Greetings Economists, On Oct 28, 2007, at 9:10 PM, raghu wrote:
It is a bit more complex than that. Sabri, for instance, considered it noteworthy that a black Ethiopian man was one of the best mathematicians he knows.
Doyle; Agreed, but then what are the grounds for making distinctions? I was over at my friend Evelyn's house talking and jawing, and James her husband made a point to Evelyn about how Ethiopians were not black (referring to their own West African background) like West Africans. Now I don't agree with this. Roughly I think he means Ethiopians were directly connected to Medterraneum cultures and therefore culturally white, while West Africa was the heartland and center of black culture. The real authentic Black culture there is an immense language pool of diverse peoples speaking many different tongues. No other region of the world speaks so many different languages or has such an amazing cultural history even considered apart from the slave history that disrupted their economic development. Sabri makes Ethiopia stand for what in terms of oppression? Sabri refers I think to Ottoman as an empire in the sense of not ethnically defined. Where to me the spread of Turkish speaking nationalties across south Asia to China is of great historical interest in the current struggle against the global U.S. empire. That means I take language as a very important cultural entity over national boundaries. Common language is more likely to unite various nations than the administrative offices of Empire. And big languages to foster ethnic cleansing over small languages. You raise though how we are to understand underdevelopment in Africa. And that is where I can't rush to judgment because we truly need deeper discussions to make clear what we see anecdotally. thanks, Doyle
