Books like The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

Soundtrack to this review - please listen :-)The Ancient Egyptians, the founders of the civilisation that built the pyramids and brought writing, geometry, religion and science to the Greeks (and others), were Black, as in 'Negro' as in, they looked more like the Yoruba or the Kikuyu or the Xhosa than any group of Semitic people.* They came from the interior, from Nubia (Sudan) or the drying Western Sahara. Their sacred sites were in Upper Egypt, their true homeland. Their gods were there, and the heads of those gods were painted coal black. The Egyptians made no distinction of colour between themselves and the Nubians or other Black Africans. Herodotus says they were black and had woolly hair. The Bible says it. And where Egyptians travelled North, they ruled: the earliest kings of Elam were Black, as their tomb paintings clearly show. The Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the Carthagianians were Black. Speaking of tomb paintings, statuary and so on, well, just take a look, the book has pictures = )*Why am I struggling to make myself clear? Well, race isn't a thing is it? It's just junk in the mind of the racist, as one friend objected when I started talking about this book. The trouble is, we (as in everyone) are all racist, and the junk in racist minds is exactly what Cheikh Anta Diop (can I call him CAD? Thanks.) is writing back to here. In fact, Egyptology up to 1954 had been part and parcel of the ideology of scientific racism. While CAD is able to cite some 'scholars of good faith' going all the way back to de Volney circa 1785 who observes the (much lightened by mixing) Egyptians and recalls the words of Herodotus, concluding “the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans.”, the majority of the Egyptologists he cites are clearly so deeply sunk in their white-supremacy that they will allow themselves any amount of contradiction, denial and extravagant misinterpretation, and think up any crackpot theory, to avoid accepting the obvious conclusion that THE EGYPTIANS WERE BLACK.Some of these theories propose that the Egyptians came from the North, which is ridiculous, and others create White races with dark skin. Hence such designations as 'Hamite' 'Nilotic' and so on, proliferate as the white Egyptologists scramble to avoid the belief that the despised and enslaved Negro could be the antecedent and teacher of European culture. CAD believes that there are only three 'races', 'white, black and yellow' and suspects that even the 'yellow' is really just a mix of black and white, like the Semites and other 'Mediterranean' people, and the Egyptians today. Egyptologists had suggested that Indo-Europeans civilized the Egyptians and lightened them, but Egyptian civilisation pre-dates anything in Europe and Mesopotamia, and mixing was very gradual due to the small numbers of whiter peoples coming to Africa, while all the elements of the Egyptian civilisation were in place in the undeniably Black Old Kingdom. The pale folks who came to Egypt before it fell were usually prisoners of war who became slaves (Egyptians could not be enslaved. The country was never a slave economy – numbers were small) or brought into the royal harem.This isn't a theory of racial superiority of course; the Egyptians' social and cultural sophistication, asserts CAD, was nurtured by their environment and the need for cooperation imposed by the particular agricultural conditions around the Nile. Bounteous nature was unsurprisingly revered. Meanwhile, the Indo-Europeans struggling to survive on the hostile steppes developed the patriarchal family and aggressive, opportunistic lifeways, devoid of respect for nature, which treated them harshly. CAD suggests that the Egyptians persecuted the Jews because of their horror of nomads. I am generally wary of this kind of psychological explanation-by-climate, but in some aspects this speculative description approximates a historical approach. I would like to stand up for nomads against this sedentarist perspective, though not especially to defend the people who became the faithless extractivists of Western Europe (what about Native 'American' nomadic people, famously not faithless extractivists**) One of my problems with the text is the apparently uncritical use of the opposition between 'civilisation' and 'barbarism'. CAD accepts the idea that Black Africa has 'regressed' from the glory days of the pharaohs. I have to object that this is part of racist, colonial ideology.Nor is this the only aspect of the text which needs further decolonisation. Unforgivably, CAD collaborates in antiblackness as it constructs black female gender. Comments about hair in particular (I would like to know what 'frizzy' is translated from) are entirely misogynoiristic*** and when CAD uses the phrase 'feminine elegance' he is explicitly distinguishing white women from black women**I don't mean to imply that Native 'Americans' all have nomadic traditions or were all nomadic