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Pan-Africanism: An Exploration of Afro-Asian Connections

Abdul Karim Bangura Introduction Employing Pan-African Methodologies, this paper explores the African connections of a people of African descent referred to as Afro-Asians or Blacks/Africoids, with a particular focus on the 45 Asian countries: i.e. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, China, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Iran, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen. The concept Afro-Asian or Blasian or Blackenese refers to Asian-born Blacks/Africoids, African immigrants and people of mixed African and Asian ancestry. Their history on the Asian continent has been traced back to 2500 BC, allowing them to launch many civilizations in the region. Afro-Asians also exist in other parts of the world, notably in the Caribbean, Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Blacks/Africoids are categorized into five groups (http://nubianem.tripod.com/ blackafroasia/):

(1) Oceanic-African Negro typeusually medium to tall in height and with features identical to Africans including kinky and curly hair.

(2) Indo-Negroid who consist of the Black Indo-Negroid people of India and South Asia.

(3) Negro-Australoid (referred to as Anu in Africa because that group and the Indo-Negroids

are from the same family of Africans who once lived in the Sahara and Eastern Africa and had a vide variety of hair textures, but had the same Negro face and other Negroid features.

(4) Negritothe Negrito people are of African origins and the first people to migrate to India,

Southeast Asia, China/East Asia, and Siberia. (The Americas, Melanesia and Australia were Negritos and taller robust Negro Africoids directly from Africa.)

(5) The Andaman Islanders are Negritos who have lived in India for over 60,000 years (see

http://www.andaman.org). It is estimated that there are 700,000,000 (seven hundred million) Black/Africoid people of Asia. The Black/Africoid population is directly related to Africans and consists of the same four types found in Africa today, except the Kong-San, who scientists believe became the modern-day light to yellow-brown Mongoloid people (http://nubianem.tripod.com/blackafroasia/).

Since this paper is grounded by Pan-African Methodologies (more on this later), the analysis encompasses four major aspects: (1) descriptions of Afro-Asians, (2) a brief history of Afro-Asians as a discrete ethnic group, (3) a brief analysis of Afro-Asian movements and organizations, and (4) a

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sample of biographies of a few great Afro-Asians who have embraced Pan-Africanism. This essay is therefore important because in addition to being methodologically grounded, it also provides a desirable insight into the subject vis--vis the reemergence of Pan-Africanism within the contemporary socio-economic development of todays global economic order. Thus, it makes sense to begin with a discussion of Pan-African Methodologies before plunging into an analysis of the Pan-African connections of Afro-Asians. Pan-African Methodologies Clearly, the parameters for Pan-African Methodologies can be drawn and redrawn in so many ways! There seems to be no consensus even regarding the orthography of the term: Pan-African, Panafrican, and PanAfrican are three possibilities. Spelling issues apart, some distinctions need to be made.

About 40 years ago, when Immanuel Geiss published his The Pan-African Movement in German, he confessed that it is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to provide a clear and precise definition of Pan-Africanism (1974:3). And he repeats: Pan-Africanism has hardly ever been a clearly defined, precise or rational concept (1974:5). One can certainly debate the rationality of the conceptis it any less rational than, say, Pan-Slav, Pan-German, or Panamerica?but now, 40 odd years later, we are no closer to a clear definition; if anything, the term has acquired additional connotations. The pragmatism of any of these connotations, particularly the political, seems to have receded into the distance. Even the July 2007 special meeting of the heads of African states, held in Ghana to discuss the feasibility of a United States of Africa, did not draft a resolution in favor of the concept. The perceptions seem to repeat or duplicate the Monrovia/Casablanca dichotomy of an earlier generation. Yet, we the advocates of Pan-Africanism are not about to give up.

While the term Pan-African implies, etymologically speaking, the continent of Africa taken as a whole, it can be understood in both a broader and a narrower sense. Some scholars extend the concept, in space and in time, to include all or parts of the Diaspora; in other words, persons or groups that can trace their origins to the African continent, whether they have moved once, twice or more times, may or should be included. Of course, while all of humanity traces its origins to the African continent, White persons and groups outside Africa are usually not part of any definition of Pan-Africa.

The term Pan-Africanism is sometimes used in a narrower sense. It may refer to Black Africans, dismissing White settlers in southern and eastern Africa as intruders. Some would exclude Arabs who have settled in North Africa as well. They tend to divide Africa along a vaguely designated latitude, separating the more southern partsusually identified as Sub-Sahara Africafrom the North, and omitting the North from their discussion. These authors would concede, however, that while the North is overwhelmingly Muslim, so are half of West Africa and East Africa. Nor is the distinction between Arab and non-Arab always clear: Are Arabsfor instance, many Sudanesewith a dark complexion primarily Arab or African? Clearly, given the almost infinite variety of complexions in the human race, any classification based on color is unscientific and invalid.

Some authors focus on Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone Africa, which again may or may not include the Maghreb countries where Arabic and Shluh (Berber) are the dominant languages. As Nicodemus Fru Awasom has noted, although the aims and objectives of Anglophone and Francophone [and I will add Lusophone] historiographies were the same, an iron curtain developed between the two, which made it difficult for them to recognize each others existence and contribution to knowledge (Awasom, 2003). In short, we must recognize that while distinctions are

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in order in any scholarly discussion, arguments based on ethnicity, religion, or cultural differences are often artificial.

Pan-Africanism and the related term Africentric (see also, Africancentric, Afrocentric, or Africa-centered), as well as African Diaspora, give rise to a growing literature that is of rather recent vintage. Going through the on-line catalogue of the Library of Congress (LOC), I found 52 titles of books containing Pan-African or Pan-Africanism as a keyword. Of these, nine were published before 1980 (none before 1959), 11 in the 1980s, and 25 since 1990. Africentric and Afrocentric were encountered 89 times as keywords, although none of these titles date from before 1990. The term African Diaspora is listed 10,000 times as a keyword, and that number is not rounded up or downit is supposed to be an exact figure! The term Diaspora, however, is listed only 2,488 times as a keyword, which may indicate that these library data are not altogether consistent or reliable.

