Talk:Africoid peoples

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

↓    Skip to table of contents    ↓

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Africoid peoples article.
Article policies
This article is supported by WikiProject Anthropology.

This project provides a central approach to Anthropology-related subjects on Wikipedia.
Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the importance scale.
This article is part of WikiProject African diaspora. This WikiProject aims to improve the quality of articles related to topics concerning persons of African descent and their cultures. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the Wikipedia:WikiProject African diaspora for more information. (See: Category:WikiProject African diaspora for more pages in this project.)
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
Low This article has been rated as Low-Importance within African diaspora.

Considering this is a new and somewhat rarely used term, would anyone object to merging this with Negroid? That article already discusses the term 'Africoid'.--Pharos 13:42, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Removed the redirect, because the terms do not mean the same thing. deeceevoice 13:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] To do

Probably needs a section on the controversy about "Caucasoid" black Africans. And it needs citations/references -- but no time at the moment. deeceevoice 13:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge?

Is this a real word? I have never heard it. I was going to merge with Negroid but I'll give any editors working on this a chance to prove this is an encyclopedic concept. (An unsigned post by User: J jackson.)

That's easy. Use your search engine. deeceevoice 23:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Google reports no reliable sources, do you have any? J jackson
I've redirected to Negroid. The article Africoid had no references and google searches didn't return any reliable sources. J jackson 20:24, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Reversed. This is not an action that should be taken unilaterally. Yes, there's a need for references -- something already noted. But do not redirect simply because it suits you. deeceevoice 20:53, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

You've written the article and supplied no references. I can't find any references from reliable sources. What reasons are there for this to exist? J jackson 21:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

"Tanorexia" isn't found in a formal dictionary, either -- yet. But it can be googled and is used by physicians. It's considered a legitimate word.

Again, Google the term "Africoid." It's everywhere -- and it's in learned use. Author and historical scholar Runoko Rashidi uses it throughout his works. And he's not the only scholar. Nigerian political scientist and historian Prof. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe uses it: "Contrary to the dominant scholarly and popular cultural opinion at the time, Diop demonstrates in his research that Africans, Africoid peoples, were the indigenous peoples of Kemet who built the civilisation that has been a marvel to the world ever since."[1] Ekwe-Ekwe is also director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies in Senegal. Dr. Molefi Kete Asante uses it throughout his writings also. About Asante: "Dr. Molefi Kete Asante is Professor, Department of African American Studies at Temple University. Considered by his peers to be one of the most distinguished contemporary scholars, Asante has published 61 books, among the most recent are Encyclopedia of Black Studies, (2004), co-edited with Ama Mazama, Race, Rhetoric, and Identity: The Architecton of Soul, Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation, (2003), Ancient Egyptian Philosophers (2003), Scattered to the Wind, Custom and Culture of Egypt, and 100 Greatest African Americans. The second edition of his high school text, African American History: Journey of Liberation, 2nd Edition, (2001), is used widely throughout North America."[2]

It's a commonly used term in some circles and appears in scholarly research/books published by mainstream publishing houses. deeceevoice 22:16, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The first citation ou give is an afrocentrist diatribe, not a reliable source. It also doesn't support the text of the article as you've written it. The second citation doesn't mention "africoid" at all. Runoko Rashidi is an unnotable afrocentrist, again not a reliable source. If you didn't just make up the article why can't you provide any citations for where you got this definition? J jackson 22:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Your attempt to dismiss these three gentlemen is absurd on its face. Their legitimacy as respected, widely read and published scholars doesn't depend upon your personal imprimatur. And, contrary to what some misguided "contributors" at this website wrongheadedly infer and seek to imply, the term "Afrocentrist" is not an inherently derogatory or dismissive term. I've provided ample proof that the term is in widespread use. deeceevoice 08:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I think J jackson has a good point. Wikipedia doesn't allow original research, so even if the term is in widespread use, if you can't find it defined anywhere, it cannot be allowed. Where did you find a definition or explanation of the term Africoid? johnpseudo 15:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

J Jackson hasn't said anything new that is worthwhile/valid. What he's done is slap a label on some prominent historians and scholars, challenging the existence of the term -- because he seems to have a problem with Afrocentrism, generally -- when it is quite clear the term is a legitimate one. He's simply and clearly a sock puppet of an existing user, or the alter ego of one who claims to have left the project, with the same old axe to grind about articles with which I'm involved, on black subject matter. With regard to the definition, I've already acknowledged the need for citations. See my comments to myself under "To do." But I'm in the middle of deadlines at the moment. Will get to it soon. deeceevoice 15:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I do see that J Jackson has a questionable user history, and I disagree with his assetion that no reliable sources refer to the term 'Africoid'. From what I've read, the terms 'Negroid' and 'Africoid' are indeed used widely in scholarly articles, and they seem to indicate different meanings. Although I've been unable to find a definition online, your definition seems believable enough to me, and you definitely deserve the benefit of the doubt. For the time being, it's my opinion that the "unreferenced" template is sufficient. johnpseudo 17:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Recommend keep for now in view of some mainstream scholarship in relation to the term Africoid. Enriquecardova 07:14, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's alveolar prognathism?

