African IDENTITY

[Najmo]

Adiday Thanx bro, couldn't help but express it.

 

Shaqsii same goes for ya

 

peace keep it coming

[Guled92]

If beauty is measured on shortness with light-skin colour and black-greyish gum then I must agree with twisted notion that Eithopian women are the prettiest in Africa.

 

But, if beauty is measured on the unniversal rules, then I must be bias and say Somali Women are the prettiest bunch around.

 

I only need to look at my mom & sisters to prove it to my self.

 

It is true when they say..Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

[STOIC]

AFRICA WAS DIVIDED IN TO NATIONS AND REGIONS AT THE ADVANTAGE OF THE COLONIZERS.IT WAS NOT THE CHOICE OF THE AFRICANS TO CHOOSE WHAT REGION OR COUNTRY TO JOIN.AFTER THE EUROPEANS LEFT WHAT PEOPLE DID WAS START DIVIDING THEMSELVES IN TO ETHNICAL CLASS AND SOCIAL STATUS(TO THE LEAST).FOR EXAMPLE WHEN THE BELGIUMS WERE IN RWANDA THEY FAVORED THE TUTSI WHO WERE MINORITIES AT THE EXPENSE OF THE HUTUS THE MAJORITY.THE BELGIUMS WERE DIVIDING THIS PEOPLE IN ORDER TO HAVE A SMOOTH ADMINSTRATION BUT THIS WILL HAVE A BACKLASH LATER AFTER THEY LEFT.BACK TO THE SOMALI ISSUES I THINK THE PROBLEM OF THE SOMALIS TODAY IS ONE THAT CAN ONLY BE SOLVED BY THEMSELVES AS PROFESOR SAID IT ONE TIME.PERSONALLY I THINK SOMALIS AS AFRICANS AND BLACKS.SOMALIS ARE NOT ARABS WE ARE BLACKS AS MIKE TYSON IS BLACK.SO PLEASE STOP THIS CRAB ABOUT "WE ARE ARABS". LET ME CONGRAGULATE THE PERSON WHO WROTE THE ARTICLE, KEEP UP.

[STOIC]

Najmo it is sad that after congragulating your article i was diapointed to discover that without shame you plagirized someone's article.it is interesting you are promoting oneness of the african identity yet you have the guts to steal someones piece of arts without giving credit to the source.next time please know that people read papers around the world.najmo iam sorry to let you know that my kudos are withdrawn.

[Najmo]

STOIC, let me say I am sorry you think so little of me, the website you went to belongs to Africans and I personally wrote this article since that website is a website that many of my own people have no idea it even exists, so let me say, and i am sorry i don't recall ever giving you the impression to insulted me, next time though make sure you know who you're talking to b4 u milk the cow.

 

peace

[Che -Guevara]

Najmo.....thats was funny piece.

I think "african identity crisis" thing is over-blown a little....I think young africans today though still have lingering colonial mentality are comfortable with their skin. I personally think a new African identity should be promoted...an identity that emphasizes more on the continent's common heritage rather than on skin color and physical traits.

As for who somalis are might be.....Obviously there are africans, anyone saying otherwise is high on something....We are member of larger eastern cushitic people which includes the oromo, afar, sidamo, etc. The only thing we share with arabs is religion and we are also in da same Afro-Asiatic language group.

Stoic....Give da sista the benefit of the dought before yu jump your guns!

[Najmo]

Che-Guevara

 

Well put!

[STOIC]

Najmo i didn't mean to insult you neither was it may intention to verify the authenticity of your posting as you can tell from my first (posting)impression.iam sorry if i insulted you.due to multiple alternative media news sources i was able to come across the article, it did not show who the author was.if you were the writer i do beg your pardoning for jumping with the gun.

[Che -Guevara]

Guys....i thought dis article is pretty interesting!

Read it

 

ALBERT MORRIS: That cleft-stick call to arms

 

ALBERT MORRIS

 

 

PEOPLE have often admired my long, loping stride suggestive of Groucho Marx stalking a waitress. Know then that it was created in the bushlands of British Somaliland, a parched and quarrelsome corner of north-east Africa full of volatile, vehement tribes and crazy, recalcitrant camels.

 

In that oven-hot, ant-hill-dotted, thorn-bush-flecked, territory, with Beau Geste to the west, Biggles Flies South to the north, Prester John to the south and Sinbad the Sailor to the east, I pounded an Army .303, quick-striking, air-cooled Imperial typewriter in the service of good King George VI.

