The establishment Left desires, more than life itself, that blacks excel in math and the sciences. Each night, before a leftist goes to bed, he prays to the spirit of Martin Luther King that blacks finally reveal their “intellectual greatness”. There have been so many programs, experiments and “original ideas” to improve the academic performance of blacks that most of us have lost count.
Is Afro-centrism, specifically the absurd belief that the ancient Egyptians were black, just one of these programs? In an article called “Early African Calendars“, a part of the “Teaching Tolerance” project of the SPLC, we can see that “tolerance” and truth do not necessarily go hand in hand:
Many math educators believe that learning about the multicultural history of mathematics can help a more diverse range of students achieve math success. Knowledge of their ancestors’ contributions, proponents say, could enhance students’ interest in algebra, for example, which was brought to Europe in books written by Islamic scholars from Central Asia, Arabia, Turkey, and North Africa. The following excerpt and activity, examines the origins of early North African number systems.
Objectives
Activities will help students:
- understand the multicultural history of mathematics
- compare the early Egyptian Lunar calendar with today’s Gregorian calendar
Essential Questions
- How did ancient Egyptians contribute to modern day life?
- What causes change? What remains the same?
Materials
Reading: Early African Calendars
If almost a third of American blacks believe AIDS is a white conspiracy to wipe out non-whites, and almost two thirds believe that drugs are deliberately imported into black areas by the government, then surely the more reasonable conspiracy that Afro-centric “theories” were planted by whites should be taken seriously.
If not for whites, practically nothing would be known, today, about ancient Egypt. Their statues and monuments would still be buried in sand, their language unintelligible and their religion and history a mystery. Thus it is clear that any black who gives credence to Afro-centric theories about Egypt is acting white. He is a foolish “uncle Tom” who falls for the cheap tricks of white/Jewish organizations such as the SPLC. A real black American will look for his roots in black Africa, not North Africa.
Well, here is a question: what kind of Egyptian archeology is being conducted by Afrocentrists? Are there actual teams of Afrocentric archeologists going to African “digs” and finding evidence for their theory about blacks running the show in ancient Egypt?
I helped choose new math textbooks for my school district when I was still in high school.
You blockquote the SPLC saying:
Many math educators believe that learning about the multicultural history of mathematics can help a more diverse range of students achieve math success.
They were preaching that line back then, too.
The only thing it accomplishes is that it imparts some (usually false) “multicultural history” of the development of certain mathematical disciplines. In other words, they’re teaching history, not math. It does not help a math student learn math any better. Believe me, you’ve been reading my rants re math in the AR comment section for awhile. When it comes to math, you either grok it or you can’t. No amount of “history class disguised as math” about how some person who was 1/32nd black helped developed our modern understanding of cubic differential equations will help you solve a cubic differential equation if you don’t have the very high level abstract ability and reasoning skill set to do it.
I wouldn’t put too much credence in those opinion polls. For a while, the atheist blogosphere was afire with how “85% of Americans go to church every week” until Christopher Hitchens pointed out that, if a stranger asks you how often you go to church, you are likely to lie to make yourself sound better.
It’s easy to be deceptive with those polls. You could ask a question like this one: “Do you think that the government is hiding something about 9/11?” If you poll Americans, a majority, or a large minority, would say yes. so that lets TIME (or whomever) say that “65% of Americans believe in truther conspiracy theories!”
Statistical malfeasance is a pet peeve of mine, but it’s ubiquitous despite that. You have to be careful, too, to avoid conflating your mental image of what something means with what the reality is––and the reality is usually much stranger and messier. My parents, for example, go to church every Sunday, but they are both Obama supporters and their church’s creed is “social justice with Jesus.” Yet when people hear the above statistic, they think of churches out of Marjoe or Inherit the Wind.
As if we hadn’t been hammered over the head enough with the “Muslim Arabs inventedalgebra, therefore mass muslim immigration is a net benefit to western countries” line enough already. Yes, whoopee, muslims invented most of the stuff you learn in 9th grade math. And most of the stuff you learn after that (you know, for the next three years of high school, plus college) was invented by (drumroll please) Europeans. Europeans also developed lots of other useful things, but if you suggest that colonialism was anything other than evil, evil, evil based on this argument, they’ll shoot you down (or at least try to) immediately.
Just as an aside, the SPLC, which in addition to its indoctrination efforts actively seeks to destroy the personal and professional lives of people they disagree with, may be one of the few groups of people that I truly hate without exception for individuals. I can judge nonwhites as individuals, without hating them simply for their race, and I can judge leftists as individuals, without hating them for their ideology. But every single person who willingly associates themselves with the SPLC, knowing what it is they do, is in my mind an utterly execrable and worthless excuse for a human being.
Europeans also developed lots of other useful things, but if you suggest that colonialism was anything other than evil, evil, evil based on this argument, they’ll shoot you down (or at least try to) immediately.
