Spanish racial identity in 1492, when Columbus arrived in the Americas, was in its early stages. Most people in Spain did not yet clearly think of themselves as white – even though they had been ruled by darker-skinned Moors from Africa for hundreds of years! Yet it was from this very time and place that Western ideas of race got their start.
In the 700s Spain fell under Arab Muslim rule. They came to be known as Moors. Most were from northern Africa and were generally darker. In Shakespeare they can be “tawny”, even “coal-black”.
- The Moors were not racists, so skin colour was not a big deal.
- The Moors allowed people to practise their own religion – so much so that Jews prospered under their rule, becoming important in the arts, scholarship, banking and trade.
The Christian kings in the north took back Spain bit by bit – the Reconquista.
In 1492 they overthrew the last of the Moors in Spain.
These Christian kings were religious zealots. They thought everyone should be Catholic. Everyone. You either converted or left. Hundreds of thousands of Jews and Moors converted, some by force. Those who did not convert were forced out.
Notice: Everyone should be the same – and should be punished if they are not.
Converted Moors kept their culture. Many sank to the bottom of Spanish society, becoming labourers.
Converted Jews remained important in business, banking and so on. They were blocked from certain professions – despite converting to Catholicism.
Some converted Jews were accused of secretly practising their old Jewish faith. They were brought before the Inquisition where their behaviour and family tree were closely examined to determine if they were Secret Jews.
The Catholic Church offered, for a fee, a certificate of Limpieza de Sangre – purity of blood. Even some whose families had never been Jewish got one as protection against the Inquisition.
Notice: Ideas of what we would call racial taint – though not yet the idea that such taint can be judged by physical appearance.
Most Moors and Jews who converted were accepted as Catholics in good standing and remained so, at least till the 1600s. Yet you had the beginnings of a caste system based on purity of blood lines, blood lines which the Spanish called raza, from their word for breeding stock of horses.
In the 1500s the Spanish stereotyped the native peoples of the Americas by their raza as “Indians” but still used their religion (or apparent lack thereof) as an excuse for policy.
By the late 1500s, raza had become the word “race” in English.
By the 1700s Western thinkers of the Enlightenment divided the world into a handful of races. They used race, not religion, to excuse genocide and slavery.
Montesquieu in 1748 tells us why, here speaking about black slaves as a white Christian:
It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.
Source: Mostly “Race in North America” (2012) by Audrey Smedley and Brian D. Smedley.
See also:
Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
http://oogenhand.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/pakistani-explains-caste-system/ Kafa’a…
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That was an incrediby instructive presentation. It looks to me like the Spaniards were very anxious to differenciate themselves from the Moors and Jews (and as we all know, a lot of Arabs are not dark at all, so must have ben the same for Jews) because they did not actually look very different. It’s a bit like the French/Italians: if an Arab marries a French/Italian, well the kids are very likely not to look exotic at all, even if they mix with a paler Northern French (I have seen it). The Spanish royal family did not look very Spanish themselves in the XVth to XIXth century because they had married into other European royal families. Same thing with the native American people: when they mixed with Spaniards, French and Portuguese, even the first generation hardly looked exotic anymore. In a way, it’s nice. It shows how stupid racial differentiations are, but it puts the “invaders” in a fragile position if they are anxious about their own identity and maintaining their power. In Mexico (my observations, I may be wrong), it seems to revolve around the moustache… Native Mexicans like all Native Americans, are not very hairy, and it’s sometimes the only trace of “Indian heritage”. The Spaniards are. The Spaniards were/are at the top of the pile, so Mexicans who want to be at the top of the pile and look dominant, “Machos”, grow moustaches.
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Very informative, doing more reading of my own on the Spanish inquisition. Learned something new today. Thanx.
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Oh yes, forgot to add: whatever the paler than pale Brits were saying about the Moores must be taken with a grain of salt: the Moores’ social make-up was very diverse and quite inclusive (except they had slaves), and the range of skintones was very wide.
The inquisition was on a par with Hitler.
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The Spanish reconquisa, the conquest of the Americas under King Ferdinand and Isabella, and the inquisition set the stage for racism/white supremacy as we know it today.
Stephanie B.
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Montesquieu, was probably the beginnings of white supremacist ideology.
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@mary burrell
I do not think Montesquieu was the beginnings of white supremacists ideology, which started before the XVIIIth century (for bloggers who will have other areas of expertise rather than French philosophers: Montesquieu being an XVIIIth century philosopher), but I agree with you: this was the century when questions of races and culture were posed (cf JJ Rousseau, not somebody I like, but he did have a couple of very good hunches).
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“By the second half of the fifteenth century, the term “Negro” was essentially synonymous with “slave” across the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, the King’s slaves were known simply as “His Majesty’s Negros.”6 In Portugal, slave occupations were delineated with “negro” as the operant noun, as in “negra do pote” [water carrier] or “negra canastra” [waste remover].7 Illicit social gatherings of blacks were known as festas dos negros.8 And slaves were buried in communal pits, known as poços dos negros.9 Portuguese scholars have noted that in the popular language of the sixteenth century, the word “prêto” emerged as the term of choice to describe dark skin color, while “Negro” literally represented a race of people.10 This “race” of people was most often associated with black Africans, and certainly, all black Africans were considered members of this inferior, enslaveable race.
“Skin color was one characteristic that defined this enslaveable race, but it was not the only one. Europeans noticed that a range of skin colors fell under the broad umbrella
of “Negro.” In 1494, Jerónimo Münzer commented that King João II “possess[ed] Negroes of various colors, copper colored, very black, and shaded black…Those that are from close to the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are copper colored, and those that are from the equatorial regions are extremely black.”11 Here, all “Negroes” are slaves, but there are already distinctions of color made between these various enslaveable Africans.
“The understanding of “Negroes” as an enslaveable “race,” regardless of color, continued in the Americas. In the early slave communities of Brazil, “Negro” transcended Africa to include any slave, whether Native American or African. For instance, slave inventories from Bahia in the 1570s and 1580s divided slave holdings into “negros da terra” [Indians] and “negros de guiné.”12 Similarly, in Rio de Janeiro in the 1620s, “a Negro from Angola and another from Brazil” were denounced to the Inquisition for performing acts of “sodomy” on one another.13 The term “negro da terra” disappeared in most parts of Brazil by the middle of the seventeenth century, as Africans became the dominant slave labor force, but one can clearly see by these examples that the Portuguese utilized the term “Negro” to imply slave status, regardless of skin color. In this way, Indian slaves were literally “blackened” to conform to their social status. Having said this, it is important to remember that while “Negro” had some flexibility in its application to people of enslaveable status, all peoples from sub-Saharan Africa were
considered “Negroes” and therefore enslaveable. Their color, accentuated by the term “Negro,” simply became a signifier for their presumed status as slaves.”
Click to access Sweet.pdf
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@Pay it forward
Yes, I agree, colour was not a litteral notion, but more a description of “class”. In some south American countries “negrito” just means little boy, and in Louisiana Cajun “fais-dodo dans les bras de ton negre” does not mean “sleep in your slave’s arms” but “sleep in daddy’s arms”. It is a strange reversal of calling black men “boys”.
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This maybe off topic, but it reminds me of an episode of the reality show America’s Next Top Model with Tyra Banks, they went to Spain to do the challenges for the models. The models had to pose with some of the locals in that town. The Spanish young men didn’t want to pose with the black models. It kind of makes sense. Now that I am learning the history of race in that country.
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@annef1: Thank you for the clarification and enlightenment. I think my emotions got the better of me reading that statement he made. That sounds like something a white supremacist would say in regards to black people not being human.
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@mary burrell
Oh I remember that!! Based on experience and observation, you’d not get that in France or Switzerland. They’d be busy trying to get a date…
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Shakespeare’s description of the “Moors” was way after the fact.
Most “Moors ” ie Andalusi, were actually as much Arab as Berber- though the Visigoths knew the invaders came from North Africa so they collectively referred tinthem as Mauri.
The “Moors” practiced plenty of bigotry. In fact, the Andalusi were extremely colorist, regarding sub- Saharan Africans as fit only for slavery.
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@Apslund
AS I said, they had slaves, and you are right, the slaves were dark (and they also did like to enslave pale northern Europeans too) but all the same, they were a lot more open to differences than the Spanish culture following them. And if you go to Morocco etc, you will see that skintones vary a lot between individuals, and from what I know, it is not relevant for the people.
