I came across this article today entitled: We Are Not All Africans, Black People Are! (http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo/2010/12/28/we-are-not-all-africans-black-people-are/) which both enraged me, and dumbfounded me at the same time. I am used to reading and hearing racist remarks from White people about Africans. It is very rare that I encounter racism, or reverse racism from “African” people.
To sum up this guy’s idiotic rants; he is basically making the argument that only black people are African. North Africans are by no means African since they are the product of colonialism and slavery. In a few sentences he managed to dismiss an entire history of North Africans, including Egyptians, as a people rightfully belonging to the African continent, and entitled by birth to the title “African”.
What do I care, right? Egyptians after all are Arabs, right? WRONG!! Despite populist propaganda dating back to the 1950s, the majority of Egyptians do not particularly identify as “Arabs”. I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this, and we can spend hours, if not days and weeks, arguing about Egyptian Arab identity. Whatever the argument, one cannot claim that Egyptians are simply-and only Arab. We speak Arabic, and the majority are Muslims, but that hardly rests the case. Egyptians also have 7000 years of heritage and historical ties to the African continent; we have traditions that are not Arab or Muslim in nature in any way shape or form; our colloquial everyday Egyptian-Arabic language structure is more Coptic than it is Arabic; Coptic, is not only just a “Christian” religion, but an Egyptian language and identity, that, whether we recognize it or not in modern day Egypt, we cannot deny that it impacts and influences our culture and traditions.
So, why am I so bothered by this? After all, I don’t live in Egypt, I don’t claim to be Arab, I’m hardly “black”, and I live in the Midwest of the United States of America.
I am bothered because I personally identify as both Egyptian, and African; and I do not think I am the only one. As an immigrant, I can tell you that I have struggled with formulating and holding on to my identity as an individual over the past 10 years. Initially as an asylum seeker, I had to deal with a crisis of identity, as I was seeking protection from the country and culture with which I identified for two decades of my existence. Later on as a permanent resident in the U.S. I had to carve out a identity for myself as I was neither an Egyptian, nor an American. Now, as I citizen of the United States of America, I am an American, but I also cherish and pride myself on my Egyptian heritage and upbringing, no matter how much I disagree and despise some of the cultural aspects I was brought up in.
I am also bothered by this de-Africanization of the Egyptians in this article, because, as an immigrant, and as a U.S. citizen, I have been forced by the U.S. government to identify as “White” on all official documents, from naturalization certificate, to passport, to social security forms, to the census. Apparently, the “ government defines White people as "people having origins in any of the original people of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American). How in the world did people from North Africa came to be lumped up in the same classification as people from Europe, I have no idea. Historically, while having some similarities due to colonialism, North Africans are far removed culturally, and socially from Europeans. I refuse to use skin color as a means of classification since there are white, black, yellow, red North Africans and Europeans. So, “White” hardly fits the bill! So, while I find the terms “White” and “Black” in and of themselves limited and idiotic classifications, I understand that they are necessary evils. However, if we are going to categorize, then we should exercise a little bit more scrutiny.
As I write this, a friend commented to me that the concept at play here is “continental”. I do agree since logic dictates that people from one continent should be referenced as belonging to that geographic location. Ergo, Egyptian is African, Indian=Asian, Lebanese=Asian, Namibian=African, Brazilian=South American, Dutch=European, Mexican=American, and so on and so forth. We cannot dismiss Egyptians from being African because they live up there at the north east tip of the continent and were conquered by the Arabs, British, and the French, and speak Arabic and the majority are Muslims. Egyptians are African, and a large number of them, if we are going to go by the color of their skin, are in fact black. If you examine history also, you will notice that Egypt extended far into “Sub” Saharan Africa, far beyond what its modern borders are today. Heck, just to be facetious (and at the risk of making a racial generalization), if you go by the size of my ass, then I am black too!
Dismissing Egyptians, Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans, and Libyans as African is like cutting off a huge chunk of the history of human civilization. That said, the larger issue at hand here is our obsession with these moronic classifications in our desperate attempts to carve out our national and human identity in an increasingly globalized world. I cannot begin to address this issue here, but hope to one day. In the meantime, we should give some thought to the idea that we should shed these obsolete and moronic classifications, for a more general terminology. Since we as a people are obsessed with label, I vote for “Human” as the next classification. I know, I know, it is too idealistic, and even naive, but it is the only label that we, as a race, can agree on, for now.
