"Do I still qualify for Affirmative Action?" joked Havard professor Henry Luis Gates, upon learning that he his genetically 50% European. "My quest to find my African ancestory led me to Europe."
Nadir: What fraction of blacks that you know claim to have "Indian" ancestors? I say close to 100% of all black folks make this claim. On the PBS documentary tonight, hosted by Gates, Oprah made the same observation that all blacks claim to have Indian ancestors. Gates's findings show that only about 10% of all "blacks" in the US have any Indian ancestors.
What confounded me about the show was that none of the blacks in the exercise expressed any interest in exploring their honkey lineage. They all only wanted to learn about their black ancestors. Even more confounding is that when Gates took commedian Chris Tucker to Africa, they kept referring to the visit as a "return", though Tucker had never been to Africa. Why didn't Gates "return" to Ireland, where half of his ancestors lived?
2006-02-08
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In my opinion, Henry Louis Gates falls into that category of conservative black reactionaries that you feel I should admire. I won't watch his documentary simply because I wasted my time watching his Africa doc on PBS, which was essentially a video of his vacation on the continent. Can I get a grant to visit Africa and drive around videotaping nothing?
As for the issues that confound you regarding black interest in the African side of our heritage rather than the European, I won't address that. I've told you the reasons a thousand times before. If you are still confounded, it is because you refuse to listen or comprehend or feel empathy for such a thing.
I will point out, however, that the reasons have everything to do with culture and little if nothing to do with genetics. In some ways I equate my own study of African culture with my studies of Taoism and Islam.
===Nadir==========
If you are still confounded, it is because you refuse to listen or comprehend or feel empathy for such a thing.
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Other explainations exist: Your reasoning is flawed, otherwise incorrect, or incomprehensibly rendered.
Since I used to subscribe to your view, I'm confident that I understand it. I just have a new interpretation for it. I find it invalid.
Far from considering your reasons to be "cultural" rather than "genetic," you believe that "culture" *IS* "genetic". For example, due to genetics, you adopt as your "culture" factors that you have never experianced.
Meanwhile you disdain only the European aspects of both your cultural and genetic heratiges, and celebrate only the non-European apsects of both. You recognize only the negative aspects of the European heratiges, and only the positive aspects of the non-European heratiges.
Nadir: I couldn't find any upcoming broadcasts of Negroes with Guns. And Netflix doesn't have it. But I just found it at:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2642626?htv=12
I don't have time to figure out how to obtain or rent a copy, but I will (if you don't figure it out first). Perhaps we should have a viewing at the new gay house of mine, which I've recently opened up to an unwed black mother (for which I think I should receive universal praise).
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