 

As an old Somali hand, I sense what is afoot there and expect a Ministry of Defence phone call asking for information and advice to boost Britain’s role in a possible United States action against al-Qaeda’s terrorist network in Somalia, a country that the Arabs claim was made from left-over pieces when Allah created the earth.

 

I can reveal that your average Som-ali is a cracking good chap who may not always play the straight bat, but knows how to hit opponents for six. When I was in Somaliland, his occupations included eliminating rival clansmen, stealing, feuding, praying and engaging in endless litigation over camels and territory. Doubtless, little has changed since then.

 

Described as "the Irishmen of Africa", Somalis are proud, violent, romantic, imaginative and quick-witted - not unlike the natives of Erin, a land of lush fertility and EU-boosted prosperity. A country of bush, rocks too hot to touch and brackish water has created a quick-tempered warrior race, fiercer, it is said, than Afghan tribesmen, with a contempt for pain or death, who can pull the trigger, sometimes before they are insulted.

 

Can you imagine the effect on a well-brought-up lad like myself from Edinburgh, town of the tinkling after-noon-tea cups and peppermint-sucking, Church Sundays, on being socially introduced to spear-and-knife-carrying Somalis with fierce, rolling eyes under mops of dusty, black, crinkly hair, many of whom regarded Britons as top of their good feud guides. One talked and walked carefully.

 

What was then British and former Italian Somaliland was garrisoned by the British Army where personnel, in outposts among desert tribes who often flew into ungovernable rages about very little when matters were sifted, felt themselves slowly slipping their regimental moorings in the Army equivalent of Le Cafard, the Foreign Legion’s desert madness.

 

Peacock-proud Somali males often insisted on being treated like prince-lings and, if you had different views, could, socially, cut you dead in more ways than one. Many, however, had an austere dignity about them, best seen when walking, carrying only a spear while their women, burdened with household loads, struggled behind.

 

The spear and curved dagger have been replaced by the Kalashnikov, the hand-grenade and heavy machine- gun in a ravaged, famine-stricken land - as desolate as Afghanistan - where the government has collapsed and the two chief towns, Mogadishu and Ber-bera, are in ruins after years of civil war and clan feuding.

 

In 1993, a US force, on a UN humanitarian mission, became embroiled in Somalia’s civil war and ended up fighting street battles against a Somali war lord whose forces shot down two American helicopters, kill-ing 18 US Army Rangers. The Ameri-cans then withdrew from Somalia.

 

Despite its resemblance to one of Dante’s more uncongenial circles of Hades, I became fond of that nomads’ land, its wilderness silences broken by the khareef - the hot desert wind - the tinkling of sheep bells, the passage of camel-borne caravans and its coastline flecked with dhows, heraldic in the sun. I also developed an admiration for the endurance qualities of the Twiglets-thin, poor but proud Somalis, who claimed, against all evidence, that their land was a Garden of Eden.

 

The bravest, most merciless but, when they accept you, the friendliest of African peoples, the Somalis are also among the most intelligent. If they could overcome centuries of mayhem and murder, they could transform a dangerous African dustbin into a prosperous, modern state.

 

I wish it well and wish Uncle Sam better co-operation with its people. If he, too, wishes my support, he can send a message in a cleft stick. An old bush strider will be quick to answer.

[Najmo]

STOIC no offense taken, but It wouldn've helped if you didn't indicate that I was plagrizing an article that I wrote w/out knowing me or what I write.

 

but is all good.

 

afterall this is a discussion board and anyone is open to put their 2 cents in.

 

welc and feel free to express yourself, but have a good source before you jump to conclusion

 

PEACE

[Ali_Somali]

Najmo, academic intelligencia dictates that any info quoted from others MUST be acknowledged by naming the source!Your "supposedly" wonderful piece is nothing but academic treachery that is punishable by banishing you from this open forum.This particular article on African Identity appeared on several newspapers and magazines that didnt identify you as the authentic author.I got this sad news from a friquenter who talked about some Somali "genius" on African history. If genius is "looting" other folks' work then that is an Academic Identity Crisis, AIC! Well it didnt take me five minutes to unearth this well polished plagirism of the works of the TRUE intellectuals!Of course I admire your interest in creating debate about the crisis of African "identities". Surely there are better ways of initating such entertaining discussion. However, I wish to conclude by stating that as a Somali, my identity is NOT African in any shape or form since there's not a uniform African idenitity. Najmo if you read your history and lived in different parts of Africa like myself, then you dont need to be an athropologist to embrace the diversity of the identities of Africans!Other than the Arabs, every African country south of the Sahara has a unique set of identities and even more unique identities within each country.Somalis share nothing in common with Africans other than the colonial demarcation of Africa as a continent!If anything we differ in a million ways.Am proud to be Somali hence I dont have any nolstagic interst for the so-called African Identity. We will survive and prosper as Somalis just like the Jews resisted any intellectual intoxication of the Jewlry intelligensia by colonial apologists!The desire by educated Somalis to interprete a rich and diverse history of Somalis and other peoples of our continent through plagirized work defeats the purpose of any meaningful discussion.Najmo am really diasppointed in you since you have destroyed the basis of your argument by not acknowledging your source.I guess by now you can tell the difference between an educated person and learned person!Somali Unique Identity---->Aluta Continua!

