Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversy over the race of Ethiopians

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 04:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy over the race of Ethiopians

There exists no such "controversy over the race of Ethiopians," as it does with that over Ancient Egyptians. The users who created and expanded this page are venturing into OR territory and creating a controversy where one does not exists (not to mention using incorrect information in doing so). If they want to include information on Ethiopian population genetics, there are already articles for that, namely People of Ethiopia and Demographics of Ethiopia, both of which are legitimate places for that information (and already do contain such information, at least the Demographics one). ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 09:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. There may have been such a discussion among 19th century colonial scholars, but there is certainly no such controversy today (except probably among marginal racialists). Discussions regarding the race (even the term "race" is not very useful today) of Ethiopians was constituent to the now scientifically obsolete Hamitic myth. Disputes motivated by the fixation on race by certain Wikipedians mustn't be allowed to allude the existence of a general controversy.--Ezeu 10:27, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. Talk about creating a non-issue for pov-pushing purposes! "Ethiopians" is not even the name of a race. Very poor scholarship here. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 12:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. This article is straight out of the 19th century. You don't have to be an anthropologist to know that this is full of obsolete uses of words like "race", "Negroid", and "Caucasoid". — MikeG (talk) 14:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as WP:OR. Batmanand | Talk 16:46, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - if such a historical controversy existed, it might merit a brief mention elsewhere, but the article as it stands is useless. Warofdreams talk 17:11, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This is undeniably a bizarre article. As Codex Sinaiticus pointed above, there is no one Ethiopian race; Ethiopia is a known crazy-quilt of ethnicities, religions & other complications. It also fails to note other documented motivations for thinking that "Ethiopians" were Caucasoid -- the best example being the Italian defeat at the Battle of Adowa. (Many European & American journalists could not believe that a bunch of, er, foreigners could defeat a European army.) Lastly, this article misuses a Fair-use image, & its creator used 2 proven sockpuppets to further develop it; those details make it hard to assume good faith over this article. -- llywrch 18:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep I find it ironic that Yom is the one who nominated this article to be deleted because it was his constant ranting and raving about a the controversy over Ethiopians on his talk page and elewhere that got me interested in the subject in the first place. A simple google search of Ethiopians and Caucasoid reveals a wealth of information on the topic. I created this article because I'm genuinely curious about whether Ethiopians are Caucasoid or not and was hoping to attract people who know more about the subject than I do to make contributions. Genetic journals in every major universities reveals dozens of major professors doing research on the race of Ethiopians, so if you do delete this article, you're doing so for personal reasons that have nothing to do with wikipedia's standards. There's also been marjor anthropological discoveries in Ethiopia that have revolutionized the field and have been covered very recently by CNN and major science magazines. Perhaps you could change the title to something more politically correct like "anthropology of Ethiopians" but racial issues concerning this one population are important enough to deserve their own article.--Whatdoyou 19:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I neither ranted nor raved on my talk age and elsewhere about a "controversy over the race of Ethiopians." My only discussions on the subject were when Cluckbang, who was relatively uninformed (thinking Ethiopians were the descendents of Sabaeans, which archaeology and genetics do not bear out), asked me about the matter on my talk page, whom I calmly answered. The studies on Ethiopians' genetic histories is not evidence of a controversy; you'll find many such studies on Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, etc. The reason why more studies exist on the population of Ethiopia than of some other Sub-Saharan African countries is because it was probably where modern human populations developed, and is therefore crucial in the study of genetics. Research into a topic does not a controversy make. "Anthropology of Ethiopians" would be a more appropriate title, but there are multiple diverse groups in Ethiopia, many of whom have yet to be studied; until the article becomes huge, there's no reason to split a genetic discussion from the already existing sections at People of Ethiopia or Demographics of Ethiopia. Note that this article is very clearly to support your own POV about Ethiopians, using dubious terms like "Caucasoid" and "Negroid" instead of actual lineages (note that such balances are used by defining some lineages that arose in Ethiopia as "Caucasoid," so as to deny genetic influene from Sub-Saharan Africa in places like Greece and Southeastern Europe). — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 19:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Actually I just added a genetic tree by Cavalli-Sforza which shows quite clearly that Ethiopians are Black/Negroid/sub-Saharan (whatever term you prefer) though obviously others differ. I don't create articles to support any POV. I create articles