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I think the later Spanish intolerance is in a league of its own, with that said:
;
The colorism itself comes from resentment of the sub-saharan units under the command of the Almoravids. The Andalusi resented large numbers of armed Senegalese in their territories: Thus the phrase- “A certain (racial slur) blacker than Satan.”
The phrase was copied directly into the literature.of Castille. The Andalusi played a big role in Spanish colorism.
I don’t want to veer too off-topic, but I’m always hesitant these days of stating one group is significantly more tolerant than the rest. I always say Libya as a beacon of acocmodation betweem N.Africans and Sub-Saharans. Now there is a genocide of black people there. A civilization can look tolerant on the surface, but when you go deeper , there’s a lot of prejudice. I think that’s true of N. Africa in general at least currently, though in the middle ages you’d probably have a different dynamic.
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Parts of the previous post are just a hypothesis. Not really set in stone yet.
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Even if the Europeans believed the black slaves were a different species, the way they treated them still wouldn’t be justified. To treat a dog with such violence and cruelty would be a crime.
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Mary,
I’ve been to several countries in Europe but never to Spain. I used to want to visit there, but no longer wish to.
From what I’ve heard, Spain is often used by continental Africans as an entry into Europe, and many Spaniards seem to resent that fact. And not only that but I’ve also heard stories of Caribeños (Cubans and Puerto Ricans to be precise), who are typically mulattos, going to live and work in Spain as sort of a “going back to the Motherland” type of experience, and whom shortly thereafter returned to the States totally disenchanted with the racist treatment received in their supposed “Motherland”.
Too, I recall a Black American woman on a message board a decade back recounting her own experiences while visiting Spain as being typically negative in nature until she opened her mouth and the locals heard her Amercan accent as opposed to the west African one they doubtlessly expected to hear.
Also, there have been several decidely racist incidents in the recent past where Black sports team player in Spain were pelted with bananas and greeted with monkey chants etc by arena spectators.
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@Pay It Forward: I always dreamed of going to Barcelona, but not so much any more.
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@ Pay it Forward
Agreed. Unfortunately, I think that, for the same reason, there is a lot of racism in Italy, even if Balotelli has become a God (Black Italian soccer player). Maybe Barcelona is a different kettle of fish though, because they are very different from the rest of Spain, the Catalans I met were not racists, but that was not in Barcelona. I only know the West Coast.
From spending time there, I thought the Portuguese were more open than the Spaniards.
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@Abagond, do you still believe in Christianity and god after reading so much on history? If so, how can you justify your belief in the face of the mountains of evidence that shows that A) religion enabled cruelty and did little to nothing to deter it, and B) that no divine force or god ever came to the aid of the natives of the Caribes and the blacks of Africa who endured genocide from the Europeans.
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I wanted to study in Spain as that is one of the countries the degree from my school offered a special partnership with. Barcelona seemed like a beautiful city to study in, but everyone, and not just black people, had so many racist stories to tell. Everyone except Anglo whites.
Oh and try talking to a Spaniard about Arabic influences in architecture or how the Arabic language has contributed so much to the Spanish language.
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Well, it looks like Racism’s patient zero has finally been found.
He’s five hundred years old, and definitely spanish.
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“annef1
That was an incrediby instructive presentation. It looks to me like the Spaniards were very anxious to differenciate themselves from the Moors and Jews (and as we all know, a lot of Arabs are not dark at all, so must have ben the same for Jews) because they did not actually look very different. It’s a bit like the French/Italians: if an Arab marries a French/Italian, well the kids are very likely not to look exotic at all, even if they mix with a paler Northern French (I have seen it).”
Linda says,
Annef1, I don’t really have to the time to go fully into what I want to say, so I will just say this until I get time:
You cannot compare how people look today with how their ancestors looked 500-1000 years ago….Phenotypes are not static when you intermix genotypes.
Case in point, it only takes 3-4 generations of race mixing between a white European and a black African to make a “white” person — and I will use Robin Thicke and his bi-racial wife, Paula Patton as an example:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2424086/Robin-Thicke-plays-happy-families-wife-Paula-Patton-son-Julian-Central-Park.html
and most likely, Paula’s black father, was not 100% black “African”
Many black Americans carry white European genes, up to 35%, and are not considered “mixed”– they are called “black” (proving that in USA, race is a social construct) —
so it doesn’t take much for a mixed-race union to change the landscape over the course of 50 years – like in the case with Robin and Paula’s son — NO ONE would guess that little boy is 1/4 “black”
“Race” as we know it today as you stated, is a fluid thing and changes with the region you’re in and their definitions on people’s Race.
I only emphasize this because white, western History has managed to marginalize and appropriate what they want from Africa and the Middle East based on adopting their own definition of “Race” as they see fit.
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Based on a question from the “Spanish” post about what is considered “black” in some countries, I ran across a story about Laurence Fishbourne and Australia (he was filming the Matrix)
Fishburne says he found a definite racist “vibe” during that first nine-month stint in Australia. It wasn’t, he maintains, because he was a black American: it was that his appearance led people to assume he was a “Maori bloke”
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/03/28/1111862318709.html
So what would they call him in Tunisia? “Arab” maybe, don’t know but it goes to show that – race is fluid based on the perceptions of the occupants of a region/country and that region/countries history.
The only thing most countries agree on is that a person whose skin colour is “literally” black or very Dark brown, is called “black”
http://james.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/SRI-LANKA/G00009jJj1.YNEWg/I0000QoqbI8DFh1w
and because they too have “dark” or “black” skin colour, they are catching h’ll in Dubai and other middle eastern countries.
(The Sri Lankans should come to work in America or Canada, where they’ll receive their “get out black for free” card because only African-descendants get the “black’ label on this side the Atlantic)
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From Wikipedia’s article on “Casta” :
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grin and bear it,
and I had posted a few Casta paintings on other threads — just to show how “serious” the Spanish were about La Raza:
http://globalbrief.ca/alejandrogarciamagos/2011/09/15/%C2%BFmestizo-zambo-prieto-o-saltapatras/
Here is a post I had found that broke it down Really well:
“1700s Families – Caste Paintings – Racial Mix Determined Status, Privileges, & Obligations”
http://bjws.blogspot.com/2011/09/18th-century-latin-american-family.html
The Mexicans had the most sub-categories.
Albarazado = Cambujo + Mulatto
Albino/Ochavado = Spanish + African or Morisco
Allí te estás = Chamizo + Mestiza
Barcino = Albarazado + Mutlata
Barnocino = Albarazado + Mestiza
Calpamulato = Zambaigo + Loba
Cambujo = Zambaigo + Indian
Cambur = African, Spanish, + Indian
Cambuto/a = Spanish + African
Castizo = Spanish + Mestizo (Spanish & a person 1/2 Spanish & 1/2 indigenous)
Chamizo = Coyote + Indian
Chino or Albino = Spanish + Morisca
Cimarrón = African, Spanish, + Indian
Coyote = African, Spanish, + Indian
Coyote = Indian + Metiza
Jíbaro/Jabaro = Lobo + China /Spanish, Indian, or African
Lobo = Indian, African + Salta atrás
Mestizo = Spanish + Indian
Morisco or Cuarterón = Spanish + Mulatto
Mulato = Spanish + African
Negro fino = African + Spanish
No te entiendo = Tente en el aire + Mulatta
Nometoques = Parts of many races, including African
Pardo = Spanish, Indian, + African
Prieto = African + Spanish
Salta atrás/Tornatras = Spanish, African, + Albina
Sambahigo = Cambujo + Indian or Spanish or African
Spanish = Castiza + Spanish
Tente en el aire = Calpamulatto + Cambuja
Torna atrás = No te entiendo + Indian
Tresalvo = Spanish + African
Zambaigo = Lobo + Indian
Zambo = Indian + African
No wonder the Mexicans are all Confused!
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@ Linda
“No wonder the Mexicans are all Confused!”—I used to say this to my husband as one of our inside jokes. It was quite amusing to see you say this. LOL
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and I say it out of love because my Honduran relatives are no better 🙂
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annef1, just wanted to also say, I definitely wasn’t criticizing your statement
because you are not too far off when you say that by the time the Spanish kicked out the Moors, the families who had intermixed probably did look just like the Christian Spaniards.
