NOI, Garvey, and beyond

Funny how things go..

As I got into Reggae music around my 11th year, and since then learned more about the associated Jamaican culture, “Black Power” as such I first encountered in Marcus Garvey and Reggae lyrics.

Yet, around the same time (Late 1980s), more US influence came through television and mass media, in the Netherlands. Hearing about Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, Minister Farrakhan, and movements where Rappers belonged to (5% nation), I initially thought they were “trying to imitate” Jamaicans, or – nicer said – “were inspired”, by e.g. Marcus Garvey, or even Rastafari.

I was even right, to a degree. The influence of Marcus Garvey – active in the US since 1917 into the 1920s -, and his movement, were present in all these US Black Power movements, including the Nation Of Islam (NOI).

Yet, they worked out in different ways. As I later focused on Malcolm X as person, the Nation Of Islam became a backdrop, though I still learned something about the NOI, and its ideas.

There were also differences with Garvey, I noticed. For one, Garvey was not a Muslim, but neither (as a Christian) religiously aimed: his goals were social and political, keeping religion more in the private sphere, though still criticizing “pro-White” religious teachings in general.

Beyond this: what are the differences between the Nation Of Islam, and e.g. Rastafari, why ‘Islam” , Black nationalism, etcetera?

A good excuse, moreover, for me to study the Nation Of Islam more in detail, for comparing, with what I have studied already in detail: connecting knowledge I acquired, personal reflections.. the synthesizing essence of the “essay”, in short.. While learning myself along the way..

NATION OF ISLAM

My knowledge about the US organization the Nation Of Islam (henceforth: NOI) was – to be honest – “medium”, and here and there sketchy. Reading more and more about it, I saw more dimensions: “zooming out” or “bird’s view”, to put it in either digital or pre-digital terms. I could compare better with what I have read about and by Marcus Garvey, and general history.

Tellingly, the aspects in which the NOI differed from “mainstream Islam” were aspects that shared similarities with Garvey and Rastafari, but also with ancient African folk beliefs. While the Islam is seriously adhered to, and even seen as the “original religion of Black people” (which – IMHO – is at least a debatable claim, though some want to believe it), at the same time the NOI’s Islam serves similarly as Catholicism once did among Yoruba African slaves in Cuba and Brazil in colonial times, simply as a mask and “front” to hide own beliefs.

STORIES

Own interpretations, deviations are all parts of “story telling”, and history of mankind has taught us that a “good story” can connect masses of people to external, then internalized, goals. For better or worse, certainly. The Bible being a prime example. Also Fascism, Communism, and other totalitarian regimes, – after all - had stories that convinced many, to bind the populace.

There’s a lot of quite imaginative “storytelling” within the NOI I noticed, with several story lines, creatively describing the history of mankind and races. Originally, in the NOI’s teachings, Whites were a race created by an evil scientist on a Greek island named Patmos (strange detail..), lacking all virtues of the original (Black) man, and having only vices and wickedness in them, therefore at one time banned by the supreme being to Western Asia (actual Europe) to live in caves. This view was later sidelined, but was also what Malcolm X was taught, as he entered the NOI: whites were a race of devils.

Absurd?, maybe; racist?, probably; vindictive?, certainly.. but still a creative and powerful story, in some sense. Of course, more nonsensical stories can be found within the NOI, as well as some more positive and plausible ones. In essence, that is the same with the Bible. The strength of Christianity lied in the engaging story: it convinced, and was well-written. The Bible had good, thrilling “plots”.. But.. is what the Bible relates all true, did it really happen? Some scientists doubt that, even beyond the obvious absurdities like Moses splitting a sea, or Jesus walking on water. It is still a good story/plot, and culturally interesting. Moreover: it is of course about the “symbolic” value, the metaphorical meanings, not to be taken literally. Some fools do, though (in all religions).

The latter also applies to the NOI, in my opinion, interesting cultural response through stories/storytelling, but in this case a clearer symbolic, and “social” role and response, namely to the racist conditions and inequalities disfavoring Blacks in the US. That gives it a dynamic, “activist” vibe. One of self-protection, making it more understandable, and – in a sense – more benign.

MAINSTREAM ISLAM

The interesting “off-shoot” of the NOI, “the Five-Percent Nation”, founded in 1964, in the 1970s growing among Black youths, was also nominally Muslim, but strayed even further from mainstream Islam as such. Its (the Five-Percent Nation's, as well as the NOI's) views of Black self-sufficiency and pride are echoes of Garvey, whereas their idea that each Black man is a god, goes toward the Rastafari concept of “I and I”, e.g. God/Jah “within man” (inna man).

Likewise, the NOI has a different view on the “afterlife” than in mainstream Islam, emphasizing more to live good today, with Rastafari adherents having similar ideas, though probably earlier in time. This allows a more activist stance during one’s actual lifetime, more seeking one’s rights while living.

This sets Islam as older (and Arab) religion apart from such later emancipation movements. Islam began as an ideological religious movement among some Arabs on the Arabian peninsula, and became a spreading, conquering religion.