The last setence of the 2nd paragraph of the "Inclusive term" section currently reads:

Similarly, other black African peoples commonly considered Negroid, such as the Senegalese also may lack alveolar prognathism.

...but can someone say what "alveolar prognathism" is? Please remember that the target audience can't be assumed to know the jargon of every field of study. Gronky 01:53, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what (if anything) "alveolar" adds here, but "prognathism" is having the lower jaw forward relative to the face. - Jmabel | Talk 22:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I've removed "alveolar" and added a description of what "prognathism" means. Hopefully someone else can improve the article further some time. Gronky 12:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wording

A section begins, "A broader term, Africoid is used to describe…" Broader than what? It reads like it was cut from some other context. - Jmabel | Talk 22:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. I think it's a redacted form of my earlier language. (I wrote the stub.) I've fixed that. deeceevoice 12:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Genetics and the Africoid map

User:Taharqa reverted my edits on this edit because s/he considered it to be "vandalism", but I justified my actions under two policies: WP:NOR and WP:CFORK. The map of the "Africoid" is original research. It was made of the map that I produced of Carleton Coon's racial definitions, but the author of this new map created a new Africoid category by combining the Negroid and Capoid races in Coon's racial system. Also, the author of this new map labeled North Africans as Africoid whereas Coon considered them Caucasoid. The Africoid map is clearly prohibited original research, so I removed it. Second, the genetic section is a content fork which does not adequately describe the whole issue of genetics. Both sides of the debate are presented equally on the Race and genetics article. Too often racial articles have a genetics section which presents genetic information as a racial determiner without the oppossing point of view that race cannot be determined by genetics. This makes the information a content fork of the race and genetics article, so the presentation of genetic information to support the existence of race is a prohibited content fork, laying the grounds for its removal.----DarkTea© 11:42, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


Dark tea writes: User:Taharqa reverted my edits on this edit because s/he considered it to be "vandalism", but I justified my actions under two policies: WP:NOR and WP:CFORK. The map of the "Africoid" is original research. It was made of the map that I produced of Carleton Coon's racial definitions, but the author of this new map created a new Africoid category by combining the Negroid and Capoid races in Coon's racial system. Also, the author of this new map labeled North Africans as Africoid whereas Coon considered them Caucasoid. The Africoid map is clearly prohibited original research, so I removed it.

One thing that you seemingly fail to realize that counters every objection you make here. The page is fully cited with dozens of researchers supporting the African variant approach, in that it merely designates variants which arose in Africa. If these said "Caucasoids" who inhabit North Africa, according to the now discredited Carlton Coon, are indeed "Caucasoid", it is not a contradiction to the Africoid position that indigenous Africans, those Africans who migrated from the Equator and settled in North Africa and adapted there with limited gene flow from Europeans or southwest asians, are "Africoids" as these variants arose in Africa! Not the Caucasus. Again, sources are cited and Coon has been discredited by modern day anthropology. He didn't even believe in the Out-Of-Africa model for human origins and believed in some "white race" to be the result of hybridization between homo sapiens and Neanderthals. He is not an authority and can be easily contradicted, and is. It is not original research since adherents of this proposition are cited and the map illustrates the concept.


Dark tea writes:

Second, the genetic section is a content fork which does not adequately describe the whole issue of genetics. Both sides of the debate are presented equally on the Race and genetics article. Too often racial articles have a genetics section which presents genetic information as a racial determiner without the oppossing point of view that race cannot be determined by genetics. This makes the information a content fork of the race and genetics article, so the presentation of genetic information to support the existence of race is a prohibited content fork, laying the grounds for its removal.