Let me attempt to reduce the multiplicity of connotations and definitions to a manageable few. Thus, (a) Pan-African Methodology can be understood as the history of the movement aiming at the political unification of the African continent and/or of all persons of African descent. (b) The methodology of Pan-Africanism can be equated with the history of Africa as a geographic unit, above and beyond the history of discrete African nations, ethnic groups or regions. (c) Pan-African Methodology is, moreover, the history and analysis of movements and organizations already in existence, catering to the needs of all Africans, including Africans of the Diaspora. Of course, it would be equally sensible to break down the concept of Pan-Africanism by discipline; for instance, in the area of the natural sciencesin geology, biology, medicine, pharmacology, etc.Pan-Africanism is not only a desideratum, but an already operative concept, with a number of practical applications. (d) Furthermore, to paraphrase Thomas Carlyle, who was no Panafricanist, it should be possible to discuss the methodology of Pan-Africanism as a series of biographies of great proponents of the idea: W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X (Al-hajj Malik alShabaz), Walter Rodney, Kwame Tour (aka Stokely Carmichael), to name only some of the best known. Hence, the concept of Pan-Africanism overlaps or coincides with the historiography of all people of African descent, on any continent, including Africa itself.

This paper addresses all four categories, a, b, c, and d, if only because they overlap and are functions of one another. I do have to draw some boundary lines, however. This essay cannot deal with all of humanity, even though, strictly and biologically speaking, we are all members of the African Diaspora; as we know, humans emerged in East Africa in three or more strainsthe ancestors of all of us lived on the African continent at one time. We can dispense with a discussion of Africentrism (or Afrocentrism), a concept which is sometimes understood as synonymous with the humanistic perspective or equivalent to modern humanisma Weltanschauung that includes a concern for all humanity. I therefore deal only with the four aspects of Panafricanism mentioned earlier.

It would be easy to argue that Pan-Africanismwhether conceptualized in the geographical, social, political or cultural sensehas its roots in antiquitythe term used in the Western world to refer to the age of ancient Greece and Rome. The unity of the African continent was implied by the nomenclature in usagegeographical terms such as Ethiopia, Libya, or Africa, each of which stood for Africa as a whole. Although the perspective of Greeks and Romans rarely, if ever, implied racism, it did imply that the continent was a single province, a single space, a single geographical unit apparently inhabited by one kind of people. Of course, the Africans they knew best were those immigrating from, imported from, or still inhabiting the northern regions of the continent.

There is a tendency on the part of some contemporary African politicians to apply the term African Union to unify people and groups south of the Sahara. They assume, rightly or wrongly,

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that there are racist sentiments and discrimination in Islam, in the Arab lands of northern Africasentiments which in turn may find reinforcement in the ideas and actions of ethnocentric politicians who view Africa as belonging exclusively to the Black. The question then becomes the following: Is it possible to refer to the advocates of two or more Africas as Panafrican? (Agozino, 2007:1-3).

In modern times, the political unification of Africa has been an ongoing concern for practically every African intellectual, including Africans in the Diaspora. There is an ever-growing number of book-length studies dealing with the history of Pan-Africanism or the Pan-African movement. One of the earliest was the study of Immanuel Geiss, already mentioned, entitled The Pan-African Movement, published first in Germany, but eventually translated into English (1974). Geiss begins his analysis with the transatlantic and triangular trades, applying the term pro Pan-Africanism to these early manifestations (1974:30). He concedes, however, that the term Pan-African did not come into usage until the 20th Century.

A detailed, balanced and perhaps more scientific study was published in 1982 by Olisanwuche EsedebePan-Africanism, the Idea and the Movement, 1776-1983which critiques the approach of the German scholar. The data uncovered by Esedebes multiarchival research carried out on both sides of the Atlantic have almost preempted the subject. Nevertheless, other authors added to the existing body of knowledge. For instance, there is a series of monographs written by Okpoku Agyeman, beginning in 1985 with an essay entitled the Pan African Worldview. There are almost countless articles and essays of varying lengths and depths that are not accounted for in the tally of books in the Library of Congress. One example would be the brief, but cogent, summary by Manning Marable entitled Pan-Africanism: Yesterday and Today (see afgen.com/pan-afri.html, 1995).

Although 1900 is usually given, partly due to the prominence of W. E. B. DuBois in the movement, as the date of the first Pan-African meeting, there had been meetings earlier. The Chicago Congress on Africa of 1893 may be taken as the beginning of Pan-Africanism as a movement (Esedebe, 1982:45). Indeed, this meeting included persons from the continent, in addition to African Americans, and the term Pan-African was applied, probably for the first time, to describe the meeting (Esedebe, 1982:46). There was also a Congress on Africa held in Atlanta, in 1895, voicing anti-colonial sentiments, radical for the time and place. Henry Sylvester Williams, the attorney from Trinidad and Tobago, is mentioned in connection with a meeting of the African Association in London in 1897 (Esedebe, 1982:47).

There is a growing literature in the English language on specific Pan-African congresses. Before writing their book on the protagonists of the movement, the team of Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood published in 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited, which included a contemporary treatise by the progressive activist George Padmore. Biko Agozino makes the same point in a blog dated May 31, 2007, part of the same Dialogue, although he provides a more militant title: Peoples Republic of Africa? Yes. Indeed, Agozinos Africa includes the entire continent, for he rejects the arguments of those who view it essentially as Africa South of the Sahara, as if the Muslim countries north of the Sahara were not part of Africa. It is easy enough for him to critique such an approach: after all, Islam includes at least half of West Africa and almost all of East Africa. Are these regions to be excluded as well?

