Mixed Asian non-musicians have indirectly contributed to hip hop culture as well. Actors like Russell Wong have appeared in films like “New Jack City” and “Romeo Must Die,” Rae Dawn Chong starred in “Beat Street,” and Sonja Sohn stole the spotlight in “Slam.” Naomi Campbell appeared in Michael Jackson’s “Keep It in the Closet” video and the TV show “NY Undercover.” Tyson Beckford appeared in Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart” video while Jeni Fujita sang on Wyclef Jean’s “Guantanamera.” Bruce Lee, who is a quarter German, is referred to, quoted, or sampled in hundreds of songs. So the groundwork is all laid out. It should be a piece of cake from here on, shouldn’t it? Unfortunately, no. There is still a long ways to go.

While the many people involved in hip hop can refer to “shaolin” or “tiger style” or throw around words like “arigato” or “sensei,” few would even know if Bruce Lee was Japanese or Chinese. Only a handful of the stars listed above actually refer to their Asian background in any real sense. The mixed population is largely invisible to the public eye and that is because many of the stars choose to identify themselves with only one race. Japanese-Mexican Naomi Sugimoto, a writer at underground e-zine “Evil Monito,” doesn’t think the world of hip hop encourages the idea of a multiracial identity, particularly if the star is part African or African-American.

“I do not think that they understand, and I wonder if it is possible for them to ever understand. One of the Black students in my class demonstrated this to me by stating that Tiger Woods needed to make up his mind, and that he wasn’t really Black. I then asked him to tell me what I was: Asian or Latina. He realized (I think) that he was in no place to categorize me. This is something that I believe mixed people share with each other: the knowledge of their experiences, and it is a very special, unique thing.”

“I think mixed people are slowly gaining representation all over,” continued Sugimoto. “I see mixed people on the news, in music videos, in movies. I’m sure it will happen in hip hop inevitably. It’s all happening…just very slowly. Things are always slow to change in this country. I think people have a tendency to reach out because of the exotic mixes that attract them.”

Although the hip hop landscape has become increasingly diverse in recent years, Asian stereotypes still dominate. Many artists claim to be into Asian culture and philosophy, but the reality is that their understanding is superficial, limited to references to martial arts, Hong Kong movies, anime, geisha, dragon ladies, and kanji tattoos (try finding someone who can actually read what they say).

That said, there are signs of hope. Although still primarily an African-American and Hispanic cultural phenomenon, hip hop has undergone a racial evolution as well. With the continued dominance of Eminem, many, if not all, racial walls are tumbling down. The global popularity of hip hop culture will also promote continued diversity. Throughout Europe and Asia, citizens of all races and creeds have taken facets of hip hop eagerly and made it their own. In Japan, rarely a day goes by where I don’t see a group breakdancers in the train station, and DJs like Honda and Krush have achieved worldwide fame. Asian rap groups like Japan’s Kick the Can Crew and Dragon Ash, and Korea’s Jinusean and Drunken Tiger are proliferating.

Read the full article here…

>> Tom Melesky <<

Arthur Kemp

Arthur Kemp alleges that only 6% of Afrikaners have mixed ancestry. This is a deliberate misinterpretation of the genetic data. It’s 6% of Afrikaner GENES, that are of non-white origin, not 6% of Afrikaner people. The same genetic data Arthur Kemp misinterprets, states that the Afrikaner genepool is 40% Dutch, 40% German, 7% French, and 7% Scottish. Does this mean that the Afrikaner population is composed of 40% Dutch, 40% Germans, 7% Scots, and 7% French? It would sound silly that all these elements represented individual ethnic personages and not genes but according to Arthur Kemp, it is so. But the reality is 6% of over all Afrikaner genes are non-white.

Research by J.A. Heese, who studied the genealogical composition of the Afrikaners looking at the period 1657 – 1867, has concluded that the Afrikaner nation´s ancestry was Dutch 34.8%, German 33.7%, French 13.2%, Non White 6.9%, British 5.2%, Other European nations 2.7%, Unknown 3.5%. GFC de Bruyn used a different form of calculation and his results were: Dutch 34.1%, German 29.2%, French 24.7%, British 0.3%, Other European nations 2.4%, Non European 5.4%, Unknown 3.9% (refer to J.S. Bergh ed., Herdenkingsjaar 1988, RTJ Lombard “Die bydrae van die Franse Hugenote tot Suid-Afrika se bevolkingsamestelling”). That means, the average Afrikaner (including Arthur Kemp himself) gets 5-7% of their ancestry from non-whites.

Arthur Kemp states that in 1685 a law was passed banning miscegenation with non-whites. The law in question banned intermarriage with slaves, but as with the American South, illicit interracial sex was far from uncommon! The law banned marriages between white settlers and SLAVES. It did not ban marriages with Coloureds and other FREE Persons of Colour. J. A. Heese, in Die Herkoms van die Afrikaner 1657-1867, presented the results of research from parish registers and other sources on the ancestors of the Afrikaners. He found that between 1660 and 1705, 191 of the settlers from Germany married or lived with women who were not pure blood Europeans. Of the women, 114 were born in the Cape (most probably mixed), 29 were Bengalis and 43 were from other Asian regions. He estimated that in 1807, between 7.2 and 10.7 percent of the ancestors of the then living Afrikaner population were Africans and Asians. His figures were perhaps inevitably conservative. It may well be that a tenth of the present Afrikaner population has Indian ancestry.