My goodness, were you mindlessly blanking, or did you actually read the article? Both sides are definitely presented with neutrality and is reflective of mainstream consensus. The genetics section is definitely not used as a stone to support any definitive concepts of race, and criticisms are noted. Besides, if you have conflicting information, the best thing to do is present it, not completely blank stuff out! For what? I'm having a hard time understanding that. In any event, you shouldn't have much conflicting data as this is from the article (pay attention to the bold print):


Some reseachers hold that older racial categories and stereotypical definitions are still in use, plugged with data not from older style cranium measurements, but modern DNA studies. Controversial categories like Extra-European Caucasoid to incorporate various North African peoples like the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and others, for example, have drawn criticism from some scholars along these lines. [11] Other DNA studies in turn throw doubt on "classical" racial categories. The nuclear DNA work of researcher Ann Bowcock (1991, 1994) for example, suggests that such primary groupings as Europeans may be flawed, and that such peoples arose as a consequence of admixture between certain already differentiated African and Asian ancestral stocks. Under this approach to the DNA data, Caucasians are thus not a primary grouping as in the classical categories, but a secondary type or race, due to their supposedly hybrid origins.[12][13]

Anthropologists such as Lieberman and Jackson (1995), also find numerous methodological and conceptual problems with using DNA sequencing methods such as cladistics to support concepts of race. They hold for example that: "the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories in their initial grouping of samples They suggest that the authors of these studies find support for racial distinctions only because they began assuming the validity of race (Leiberman and Jackson 1995 "Race and Three Models of Human Origins" in American Anthropologist 97(2) 231-242)

^So forgive me for having a difficult time in understanding your point, since it seems misguided.Taharqa 19:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DNA info is relevant to article

The DNA info should stay and appears to be relevant for two reasons:

  • Modern DNA studies show the broad range of African population variation and relationships. This is used by supporters of the term Africoid to illustrate that separations of African peoples into pre-assigned racial catergories are arbitrary and show the double standard of the "true negro" classifications.
  • At the same time, the modern DNA studies also call into question various Afrocentic theories such as phenotypic linking of people like Australoids and sub-Saharan Africans.

The genetic info does not attempt to cover all sides of the race debate. It deals with those issues raised by users of the term Africoid. Indeed one supporter of the term Africoid is quoted directly and he uses genetics as part of his overall argument.

There is thus no content forking. A content fork is defined as "unintentional creation of several separate articles all treating the same subject." That is clearly not the case here, which involves a limited topic and a single article, with authors and info that directly tie-in. There is no "original research" involved. The citations are by well established published authors. Wiki articles do not have to present every possible point of view on related issues. The genetic info thus have a bearing on both sides of the coin- pro and con, and should stay in place, allowing the reader to make up his or her mind rather than arbitrarily removing it. The section should clearly show this balanced approach. I have made some edits to that effect.


On the map, I have no strong preference pro or con but there does appear to be a double standard at work. The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carleton_S._Coon contains a similar map, that was submitted by one Dark Tichondrias but as should be noticed there seems to be no problem with that one, even though it is clearly put together on someone's computer and makes no citation to any Coon work. It could be argued that the drawing is based on certain theories of Coons. Fine. But stangely, when a similar map based on the theories of Cheikh Anta Diop is put forward, suddenly it is alleged to be in violation of a number of things. No explanation is given as to why the Coons map is exempt while the map based on Diop is not. Lexmark312 16:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming and photos

I've renamed the article. See my rationale here.[3]

I like the direction this piece has taken, generally. Good work on expanding -- and documenting -- what was a stub. But it needs photos to show exactly the kind of phenotypical diversity described in the article. Peace. deeceevoice 12:14, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This article is indeed very biased

The article begins by stating the Afrocentric view on a given issue, and then providing the critics' view on the same issue. This system works very well up until the 'Criticism of race categorization' section, which, as the name implies, marks the start of a systematic effort to negate every last rebuttal to the initial Afrocentric assertions. For example, the article states that Afrocentrists believe that the 'Senegalese also may lack prognathism' despite being 'commonly considered Negroid'. The critics' counter to that assertion as cited in the article is that 'the Wolof people of Senegal possess considerable Caucasoid maternal admixture which could very well explain their relative lack of prognathism'. That should have been the end of that point with both sides having had their respective views expressed. However, the 'Criticism of race categorization' section proceeds to mention that 'in the case of the Wolof and other African peoples, ...the differences found among the Africoid peoples are simply localized variations that do not rely on any mixture from an assortment of discrete races' - a quite blatant attempt to negate the initial critical counter to the Afrocentric view. This section and most of the ones that follow it are but very poorly disguised attempts at continuing the same Afrocentric view, but this time without providing any critical passages to counterbalance that view. Even the sources cited are similar if not identical: The Afrocentrist Cheikh Anta Diop continues to be cited as a legitimate authority just like he is in the passages that begin 'Afrocentrists argue that...' Given all this, I don't think it's unreasonable to let Wikipedia readers know just what they are being subjected to by including a tag warning them of the fundamentally biased and unscholarly nature of this article. The real question is whether this is enough. Soupforone (talk) 08:11, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


Cannot agree with claim as to article bias. Instead it is the opposite. A number of different theories are presented relating to the topic, allowing the reader to make up his or her mind. Not all is perfect. In fact there are a number of unsupported statements that need more checking.

