When is WHITE history month?

reply to post by Sphota

I think the fact that most "white" Americans think they really are pure "white" is a national myth and one that could use to be disproved.

So true...

There's America, but Europe got mixed up during the Roman Empire as well. For over 1,000 years, the centurions, who were of African, Germanic, Frank or Semetic origins, happily spread their lovely mixed genes throughout ALL of Europe.

Then, when establishing clonies was all the rage a few centuries later, there was this big navel-gazing experience and the notion of a white race being of superior intellect was born. It sure helped subdue those alien populations that weren't 'human enough' (WASP) to look after their own affairs. Lucky for all the 'Godless savages', right?

reply to post by masqua


Yeah, if evolution is right then we all evolved from blacks, and we evolved to suit our environment, whites in there cold became white, blacks in there sunny, well stayed black and asians adopted the white but because of brighter sunlight adopted the different eyelids.

I was just under the (uneducated) impression that whites evolved with the blonde hair and mated with blacks and that eventually led to darker hair.

reply to post by woogleuk


Caucasian, as a general term, refers to a large section of people from Portugal to India, from North Africa to Russia. The reason some groups have different features is that there has been mixing. In North Africa, Romans, Greeks, Goths (Germanic) and Arabs all mixed with peoples who have Sub-Saharan backgrounds. The Russians, Poles and Finns have some "Asian" background. Indians have pre-Caucasian mixes in their various ethnic groups, probably the people from which the Negritos of Southeast Asia, the Papuans and the Australian Aborigines descended from.

It's all a big mix, evolution doesn't allow for "pure". (Meaning: you are as much your mother's child as you are your father's and ideally they would not be too similar.)

"When is WHITE history month?"

March 1st through January 31st.

Now if the question were, "when is hispanic history month?" I'd be at a loss.

reply to post by Sphota


Thanks for the response, I actually regret using the term "pure" white, it sounds racist in its own rights, which I didn't intend. I do believe all humans are the same, just evolved to suit their surroundings, but generations of travels and mixed breeding created what we are today. But all human regardless.

reply to post by woogleuk


Just a technical correction, we are not descended from "Black" people. No creature currently alive can be an ancestor of another currently alive creature. This is why that particular argument made against evolution (the whole "Why don't monkey's spontaneously become humans" argument) bothers me: we don't come from monkeys, contemporary monkeys and contemporary humans come from a shared ancestor.

"Blacks", "Whites" and "Asians" (and the other 5 billion people on the planet) at this moment in time are not descended from "Blacks".

By the way, I'm being critical, but not intending to sound "superior". That's just one issue that has always bothered me about discussing biology and evolution. You're on the right track with "suited to one's environment" comment

reply to post by Sphota


If I was lucky enough to sit as a judge and had to handle mild cases of racism, I would, upon conviction, sentence each to house arrest until they've read and absorbed The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Once they'd reached that lofty goal, I'd set loose upon the land an extremely enlightened soul who would now understand how utterly senseless and defenseless the idea of racism really is. Gibbon actually uses 'race' as a terminology for 'family', because he knew how completely interbred everyone was in the mid-1700's. (i.e. the Merovingian 'race' )

"When is white history month?"

White history month is the other 11 months of the year!

reply to post by masqua


I will have to read that book. The title is The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibson? Is it a new book? I've always been fascinated with where I come from, and a large part of me comes from that Empire.

The point of Black History month is to enlighten people and help them see what has been done to black people in America. It doesnt matter what mix you are....I have German, Cherokee, English in my blood...but I have not had to endure racism like Black people have in the past and do today. It is a major part of the American story.

reply to post by Sphota


It was just my understanding that humans evolved from australopithecus which was the common ancestor of man and ape which came from Africa, and given our understanding of evolution would mean all man started off black and evolved from there as he moved out of Africa.

reply to post by Sphota


Edward Gibbon published the series of books between 1776 and 1788, but now available as a single volume (~1200 pages).

It's also available online

The title is The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibson?

Nope... easy mistake to make. It's the Decline and Fall

The Rise must have been the good part and not worthy as a lesson to humanity.

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
When is Asian History Month?

May

When is Hispanic History Month?

They don't really get one; it's September 15 to October 15

When is Native American History Month?

November

When is...well you get the picture.

Irish Heritage month is March, as is Greek heritage month
October is Italian Heritage month and Polish history month
German history month is also September 15 - October 15
May is also Jewish heritage month
April 6 is Scotland day. That's what you get for being stingy

It might be time to do away with this practice, eh? Keeping it separate and in the forefront, while benevolent in intention and full of pride and all that, in reality just keeps it all separate. And, if I'm not mistaken, keeping focus on differences and enforcing separation is not the idea.

edit on 2/13/2011 by ~Lucidity because: formatting error

Let's be honest. Things like Black History month and such exist specifically because the histories and achievements of these segments of the American population have been intentionally left out, glossed over, and depreciated in our American History books, in favor of an exclusively white-Anglo historical narrative. And judging from the five pages of white dumbasses getting butthurt that these people get any recognition at all, it's still worth keeping these observances in place.

Originally posted by apodictic

Now, no, the past is not behind you. If it was, you wouldn't still be separating everything by skin color and finding it necessary to have a history month based on the skin color of individuals. You are living in the past.

It's not based on skin color. The confusion is in the designating term. Black refers to Black Americans as I posted on page 4. Black Americans have, on a continuum, some varying degree of mix of West African, European and Native American heritage. The culture and language is unique, also based on the mix of heritage.

Celebrating "Black History Month" has nothing to do with Black Africans (nor should it) because Black Africans are not "Black", they are Yoruba, Ewe, Kwe, Ngola, Xhosa, Zulu, Fan and so on. They don't see each other as the same just as Europeans don't see each other as the same.

It is only through the prism of colonialism that the most salient distinction (skin color) becomes the crux of the issue. The opposition is what creates the categories, the categories themselves are not inherent.

Masqua
Your suggestion is great although it is sort of taken....gay pride day/month=rainbow symbol heeheee
If you have any gay friends go celebrate with them. 2 birds 1 stone!

reply to post by Bachrk


maybe if we lose the purple and keep a yellow, black, red and white rainbow?

reply to post by woogleuk


I think you are right. But, I would argue that the Black people of contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa are no closer to Australopithecus than Europeans or Asians. it is specifically the environmental niche that you discussed a couple posts up that explains the coincidental hue similarities in the skin. Just look at Mayans, Tamils, Papua New Guinea and Polynesia: evolution continues.

reply to post by woogleuk


Well, odds are that early man was dark-skinned. The majority of people in the world have fairly dark skin, and most of our fossil record is found in places like Africa, the middle east, and south Asia, where dark skin is a big bonus.

However, no one alive today is particularly related to "Archaic" H. sapiens, much less Australopithecenes. We've all had about a million years of evolution and development since the earliest days of our species, and even the most "archaic" peoples alive today - the San people of southern Africa, the "negritos" of the Indian ocean and Philippines, and the Australian Aborigines, are guaranteed to look very little like those ancestral populations.

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Comment removed as Off Topic

*slaps self*