>i think solarus is deconstructing your theories. you might
>be calling his academic theorizing but i am beginning to
>think you are confusing the expressions of capitalism with
>this particular issue on race.

u are right. many of the issues i bring up are realted to practical things such as class. thats my perspective and it is a little off track from this already derailed discussion.

>this is very true for very many african tribes. there are
>very many differences culturally, but i feel that the core
>of our beliefs are more similar than different. different
>expressions, though. i mean which is why one group would be
>pastoralists or agriculturalists, have totally different
>lifestyles, but share certain common ideologies. and we can
>get into this if you want. so i would hesitate to claim
>that, "an ethiopian and some west afrikans >has more in
>common with me than with a south afrikan." even though i
>can relate to an indian, i know i have more in common with
>the other tribes from sub saharan africa...we could share
>the same ideas of family etc but if we are gonna use that
>basis, we can argue that every human being if you look hard
>enough shares one thing or the other with another. you can
>go as far as saying some of the scandinavian europeans, with
>the same ideas of family and social structure are "african".
> the reason we dont do that, is that our beliefs are NOT
>fundamentally the same.n that's wjy they are whatever they
>call themselves and i am an AFRICAN, with more in common
>with a west and south african, than the turks, persians, etc
>etc.

i do think overall africans have more common amongst themselves. i am not arguing to say that they also share common things with others, even though they do.

i personally find it problematic lumping groups together.

but i guess my main point of dissent was that while u can find commonlaities across all those groups as afrikan (they may or may not be pragmatic or real), i dont find those commonlaities between europeans, persians, and indians. there are no shared cultural practices, idealogies, expressions that i can find between me and any european. there are commonalities with arabs and persians, but they seem to be as much influences and similarites as u mentioned between afrikans and non-afrikans.

i mean, most ideas of family and to some extent social structure were similar everywhere except europe after a certain time (maybe "enlightenment" or industrialization eras, i dunno specifically)...

>this is a question of how poverty expresses itself. every
>poor person will not have foodshelterclothing. it has
>nothing to do with cultural expression. as solarus said,
>shared poverty does not mean shared ancestry. we are not
>arguing class issues. the russian poor are living much in
>the same way as the rest of us, maybe not as intense a
>poverty as indian and the african poor, but that's a
>question of CAPITALISM. (where is mobutu?).

true. this becomes another discussion. thats my fault for straying off.

>MAYBE THIS HERE IS THE PROBLEM. by saying these people
>share common ideologies, cultural expressions, or can be
>called africanS, I DONT THINK WE ARE SAYING THEY ARE THE
>SAME. come on, give some of us some credit. we are aware of
>history and the shit that has gone down. by saying my
>father's tribe shares this with my mother's tribe, or even
>my father's tribe (dinka) considers another tribe (nuer)
>their cousins, that does not mean they are not different...
>they are... and we are not saying ignore that and say they
>are all the same, please, it would illogical to do that.
>but we are saying, they SHARE COMMONALITIES THAT MAKE THEM
>PART OF THE SAME TREE. which we are calling african. so
>what if an indian is as black as iam. if he/she does not
>share these core fundamental beliefs with me, i wont call
>them african, you know. which is why we still call the
>indians in kenya, indians, and not kenyans. at least i
>consider them that way..and that's not academic.

ok. here IS THE MAIN MEAT OF DISCUSSIN. i have no problem with afrikans arguing a common afrikaness. it may or may not be real, but it is not my place to argue anyways. AND THAT IS THE POINT. it means something completely different if an outsider groups people into one, real or not. whereas it can mean very different for someone to see commonalities amongst themselves.

so one point is who says it and what it means.

second, is that this grouping of all from europeans to south asians, is just bogus. the commonalities u find between arabs, persians and indians are either just similarities (of traditioanl old lifestyles) or the influence of (mostly) muslim invaders. do they have a common origin? it is still a theory, but i think so. but not much more than that.


>>anything that doesnt deal with peoples reality is just
>>academic theorizing or, in this case, racialism.
>
>again, quit trying to talk about six different things, we
>can start a post about whatever racialism is (racism?)

racialism (i dont think its a real word) but it means to me that there is such a thing as race and it has meaning. to me it is not real, EXCEPT for the fact that its has been used historuically to oppress people. i do think it serves a purpose in getting out of that oppression, but not much more than that.