The Garvey movement and NOI were mostly occupied with finding and defending oneself, one’s own group. Seemingly, the Islam served to give “structure” to such goals, for the NOI, while Marcus Garvey kept religion out of his movement, though considering himself a Christian (first Methodist, later Catholic).

Religion is essentially “power”, else it would be a loose spiritual movement, so adding Islam to Black Power probably provided that power base.

For the same reason, though more gradual, the Early Rastafari adherents, largely fitted their views in a Biblical context, and Christian world view, as common in Protestant-dominated Jamaica. A sense of stable power.

Garvey, however, focused on economic organization and international organization of all Black people as source of “stable power” for the UNIA movement. Though not just that: Garvey left religion out of it, but origins certainly not: Africa as Black motherland became equally a (desired) power base, once freed from colonialism.

Therein lies the crux of the difference between the NOI in the US, and the Garvey movement, of which Rastafari can be seen as a branch: the role of Africa, the motherland/continent of origin.

BIGGER WHOLE

Marcus Garvey famously and eloquently said: “ I won’t give up a continent for an island” (meaning Africa for Jamaica). This was later quoted in some Reggae song lyrics by Rastas.

This answers to common human, psychological needs to belong to “bigger wholes”, which is healthy when it is natural. Unhealthy when it is fiction, and only effective for so long, crippling over time, as it alienates someone from oneself.

That psychological need for “a bigger whole” was among the NOI answered by the Islamic faith, after abandoning the “repatriation goal” to Africa, while recognizing the African roots as (merely?) “something of the past”. That is less natural, and not even historically totally correct. Islam originated on the Arabian peninsula by Arabs, then spreading with armies conquering toward North Africa, further into Asia, and even reaching parts of Europe (Iberia, Sardinia, and Sicily).

The connection with Africa – of Islam - is therefore more indirect, as the North African countries “converted” to Islam, were before that Christian, without even European imposition.

This is a fictional element that need not be destructive for a movement, but is nonetheless distracting from truth. Only focusing on the truth secures a strong, lasting foundation.

Eventually, the NOI “gave up on the continent Africa”, as in its pleading for separatism, and a separate homeland for African Americans, it meant (even explicitly stated) a separate state for Black people “on American soil”.

Another key difference, thus, with Garvey’s UNIA movement, which kept aiming at repatriation to an independent Africa. The Rastafari movement in Jamaica, one of the heirs to the Garvey movement maintained that.

AFRICA

Is one Black Power movement therefore better than the other? Mutabaruka describes Rastafari as a “Black power movement with a theological nucleus”. In itself true, but when comparing – as I do now – with the NOI, a word should be added: “with an OWN theological nucleus ”, namely on Haile Selassie – many Rastas consider divine - and Ethiopia, while reinterpreting the Bible. NOI copied an Arabic religion, adapting it also a bit to its own needs, but maintaining its tenets and banner.

The abandonment of a focus on Africa in the NOI started quite early in the movement. The NOI claims that the early precursors of the NOI were the enslaved Africans who were Muslims in parts of the US. A reference to Africa, where parts in the wider Sahel region – from Senegambia to Northern Nigeria -, were Islamicized earlier by Islamic invaders, mixed in within the local culture. This occurred before English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and so on, got their slaves from there.

While it is true that Africans from those Islamic areas ended up in the US – even relatively more than in Latin America -, they were still not the majority among enslaved Africans in the US, who mostly had other “religions”, “beliefs”, spirit/nature religions before Christianized. The Mississippi Delta was a region in the US South where relatively many “Senegambia/Guinea/Sahel” Africans ended up, having an interesting echo in the Blues, and guitar playing (and the swing/shuffle feel).

Another caveat is that – as many who travelled through different parts of the Islamic world can tell you – that Islam in African countries like Guinea, Senegal, Mali, parts of Ivory Coast, northern Nigeria, Cameroun, parts of Burkina Faso, etcetera, is evidently an own, local, “free” interpretation of the Islam, especially when analyzed beyond the superficial “main pillars”, upheld there too (5 times prayer a day, no alcohol, women dressed with veils and modestly, no public nudity/sexuality, fasting, diet, etcetera). Islam is in Guinee/Sahel Africa mixed with own African traditions. Also among, e.g. the Hausa (a quite numerous ethnic group, also in neighbouring Niger) in northern Nigeria, although a violent Islamist group like the Boko Haram seeks to enforce a stricter Islam.

While – musically - the Mississippi delta Blues, and “swing” in other US Black music styles echo and reflect the heritage that Africanization of Islamic influences (like e.g. “string” instruments) of the rich Guinea region “griot” (travelling musicians) tradition, the Nation Of Islam (NOI) apparently did not attempt such a cultural Africanization, even over time leaning more to the “Orthodox Islam”, the original “Arab model”, so to speak. This also came to the fore in the Malcolm X movie by Spike Lee.

