Not to put too fine a point on it, but life is short. The world is chock full of peoples and cultures who have invented intricate writing systems, beautiful music, complex technologies, have advanced science to the point of brain surgery and space travel, have produced literary masterpieces and stirring philosophies, have perfected the art of the kebab…aside from paying it a passing interest, why should I be compelled to investigate the history of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, who have contributed virtually nil to the sum total of human knowledge and achievement?
[quote]why should I be compelled to investigate the history of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, who have contributed virtually nil to the sum total of human knowledge and achievement?
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I don’t think Black History Month advocates any such thing – its supposed to be about Americans.
(1) Because it would be racist not to think they were important, and we wouldn’t want that would we? (2) Besides, they’re better in sports.
Most of the world’s alphabetic systems were inspired by the Near East. (For example, Korean had its eye on Mongolian which basically turned Syriac on its side.) Chinese may or may not have an utterly different origin–Victor Mair thinks it’s related to Sumerian, and not many are in a position to argue with him.
Space travel? There aren’t THAT many “cultures” involved–it’s basically just the West, Russia, China, and Japan. Africa hasn’t done squat. Similarly, most advances in medical knowledge come from a predictable list of countries, though I recall that a white South African did the first heart transplant.
To many, musical quality is hopelessly subjective, but I see much greater depth, complexity, and variety in classical European music.
[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]I recall that a white South African did the first heart transplant.
[/quote]
Actually, it was revealed recently that the first heart transplant was performed by a black South African. The guy was not a certified doctor (how could he have been in apartheid SA?), but he had worked as a surgeon or surgeon’s assistant for decades. Although everyone in the hospital knew that he was a surgeon, his job title said he was a janitor or something. The white doctor who was credited for doing the surgery was actually physically incapable of doing it because of arthritis. He did do most of the planning for the surgery, but he could not do it himself. He has acknowledged that the black guy was the chief surgeon. But of course, he wasn’t American, so I don’t see how we can honor him for Black History Month.
There is one very obvious - though I admit that few people think of it - area where the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa have contributed a great deal to the world, and that area is music. American popular music is obviously the most influential music in the world; as examples, does the currently-popular music in Taiwan sound like traditional Chinese music? No, and the currently-popular music in Korea is Korean rap, not traditional Korean music. Japan is the same. Around the world this is true. Well, where exactly do you think the origins of this music lie? The originators of jazz and the blues are African slaves (or their descendants) who were brought to America. It’s not enough to say that many good performers of popular music are black; the origins of this music are in Africa. Just as, say, people of Chinese origin can become very accomplished performers of Western classical music, without altering the fact that what they are playing is European classical music, so people of non-African origins can adopt essentially African music. It is unfair, though, to refuse to recognize that what they are copying or altering is African.
By the way, before American music was the most influential music in the world, Cuban music was. Again, Cuban music is not from Spain. It’s origins, once again, are slaves from West Africa.
I do not want to imply that there are no other influences in jazz, the blues, rock, and rap. Obviously, there are. However, I think it is equally obvious that the music we listen to is, basically, African music, and in particular West African music. The child of some slave living in the Mississippi delta did not just by accident one day start playing the blues - he was playing the music of his ancestors.
Hooey. The originators of jazz and blues were African-American. Fullstop. Why do you think that the music of African slaves in Africa, whose numbers dwarfed those of the slaves in the Americas, is as different from American jazz and blues as the polka is to a Chinese orchestra?
People around the world are held in thrall to a post-WWII popular music phenomenon owing a great deal to the music of African-Americans, not Africans. Hip-hop and rap are as second-hand in Africa as they are in Korea.
I’ll admit, though, that I’m not averse to the Senegalese djembe, c’est bon, ca truc. But give me Turkish and Indian drumming over anything from Africa any day.
OK, so you agree the music at its base is African-American. I agree there are other influences - there are some influences from European-style music. It is not pure African music. But I cannot agree that the base of popular music is not African. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that it’s first exemplars were all the descendants of West African slaves? Also, have you listened to much traditional and modern music from Africa? I have, and there is more resemblance between it and the delta blues, for example, than there is between Polish polkas and traditional Chinese music. It’s not all drums.
I honestly believe that it is deeply-held prejudice, maybe even prejudice that people are not willing to consciously admit they hold, that makes people unable to accept (or hear) that the origins of the music they like is not really at its base European, but is in fact African.
No offense intended, but why the f**k should we remember Black History Month? What if you don’t have any interest in black history?[/quote]
It’s totally voluntary. Unless you’re a student in an American school.
I think it’s a good idea.
Black history month from my understanding applauds African-American achievements and tribulations. It’s a gesture to make up for the really shitty things that were done to them and in some cases are still happening. To recognize the hardships that they went through and the accomplishements they have made to the US.
