Martin Bernal, ‘Black Athena’ Scholar, Dies at 76

NYT ^ | 6/22/2013 | PAUL VITELLO

[Borges]

Martin Bernal, whose three-volume work “Black Athena” ignited an academic debate by arguing that the African and Semitic lineage of Western civilization had been scrubbed from the record of ancient Greece by 18th- and 19th-century historians steeped in the racism of their times, died on June 9 in Cambridge, England. He was 76.

The cause was complications of myelofibrosis, a bone marrow disorder, said his wife, Leslie Miller-Bernal.

“Black Athena” opened a new front in the warfare over cultural diversity already raging on American campuses in the 1980s and ’90s. The first volume, published in 1987 — the same year as “The Closing of the American Mind,” Allan Bloom’s attack on efforts to diversify the academic canon — made Mr. Bernal a hero among Afrocentrists, a pariah among conservative scholars and the star witness at dozens of sometimes raucous academic panel discussions about how to teach the foundational ideas of Western culture.

[P.O.E.]

Even if true, so what? Western Civ moved on from tribalism, unlike Africans and Arabs. Oh, wait, I stand corrected - they became Muslims - great contribution to civilization there.

[Mercat]

I don’t understand the concept of “scrubbed.” Many early church fathers were from the middle east and Africa. I don’t think people obsessed about skin color then as much as now.
“

[vladimir998]

Not Out of Africa - the book that destroyed Bernal’s thesis:

http://books.google.com/books?id=mzJdOOrH3VMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Videotaped debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJWzgretLA&list=PL5B89F5A8FC6045D2&feature=player_embedded#at=219

[Sans-Culotte]

A lot of the controversy comes from confusing North Africa, which was populated by semitic peoples with the rest of the continent. For awhile, we used to hear that Hannibal was black ‘because he was from Africa’; even though the Carthaginians were originally the ancient Phoenicians.

[Bernard Marx]

Thanks for posting. Unfortunately, as George Will says in a pull-quote on the cover of the book, the truth is no longer of concern in intellectual disagreements. The Postmodernists have Pied Pipered a generation or two into a world of morally-relativistic parallel universes. The old radical chant that “Western Civ has got to go” is coming true.

[untenured]

...the same year as “The Closing of the American Mind,” Allan Bloom’s attack on efforts to diversify the academic canon.

That is a remarkably impoverished conception of that book.

[PapaBear3625]

A lot of the controversy comes from confusing North Africa, which was populated by semitic peoples with the rest of the continent. For awhile, we used to hear that Hannibal was black ‘because he was from Africa’; even though the Carthaginians were originally the ancient Phoenicians.

And consider that Israel, India, and China are all part of "Asia", with a multitude of different people.

The people of the Mediterranean have more in common with each other than North Africans have with Sub-Saharan Africans.

[x]

Son of the British Marxist biologist J.D. Bernal.

“My father was a communist and I was illegitimate,” he said in 1996. “I was always expected to be radical because my father was.”

The idea was more that Phoenicians and Egyptians had influenced the Greeks, who weren't some kind of purely "European" culture.

The title was a clever provocation to tie the book in with the political trends of the day.

RIP, anyway, I guess.

[yarddog]

One cannot watch TV or any media without getting a steady diet of Pavlovian conditioning. You see the same thing repeated hundreds maybe thousands of times and you begin to believe it even if it is totally made up and false.

Every pretty young 100 lbs girl can beat up any 230 lb. special forces type. I see that over and over and over. All famous people in history were Black or either hung around with Blacks even if they are in a place where the chances are zero of that being true.

King Xerxes was Black as were all his messengers. Cleopatra was Black. Robin Hood was saved by a Black guy and they both went to England together.

Anyone who had any real chance at all of being a Negro will for certain be one in fantasy land, or the American media. For instance Moors are not Negros but they may have had some small mixture since they lived in a part of North Africa where there really was a mix of races It is just as likely that any one Moor has none. Because of that, they are totally Black when depicted.

If one watches daytime TV it will be at least 60% Black. At times it will be nearly 100% Black.

Homosexuals are the best people in the world while devout Christians are the most evil. The only good Christians are those who are “tolerant”. which means they don’t really believe anything.

We now have a Black President who has a Muslim sounding name. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that most people who voted for him thought they were being cool, open minded, and intelligent. That is the way they would be portrayed on TV.

Ring a bell, feed dog, Ring a bell, feed dog. Do it a few hundred times and you ring a bell, dog salivates.

See a beautiful girl on TV, Man tries to beat her. She spin kicks him to oblivion. See that repeated a few thousand times and it starts to make people think we should have women in the Rangers and Seals. The American military, and especially any company who supplies arms to them are always evil.

It is no accident that all this is happening. Anyone who thinks it is, has already been brainwashed which is what Pavlovian conditioning really is.

[Verginius Rufus]

I think his main goal was to discredit mainstream "bourgeois" scholarship by trying to paint it as racist--using Alinskyite tactics like labeling the based-on-evidence mainstream view of Egyptian influence on Greece as the "Aryan" view. He claimed that the title Black Athena was forced on him by the publisher (he would have preferred African Athena).

I think his real scholarly expertise was in China--he got into this as a hobby and his claims about Egyptian origins of Greek words have not won much acceptance with classicists.

I heard him talk once. He seemed sincere. Some of the black people in the Q&A part of the event had more extreme theories. I think the Afrocentrists welcomed him because he was a white man challenging the accepted views, but he did not agree with their more extreme positions.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Borges. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[eddie willers]

Excellent post.

The sad thing is, yes...they are winning.

[eddie willers]

I think his main goal was to discredit mainstream "bourgeois" scholarship by trying to paint it as racist--using Alinskyite tactics like labeling the based-on-evidence mainstream view of Egyptian influence on Greece as the "Aryan" view.

Yep...when I clicked to the article I saw that he was a typical red-diaper communist.

When Marxism is your only hammer, everything is a nail.

[Billthedrill]

Interesting fellow. He was not actually a professional historian at the time of the writing of Black Athena, rather a Government Studies professor. That cost him a certain measure of credibility in the historian community, probably not altogether justified. Neville Morley points that out in Writing Ancient History, while tactfully admitting that his case was quite overblown.

The real difficulty is that no serious ancient historian ever did assume that Greek culture developed de novo. Cross-pollination was inevitable in a region so closely linked by the Mediterranean and so adept in the use of water transportation. Bernal's real notoriety was based on the accusation that white Eurocentric historians had cut Africa out of ancient history out of racism. That's more than a little unfair but it's the part the people remember. RIP

[ZULU]

Liar, rest in peace.

[chesley]

I beat my way rheough v1 &V2,

While I don’t have expertise in linguistics and a dozen other fields he tried to use, I have a logical mind and a highly tuned BS detector.

His scholarship is worthless.

[SunkenCiv]