[Najmo]

Ali_Somali,

 

You’re one of various adversaries who believe that Somalis are not intelligent enough to engrave such an editorial, I am thwarted in you that you give your race such a demean educationally, I am the writer of this critique or African Identity, it appeared and actually is posted on an African Website, yet never appeared on any newspaper, as far as I know, if you would like to challenge my cerebral aptitude to post an article or post a forum this good, I have nothing better to be offended by you for your spiteful characteristic. Furthermore, you actually enthused me to post an article about Somalis resentment to their own brothers and sister’s success, you not only confirmed my worst fear of your covetousness, you proved that you had no better use for your verdict. I am sorry to inform you but I am glad people like you are not judging others, as for banishing me from this forum, sorry to disappoint you but this is free forum you and I have the same right …ouch! But if anyone should be banished from the forum it would be non other then you, for brazen way of calling me a bootlegger, you’re even worst then a communist Russian at least they had the audacity to create something similar but you just pose a threat to my intellectual ability to write freely.

 

And next time, use your research wisely, and find out the so-called author you think wrote this article.

 

Heed of what you write before you post it next time!

[LadyMo]

For cryin out loud leave it at dat man why dont u all just bring de violins out??

 

As far as Im aware Najmo neva said this is my piece of work! & yeah true say u must supply a source and dis dat and de otha. But to be quite frank I couldnt care less where dis article originated from coz at de end of de day it wud just b another name! Whether de name of de author was Cambaro or Cuud or even Hassan or Hussain its doesnt make any difference its a wonderful article and I'll thank Najmo once more for postin it!

 

How do ya'll kno dat Najmo aint de real author in disguise??

 

Ya'll need to calm down and take a chill pill or 2

[Baashi]

That piece was brilliant…hats off to u. Let me comment on the Identity issue if I may.

 

Do the Somalis have Identity crisis? No we don’t have identity crisis.

Are we pure Africans by race? By geography yes but by race we are not pure Africans. Our genes is mixed with some other Asian race. Should we call ourselves Africans? Absolutely! Do we have to please others or worry about what they will think of us if we say out loud that we are probably a mix of two races? Hell no! We are located on a point where races, Africans, and Asian intermingle. Same can be said Nubian, Berbers, Cushitic, Hematic and Semitic speaking ethnic groups of East and North Africa. One to be bold like that as I am is to risk a whole lot of criticism and bashing not because I’m wrong but perhaps I’m politically incorrect.

 

Do we have history of our own or view of our own on this subject? Yes…it is not a written one nor does it have volumes of books or distinguished authors that we can refer to. Ours is distinctively different than other civilization that happen to have written language. It is called oral history. Our forefathers left us a body of information, through oral history, about this subject and our physical appearance validates their assertion. No one can sidestep what they had to say about who they are. Theirs is not a myth but history as they come to know it. By definition, oral history is a method of gathering and preserving historical information through recorded interviews with participants in past events and ways of life. It is the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word.

 

What about science? After all, this can be settled very easily if we put our faith in science? Why not! It turns out that geneticists insist that your genes (as Negro) may have more in common with the genes of a Norwegian (White) than with other non-relative fellow Negro. They say even gene taken from mitochondria would not help because it takes humans to one single mother. Where do I got all this information? I got from a program aired on the PBS’s Nova. It is called ‘Race’. I must admit that my knowledge of the subject (genetics) is basic. Corrections are appreciated.

 

I am Somali, a Negro…I will say that in casual conversations. But the minute someone brings Anthropology into the conversation and uses that as scientific evidence to tell me who Somalis are and where they originated I would challenge her/him. I took Anthropology in school… it is systematic, disciplined course as any other course but there is nothing scientific about it. It starts great Apes and it links that great Ape with origin, culture, and development of humans. It is a crap! Throughout the course we were measuring Anthropoids’ skeletons and they were telling us that we are probably holding the exact replica of the bones of our relatives…so much of education…I want that money back.