In a lecture entitled New Meanings of Panafricanism in the Era of Globalisation, Neville Alexander of South Africa quotes Frantz Fanon in the masthead to his paper: Great lines, great channels of communication across the desert. To wear out the desert, to deny it, to bring together Africa and to create the continent (from an article by Fanon titled Cette Afrique venir). Alexanders thoughtful lecture insists that Africa is one, meaning that African leaders should ignore

the divisive efforts of those who would exclude the North, or divide Africa into a North and a

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South. More alarmingly, according to Alexander, Africa is both globalized and marginalized. Globalization, he implies, is not a positive process, but rather a force to be overcome (2003:26). He also points outperhaps from his vantage point as a South Africanthat the dominant, that is unifying, economic factor on the continent is South Africa, at least as much as the 200 or so transnational corporations present in Africa. Indeed, the growth of the GDP of Africa as a whole has been positive of late, mainly thanks to the economy of South Africa, which now represents about 25% of the continents economy, with a growth rate of around 3.5% since 1999.

In the words of Alexander, It is the writers, poets, musicians, sculptors, architects, in short, the artists of Africa, those whom Ngugi wa Thiongo calls the keepers of memory, who need to serve as the bridge between the African past that is in every sense of the word increasingly acknowledged as the cradle of civilization and the future that is at one and the same time indubitably global as well as distinctively African (Alexander, 2003:25). Indeed, we must list among the Pan-Africanists great writers described as African, and whose village or ethnic group is of secondary importance: thus, Chinua Achebe, Ousmane Sembene, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiongo, as well as the great musicians such as Miriam Makeba, Fela Ransome Kuti, etc. must be included.

Not surprisingly, few outstanding scholars have attempted to produce a history of the African continent. Some of the reasons for this omission had currency in the past. For a long time, authors have taken the cue from Hegel and other 19th Century European thinkers (in any case, scientific history-writing is a relatively modern undertaking) who regarded Africans as objects unworthy of study, as lacking history, as lacking culture. Even when endowed with culture in the anthropological sense of the term, this would often be described as inferior, primitive, backward and savage. Maybe African historians were not around to respond to these perceptions at the time, but similar opinions were expressed by Hugh Trevor-Roper and other historians many decades later, even as late as the middle of the 20th Century.

Today, many major American universities and others around the world offer courses on African history. Several textbooks cater to the students enrolled in them (and their instructors). Most textbooks in African history, however, have not adopted a Pan-African approach. They deal with the subject in geographic terms, acknowledging that Africa is, indeed, a continent with a history, in the words of Basil Davidson, as rich and as varied (Africa and the Africans) as any other continent. Given the vested interests of the authors in the sale of these textbooks, the emphasis tends to be on the varied rather than on the unity of civilization and culture, or on the moral and political imperative of unification.

It would be a mistake, in my opinion, to divide historians of Africa into groups according to complexion or race, into Black and White; it makes greater analytical sense to classify historians according to attitude or ideology. Therefore, let us dismiss 19th Century racist interpretations, and let us by-pass those historical works focusing on a region or a single country, however scientific and progressive.

We are left with a short-list of historians, Africans and others, from the first half and mid-20th Century, the colonial period and the period of so-called independence. Since colonialism and neo-colonialism are unequivocally negative concepts, it is not surprising that Africancentric social scientists tend to emphasize periods of glory, such as ancient Kemet, or the Great West African Empires. Similarly, scholars writing in the post-colonial (or neocolonial) period, down to the present, while recognizing that Africans on the whole are often facing a dour fate, find the roots of the African predicament in the trade of human beings, particularly the Transatlantic trade, the scramble for Africa, the colonial regimes (however short-lived), and neo-colonialismnegative factors ascribed, for the most part, to outside forces, that is to European and, to a lesser extent, Arab intervention.

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Incidentally, Pan-African historical works may or may not deal with the entire time-span, beginning with the beginnings of Kemet. If they do, they face the issue of periodization, of how to approach the African society and politics chronologically. There are works that purport to be Pan-African, yet divide time into periods designated as pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonialas if Africa cannot be described or imagined without the presence or absence of the European factor. Such an approach smacks of Eurocentrism. By resorting to such Eurocentric terminology, their supposedly Africancentric or Pan-African approach becomes compromised. In other words, it is important to realize that a genuine Pan-African Methodology and historiography hinge upon an Africancentric (i.e. Africa-centered) approach and perhaps an Africancentric world-view as well.

The most outstanding classical works on African, or Pan-African history, were written by the fathers of Africancentrism: W. E. B. DuBois and Cheikh Anta Diop. While the entire opus and the very life of DuBois can be qualified as Pan-African, it was his The World and Africa that opened the path to subsequent Pan-African historians. The same may be said of Diops The Cultural Unity of Negro Africa, and even his Priorit de la civilisation africaine, which argues convincingly that the population of Kemet (ancient Egypt) was African rather than European or anything else. The classical work among those which blame the persistent economic difficulties, ethnic conflicts and other social ailments on the slave-trading and colonial powers is Walter Rodneys How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. We may add the works of progressive European authors such as Jean Suret-Canale, Catherine Vidrovitch, and Endre Sik.

In addition to the approach in most textbooks, several attempts have been made to elaborate a comprehensive history of Africa without, however, seeking common Pan-African elements. The best known in the English-speaking world are the Cambridge History of Africa and the multi-author series produced by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): i.e. The General History of Africa Series. The Cambridge history, published in eight volumes between 1975 and 1986, was the first attempt, at least in the United Kingdom, to integrate and assess the achievements of scholars focused on Africa. The editors of the volumes were British, as were the overwhelming majority of the contributors. Generally speaking, the volumes fail to present the continent as an interrelated (i.e. Pan-African) whole.

The UNESCO series sought to overcome the shortcomings of an almost exclusively British interpretation. The mission of the work, as defined by Bethwell Allan Ogot, president of the committee in charge of drafting the series, was to consider Africa as a totality, the aim [being] to show the historical relationships between the various parts of the continent, too frequently subdivided in works published to date (www.unsesco.org/culture/africa p. 1). The series exists in an unabridged, clothbound version, and in an abridged paperback version, both in eight volumes. Each of the volumes consists of about 30 chapters, the authors being mostly African scholars from the continent. Those who are not African are widely recognized as students of African civilizations. Thus, each volume is edited by an acknowledged contemporary scholar. The first version was in English, but several of the volumes have also been published in French and Arabic, and some have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese, with further translations contemplated in Kiswahili and Hausa.

