The Golden Book Encyclopedia was the best-selling children’s encyclopedia in America ever. The 1959 edition sold throughout the 1960s. It is the oldest encyclopedia in my possession – and it writes about black people just four years before Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
- name: Negroes
- race: Negroid. The Bantus, Melanesians and Hottentots are Negroid but not Negroes.
- physical appearance:
- skin: brown or black
- hair: kinky and black
- eyes: dark brown
- nose: broad
- lips: thick
- origin: Africa, particularly West Africa, the home of the True Negroes.
- history:
- The early New World explorers – Columbus, Balboa, Pizzaro, Cortes – had Negroes among their men.
- Most Negroes who reached the Americas were brought as slaves.
- Some American Negroes founded the country of Liberia in 1847.
- “The War Between the States” was brought on “partly because the North and the South did not agree about slavery. “
- Lincoln freed the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation.
- “Even after the slave were freed, they did not have much chance to move forward. Many ways of earning a living were closed to them. It was not easy for a Negro to get an education.”
- “Now the chances of getting a good education are far better.” Presumably a reference to Brown v Board (1954) and school desegregation.
- “Negroes have become famous in many fields.”
- famous Negroes: it has articles on:
- Booker T. Washington,
- George Washington Carver
- capabilities: “Negroes are helping to prove that scientists are right in saying that no race is more capable than another.”
- images: the article on Negroes pictures them as:
- “African native carving a stool”,
- plantation workers,
- entertainers,
- scientist,
- civic leader,
- nurse.
Africa: A huge point it makes over and over again is that transport in Africa is terrible. There are few good roads or railroads. It has two of the world’s longest rivers – the Nile and Congo – but ships cannot go very far before hitting waterfalls or rapids. That is because the middle of Africa is made up of highlands. In addition there are vast deserts and jungles.
Therefore, even though Africans were civilized when Europeans were still living in caves, that civilization spread mainly to Asia and Europe, not to the rest of Africa. Even in 1950s there were still people who had no written language. Some still lived by hunting and fishing like their ancestors have done for hundreds of years.
Colonial vocabulary and imagery: It is big on calling Africans “natives”, even when it does not have to. They do not live in houses but “huts”. It commonly shows Africans as living in huts, carrying shields or spears, as “savages” (pictured above). In the article on Africa they are all shown as black-skinned.
Union of South Africa: “Much of South Africa’s Negro population is still poor and unhappy. It is important that the Union’s people find better ways of working together.” That was printed one year before Sharpeville and three years before Nelson Mandela was sent to prison on Robben Island.
See also:
- Golden Book Encyclopedia
- black people according to:
- Of “natives”
- Compare and contrast:
Just wanna be up in the comments. Nothin to add for now.
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Whiteness doesn’t change much, does it?
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Not as bad as I expected.
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I am not surprised that in the 50’s Africans would be referred to as savages. Wow, just Wow.
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Therefore, even though Africans were civilized when Europeans were still living in caves
Don’t forget the part about blacks being kings and queens and scientists who all lived in palaces and flew around in airplanes.
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This is pretty accurate. Timelessly accurate.
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I remember you posted about this last year. Thanks for posting again. I remember this encyclopedia sold in supermarkets in the 1960s.
At least they admitted that the Civil War had something to do with slavery (and not all about states’ rights) and that opportunities after the Civil War, esp. for education were not good.
My parents got us an old used 1959 World Book when I was a child for us to use in school. I read the whole thing. And when I visited my mother’s parents, I read their 1951 version, bought presumably when my mother was in school. There were already differences between 1951 and 1959, The 1951 version made extensive reference to the concept of the “white man”, eg, the “white man” discovered this and that, the “white man” fought wars against the Indians and eventually won, etc. as if white man = civilization. By 1959, many of those had been rewritten.
Are there any encyclopedias geared for children TODAY that we can compare directly to 1959?
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Abagond…Your knowledge of all things “Us” never ceases to amaze me! Thank you for this, as well as all the others.
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Re: “Lincoln freed the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation”
Encyclopedia should have said:
“Lincoln freed the enslaved …”
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Why are the Negro savages wearing white diapers and carrying bananas?
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The irony of the supposed freeing of slaves is that, slavery didn’t end with the emancipation proclamation in 1863 or 1965 when the 13 amended was ratified , it still continued for almost 80 years til 1942 via peonage.
