We Are One

Some one hundred and twenty-five thousand years ago modern man left Africa or so goes one theory. Another theory says that man left the continent between sixty and ninety thousand years ago. Seeing that these scientists have spent decades studying and researching the migration of modern man out of Africa, who am I to say which theory is right. I mean all I have is a few hours watching a couple of YouTube videos. With that being said I’m going to split the difference and say we left around one hundred thousand years ago. Now when modern man left Africa, we were all one color. There were no Whites or Asian folks coming out of Africa during the initial migration of humankind. I said initial because there were two major migrations.
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Mig1: OMG!! What happen to you!!? You were standing under that pterodactyl nest again… weren’t you… go wash yourself off.
Mig2: Wow!! it must have been quite a journey for you… you guys are walking around looking like you are half asleep…
Asian Brothers: Oh, you think you are funny huh… now if I said something about yo’ mama… you’d think I was wrong…
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So, they think humankind was driven out of Africa because of droughts and climate change. It was either starve or leave. Now you might think that with all the animals in Africa, starvation would be the least of humankinds worries. However, it is thought that early man was not a hunter, but a scavenger. I mean I don’t blame them… they remember the story that was passed down to them about the one time this dude and his boy was sitting by the cave eating marsh grass and crickets, when his boy jumps up and says “I’m tire of this shat!! There goes a sabretooth tiger and Ima kill it with this rock and we are going to have meat tonight!!” So, his boy ran over there and hit the sabretooth tiger in the head with a rock… now exactly what happened next was lost to antiquity, but ever since then folks were scavengers… so there is a cave drawing of the event… but scientist are divided on what the object is in the sabretooth tigers’ mouth… some say it is a hand with a rock in it, while others say it’s two peoples legs sticking out…
Anywho, so, humankind spread across the earth and into areas with vastly different climates from where we evolved. In these new conditions, different traits were better suited for survival and reproduction. Take for instance humans that migrated toward the equator. It was better to have darker skin to resist the intense sunlight, while humans that migrated to the extreme northern hemisphere developed lighter skin tones and were better able to survive as they could absorb more sunlight needed to synthesize important vitamins, like DeMassa… okay I’m kidding. Anywho, among the vitamins that the sun helps us produce is vitamin D. Vitamin D is essential to every cell in your body. It helps regulate our blood pressure, builds strong bones, improves our immune system, and helps control our blood sugar. Maintaining your blood pressure was very important especially if you plan on enslaving folks who walked around with alligator teeth necklaces and wearing capes made from lion and tigers’ skins…
Enslaver: Excuse me sir… excuse me…
African Warrior: ROARRRRRR!!!!!!!
Enslaver: OMG!!!
Anyway, so yeah climate “and” natural selection played an important part in our diversity. Now natural selection makes humans more suited to their environment… it still circles back to climate as to why we have different appearances… we all share the same DNA … “Each human is a different expression of the same set of genes, with some expressions more common based on geographical location.” – University of California Santa Barbara

Not In The Beginning

So where did the notion that humankind is made up of different races come from? Well, it seems that as far back as 400 BC people knew that climate played a role in human appearance. Hippocrates thought that environment played a crucial in our appearance.
Julian, Ceasar of Western Rome thought humankind was divided into classifications of characteristics rather than appearance. For instance, he said, “Why it is that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are, generally speaking, inclined to political life and humane, though at the same time unyielding and warlike? Why the Egyptians are more intelligent and more given to crafts, and the Syrians unwarlike and effeminate, but at the same time intelligent, hot-tempered, vain and quick to learn? Indeed, it should come as no surprise that when they rent a one bedroom abode for 20 people that some of them wake up hostile as shat…” Miguel: “Don’t you faque with me this morning… I’m tired now!!” Okay he didn’t say that…
Anyway, race was not always defined by skin color. Skin color started to become the basis for racism around the latter part of the 14th century. It was the beginning of the scientific revolution. In past centuries, mankind was more preoccupied with who you worshipped rather than how you looked. You could get it all put under the dirt for as little as peeing on some remote mountain top where the god of the golden blade of grass lived.
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You: This is as good a place as any…. pssssssssssss.
Them: OMG!! YOU HAVE DEFILED LU’ZENUM!! “THE SACRED!!” TAKE HIM TO THE HIGH PRIEST!!
Priest: OMMMM…. OMMMMM… OMMMM…
You: Your honor I didn’t know… I mean I was on a mountain in the woods behind this tree when…
Priest: When you peed on our god…
You: I didn’t know it was your god… it looked like a patch of grass…
Priest: SILENCE!! Lord Klack… BRING ME THE SACRED SCROLLS!!
Klack: My Greatness, shall I also bring the Golden Pouch?
Priest: Yes!
You: Your honor… Please… look, I’ll go get some fertilizer and put it on him and he’ll be good as new… and then I’ll leave and never come back!!
Priest: SILENCE!! GIVE THE BARBARIAN THE BOOK!! THE SACRED SCROLL WAS WRITTEN BY LU’ZENUM HIMSELF IN THE LANGUAGE OF OUR ANCESTORS… IF YOU CAN READ ALOUD THE GOLDEN PARAGRAPH… THEN YOU WILL BE SET FREE!!
You: (thinking)…they got me now… wait… I can understand this!
“Before the time of man, I have walked this land. It was bare and the land bore none. And I cast my hand out and behold I brought forth the bird and the animal. I blinked my eye and there was abundance. I stamped my foot once and there was man… I stamped my foot twice and there was woman. It was good and they were good. I am Lu’Zenum!! Giver of the Golden Pouch!! As you have accepted my gift of life… so must you accept me…”
Priest: Do you accept the Golden Pouch!!??
You: YES!!
Priest: Do you accept Lu’Zenum!!??
You: YES!! YES, I DO!!
Priest: Very well… pull down your pants… Lord Klack, lock the door and bring me my knife… here’s take this pouch… you are going to need it…
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Valhalla Here I Come