AFRICAN CULTURE

What about more historically accurate alternatives, one might ask? Just like among some Rastas, directly African-derived spirit religions, surviving now in Haitian Vodou, Santería (Cuba), Candomblé (Brazil), or Obeah (Jamaica), known “spirit possession” religions seem to be viewed as backward and “devilish” within the NOI.

Among Rastas, Haile Selassie, and “old” and indigenous Ethiopian Christianity seemed a better foundation, or just some Biblical/Christian aspects “from an African perspective”.

This disdain of Vodou-like actually African religions within some Black Power movements is interesting for its connotations. Of course it relates to a cultural inferiority complex, because of the colonial and slavery past. It also has to do, however, with an already mentioned “stable power base”, and the idea of/believe in "one supreme God". The old-fashioned, rather conservative views on male-female relations within the NOI and (to a lesser degree) among some Rastas – with the man as “head” of the household, women serving him and dressing modestly and behaving sexually conservative, of course are also found in the Bible and the Quran (and Hadith: extra, oral accounts of Mohammed). Stable, strong families, must be the idea, but with a patriarchal structure of male dominance, even bordering misogyny at times.

There’s the idea that matriarchy – or mother/female dominance within families – within Black US (and Jamaican) culture arose from the disruption of family ties due to slavery conditions. This is partly true. Many of the enslaved Africans, though, came from areas in Africa with quite matriarchal, often polygamous cultures, even with polyandry (one woman having several men), and loose relations between even those sharing children. The “extended family” was in such cultures much more important than that Western “nuclear family” idea. Partners (even sharing children) often even did not live together (separate places for women and men, with occasional, let’s say “visits”, haha).

This was the case in many societies from Southern Ghana to Central Africa, which the Islam reached less. North of it (the Sahel zone), remnants of this were somehow fitted in Islamic male patriarchy standards.

In short, male dominance was originally not the family culture in much of Africa, also parts where many slaves came from (percentages dependent on colony: Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroun, Congo, or Angola).

Some historians even claim that colonizing Spaniards of the time of Columbus were more patriarchal culturally than Yoruba or Congo men in that time, ending up as slaves in Spanish colonies (often brought and sold by other Europeans), or many Amerindians, due to Spain’s religious (Catholic and Moorish/Islamic) conquest history, both upholding male patriarchy and “machismo”.

Further relevant facts: the enslaved Africans in Jamaica came for over an estimated 40% from the (non-Islamic) Ghana region, while Afro-Cubans in nearby Cuba for about 40% from the Congo region, and in also nearby Haiti Africans from the Benin/Togo area were dominant..

To the US went/were brought quite some Senegambian and Guinee-region slaves – Islamic-influenced before -, but also many from non-Muslim areas (many from Igboland, Nigeria, for instance).

The legitimacy of choosing the “Islam”, by the “Black Power movement” NOI, seems thus weak, at best. The NOI thus chose mostly fiction over reality. This is dubious, in my opinion. It betrays political, hidden goals, without knowing what’s hidden.

Reality is the African origins, from which African Americans (and Afro-Caribbeans, of course) were forcibly taken. Reality is however also “cultural heritage”. Culture is very much neglected in political discourse, probably because it is “feared” as too free and liberating for the masses, especially folk culture.

Rastafari is reasonably connected to culture, also to African retentions in Jamaica. While an African retention like Obeah is by some criticized as “devilish” magic, African remnants are in many small and big things in Jamaica, with a “Western” or British superficiality, or even influence, but always mixed.

The connection of Rastafari with Jamaica’s rich musical tradition (and notably Reggae), and Bob Marley’s global fame, brought Rastafari influence in Reggae music, and more African-derived percussion, for example. Subtly woven through Reggae music (and its precursors), the African polyrhythmic and harmonic musical heritage has, by the way, always been present and essential to it.

In addition, the “back to nature” focus of many Rastafari-adherents, with communal self-sufficiency and natural living, also draws on African traditions, long-lost in most of Europe and the Western world since its modernization and industrialization.

The NOI also has acquired economic power and ownership of businesses – along Garvey’s lines –within Black US, but simply fitting in the US capitalist society, without even much of a “cultural” change.

These contradictory aspects in the NOI were forgotten with extremely communicative and intelligent leaders like Malcolm X, keeping it together.

IDENTITY

In time, however, the “slippery slope” of “identity” politics slipped in the NOI, with as effect a superficial and political “identity”, totally detached from (lived ) culture stemming from an actual history. This can have – temporarily – a beneficial, emancipatory effect, but can go terribly wrong, especially with totalitarian regimes. After all, the German Nazi’s had as political identity “the Aryan”: a superior Germanic race, that should rule the world (according to them).

I now also live in a country (the Netherlands) said to have (like Germany) mostly a Germanic/Teutonic (ethno-historic) origin, and in time I got to wonder: what is this own Dutch, originally Germanic (in English also Teutonic) culture? Maybe some countries, like England, the Netherlands, and Germany modernized and industrialized too soon too much to maintain much “original culture”, and the Nazi’s replaced that, indoctrinating the people with a mythical, absurd “racial supremacy” notion, at the cost of others.