  • You say that an Afrocentric view is listed, then a counter view and that should be the end of the matter. Has it ever occured to you that there may be MORE THAN ONE counterview? Encyclopedia articles are not written in two paragraphs. There are initial points, and follow-up points by different people, exploring different angles of the issue. This is what scholarship is all about. Just because one scholar says something, and another says something else, does not end an article. There may be a THIRD scholar saying something different that may challenge the first two.
  • You mention the Senegal/Wolof example. Excellent. Let's look at it. The statement itself in the article is without foundation. Whoever put in that statement does not even provide a verifable reference. They simply assert that "the Wolof people of Senegal possess considerable Caucasoid maternal admixture which could very well explain their relative lack of prognathism." There is no credible, verifable references. Is it really the case that the Wolof have that much lack of prognathism? How much is a lot? In comparison to what? It would be nice if this claim is backed up with a verifable reference that can be cross-checked. But it isn't. That's definitely a point to be scrutinized in the future.
  • You say that the critics of race categorization are Afrocentrists. This is not so. In fact they are among the critics of Afrocentrism. Some Afrocentric writers such as Cheikh Anta Diop for example, divide Africoid populations into two branches, "Negroid" and "Dravidian" with the Dravidian populations showing very dark skin color but greater variability of facial features. To quote Diop:
"There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian." (from Ivan van Sertima, The African Presence in Early Asia) [1]
Diop's split definition here is challenged by such mainstream scholars as Kittles and Keita (1997) and Hiernaux (1975) who show that some of the most ancient East African populations have a number of so-called "Dravidian" characteristics, including narrow noses.[2]. It is also challenged by Templeton (1999) who questions the usefulness of assigned racial checkboxes given the diversity of the human species.
In essence, the analysis of these mainstream scholars kicks over Diop's claim as regards the Dravidians. An aquiline nose, thin lips, and variable hair is found in some of the oldest populations of East Africa, and have been so noted a far back as the early 1970s. They are no more "Dravidian" than they are Swedish. These same scholars also dispute the Afrocentric claim that Polynesians, New Guinea peoples, Dravidians from India or Australoids have some sort of special link with Sub-Saharan Africans because some of them have black skin and frizzy hair. While they may have some outward resemblance, objective DNA analysis as a whole puts such peoples closer to Southeast Asia rather than Africans. Again, the mainstream scholars referenced, Keita, Kittles, Hiernaux, Armelagos, Templeton etc question Afrocentrist claims.
  • You say in one edit: "Diop, Rashidi et al.'s theories aren't presented as Afrocentric theories but as authoritative." Where exactly is this being done? Diop is mentioned a grand total of 3 times in the article, none of which presents his views as "authoritative". They are presented as his own view, with a citation to his own work and theories. Can you explain how Diop is being passed off as an authority, and if so, in what field? If anything, the article refutes the claims of Diop as to the Australoid, Dravdian peoples, and mentions that the more race-neutral scholars contradict Afrocentric claims. Can you explain how he is being presented as authoritative when various sections of the article clearly question this claim?


