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Many ancient and medieval
writers commented on how skin color correlated with intelligence. To
the shock of many modern readers the Greeks and Romans equated dark
skin with intelligence and lighter skin with stupidity. The Greek
historian Lucian (125?-90) wrote that the Ethiopians (name for all
black people), "Being in all else wiser than other men,"
invented astrology and taught it to the Egyptians.1
Aristotle (398-332BC) believed that, "The races that live in…. Europe are full of courage and passion but
somewhat lacking in skill and brain power2
…Those who are too black are cowards, like for instance, the Egyptians
and Ethiopians. But those who are excessively white are also
cowards…The complexion of courage is between the two." 3
Aristotle believed, liked many Greeks and Romans, that they lived in
the perfect, "mid-position geographically," between the
intelligent, yet cowardly dark skinned southerners, and brave, yet dull
pale-skinned northerners.
Vitruvius Polio (1st
century BC) in his book, On Architecture, wrote the following passage
about the different innate attributes of people:
"Now while the southern peoples are of acute intelligence and
infinite resource, they give way when courage is demanded because
their strength is drained away by the sun; but those who are born in colder
regions by their fearless courage are better equipped for the clash of
arms, yet by their slowness of mind they rush on without reflection,
and through lack of tactics are balked of their purpose…Italy
presents good qualities which are tempered by admixture from either
side both north and south, and are consequently unsurpassed. And so, by
its policy, it curbs the courage of the northern barbarians; by its
strength, the imaginative south. Thus the divine mind has allotted to
the Roman state an excellent and temperate region in order to rule the
world."4
There are many examples of
the Greeks and Romans' high regards for the intelligence of black people.
In Heliodorus's play, an Ethiopian King was a model of wisdom,
righteousness, and magnanimity.5
In Homer's Odyessy, Odysseus's herald Eurybates--who has black skin and wooly hair--was renowned for
his wisdom.6
Lucian mentioned a thoughtful Negro scribe
from Memphis
named Pancrates.7
Aesop, the famous fable writer was described as an Ethiopian.8
The Roman writer Terrence, who achieved great fame as a comic poet
after arriving in Rome
as a slave, was described as having dark and black skin. Terrence was
accepted into Rome's
elite circles and his daughter married a Roman knight.9
Strabo placed Taharqa, one
of the kings of the Black-Nubian-Egyptian 25th dynasty, among one of
the world's greatest military
tacticians.10
Many Arabs in the Middle
Ages believed they were superior
mentally to all people--they showed contempt for lighter and darker
skinned people--although they seemingly held
blacks in higher esteem than whites. The Muslim scholar Sa'id
al-Andalusi wrote: "They (whites) lack keenness of
understanding and clarity of intelligence, and are overcome by
ignorance and dullness, lack of discernment, and stupidity."11
A Muslim writer in the
10th century wrote that Iraqis were the most intelligent and attractive
people. "The people of Iraq have sound minds…a proficiency in
every art…and a pale brown color, which is the most apt and proper
color…They do not come out with something between blond, blanched and
leprous coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the
women of the Slavs and others of light complexion; nor are they
overdone in the womb until they are burned…such as the Ethiopians and
other blacks…. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned
crust, but between the two." 12
The Asian Mongols also
believed that whites were innately inferior. Between 1237 and 1242 the
Mongols ruled over Russia
and much of central Europe. They grew
wealthy selling white slaves. In the Middle Ages Russians and other
Slavic people were the primary source of slaves in the Mediterranean
world--The word slave even derives from the word Slav.13
To the surprise of many, there can be little doubt that black people in
the Mid-East and Egypt
owned white slaves.