I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but what do you say when they try to shoot you down? Jared Taylor suggests saying “Say something original for a change” and quickly moving on to the next point. Have you found any other tactics that work?
I point out that for most of human history, humans have killed each other over resources, and a large part of our evolution has been intertwined with that tendency. It only got to be considered “evil” in the last few hundred years, and only when whites have engaged in conquest. So the depredations of the Aztecs and the cultural genocides of the Incas, not to mention the general savagery of sub-Saharan African tribes are typically whitewashed, while every act of conquest by whites is held up as an example of the evil nature of white people. Of course, unlike most conquerors (such as, say, the Mongols, who killed millions of other Asian people and made few, if any, cultural or technological contributions to the civilizations they devastated), whites have made important contributions to the well-being of any group with the intelligence to benefit from them (and a few who aren’t), so far from being uniquely evil among conquering races, whites are uniquely good, at least if we apply the standards of morality typically employed to castigate white conquests.
That’s a good approach. Thanks!
No problem. Always glad to be of service.
I see all your points.
You would probably gain more credibility with the uninitiated, if you mentioned the “good blacks”, the black elite.
I had a post-graduate math professor that certainly was pretty intelligent and had very high math capacity. There are other decent middle and upper class blacks (Obama, presidential candidate Cain). A lot of these blacks bemoan the attitudes of low class trash blacks they call n.gg.rs.
Also, some white effort helps to undo the negative effects of black (anti) culture which sets black students back further then needed, makes them perform BELOW their (already low) intelligence level
Now, I always hammer away at the point that the scientific truth is liberating. If black and white society were aware of black IQ deficiency, they could devise the best possible plans to counter this and get the best for society. Vocational training for blacks, would be one possible solution. Better a good carpenter then a failed college student.
Of course, even Nobel Laureate Watson was shot down for such a noble attempt.
Generally, whenever the “accomplishments of Islam” meme arises, you can be sure that those “Muslims” who invented alegebra and such were either a) Jews living within Muslim-conquered areas, or b) Persians. There are very few ethnic Muslim Arabs who have anything to offer the world other than hair-trigger tempers and honor killings. Ibn Khaldun and Omar Khayyam (ethnic Arabs and Muslims) are about the only exceptions to this rule I can think of. The Caliphate’s only true innovation was its rulers recognition that it needed to step out of the way and let its resident geniuses (Jews, Armenians, Persians, Greeks) do their thing. When the Muslims stopped doing that, they collapsed back into the cultural squalor they enjoy today.
This tendency to “let the smart guy do it” can even be observed during the Ottoman Period–I’m always astonished by how many talented Ottoman generals, admirals, and so forth turn out to be converted Europeans. Famed Ottoman naval officer Piri Reis and the notorious corsair Barbarossa were both Serbs who converted to Islam.
Actually, I don’t think they do. They simply want to use the failure of blacks to excel as a cudgel to beat non-leftist whites around the head with.
Good point, and a good username too.
Right. This is where false science comes in.
The failure MUST be due to discrimination. Thus it creates hate against the white evil discriminators that cause black backwardness, poverty and crime.
Could be. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall during one of their “secret meetings”.
Maybe part of the reason they bemoan non-leftist whites is the supposed responsibility for the failures of blacks.
JewamongYou :
I believe that modern afro-centrism was mostly popularized by the Senegalese physicist ( I don’t think he had an actual physics career but he did study it in France) Cheikh Anta Diop. He had a few predecessors but it’s Cheikh Anta Diop who popularized it, first in the french speaking world.
Those ideas eventually made into the anglosphere.
I’m black btw,
As a teen, I was quite enchanted by afrocentrism and by the glorious past that Diop was telling me about. I was into it for a few years. As time went by, it became clearer and clearer that afrocentric “history”, “linguistics” and archeology were nothing more than cargo-cult fakery. Craniometry, linguistics and more recently genetics have made it plain that the ancient egyptians weren’t of west-african extraction at all.
Californian wondered if afrocentrists had their own conferences and conducted their own research. They sort of do, in a cargo cult way.
I remember some afrocentric linguistics results that showed that Berber languages were germanic. I think the author got that idea from the fact that the Vandals invaded north-africa at some point. That was enough to cobble together some half baked nonsense about berber languages being germanic.
They publish papers showing how some random african language is ultra close to egyptian, using methods that the brothers Grimm would have probably laughed at. They write history papers based on mythical migratory paths taken by black people out of Egypt and into every corner of black africa. They don’t seem to be bothered by the simple fact that many areas of Black africa were already occupied 5000 years ago and what this implies about their ideas of all blacks living around egypt just a few centuries ago.
A lot of afrocentrist are black nerds. They’re bookworms and they like to appear intelligent. The problem is that, as we all know, intelligence is not that abundantly distributed in the black population. So afrocentric conferences are like gatherings of mostly dull, stupid nerds who nevertheless enjoy tremendous self-esteem an who are convinced that they know something.
Very interesting! Thanks for the info and I’ll look it up when I have time.