So yeah, it started with the scientific revolution. First, they started classifying animals and insects, then they started classifying humans. As an aside, Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary science was one of the biggest racist who ever lived. I mean it wouldn’t surprise me if he had little burning crosses in his laboratory instead of candles. Anywho, another surprise is that racism didn’t start with blacks and whites. It started with white against other whites. It began with the English and what is now Ireland. England regarded the Irish as a different race! Way back when England wasn’t anything but a bunch of little fiefdoms, small towns and villages, a group of people called the Vikings from Scandinavia invaded it and set up their own towns and villages in what is now Ireland… Scandinavia was what is now Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The Vikings were no joke!! The English had never seen anyone like them before. Nothing made a Viking happier than dying in a battle smeared with somebody’s blood and guts all over him… or her!! Both men and women Vikings fought. Heck it wasn’t nothing for the Vikings to chop off a few heads after a battle and ride around with them for a couple of weeks just to faque with people, so they could start another battle. Vikings: “Hey there Englishman!! Isn’t this the head of Lord Whatever we got on this pole? We thought you might like it back…” The English were like… WTF!! English: “Go get my damn sword!! These Mfers done violated!!” They regarded them as barbarians. To make a long story short those Vikings are the ancestors of the people of Ireland. When English naturalist started talking about classifying what they called the lesser races… guess who was at the bottom of the list?
Now, I’m not entirely sure when the Vikings came to England, but if I had to pin it down, I would say somewhere between 800AD and 1200AD. I say that because around 1400AD the English began exploring and by then Ireland was well established. It was during this time of exploration that the idea of race based on the color of your skin and characteristics was born because of the different cultures they came across.

With Their Boots On…

Of course, during this time of enlightenment, they placed themselves at the epitome of humankind. Everyone else was a beneath of them. However, there was a split in the thinking of how the races came about. The two lines of thought were monogenism, which meant we all came from one common ancestor and polygenism, we split off some kind of way and there were distinct lines of races. So, the big question is how did black folks end up on the bottom of their evolutionary ladder? Well basically, the naturalist who believed in polygenism were the ones who eventually fostered racism based on skin color. During the latter part of the 1700’s numerous intellectuals and scientist advocated for polygenism, especially in England where the famed author and historian Edward Long got his flowers for writing a book about the history of Jamacia from the slaveowners view. His work called the History of Jamacia was a three-volume set first published in 1774 and again in 1970. Yep, it was still in publication almost 200 years later. In the book he described that American “Negroes” were characterized by the same “bestial manners, stupidity and vices which debase their brethren” in Africa. He maintained that “this race of people” is distinguishable from the rest of mankind in that they embody “every species of inherent turpitude” and imperfection that can be found dispersed among all other races of men. These peoples have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
They say he died with a voodoo doll stuck up there… but I don’t know for real… that’s just what they say…
Jamaican: Master Edward… do you feel something like long sharp needles sticking you in the azz?
Edward: No… why?
Jamaican: How about now…?
Anywho… now another muthaf… I mean polygenist we need to discuss is a man named Christoph Meiners. Meiners was an early convert of scientific racism and his works later became required reading in Nazi Germany. Now Meiners elevator didn’t go all the way to the top. It stopped two floors down from where his brain was located. Meiner equated race with how beautiful a person looked. In his book called “The Outline of History of Mankind,” he claimed that a main characteristic of race is either beauty or ugliness. Of course, he viewed the white race as beautiful and all other “races” as ugly. He was especially hard on black people. In his mind not only were black people ugly but they were insensitive. He claimed that black people felt less pain than whites because we had thicker “nerves.” He once described a story about a black man being burned alive and that while they were burning him, he asked for a pipe to smoke like nothing was happening. Sounds like that brother wasn’t the only one smoking something. In his anatomy studies, he claimed that black folks had larger teeth so that they could rip and tear their meat apart like wild animals and that while we had larger skulls, we had smaller brains than any of the other races.
Now Meiners didn’t stop with black folks. He also had something to say about Native Americans and Arabs. He claimed that Native Americans couldn’t adapt to different climates, that they could eat any type of foul offal, and that they consumed large amounts of alcohol. Offal is the part of animals which is not regularly eaten, like the tongue tail or feet. He also said they have super thick skin as the Spaniards found out when their blades shattered on them. He said their skins were thick like an ox… As for our Arab, Middle Eastern and Asian brothers, he said they all lacked intelligence, had an evil disposition, which goes together with their lack of adaptability and insensitivity.
Meiners died at the relatively young age of 62 in 1810. They say he was found with a piece of fried chicken stuffed up there and that a tomahawk was sticking out his back. Investigator said it wasn’t clear what part the Persian rug and chopsticks played in his death, other than to say they found traces of popcorn, egg rolls and tea on it. Nearby they found a flute. They speculate some person, or persons were dancing while the crime was taking place…