Medieval European and
Arabs who visited African kingdoms praised the blacks for their
intelligence. Duarte Pires, writing to the king of Portugal about the people of Benin,
told his king, "they are very good learners."14
A Portuguese chronicler described an ambassador from Benin as, "a man of
good speech and natural wisdom."15
The Dutchman Olfert Dapper writing in 1622 concluded that "These
Negroes...are people who have good laws."16
Donald Levine and Almeida described the Ethiopians as "very
amenable to reason and justice…intelligent and good natured…mild,
gentle, kind…"17
The memory power of Africans struck one European merchant as
"beyond what is easy to image."18
Mahnud Ka'ti wrote, "the great men of the Songhay were versed in
the art of war. They were very brave, very bold and most expert in the
deployment of military stratagems."19
Henry Morton Stanley,
after visiting the court of the Ugandan king in 1875 wrote that he was
neither, "tyrannous savage," nor "wholesale murderer,"
as had been told in European fables, "but a pious Mussulman and an
intelligent humane king reigning absolutely over a vast section
of Africa, loved more than hated, respected more than feared." 20
An English soldier, after
being defeated by a Nigerian town that had acquired guns and cannons,
wrote that the Africans demonstrated a, "…considerable amount
of intelligence. The guns were admirably placed to meet any attack
from the direction expected…and were well and strongly mounted."21
One British soldier warned
his countrymen about the Bornu soldiers: "Do no
let us smoothly despise these black warriors. This headstrong braggart
cavalry and its rabble of infantry, these raidings and reivings or rare
and brilliant battles that grew willy nilly from duel and skirmish--they were
our own feudal army, they were Crecy and Agincourt." 22El
Masudi, a 10th century Iraqi historian recorded that the Zang, a black people
in East and South Africa, "are elegant speakers."23
John Hunwick, a history
Professor at Northwestern wrote: "In India Black African slaves or
freedmen played a considerable role, not merely as soldiers but also as
administrators and rulers, in a number of states from the
fourteenth to the seventeenth century."24
The Muslim world believed
that blacks made good financial assistants.25
Barbosa recorded that a
people near Zimbabwe,
"…are great traders."26
The
"sophistication," of the West African forest people's
agricultural, recorded Iliffe, "impressed fifteenth-century
Europeans."27
Visiting the Tigre in Ethiopia
in 1893, Bent wrote in admiration, "all the surrounding hills have
been terraced for cultivation…Nowhere in Greece
or Asia Minor have I seen such an
enormous extent of terraced mountains as in this Abyssinian valley.
Hundreds of thousands of acres must have been under the most careful
cultivation, right up almost to the top of the mountains."28
The high regard in which
the Europeans held black intelligence for over 2000 years quickly took
a dramatic dive during the slave trade and Africa's subsequent fall:
"By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," Davidson wrote,
"the European estimate (of black people) had changed, vastly
changed; because Europe, with a couple of hundred years of industry and
science behind it, had also changed, while Africa had…had fallen
back."29
In 1748 the Scottish
philosopher David Hume--ignoring
or blatantly lying about history--demonstrated the ridiculous
propaganda that was accepted by an unknowing
public with the following quote: "I am apt to suspect the Negroes,
and in general all the other species of men, to be naturally inferior
to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other
complexion than white, nor even say individual eminent in action or
speculation." Sadly this type of propaganda was accepted among
white Europeans; they just didn't know any better. Unfortunately the
propaganda led whites to discriminate and commit violence against
people with darker skin tones, especially blacks, because of lies like
the one above.
When historical facts
clearly proved the white supremacists wrong they desperately dreamed up
ridiculous stories, or squeezed their eyes really tight until they
truly believed 2 plus 2 was 5. They even created myths why the artwork
of the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians all clearly show darker skinned
people with black hair as the inhabitants, instead of blondes with pale
skin, who they claimed created the civilizations; Their ad hoc
explanation was that it was the blondes who initially built the
civilizations, but accustomed to their old climate of the north, began
to wither in the Mediterranean heat and quickly died out.30
Ridiculous as that is, it was accepted. White myths about how Europeans
once conquered and civilized India, the Arab nations,
and Sub Sahara Africa soon followed. There was a general rule of thumb:
Whenever a civilization was successful it was because of white
infiltration and rule, yet when a civilization declined it was because
of race mixing or a dark skinned leader; forget the evidence! Simple,
silly, and contrary to all the empirical evidence, yet it was accepted
by the public.
Incredibly it is these
erroneous claims that are the root of false stereotypes many people
have today, which of course leads to violence and discrimination.
In 1932 Wilson studied the Kenyan mines, terraces, and roads, and his thoughts
are a reflection of the vastly changed mindset toward blacks. "The
average width of the top of the terraces is about a foot. They were
probably about three feet originally, and the depth between terraces
three feet." The roads, "as a rule about ten or twelve feet
wide," while, "the strata of the hillside are exposed and
have been worked with a tool." One of the roads of Kenya connects with Northern
Zimbabwe, which is around 500-600 miles. It was a great
achievement of the Kenya’s,
but not according to Wilson.
He wrote that the black natives, who were actually still using the
terracing methods when he visited, "are too barbarous to have learnt it themselves." When the Kenya’s
told him that it was they who had mastered these techniques he shunned
it as, "probably an Anzanina
legacy."31
Myths about the stone
palaces of Zimbabwe
were even more absurd. The stone castles were an obvious evolution from
the straw and wood homes constructed by the indigenous people, yet
white supremacists claimed that Phoenicians built the castles; or
perhaps, they claimed, it was King Solomon's mines; or maybe even the
Garden of Eden. It's hard to imagine people believing these stories,
but it was a different time, and who else could have built them?
Certainly not the blacks they reasoned. It would be funny if it weren't
so harmful.
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