As Bulanik had mentioned, the Moors fought between each other, and sometimes the Moors and Spanish rulers used/recruited Each other in their struggles of power and married into each others families.
Many of the Moors based in Spain would soon become assimilated and their descendants who did marry with the native Spanish people, probably considered themselves “al-Andalusi” (Spanish) as well (like the Nino brothers who lent Columbus one of their ships)
but I think the Church and the native Spanish people’s “memories” about the invading Moors and what they Really looked like were not that easily forgotten, especially as Christianity played a more pivotal role in Spain – that Era was long and complex.
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Linda-
From my perspective the artistic presentation of “Moors” as black in the 17th and 18th century is based on the fact that many if them were, and that they stood out in the European psyche, the same way they did in Tang China. Prior to this period the presence of blacks was used by both christians and muslims alike in hit pieces. Those groups (sub-Saharan) didn’t define the majority of Iberian Muslims though. They did play a huge role as soldiers and sailors, both free and unfree. Black soldiers from the Sudan were renowned for their swordsmanship.
Muslims who converted to Christianity were called “Moriscos,” by the Castllians (who would have only loosely identified as “Spanish” at the time). Fear of Jews tampering with their conversion process was a source of anti-semitism.
Just a note of interest to those who claim the world would be better run by women, it was “Isabella the Catholic” who was primarily responsible for the kingdom’s vicious policies. Her and her daughter Joanna the Mad were severe. Ferdinand of Aragon (at this point many still loathed Castille)was henpecked utterly.
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In terms of what people looked like, we could guesstimate pretty accurately just by looking at the individual groups:
1. The Andalusi. Eighth- Eleventh centuries Indigenous Muslim Iberians. Genetic mix of Arabs and Berbers. Later on more Visigoth and Basque blood entered that population. Responsible, along with Jews and Mozarabs (Christians living in the Ummayyad Caliphate), for the massive academic gains of the era.
2. Almoravids. A military and fundamentalist movement from N. Africa. Berbers.
Almoravuds mercenaries. Some of these were Slavic slave soldiers. Some were slave- soldiers acquired after the fall of Ghana to the Almoravids in 1075. There were also freemen from these groups. In particular, mercenary infantry from the Sudan. Originally invited in by the king of Seville, they seized power, citing heterodoxy among the Andalusi.
Almohads- A later group of Berbers. They could never reverse their defeat at Las Navas De Tolosa.
Moriscos- Muslims descended from all groups who converted to Christianity.
All in all, I’d say in a typical Islamic city in 1300, say Granada (maybe that’s not so typical), there’d be an aristocracy with heavy elements of Andalusi and Visigothic genes. Most freemen would be Berber and Andalusi, with some Slavs and Senegalese, Sudanese thrown in. At rock bottom, enslaved sub- Saharan soldiers, Visigithic women in harems. Jews at certain periods (like during Almoravid rule)
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“Asplund
The Andalusi. Eighth- Eleventh centuries Indigenous Muslim Iberians. Genetic mix of Arabs and Berbers. Later on more Visigoth and Basque blood entered that population. Responsible, along with Jews and Mozarabs (Christians living in the Ummayyad Caliphate), for the massive academic gains of the era.”
Linda says,
The problem I have with this statement is that you are not being clear -it’s way too ambiguous.
There was no “Andalusia” prior to the Muslim invasion — Spain was known as “Iberia or Hispania”, by the Romans and Visigoths, both who ruled prior to the Muslim invasion.
The term “al-Andalusi” only refers to the Muslim held territory in Spain, not the entire Spain because back then, Spain was broken up into different Kingdoms
The Conquered regions in Spain were called “al-Andalusi” by the Moors when it was conquered by Tariq ibn Ziyad 711-718 A.D
this was the start of Islamic rule and the beginning of “al-Andalusi” — which grew or shrunk depending on Moor victories and how much territory they were able to hang to — that is how the term “al-Andalusi” came into existence.
so it’s quite Impossible for a “Muslim Iberian” to be indigenous – unless he was a convert.
The Moors only managed to hang on the southern most part of Spain later on before they were pushed back to Granada… but the name Andalusia stayed with the region they vacated.
Here’s a map of Al-Andalus as it “shrinks”
I believe Historical information should be passed along as “factual” as possible, considering how biased some historians tended to be while presenting western History.
I try to present source links so that people reading my words can look at the information themselves to get a better sense of the picture and not just a “slice”
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and don’t get me wrong, I see where you are trying to go by presenting the mixed Iberian/Arab/Berber as a “specific look” that became synonymous with Andalusia
just want it to be clear that the only “indigenous” people native to Spain were the Iberians, who themselves were mixed because of invasions by the Celts, Romans, and Germanic/other European tribes.
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Linda-
When I wrote “Andalusi” I was referring to the ethnic group. “Andalusia” is a latinization of “al Andalus.”
I call them indigenous in relation to the Almoravids. 400 years is a long time to inhabit a place, let alone rule it as an historic majority. But they were not completely indigenous. You’re right there.
I’ve included sources, even primary sources. They tend to get ignored most of the time. In terms of colorism/anti-black racism among Berbers, I included a little bit from Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun. I was going to include some of my translations of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X(which are in print if anyone is interested). But it doesn’t help much.
I don’t hate Wikipedia like most teachers, but I don’t completely trust it either. For example, most Hospanisys don’t believe Tariq was a real figure.
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The Celtiberians predated Rome. With old world areas the term “indigenous” can be used a little more loosely Imo. For example, with the Belgian Congo, we can talk about the Brkhian brutalization of “Indigenous” Bantu-speaking groups, even though the Twa were the truly indigenous (or at least I’m thinking on the top of my head. Um not sure who was there pre-Bantu migration).
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I mention them pre-dating Rome to point out the many “Indigenous” groups in that region over time thus my usage. But again, no disagreement there Linda.
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Wasn’t from Spain we get the term Blue Blood, as in I didn’t mix with the moors I stayed inside the sun never touched me so you can see my blue veins. Which became all the rage throughout Western Europe. Blue Bloods do no work and supposedly never mingle.
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@Jess
Regarding how Spaniards view the influence of the Moores: during Franco’s dictatorship, history was re-written to paint the Arabs in Andalusia as utter savages and villains who destroyed Spain, when in fact they created oases in the desert. The Spaniards are now being told about what really happened and some really cannot accept they have been lied to. A (Spanish, Barcelona) friend of mine says his generation got completely different histry textbooks at school. One of the reasons why Spaniards were so greedy in getting gold from the Americas was that once they had got rid of the Arabs, they only had poor peasantry (=subsistence, nothing to trade abroad), and no industry. Of course, it did not help that Napoleon raged in Spain in the XIXth century and ransacked a lot of the copuntry, but there was no political will to develop it anyway, neither before nor after Napoleon. The royals were counting on their colonies to bring them riches.
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Nicely written article. I would like to hear more about this topic
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@ King of trouble
“Blue Bloods do no work and supposedly never mingle.”
I’ve never met a jew in any workplace and they breed certainly among themselves. Blue Blood refers to nobility … And Jews call themselves “the chosen people”….
Are you one of them?
VERY interesting video about how the Jews conquer(ed) America:
(http://youtu.be/faNge-o0V-k)
One of my favorite videos, a very smart negro to say:
(http://youtu.be/fi6fvwxB2Bg)
The presence of Jews in Spain during the Middle Ages seems to me simply to explain:
Since the FUNDED the Moorish conquest of course they went along to claim back their “investment” of course with intrest…
Ever heard of Torquemada?? He was a converted jew, to the order of the Dominicanans and in that position was the worst and most cruwel torturer during the Inquisition. Most of his victems were young woman.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/mass/torquemada/3.html
The slave traders:
http://www.rense.com/general69/invo.htm
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“Asplund,
When I wrote “Andalusi” I was referring to the ethnic group. “Andalusia” is a latinization of “al Andalus.” I call them indigenous in relation to the Almoravids.”
Linda says,
but you cannot do that because that is a false premises… “Andalusi” is Not an Ethnic group…Andalusia is a Region, it is a not a Population or an Ethnic group…an Iberian who is non-mixed can call themselves “Andalusi” because they are from that region, just like a Jew from that regions.
(what Ethnic group does mixed-race Barack Obama belong to since he was born in Hawaii? does that make him a “indigenous” Polynesian? -obviously not even though he can call himself “Hawaiian” because he was born there)
the mixed-race Muslim-Iberian population were just one of many citizens of Andulusia and there was enough of them to stand out.