“Slavery by another name”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd8YoRp9WEE&feature=share&list=PLC7AED4DA567FDC38)
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The irony of the supposed freeing of slaves is that, slavery didn’t end with the emancipation proclamation in 1863 or 1965 when the 13 amended was ratified , it still continued for almost 80 years til 1942 via peonage.
“Slavery by another name”
abagond, i guess you can delete my post in moderation. i put the YouTube link in brackets but it still got caught in moderation.
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@ Sondis
I moderate all YouTube links. That way I can put in the brackets if they are missing.
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Yep, negroes just danced around, playing the drums and eating enormous quantities of bananas all day. What a 1800’s view of life in the tropics.
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Bananas didin’t even originate in Africa, they originally come from Southeast Asia.
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“savages live by gathering food in the land about them”
They are equating savages with “hunter-gatherers”. Was savage not such a bad word in the 1950’s? I looked up Rousseau’s “The noble savage”, he defined people in a pre-society state, living in nature with simple needs, easily met. Savage meaning wild, but not like wild animal or brutal, that meaning came of savage came later.
Why would racist book sellers feel compelled to put in this blurb:
capabilities: “Negroes are helping to prove that scientists are right in saying that no race is more capable than another.”
This is encyclopedia was trying to change perceptions, yet some here (Matari) are still aggravated by it. “Skinless people in a sand paper world”
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@sondis…“The irony of the supposed freeing of slaves is that, slavery didn’t end with the emancipation proclamation in 1863 or 1965 when the 13 amended was ratified , it still continued for almost 80 years til 1942 via peonage.”
My Brother, it continues, way past 1942. Very few understand the connection between what you stated and the conditions that exist today. Slavery’s not , nor has it ever been, truly abolished if one’s paying attention.
(emphasis mine)
Therein lies the reason privately-built, government-invested-in companies, depending on the number of inmates they house (which gives rise to a whole ‘nother kind of abuse involving capitalism) are extremely invested in the ignorance.
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@ Riverside_Rob
The dictionary definitions of “Savage” as is in this context, has always meant uncivilized and barbarous The problem was one of selective usage. The very Roman term “Barbarian” was coined to describe the White tribes along the northern border of their empire. Yet you would be hard pressed to find encyclopedias or textbooks who have ever describe uncivilized White people as “Savages.”
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King u r spot on regarding Romans and there barbarians. The term meant “not Roman” and was a catch all to include Germanic Slavic and Turkic tribes. Savage referred to non civilized tribes not necessarily brutal or violent tribes.
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Can you do me a favor and check to see if they used the work “Oriental” or “Mongoloid”. Also, did they use the word colored at all? Jim Crow?
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[…] The Golden Book Encyclopedia was the best-selling children's encyclopedia in America ever. The 1959 edition sold throughout the 1960s. It is the oldest encyclopedia in my possession – and it writes… […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Anyone who read the caption can see Riverside Rob is right. The caption says, “Savages live by gathering food in the land about them”. They’re using “savage” to describe primitive, hunter-gatherers.
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“This is encyclopedia was trying to change perceptions, yet some here (Matari) are still aggravated by it.”
*******
YA DAMN SKIPPY!!! : ))
I’m not known around here for being polite, patient or nice toward oppressors/trolls/deluded/liars who attempt to marginalize those that look like me! Please, hold your breath waiting for THAT to change, …..
What SANE victim of molestation would not be aggravated by the continued, persistent attacks and criticisms from a racist/white supremacist culture?
That whiteness lets slip off the table a couple of flecks which amounts to less than crumbs after robbing a continent of anything worth stealing and misrepresenting everything imaginable in order to keep and hold the negative perceptions of Africans — and I’m not supposed to be aggravated??? Obviously you are far dimmer than what you’ve previously let on,
You really should stick more to your side of the river, Bob! You (and your fellow idiots, aka trolls) plainly have no business whatsoever over here!
I’m now returning back to my regular — IGNORE the SUPER-IDIOT RACIST TROLL B/S tripe! — mode.
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“Savages live by gathering food in the land about them”
Does not mean that
“They’re using “savage” to describe primitive, hunter-gatherers.”
It would be like having a picture of drivers at a freeway interchange with a caption “Americans travel to work by private automobile” and interpreting that as meaning that they’re using the word “American” to describe (environmentally destructive) motorists who drive alone.