  • You also say that: "The Afrocentrist Cheikh Anta Diop continues to be cited as a legitimate authority just like he is in the passages that begin 'Afrocentrists argue that..." How so? In the example you give, it discusses Diop claim that "that certain African peoples exhibit physical characteristics beyond the scope of the classic Negroid phenotype.." If the passage begins with "Afrocentrists argue" and cites Diop's work, how is that a "bad" thing? The very words "Afrocentrists argue" clearly presents the argument as COMING FROM AFROCENTRISTS, not from say Egyptologists at the well-known Chicago Oriental Institute. I do not understand your claim on this point. How is a clear statement of an argument put forward by a clearly identified biased party a citation of "legitimate authority"? Please explain.
  • You also say such statements as: "the differences found among the Africoid peoples are simply localized variations that do not rely on any mixture from an assortment of discrete races'.." is a blatant attempt to negate the afrocentric counter. How so? As noted above the statement contradicts Diop's Dravdian claim. It is also based on the writings of respected mainstream scholars published in peer-reviewed journals. Are you saying these experienced scholars are wrong, but your view is correct? How so? Please explain..
  • You also say that various paragraphs are "without providing any critical passages to counterbalance that view. Even the sources cited are similar if not identical.." How is this so? In the lines following, there are at least 6 different citations from mainstream peer-reviewed journals, spread between 4 different authors. How can they thus be similar as you say? In the same section you mention, there is a statement explicitly saying that the scholars referenced disagree with Afrocentrists on some points- quote: "This more race neutral view contradicts the assertions of some Afrocentrics as to idealized racial types.." But yet you maintain that there is complete agreement- despite the explicit statement in the passage saying that there isn't. How do you explain the discrepancy between the clear citation in the passage and your claim?
  • As regards Diop, several mainstream white scholars also raise the same questions CA Diop raised. for example, Diop questioned why an ulta-white blonde Swede and dark Italian were considered to be of the same race, but when it came to African peoples, then the same rule did not apply. Africans like Somalias or Nubians or Ethiopians were considered "different," with a different set of rules being used. They were caterogized as people of totally different races, even if they lived within a few hundred miles of one another. Why the double-standard he asked? The same criticisms of racism, inconsistency, hypocrisy etc of much scholarship on African peoples have been made by white scholars from Verncoutter, CY Adams, Frank Yurco, Bruce Trigger to Basil Davidson. The history of the field shows much bias- from the discredited Aryan models, to the Hamitic Hypothesis, to modern era variants that some hold, still use some of the same methods, with different terminology applied. These criticsympathetic to isms are echoed by scholars such as Kittles, Keita, Templeton, Armelagos etc. Has it ever occurred to you that those who question the methods and models used in the field might have the same concerns over methods and models as Afrocentrists? Just because they have similar criticisms, does not mean they are Afrocentrists.


I am glad you came to the Talk Page to actually explain your view and I commend you for pointing out the unreferenced, unsupported Wolof example as well. Cannot agree however as to your points above. Outparcelss (talk) 08:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


No, I have not said nor do I say 'the critics of race categorization are Afrocentrists'. I'm saying the section labeled 'Criticism of race categorization' in this article and most of the ones that follow it are biased. I'm saying they devote an unseemly amount of space in an attempt to negate and/or neutralize the counterarguments to the Afrocentric claims first introduced in the preceding sections. I would have no problem with a third party contributing their two cents if the net effect is not to tip the NPOV in favor of an existing view, which the aforementioned edits definitely do with regard to the Afrocentric POV.

You write that Diop's 'split definition' of what he considers 'Africoid' populations is challenged by the 'mainstream' scholars Keita and Kittles as well as Hiernaux. The problem with this is that none of those men are mainstream at all, and are, in fact, regularly cited by Afrocentrists to advance their cause. The African American Keita, for example, while perhaps not as obvious about his agenda as, say, Diop, still operates conspicuously enough to earn the descriptor 'evidently more sympathetic to Afrocentric ideas than are Brace and his co-workers' from the Oxford historian Stephen Howe in his Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. Keita also has a nasty habit of obscuring facts to try and make things appear as they are not. Take this quote from a recent paper of his:

The M2 lineage is mainly found primarily in "eastern", "sub-saharan", and sub-equatorial African groups, those with the highest frequency of the "Broad" trend physiognomy, but found also in notable frequencies in Nubia and Upper Egypt, as indicated by the RFLP TaqI 49a, f variant IV (see Lucotte and Mercier, 2003; Al-Zahery et al. 2003 for equivalencies of markers), which is affiliated with it. The distribution of these markers in other parts of Africa has usually been explained by the "Bantu migrations", but their presence in the Nile Valley in non-Bantu speakers cannot be explained in this way. Their existence is better explained by their being present in populations of the early Holocene Sahara, who in part went on to people the Nile Valley in the mid-Holocene, according to Hassan (1988); this occured long before the "Bantu migrations", which also do not explain the high frequency of M2 in Senegal, since there are no Bantu speakers there either.