because I have genuine interest in subjects and want to have a convenient resource that summarizes all the relevant data and is constantly being updated by those in the know. The reason why I feel this article is needed is because there's just too much genetic, craniofacial, and anthroplogical data to fit into articles like People/demographics of Ethiopia, since these articles are focused on broader issues than just race (i.e. culture, religion, etc). And I didn't create this article to create a controversy. The controversy title was simply modeled after the controversy over race of ancient Egyptians article. I found that title to be quite funny, and thought it would be even funnier if it was turned into a series. Change the title if you want, but is not possible to preserve an article entirely dedicated to the complex and massive body of literature concerning the race of Ethiopians? This dispute comes up over and over again in many articles and creates many edit wars which is why a comprehensive reference to the subject is needed--Whatdoyou 20:10, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. This article reads like a really bad 18th century geography work, with caucasoids and the like. Move on, people.-Kmaguir1 09:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep: it was a very real controversy, as many references can attest, and should be discussed in historical context. FairHair 17:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Modified only Delete revised by me Ngwe 04:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC) (See comment below Ezeu's): (Original comment): FairHair is right that this topic deserves an historical article, provided that there is enough specific secondary literature to keep it from being original research. It should be an adjunct link to a main article on the history of racial thought, which is bound to be or to get large & result in spin-offs. The text would need to be junked and totally rewritten. Ideally the title should indicate that the controversy was historical. The introduction must state clearly that it is not a matter of serious contemporary controversy and that the racial ideas with which it was argued are now rejected by most scholars as incoherent and methodologically flawed. Otherwise teachers of African history & anthropology will have to waste additional hours undoing Wikipedia-derived misinformation (already a serious problem for African studies). New text should reflect not only historical context, as FairHair, says but restricted to explicating the historical ideas in context. The current article weirdly combines utterly outmoded racialist concepts with ideas that are treated seriously today by some human population biologists and physical anthropologists (though rejected or doubted by many others). This combination amounts to original if idiosyncratic research.Ngwe 18:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• Whatever there is to say about this supposed controversy can be mentioned in the People of Ethiopia article. A separate article is not warranted. The main problem with this article is that it is a fork created specifically to forward an agenda based on obsolete racialist POV. The title and the content alludes a dispute that does not exist, and is inherently missleading. It is easy to argue for an article to be kept, while suggesting that it be radically edited. The end result is often that no one actually radically edits the article, and when they try to, they meet strenuous opposition from the creators of the artice (who often fight hard to maintain the POV), with the result that the "original if idiosyncratic research" stays more or less as it is, and continues to spread disinformation. --Ezeu 19:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I am persuaded by Ezeu's & Mark's comments on what will actually happen. The search engine point had not occurred to me. Ezeu, when I first tried to respond but ended up closing the edit window without saving, apparently, I called the article a self-parody, esp. the idea that one could define race by skin color as "black", or "negroid" (from Spanish for black) and then by use of other putative racial distinction criteria, end up in effect with the proposition that Ethiopians are black whites -- whoa dude! I do not think there is any current controversy. However, the historic intellectual contortions of racialists in the colonial era to try to deny or minimize the "blackness" of Africans whose achievements they counted admirable by their own ethnocentric standards ("Hamitic hypothesis" etc.) is a significant historical phenomenon that needs to be in Wikipedia. I suspect you are right about the forking of this article as it stands in suggesting spuriously that a controversy exists today, & agree that Wikipedia should not be in the business of promoting such dicredited views in the present. Being new to Wikipedia, the distinction between such forking and the principle of creating new pages on sub-topics if a big topic gets too big is not always clear to me. So I accept what Mark says below about the way to approach a redefined historical topic. But I do think FairHair is right to point out that the historical phenomenon is a legitimate potential Wikipedia topic, provided the sources to which he/she refers are not all primary documents, though FairHair does not deal with the presentism of the current article. Ngwe 04:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. I largely agree with Cclowe's argument above, but I do think the article as it is is irredeemable and should be deleted. If someone wants to create a different, well-sourced, and verifiable article on the notable historical controversy, he or she is free to do so, but let's not leave the present highly problematic article up any longer only to be picked up by Google and other content scrapers. There is enough misinformation in the world, let's actually try and delete some. — mark ✎ 19:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.