People who gather food around them could still be primarily farmers. In fact, those bananas could have been harvested from a field and we could have used the same caption. Even farmers in the midwest gather food in the land about them (via harvesting).
It also does not mean that all savages are hunter-gatherers. It only means that the “savages” in the picture gathered the food that is in the picture. It didn’t say that they were either “primitive” or “hunter-gatherers”, but of course, that is what many people will think when they see the picture and read the caption.
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jefe
Don’t be so quick to assume the worst. I read the original article and there was nothing to suggest the writer was prejudiced. I also checked several dictionaries and the anthropology definition was “a member of a nonliterate society, esp one regarded as primitive”. That’s a fairly innocuous definition. There were other definitions such as “wild”, “ferocious”, etc. But given the picture and context it’s obvious they’re using the anthropology definition. Otherwise, they would have shown a picture with spears instead of fruit.
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@Abagond
Not so off topic. Some depraved white guy shot a 8 year old black kid in the face in Dallas, TX. I will let the story develop. Most likely he will do some sort of time.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/09/04/8-year-old-recovering-after-being-shot-in-face/
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@Abagond
I don’t know if it was racially motivated. But there is a trend of cowardly white men with guns maiming & killing black children.
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Gee,
Depicting Africans as savages and leading readers to infer that they are primitive hunter-gatherers in no way suggests that the writer has any prejudice or bias.
And to think, some people even suggested that I was biased.
LMAO
😛 😛 😛
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@Adonis
When are Americans going to admit they have a problem with guns? This is actually one of the reasons I don’t like going back there.
If savages carry spears, then what sort of creature goes around shooting guns at children?
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@Jefe
I am sure the death toll would go down if we controlled gun, but the violence would not stop.
That white guy would have sliced the the 8 year old instead.
This feels racial & screams of cowardice.
But I would like the story to play out.
We know if this was the other way around. Right wingers would be Soul Training this story all over the Internet.
Now, if the 8 year old attacked him, you can at least punch the little boy in the face worst case scenario.
But you don’t attempt to murder him!!!
Good day
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Have you ever lived in a society where private gun ownership is not permitted? Believe me, it is a HUGE difference.
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On the “savage” thing Da Jokah is kind of right, but so are his naysayers:
“Savage” as an adjective in English has meant “fierce, ferocious, wild, undomesticated, untamed” since the 1200s. As a noun it has meant a “wild person” since about 1400. It was one of the main words in English applied to Native Americans starting in the late 1500s.
In the 1700s Rousseau pushed the “noble savage” stereotype. He saw it as the original state of man before corruption of civilization. Original = good.
In the 1800s the West arranged mankind along an evolutionary scale, with themselves at top, the Chinese and Arabs somewhere in the middle and “savages” at the bottom. “Savage” was a “stage of mankind”. Here original = backward. “Savage”, like “barbarian” in Roman times, was used to support imperialism.
In the early 1900s Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, saw the “stages of mankind” thing as ethnocentric.
The Golden Book Encyclopedia clearly uses “savage” in the pseudo-anthropological “stage of mankind” sense of the 1800s. Pseudo because by the 1950s the “stages of mankind” thing was already bad anthropology, though still common in “educational” material, like this encyclopedia and National Geographic.
Nowadays we do not say “savages”. It sounds too colonial, and it is. One of those words that the British Empire gave a bad smell. Instead we use “primitive” or “tribal”. It sounds more objective but it means pretty much the same thing.
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@ jefe
“Mongoloid”, yes. For them it is one of the three main races of mankind (Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid).
“Coloured” and “Jim Crow”, no.
“Oriental” not as far as I have seen. It does not come up in their articles on “race” or “San Francisco” (uses “Chinese” instead), for example. Unlike “Negro” it is not in the index.
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Please take the gun thing to the Open Thread.
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Riverside_Rob
Dang Matari, let it out brother, you’ll feel better. Were you molested by white people? I’m sorry if that happened to you, it must have been horrible.
The name calling dilutes your argument a bit, you’re off the charts for over-reaction, but I would guess that chip on your shoulder has been there a long time. It’s yours, you’ve earned it. As for the negative perceptions of africans, (like over emotional thinking for example), you’re doing a bang up job of creating that.
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That is SO 1950s. I remember that from the 1950s encyclopedias.
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@ Riverside_Rob: Comment deleted for being off topic.
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Abagond,
can you put Robs and my comment in the Christopher Lane post
because now, mine is off topic since his is no longer here (and it makes no sense standing alone)
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Yeah. I stopped listening to what whites had to say about history a LONG time ago.
