Re: Bernal

Perhaps the strangest thing about Black Athena is that it has become a success among Afrocentrists: this book says nothing at all about black Africa and it actually says very little about Egypt. You don't learn anything about Egypt by reading this book: to Bernal, Egypt is only valuable as a precursor of the Greeks. During their 3,000 years of civilisation they did nothing that is interesting or valuable in its own right.

If Bernal wanted to boost black pride, he chose to do so in a strange way: by linking Africa to the Greek civilisation, as if the only cultural heritage worth having is the Greek and Western European one. One conclusion from Bernal's book is that Africa south of the pyramids must have been a dull void where nothing worth mentioning ever happened. What Bernal actually says is - you're either part of the Western history of civilisation, or you're nothing.

Hakan

Mark wrote -

This is the first time I've had opportunity to respond to my experience with Bernal's theory. Quite seriously, you don't know how baffled I've been in the presence of black women who insist that Egypt was a very black culture -- as a matter of *race* -- and insist that anyone who says anything to the contrary is a nazi fascist racist pig. The same goes for the idea that the original Children of Israel who did the Exodus out of Egypt were also 'black', in the US sense.

Right-wing Republicans in the US vaguely refer to this theory, but don't understand; it's sort of like Mormans explaining the pre-Columbian Aztecs.

It's when you try to reason with the fiction-loving right, the fiction-loving left, and all fiction-loving inbetweens that you sort of sit down and reason with yourself. A lot of people have weird beliefs. A lot of people are downright dumb.