Clyde Winters

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King James was Black.
—Clyde trolling at Egyptsearch[1]

"Dr". Clyde Winters (1950–) is an African-American black supremacist crank. He is a proponent of Afrocentric historical revisionism, the racist melanin theory and other pseudoscience.

Background[edit]

Education[edit]

His listed[2][3] academic credentials include:

  • 1973 - B.A., Sociology/History (University of Illinois)
  • 1973 - M.A., Social Science (University of Illinois)
  • 1994 - M.S., Education (Chicago State University)
  • 2000 - Ph.D., Educational Psychology (Loyola University)

None have anything to do with genetics or deciphering ancient scripts which he claims to be an expert in.

Uthman dan Fodio Institute[edit]

Winters says he is "Professor of Education, Anthropology and Linguistics, Uthman dan Fodio Institute (UdFI)", as well as a "Faculty Member, Archaeogenetics", an "Associate Professor" and "Director" at the same institute.[4] The problem is this institution with an archaeogenetics department does not exist. Records show the UdFI is his private home school in Chicago, which only has a history of enrolling and teaching African-American students of the 8th grade (13 - 14 year olds).[5] UdFI's staff or faculty members all seem to be one person: Clyde Winters. The private school also appears to be his own house.

Stephen Howe, Professor of History and Cultures of Colonialism, University of Bristol has noted:

The tendency to claim or imply grand-sounding academic careers and affiliations seems to be quite widespread among Afrocentrists.

He refers to Clyde Winters as an example.[6]

Race discrimination case[edit]

Winters filed a race discrimination action against Iowa State University in 1991. He was employed as Director of the Black Cultural Center at Iowa State University from August 1974 to May 1975.

The case was dismissed.[7]

Afrocentric historical revisionism[edit]

Ancient civilizations as black[edit]

Like Egmond Codfried, Winters spends his time online trolling forums and blogs, posting his crazy historical revisionism: all ancient peoples and civilizations were black people from Africa (including the Sumerians, Celts, Vikings, Romans, Greeks, Samurai, Olmec, and so on...) and that white people and light skinned Northeast Asians are recent albinos or "mutants" from caves with no ancient history:

When confronted and asked to provide evidence for these nonsensical claims, it is notable that Winters alters his position from asserting all or most of these peoples being "black" to arguing there were just a small number of Sub-Saharan African migrants in these civilizations through trade contact etc (which no one denies). So it is not as if Winters holds a consistent position, and even admits to trolling.

Medieval European kings as black[edit]

An early 17th century portrait of James I of England (VI of Scotland), with pale skin and a blonde beard, somehow "Black" according to Winters.

Winters has resorted to further trolling on the Egyptsearch forum and has posted King James I of England was "Black".

Decipherments[edit]

Winters claims to have deciphered:

  • Indus (Harappan) script
  • Meroitic language
  • Sumerian
  • Olmec script

According to Jason Colavito: "Winters then claims that not only Sumerian but the Olmec and Indus Valley scripts can be understood with reference to something called the Vai writing system, which he takes to use identical syllable-sound pairings to these other tongues [...] This is because, he claims, Black Africans were the inhabitants of Atlantis, which was in modern Libya, and spread its culture and people around the world, bequeathing Black civilization to all the other continents. This is why he feels all the ancient world languages are merely versions of Black Atlantean language."[8]

Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Wayne State University has debated Winters online the Afrocentric forum Egyptsearch regarding the ancient Mesoamerican languages. He points out that: "The person in this forum who is the biggest liar, misquoter, and provider of false or missing references is YOU- Clyde".[9] Winters is known to distort data and misquote sources; when he is shown to be a liar he spams the forum so no one can read what was posted.[10]

Winters has said that the Fuente Magna Bowl, a stone bowl that surfaced in the 1950s from South America is a genuine "proto-Sumerian" text. However, archaeologist Carl Feagans noted that the bowl is dismissed as a hoax by scholars and described Winters as "a pseudo-historian".[11]

Publications[edit]

Books[edit]

Winters publishes, and sells his books on Amazon Kindle, or self-prints copies from Uthman dan Fodio Institute his home:

  • African Empires in Ancient America (2013)
  • The Ancient Black Civilizations of Asia (2013)
  • Atlantis in Mexico: The Mande Discovery of America (2013)
  • Meroitic Writing and Literature (2013)

Reviewed by a customer who wasted their money:

Total Afrocentric trash from a pseudo-academic. Made-up linguistics. The ancient Meroitic language has not been translated.[12]

  • Dravidian (Tamil) is the language of the Indus Valley Writing (2014)
  • We Are Not JUST Africans: The Black Native Americans (2015)

Peer-review controversy[edit]

Winters has published letters and comments in response to peer-reviewed articles in academic journals. However his responses while appearing in journals are not peer-reviewed, despite him claiming the contrary. Bernard Ortiz de Montellano points out: "articles you [Clyde Winters] claim in journals like PNAS are your letters commenting on a legitimate article. These letters are NOT reviewed and just published-- i.e. like the vanity press Current research Journal of Social Sciences which has no review and published your article full of typos so it was not even proofread. Similarly, the talk that is mentioned at the start of this thread, is NOT peer reviewed. Talks at regional meetings, particularly those that not part of organized sessions on a particular topic are NOT reviewed or given academic approval."[13]

Most of the peer-reviewed work Winters has actually had published are confined to fringe and pseudo-journals, examples include the Journal of African Civilizations[14] and the Mankind Quarterly.

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Afro-American Origins: the Black Europeans (archive)
  2. Curriculum Vitae
  3. ResearchGate
  4. Google Scholar, academia.edu, chroniclevitae, webmedcentral.
  5. Private Schools in Chicago, Illinois.
  6. Howe, Stephen. (1998). Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. London: Verso. p. 261.
  7. Winters v. Iowa State University, 768 F. Supp. 231 (N.D. Ill. 1991)
  8. Sumerians in Bolivia: Afrocentrism and the Potokia Monolith
  9. Olmecs were not Mande by Bernard Ortiz de Montellano (archive)
  10. "As usual, Clyde Winters fills the air waves with spam with the hope that the sheer volume will deter people from checking up on his data and sources. I have dealt with practically everything about Mesoamerica that he just posted here. A search of this forum will come up with megabytes on these topics. As you have seen, Winters NEVER acknowledges that he is in error. Lately he has take to making flat assertions as if they were not in any doubt." - B. Ortiz de Montellano (posting as "Quetzalcoatl" on the Egyptsearch forum, [1])
  11. Sumerians in Bolivia? Probably not
  12. Meroitic Writing and Literature by Dr. Clyde Winters (Book Review)
  13. Dr. Clyde Winters: The Decipherment of the Olmec Writing System (archive)
  14. "Journal of African Civilizations [...] consistently promote a racialist and hegemonic view of the role allegedly played by 'black peoples' in the formation of civilizations throughout the world." (Haslip-Viera, G., de Montellano, B. O., Barbour, W. [1997]. "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs". Current Anthropology. 38(3): 419-441.)