Liars and murderers. All of them.
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@ Linda: Comment deleted for being off topic.
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@ Linda
You and Rob will have to move them yourselves. If I do it, they will look like they are coming from me. If you lost the original, I can email it or temporarily undelete it.
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But these that I replied to are on topic? What do these have to do with an Encyclopedia
Adonis
@Abagond
Not so off topic. Some depraved white guy shot a 8 year old black kid in the face in Dallas, TX. I will let the story develop. Most likely he will do some sort of time.
jefe
@Adonis
When are Americans going to admit they have a problem with guns? This is actually one of the reasons I don’t like going back there.
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Abagond, can you temororarily undelete then… I did not save mine. ThanX
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@ Linda and Riverside Rob
I temporarily undeleted your comments on guns. Move them or lose them. They do not belong here. They are OFF TOPIC.
I will delete them in an hour. If you need more time, ask.
Any FURTHER comments by anyone on guns will be deleted on sight as off topic.
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That’s nice and all, but the people described in the 1959 Golden Book Encyclopedia aren’t “primitive hunter-gatherer”. Their sedentary agriculturalists. Bananas aren’t “wild fruit”, they were domesticated over thousands of years in tropical Africa by Niger-Congo peoples. They also domesticated rice, sorghum, guineafowl, and other foodstuff. The belief that Africa is a continent of primitive hunter-gatherers is racist in and of itself, and contradicts well known history: hunter-gatherers don’t own slaves.
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@ Riverside Rob
I declared it off topic, so it is off topic from that point onwards. I do not retroactively delete comments by established commenters:
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@Abagond
My fault. Please delete my O/T comment. Thank you
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@ D
Excellent reply. There are hunter-gatherers in Africa but most Africans are not said “savages”, not even during the Transatlantic slave trade.
Africa has a billion people. A hunter-gatherer economy in Africa would be hard-pressed to support even 1% of that.
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@ Adonis
It is off topic because I say it is. That simple. In this case I hardly think I was being unreasonable. In any case, your comment can stand because it came before I declared it off topic.
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@ Riverside Rob and Linda
AGAIN, please continue your discussion elsewhere. Christopher Lane is appropriate, the Open Thread always is. If you cannot manage such simple instructions, then I will ban both of you.
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I don’t intend to continue,
not a real discussion anyway, just Rob acting like a girl because he got called out — and me being catty 🙂
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@abagond
Got it. Full cooperation on my part. Just wanted to make your job easier.
Thanks
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‘barbarus’ is from the latin, according to what i remember it was because the greeks’ speech sounded to the romans like they were just all saying ‘bar bar bar’, something like that.
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@abagond didn’t you do a post before with that picture?
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@ v8driver
That picture appeared in the post on the Golden Book Encyclopedia, though it was the top picture (I try not to recycle those):
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@ v8driver
“Barbarian” comes from the Greek “barbaros”. It meant anyone who did not speak Greek, because they sounded like they were saying “bar bar bar…”. The Romans used the term to mean the Greeks AND Romans. They applied it most famously to those who lived north of the Roman Empire.
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right. i thought i was wrong when i was walkin away from the library, duh.
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i managed to avoid the greek alphabet entirely except for math
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D.
Bananas aren’t “wild fruit”, they were domesticated over thousands of years in tropical Africa by Niger-Congo peoples. They also domesticated rice, sorghum, guineafowl, and other foodstuff.
Bananas aren’t native to Africa so the picture was probably showing Melanesians who, although primitive hunter-gatherers, also grow taro and bananas. Melanesians aren’t classified as negroids today. But in 1959 they were..
Bananas were domesticated in Papua New Guinea. Rice was domesticated in China. And the earliest evidence of domesticated sorghum is found in Ethiopia. But guineas were domesticated in sub saharan Africa.
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Yes, you are correct that the Banana was not domesticated in Africa, but in PNG, and possibly in some other SE Asian Islands. The picture indeed looks more like a scene from PNG rather than Africa.
But, I haven’t been able to find how bananas were spread from SE Asia to Africa, and how it spread in Africa.
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Oryza sativa, “Asian rice”, (most probably) was cultivated in China. Oryza glaberrima, however, is a native African species of rice, and was cultivated by Africans thousands of years ago.
