Clever girl!

asianhistory:

What Is “Asia”? by Philip Bowring from the February 12, 1987 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review (v. 135 n.7) Note: This article has been re-formatted.

  1. There are many ways to dissect the globe. But by the visual geography of the school textbook, one is very easy: There are four major landmasses.

• The largest stretches east-west from the Korean to the Iberian peninsula, with the isles of Japan and Britain as respective appendages (Eurasia).
• There are two land masses of roughly equal size, one running north/south, almost from pole to pole but nearly divided in the middle, and one as broad as it is long lying mostly within the tropics (North and South America; Africa).
• The fourth is a much smaller mass in the Southern Hemisphere (Australia).

2. With one exception, the land masses are called continents. The exception is the largest.

• For some reason one-fifth of it has been lopped off at a line joining the Urals with the Caucasus and the Black Sea.
  • West and north is Europe, east is Asia.
  • Why, it may be asked, draw a line there rather than, say, one formed by the Himalayas, the Baluchistan desert and the hills which form the Brahmaputra/Chindwin watershed — the borders of the “Subcontinent”?
  • This area has as much cultural identity as Europe while being equally fragmented in linguistic and — for most of history — political terms.
• The answer is simple: The word “Asia” was invented by Europeans, and its concept has been propagated by European geographers, politicians and encyclopedia writers.
• The concept did not exist among Asian civilisations, and even now the Chinese use a character which simply denotes the sound “A.”
• To talk of Asia at all may even be to talk in Eurocentric terms.
• That does not necessarily invalidate the word, but it does make it necessary to ask:
  • What does it mean?
  • Does it mean different things to different people?

3. Asia in simple geographic terms encompasses Europe. So if the two are to be set apart from each other, there must be sufficient common denominators on each side of the Ural line which do not exist on the other.

• Does Asia have such a common identity, some positive denominators?
• Or is it too big, the home of too many civilisations?
• If so, Asia exists only in the negative sense of being non-European — which is the European definition.

4. Even if this is the case [i.e., that Asia exists only in the negative sense of being non-European], it does not necessarily diminish the power of the name or its force as a rallying cry in the days of European colonialism. And today, it is often a handy term for describing a local situation in a way which contrasts it to a Western — derived from Europe — counterpart.

• Thus a Chinese may describe himself as Asian, in contrast to European or Western, without feeling any need to identify with, say, Indians or Iranians.
• Or, he may make his own definition of what is Asian to include East Asian countries with which China has strong historical connections or which are inhabited by “Oriental-looking” people.
• He may specifically exclude West or even South Asia from his definition of Asia, especially if they have features such as big noses and lots of body hair, which are part of the local stereotype of Europeans.
• Other “Asians” similarly may provide their own definitions, usually featuring their own nation or culture at the centre of Asia.

5. At its most basic, the word “Asia” just sounds good, appearing to give identity even if such is spurious as a continental concept.

• There are many publications, for example, which incorporate the word “Asian” but seldom cover anything west of Phuket.
• Hong Kong has a TV channel called “Asia Television,” a name which sounds nice and marks it out in a vague way as local rather than British or Australian in character without any way committing itself to pan-Asianism.

6. This use of the word to suit the occasion is also found in South Asia.

• There it is normal to use the term West Asia to describe a region which they used to call the Middle East.
  • “Middle East” is now rejected as Eurocentric, which indeed it is.
  • This new formula is not necessarily any better and shows a fixation with “Asia” rhetoric rather than reality.
  • The phrase Middle East (esh-sharq el-awsat in Arabic) continues to be widely used in that area itself because it describes a geo-political region rather than a precise but artificial piece of geography which excludes the most populous half of the Arab world.
  • Indeed “West Asia” ignores the fact that the most powerful nationalist movement transcending state boundaries and geography has been pan-Arabism, defined by language and culture and largely oblivious of Asia as a concept.

Read More

(via ayiman)

i-killed-the-kkk-with-malcolm:

and how in the 1890s and 1930s and even prior to that, white immigrants were killing each other in record numbers and it became this big societal issue. “How to keep the white folk from gacking each other”, to the point that the government got involved and social workers (or the equivalent of social workers) worked with the youth of the time, and with their parents to integrate them fully into American society. White folks killing each other was worthy of society as a whole taking note and trying to do something about it.

It was contrasted with the way society looks at black on black crime like, “oh, that’s a nigga issue. Let the niggas sort it out.” Instead of viewing it as a symptom of racism, black people being left out of the New Deal, forced into ghettos following the abolition of slavery, basically left to fend for themselves.

Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad talked about how no other racial group in American history has essentially been told to buck up and handle every issue on their own, as though white America had no stake in what became of them. He talked about how it’s a easy way for white America to pass the proverbial buck.

It makes me think about how the crack epidemic was seen as this scourge that only affected blacks, and they just had to shut that shit down because it threatened white people, so they incarcerated us, made laws tougher for crack possession, a drug black people would more likely have, than cocaine possession, all kinds of fucked up shit…

…and then meth comes along and all we’re talking about is rehabilitation, curing people, saving them. Black folk had to be put down. White people can be saved.

Anyway, this is his book:

I’m gonna order it. 

(via karnythia)

smallrevolutionary:

thisisblackwomen:

afro-art-chick:

Queen Sophia Charlotte was queen consort of the United Kingdom and wife to King George III of Britain. She is a direct descendant of the Sousa family, a black branch of the Portuguese Royal House. Her appearance was black, with full lips and distinct facial features. Artists of the 18th century were asked to tone down “extreme” features of their subjects, but Sir Allan Ramsay, an anti-slavery artist, always painted Queen Charlotte in her actual appearance.

white washing…. it aint nothin new.

(via karnythia)