Not even the Celts mixed with the entire Population of Iberia, that’s why the Romans made a distinction between the indigenous Iberians and Celt-Iberians when they occupied Iberia — you have to keep in mind that there were many “Iberian” Ethic groups, not just one.
white and black Americans are Not “indigenous” to North America, even though both groups have been in North American for over 400 years….
the Native Indians are the only indigenous Ethnic group to North America… and they did not mix with the entire European and African population that lived there, just a fraction.
that’s why I said you have to be careful in how you attempt to generalize historical events and it’s people — it can be misleading
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but you cannot do that because that is a false premises… “Andalusi” is Not an Ethnic group…Andalusia is a Region, it is a not a Population or an Ethnic group…an Iberian who is non-mixed can call themselves “Andalusi” because they are from that region, just like a Jew from that regions.
Andalusi is an ethnic group. It is the ethnic group that emerged from the union of Berbers and Syrian Arabs who originally moved into the peninsula. An ethnic group can take its name for a region. It’s a process that takes centuries but it does happen, and quite frequently at that. There are plenty of places in which the region and ethnicity are named together. A perfect example for our purposes is the term “Spanish.” “Spanish” comes from “Hispania.” At one point, people were Castillian, Aragonese, Basque, Galician, etc. Over time a “Spanish” identity emerged to interact with these other identities, named after the region-Hispania.
They referred to themselves as Andalusi as being native to that region. They considered themselves natives of Al-Andalus. They called themselves “Andalusi” and sharply contrasted themselves with other groups. Just like the Britons distinguished between themselves and invading Anglo-Saxons.
“white and black Americans are Not “indigenous” to North America, even though both groups have been in North American for over 400 years….
the Native Indians are the only indigenous Ethnic group to North America… and they did not mix with the entire European and African population that lived there, just a fraction.
that’s why I said you have to be careful in how you attempt to generalize historical events and it’s people — it can be misleading”
True, but we can say that about 99% of the worlds peoples. Even many of the Native American groups in parts of the U.S. displaced even more “indigenous” groups who came before. It may be an imprecise term, but some kind of term has to be used to distinguish a 700 year Iberian population and note its long-term existence in the area. Another term might be more useful. They aren’t perfectly indigenous. But they were not exactly settlers and foreigners, either.
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@Apslund and @Linda
Well, Maybe I missed it along the many contributions, but I do not remember anyone mentioning that the word “Andalus”, comes from a German tribe called the Vandals, who had a terrible reputation for destroying everything in their wake (justified? They were a subtribe of the Visigoths mentioned by a couple of contributors). Linda, you think that not everyone of the already settled people mixed with the invaders. Over time they do, if only because those who don’t end up inbreeding. Inbreeding being detrimental to the survival of offsprings, inbreeders lose out and disappear. But by the same token, over time, you have resurgences and as DNAs recombine, someone is born centuries later looking like an early settler. I really think that this is what racists/white supremacists hate, the fact that their type is always a dying proposition. Theirs is a losing battle: even if every generation has its fill of non-mixers, in the end, invaders go native and the natives sleep with the enemy (at first probably not willingly). Racist ideology is based on a fundamental error: they do not realise that they, themselves are always the product of past mixes. Think of Startrek…They invented all sorts of aliens, and then they could not help themselves and aliens and earthlings had babies (one wonders how but hey). I guess that there must be some innate knowledge of that somewhere deep inside us, because in spite of all the idiot supremacists’ talk of pure races, genetics has confirmed that mixed race humans are cleverer with a better immune system etc, .
So if I understand Apslund, The mixing of a number of types in a given location will create a new more or less homogenous type typical of this region. Call it a race??? not sure. I call them “regionally prevalent type”.
As for Linda, as far as I understand, she argues that the different races mix a bit, but mostly co-inhabit the area, and if they call themselves “Andalusians” (or Welsh, or Londoners) it is meant geographically. I bet you both know, that you are both right. The “prevalent type” Apslund seems to refer to is created when people of various types mix without much interference from others, over centuries. I think this process is altered today, because people travel fast and move on. Yet…Asians in the UK mingle with Brits and have babies (on my very street), my sister’s daughter has added one more type (Berber) to a family where whites, blacks and Vietnamese had mixed…but the Berbers of Northern Africa that she married into had themselves been invaded by Vikings and Visigoths, so God knows how that will combine with the Celtic part of us, and what her daughters’ kids will look like. We know that both the Basks, and the Berbers once inhabited a much larger territory than where they can be found today, etc etc, that must have left traces in the locally prevalent physical types.
The tradition of Spanish colorism supported by Inquisition, and carried on by Franco (incidentally an ally of Hitler’s) is one of the ugliest phases of human history, and is still poisoning us. By the way, have you heard of what’s happening in Greece at the moment? The poor Greeks are in dire economical circumstances, and a racist/fascist ideology is rising scapegoating all “foreign races” and extolling the virtues of the “real Greeks”. Same old same old. It is so convenient to pin the blame on people who look or act different.
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Annef-
Thanks for your informative reply.
When it comes to ethnicity, and my accepting it as a constructed identity, I generally prefer to hold that people are who they say they are, race being cultural phenomenon more than a biological one.
The Andalusi emerged as a specific stock in their own minds (thanks for pointing that out about the vandals) by the late tenth century when the dictator Al-Mansur began importing foreigners to control the realm. The Andalusi spoke a unique Arabic dialect, based on Syrian Arabic with many Berber loan words thrown in. They saw in this a major contrast with Berber groups, especially the Almoravids, as these groups stormed into the peninsula. They saw themselves as a distinct people, with a distinct language, and the beacons of civilization beset by infidels (Castilian, Basque, Aragonese,) and barbarian co-religionists ( Almoravids).
They definitely were out red, however. The massive presence of Gothic queens and princesses is a huge testament there, as are men from Ghana and the Sudan.
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Hi Asplund (sorry mispelt your moniker earlier)
Yes, I agree to a very wide extent. I also think there is something very touching in a community made of various ethnicities as we might describe them today, deciding they were one people because they shared in the land they had anchored themselves to. The same approach worked for the Roman empire didn’t it…(well, to some extent: They thought Cleopatra and Berenice were “bloody Foreigners” as they say in my neck of the jungle and rejected them wholesale), but once you had paid your dues and had become a Roman citizen, it seems that you were accepted if what Roman tombs tell us can be taken at face value. Shame they did not treat women quite as well.
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“Asplund,
True, but we can say that about 99% of the worlds peoples. Even many of the Native American groups in parts of the U.S. displaced even more “indigenous” groups who came before.
It may be an imprecise term, but some kind of term has to be used to distinguish a 700 year Iberian population and note its long-term existence in the area. Another term might be more useful.”
Linda says,
There already is a term — it’s called “native born”
“indigenous” typically refers to the “first people” or aboriginals (just them, sticks, stones and animals) originating in a region prior to any other “human” group coming in and setting up shop.
(like with the Ati of Philipines before the other Pinoy groups moved in and became “native” to the land)
“native-born – belonging to a place by birth; “a native-born Scot”; “a native Scot”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/native-born
That’s what you call the descendants of “immigrants” or “colonizers” or “invaders/occupiers” who push out and integrate with the “indigenous” or “native” population and over time, blend and form a culture or Ethnic group.
all those descendants of the “occupiers” who eventually mixed or remained “unmixed” and assimilated with the Iberians — blended cultures and are referred to as “native born or native”
that’s what people are when they are born on American soil, “native born” Americans — only the “First Nation” people (aka Indians) are “indigenous” because they were the first people here.
The Arabs are “natives” of north Africa but they are Not “indigenous”
If you had used the term “native” or “native born” when referencing the Iberian-born Moors, then you and I wouldn’t be having this continued conversation.
Sorry to be such a stickler but this word has been “appropriated and misused” in the past to justify and excuse the occupation and oppression of other groups:
ex. the Boers/Afrikaners invoking “indigenous” rights in South Africa and claiming the black Africans (ANC) are committing “genocide” against them
http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/02/13/un-asked-to-stop-boer-genocide/#sthash.eheYdnej.dpbs
considering how many Indigenous populations had to face near “extinction” due to genocide and are still marginalized today (like the Maori) by the descendants of a larger Ethnic/racial group(s) that invaded their Ancestral land — I just feel
the least you, I, and other people can do when regurgitating history, is to not further “bastardize” the term “indigenous”
No matter how long a European descendant lives in Australia or North America (or South Africa), they’ll never be “indigenous” to that land but he is “native” because he was born and grew up within that culture.
