"People of color"

[James A. Landau <JJJRLandau@netscape.com>]

On Sun, 31 May 2009 19:37:05 Zulu minus 0400 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
wrote:

<q>
Black people no whiter than, say, Mohammaed Ali, claimed, back in the
day, to have gone to white places and done white things, merely by
claiming to be Jews. [Well, if a Jew's not white, then he *could* be
black, right? Somebody should explain these things to me!]
</q>

An interesting factoid is that, before he went to the Olympics and fame, Muhammed Ali mowed the lawn at synagogue B'rith Sholom in Louisville, KY.  Considering that Rabbi Perley of B'rith Sholom was active in civil rights, I can imagine him vouching for young not-yet-Muhammed Ali.

More seriously, I have trouble imagining any place or social situation in Louisville in those days which would have excluded black Gentiles but welcomed black Jews.  Yes, there are black Jews---back around 1982 my wife and I attended a Passover seder at the home of a black Jewish family.


On Sun, 31 May 2009 20:53:00 in that ever popular Zulu minus 0400
Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

<q>
(Anti-)semitic, with an "i". Mnemonically, think of "Semite". The idea
behind the name was that the "races" of mankind were descended from
Noah's sons (Genesis 9:18-27). ... Time out to check OED.... OMG:

-----
A person belonging to the race of mankind which includes most of
the peoples mentioned in Gen. x. as descended from Shem son of Noah,
as the Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, and Aram��ans. Also, a person
speaking a Semitic language as his native tongue.
-----

No disclaimer, no "supposed". Isn't it past time to rewrite this and
throw that racial presupposition out onto the dustbin of history?!
</q>

Even more dubiously, while "son of Ham" has been used to mean a black African, the Hamitic language family includes Coptic (ancient Egyptian), Berber, and Touareg.  The ancient Egyptians, judging by their tomb paintings, were mostly white, and not all Berbers and Touaregs are black.

It is generally considered that the Semitic and Hamitic languages belong to one larger family, which used to be called "Semitic-Hamitic" but nowadays is called "Afro-Asiatic".  Is that change of name a case of Political Correctness, or what?

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