Single authors dealing with Pan-Africanism or the history of the continent as a whole usually have a point of view that may limit their acceptance by students or scholars. Jean Suret-Canale approached Africas problems from the point of view of exploitation and abuse by the colonial and neocolonial masters. His Essais dhistoire africaine: de la traite des noirs au nocolonialisme, dating from 1980, appeared in English translation rather late, in 1988 (Africa World Press). The same ideology undergirds the opus of Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, including her anthology co-authored with Alain Forest, Dcolonisations et nouvelles dpendances, from 1986. See also her Histoire Africaine du XXe sicle: socits, villes, cultures and a number of her publications on the urbanization process throughout

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Africa, such as Processus durbanization en Afrique, from 1988. Her studies are usually published by LHarmattan publishers of Paris, specializing in African topics.

Jan Vansina also began as a francophone author of works on Africa. His classic book on Oral Tradition was originally issued in French. It was translated into English, or perhaps reissued by the author in English; it was updated, again in English, under the title Oral Tradition as History. It is not only a Pan-African work, but also a seminal work in historical methodology, in African folklore, ethnology and anthropology. This work is emulated by Oral Tradition and Oral History in Africa and the Diaspora, edited by E. J. Alagoa.

Perhaps the most prolific historian of Africa writing in English has been Basil Davidson. His titles include A History of Africa, Africa in Modern History, Lost Cities of Africa, The Black Mans Burden, etc., the contents of which tend to be somewhat repetitive. Davidson is described over the Internet as a historian with leftist leanings (www.answers.com/topic/basil-davidson), and he has incurred the wrath of some scholars from the continent, having dismissed their work (without specifying names) as often superficial and their authors as not particularly competent. Nevertheless, Davidson, as a White British scholar, deserves consideration for his Africancentric approach and his unrelenting denunciation of the impact of the slave trade and colonialism

Special mention must be made of Endre Sik, whose The History of Black Africa was published in 1966, in Budapest (with a French version and other versions to follow). At the time of publication, under Cold War circumstances, the book was described, in the Western press, as dogmatic and sharply Marxist in tone. Indeed, given the political conditions in East-Central Europe under state socialism, the critique was not misplaced; nevertheless, the books analyses of imperialism and the colonial regimes were both path-breaking and hard to refute.

As a reaction against those who blame Africas predicament on outside factors, there are scholars, mostly political scientists, both African and European, who argue that Africans, particularly African leaders since independence, must share the blame. They must share the blame principally because of what is termed corruption. Here, too, we may make distinctions between those authors who feel much of Africas wealth has ended up in Swiss banks, in the bank accounts of specific leaders, usually identified as dictators, and those who feel that European and American observers often overlook similar phenomena in the politics of their own lands. They have failed to understandwe are toldAfrican traditions, such as the ten percent rule that applies in some countries or regions constitute part of the culture; hence, they refer to the phenomenon as kickbacks or bribery. General, albeit not necessarily Pan-African histories of Africa, include the old work of John Paden, The African Experience, from 1970, Africa & Africans by Bohannan and Curtin, from 1995, and A History of Africa by Fage and Tordoff (2002). Descriptions of Afro-Asians As stated earlier, it is estimated that there are 700,000,000 (seven hundred million) Black/Africoid people of Asia. The Black/Africoid population is directly related to Africans and consists of the same four types found in Africa today, except the Kong-San, who scientists believe became the modern-day light to yellow-brown Mongoloid people (http://nubianem.tripod.com/blackafroasia/). Population data on contemporary Blacks/Africoids for the various Asian countries are hard to find. Nonetheless, as shown in Table 1, there is enough evidence to show that Blacks/Africoids and other Africans exist in every Asian country today.

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Table 1: Evidence of African/Black Presence in Asia in 2010

Country Population Notes

Azerbaijan 8,303,512 (July 2010 est.) Afro-Turks were brought to the Ottoman Empire by the Arab slave trade to plantations The migration of the Romanies through the Middle East and Northern Africa to Europe Indo- European-Armenian

Armenia Yezidi (Kurd) 1.3% Ottoman empire included Egyptian-Kurds

Bahrain 3%

Portuguese people from Northern Africa, Sub Sahara and Sahara

Bangladesh 90-95% Black Austroloid

Bengali-Paleo-Mongoloid, aka Northern Indian mongoloid originated from Africa

Bhutan Bhote 50%, ethnic Nepalese 35% (includes Lhotsampas - one of several Nepalese ethnic groups), indigenous or migrant tribes 15%

Burundi and Kenyan refugees

Brunei Malay 66.3%, Chinese 11.2%, indigenous 3.4%, other 19.1% (2004 est.) 395,027 (July 2010 est)

Negrito- Negritos share some common physical features with African pygmy populations In the out of Africa theory, the ancestors of the Australoids, the Proto-Australoids are thought to have been the first branch off from the Proto-Capoids to migrate from Africa about 60,000 BCE, Afro- Asiatic Recruited teachers and offer student scholarships in Africa

Burma Other 5%

Blacks African WW II fighters for Britain against japan

Cambodia Khmer 90%; the people of Cambodia still call themselves Khmer, meaning Black

Influenced by Indians and Asian Malayo-Polynesian Black Malaysians

China 100,000, a number that has been increasing at annual rate of 30-40%

Han Chinese from Signapore with influence of Indian, Arab and African people

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East Timor 1,154,625 Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian), Papuan

Black Malaysians Blacks, Malays, Portuguese

India 600,000,000 Indo Negroid; 300,000,000 Black Tribals, 300,000,000 Black Dalits/Dravidian 25%,

Have been in India for over 60,000 years

Iran Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1%

Arab, Turkmen, some Persian Azeri, and Africans Semi-dark and very dark, afro hair, wide nose, plump lips Half Black/Half Arabs of South and East African Blacks of South

Indonesia Javanese 40.6%, Sundanese 15%, other or unspecified 29.9%

Sudan influence and Malay Hundreds of Somali and other African students

Iran

Iraq 29,671,605 (July 2010 est.) Arab 75%-80%, Kurdish 15%-20%, Turkoman, Assyrian, or other 5%

African origin Assyrian ( Caucasian)