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My comment is in moderation so initially this comment won’t make sense.
but just to continue with my comments and further highlight what I mean about modern day political “appropriation and misuse” of the term “Indigenous”
here is a clearer “view” that makes me want to puke!
http://danielcuthbert.com/the-afrikaner
The Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch, French and German colonists who settled in the Cape from the mid seventeenth century onwards. This grouping gradually formed its own cultural identity and became increasingly concerned with the need for self-determination and freedom from British colonial rule.
These settlers founded various republics in the northeast of what is now South Africa, and collectively gave birth to the Afrikaner people, and a new language –Afrikaans. Afrikaans has joined more than ten other indigenous languages to form part of the political and cultural landscape of South Africa.
In recent times, since the first democratic elections in 1994, the Afrikaner has become an anachronism in South Africa – rejected by the black majority – a (white) tribe produced by Africa, but with nowhere else to go.
In 2008, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) awarded the Afrikaner people membership during its IX General Assembly in Belgium. This award recognises indigenous peoples, occupied nations, minorities and independent states or territories, which lack representation internationally.
the F’ck!! after enslaving and slaughtering the indigenous Africans for 400 years, now because “payback is a b’tch” — they want legal protection!
I’m sure Holland, France, Belgium and even Germany would take them back Gladly and with open arms – and with modern day genetic testing, it won’t take long, at All, to find their actual genetic-DNA family members living in Europe today.
It’s the indigenous/native Africans that don’t have anywhere to go because they are Already HOME and who the f’ck was legally protecting them Internationally when they were being slaughtered.
http://www.unpo.org/members/8148
so yes, sorry Asplund, I tend to get a bit, “nitpicky” with certain words or terms because these terms “have been/are being” used to diminish black/brown people and/or to further white supremacist Agendas
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@ Linda
Afrikans is a Dutch/Flamish dialect, with some words/items of syntax reflecting the African environment. Well, there will be some white supremacists French/Dutch etc who might welcome Afrikans. I do not think the majority will, at least not openly, if only because France, Belgium and Holland have a large number of people who in the USA would be termed non-white, and in spite of present troubles, please remember that in the XXth century, a lot of Black intellectuals etc moved to Western Europe (France and the UK) because they felt more at home and respected (cue my great great great grandfather, Sydney Bechet, James Baldwin etc).
What I will say next hurts, it really does because it would be nice to pay back, but Afrikans really have nowhere to go: their recent history has estranged them from Europe. Shipping people back…Remember it was not a great success when descendants of Slaves were shipped back to Liberia. All they can do is CHANGE!!!!and adapt and embrace Bantu/Zulu etc liberation. Those who do not will disappear (cf what I said earlier about inbreeding).
This is the thing that is hard to get my head around: the world history is made of violent invasions, and then a few centuries down the line, all have mixed and have become one people. The difference with recent history is that we keep a record of everything, so the grudges grow, which is not so great. But, I am also (thus contradicting myself) in favour of remembering the wrongs so we try and avoid repeating them. So we are all the products of violent invasions and have ancestors we can’t be proud of, as well as ancestors we can be proud of.
I think, even if it hurts, it is important not to follow the white supremacists’ lead, i.e: violent retribution or attack. We have to show we are better, otherwise it means we have allowed them to contaminate us, to enslave our minds.
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Seems this focus on the spanish and 1492 is hot topic,and despite the lengthy and in some cases pedantic (but informative) discourse regarding this issue ,Abagond has yet again shown not only how to pick worthy topics ,but how to summarize in his famous “500 words a day” a voluminously complex but important historical subject.
And this indeed is worthy issue – the beginnings of colonization and slavery,the role of race (phenotype) ,language and religion – how did we get where we are in regards to certain groups of people.
Well here’s a good starting point of discussion on these issues, ranging from the most informed and credentialed intellectual to the average person with minimum knowledge.
While some commentators and posts here can be emotionally challenging ,this is definitely a worthy blog.
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Annef1,
I hear you but I lived in Europe for several years…. its’ not guess work on my part when I say the South African whites would not be rejected as “immigrants” to Europe
I lived in Europe (Germany) over 20 years ago and with my work, I was able to travel and live in (UK and a few other countries) — overall, western Europe at that time was a more accepting environment for us non-white people.
now, from what I see and hear from my non-white friends, “Europe” is no longer what it used be — there is a reason groups like Golden Dawn are getting stronger — the majority of Europeans do not want “multi-culturism” even if they vocally condemn the violence done in its name.
Europeans are and have always been very Ethnocentric and Nationalistic and there is nothing wrong with that — but I believe in honesty because being blind or keeping one’s head in the sand, has gotten many Ethnic groups killed
Many Boer/Afrikaners did in Fact immigrate to Holland, so this is not me speculating:
“If you can speak afrikaans its really easy to catch on to Dutch so you dont have to have any worries.”
http://www.expat-blog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=69278
White South African Family Wants “Repatriation” To Holland –
http://www.therightperspective.org/2010/04/26/white-south-african-family-wants-repatriation-to-holland/#sthash.91HSZp8O.dpuf
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To Linda as well as to annef1:
I just wanted to say that I for one appreciate the two of you as commenters. I most especially appreciate your knowledgeable commentaries with regards to these types of subjects, as my own intellectual interests / avocations tend to fall in line with cultural (as well as physical) anthropology and archaeology, history, language, and the fine arts — including art history. The two of you cannot comment enough on these subjects as far as I’m concerned.
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So, just to tie all this together — the indigenous and native South Africans are doing the same thing now to the Boers/Afrikaners that the Spanish did the Moors and their descendants.
the indigenous and native-born Spaniards did not see the native-born Iberian-Moors as “indigenous” regardless of the 700 years
(and that’s why the unified Kingdom of Spain proceeded to kick-out or kill the native-born Moors, regardless if they converted or not)
The Spaniards also re-wrote their history books and revised and omitted information regarding the Moors, so that people like us could sit back and speculate just how “white, brown, or black” the Arab and African Moors were and who contributed what.
Despite the fact the Moors “ruled” over Al-Andalus, the Christians, Moors, and Jews maintained their distinct cultures.
Towards the end of occupation, the majority of Moors or “Mudejares” could be found in what remained of Al-Andalus in the very southern region of Spain.
I like how this article summed up, Spain before 1492:
“Christians lived under Muslim rule (as Mozarabes) and Muslims under Christian rule (as Mudejares). The different communities, occupying separate territories and therefore able to maintain distinct cultures, accepted the need to live together. Military alliances were made regardless of religion.
Communities lived side by side and shared many aspects of language, culture, food and dress, consciously borrowing each other’s outlook and ideas. Where cultural groups were a minority they accepted fully that there was a persistent dark side to the picture.
But by the fourteenth century `it was no longer possible for Christians, Moors and Jews to live under the same roof, because the Christian now felt himself strong enough to break down the traditional custom of Spain”
Whereby the Christian population (majority population) made war and tilled the soil, the Moor (minority population) built the houses, and the Jew presided over the enterprise as a fiscal agent and skillful technician’.
Mudejares tended to be peasants or menial urban labourers; Jews for the most part kept to the big towns and to small trades; the Christian majority, while tolerating their religions, treated both minorities with disdain.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kamen-inquisition.html
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Pay It Forward and Mbeti,
stop it, you’re making me blush 🙂 Thanks for the kind words.
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and Annef, just to be clear,
I am not saying that the white South Africans should leave and “go back to Europe” — they should stay.
They are the ones who say “they don’t want to Assimilate or live with the blacks” and I can even understand their sentiment if the violence against them is that severe
but there are white people willing to integrate and assimilate and they may have a different view than those people who want to live separate lives.
“Do white people have a future in South Africa? Those who fit in and succeed will certainly have a future. As for the rest, there are no guarantees whatsoever.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22554709?
Some of them have already started solving their problem of having to share the same land and air space with the only native Africans — it’s called Orania, a “whites only” town.