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/25/16360.full
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abagond
@ Linda and Riverside Rob
I temporarily undeleted your comments on guns. Move them or lose them. They do not belong here. They are OFF TOPIC.
I will delete them in an hour. If you need more time, ask.
Any FURTHER comments by anyone on guns will be deleted on sight as off topic.
Abagond,
I’m done with her for today. Linda is rather closed minded, no debate potential there. She’s fun for a while, but she gets angry to quickly and says stupid stuff like “you white Americans are the problems in this country… “.
Have a good night.
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“Riverside_Rob,
I’m done with her for today. Linda is rather closed minded, no debate potential there. She’s fun for a while, but she gets angry to quickly and says stupid stuff like “you white Americans are the problems in this country… “.
Linda says,
Awww Rob, I love when you try to sound intellectual and not emotional … you’re no fun when you lose your train of thought and go into your racist rants
and please, don’t be self-deprecating…. you are the true comedian on this board… I don’t think I could ever rise to your level and wear that crown… stop being so humble.
As for “debating”, I reserve that privilege for Randy, that’s his forte… I like you best because you behave like the Average Joe that you are… why muddy the waters.
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jefe
If you’re really interested in the history of the domestication and development of the various types of bananas and plantain (similar to bananas) and how they spread around the world then this is a cool paper. It might sound boring but I found it fascinating.
Click to access IN020267_en.pdf
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Fiamma
I’d always read that rice was first domesticated in China 8,200–13,500 years ago and spread to other countries. Usually, domestication comes from a single source and then other varieties develop as it spreads to other regions. Si it never occurred to me that it would have been domesticated independently from another wild plant. That’s kind of cool.
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#DJ,
Thanks for the link, but it does not explain how bananas originally got from SE Asia to Africa, nor how it spread through Africa. It says “No one knows”.
It says that the popular cultivars were first brought to East Africa by Arabs, then later to other areas by the Portuguese. But “no one knows” how plantain varieties first came to Africa.
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You crazy? Whites still think Blacks are inferior. I live around these Neanderthals so I know how they feel about Black people. And I hate living around them. I can’t wait to graduate so that I can move to a more diverse area and stay the hell away from these people!
Whites will always think they are better than us. Times change but people haven’t.
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White people are so racist! They don’t understand black people.
If you think this is shocking, you should read some HONEST HISTORY books about Africa.
===
The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia (Full Length Documentary)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo)
Published on Jun 13, 2012
Liberia’s elections, ritual killings and cannibalism
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/110728/ritual-killing-liberia-elections-politics
Ritual killings and even cannibalism flare up in Liberia’s election campaigns.
August 1, 2011
A candidate for Liberia’s Senate and a former county attorney are among those standing trial for the 2009 murder, the latest in a long history of ritual sacrifices performed for political power in Liberia.
In this case in southeastern Maryland County, prosecutors were tipped off by a witch doctor who provided a list of 18 people allegedly connected to the killing, including Fulton Yancy, the former county attorney, and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s Special Envoy and Ambassador-at-Large Dan Morias.
Vials of blood were discovered in Yancy’s home. Nine were charged with murder but were released earlier this month following a Supreme Court ruling.
===
A candidate for Liberia’s Senate and a former county attorney are among those standing trial for the 2009 murder, the latest in a long history of ritual sacrifices performed for political power in Liberia.
In this case in southeastern Maryland County, prosecutors were tipped off by a witch doctor who provided a list of 18 people allegedly connected to the killing, including Fulton Yancy, the former county attorney, and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s Special Envoy and Ambassador-at-Large Dan Morias.
Vials of blood were discovered in Yancy’s home. Nine were charged with murder but were released earlier this month following a Supreme Court ruling.
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@DJ
Bananas aren’t native to Africa so the picture was probably showing Melanesians who, although primitive hunter-gatherers, also grow taro and bananas.
You can’t be a “primitive hunter-gatherer” and grow foodstuff at the same time, it’s oxymoronic. Secondly, peoples who remain hunter-gatherer don’t do so because they’re primitive, but because their environment allows for little else. If there isn’t good soil and water for crops or animals and land viable for herding, hunting and gathering is what they are going to fall back on.
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I know you don’t ban people unless they do something ridiculous, but Abagond please remove Gridlockshire’s post, s/he is obviously just a troll.
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So we have confirmed that there is something very wrong with the picture. Bananas are not native to Africa, but to SE Asia / PNG where they have been cultivated for many millennia. They arrived to Africa due to cultivation,so would not normally be a fruit that is collected wild by hunter-gatherers.