Notice how he claims that there are 'notable' frequencies of E3a-M2 in Nubia and Upper Egypt, but never bothers to cite actual percentages to let readers decide for themselves whether or not that alleged presence is indeed 'notable'. That's a smart policy on his part cause as it turns out, E3a-M2 is scarcely observed in Sudan and it's found at a frequency of less than 9% in Egypt where its presence is attributed to the slave trade - not to 'populations of the early Holocene Sahara':

The NRY composition of the Egyptian and Omani collections exhibits a greater Middle Eastern versus sub-Saharan affinity. The cumulative frequency of typical sub-Saharan lineages (A, B, E1, E2, E3a, and E3b*) is 9% in Egypt and 10% in Oman, whereas the haplogroups of Eurasian origin (Groups C, D, and F–Q) account for 59% and 77%, respectively. ...NRY markers typical of the current sub-Saharan Africa (E3a*-M2 and derivatives) are represented by low frequencies in Egypt and Oman and, thus, may be a recent acquisition, at least in part, from the slave trade.

As for Hiernaux, his work on so-called 'elongated Africans' from over thirty years ago has long been discredited. He based many of his conclusions in his book The People of Africa on measurements he borrowed directly from Carlton Coon's The Races of Europe published almost a half-century earlier. He also claimed that Tutsis represented the ancestors of modern East Africans:

The oldest remains of Homo sapiens sapiens found in East Africa [resemble] several living populations of East Africa, like the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a number of body proportions. There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. They should not be considered closely related to Europeans. [...] In skin colour, the Tutsi are darker than the Hutu, in the reverse direction to that leading to the caucasoids. Lip thickness provides a similar case: on an average the lips of the Tutsi are thicker than those of the Hutu.

The problem with this assertion is that, according to Luis et al. 2004, over 80% of Tutsis carry the E3a haplogroup characteristic of west, central, southern, and southeastern Africans, but less than 3% carry the E3b haplogroup which characterizes northeast African populations. The small presence of E3b in the Tutsi population, moreover, is thought to be 'a legacy left by earlier inhabitants'. The Tutsis therefore could not have been 'ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'.'

The notion that there even is such a category as 'elongated East Africans' has also been dismissed by several prominent scientists. The pioneering geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza had the following to say about the term in his book The History and Geography of Human Genes:

The analysis, however, does not confirm the category of 'elongated Africans,' which seems to correspond to differences of a lower order compared with those considered here. ...The similarity between Nilotics and Bantus, incidentally, disposes of the hope that the 'elongated Africans' might correspond to a clearly separate genetic group.

But it's the anthropologist C. Loring Brace that pretty much kills the theory when he highlights the fact that the elongated limbs of northeastern Africans are, to quote from the article, 'strictly an adaptive response to living in a tropical environment and not a sign of shared racial ancestry with neighboring black groups as has been proposed':

The elongation of the distal segments of the limbs is also clearly related to the dissipation of metabolically generated heat. Because heat stress and latitude are clearly related, one would expect to find a correlation between the two sets of traits that are associated with adaptation to survival in areas of great ambient temperature, namely, skin color and limb proportions. This is clearly the case in such areas as Equatorial Africa, the tropical portions of South Asia, and northern Australia, although there is little covariation with other sets of inherited traits. In this regard it is interesting to note that the limb proportions of the Predynastic Naqada in Upper Egypt are reported to be "super-Negroid", meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans. It would be just as accurate to call them "super-Veddoid" or "super-Carpentarian" because skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics. The term "super-tropical" would be better, as it implies the results of selection associated with a given latitude rather than the more "racially loaded" term "Negroid.

Note that I have no problem with the inclusion of the section labeled 'Africoid as a term incorporating Oceanic, Dravidian and Australoid peoples'. On the contrary, I thinks it's absolutely necessary since it serves to counterbalance the Afrocentric claim that the aforementioned people are genetically related to Blacks solely due to similar hair texture or nose shape, a point which hasn't been made elsewhere in the article.

What I take issue with, for one, is the 'Criticism of race categorization' section, which is exclusively devoted to negating and/or neutralizing all the counterarguments to the Afrocentric claims enumerated in the preceding sections of the article. At one point, Diop is even presented as a 'writer' rather than an 'Afrocentric writer', with a phrase asking 'why are European populations conceived of as varying so widely in skin color, features, hair, and other indices but not Africoids' -- note how the phrase presupposes that the term 'Africoid' is a valid concept, an unmistakable sign of bias -- attributed to him in the reference section yet said to be an 'echo' of sentiments shared by the allegedly 'race neutral' African Americans Keita and his colleague Kittles in the body of the article.