Carel Boshoff, was the founder and his son, Carel, is now president of the Orania movement. Carel Boshoff is related (son-in-law) of late prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, “the architect of apartheid”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2321236/Orania-Whites-town-South-Africa-Afrikaners-dream-building-state.html
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Linda-
Interesting comparison with the Afrikaaners. I agree about the defect of using ” indigenous” in both cases. The Boers are not indigenous but they also aren’t ” settlers” like in the ” Kill the Boer” song. Some kind of medium term? I can’t think of an appropriate one myself. As for the Boers, what about an independent state for them? Of course I know that’s off- topic.
Mbeki. Hreat summary.
Annard- no love?
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@Linda
In regards to your comments comparing the spanish vs moors with native south africans vs afrikaaners ,
I commented to Bulanik in another post on this site about how these conflicts may be cyclic in nature ,
as in first group gets invaded oppressed by other group who after a long struggle overcome their oppressors and through time and loss memory themselves become oppressors – a repetitive cycle.
What are your thoughts if any?
One factor I consider (if this hypothesis of mine has any validity) is the limited lifespan of individual members of groups but the far greater lifespan of particular groups – the spanish as a opposed a Spaniard (male or female) ,the Christians,Catholics,moors,muslims etc etc…
@Asplund
you should really pay more attention and perhaps take more time with your comments – although it a small thing ,I really do not appreciate my name being misspelled esp when the correct spelling is directly in front of you.
However thank you for your acknowledgement.
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Hey M- Betty,
You’re welcome.
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Well now ,Asplund – this second time ,its obviously deliberate – I never liked the term “troll” I prefer we not hide behind empty rhetoric and call or name them for what they are and what they do.
And this is yet another antagonistic white/albinic person.
Because venting (by using slurs and profanity) is bad for your health.
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@ Asplund
Wow. What a fucking jerk you are. Lucky for you that is not in my comment policy. I thought it was, but it’s not.
To be added to my comment policy: You are allowed to shorten a commenter’s name but not change it into something else.
If you do it again you will be banned.
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Just to mix things over here abit more: the name Andalusia did not come from latin or any other sourse, It came from the people called vandals who lived there for a while before immigrating into North Africa. Yes, it is those original vandals who have had a bad press ever since they crossed the Danube.
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@Linda
Yes, I agreee with you entirely! But I like the irony of the fact that, if they do not want to assimilate, they they will surely disappear: They will have to intermarry mostly, as not a lot of “fresh blood” will be attracted by what they have to offer (There have been similar attempts to carry on an Aryan lifestyle in South America, but the films made on the topic and presenting neofascists communities bent on world domination are pure fantasy, because these communities are failing), so their offsprings will be ridden with genetic diseases and less able to make it. Whereas when you assimilate, bits of you survive through the generations.
@Sam
I said it a few posts ago (Andalus=>Vandals=>Eastern Germanic tribe) but it is good to repeat regularly, just to remind us how todays’ human groups, no matter what they look like and where they are currently located and how peace loving they may be, will carry the DNA and traditions from far away people who did not lok like tham and might have been very violent (but as the Vandals were the underdogs and history was written by their enemies, this reputation may be in fact libel to excuse all the violence done to them).
@Mbeti
Thanks for the links
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@Asplund
You are letting yourself down.
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@kiwi
thanks for the links,much appreciated.
While I have not until now communicated to you, I’ve always found your comments worthy and insightful.
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@Kiwi
Sorry, thanked Mbeti for a link which you in fact had given.
So I went and checked these links.
I have experienced the same name problem and there have been times when I was called by Tanoy…and did not recognise myself, and so failed to act, especially in the USA, and I really think people should make an effort to try and pronounce names. But we must also be fair. I am a linguist. When you decide to learn a language, it means you WANT to pronounce things correctly, but most of us at the beginning of learning a language just can’t get our tongues around its sounds and melody, especially if you have not actually been exposed to this language before (English speaking Canadians learn French faster than US citizens because they hear a lot of French, amongst other reasons). Why? For starters, you might not even hear ithe sounds properly because there is a kind of selective deafness applying to each language. This means that, by the age of 11, most of us will have stopped listening for sounds which are in not use in the language we speak because they are irrelevant, and as we discard them from our repertoire, we also deny ourselves the ability to produce them. When I teach French/English to German speakers, I must awaken the sound “j” as in rage of Joseph. Same for “th” with the French who genuinely hear either “s” or “z” instead. Now, I think we should view this as a challenge to try and get a glimpse into another culture/language when we pronounce a name, but for a lot of people, it is a daunting prospect, and they do not even want to try, because they hate to feel inadequate. I find we have to help, so I tell people “stress my name on the first and third syllable and you’ll be fine” and help them with it. They are really pleased when they achieve saying it. So the issue is a bit more complex than just ill will, but yes, there is ill will too…as I notice when people look at me, when I try to help and their eyes clearly say “And why should I try to say your name properly?”. Well, strange are the tricks your mind plays on you…I can never remember these people’s names.
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@ Linda, fascinating stuff.
It might be also true that the Spanish attitude to racial identity in the 15th century was ENACTED according to the military culture of their aristocracy.
During the Re-conquest of Spain, the monarchs rewarded their noble soldiers sometimes in the form of Latifunda (slave-run farms or Haciendas) or, bestowed high position to them over the areas and people they had beaten down, usually Muslims or peasantry. One feature of this gift was that anything a soldier of the Reconquista did could be done without “Royal Audience”, or interference.
When soldiers and Conquistadors arrived in numbers in the Americas, this practice was only transferred to the setting. That became became known as Encomiendos. Although the land belonged officially to the indigenous peoples, their own status on their land was as “wards”, and the Conquistadors were their trustees (or slave owners).
This systems was notorious for its abuses and atrocities.
The land and location of the Encomiendo became intertwined with clan or tribal identity of the people who belonged to the land, but — not if someone was mixed-race/Mestizo, forcing many to aggressively pursue intermarriage with Creoles or Spaniards — to avoid servitude and the low racial status that it came with.
A picture says a 1,000 words, and the Spanish attitude to race in the 15th century seemed most graphic when I first saw the Codex Kingsborough, a pictorial manuscript showing the conquest of Meso-America.
The manuscript comprises 72 leaves written on “European paper”, and is described as charting the “history of the people of Tepetlaoztoc in the valley of Mexico between Tezcoco and Otumba and the tribute paid to the Spaniards to about the year 1550.”
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=261414&objectid=662793
What “tribute paid” here refers to is Encomienda — a Spanish institution devised to control the autonomy of the Native peoples, and the profit squeezed from their labours.
A critical account of the conquest, and evangelization of the Americas by the Spanish by David Traboulay:
(http://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Las-Casas-David-Traboulay/dp/0819196428)
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Correction:
Linda said:
So, just to tie all this together — the indigenous and native South Africans are doing the same thing now to the Boers/Afrikaners that the Spanish did the Moors and their descendants.
the indigenous and native-born Spaniards did not see the native-born Iberian-Moors as “indigenous” regardless of the 700 years
😀
And, what is the attitude of Spaniards in Spain around newcomer-Latinos from the Americas? I don’t know, but what I’ve heard (mainly from Colombianos) in Spain was something like this:
“Oh, we used to be their bastards and mongrels, but now because we have Salsa and sexy-Jennifer-Lopez-bodies and some have started be seen as real people in white America, these white people want to be part of our “hot and spicy” passion and culture…like we are “the same family” now because they want our style, like we are reconciled now, like we are in Spain because we want to connect with our roots with them, and they like us…”
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apologizes but I must provide critique and put this in my own word – what is known as “race” is phenotype ,particularly phenotypic populations due primarily (but of course not exclusively) to geographic locations.
It is one the most primary aspects of a biological organisms existence – therefore I sincerly doubt that
“the Spanish attitude to racial identity in the 15th century was ENACTED according to the military culture of their aristocracy.”
was the cause of the Spanish white (albinic – degree of lack of melanin epidermal pigmentation) populations focus on their obvious external differences from other populations.
Also the factor of time is one that may not have been mentioned or not given enough consideration.
By time I mean the evolutionary duration of our species ,the position of the european / white population in that timeline and as well as the accumulated cultural and technical developments that allowed for the power imbalance
between groups or populations of our species as well as their geographic separation and isolation allowing divergent phenotypes to develop ,
and also requiring significant accumulation of time and knowledge to transverse these geographic spaces.
“This systems was notorious for its abuses and atrocities.”