before the invasion of colonising Europeans – despite my ignorance about the topic I am well aware that the continent had many cities before the white invasion. CAD thinks that Black Africans who crossed the Atlantic had a hand in this urbanising (step pyramids!) but he is only speculating and I need to do further research into the exciting topic of these Atlantic crossings***the term misogynoir was coined by Moya BaileyThe depth of some Egyptologists' investment in white supremacy provokes some enjoyable dry humour from CAD. In 'Reply to a Critic', he addresses the remarks of one denier, Raymond Mauny on the ethnic mix of later periods “M Mauny knows that if this mix of people were transported to New York City, they would be found in Harlem”This snark not only indicates the accessibility of this readable and absorbing book, but also points to the reality that racialisation is contextual. As Leena Abiballa (a Sudanese writer) explains in this article Too Black to be Arab, too Arab to be Black "race is a Western fantasy maintained by a daily, violent socio-political choreography.” So, why do I disagree with my friend's comment that "we shouldn't assign racial identities to historic civilizations"? Why am I greeting CAD's project as near-heroic? Context! In, say, Paris, 1954, or London, 2016, a time-travelling group of ancient Egyptians would be called BLACK, and that fact turns the foundation of scientific racism, which is the foundation of this 'Western fantasy' of race, UPSIDE DOWN, which (as Fanon tells us) is what has to be done before it can dissipate into nothingness. So while I find the occasional descent into skull-measuring tedious, I recognise its necessity. What happens now is that nobody talks of the Egyptians as White or Asian, but the conception is not challenged, so people continue to picture them as such and reproduce the idea - it has its own self-sustaining life. That's why whites are cast as Egyptians in movies etc. Now I'm on the lookout for books and other art that presents ancient Egypt as Black. Hollywood antidotes please...update: it has been suggested to me that Cheikh Anta Diop's theory is 'trapped inside a racist conception'I would like to avoid facilitating obfuscation, so I want to reply here. Firstly, this is insulting. CAD has replied to the racism of Egyptology, implicit and explicit, ON ITS OWN TERMS. Even on the grounds of the essentialist concept of race it propounds, it is incorrect. I think this is the most effective refutation. CAD has used white man epistemology and essentialism strategically.I know that in a way, a meaningful way, the objector is right, because in this volume CAD concludes with touching optimism that accurate or authentic objective anthropology will triumph, racism will be over! But yes, a different epistemology is needed. To repeat a much abused revelation:"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" - Audre LordeBut knowing that 'race' is not real has not helped much, has it? White supremacy has been making out like a bandit on the back of this valid deconstruction for some time, pretending that since race does not exist, racism (the white concept of racism is one of the master's tools) does not exist either, since Lincoln freed the slaves or whatever, now there's a full meritocracy, level playing field etc:'that was all in the past, can't we just move on?''stop playing the race card!'Racialisation is contextual, but it does not follow that a person can take off the helmet of their language and culture at a stroke, and end racism thus. History is important, emotionally. Stories have real power.While I was reading this, I asked some folks this question:What do you think the ancient Egyptians looked like?The first answer I got was about their clothesThis is avoidance of the uncomfortable. I clarifiedThe second reply (from a knowledgeable person) was that they had 'Asian skin, almond eyes, long hair'That is racist Egyptology at work.I said the Egyptians were Black, as in, you know, like Oprah.The next reply was 'I don't think we should assign race to them, I never thought about it'That is 'colourblindness' or raceblindness, which is really racism-blindness, isn't it? The last person is quite enlightened, he knows race is not a thing, but it seems to me that it is another way of avoiding an uncomfortable topic.White Supremacy: "The Egyptians were White, because only Whites could create this advanced civilisation"Cheikh Anta Diop: "Actually, the Egyptians were Black"Pomo Covert White Supremacy: "Oh, race isn't a thing anyway"What happened? The water got hot, so somebody jumped out.Person 2 also said 'Surely the Egyptologists were not all racist' which is related to the objection 'some old racist books claimed the Egyptians were white'But this is not over, as person #2's first response indicates. They had 'Asian skin', so they were Asian?Go to the British Museum's lovely Ancient Egypt website, and see all the gods drawn as pale as I amAs Sara Ahmed says:This is not over. We should not get over it.