Israel About 10%

Africa-born Jewish 5.9%,

Japan Up to 230,000 Brazilians Africans, Brazilian and Philippians

Jordan Circassian 1%

Many Africans

Kazakhstan Other including Africans 4.9%

By way of the Mongol Empire

Laos Over 100 minor ethnic groups 26%

Indo-African-influence

Lebanon Other 1% Many Christian Lebanese do not identify themselves as Arab but rather as descendents of the ancient Canaanites and prefer to be called Phoenicians

African influence and people

Malaysia Malay 50.4%, Indian 7.1%, others 7.8%

Malay-African influence and origin with Indian influence

Maldives 395,650 South Indians, Sinhalese, Arabs

African and Indo-Aryan and Asian influence

Mongolia 3,086,918 Mongol (mostly Khalkha) 94.9%, Turkic

Turks-Africans and Mongols

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(mostly Kazakh) 5%, other (including Chinese and Russian) 0.1%

Nepal Kami 3.9%, other 32.7%, unspecified 2.8%

Mongoloids, Magar-Indian influence and Asia-Indian and immigration because of slaves (Africa-Kami people from Tanzania)

North Korea Relatively racially homogeneous

Some Africans (mixed)

Oman 2,967,717 Arab, Baluchi, South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi), African

Africans

Pakistan 6.28%

Sheedi Africans/Blacks

Philippines 25.3% Negritos share common physical features with African pygmy populations

Qatar Other 14% Africans

Saudi Arabia Afro-Asian 10%

Africans and Afro-Asian

Singapore Malay 13.9%, Indian 7.9%, other 1.4%

Mix of African influence

South Korea Relatively homogeneous (except for about 20,000 Chinese)

Some Africans and mixed people?

Sri Lanka Moors 7.2%, other 0.5%, unspecified 10%

Africans due to trade and migration

Syria Other 9.7% Afro-Arabs

Taiwan Others 2% Afro-Asians

Tajikistan 2.6% Indian and Persian with some darker colored people

Thailand Other 11% Indian, Asian and African

Turkey Other minorities 7-12% Africans and they are mixed

Turkmenistan Other 6% Some sort of African influence and Africans because some Afro-Turks

United Arab Emirates Emirati 19%, other Arab and Iranian 23%, South Asian 50%, other expatriates (includes Westerners and East Asians) 8% note: less than 20% are UAE citizens (1982)

Africans exist

Uzbekistan Other 2.5% Indo-influence with some darker

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colored people

Vietnam Others 4.1% Indian, Asian Afro-Vietnamese and darker colored people exist

Yemen 23,495,361 predominantly Arab

But also Afro-Arab and South Asians

Sources: More than 100 including books, journals, magazines, news papers, encyclopedias, Internet entries, and personal interviews

In addition to the data in Table 1, there is additional evidence that has been presented by various researchers on the presence of Blacks/Africoids in Asia. According to Runoko Rashidi, Indonesia is made up of more than 13,000 islands stretching from the Asian mainland into the Pacific Ocean, and a significant number of these islands have Black residents. Of course, many of the Black people in Indonesia live in the occupied territories, most notably the Papuans of Irian Jaya (the western half of New Guinea) or what they refer to as West Papua. These Blacks have been brutally treated by the Indonesian government in a policy that approaches genocide (Rashidi, 2005).

Thailand, like Indonesia, is a country with an extremely ancient but little known Black population. Thailands Blacks are referred to as the forest dwelling people called Sekai, sometimes identified by the pejorative term Negritos and probably more accurately known as Mani. These people live in southern Thailand in the region straddling the border with northern Malaysia. They are forest dwellers and seem to relish their isolation (Rashidi, 2005).

Furthermore, As Philip Snow (1989) informs us, the term Negrito refers to several ethnic groups in isolated parts of Southeast Asia. Their current populations include 12 Andamanese ethnic groups of the Andaman Islands, the Semang, Batek, Jahai, Kensiu, Kintaq, Lanoh and Mendriq of Malaysia, the Mani of Thailand, and the Aeta, Agta, Ayta, Pygmies, Ita, Baluga, Ati, Dumagat and at least 25 other ethnic groups of the Philippines. Negritos share some common physical features with African pygmy populations, including short stature, natural afro-hair texture, and dark skin; nonetheless, their origin and the route of their migration to Asia is still a matter of great speculation. Also, as V. K. Kashyam and his colleagues (2003) state, Negritos have also been shown to have separated early from Asians, suggesting that they are either surviving descendants of settlers from an early migration out of Africa, or that they are descendants of one of the founder populations of modern humans.

In addition to the Mani groups, however, the Black presence in Thai antiquity is perhaps best manifested and most clearly demonstrated in the numerous Africoid images of the Buddha. Making the great link between antiquity and the modern era, as far back as 1883 in his brilliantly written History of the Negro Race in America, African American scholar George Washington Williams pointed out that In the temples of Siam (Thailand) we find the idols fashioned like unto Negroes .... Traces of this black race are still to be found along the Himalaya range from the Indus to Indo-China, and the Malay Peninsula, and in mixed form through the southern states to Ceylon (Rashidi, 2005).

In Malaysia, these Small Blacks have been denoted as Orang Asli (Original Man). Pejoratively they are known as Semang, with the connotation of savage. They live in the rainforests of northern Malaysia and are probably the aboriginals of the land. It is tragic that the contributions of these small Black people to monumental high cultures characterized by urbanization, metallurgy, agricultural science and scripts remain essentially unexamined (Rashidi, 2005).

According to Rashidi, when someone asked him about African people in Sri Lanka, his response was the following: It all depends on what you mean by African. He adds that the majority Sinhalese population of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) is itself very dark. Then there are the Tamils from South India residing in Sri Lanka. They, also, are very dark people. They are Dravidians with

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some of them being quite black. These are the Blacks currently fighting the Sinhalese Sri Lanka government for independence or at least a greater degree of autonomy (Rashidi, 2005).

