Are Egyptians Africans or Arabs? Shahira Amin Discusses Egyptian Identify & How They Perceive Themselves (3648 hits)
...Their responses led me to contemplate the conceptual Sahara divide. For centuries, the Sahara Desert has been viewed as a vast impenetrable barrier dividing our continent into two distinct areas : Northern “white” and sub-Saharan “black” Africa. The countries south of the Sahara have long been considered authentically “African” while those to the north have been perceived as Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Islamic. While most anthropologists refute this perception of Africa as “inaccurate”, it has nevertheless, influenced the way people think about the continent and our region in particular. Apparently, it has also impacted the way Egyptians view themselves. Many Egyptians are oblivious to their “African-ness “, failing to identify themselves as Africans. When confronted with the reality of their African roots, some Egyptians are stunned, others reluctant to acknowledge the fact. Though I hate to admit it, we are a racist people.
African refugees living in Egypt often complain of discrimination and verbal and physical harassment on the streets. Egyptians look down on darker-skinned sub-Saharans as their “inferiors,” they claim. Historian Jill Kamel confirms this, explaining that it may be attributed to the fact that across generations, Egypt’s elite community was made up mostly of lighter-skinned Egyptians whereas the underprivileged Egyptians were those toiling under the hot sun to earn their bread. ”Egyptians have thus come to associate fair skin with elitism,” she said.
The nationalist pan-Arabism ideology promoted by the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties and sixties led his supporters (the Nasserists) to take pride in their Arab identity. The notion of pan- Arabism gained wider acceptance in the seventies when, in the wake of the Gulf oil boom, millions of Egyptians traveled to oil-rich Gulf states to earn their livelihoods. They adopted many of the habits of the host countries, bringing home a new conservatism which was reflected in their style of dress and mannerisms. Author and writer Galal Amin discusses the impact of Wahhabism, a rigid form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, on Egyptian culture at length in his book “Whatever Happened to the Egyptians” a two-part series that chronicles the changes brought about by the mass exodus to the Gulf in the seventies.
Egyptians are not Arabs, they are Egyptians ..."A strange title for a blog entry I know. But this is a result of a little nosing through the DNA studies available of modern Egypt, and some irritation at modern Egyptians being incessantly called ‘thieving Arabs’ by on-line Afrocentrists."...
Egyptians is a term used by Europeans with Eurocentric significance -- NO ARABIC meaning
as for this author---to me---from the negroid, Caucasian, mongoloid European supreme MIND----READ ?
"...the L haplotypes are typically sub Saharan (23.7%), M1 and U are ancient Eurasian, present at least 30,000 years and many of the other Eurasian haplotypes have been found in 12,000 year old bones in Morocco. The N an I are possibly attributable to Arab ancestry, about 15% non-Arab in upper Egypt...To sum up, there doesn’t seem to be majority ‘Arab’ genetic component to the Egyptian DNA pool, 20% absolute maximum. And a lot of the non African DNA is traceable to the Neolithic farming expansion that swept across North Africa, so it would be a lot lower in reality......In upper Egypt a maximum of 20% of the Y chromosomes are non African (the Mt DNA has been shown to be the same since dynastic times from Nubian mummy studies).. so how these people are supposed to have magically changed appearance in the past few thousand years with so little foreign input....."
ok -- I am not a trained anthropologist or paleontologist -- so my opinion just stays at nonsense of the Racist type
REALITIES:
The Land between the Libya and Arabian Peninsula is Misr(englishTransliteration from Arab Language)
Misrians are AfricansAsians, Arabs are AfricansAsians
Misrians are sudani, Nubian, Libyan, and a number of other family groupings......
The Sun and Sand of the Sahaaraa bakes all things including people --- many tans, and styles
I have KNOWN Misrians 50YEARS---in USAor Misr --- I have lived in Misr a number of years and jenFad this TERM is FALSE
------"Egyptians look down on darker-skinned sub-Saharans as their “inferiors,”
As Misrians are mainly Muslim, Muslims stretch EAST, WEST,SOUTH to southAfrica and there is NO color designation or class inferiority in AlIslaam.
in fact some that want to go to Europe called me 'white' ?
maybe the christianJewish Egyptians look down on some that they feel are not European enough
--- THIS I have seen
--- -and some African pagan or spirit people are looked down by EVERY 'soCalled Civilized' person on EARTH
..." Misrians are AfricansAsians, Arabs are AfricansAsians
Misrians are sudani, Nubian, Libyan, and a number of other family groupings......
The Sun and Sand of the Sahaaraa bakes all things including people --- many tans, and styles , ..."
Excellent summation, but the ppl I've met from Egypt don't think of their country as part of Africa. So this is why I posted the blog. So I believe your speculation regarding maybe some Christian Jewish Egyptians look down on the ones that don't look European enough. Anyway things are changing since ppl like super model Alec and now Lupita have come along.
Can you believe this?! I met a Egyptian woman at work after posting this blog who told me she was born in Egypt, but moved to South Africa. Her father was Egyptian and her mother I can't remember but she clearly identified herself as African and considered Egypt in Africa. She said she was aware that some want to isolate Egypt from Africa but she wasn't apart of them. We talked for a good 15 minutes.