Do You Want a Fade?

These are just a couple of the racist that contributed to racism based on skin color. Others are men like Charles Darwin, which we mentioned earlier, Thomas Huxley, and Arthur Gobineau, who said that the white race’s miscegenation was inevitable. Miscegenation means when people of different ethnicities have children together. According to his definitions, the people of Spain, most of Europe and a large part of Britain, consisted of a degenerative race that arose from miscegenation. He hypothesized that the development of empires was ultimately destructive to the “superior races” that created them, since they led to the mixing of distinct races. Of course, the superior race was white. There is no record of what happened to Arthur except that a copy of his book and a note saying he was leaving for Africa were found on the ledge of a bridge overlooking the Thames River… he was never heard from again…
Anywho, around the mid 20th century and with the rise of Nazism, a more critical look at racism based on biologicals traits started to emerge. With the implementation of the Final Solution a backlash and abhorrence against racism based on biology took hold. The Final Solution was the systemic murder of European Jews based mostly on biological traits.
In America racism has and still is mostly based on biological traits. When the colonist first came to America, they brought black and white slaves, although the white slaves were called indentured servants. The only thing about having white slaves is if they escaped, they could easily blend in. The colonist then turned to native Americans, but as I said earlier, they resisted and going to sleep with them in the house could be dangerous to your health. Not to mention their brothers and sisters wishing a Mfer would leave the encampment and come out into the woods where they were giving away free haircuts. So, it was a no brainer, black folks could be easily spotted if they escaped. Our skin color was the main reason we were enslaved instead of the other peoples of the earth. That and we were the closest continent to Europe.
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Racist: Where do you think you are going nagger!!
Black: I’m not a nagger!! I identify as white.
Racist: Wait!?? What!!?
Black: That’s right I’m a white man!
Racist: Ima count to three… and if yo ass ain’t tap dancing and singing “My Cotton Boy”… Ima hang yo ass from the tallest tree I can find!!
Black: I can prove it!! Ask me a question… any question!!
Racist: Okay… if you saw a nagger smack a white man across his lips… what would you do?
Black: By the time I finish with that nagger, they would be burying that nagger in six caskets!! Five of them would be for each finger!!
Racist: Well, boy!! Looks like you are a bonafide white man!! How’s about coming to my place for vittles.
Black: Don’t mind if I do… By the way… what’s your name?
Racist: Nathan! Nathan Bedford Forrest!
Black: Okay Nathan… lead the way!
Later…
Nathan: That sure was a fine meal my Sarah cooked!!
Black: Yes indeed!! That fried chicken was delicious and that corn on the cob was the best I ever had…
Nathan: And the potato salad… wasn’t that something else?!!
Black: Oh… I didn’t have any potato salad… I don’t eat potato salad with raisins in it…
Nathan: (Staring at him hard and grabbing a rope…)
Black: OMG!!!
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We Are One

I chose the racist name to be Nathan Bedford Forrest on purpose. He was the commander of the Fort Pillow Massacre and the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Because of Forrest tens of thousands of black folks lost their lives under the yoke of racism. You can read more about him here.
Because of modern genetics the concept of race is as ridiculous as throwing a barbeque in a lion’s den. There is no “biologically discrete, isolated, or static” populations with concern to race.
“The belief in ‘races’ as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality that emerge from such beliefs, are among the most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past.” – American Association of Physical Anthropologists 2019

Well that’s it… as Frankie Beverly said… We Are One.
Thanks for reading ©Hill1News