The introductory sentences to the section labeled 'Africoid as an approach to overcome bias in previous scholarship' are not a problem since an effort is made here to let it been known that it is primarily Afrocentrists who believe in the validity of the 'Africoid' concept. However, what this section could use are counterarguments from critics to air the other side of the story. This is even more true of the section labeled 'Use of racial categories in modern DNA studies', which begins by stating that 'some supporters of the term Africoid point to...' but quickly abandons that necessary identifier and goes on to quote from studies without bothering to point out that it's still Afrocentrists that hold that 'modern DNA studies have in many ways undermined traditional racial categories in favor of a population variant/gradient or continuum approach'. That entire section supports the Afrocentric view, and its phrases should therefore be prefaced with something along the lines of 'Afrocentrists hold that...'. Those phrases should then be followed by counterarguments from critics for balance.

In addition, the section labeled 'Scholarly use of the term Africoid descriptive of local populations' features yet another quote from our notoriously forthright scholar Keita, this time evoking a handful of cases of authors using non-traditional terms some 30+ years ago with regard to racial classification to support his own championing of the distinctly Afrocentric term 'Africoid'. The section labeled 'Africoid as an approach to show population diversity' also makes very little effort to conceal its author's bias. The section begins with the couplet 'modern re-analyses of previous studies shows a clear tendency to sometimes minimize variability within certain northeast African populations. This range of variation is the building block of the concept of Africoid populations, as opposed to their rigid separation into groupings like so-called "Caucasoid" and sub-Saharan Negroes.' The writer is quite clearly endorsing the Afrocentric term 'Africoid' without even bothering to mention that it is primarily Afrocentrists that feel the term Africoid a) has any validity, and b) is superior to the supposedly 'rigid separation into groupings like so-called 'Caucasoid' and sub-Saharan Negroes.' The author even made sure to include the rarely used term 'sub-Saharan Negroes' instead of the common 'Negroid' companion to 'Caucasoid', ostensibly for shock value. This is quite possibly the least objective, and most biased section of the entire article right after the 'Criticism of race categorization' section.

That said, judging by the pictures of the Wolof I've personally seen, I would have to agree with you that the assertion that even a portion of that population is the product of admixture beggars belief. Indeed, the largest modern study on prognathism in world populations suggests otherwise. Soupforone (talk) 01:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