Nowadays, despite hidden ancient, Germanic cultural “remnants” (beyond the language), the Netherlands people are international, even imitating aspects of other cultures: from the US (even Black culture), more Southern parts of Europe with presumably more “temperamental” and “life-enjoying” people, or other parts of the world. I noticed this identity crisis – in hindsight – among White Dutch people I encountered, trying to “out-Black” me, because I (of South European descent) showed some appreciation for Black culture: a Reggae t-shirt or patch, for instance. For some odd, mistaken (slightly psychopathic) notion they considered themselves “gatekeeper” (for having more Black friends, maybe?), a phenomenon - White gatekeepers of Black culture) still found here and there. Seems almost like politics.

I guess that “culture” keeps the mind softer and opener than politics..

A Black Power movement based on Vodou-like beliefs would be strange – or to be honest: I would find it funny and intriguing -, but without going so far, still a fruitful, open-minded balance can be found, as is achieved in the Rastafari movement, lacking authoritarian, strict rules.

A balance seems most reasonable in the case of the African Diaspora in the West: colonial past, adapted to other societies, but knowing one’s roots. Realistic about one’s history, roots and routes.

The NOI – for all its interesting aspects – seems to deny some “realistic” aspects, but that is just my opinion, and it’s their prerogative..

IMPLICATIONS

Still, this choice to “abandon” Africa, the continent, as focus among the largest “Black Power” group in the US, the NOI, can have in my opinion negative connotations. For one, it replaces solidarity with the brothers and sisters on the African continent, with a semi-fictional one with the Arab world. You notice this even in the Palestina protests. Fine, and even noble, that Black people feel solidarity with the Palestinians’ cause, and critique Israel’s harsh, brutal, and discriminatory policies in Gaza and elsewhere. Too often, though, these same “selective” activists do not mention what happens elsewhere in the world, such as Africa, with genocides also having occurred or attempted in Sudan (e.g. Darfur) – some say still going on - , and some brutal regimes and violent conflicts here and there (I mentioned already Boko Haram).

Could it be that the fictive/symbolic alignment with the Islam as a “Black man’s religion” – popularized by the NOI – made many turn a blind eye to whatever is done in the name of Islam in Africa, especially when combined with a nice, melanin skin? Could it be that superficial?

People in Islamic (Northern) Sudan call themselves “Arabs”, while clearly mixed with Black Africans, pointing at cultural annihilation and depreciation of Africa and its people. Not unsimilar to what occurred among some African-descended people in the Americas. In the Dominican Republic, most people are mixed (mostly Spanish-African) and Mulatto-like, but long upheld a vague “Hispanic” identity, derived from European Spain. This differed among Dominicans (some saw themselves as mixed also culturally), but was the political norm. The same in Jamaica, where the political elite long fought the Afro-centric Rastafari movement, including even brutal repression and raids up to the 1960, and customary discrimination even into the 1970s. A “Black British” culture aimed at the Anglo-Saxon world, was the proscribed norm for the populace, it seemed.

BLACK-WHITE

Another negative implication is the Black-White discourse. In my opinion, this has gotten out of hand. In the early stages of emancipation it had a function, and even a positive, path-making one, as also Marcus Garvey used that dichotomy (albeit in his days (1910-1930s), also with now old-fashioned terms like Negro and Coloured).

Garvey however never forgot or abandoned the connection of “Black” with Africa.. Despite the politically (and historically) correct now common moniker of “African Americans” for US Blacks (along the lines of Irish American, Italian American, etc.), in common parlance “Black” and “White” is still the norm, not even just among stand-up comedians, for comedic effect (of variable quality in my opinion, though sometimes funny, I must admit).

This seems innocent, and just words, but psychologically can legitimize superficiality of skin color, over a rich African heritage, from even way before slavery. Even the interesting history from “way before Islam came to Africa (7th c. AD)” for that matter.

In my opinion, one’s sense of its (true) origins and culture makes one truly stable and stronger, and even more balanced. Ironically, also more open-minded, as less involved in “politicized oppositions”.

If you know “who you are”, as some put it, you are honest and spiritual enough to show sincere interest in the true beings of other humans – and other cultures! – as well, without games or hiding.

You also are more able to step out spiritually of the “rat race” of Western politics and economics, and apply other worldviews, with distinct, more natural and communally based lifestyles, also found in the African tradition, and applied (in their own way) by e.g. Rastafari adherents in Jamaica or elsewhere.

Also, in different ways, Vodou practitioners in Haïti, or those Afro-Cubans involved in Santería (Yoruba-based) or Palo Mayombe (Congo-based) spiritual faiths, kept open their mind for “alternatives ways of looking at Western culture ”, the (in this case) Catholic colonizers forced on them.

