The Movie about Black Women in NASA
I refused to see the movie about the black women at NASA who were supposedly so important to its success. It sounds like propaganda from the left. On the other hand, if it manages to destroy the American black’s insistence that doing well in school is “acting white” – which is a racist (against whites) sentiment, by the way, and which in any case is misdirected since it applies more to Asians than to whites – then I guess it will be a good thing.
Let me add that the “acting white” syndrome is one of the most perverse alliances in history. It allies blacks with racist whites. Blacks get to, in the short run, think that they are sticking it to whitey by not studying hard (but eventually ending up with nothing but grunt jobs), while racist whites get to think of them as stupid. I think racist whites are getting the better part of the bargain.
Myths from the Left and the Right
Thanks to a link from Mark Spahn, I stumbled onto this video, which supposedly shows an Egyptian man going apoplectic about blacks who insist that ancient Egyptians were black (though it’s actually, according to some of the commenters, a Coptic Egyptian ranting against Muhammad Morsi). What’s distressing is the defense of the view by some of the commenters that ancient Egyptians were black, a view which I thought had died out. Some of them insist that ancient Egyptians must have been black because ancient Egyptian was an Afro-Asiatic language, and those languages came from black Africa. Of course, Hebrew and Arabic are also Afro-Asiatic languages, but no person with any sense would say that Jews and Arabs are really black.
Between those on the far right who claim that African blacks are even stupider than American blacks, and those on the far left who claim that the ancient Egyptians were black and that the Greeks stole their culture from these blacks (and that Socrates was black), the rest of us are stuck defending something in between. In my experience, blacks from Africa are generally more impressive than American blacks. If they aren’t smarter, they are at least more diligent in their studies. As for ancient Egyptians, this also goes against my experience since when I was in Egypt, I saw whites who actually looked like the images on the sarcophagi of the mummies. I had never seen that type of person before and had thought of those images as just imaginary when it turns out that they were more true-to-life than I had thought.
I don’t know where the idea originated that ancient Egyptians were really black, but certainly the idea got a strong push from the Martin Bernal book Black Athena (here). This caused a huge fuss in classical studies, and it was refuted, at least as far as I was concerned, by Mary Lefkowitz with this book. Incidentally, if Bernal had been writing in the 1950s, he probably would have argued that the ancient Egyptians were really Jews, but Jews are no longer the ethnic group du jour, so he chose blacks instead.
Let me add that I have to wonder if the Islamophiles on the left are re-thinking this business about claiming that ancient Egyptians were black. Even if this video is a fake, that view certainly is a slap in the face for non-black Egyptians, most of whom are Muslims.
Lying about Islam
Not only has the left lost its collective mind about Islam, it lies about it. No, “Islam” does not mean “peace.” It means “submission.” No, Islam is not a particularly peaceful religion since in its earliest years it was spread by war. No, Islam is not the eternal victim of Western imperialism since it tried its best to conquer the West. No, “Allahu Akbar” doesn’t mean “God is greatest,” but “God is greater.” No, Tariq Ramadan is not a moderate but on the right. Etc.
For Those Who Participated in the Women’s March in Washington (and Other Places)
Since there have been no marches supporting the female victims of ISIS, it is reasonable to conclude that the marchers don’t really care about them, even though they are women and have been much more victimized than any American woman has. I had a roommate as an undergraduate who was a communications major, and one of the things he constantly emphasized was that it was impossible to avoid communicating. Even if you try not to, you are communicating, he insisted. Taking that approach to the marchers, they are communicating something to the rest of us, and we aren’t impressed. It’s really better, if marches are your thing, to march against ISIS because otherwise it looks like you don’t care. Saying things like “We don’t want to encourage the Islamophobes” isn’t enough. Ask yourself what ISIS’s female victims would want you to do, and it’s easy to see that marching against Trump but not marching against ISIS isn’t being very sympathetic.
By the way, I had to listen to a bunch of liberals today talking about this march. Out of six people, two did not even know what the pink hats were about. Sheesh.