In regards to the spanish cruelity ,it seems to me that aggression is an inherent part of biological life as is the built in necessary of predation for nutrient acquisition.
I read somewhere recently (on this blog or a related link) the many of the native tribes warred against each other as well as practiced a form of cannibalism.
So much for the peaceful innocents ,I get the impression we should think of them.
I’ll say more in other comments but this is my take on this point in sapien history.
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ah,I just noticed whats different and lacking in my analysis and presentation.
specific names,places and people.
Being specifically unfamiliar with the subject at hand I used sweeping scientific generalizations of a kind I am more comfortable with ,though also lacking in formal specificity.
With further reading of esp of those more familiar with topic perhaps in time I can blend the two ,to something worthy of consideration.
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@ Mbeti
Yes! After all, the Incas themselves also had a tribute-giving system and great bloodshed was hardly unheard-of among them…
My response came out of the points that Linda had raised and I was curious about the possible PoV of the Spanish during the given time-frame.
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@abagond
“In the 700s Spain fell under Arab Muslim rule. They came to be known as Moors. Most were from northern Africa and were generally darker.”
You appear to have fallen in the same trap as most historians by confusing “Moors” with “Arabs.” They were not one in the same. While both were mainly (not all) Muslims, Moors were from Africa while Arabs were from Asia (Arabia). Big difference.
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@resw77
The invaders of El Andalus were mostly Northern Africans and Malians. A considerable proportion -but not all of them by any means- of Northern Africans were from Mauritania where there are a lot of darker people (etymologically: Mauritania=land of the darker people) but FIRST:not everyone in Mauritania is very dark and SECOND: today’s Northern Africans display a wide range of skintones as was the case then. Calling them “Moors” and attributing very dark skintone as a blanket description was politically motivated, looking for the “them” and “us” effect, easy targets. It is not in itself important what colour they were, what’s important is how it was reported and how colour was given connotations. The very fact that the Spaniards became obsessed with colour and were spying on their Jewish and Muslim converts is precisely because they were so hard to tell apart from the other Spaniards.
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@resw77 you make interesting point
Did you mean this
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This that is..
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@Mbeti and @resw77
If what is meant is the map on the link, then it is obvious that there was a mix of colours invading Spain. By the way, they went all the way up to Poitiers in France (Stopped by Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s dad) and as they retreated, some stayed behind and mixed with the local population especially in the marshy area of the Landes.
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Ha!
I come back fur a few quick laughs and find that this thread instantly devolved with my departure.
Mbeti- go fly off in your melanin- powered space shuttle. Or better yet check out ONE book about Al-Andalus at your local library.
Lol@ original invaders of Iberia being Malian.
Look people. The Islamic conquest of Spain is the western extreme of a massive Islamic expansion out of S. W. Asia. That’s why they royal house of the Ummayad caliphs was predominately Syrian. You guys have Molefi Kete Asante’s strategy of just calling out made-up facts with no substance down.
Now all the Occitain- speaking folks are going to be proven to have come from Central African Republic. Ok I PROMISE now to go away soon. My jerk attitude is now starting to balance the jerk attitude shown to me.
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@Asplund: do not overdo the jerk thing!!! It ain’t funny and you are not doing yourself justice.
So,if you care to look at the map provided by Mbeti (though it is a bit rough around the edges), you’ll see where they all came from, but you know that already.
You are right about the Arab expansion, but they swept in and everything went their way. To the extent that the people they were expanding into followed them into Spain. Hence the Malians and the Mauritanians. As for the Occitan speakers…. Have you been to France??? If you care to look at the physical types you find in France, especially in the south, you will be astounded by the obvious mix of races, and we are not talking last 50 years and big cities exclusively. The Landes people for instance show obvious Basks and Arab influences. Champollion (who followed Napoleon to Egypt and read the Rosetta stone) was described as looking African, and then we know about the two Dumas, father and son etc etc.
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@annef1
“The invaders of El Andalus were mostly Northern Africans and Malians…Mauritania where there are a lot of darker people (etymologically: Mauritania=land of the darker people)”
I tend to agree with that, but the invaders were not all the same and came at different periods of time. My point, however, is that it is inaccurate to use “Moor” and “Arab” interchangeably as Abagond seems to have done.
“FIRST:not everyone in Mauritania is very dark”
No one said they were, but by far most are, and even more were very dark during the time of Muslim rule in Spain.
“SECOND: today’s Northern Africans display a wide range of skintones as was the case then. Calling them “Moors” and attributing very dark skintone as a blanket description was politically motivated,”
Note that I made NO mention of skin colour/tone in my comment, but somehow you are construing my words to suggest otherwise.
However, “Moor” was a European term, not an African term, that means very dark/black, etc., and you can check any old dictionary or literary reference to that word prior to the late 1800s to see that this is true. So, yes, “Moors” were definitely dark, for if they were pale then they would not have been called “Moors.”
Northern Africans of today may be a “wide range of skintones,” but what you are failing to realise (or perhaps ignore) is that the Arabs and Ottomans heavily invaded and immigrated to North Africa during this same period of time (711-1495). This drastically changed the face of North Africans, although indigenous groups still inhabit the region.
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@Annef1
“If what is meant is the map on the link, then it is obvious that there was a mix of colours invading Spain.”
Do my comments suggest there was not a “mix of colours invading Spain?” Not at all. I think it was perhaps the most diverse region of Europe at that time; I simply mean to differentiate between Moors and Arabs, both of whom were present in Muslim-dominated Spain.
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@resw77
Apologies, I thought you were underplaying the mix factor, but I did ot think you were entirely denying it.
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@annef1
It’s astounding to me how you could think that even though I said nothing of the sort…but apology accepted.
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Don’t need the local library (though I’m a regular patron) just a quick google
– Al-Andalus , also known as the Moorish Iberia or Islamic Iberia, was a medieval Muslim state occupying at its peak most of what are today Spain, Portugal, Andorra and part of southern France.
As far as I’m concerned while important from a historical perspective,this is not the most interesting or important subject to me.
And the discussion while mildly interesting ,and definitely very informed ,was/is at times quite pedantic ,long and boring – again TO ME.
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Annef-
I’ve already given up on any kind of rapport. I was the nicest imaginable but the fact that I actually proved my point made me despised. Of course now that I’ve retaliated maybe its a little more justified. I deliberately trashed Mbeti’s name. I’d apologize but I looked over his blog. He has melanin superpowers so I think he will do fine. I’m more concerned about Abagond’s hypocritical new “policy.” People are still calling me “Assplund” which I admit is funny. No measure of enforcement though.
Your post contains two features prevalent in the thought on this blog. One is that it stretches the definition of blackness to absurd degrees. For example, southern French now being hinted at possessing some form of blackness. If that’s the case, everyone’s black. It’s like Absgond’ s ridiculous post on the Greeks, arguing they ” were not do lily white” because they were 5 percent black. The 95 percent is immediately discarded and an affirmation of blackness is made. According to that line of thinking I’m black. I’m more than five percent black.
If we go by what people say about themselves, they clearly go to great lengths to differentiate themselves from blacks. That’s a process stretching from the ancient Egyptians to modern North Africans. If those people could be grouped with sub- Saharan blacks, then Ibn Battuta would not have said the disgustingly racist things he says when he visited Mali. Same thing with Ibn Khaldun.
Where are you finding large numbers of Malians among the original invaders? I don’t claim to know everything ( well I did but just to be an ass), but I was under the impression that the Malians only start to play a significant role in Iberian history after the Almoravuds conquer the Mandinka in the eleventh century.
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@ Asplund
“If we go by what people say about themselves, they clearly go to great lengths to differentiate themselves from blacks.”
First, who is “they” and please provide an example of their “going to great lengths to differentiate themselves from blacks.”
“That’s a process stretching from the ancient Egyptians to modern North Africans.”
Hmmm…I’ve never read any ancient Egyptian account wherein one differentiated oneself from “blacks”…I mean the Egyptian word for “Egyptian” literally means black person, so what sense does that make?
“If those people could be grouped with sub- Saharan blacks, then Ibn Battuta would not have said the disgustingly racist things he says when he visited Mali. Same thing with Ibn Khaldun.”
Who are “those people.” Aside from Khaldun, what racist things did Battuta say when visiting Mali? And what point are you trying to make here? Are you saying that Battuta and Khaldun are “moors.” If so, who ever called them “moors”?