CULTURAL IDENTITY

Sometimes forming one's own personal cultural identity is a matter of “taking the best of both worlds”: I have known in Cuba some (pitch-) black Cubans – who would physically hardly stand out in Lagos or Kinshasa -, who only spoke Spanish proficiently -, and who could quote some poems by Spanish poets (like Federico García Lorca), and even from the famous Spanish novel Don Quichot – while at the same time attending Santería gatherings, and dressed in African/Yoruba attire on occasion, or playing Batá drums.

Rastafari artist and radio personality Mutabaruka also said in an interview that he tries to get the best of both worlds (Western modernity/technology and Africa), and learn about different parts of the world, while at the same time seeking to expand (also in his radio show) the knowledge about Africa and its history in Jamaica and beyond. It broadens one mind, in short, also to compare better internationally.

Though there were interesting and open-minded intellectuals within the Nation Of Islam (NOI) in the past and present – knowledgeable about global affairs, and sometimes say something sensible about it, even Louis Farrakhan – most of its rhetoric deals with the US situation.

Even if this is often just and right criticism of a certainly racist system and society in the US (and also other Western countries, for that matter) – keeping African Americans back structurally -, I think the knowledge of an own origin, and knowledge of one’s culture, offers more ways to deal with this, in an enduring, fruitful way, than playing along with that superficial (colonially inherited) game of “skin colour”. Even if your color is used against you, you can stand above that with pride in your own culture, your actual history, as a “true identity”. True self-assurance and true self-confidence.

That is also the power of a “story”, but more importantly: an indestructible power base in “truth” and love.

How the "click" was lost: DNA and historical racism

DNA and genetic studies represent a relatively recent breakthrough in modern science. In fact, it really only developed with the birth of “molecular biology”, around 1957. The study of “blood” (actually: genetic material from any body liquid, like saliva), and biological descent, has after that been put to use for practical and technical purposes: in law and medicine. Perpetrators can now be traced better, more secure, through their DNA. It helped to solve seemingly unsolvable crimes. Hereditary diseases can be examined also by studying one’s DNA: for instance to know of genetic health risks: required for instance when one wants to be a blood donor.

Another use of DNA that intrigues me a lot seems less practical and is more theoretical. This deals more with historical science: ethnicity, population groups, and ethnic mixture over time. It sheds new light on human history and genetic mixtures of the world. It makes tracing one’s family tree possible also for, for instance, descendants of African slaves in the Americas; at least more specific ethnic groups can now be traced as one’s origin, because of DNA. A welcome - and just - possibility for people who have been in history forcibly cut off from their family and genetic (thus: ethnic) history, because of slavery and forced deportation. Many people of African descent in the West also have some White/European blood, largely due to the fact that many slave owners or overseers (mostly male) fathered children among female slaves, and in rarer cases through (semi-)consensual relations, although there generally were power differences.

ETHNIC IDEOLOGIES

Interestingly, “ethnic” DNA studies dealing with the whole world, require also reconsidering age-old, ideological ideas living among nations and states about “our foreparents”. “Ideological” in the sense of national identity, that could take extreme forms of superiority delusion. Much sinister and evil use has been made of this: Nazi Germany being a notable example, and similar “racial purity” ideas were part of European colonialism, related to slavery and conquest, divide-and-rule policies in colonies, and in several nation states meant to exclude or oppress certain people. In Spain, the Spanish Inquisition, at one point strived to inquire if one was of “pure blood”, i.e. being Old Christians with no converted Jews or Muslims in the blood line. This added a racialist idea to religious fanaticism.

Maybe more innocent (though with possible racist effects), but nonetheless mistaken ideas live on in several countries of the world. Do – for instance - all French really have as foreparents the (Celtic) Gauls, and only those Gauls? Do all Italians descend mainly from Romans? Or Germans, English, and Dutch from Germanic people? This was until recently generally more or less taught in schools in these countries.

Written history – before DNA studies – already had established mixtures and casted doubts on too simplistic ideas of racial/ethnic “purity”. This got however mixed up with lies deriving from (political) ideologies. DNA therefore provides now a more secure, objective “proof” of which people and ethnic groups mixed over time in a certain region, and what that says about the local population’s history.

OLDEST DNA IS FROM AFRICA

However, apart from these historical lies and ideologies propagated in specific European countries, the most profound knowledge and fact, affecting the whole of man kind!, that came with increased DNA study, is the confirmation of the genetic roots of man kind in Africa. Before this, the oldest remains of human beings, as we now know them, have of course also been found in Eastern Africa: Kenya and Ethiopia.

DNA studies likewise also traced the oldest human DNA to sub-Saharan, Eastern Africa, around Kenya. The present-day people with this oldest DNA include peoples like the Khoi San, and related peoples in Southern Africa (e.g. the Xhosa, the ethnic group of Nelson Mandela). These have languages known for their remarkable “clicks”, so rare in other languages. This brings me to an interesting hypothesis, a linguistic one: people with the oldest genetic material speak/spoke with “clicks” in their language: “later” people, including those that spread from Africa, for some reason have lost this “click” in their languages. Why? It is a sound which is easy to make.

