Here are some pictures of Andromeda, the princess that Perseus rescued from a sea monster and then married. Notice anything about her?
Yes, she’s naked and in chains. I’m sure you noticed that right off. But what else?
She’s white.
What’s wrong with that? Well, Andromeda was an Ethiopian princess. “Ethiopian” comes from a Greek word meaning “burnt face.” In other words, the Greeks knew perfectly well that Ethiopians are black, so the correct colour of the woman whose beauty so stunned Perseus would have been traditionally understood by ancient audiences. Modern depictions have erased a fairly important woman of colour, and a fairly important interracial marriage, from Greek mythology.
Fascinating.
Although the only examples of ancient art depicting Andromeda I can find (after a cursory google admittedly) portray her as white – how much this is due to the limitations of the medium I don’t know.
The Greeks took a lot of ideas from Egypt, Assyria, and Ethiopia as well. Have you read the book Black Athena at all? It’s very interesting, though I haven’t read it in-full.
Yeah, right on Rod! She definitely was a Woman Of Colour
If there were examples of blacks in Africa adopting anglo’s as hero’s and coloring them thru the centuries, would this be worthy of your calling out?
It’s human nature for people to look suspiciously at things outside of their social structure. If government-forced segregation and integration had never occurred, and subsequently many whites and blacks chose not to integrate, I’m assuming you would accept this. In this case, whites and blacks would have some tendency to be suspicious of each other. But there would also likely be cultural influences thru media, etc. In this case, your example scenario would be likely to occur. What would you take this to mean?
I feel like you made this easy on yourself by simply pointing out the facts and leaving the implications to your left-leaning readership. If the only point you were trying to make here is that the history is wrong, this wouldn’t really be a problem. But I think you know that’s not true.
By the way, the details behind this story are much more interesting than your short post, to the extent the following are accurate:
http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/02/andromeda_myth_was_she_black.html
http://www.openbibart.fr/item/display/10068/1055507
To me this wreaks of the classic example of a white liberal “weeding out racism where ever it exists” (event if they have to invent it)
If there were examples of blacks in Africa adopting anglo’s as hero’s and coloring them thru the centuries, would this be worthy of your calling out?
No, because there’s no comparable history of institutionalised racism in that case.
If government-forced segregation and integration had never occurred, and subsequently many whites and blacks chose not to integrate, I’m assuming you would accept this.
Why do you assume that? (Unless by “accept” you just mean “not oppose by state violence.”)
I feel like you made this easy on yourself by simply pointing out the facts and leaving the implications to your left-leaning readership.
Is my readership left-leaning? My readership is mostly libertarian, of both left-libertarian and right-libertarian varieties.
To me this wreaks of the classic example of a white liberal “weeding out racism where ever it exists” (event if they have to invent it)
a) I’m not a liberal (at least in the usual sense); b) you’ve given no reason to think the racism here is “invented” (indeed your first link supports the opposite interpretation); c) you’ve confused “wreak” with “reek.”