For Your Consideration

No One Asked Me

I have never been to Africa. Neither have my father and mother or any of my grand parents or siblings. (My sister did take a one-moth vacation to Africa (Ghana, I think). She said she really liked it and that I should go. But she came back with a mild concussion from day- trips over the bumpy roads and had to be treated and watched for several weeks after her return. African-American does not fit me; it says nothing about me. And somehow it makes me less than American. African American was started with Malcolm X after his pilgrimage to the middle east, and it caught after his assassination. I like what Malcolm X stood for, but he never had authority to name me.

I was fine with Negro1. It was a simple anthropological classification. It had nothing to do with nationality. Nothing offensive about it. But Colored would also do. It stated a condition that differed from white. But both are no longer in technical use. On applications or survey forms they are no longer listed.2 I guess their correctness was thought too controversial, even if not offensive.

But I am more offended by Black. It is not that I am too light to be called Black, but I had no part in the naming. After all, there really are no black people or white people. Although I did go to high school with a guy so dark, we called him blue, but not to his face. But he was really more like a very dark dust.

Any way, what does it say about a people that accept a nick name from a self-declared but un-anointed leaders? Jesse Jackson and a few other civil rights leaders said we should be called black. Jessie probably has a rhyme about it. Another self-appointed leader might want to make us brown, dust, chocolate, or blue or some other color that better suits their mood of the moment. Are we so insignificant that we can be named and renamed by anyone who dares?

The Major Divisions of the Human Race

Most anthropologists recognize 3 or 4 basic races of man in existence today. These races can be further subdivided into as many as 30 subgroups.

Ethnographic division into races from Meyers Konversationslexikon of 1885-90 is listing:

Caucasian races (Aryans, Hamites, Semites)

Mongolian races (northern Mongolian, Chinese and Indo-Chinese, Japanese and Korean, Tibetan, Malayan, Polynesian, Maori, Micronesian, Eskimo, American Indian),

Negroid races (African, Hottentots, Melanesians/Papua, "Negrito", Australian Aborigine, Dravidians, Sinhalese)

Caucasion: Skull: Dolicephalic(Long-Head),High forehead,Little supraobital development.
Face: Mainly Leptoproscopic( Narrow)Sometimes Meso- or even Euryproscopic, Neither Facial nor alveolar prognathism occurs except among some archaic peoples.
Nose:Long,narrow,high in both root and bridge.

Mongoloid:
Skull: High incidence of Brachycephaly(Short Round Head)
American Indians while Mongoloid are often Dolicephalic.
Foreheads slightly lower than that of the Caucasoid.
No Supraobital development.
Face: Wide and short, projecting cheek bones, Prognathism rare. Shovel shaped incisors common especialy in Asia.
Nose: Mesorine(Low and Broad in both root and bridge.

　

Negroid: Skull: usually Dolicephalic, a small minority are Brachycephalic.
Forehead most often high, little supraobital development.
Face: Leproscopic (to a much lesser degree than the Caucasion), Prognathism common in most Negro populations.
Nose: Low & broad in root and bridge with characteristic depression at root.

Another popular division recognizes 4 major races

The world population can be divided into 4 major races, namely white/Caucasian, Mongoloid/Asian, Negroid/Black, and Australoid. This is based on a racial classification made by Carleton S. Coon in 1962. There is no universally accepted classification for "race", however, and its use has been under fire over the last few decades. The United Nations, in a 1950 statement, opted to "drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of "ethnic groups". In this case, there are more than 5,000 ethnic groups in the world, according to a 1998 study published in the Scientific American.

/SS/CG