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To the ears of many, Spanish Flamenco sounds like the music of India, and to some eyes, the dance movements of flamenco resembles at least one of the dance forms of India, North India especially.
Flamenco has always been seen as quintessentially Spanish and Gypsy-Spanish at that. Afaik, it is only in recent years that the “Gypsies” — or Gitanos — of Spain have been identified as a people of the Indian Diaspora, or that they belong to an original culture now more commonly known as the Roma or Romanis. In the Basque country, they are known as the Erromintxela.
Indians started arriving in Spain in around 1447, but the accounts I have read or heard point out that this population left South Asia much earlier than that, and have been part of Spain since the 11th century. The Indians were a nomadic people — and were incorrectly thought to be from Egypt, and hence misnamed “gypsies”. In fact, they originated from an area around the Thar desert in Rajasthan in India’s Northeast.
During the Reconquista, the Spanish monarchs identified them as another non-Spanish group they wanted flushed away from their country, and this made exclusion and persecution in Spain official for centuries afterwards. They were often compelled to inter-marry and forbidden to speak their languages, etc.
The legacy of that treatment is ambivalent.
On the one hand a Gitano is associated with the lowest strata of Spanish society. But, on the other, Gitano culture IS most essentially and profoundly “Spanish”. It is as though an ethnic stigma is attached to a Gitano, but yet, their culture has been appropriated as that which most represents “Traditional Spain” and more specifically, Andalusia.
What this shows, or emphasizes, is that Spanish identity is a hybrid, an unhappy one historically, and flavoured by denial and forgetting.
*
On November 16, 2010 UNESCO declared flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
A brief report from Indian TV, on the connection between India and Spanish cultural identity.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA-aXAiv4LU)
A closer look at the similarity between the 2 styles:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_OAphHLXvo)
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@Asplund
I thought you said a lot of things I could agree with, and said so. But agreing with someone is meaningless if you are not able to show disagreement when it is there. We are not each other’s fan club, we are people having a debate.
I don’t approve of people making fun or debasing names in general. So I did not like it when you did it, and whoever played with your name and insulted you was not right either. Sorry I missed them and did not show my discontent, because at some point when the blog got very busy, I was otherwise engaged, and so, sometimes I read stuff too fast (sorry @resw77).
So back to Malians. The exact point in time when Malians joined in is irrelevant because all I see is: at some point in El Andalus, before the Reconquista, they came into the mix. This is my stance because what I am looking into is how the Reconquista shaped things, so if I got the exact date wrong, well, correct me, but it changes nothing about for the rest.
About anyone with a bit of black DNA is black. Of course, this will make everyone black…and this is not what we are all arguing about. It seems to me that we are all circling the crucial point that there is a lot of talk about racial purity and some ideal unadulterated this or that, which does not exist. Maybe it is just the pendulum swinging back. After all, for a long while in a lot of places, the degree of success in society depended on how much white you had in you. We are turning this on its head, we assert with pride our degree of blackness.
But in order to make things clear: I have no problem with my degree of whiteness, I got it from people I love (my family), but I have a problem with people whose main focus is their whiteness, people who are so into their whiteness they want to get rid of blackness altogether.
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[…] Spanish racial identity in 1492 (abagond.wordpress.com) […]
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Abagond, are you going to do a post about Italian’s and their racial identity?
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As a person who was born and has lived in Spain (more concretely in Catalonia) I feel like most Spaniards know little of the consequences the Inquisition and Reconquista had, and how they contributed to racism. Even I did know very little of it. Those events are explained in highschool history books, but there’s not much explained. I’ve barely been taught anything about Spaniards starting the concept of race, or about the Limpieza de Sangre. Even during primary school, when they taught us about Columbus, they made him look like a hero.
As another commenter said, North Africans, and mostly Moroccans use Spain as a gate to get to Europe. Spain has a lot of North African and Moroccan immigrants and maaaaany Spaniards seem to have a lot of prejudice against mostly the Moroccan people and pretty much against Arabs and Muslims. A few examples: the word “Moor” is often used as an insult, there’s A LOT of prejudice against women wearing veil, Moroccans are often portrayed as criminals, and so on… I find it very sad that the country I live has such a racist and prejudiced culture, and most people don’t even realise it.
I’ve read above that someone used to wish to visit Spain (I think I’ve read Barcelona?) but has been discouraged due to this. I would still recommend to visit Spain, because despite all this it has a lot of natural and architectural beauty you may enjoy. What I wouldn’t recommend is living here permanently.
Thank you Abagond for this very interesting post. I’ve always wanted to dig more on the roots of the racism and prejudice in Spain and your post and many of the comments above have been of great help.
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@ Sargantana, agreed about all the above, and true, the land, architecture, night life, fashion and art scene of Spain (well, Catalonia) is kind of wonderful, but, why wouldn’t you recommend living there permanently?
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Reblogged this on Consult your Life and commented:
link to this reblog
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Very insightful. .What I believed to be true all along. .
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resw77
@abagond
“In the 700s Spain fell under Arab Muslim rule. They came to be known as Moors. Most were from northern Africa and were generally darker.”
You appear to have fallen in the same trap as most historians by confusing “Moors” with “Arabs.” They were not one in the same. While both were mainly (not all) Muslims, Moors were from Africa while Arabs were from Asia (Arabia). Big difference.
————————————————————————————————–
But is it a “big difference” to white people? Probably not considering how white people feel about other white people who “race mix”
*the only thing worse than a ________ is a _______ lover*
Im one of those people who grew up thinking the Moors looked like Antonio Banderas; ya know, one of those white people with just enough taint (contamination by color) to cause other white people to hit them with the “where are you from?” query. I read books and this is what the books showed.
So imagine my surprise when with the world wide web, I was able to see paintings of Moors done by European painter of that time? I was like WTF?
Not only were they black, but a lot of them were BLACK BLACK! Like the color of my hair. I think many white people always knew this but conspired to withhold the information from
people
like
me.
And they are still engaged in this behavior today. If you open up the Wikipedia article on Moors, they give you the Antonio Banderas song and dance routine; with pictures of Leo Africanus and other assorted light skinned “mystery meat”. No wonder people like me were mislead.
But, I think the Wiki article on Moors written by a white person did clear up one thing for me. The Black heads on the coat of arms. They were first brought to my attention by some afrocentrists who claimed they were proof that Moors (black people) ruled over white people and white people “confess” this fact by putting black heads on their coats of arms (they gave a lot of examples, queen of England, various Dukes and Earls…)
But in the Wiki article, they say the Moor (black) heads are SEVERED HEADS which represent the defeat of the Moors.
I think this is a better explanation of the black heads on the coats of arms since the sheilds are often split into 4 parts with each area represented by something the family OWNED, was in charge of, or controlled… after all, the coats of arms are for the most powerful white families.
I admire and am thankful for all the work the afrocentric scholars have done, but you gotta watch out for the “negro pep rally” effect. It can it can sneak up on you, especially today in the Youtube era.
If you are a black person who produces historical videos; citations are your friend, try to include them for any picture or photo you use. If you can’t find one, at the very least, tell the viewer were YOU found the image.
In other words, your content should be able to stand on its own; if it needs you to add a “sales pitch”, you probably should find some better content.
Here is an example of what I think is a well done afrocentric video. How do I know it is well done?
Because when I provided it to a room full of racists in response to a charge that black people deserve to be abused because after 200,000 years, they never produced a written language.
It shut down the conversation.
There was no response.
*crickets*
And you all know how white people gotta have the last word?
They had nothing to say after seeing this:
“Ebony comes from Ancient Egyptian “Hebeny” (hbny), which gave the greek “ebenos” which gave the latin “ebeninus” (or ebenus)…”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U10MD71beFM)
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[…] Spanish racial identity in 1492 […]
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At one time Spanish was white it was part of Europe until the Arab invasion….now its multi racial.
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The further down Europe you go the darker the European ‘ s the further north the whiter…
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too simplistic, here is a better understanding in regards to limpieza de sangre(in Spanish): http://www.armesilla.org/2013/08/izquierda-hispanica-contra-el-racismo.html
there is no comparison between the Spanish empire and those filthy greedy saxons
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Looks like an interesting article. Too bad it’s in Spanish.
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Moors were definitely those negros.
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Can you really blame the Spanish for cleansing their country of the Islamic plague? Islam is incompatible with Western civilization.
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