Ah historical revisionists... To be honest, when I first saw this topic, I thought it was going to be about Holocaust denial, but really it's all the same thing. White supremacists and SJWs are really just two sides of the same coin. Ironically they both have racist attitudes, both towards whites and towards non-whites (and yes, the fact that they lump all non-whites together is equally amusing and insulting to me; ironically the Puritans did the same thing, not differentiating between Indians and blacks, and in the Commonwealth everyone from South Asians to Australian Aborigines has been describes as 'black' sometimes until quite recently; just look up the Southall Black Sisters for example or W. Lloyd Warner's 'A Black Civilization').
I just find it absolutely funny that someone would want to talk about the Olmecs while showing a picture of what appears to be the one image in elementary school social studies textbooks that talks about the Nubians.
Well, most of these people aren't exactly well educated, nor do they take the time to do research on the pictures or quotes they use. Ironically, all 'black' people look the same, whether its an Olmec head, Egyptian artwork or Mycenaean pottery.
I'll say it again; for a group of people who are very upset that native culture is being shit all over, they sure are eager to shit all over native cultures.
I think part of its because most of these SJWs come from the US, where until relatively recently, 'minority' was almost entirely synonymous with 'black.' I've worked in education and had people who seemed incredulous that Native Americans still existed, and groups like Polynesians, Hmong, Kurds, Sami, Roma, Ainu, Australian Aborigines and others are even further from public consciousness. If they are thought of at all, its as 'foreign' cultures that live on the other side of the world (unless we get into anti-immigrant hysteria and Islamophobia).
Also, I admit my knowledge of African history is woefully lacking, but I do seem to recall reading a bit about a couple of great African Empires built and ruled by black cultures. Wasn't the Mali Empire kind of a big deal? If these tumblristas really cared about African history and educating people about it, there's loads of great ancient African societies they could be sperging about.
Of course, that would assume they actually care.
I believe there are multiple factors there, really. Aside from the obvious fact that they really don't care to learn about African and Diasporic history. There is (or historically has been) something of a bias against black Africa in Western discourse. Until very recently, most black Americans wanted to distance themselves from the word 'Africa.' Africa was 'primitive,' 'pagan,' 'barbaric.' Ironically even black nationalists continued this trend. Nation of Islam and similar groups talked about the 'blackman of Asia' and 'Asiatics,' rather than looking to Africa. They tried to claim everything... the 'Black Athena,' Egypt, India.... but not Angola or Kenya. Places like Greece, India and Egypt are seen as 'romantic' in the Western mind, but sub-Saharan Africa not so much so...
The tumblarinas have inherited these same prejudices. For all their whining about 'white people' they still tend to compare America to liberal European nations (never mind that Europe suffers from racism too) and seem genuinely ignorant about modern African nations. They never really talk about the Rwandan Genocide, the Congo Civil Wars, the Touareg secessionists in Mali, Boko Haram, Cabinda, race relations in Zimbabwe and South Africa, ethnic conflicts in South Sudan, etc. Hell most talk about 'Africa' as if it were a single bloody country.
EDIT: And, of course, none of that will get around the fact that, due to great interest and success in sea travel, and, later, industrialization, European imperial ambitions managed to subjugate most of Africa. It's unfortunate, but it's also true.
Well that's true, but its also only looking at very recent history. Europe has only come to dominate the rest of the globe over the last two centuries or so (and the US less than that). India, China and the Islamic Empires were much stronger at one point and as it stands are catching up. Ironically one of the big things that hurt African empires was the end of the slave trade. Europeans had very little presence in Africa at the height of the Atlantic slave trade.
If you wanted to "revise" history more accurately to reflect the prominence of a lot of now virtually forgotten African empires, that would actually be accurate and there would be a lot of history to have genuine pride in.
It's a fact that a lot of genuine African history that actually connects with Western history doesn't get covered, whether due to conscious or accidental bias. That should be fixed.
Instead, though, these morons want to just make shit up. It's embarrassing.
I agree. I think part of it is, as I said above, is both genuine ignorance and the fact that Africa is something of a 'dirty word' to some people. I also suspect there's some hostility due to the fact that most of the great African empires were Muslim. Mali, Kanem-Bornu, Songhaï, Adal, the Almoravids, Sokoto, all of the Swahili city-states...
