i took one of these tests too and found out that i was part middle eastern, north african, and south asian. crazy isn't it? i thought i was just half jewish half white.
WashashoreProd
That doesn't sound too far off, actually. Most Jewish people, except converts, have clear Middle Eastern ancestry to begin with, and North African people are more or less white if you're not an Islamophobe.
idek
how are north african people white, theyre black. im so confused
Wabbi wasabi
naaaah they are white xD north africa people are mixed with arab, and it's also fully arab people there
idek
i have never heard of this. i just assumed all people from africa are black. obviously they would be mixed with arab since they are so close. do you know any articles that talk about this sort of thing bc it doesnt really make any sense to me why north africans and arabs are considered white in the US
WashashoreProd
Most people from north Africa are either more or less indigenous (Berber, Egyptian) or a mix of indigenous with a bunch of other things -- Arab, European, Phoenician, whatever. I think Morocco and Algeria have a bunch of people who have some Basque or Gothic DNA in them somewhere that came from ancestors who were kicked out of Spain after the Reconquista (which probably would make them extra-white). I think the dividing line, if such a thing can be said to exist for a concept as muddy as race, is probably somewhere around Sudan/South Sudan. (Not to mention the Sahara Desert, the main reason the Romans and the Bantu peoples never came to blows.)
Of course, Egypt probably has a fair bit of east African DNA floating around from the upper Nile area because of trade connections to Nubian and Ethiopian nations in the old days, and I'd be shocked if most north African nations didn't have a decent-sized population of people of sub-Saharan roots whose ancestors came relatively recently (like, after 1000AD and the spread of Islam), but for the most part I think most people from North Africa would be considered white to someone who wasn't racist.
idek
long story short almost everyone is somewhat mixed and race is just a social construct made up by society to separate people. i wouldnt say its racist if someone who is north african said they werent white.
Wabbi wasabi
My friend is from morocco and that is in north africa, but even if we are both african, she consider her self as arabic or white, i told her once that she is african,she did not believe me and disagreed, because her mother told her that she was Arab or white since she was a little girl,most people I've met who is from the north Africans do not consider themself as african, because that is "black" and they look down on them, not everyone is like that, but most I've met
WashashoreProd
As for what makes someone "white" or whatever -- according to one probably-arbitrary count, there's something like seven "races" (really just broad genetic groups that probably represent settlement waves out of Africa; the number is not to be taken too literally).
The closest to the "original" human race would probably be either the Khoisan (southern Africa) or the Indian Ocean negritos, who look more or less black but have wildly different genetics from any of the African groups. "White" or "Caucasian" is kind of a catchall term for the group that settled from northwest India to Europe and north Africa, with some admixture of Neanderthal; most of the Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European speakers fit into this category, including basically all of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East (except for Ethiopia; east African -- Ethiopian, Somali, etc. is a group unto itself). "Asian" (in the east Asian sense) I think may have branched off of "White" relatively late, and covers basically everyone whose ancestors came from anywhere between the east side of the Urals down to South America.
The people we would think of as "black" would be from west and central Africa, of which the Bantu are probably the single largest group. They probably started in central Africa (they are part of the Niger-Congo language group), but spread all over the continent south of the Sahara; for example, Swahili is a Bantu language originating from East Africa, and a lot of black South Africans are actually a mix of Bantu and Khoisan. (Nelson Mandela looked like pretty much a straight-up mix of both, for example.)
Finally, you have the pygmy groups and the Australian aborigines. The pygmy peoples of Africa represent a separate group that seems to be slowly merging with the black west/central Africans. I'm not sure what the deal with the Australian aborigines is; I believe they're a separate population entirely but I really don't know, and of course by now there's been a lot of European and southeast Asian mixed in as well.
BenjoJames
Erm...where did you think Jews came from?
idek
i know all jews come from the middle east but i just never thought about it
jessica
the dividing line in antiquity was the sahara, and it was really only in egypt where there was substantial mixing.
the indigenous inhabitants are called berbers and are of white-tanned complexion, similar to spaniards or italians.
the carthaginians/phoenicians set up in modern day tunisia and created an empire that included northern africa and southern europe. they built cities all along the mediterranean. the actual fact is that a huge amount of the urban civilization in southern europe developed out of white african colonization.
the carthaginians were eventually conquered by the romans, who incorporated the whole of northern africa into their empire. when you put the roman and carthaginian colonization of north africa together, that's over a thousand years.
the region did not pass directly from romans to arabs. there was a period of chaos in between that lasted several centuries and saw large waves of migration from germany into northern africa - just as it was elsewhere in the roman empire during the empire's collapse. there was a relatively powerful swedish kingdom in the region of tunisia for a few generations. in the end, the emperors (and justinian, especially) retained enough control to settle the barbarians in the countryside.
vikings also settled in north africa in substantial numbers.
there has even been substantial french migration since napoleon.