[Siman]

I personally don't think Somalis are mixed race, not more than any other race. But rather I think we are a race of our own (not quite same as other "African nor Arabs) there is tendency to categorized people as black, white, Arabs..

but the fact of matter is we are unique and one of its kind race.

 

I found below article interesting:

 

 

article 1 about where egyptians black?

 

Loring C. Brace is often cited as someone who's proven that the ancient Egyptians weren't black. He measures skulls and runs craniological evidence through computers, and concludes that sub-Saharan Africans are black, and Egyptians are in a group more similar to Europeans -- but he also considered Nubians and Somalis more like Europeans. And yet the evidence is there to be seen. Many modern Egyptians, many of them descendants of ancient Egyptians, look black. Why measure skulls and use a computer for this conclusion? Ethiopians and Somalis have been described as Caucasoid before; there is a double standard here, too.

 

Scholars cannot have more than one definition of blackness - the one-drop rule for the US, and for Africa the 19th century standard of the "true Negro" of the original black race with the darkest of complexions and the most Negroid of features. In the 19th century, people in Africa without the most pronounced Negro features were not considered black. The Somalis were considered Hamitic. The differences you see in Africa were not caused by marriage with [non-African] outsiders -- Africans evolved that way. Do Somalis look more European with their features or do Europeans look more like Somalis?

 

 

Article 2 the hamitic myth

 

 

According to Webster's New World Dictionary a Hamite can be described as, "a member of any of several usually dark-skinned peoples of N and E Africa, including the Egyptians, Berbers, etc.8" To many this is a general description of a Black African. But to those who perpetuate this Hamitic hypothesis however this is not the case. Rather these Hamites fall conveniently into the category of Caucasian. In his work, Races of Africa, Dr. C.G. Seligman makes the following statement:

 

 

…the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history the record of these peoples and their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day Beja and Somali…The incoming Hamites were pastoral Europeans--- arriving wave after wave---better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes. 9 A somewhat similar viewpoint is held by Dr. Donald Weidner in his work, A Short History of Africa South of the Sahara:

 

 

 

Caspian types also began to appear in western Kenya. They are known variously as Caspian people, early Cushites or early Hamites…These people, it is believed, migrated northeastward into Arabia and western Asia as well as northwestward into Egypt and North Africa. Recent scholars (notably Joseph H. Greenberg) have suggested that the term Cushite be applied to this parent of the Caucasian race, and that their basic language be Afroasiatic (formerly Hamitic)…Cushites who were developing Caucasian characteristics penetrated Egypt about 5,000 B.C.10

 

 

Though similar in theme, unlike Seligman, Weidner places these Hamites as originating in the heart of Africa itself, as far as Kenya., and migrating northward. But in accordance with Seligman he readily identifies them with Caucasians.

 

 

when these Caucasian cranial traits were found to exist in certain Nile Valley populations, it was assumed that these Africans were either Caucasians or hybrids of Caucasians and Africans. These Hamites are also known as members of the Brown race, Mediterranean race, Eurafricans, dark-whites

 

 

Seligman links the "highly civilized Egyptians" with the Beja and Somali, he identifies them as Hamites who themselves are separated from "the Negro and the Bushman." In fact these Hamites, who may have reached as far as Somalia, are classified as "pastoral Europeans."

 

 

Sir Grafton Elliot Smith was the next figure to whom Reynolds attributed the proliferation of the Mediterranean myth.

 

A Professor of Anatomy at Cairo's Egyptian Museum in the early 1900s, Smith based his findings on his examination of a wide variety of human bodies belonging to predynastic and dynastic Egyptians. His findings revealed what he described as people having an effeminate and frail build, poorly developed eyebrows, small broad noses and slight prognathism.15. But he classifies these people of predynastic and dynastic times as members of the Brown race and, according to Reynolds, vehemently "rejected the thought of a Negroid or Black affiliation of the type generally called Hamitic or Brown."16 Reynolds makes the following summary of Smith's findings:

 

 

Smith initially designated this type the Brown race on the basis of the coloring of the ancient Egyptian iconography and, secondly, because of what he considered to be the close osteological and cranial affinities with the mainly Cushitic-speaking peoples of East Africa, now called Bedja, Somali, Beni Amer, and Oroma (Galla) in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. 17