I'm surprised they didn't mention how nearly all the gods were rapists, even the black/disabled/pansexual ones. And that a lot of the goddesses were guilty of massive victim blaming. (Oh, my husband raped you? Let me horribly curse you and destroy your life.) And that Athena was viewed as "safe" because she was a virgin, and wouldn't have any children that might eventually take over from their fathers. And that Greek mythology is, overall, nearly as sexist as Holden is.
Even funnier since the Greeks (and later Romans) actually did portray several of their gods as distinctly (and often ambiguously) 'foreign.' Dionysus immediately springs to mind.
There is ample evidence in actual history to contradict the hypothesis of European progress/African primitivism, but most of the people pushing this history are ignorant of African history and have no desire to correct that, so they'd rather talk about black Beethoven or black vikings than Mansa Musa or the Sultanate of Agadez.
Again, see above. Mansa Musa and the Sultanate of Agadez would both be examples of the African-Islamic culture that I think both conservatives and SJWs seem eager to ignore.
Tumblrites can't accept the fact that there was time in history when countries like Europe were primarily white.
Except of course that people had been trading back and forth across the Mediterranean for millennia. Especially before the rise of Christianity and Islam, people in Greece, Egypt and Palestine had much more in common with each other than people tend to assume. Thinking in terms of 'race' doesn't really help much.
Or that most revered people in history were white.
Only if you're talking European history and even then until fairy recently. I'd daresay the historical Jesus (who was distinctly brown) had far more influence and respect than anyone in Europe. Ditto for Muhammad and the Buddha Sakyamuni. And that's before we get into Mansa Musa, Valmiki, ibn Sina, Vatsyayana, Ali ibn Abi-Talib, Ulugh Beg, Mahavira, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, Tertullian, Rhazes, ibn Battuta, Guru Nanak, Ferdowsi, Hypatia of Alexandria, Timur, Genghis Khan, Paul of Tarsus...
Not only that, but there were pictures of the Sami people and they weren't POC as the SJW's thought. It wouldn't excuse SJW's from complaining though
That's because SJW's are extremely myopic and unaware of cultures outside of the US. Or even within the US. I don't see many of them helping out American Indian causes, and I doubt they'll ever mention the Métis or Cambodian refugees.
Considering mythology, Africa itself is rich like Europe.
I would argue its even richer than Europe for several reasons. Africa is a much larger continent and larger population base, with five major language families that are entirely unrelated. Also unlike Europe, many African civilizations continued their traditional religions until very recently, if they stopped practicing them at all. We have very little idea of how the pagan Greeks worshipped their gods, let alone the Celts, Slavs or Dacians, but we know a great deal about the Zande and their beliefs.
Would these tumblrites even give Anansi focus like they would to a Greek god such as Hades? Would they even bother to learn about something with African religious mythology such as a sort of creator spirit that brought forth much things in this world?
No, I don't think so. Especially because they're terminal edgelords. They're more likely to call themselves 'Hades' or something instead of learn about creator gods and tricksters, because they want to shock people.
They probably don't even know about one African mythological belief in that people were born with two souls/spirits that are male and female.
Could be referring to the Zulu supreme being called uNkulunkulu. I believe in pre-Christian times uNkulunkulu was portrayed as having both male and female traits though after contact with the Christian missionaries he took on decidedly more masculine traits (though I might be mixing the Zulu's creation myths with another civilization's here; SA isn't my specialty so I apologize if I'm wrong). The modern Zulu and Xhosa people still use the name uNkulunkulu both for god in their traditional religions AND as the name for the Christian god.
If they really knew about the two spirit gender, they know about the Dogon myth having the first 8 being of dual soul and that other African cultures see there being a dual nature for every human.
To be fair, the SJW's misappropriation of other culture's mythologies amuses me. It's essentially taking another culture's creation myth and using it to justify their transgender/crossdressing/genderfluid identity. Sometimes (actually probably more often than not) they are misrepresenting or misinterpreting another culture's practices. It's especially funny because many African civilizations do have strict gender roles and homosexuality is even a crime in several modern African nations (there was even the issue of Uganda wanting to make it a capital offense).