All people in the world – no matter how blond or white - thus descend ultimately from an East African woman, that’s what DNA studies essentially has proven. From this early DNA, different, later DNA types developed over time. These DNA types became associated with specific regions and peoples. There is for instance a DNA haplogroup – as DNA subtypes are called – associated (roughly) with Berber peoples, other ones with Semitic peoples, the Middle East or Anatolia, the specific Central European/Celtic, Nordic/Germanic ones, also distinct Slavic, or Northern Spanish, Greek and Italic ones. Several distinct East Asian, Pacific Region, African, and Amerindian ones exist of course as well.

All these developed, however, over time from the oldest DNA of the type/haplogroup L, from sub-Saharan Africa.

I have read and studies much about this genealogy and DNA in its relation to human history in recent years. The Genographic project of National Geographic, on this theme, got my interest, even though it had a very broad – not specific - focus. Also, I found interesting a more specific DNA study: the already mentioned possibility to trace genetic forefathers of for instance African-descended people in the West, on which I saw also some engaging documentaries. This possibility is quite recent and intrigues especially because the African Holocaust destroyed family relations and meant the loss of African surnames. Unlike White people in the West, like the US, (or Indians and others) who largely maintained these bonds and knowledge thereof (orally and written). John Travolta knows for instance he is of Italian-Irish descent (probably also what part of Italy or Ireland) to give an example. Other White people have vaguer, but still traceable connections to Europe. Now, with DNA, it’s possible to know also more on the African Roots of Blacks in the West. This seems only fair.

Black US comedian Chris Rock, for example, traced through DNA his genealogical foreparents in part to the Udeme people of what is now Cameroon. Quincy Jones, on his mother's side, to the Tikar people of also what is now Cameroon. US comedian Chris Tucker to what is now Angola. Martin Luther King’s genetic foreparents were found in part among Mende-speaking people in what is now Sierra Leone.

Also Europe got my attention. Specifically also the countries I have something to do with: where my parents are from and I heard most of. My mother is for instance from (Southwest) Spain, my father from (North) Italy.

SPAIN

Spain is an interesting case, because the ideological “lies” spread by ruling powers have perhaps been stronger there historically. Spain (and Portugal) have been ruled by Islamic Moors from the 8th c. onward, up to the late 13th c. in the central and southern parts, and a southeastern part (Kingdom of Granada) up to 1492. Spain also had (since Roman times) a relatively large Jewish population.

After the Christian conquest from Northern Spain over time of the Iberian peninsula a fanatic Christianizing effort took place, of which the strict Inquisition was part. This led to expulsion of many Jews, Berbers, and other Islamic remaining people, if only in part. Though it is – probably for ideological reasons – propagated in official history writing that ALL Jews and Moors were expelled from Spain in or around 1492, in reality only a part was: many more or less converted and mixed with the local population. This was already assumed by more neutral historians, but recent DNA and genetic studies confirm this. Spaniards are genetically mixed, including Jewish, Berber and other non-European blood, mixed with Celtic, Roman, Greek, older European/Basque, Germanic and other blood.

This Christianizing effort tried to hide this, and propagated another national identity for Spain. Probably stimulated also by the imperialism/colonialism Spain and Portugal more or less inaugurated with Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas. An ideological and “racial” distancing of non-European, non-White “heathens” - even if Africa is only about 14 kilometers away from Spain – was deemed necessary for that.

TENERIFE (CANARY ISLANDS)

I recently went for a trip to Tenerife, one of the Canary islands. These became Spanish around that same year 1492 (after settlement with Portugal who already owned Eastern Atlantic territories). In relation to this ethnicity and DNA, Tenerife/the Canary Islands are also an interesting case. Having become Spanish at the dawn of Spain’s imperialism (1490s), the Canary islands served as a “testing ground” for Spain for the Americas. After being introduced by the Portuguese, slave trade in (Black) Africans, and enslaved Black Africans in the sugar industry more or less began for Spain on the Canary Islands. Later it continued on a larger scale in the Caribbean.

The Canary Islands were originally inhabited by peoples related to the present-day Berbers from Northern Africa, called Guanches. Though some sources said they were all wiped out (strange how regarding Spain’s history, population genocide is always stated in such “total” terms); in reality a large part of these Guanches mixed with Spaniards that settled on the islands, such as Tenerife, of whom many came from Andalusia or other parts of Spain. Some Black Africans were, as said, imported as well, and also some other Europeans, like Portuguese, settled there. A museum I visited on Tenerife sketched this history. All these populations mixed and resulted in the present-day Canarians.

I knew already some people from Tenerife, and having now been there, I saw indeed what I perceived as Berber traits among a part of the Tenerife people. Relatively stronger in more rural, mountainous part (and Tenerife is very mountainous). To differing degrees, I must say. Some mainland Spaniards from the South have these traits as well, so at times it was difficult to determine.

While in places like (South) Portugal, Extremadura, Andalusia, and other parts of Spain, Berber traits recur sometimes, as well as Semitic traits – confirmed by actual DNA studies - relatively many Canarians seemed overall dark Mediterranean, Berber-like types.