In some cases dispensations were given allowing interracial marriages. One example is the case of a Khoikhoi or Hottentot woman named Eva-Kroata. A Dutch man named Pieter Van Meerhof, married her and had 5 children with her. All of them in turn married white men. Eva-Kroata is the progenitor of a number of Afrikaner first families. These include the Krugers, Van Riebeecks, Bruyns, Van Rensburgs, Zaimans, and Pelzers, to name a few. Paul Kruger, the great revered Boer hero, is a descendant of Eva through her daughter Petronella Meerhof. Andries Pretorius, the Great Voortrekker leader was himself a descendant of two East Indian slave women, Catharina van Bengale on his mother’s side, and Helena van Malabar on his father’s side. Thus, the entire Pretorius family can trace their ancestry back to these two slave women. These well known interracial marriages, are just a fraction of the non-white blood absorbed into the modern Afrikaner genepool. Ironically, Governor Simon Van Der Stel, who passed the 1685 law, was himself of Coloured stock. He was born in Mauritius to a half-Bengalese mother.

There is also a further factor, colonial South Africa had no “one drop rule” as Arthur Kemp wants the reader to believe. A person that looked white was seen and treated as white, and was considered White by law. In fact even Apartheid did not have a one drop concept. When people were being separated into four “races”, people were divided based on their appearance, skin color, and hair texture, not their ancestry. Government officials measured peoples facial features and skull shapes and applied paper bag and pencil tests, to determine race. If a person passed the skull measurement tests, had skin lighter than a paper bag, and a comb went through their hair with ease, they were classified as “White.”

Even if a white family was found to have non-white ancestry, despite social dissapproval, that family was still white by law. An example of which, was the case of Sandra Laing. Both her biological parents were white. But she was born with brown skin and frizzly hair, although the rest of her features were European. DNA tests proved that Abraham Laing (the white father) was the biological father of Sandra Laing. The Laing’s ran into trouble when they tried to register her for school, and the government threatened to have the child reclassified as Coloured and separated from the parents. Although Sandra Laing was to be reclassified, her parents were still unquestionably white by law. And because of Sandra Laing, in 1967 a new law was passed, which stated that a child of two white parents was White. In her case, that shows a few Afrikaners had significant levels of non-white ancestry. Although as studies show, the average Afrikaner is 5-7% non-white, which is negligible. Sandra Laing’s parents were amongst the few that had as much as 20% non-white genes, even though they and her brothers look completely white. Today Sandra Laing’s brothers do not speak to her, and refuse to embrace their undeniable African heritage.

As well as the above, under Apartheid there were people changing their racial classification based on their appearance. Some light-skinned Coloureds were successfully reclassified as white under Apartheid. In fact in 1984 according to the South African government, nearly eight hundred South Africans officially crossed the racial lines. Of these, 518 light-skinned Coloureds were reclassified as white. In fact hundreds of Coloureds between 1950 and 1991, reclassified themselves as white every year. This was of course in the best interest of the National Party, which was eager to register more “white” Afrikaans-speaking voters to the voters list. This could explain the high levels of non-white ancestry in Sandra Laing’s parents. These are all facts about Apartheid South Africa which Arthur Kemp neglects to mention in his “March of the Titans“.

Also, the Afrikaans language spoken by Afrikaners, was actually originally spoken by slaves. Just like in the United States of America, where Black English or Ebonics developed from the broken English Southern dialect spoken by Black Americans, Afrikaans developed in the same way. The Afrikaans language, although Dutch based, absorbed many Khoikhoi, Malay, and Indian words. As white colonial children were raised by non-white slave mammies and had mixed-race children for playmates, one can see how the white settlers abandoned their Dutch language for Afrikaans instead. The very fact Cape Coloureds still speak Afrikaans, even though their ancestors did not participate in the Great Trek, shows that the language did not originate amongst the Voortrekkers, as Afrikaner white supremists claim. Cape Afrikaans (spoken by Coloureds) and Orange River Afrikaans (spoken by white Afrikaners), although baring dialectic differences, are similar enough to be regarded as the same language and mutually intelligible. Thus, Afrikaners ironically, speak a language with non-white origins.

To further tear down Arthur Kemp’s theory of Southern Europeans being Mulattoes while Afrikaners are pure Nordics, one only needs to look at genetic studies on Southern Europeans. The Portuguese, who have the highest amounts of non-Caucasoid ancestry amongst Europeans at 1.65% Sub-Saharan, have four times less non-white blood than Afrikaners. If the Portuguese are Mulattoes, then what does that make Afrikaners? Maybe the collapse of Apartheid was due to the 6% non-white blood in Afrikaners? Why is it the race conscious Afrikaners have more non-white blood than than Southern Europeans who can’t help but sleep with every non-white they see? Before Arthur Kemp worries about non-white blood in Southern Europeans, he should worry about his own coloured ancestry first. Fact is Apartheid was about ensuring white minority rule in South Africa, not about racial purity. The very fact the Apartheid government granted white status to those with known non-white ancestry, shows they weren’t concerned with absolute purity of blood. Hendrik and Betsy Verwoerd. Betsy Verwoerd was rumoured to have non-White ancestry, as is not uncommon amongst “white” Afrikaners.

Read original article here…

Anyway here’s the story:

James D. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel prize for deciphering the double-helix of DNA, apologized “unreservedly” yesterday for comments reported this week suggesting that black people, over all, are not as intelligent as whites. In an interview published Sunday in The Times of London, Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that while “there are many people of color who are very talented,” he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.”

“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. In a statement given to The Associated Press yesterday, Dr. Watson said, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. There is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

>>Read the full story on New York Times <<

This statement struck me, as what he said was nothing but true. Often the coloured people in society are looked at as gangsters or thieves. Yes, this whole documentary evolved around colored people but have we asked about the reasons for their actions? The Coloured people of South Africa have been pushed aside, could this gangsterism problem be a result of that? could it be an outcry by the coloured people to get some attention from the government and from fellow citizens.

Read full article here…

>> Al Postman <<