Arabic and IE

[bwald]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I wrote:

>> (With regard to racism, Pedersen's discussion makes a particular point of
>> denying that the Egyptians or EVEN the Nubians were "Negro" (actually he
>> spells it "negro", indicating he is talking about a "racial"
>> classification), but concedes that the same cannot be said of the Hausas --
>> currently part of the Chadic branch of Afro-Asiatic.)

AMR replied:

>I am not sure whether he was or was not a racist.  What you mention
>does not prove that he was.

I am not interested in labelling Pedersen one way or another in this
regard.  What he wrote was simply an uncredited report on the opinion of
others, which reflects the ideologically inspired institutional racism of
his time.  I did not think I had to spell out the point.  Although he was
relying on the opinion of others, he did a common academic thing of simply
asserting it without characterising it as an opinion or crediting it to
anyone else. Even post-colonial work of political analysis still referred
to the Tutsi as being of "Ethiopid origin" (avoiding the antiquated term
"Hamitic") and down-played the role of the German and then Belgian colonial
authorities in promoting the caste system which they exploited in colonial
times.  Just to spell out the implications of Pedersen's (no doubt
unthinking) acquiescence to insitutional racism, it is thaty there is a
(natural?) pecking order (Indo-)European over (Semito-)Hamite over "black"
African.  In the 19th c there was much concern in institutional racism to
remove the Egyptians from "black" ancestry.  Somehow, by Pedersen's time
that had been extended to the Nubians.  That is logical according to
institutional racism since the Nubians were literate before the Europeans,
and even had some late pharoahs over Egypt (in the late dynastic times
called "decadent" by Western historians -- having it both ways apparently.
NB: in Western popular culture the Nubians were black and "slaves" of the
Egyptians, cf. the black actor playing a explicitly labelled "NUBIAN" slave
of the "Mummy", played by (white) Boris Karloff in 1933).

Whatever Pedersen's personal feelings about black people, his acceptance of
the solemn authority of those who distinguished "Nubians" from "negroes"
would certainly preclude it occurring to him that Semitic and Hamitic might
have an African rather than a Eurasian linguistic alignment, andthe
intellectual climate of the times would discourage him from looking to
Africa for the antecedents of Semito-Hamitic (or Hamito-Semitic).