Then there is the group of Blacks who arrived more recently from Africa in Sri Lanka called Kaffirs. They are very similar to the African populations in Iraq, Iran and Kuwait and known in Pakistan as Sheedis and India as Siddis and Habshis. There seem to be only a few thousand of these Kaffirs in Sri Lanka, but they represent the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island within the past several hundred years. These Blacks have distinct recollections of Africa (Rashidi, 2005).

And certainly, for Rashidi, not to be left out of the discussion are the descendants of probably the original people of Sri Lanka and these people are generally called Veddas or Veddoids and have a strong resemblance to Aboriginal Australians. In respect to phenotype, all of these populations are Black (Rashidi, 2005).

Rashida adds that since the first modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) were of African birth, the African presence globally can be demonstrated through the history of the Black populations that have inhabited the world within the span of recent humanity. Not only are African people the aboriginal people of the planet, however; there is abundant evidence to show that Black people created and sustained many of the world's earliest and most enduring civilizations. Such was the case in India (Rashidi, 2005).

In Greater India, points out Rashidi, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization. We are referring here to the Indus Valley civilization, Indias earliest high culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River. In his African Origin of Civilization: Myth of Reality, Cheikh Anta Diop pointed out:

There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type ... Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent (quoted in Rashidi, 2005).

The term Dravidian itself, according to Rashidi, is apparently an Aryan corruption of Tamil.

In 1288 and again in 1293, the Venetian traveler Marco Polo visited the Tamil (Dravidian) country of South India and left a vivid description of the land and its people. In his Travels, Polo exclaimed:

The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described (quoted in Rashidi, 2005).

According to Rashidi, possibly the most substantial percentage of Asias Blacks can be identified

among Indias 250 million Untouchables or Dalits. The Dalits along South Indias coastal periphery were dramatically affected by the tsunami. The Dalits, brutally crushed underfoot by Indias Hindu caste system, are demonstrating a rapidly expanding awareness of their lineage and their relationship to the struggle of African people throughout the world. In April of 1972, for example, the Dalit Panther Party was formed in Bombay, India. This organization takes its pride and inspiration directly from the Black Panther Party of the United States (Rashidi, 2005). I provide

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more detailed information on the Dalit Panther party in the section on Afro-Asian Pan-African movements and organizations.

Rashidi points out that the formation of the Dalit Panthers with the corresponding ideology that accompanies it signals a dramatic change in the annals of resistance, and Dalit Panther organizations have subsequently spread to other parts of India. In August of 1972, the Dalit Panthers announced that the 25th anniversary of Indian independence would be celebrated as a day of mourning (Rashidi, 2005).

Rashidi also notes that in the 1987 edition of the African Presence in Early Asia anthology edited by Rashidi and Van Sertima, and Dravidian journalist V.T. Rajshekar stated: The African-Americans also must know that their liberation struggle cannot be complete as long as their own blood-brothers and sisters living in far off Asia are suffering. It is true that African-Americans are also suffering, but our people here today are where African-Americans were two hundred years ago. African-American leaders can give our struggle tremendous support by bringing forth knowledge of the existence of such a huge chunk of Asian Blacks to the notice of both the American Black masses and the Black masses who dwell within the African continent itself (quoted in Rashidi, 2005).

Furthermore, according to Rashidi, DNA studies published in The New York Times of December 11, 2002, focusing on the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago east of India, state that they are the direct descendants of the first modern humans to have inhabited Asia. According to the newspaper, Their physical featuresshort stature, dark skin, peppercorn hair and large buttocksare characteristic of African Pygmies. They look like they belong in Africa, but here they are sitting in this island chain in the middle of the Indian Ocean, said Dr. Peter Underhill of Stanford University, a co-author of the new report (Rashidi, 2005).

Notes Rashidi, only four of the dozen or so ethnic groups that once inhabited the island survive, with a total population of about 500 people. This was before the tsunami. These include the Jarawa, the largest group, who still live in the forest, the Onge, who have been settled by the Indian government, the Great Andamanese and the Sentinelese. These studies of the Andamanese suggest that they are part of what is described as a relict Paleolithic population, descended from the first modern humans to leave Africa. Dr. Underhill, an expert on the genetic history of the Y chromosome, said that the Paleolithic population of Asia might well have looked as African as the Onge and Jarawa do now, and that people with the appearance of present-day Asians might have emerged only later (Rashidi, 2005).

Initially, concludes Rashidi, there was some fear that the tsunami may have wiped out these ancient African people. But apparently they have survived largely intact with a resilience, tenacity and determination that all humanity might look upon with admiration, pride and respect (Rashidi, 2005). A Brief History of Afro-Asians In his book titled From Susu Economics: A History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth (2000), Paul Alfred Barton traces the African presence in Asia to Nubia-Kush, which was the original civilization in the Nile Valley. He believes that it may have been in existence before the Neolithic Age, as early as 10000 BC. He cites new data based on the work of archeologists to show that about 8000 BC, Nubia had an advanced culture which became Ta-Seti and contributed both the manpower, technological knowledge and culture to what became Egypt, when Egypt or Khemet was the northern section of the vast Nubian-Kushite or Ethiopian Empire. At that time, he notes, much of the Nile Delta may have been under water and a vast swamp.

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Nubia-Kush, according to Barton, was the core of Black civilization between 15000 BC and 4241 BC. The core of the ancient Nubian-Kushite Empire was the portion of land between Aswan and Khartoum. After the Khemites retook northern Khem from alien Asiatics who were settled in the northern part of the Delta, between 3400 and 3100 BC, and reunited the two lands, the boundaries of the empire expanded. It began south of Turkey in the north and included Canaan, and the entire region now made up of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Isreal and Sinai. Its southern extension included parts of modern Ethiopia and the Lakes Region of East Africa.

For Barton, there is no doubt that the civilization of Nubia-Kush was the original civilization in the Nile Valley, for the Khemites, who are supposed to be the first civilization in the region, actually looked to Nubia-Kush (Sudan) as the origin of their civilization and culture, as well as their people. Nubia-Kush was the source of the Nile Valley culture. The legend of Osirus, who is said to have brought civilization to Egypt from Nubia-Kush, points to the south of Egypt as the place of his origins. The Khemites themselves claimed that the area, which later became Khemet (particularly the Delta area), was still basically swamp, wetlands and ocean during the time the legend of Osirus is said to have taken place.