BOOK ON RACISMS

I would like to place these DNA studies and the new historical knowledge they provide further alongside a recent book I read: ‘Racisms : from the crusades to the twentieth century’, appeared in 2013. It was written by Francisco Bethencourt, and presented as “the first comprehensive history of racism”. This is quite a claim – perhaps for marketing reasons of course - since historical racism has been and is being studied by other scholars as well. Bethencourt takes in part a new, original stance, though.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10082.html

He traces the history of racism, as ideas and practice, aimed at the exclusion of people because of descent, in Europe, from before the start of colonialism and during colonialism, as well as in other continents or historical epochs. He focuses most on the Western world. He discusses these political ethnic ideologies I mentioned already. Especially the period following Moorish (Islamic) rule in Spain and Portugal gets much attention. Not because racism started there: Bethencourt points at different sources and places (hence the plural Racisms of the title), but early forms of racism, based on descent developed there, mostly due to religious policies, like the Inquisition I already mentioned, distinguishing “Old” Christians from “New" Christians (converted Jews or Moors) based on descent, aimed at repressing and excluding. The Portuguese started trading in Black African slaves in the Eastern Atlantic even before Columbus went to the Americas, and this Bethencourt also discusses.

I heard some say that racism did not really exist against Black Africans until this slave trade and slavery in the Americas developed. Bethencourt confirms this in a way, though not totally. After discussing all types of racism: Inquisition, slavery, as part of colonialism in other continents, wars, in different parts of Europe, by Arabs, Roman times, Nazi Germany, against Amerindians, Asia, Africa, he comes to these main "concluding" arguments:

one:

“racism preceded any theories of race and must be viewed within the prism and context of social hierarchies and local conditions”

and two:

“in its various aspects, all racism has been triggered by political projects monopolizing specific economic and social resources”.

The first argument makes an intriguing distinction between racism and (semi-scientific) “theories of race” (superior and inferior, more animal-like races etc.). In Portugal ideas on Africans inferiority or animal-like status (“racism”) actually preceded their starting to trade in enslaved Africans and taking control of the Angola region, in the 14th c.. Later (quasi-) scientific racial theories only institutionalized these ideas. In other European countries like Spain, Italy, Germany, and France similar racist ideas existed, to differing degrees, even if then slaves were not just Blacks (as later). Also the Arabs, and some Moorish authorities in Spain, expressed ideas on Black inferiority, especially when the Arab slave trade increasingly involved Black Africans as slaves.

Spain’s Catholicism’s “purity of blood” ideas were the official norm, though with differing degrees of consistency or enforcement, and excluded and discriminated Jews and converted Moors (called “Moriscos”). Portugal meanwhile increasingly used Black Africans as slaves, a practice later taken over by the Spanish, and still later other European powers as the British, French, and Dutch.

All this shaped the racism inherent in the colonial project Spain and Portugal engaged in after Columbus (Italian/Genoese but in the service of the Spanish kingdom) “discovered” and claimed the Americas for Spain since 1492, of which a part (Brazil) would go to Portugal.

Northern Europe was before this not free of racism, and negative ideas on other races’ inferiority, existed also there, independent of Iberian developments. The Biblical use to defend slavery of black people (the curse of Ham idea), was probably first stated in the Netherlands, historians found.

However, European colonialism as such started earlier with Columbus, so to speak. So, in 1492. In slavery’s systematization and expansion, increasing the racial aspects, the Dutch and English were later also important, must be pointed out. Overall there is therefore not much use in trying to determine which European country was the most colonial and racist: there were different sources and conditions shaping it over time, in different parts of Europe and even outside it. Also, the Muslim and Arab behaviours and ideas after Islam’s rise can in part also be seen as definitely racist toward Black Africans, even after these converted to the Islam.

Jamaican poet and reggae artist Mutabaruka was, overall, in essence right when he stated in his poem ‘Columbus Ghost’, recalling this history, that with Columbus’s “discovery” in 1492 “White supremacy” really began. It did indeed initiate a lasting global inequality on racial (mixed with religious/cultural) grounds. This still is noticeable in today’s world and North-South relations.

An interesting read, overall, Bethencourt’s book, but it is history writing based on documented, “traditional” sources: DNA and genetical studies are not included (nor mentioned). These however can add some interesting insight to the historical developments, such as the ones he sketched about Spain (relatively much discussed in the book). Did such “purity of blood” policy have effect on the ethnic make-up of the present-day Spaniards? To what degree?

Early racism (mixed with religious fanaticism) as part of political projects – the “purity of blood” - were thus present in Spain and Portugal. Portuguese were furthermore early slave traders in Africans (bringing these also to Iberia). How does all this history as Bethencourt related, show in the current genetic and DNA characteristics of Spanish (and Portuguese) people? I’m curious about that.

SPAIN, SOUTH EUROPE, AND DNA

My mother told me that in South Extremadura, close to the province of Córdoba, in Southwestern Spain, where she was from, there were both darker and lighter people, though blue eyes and light blond hair were unusual. Physical traits further also differed.

