Forum:"African Olmecs" and general "Afro-centric" crankery.

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Hey guys, I came here looking for info about Afro-centric cranks as "Dr." Charles Finch the 3d and similar theorists, but I was surprised not to find any content here on this guys. Since "afrocentrism" redirects to Black-Supremacism, and this theories are not necessarily "supremacists" in nature, I think they could be separated, as to put most politically involved revisionism, on the Black-Supremacism thread, while putting pseudo-scientific premises and theories on the Afrocentric thread not necessarily "racists" (on the political sense of the word), as some of the later do have a certain academical pretension. For the Afrocentrism thread, other than the already mentioned figures and ideas, such as the melatonin theory, and the black-egyptian theory, one that particularly called my attention is the following.

Basically, they carry the idea that native americans are originally black "Dogons" spreading Egyptian knowledge around the world. They argue that Chinese, Egyptians and Olmecs were all of Sub-saharan ascendency, and take heavily on 19th/early 20th centuries racial jargon and authors to validate their demarcation for races, and "racial evolution" (since they champion the "innovative" idea that all of humanity comes from Africa, as opposed to main-stream anthropology that believes that all races come from "different kinds of hominids") and commonly incur on semantical deconstructions to disprove "non-african races" (for example, that amerindians don't exist since "Amero" was an italian, and "indian" refers to the Hindus valley, and therefor native-americans are foreign to America (contrary to the exogenous Dogons who seem to be "autochnous")).

Their followers turn around Charles Finch and Robert Strongriver, but they count also with an assortment of heterodox theorists with more or less credibility, thought those two would do. They've built enough content as to qualify as cranks and to be debunked RW style.

This is a mayor rebuttal from some centro-american dude who pretty much summarizes their point and main flaws: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIA8DZKS9nE&lc=d6wlpvsBEWzv2ewGsRiUF7tICfdvmjWRmMR62A2ctd8 This is a video of somebody arguing that Chineses are actually, africans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFhS-49WGGY --Tasurinchi (talk) 04:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

f you come to a wiki and the content you are hoping to find is not there, and you have a working knowledge of the topic in question, it would seem like there is an eminently workable solution to your problem. If I knew the way/I would take you home. 01:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Go for it. Afrocentrism could use its own article -- the only reason it redirects to black supremacy is because I didn't know enough to give it its own page when I wrote the article. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:08, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, the thing is I don't have a working knowledge on the topic. I'm not close to the topics this kinds of theories involve (for example, genetics or philology) I could only affirm the current concensus, but I couldn't back up a well sourced rebuttal.^{— Unsigned, by: 186.105.166.189 / talk / contribs} --Tasurinchi (talk) 04:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

My unicorn is sailing along the Champs-Élysées in a teacup

Afrocentrism is a depraved antiwhite, antichristian theory that is popular among psychotic, reptoid Martian liberals. Masturbation is the left's sacrament (talk) 03:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

So according to these theories, I'm not only of Spaniard, Zapoteco, and Aztec blood, but have some hybrid Egyptian blood in me? Wow. Better tell my parents that we're Egyptain-Mexican-Americans. Zexcoiler Kingbolt (talk) 04:34, 21 September 2015 (UTC)Zexcoiler Kingbolt

Afrocentricity and afrocentrism

OK, I'm not that big a help here, but from what little I have personally studied on this topic (one class... that's not much help...) 'afrocentricity' and 'afrocentrISM' are two different things. Afrocentricity is the idea that we could additionally be looking at the world from a perspective from Africa and the African diaspora as a counter-narrative, because those points of view are historically erased by dominant white narratives. Afrocentrism is the idea that Africa is the cradle of civilization and has related crankery attached to it, though from a different angle than most crankery. Because black culture is traditionally suppressed by imperialism, dominant culture in areas the African diaspora spread to, etc, a lot of the crankery is reactionary and intended to give a stronger identity to black people worldwide: the idea that they, like white races, have kings and figures of importance and a good culture in their background rather than their heritage starting with 'they were sold to white people as slaves.' There's a constant struggle in black studies concerning these topics and it's a really delicate issue. I'd go find somebody who's an actual scholar of this stuff to help; it involves academic and subcultural in-fighting that doesn't benefit at all from reductionist 'they all are black supremacists, reverse racism, not well informed, dumb dumbs lets laugh at them' summary jobs.±KnightOfTL;DR^{free guybrush threepwood! no new taxes! down with porcelain!} 05:19, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

There's always a place for legitimate revisionism, but that's pretty far from stuff like "Aristotle was really black." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

it is. I'm not the expert to make the calls, but the more accepted theory behind it is reclaiming people who existed before white culture and were probably not all white from whiteness. For example: reclaiming ancient egyptians as african peoples, not 'vague mediterranean-the-romans-were-okay-with-them peoples.' But yeah the crank stuff is fairly crank. It's one thing to revise history to find the black people cut out of it. Inventing cultural propaganda.... nooot soo muuuchh okay...±KnightOfTL;DR^{just shut up already} 06:28, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's why I argued for distinguishing Afrocentrism from Black Supremacism, to start of. But beside that, arguing in favor for bad epistemology from a political point of view is bigotry from wherever you look at it, this particular case I'm arguing for is criticized mostly by Mexicans and Center-Americans who like me, are not white, and are under a similar political position as black themselves. Also, and what's worse, not only they try to paint black Aztecs and Olmecs and to steal them key elementary elements as their ancestor's architectural achievements, but they also sustain themselves on finisecular racial jargon, from which Mulattoes, Zambos and Pardos who built their collective identities on syncretism (much like all latin-americans), are by force of American prejudices on colour people, and American hegemony on intellectual diffusion, tied to foreigners who only have in common with them a certain degree of melatonin on their skin.--Tasurinchi (talk) 19:01, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Black Jesus

Recently started an article name Black Jesus about an afrocentric religous crank . Need suggestions on how to improve it...

Nicoliver (talk) 21:06, 20 September 2015 (UTC)Nicoliver

Relevant to this discussion

Martin Bernal died. If I knew the way/I would take you home. 18:04, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Dare I take the plunge?

I know a little about this topic from an Egyptological perspective, but have been cautious about throwing myself too enthusiastically on top of this landmine. Been a way from the wiki for a bit as well, but happy to try and throw something together over the next week. I'd really appreciate some eyes on it though, especially for claims about stuff outside Egypt and the classical world. TheEgyptian^¿Dígame? 16:13, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Would be happy to take a look. I added some relevant material to the article on Egypt some time ago. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 20:56, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I've got a free next week so will pull some stuff together. TheEgyptian^¿Dígame? 21:35, 27 September 2015 (UTC)