According to Barton, trade occurred frequently between the Nubian-Kushites and Khemites. The trade may have begun during the Paleolithic Age and may have been carried out by boat, animals, or on foot. The resources of Khem has never been as great as that of its southern neighbors and most of its gold, ostrich feathers, ivory, ebony, animals, food and other commodities came from Nubia-Kush. Kush was not only the mother of Khemetic civilization, but Khemet depended greatly on Kush and the lands further south for its very survival.

Furthermore, Barton demonstrates that Africans represented in Olmec art are represented in all facets of life. Some of Alexander Von Wuthenaus photographs of Olmec art show Africans and Blacks in general in all walks of life, particularly in his book, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America. In Olmec representations of Africans, the Africans are placed in a position of dominance over people who seem to have Semitic characteristics, such as hooked, aquiline noses, beards, turned up shoes, and other characteristics. Representations of Semitic-looking people have been found carved on stalaes and in other media.

Barton cites Bill Macks observation of the African position among the Phoenicians in Fate Magazine:

For a long time, archeologists have been puzzled by the diversity of physical types portrayed in Olmec art. The Olmecs, first of ancient Americas true civilizations, were the precursors of the Mayans. They sculpted figures that are strikingly Negroid in feature. To further confuse the already murky picture they also portray what archeologists call the Uncle Sam figure, men with aquiline features and chin wiskers. Early archeologists concocted theories that these portrayed Phoenicians and the Negroid featured portraits were either slaves or crew, or both. As is usual in such schorlarly guessing games, the balance tipped the other way when a number of stalae were found where the Uncle Sam figure were shown groveling in submission to the Negroid featured men. To add to the considerable confusion, some Olmec statuary depicts a combination of the twoNegroid features with chin wiskers! Many of the Mexican state and university museums have taken the bull by the horns and labled their exhibits as having been introduced or at least influenced by contacts with Africa. Perhaps the most striking example of why Mexican officials made their decision is found in the state museum of Jalapa. A terracotta bust approximately ten inches high is definitely the portrait of an African right down to the

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cornrow hairstyle. The clincher is that the sculptor, to insure that there was no doubt, painted the face black.

For Barton, the observations of Bill Mack and that of the Mexican officials throw doubt into the

inaccurate belief that the Blacks portrayed in Olmec art and in the collosal stone heads were slaves or even servants of the Phoenicians. No enslaved people would be bowed to, nor would their portraits be carved in gigantic boulders, many times bigger and more massive than portraits of their so-called masters. Furthermore, one of the collosal heads was used as an oracle or talking God. It has a hole in one ear, through which a priest may have uttered words to represent the God. This same technique was used by the Ancient Egyptians and Nubian-Kushites, who made use of talking Gods.

Thus, Barton argues that we are left with what is the actual truth and the reality: that is, the Blacks portrayed in the collosal basalt stone heads were both representations of Gods or kings, or God-Kings similar to those of Egypt and Nubia-Kush. These great Black Olmec kings ruled Mexico for perhaps 1,000 or more years, beginning about 1100 BC to about 300 AD. In fact, about 22 of these gigantic stone heads have been found in Mexico, and there may be more.

According to Barton, the so-called Semites portrayed among the African Blacks were probably Phoenicians or Canaanites, for these were people who were a mixture of Semitic and African, with a predominance of African features. This type is clearly present in Bill Mack's description. Also, the similarities between the pure Blacks portrayed in Olmec art and West Africans and the pure Blacks of Sudan and Nubia-Kush of ancient times is stunning. Thus, a ship under the control of Black Egyptians and Nubian-Khemites could have hired some Phoenician sailors, as was their custom, and sailed to West Africa, where African sailors accompanied them in West African boats for a trip that had been planned. After all, the Nubian-Kushites, Khemites and Phoenicians traded with the West Africans. Logic says that due to the very ancient relationship that the West Africans had with the Americas (earlier than 4000 BC), then the Khemites, Nubian-Kushites and Phoenicians would have heard about lands beyond the Atlantic from the West Africans in the same way that the African sailors of Cape Verde told Christopher Columbus about the Americas and their trading relationship with the Native Americans there.

In retrospect, Barton adds, the history of West Africa was as fruitful, rich and glorious as that of Khemet, Nubia-Kush, Elam, Sumer, Punt (Negau), India, or any of the Black civilizations on the north-eastern portion of Africa, West and South Asia. All these regions made great accomplishments. While the Nubian-Kushites and Khemites spread their trade and influence throughout the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean (called the Ethiopian Sea as late as the 1500s AD), the Atlantic, Asia, the rest of Africa and Europe, the West Africans spread their trade and influence to the Americas, the Sahara and North Africa, the Nile Region, Central Africa, the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula. There are records which prove an ancient African connection between the Africans in the area of Cameroon and the ancient Blacks of Mesopotamia as well as ancient China. Barton cites Wayne Chandlers discussion of this fascinating topic in his essay titled African Presence in Early Asia in the book, The Principle of Polarity, edited by Ivan Van Sertima.

In his other book that followed From Susu Economics: A History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth and titled A History of the African-Olmecs: Black Civilizations of America from Prehistoric Times to the Present Era (2001), Barton argues that it is very likely that the very first inhabitants of the Americas were Negritic Blacks from Africa and Asia who arrived in the Americas earlier than 100,000 years BC. This occurrence would have taken place during a period in human history when the only Homosapiens were Negritic Blacks and recent migrants from Africa who entered into an uninhabited North and South America. To understand this possibility, which is becoming more factual as further evidence is gathered, we must consider the fact that mitochondrial DNA studies

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done over the years have already fortified the evidence which points to the mono-genetic origins of all humans present to a source somewhere in Central Africa. Furthermore, all humans came from this African source and developed into distinct races only about 40,000 years ago. This means that the Black race (Negritic) existed for more than 1,000 years before all other races came into being.