Having travelled throughout most of Spain and Portugal, I noticed all these differences too, alongside a dominant Mediterranean type. Genetic, DNA studies further give more insightful background information about this.

The specific DNA haplogroup/types associated with Berbers and Middle Eastern peoples are to be found - within Europe - presently relatively more in South Europe, especially Portugal and Spain, followed by South Italy. The L Haplogroup of the oldest DNA, from sub-Saharan Africa, is even found a bit there, while rare in the rest of Europe (it can be found among more recent African or Afro-Caribbean migrants in Paris, London, or Amsterdam of course).

The broader DNA haplogroup E1b1b: (http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_E1b1b_Y-DNA.shtml) has many subtypes, but is partly associated with North Africa and Semitic peoples. It is overall - degrees differing per E1b1b subtype – overall among Europeans a bit more common among people in Southern Europe, as studies show, with intriguing regional differences in for instance Spain. Yet, this DNA haplogroup is not a strictly South European or Mediterranean affair, as the maps with frequency of the above link show. Some of these also spread as north as well into Germany , England, Austria, or Czechia for instance. That Hitler had this DNA type, which is also found relatively frequent among Jews, including Albert Einstein, can be considered ironic, but it is a broad haplogroup.

The specific M81 “Berber” subtype map among these – points most directly to North African (Berber) genetic influence in Europe, relatively more frequent in South Europe. Regarding Spain, it oddly is relatively frequent even where the Moors (who were partly Berbers) did not rule that long (North Castile/León, Galicia), along with more predictable southern parts (Extremadura, Western Andalusia). Around Granada less, maybe because of repression, forced migration…or the Inquisition’s focus..who knows. Bethencourt indeed relates how after a rebellion “Moriscos” around Granada were forcibly removed and dispersed throughout what was then the kingdom of Castile. The Semitic (African/Middle Eastern) M123 subtype/haplogroup is also interestingly found in some regions more than others, but is a bit more frequent overall in the southern half of Europe.

Berber genes, you can conclude are found among many Spaniards and Portuguese, not just in the Canary islands. Another recent study found that 20% of all Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) people have some Sephardic, Jewish ancestry in their DNA. A higher percentage than many expected, and also regional differences that many did not expect (more in rural Aragón than in “more international” Catalonia for instance, higher in rural Extremadura than in other places). Like many scientific studies, the results and methods are not uncontested, but they are intriguing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/science/05genes.html

http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929708005922.pdf?intermediate=true (entire study article in PDF)

Like I already concluded earlier in this text, and almost needless to say: Spaniards are not “of pure blood”, neither “Aryan”, as it is called (but which is really a nonsensical term). One must furthermore not forget that African and Middle Eastern (Semitic) genes might have entered Spain already well before Roman or Moorish times, seeing its location, and Phoenician/Carthaginian historical presence. So it can also be seen as separate from “arrival of certain religions” (Jews, Muslims).

Then again: no ethnic group or group of people in the world really is “of pure blood”, no matter how isolated.

Looking at all these results for Europe – and to the other haplogroups on the Eupedia website -, it seems hard to see some consistency, beyond general tendencies. It is still an interesting website where people can for instance look at DNA results in the geographic place where their family roots happen to lie (just like I did), but also to know about the world in general.

South Europeans have overall somewhat more Middle Eastern and African DNA, with intriguing regional differences within countries. It points at migrations and mixtures due to social changes over time: from Africa to (West) Asia, then to Europe, within Europe and regions etcetera.

L HAPLOGROUP

There is one consistency, though. The main origin of all DNA in the L haplogroup of sub-Saharan Africa. Of all people in the world, including all Europeans. The Wikipedia article on this (Macro) L haplogroup is in this regard insightful. Again, a bit more found in Southern Europe (especially Iberia and South Italy), but indirectly at the root of all DNA of all Europeans and other humans in this world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro-haplogroup_L_(mtDNA)

These DNA studies show that man kind thus comes from Africa, and all people are essentially mixed. This proves once again the stupidity of racism in general, and the evil, “political” use of its moderate or hidden variants like ethnic/racial ideologies in some countries/regions, leading to superiority senses many people apparently need to have. This increased with Europe’s colonial project since 1492, somewhat ironically pioneered by an Italian (Columbus) and by Portugal and Spain – all countries with intensely mixed DNA and relatively much African and Middle Eastern admixture – , in tandem with the rise of organized, repressive, “conquering” religions like Christianity and Islam. This led to racial and cultural divisions and inequalities among human beings, because of lust for power, competition, the will to gain more territory, and war. Or: “political projects monopolizing specific economic and social resources” as Bethencourt described an origin of racism in the aforementioned book.

In other words, the “click”- in the symbolic sense of an equal, harmonious relationship – was lost between “Whites/Europeans” and “non-Whites/non-Europeans". Parallel to how “the click” - literally, as sound in the languages spoken by the oldest DNA bearing people in Africa - was lost in most later human languages.