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D.
You can’t be a “primitive hunter-gatherer” and grow foodstuff at the same time, it’s oxymoronic.
These are the folks who grow the bananas and taro. They look kind of primitive to me.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLljI1-7xr4#t=1m5s)
”
jefe
So we have confirmed that there is something very wrong with the picture.
Only insofar as melanesians are no longer classified as negroid.
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Ah, so primitive is not an objective characteristic, but a subjective evaluation based upon, what exactly, nakedness? (I do not see the virtue of clothing in a hot, humid environment) Their dancing? (LOL) Because it certainly isn’t the means by which they procure their calories that determines whether they’re primitive or not; they do not live like paleolithic man. They live much like humans have for the better part of recorded history since the Agricultural Revolution until the Industrial Revolution, thus they are no more primitive than rural-living middle age Europeans (and the Amish, for that matter), who are hardly ever described as such.
Though they did not domesticate bananas, Bantu still grew and harvested them.
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@Da Jokah
What I’m saying is that your eye-ball anthropology doesn’t impress me. Don’t quit your day-job.
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Maybe it depends on the design of the scantily body covering which determines what is primitive. 😛
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They live much like humans have for the better part of recorded history since the Agricultural Revolution until the Industrial Revolution
No. They don’t.
prim·i·tive adjective \ˈpri-mə-tiv\ of, relating to, or produced by a people or culture that is nonindustrial and often nonliterate and tribal
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@Da Jokah…Nonindustrial? Yes (not unlike most of the world before the Industrial Revolution, including those of a decidedly alabaster hue). Nonliterate? No. There’s no doubt many folk have been deemed “non- or illiterate, simply because the “describer” did not understand (or was too lazy to research) what they were saying. Such is the problem in America today which claims many Black and Brown folk are “illiterate” just because they don’t understand the language spoken among the people they’re trying to “describe.” Not until Lorenzo Dow Turner lived among the Gullah people of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands, did he realize they were quite literate — http://www.folkstreams.net/film,270. In his book, “Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect,” he proved as much.
As for “tribal,” Please! Who among those who’ve immigrated here was NOT tribal?? Talk to the Italians (about whom I know first-hand), Jews, Irish, Romas, etc., etc., etc. Also, let’s not forget it wasn’t any of us Black and Brown folk who wrote that Webster’s dictionary to which you refer. As Chinua Achebe says in his “Arrow of God,” — “Don’t you dare believe other people’s stories of you.” I concur.
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@Da Jokah
Most people in history were illiterate, hence primitive. The Iliad and the Odyssey were passed down orally between two or three centuries before being transcribed by Homer, so those epic poems, the pillars of Western story telling, are also primitive.
Then there is the matter of “Do you even know writing when you see it?” Is this a picture or a paragraph:
I posit that they do have writing, but not the writing we’re used to. The figures and symbols of their carving and body art have meaning, and what is literature other than culturally assigned meanings to otherwise abstract shapes?
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@Linda,
Indeed, that carefully selected definition is exceedingly eurocentric and technocentric
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Sorry, the last post was not directed at Linda. I misread.
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You make yourselves ridiculous.
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Da Jokah…Trust me, way less than you do.
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If it werent for The continuous use of the word Negro this wouldn’t be that horrible. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. “Successful in many fields” almost made me laugh out loud.
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@Da Jokah
Call me a liar. Tell me that most people in history weren’t poor illiterate peasants or slaves, because otherwise saying “The Greeks had writing” is akin to saying “Americans have PhDs and private jets”. Writing was a skill limited to a powerful and exclusive elite and was not characteristic of most of the society.
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@Gridlockshire
You do know human sacrifice was practiced by Europeans as well right, even against innocents as well as Medical cannibalism where they ate whole cured bodies of dead humans in the belief it gave them “energy”, research it but this is not unique to Africa or Europe but the entire world practiced all they way up to the development of new medicine.
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Most of the world lived the same way Africans did till the industrial revolution and most of them were illiterate, only recently has the advances (Urbanized settlement) that took place in optimal fertile regions( Nile valley and Yellow valley etc) spread from there to Africa
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[…] Stockett’s The Help), but then there are the outright racist publications such as the 1959 Golden Book Encyclopedia, which intended to teach (again, white) children about “the Negro” in what was, at the time, […]
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