Despite the ridicule that it gets I do see it as important. I see it as something to be proud of. A nation trying to undo the damage and give people a sense of worth. Hopefully someday we can get past all this ethnicity crap and have no more need for it because things will be properly taught, honored and examined.
It is not to wallow in victimhood, but to look forward to what we can do and accomplish as a people.
CYA
Okami
ok enough of this. Anyone want to work out in Cali Fitness (I won’t bash heads).
Need a gym partner. I’m not gay. and I prefer someone who is <26
i thought people came from africa. their genetic development led to you… somehow.
too bad they eat bushmeat, killing all the great apes and such.
I went to a typical public HS, which is to say that most of what we learned about British history was used as context for American history. That said, I distinctly remember a week spent learning about the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William and the Normans vs. Harold (the Weak) of Saxony; Harold lost (the last time England were ever successfully invaded, if I remember correctly). The Normanization of England led to English feudalism, which led in turn, eventually, to the Magna Carta (see where they were heading?). The Magna Carta limited the “executive power” in England, but more importantly it demonstrated that the king’s powers could be limited via a special kind of agreement–the written Magna Carta.
And the following Monday we neatly moved on to the US Constitution, if I remember correctly.
The “British History Week” is memorable largely because Mr. Kuhlmann, our history teacher, showed up in some kind of Saxon-ish, leg-warmer and chain-mail get up one day about midweek. He was also the debate/forensics teacher, and I remember he had to drive us debaters somewhere later in the afternoon but he didn’t bother to change clothes. He was also bald, but vain, so he had a big comb-over going on. What was so memorable was walking to the car with the debate group and seeing Mr. Kuhlmann in full-Saxon regalia, smoking a cigarette, with about 2 ft of left-side-only hair blowing straight to his left in the high Kansas wind that day. Believe me, you’d never forget British week, either, if you had seen that.
Of course, post-secondary education is much better. Most major state universities offer a staggering array of British history courses, as do most of the better private universities.
How on earth does this topic have anything to do with Taiwan? 
Wait, isn’t Tiger Woods Chinese?
He’s a black Thai!
Yeah, but his mother is an overseas Chinese from Thailand, right?
Thesis + anti-thesis = synthesis
And that’s how we got jazz, the blues, country & western, gospel, rock’n’roll, and every other form of modern American music worth giving a damn about: the collision between poor white & poor black styles. Jazz kicked off after the Civil War when all these ex-slaves found all these abandoned musical instruments looted from destroyed plantations and marching bugle boys’ corps. They had an approximation of what music in the European classical tradition was supposed to sound like, but they weren’t that familiar with how exactly to go about playing it, and so - a new musical genre is created. Country music was just the white hillbilly’s blues, the blues was just the black man’s country & western - and both were descended from a fusion of traditional Celtic/English balladry set to African tunings and moans, and played on a Spanish instrument called the guitar. Slaves sang white Christian Bible hymnals with the passion they sang West African worksongs, and from there eventually leads the road to Aretha Franklin. Chuck Berry sounded “too white” for black radio and Elvis Presley sounded “too black” for white radio, and 50 years later kids still wanna rock’n’roll.
In sum, African-American music is as American as it gets, America at its finest - a mutant mongrel Frankenstein of whatever ingredients taste well together in the gumbo. In the end it really doesn’t matter that much whether this ingredient here originally hailed 400 years ago from Iberia or Ghana or the Scottish Highlands - eggs, sugar, and flour make a cake.
His mother was a dirt-poor Isaan farmgirl who moved to Bangkok for the, erm, work opportunities, who met Tiger’s naval officer American father in a, erm, ‘gentleman’s club.’ That’s what I’ve heard…
[quote=“Okami”]Black history month from my understanding applauds African-American achievements and tribulations. It’s a gesture to make up for the really shitty things that were done to them and in some cases are still happening. To recognize the hardships that they went through and the accomplishements they have made to the US.
Despite the ridicule that it gets I do see it as important. I see it as something to be proud of. A nation trying to undo the damage and give people a sense of worth. Hopefully someday we can get past all this ethnicity crap and have no more need for it because things will be properly taught, honored and examined.
It is not to wallow in victimhood, but to look forward to what we can do and accomplish as a people.
CYA
Okami[/quote]
What the fk does this have to do with me, a Canadian who’s grandparents immigrated during the Russian revolution? How can you presume to inform me that it should be important to me? Where the fk do you get off talking about the US nation and “we” in an international forum?
I thought people came from africa. their genetic development led to you… somehow.
too bad they eat bushmeat, killing all the great apes and such.[/quote]
Whoa, buddy…don’t misquote me. I said sub-Saharan Africa.