Hi, SDAI--

Why a British link? Because the British have a much broader range of experiences in Africa than the Americans. The depth of their scholarship in this region is greater because they explored, traded with, made treaties with tribes living in, and eventually ruled quite a bit of Africa. They also have the best record of any of the colonial powers in their organized dealings with the indiginous inhabitants, the infamous problem of South Africa and Rhodesia notwithstanding.

Does the website demonize the Arabs, the French and the Americans in general, or only in regard to the slave trade? Is "demonizing" a synonym for "condemning a wide-spread practice"? After what I have been reading here for the past few months, I find it hysterical to read that the poor Arabs are being demonized for their past practice of trafficking in African slaves. Is the verb "to demonize" only used correctly if in the past tense?

It is these little things that make it seem all so one-sided and try to play upon the guilt of the modern westerner - to follow their agenda, give up their money, and more importantly - forever get him/her to hold their tongue and not speak freely about these affairs, so as to exploit the modern man/woman as much as did the slave trade exploit the African continent.

OK, back up.

First, civilizations with large buildings and documented contacts with distant cultures (like China) are not "little things", nor are they easy to manufacture or fake. This falls in the "anything is possible" category, along with Edgar Cayce.

Second, correcting a record that, for a couple of hundred years at least, one-sidedly painted Africans as the Little Rascals' Buckwheat or as missionary-boiling savages is actually pulling popular imagination closer to the center by presenting a counterbalance to the former propaganda. We all still know about the cannibals. We can still see them on Bugs Bunny. You will not, btw, see me involved in a crusade to censor Looney Tunes on this subject or any other, ever.

Third, people can only be shut up three ways: execution, imprisonment, or intimidation. Anyone who is intimidated into silence by a website hasn't got a firm attachment to his or her own beliefs and behaviors. Me speaking my mind here has not, I notice, cowed anyone into silence. So too with opinions expressed in larger forums. Let those whose opinions differ go out and do the work to back themselves up, use their right of free speech if it means that much to them.

Fourth, saving the best for last, how can you even begin to draw a parallel between using media outlets to sway public opinion and the physical enslavement of millions of human beings? Are you saying that all exploitation is equal? (I will posit that the media manipulates people. They advertize. It's their job.) When you can demonstrate for me that the average slave had the equivalent of the remote control, the ability to talk back, the ability to withhold services (as moderns can boycott in the face of media content they dislike), the ability to click away, then talk to me again. I can turn my TV off tomorrow. People will think I'm a freak, but people have thought that before and I've lived. No one will send men with dogs and guns to my house to make me turn it on. Geez, guy.

Yes the global market is no longer wanting to see a blond-haired, european upturned nose beauty with blue eyes, seeking marriage and home(land?;-) security.

Haven't been paying much attention to the world of magical girl manga and anime lately, have you? ;)

The global media market was a lot smaller and a lot more, um, white when the movies were introduced. Demographic marketing is finally catching up with demographics. A woman my age said to me, when Beauty and the Beast first came out, that she was glad that, unlike her childhood, there was finally a Disney heroine with brown eyes for her brown-eyed daughter to see. She had noticed this in her 1950s childhood. Brown eyes were prevalent then, as now.

I could also make a case for anti-blonde propaganda in Disney films: why are the dark-haired heroines the only ones who rescue themselves? But I'm a brunette, so I won't. ;)

Must we kill in-depth news content and replace it with "reality television" set in jungles and with lots of "real" yet theatrical primitive barbarism?

Yeah, I'm very much with you there. Who started this trend, anyway? Fox Entertainment, with "Cops" and other "just like real life!" shows. Yet I see a huge effort to differentiate between Fox Entertainment and Fox News, which leans to the right, as if the corporation's policies in one area have no influence anywhere else...
But maybe I'm just cynical.

The other leader in this area has been MTV, with "The Real World", but they haven't pretended to be a news outlet in any other area except youth culture.

The same is true with the mainstream media - they have pandered to broader markets and lost their core market in the process. So now they have to go even further astream in their pandering to make up for the loss of their old core!



The link you provided is part of this pandering process, albeit a much higher form of pandering - on the educational level - but pandering nonetheless.



Um... So, if reporting supports your point of view, it's a brave attempt to counter media bias, but if it doesn't, it's pandering? In that case, I never expect to see you post a link to anything in support of your position again, because I will consider the source an example of right-wing pandering. It had better be all original work from now on, complete with the receipts for the hotels that you stayed in while you visited the archeological digs or conducted the interviews or examined the forensic evidence, or whatever.

Incidentally, I hadn't noticed that the BBC has become a discredited news source, although, with the greater variety of media and news agencies out there, it may have lost some of its audience. The market for information is limited by the number of people, the availability of technology (radio is big in Africa), and the amount of time each person can spend on information gathering. This pandering you speak of is known by another name: competition for a limited market. I was pandered to by Barnes & Noble, Borders, Demco (library supplies), and Chapter-A-Day, all just this morning in my email.

Diversity in learning capacity should be no more stigmatized than diversity in any other area. But to deny this diversity is to handicap folks and make them unfairly compete in arenas which they are not suited for.

To identify one geographic area's population or one racial group as being intellectually "diverse" in a particular way is to deny the individuals in that group their individual potential, and is in fact bigoted against (or in favor of, if the bias is positive) both the group as a whole and the individual based on membership in the group. Is a stupid white person stupid because he or she is white? Of course not, [sarc] unless that person is Polish [/sarc]. You, of course, get my drift here.

There's nothing wrong with vocational schools or blue-collar work. There's plenty wrong with the suggestion that whole groups of "folks" ought not to be put in the position of having to unfairly compete with their "betters". Mexicans are better suited to be gardeners than executives, just like my family is evolved specifically to lay railroad track.

I can see that genetics play a part in some populations' limitations, but there's help for that: less inbreeding to dilute the offending gene. I can also see making an exception for small populations with exposure to some sort of toxin that resulted in a particular medical condition -- lead poisoning, for instance -- but one can conduct clinical tests for that.

And speaking of tests...

If I gathered EVERYONE in the world and passed out a standardized test in their native tongues, even with history sections tailored to their own cultures - the bottom line is that if I divided the test results by location, nation or race - there would be clear high scores and low scores.

Have you taught people how to take the tests? Have you handicapped those who have literally grown up with this format and discipline as part of their culture? The tool itself is inadequate. We might just as well measure everyone's heads and declare those with the biggest heads to be the winners.

In a figurative sense, that would be right.

Regards--
Mary Anne