  • On the section in question, it represents the "Third Force" of writers- Kittles, Templeton, Keita, Armelagos, Boyce etc - those who adhere to a view of Africoids that calls for avoiding race classifications, holding that they are not useful in studying such populations. The other forces in the mix are those who want to maintain racial classifications and Afrocentrics who have their ownideas about categories ot use. I think the reader should see all these schools of thought side by side and thus be better informed.
  • As for the term Africoid, it is not a monopoly of Afrocentrics. In fact it is used mainstream scholar S. Keita, himself a critic of Afrocentrists. Again, I think the reader should be able to see and contrast all three schools of thought. For the Afrocentrics, Africoid takes in all black peoples - from Africa to Australia to India, and is involves their oppression by white hegemony (Chancellor Williams for example as cited). For Keita however, the term Africoid does not mean any of those those things but rather the idea that African peoples can vary in how they look as part of the routine population diversity of Africa. Keita uses the Out oF Africa evolutionary model, maintaining that such diversity should be expected at the source.
This "third way" approach criticizes the obsession with blackness or whiteness, and criticizes the notion of a worldwide black race from Australia to Africa, and calls for looking at local populations as they are, on the ground. Templeton, Armelagos etc etc reflect similar sentiments. So when you say the term Africoid is not valid, this is not the case. It is a term appearing in the mainstream scholarly literature as a descriptive term for African populations and their bio-diversity. Other researchers are using it, but in quite a different manner than the Afrocentrics and their world-wide phenotype theories. The reader of the article should be informed about these distinctions so that they better understand the term.
  • On the Elongated African of Hiernaux in 1975, his Tutsi model as you say has been questioned but his basic idea that African peoples were not one stereotypical monotype but are a diversity of types that vary in how they look has been supported down to the present time in Kittles (1997), Keita (1999 etc) Tishkoff (2004) et al. You say the claim was dismissed and offer a quote by Cavalli- Sforza. But the quote itself does not dismiss Hiernaux as such. It says ".. does not confirm the category of 'elongated Africans,' which seems to correspond to differences of a lower order compared with those considered here." But all Cavalli is saying here is that at his particular level of analysis, which has been challenged by others as noted above, he did not find the category, but that the category itself was at another, lower level. In other words he does not deny the existence of the category at all. He just didn't find it at whatever study design level he was working with. Others who ran other studies, at their own design levels, support the work of Hiernaux.
Also note the second part of the quote: "the similarity between Nilotics and Bantus, incidentally, disposes of the hope that the 'elongated Africans' might correspond to a clearly separate genetic group." The only thing is, neither Hiernaux, Keita, Boyce etc ever claimed that elongateds were a "separate gentic group." In fact quite the opposite. They held that they are part of a continuum of African peoples- varying in how they look. It is supporters of the racial Aryan model that continually split and dice up such populations into separate groups.
You also say Brace kills the idea, but actually the same reasoning by Brace is used by other scholars to refute his conclusion. Brace attributes differences to climate conditions etc rather than shared race ancestry. His conclusion would also seem to refute theories of race mixing explaining the physical variation. Anyway, Kittles and Keita, also note the importance of clines, but maintain that persons of the same local population group can share different characteristics and that this is due to clinal factors. In other words, you can be both- you can have shared genes, and also be affected by climate factors. So for example, white Scots can have large instances of red hair and very pale skin. A Portugese may not have as much red hair or pale skin. They are usually seen however as one population group, sharing common genes, even though climate factors may make the Portugese "Mediterranean" skin and hair, on the average, comparatively darker. They are still held by many scholars to be one European population continuity.
Local African populations hold Keita and Kittles are similar. They are one continuity- they vary, just like everyone else around the world. Thus East Africans have tropical body proportion, but many tribes also have narrow noses as an adaptation to higher altitudes. The two exist side by side, and are cshare culture and genes. In other words, Africans are not weird special cases. They vary just like everyone else in how they look. So the arguments by Brace, and Cavalli, are arguments contradicted or refuted by other mainstream scholars. And in turn there are counter arguments, and counters to the counters.
  • You say that: "it's still Afrocentrists that hold that 'modern DNA studies have in many ways undermined traditional racial categories in favor of a population variant/gradient or continuum approach'". Actually this is not the case at all. Several white mainstream researchers of the "Third Force" hold this view. In fact they criticize some modern DNA studies for methodology that they feel, downplays, minimizes or stereotypes the full diversity of the African peoples. These white scholars also criticize older theories in the field such as the Hamitic Hypothesis and the racial Aryan Models of Carleton Coons and CG. Seligman. They call for a non-racial approach to studying these peoples, that does not dice them up into neat race checkboxes and percentages.
They are especially critical of some of the methods used to do so. Liberman and Jackson 1995 are referenced in the article. Here is an extended quote from their published work where they criticize certain DNA race models:
'"the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories in their initial grouping of samples. For example, 'the large and highly diverse macroethnic groups of East Indians, North Africans, and Europeans are presumptively grouped as Caucasians prior to the analysis of their DNA variation. This limits and skews interpretations, obscures other lineage relationships, deemphasizes the impact of more immediate clinal environmental factors on genomic diversity, and can cloud our understanding of the true patterns of affinity." (Leiberman and Jackson 1995 "Race and Three Models of Human Origins" in American Anthropologist 97(2) 231-242)
In other words, they argue, some researchers are taking DNA samples and grouping them into preferred race categories ahead of time, before they even start to run the DNA analysis. Such methods produce very skewed interpretations. Classifying North African peoples like Ethiopians as "white" for example before even beginning an analysis would be a practical example of such skewed methods. So you see, you do not have to be Afrocentric to criticize some of the race research going on in the field. Many DNA studies on Africoid peoples have been criticized for how they classify what genes are "black" and what are "white" or whatever labels are used by the a particular researcher.
  • You say that the quote by the "notorious" S. Keita where he mentions the term 'Africoid" is "non-traditional" and supports Afrocentrism. Again, let me repeat, the term "Africoid" is not a monopoly of Afrocentrists. As for "non-traditional terms, they appear all the time in scholarly literature. Authors define them, which Keita does, and let it be said that Keita is a respected mainstream scholar, who as noted above is critical of a number of claims advanced by Afrocentrists.
  • You object to the use of non-traditional terms, but a scholar you cite aprovingly does exactly the same thing. Note that the scholar Brace also uses non-traditional terms in the article and he is quoted at length: "It would be just as accurate to call them "super-Veddoid" or "super-Carpentarian" because skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics. The term "super-tropical" would be better, as it implies the results of selection associated with a given latitude rather than the more "racially loaded" term "Negroid. In this quote, the scholar uses 3 non-traditonal terms which he holds are preferable to "Negroid". So you see, it is nothing unusual.


The above being said, you have presented an impressive amount of information on the issue. If therefore you want to adjust the section in question, keeping in mind the concerns noted above, and the need for balance I would be open to it. You would have to harmonize with the section above- with the Wolof claim, etc..Outparcelss (talk) 05:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)