portray “the blacks” (in their conceptual entirety) in a negative light. And while this (universally accepted) Zeitgeist has fallen out of favour in intellectual circles it continues to pop up in various places 1, 2, 3.
Well since American troops were the first into Paris and told to hold back and withdraw so the French could have a photo op the whole thing was bullshit anyway.
Bah, that’s nothing. The whole thing was a PR stunt anyhow and we all wanted the pictures to show “real” Frenchmen, not colonial soldiers.
If you really want some whitewash, check out the Buffalo Soldiers. These regiments did the heavy lifting in Cuba and the Phillipines at the turn of the century, not to mention the various western activities, and the white regiments, even the crappy ones, were glad to take the credit. The Spanish-American war was a huge potlitical move back in the day. How would it look if the heros were mostly black?
I have never encountered any account of the nazis killing Black soldiers of any nationality as “subhumans.” I would very much like to have my ignorance fought through a cite.
I must disagree: firstly, it’s been long since accepted that Nubians (i.e. blacks) once ruled Egypt; secondly, the British, at the height of Empire looked down on everyone - Indians, Chinese, Africans, etc; thirdly, there is the racism prevalent today in Arabia and Malaya against Indians and Fillipinos. Then there’s the Japanese racism. And then there’s racism between various African tribes. And so on.
I’m sure that history continues to be “white washed” – just ask James Loewen (Read his books Lies my Teavher Told Me, Lies Across America, or his recent Sundown Towns, for a real eye-opener) I think he goes a little too far in his writings, but there’s undoubtedly a huge amount that’s been ignored and covered up through a combination of ignorance and someone’s agenda. Or read Howard Zinn’s books – especially the recent illustrated a People’s History of American Empire, which explicitly points out where the participation of blacks in, for instance, the Spanish-American War was “whitewashed”.
As for the lack of development of Sub-saharan Africa – what about Mali and Timbuktu? The “knights” of Oubangi-Shari? The city of Zimbabwe? Nubia wasn’t exactly sub-Saharan, but one look at the statues and monuments (as in the collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) will convince you that these people were physically “black” (much more so that the Egyptians), and had pretty damned high culture before 3000 B.C.
How about the Benin Bronzes, or Nok iron? Those are sub-saharan, and pretty old.
I quite agree: hate and idiocy abound. But history also continues to be washed with all other hues. Hate and idiocy aren’t confined to whites. orcenio is complaining about an exceptionally anti-black stance, and I just don’t see it.
Nor have I. However the OP’s quotes appeared originally verbatim in an article on the BBC website a few days ago, so I am inclined to give it credence. I can’t search the website now for some reason, but the title of the article was "Paris liberation made’whites only’ . "
Depends - but in this case it was because the federal government and the District of Columbia had been vigorously resegregated by the Woodrow Wilson administration.
You know, that progressive hero and father of the League of Nations.
Alexander the Great might be one example. He welcomed troops from conquered countries into his army, and he encouraged his soldier to marry native (Persian) women. I think that I read that toward the end, as he approached India, less than half of his soldiers were actually Greek or Macedonian.
And the Roman Empire might be another example. They did a whole lot of ‘assimilation’ over the centuries. They tended to ‘merge’ the local religion into the official Roman religion, by finding some similarity between each local god and a Roman god, and then declaring them to be the same god: for example, saying Zeus was the Greek name for Jupiter. Local holidays were acknowledged & celebrated by the Roman government. The Roman Governor of a Province often took on the title used by the previous local ruler. And the ruling elites were fit into the Roman provincial government somehow.
A couple of examples, since it’s Easter time: Pontius Pilate honored the Jewish Passover holidays by offering to release a prisoner (Barbabas was chosen). And the Jewish Chief Priests & Elders were a semi-official part of the government: they consulted with Pilate, and they had authority to have Jesus arrested, but not put to death.
This photograph shows Nazi propoganda depicting Blacks along with Jews (and Arabs and Mongols) as inferior (bastard) races. A couple of other images linked to on that page illustrate similar attitudes.
The Wikipedia pagelists the persecutions that blacks suffered under the Nazis, but says “However, there was no systematic program for their elimination as there was for Jews and other groups.”
Not quite what you were after, but not unimaginable given the prevailing attitude…