According to Barton, Glogers Law supports the idea that humans originated in Africa and migrated to other regions. Those who went to the cold northern lands adapted to the cold climate. Barton notes that according to Cheikh Antah Diop, Glogers Law states that warm-blooded animals originating in a hot and humid climate would be pigmented. This fact clearly indicates that the very first humans to inhabit the Americas and the entire world came out of Africa between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Barton cites the Gladwin Thesis (1947) that Blacks were in the Americas as early as 70000 B.C. These first Blacks may have been the Australoid type as well as diminutive Blacks such as the Pygmies, Agta, Bushmen and others.

Barton argues that it is unlikely that the prehistoric Blacks whose remains have been discovered in the Americas evolved from Mongoloids and developed in situ in the Americas into Negritic racial types. This idea can be refuted due to the fact that if humans entered the Americas between 30000 BC and 15000 BC, they would have had to have been Negroid. Prehistoric Blacks were moving worldwide; consequently, the prehistoric migrants to the Americas during that period would have had to have been Negroid and Black. It seems more possible that people who were Negritic changed into the Mongoloid type in the Americas in order to adapt to the cold climate in the north. In fact, the Kong and San peoples of Southern Africa, who live in climatic regions similar to that of East Asia (the cold, windy, high veldt of Southern Africa), possess the so-called Mongoloid characteristics such as yellowish-brown skin, short stature, and the epicantus eye fold. Yet, genetically and in most other aspects, they are typical Negroids with features that can be found from the tip of Southern Africa to North Africa among the various Negritic peoples. These Negritic peoples are among the earliest examples of the prehistoric Homo sapien types who once settled the entire world before the development of distinct races in various parts of the planet. Furthermore, according to Barton, findings based on mitochondrial DNA prove without a doubt that the earliest ancestors of all Homo sapiens alive today came from Central Africa. The place of origin of the pre-Columbian Blacks who inhabited the Americas has been placed in a number of geographical regions, including what is today the United States of America itself. And, based on the close similarities between cultural assets found in West Africa, particularly during the ancient, pre-Christian Ghana Empire (3000 BC-400 AD) and those of ancient Mexico, many anthropologists, historians and scientists such as Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus), Alexander Von Wuthenau (Unexpected Faces in Pre-Columbian America), and Andrezej Wiercinski, the Polish craniologist, have concluded that there was a significant ancient African presence in ancient Mexico. Studies conducted by anthropologists, historians and others on the Blacks of Olmec Mexico show cultural similarities not merely with ancient Ghana, but with West Africa in general. For example, Ivan Van Sertimas quote of R.A. Jairazbhoys quote from the Quiche Maya book, Titulo Coyoi, clearly points to a West African origin and influence for some of the cultural contributions to Olmec artistic works which portray Black African types or Negritic features.

Barton cites Van Sertimas address to the Smithsonian in 1992 when he points out that the Maya Oral tradition describes artifacts and materials brought to Mexico by people who most likely came from West Africa. In Sertimas words: These things came from the East (east of the Gulf of Mexico), from the other side of the water and the sea. They came here, they had their thrones, their little benches and stools, they had their parasols and their bone flutes. These items, Barton notes, are still very common in West Africa and are used by chiefs, kings, noblemen and their entourages. Such items are symbols of power and influence. In fact, golden stools or replicas are still carried by

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the Ashanti Nation of Ghana, along with large, multi-colored umbrellas, flutes of bone and ivory, as well as trumpets and horns of the same materials.

According to Barton, the period in which these observations were made by the Maya may have been anytime between 1800 BC to about 1000 AD. This record may have survived from a very early period in the history of Mexico, when Africans and Native Americans met somewhere in the Bay of Campeche. During this period, whether it was as early as 1800 BC, or as late as 1000 AD, Ghana was in existence first as a prehistoric kingdom in what is today Mauritania about 8000 BC. For Barton, this very region may have been the home of one of the most ancient civilizations on earth. He cites the Mobetter News (South Holland, Illinois) which states that a prehistoric empire called the Zingh Empire existed in the present location of Mauritania about 15,000 years ago. One of its most famous Emperors was Tirus Afrik who designed the African standard red, black and green flag.

Barton delineates three periods of the history of Ghana. The first period was a continuation of a prehistoric civilization which existed in the Sahara during the Wet Phase, when much of the extensive lake covered areas had given way to dry, fertile, forest covered terrain. A culture which practiced agriculture and was connected to the Mende Speaking peoples in West Africa. That same culture developed into a great civilization between 3000 BC and 400 AD, and continued to exist up to about 1000 AD. It was from this Ghana, during these periods, that most of the ancient Blacks whose likenesses still exist in Olmec stonework of Mexico sailed from Africa to Mexico.

Furthermore, Barton notes that Ghanas earliest roots began in the region of Mauritania about 15,000 years ago. He cites new information that places a civilization called the Zingh Empire in the region at this very ancient period. During more recent times (between 10000 BC and 3000 BC), the Mende agricultural complex and the Niger-Congo language family developed. This development was followed soon afterwards by the Nok Civilization which placed an emphasis on highly technical and fine works of terracotta art, iron ware, weapons and utensils, cotton cloth and textiles, gold and gold ornaments, weapons and currency. Civilization in this region, according to Barton, continued into the Renaissance phase of the Ghana Civilization, which was perhaps between 400 BC and 1000 AD, a very long period. He mentions Nigerian officials who have dated some of the ancient terracotta artwork of the Nok region, which spread its influence all over Western Africa, to about 2700 BC, cited the UNESCO book, A General History of Africa (vol. II, Paris, 1990).

Nicholas Faraclas in his seminal essay, They Came before the Egyptians: Linguistic Evidence for the African Roots of Semitic Languages, in the book titled Enduring Western Civilization (1995) and edited by Sylvia Federici, has provided impeccable linguistic evidence that supports the claims for an early influence of Africans in Asia. Faraclas traces the origins of Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Babylonian, Assyrian and Arabic languages back to their Central African homeland. The evidence suggests, according to Faraclas, that many of the speakers from all of these languages may have participated in a Black civilization that was driven out of Central Africa by the expanding Sahara desert some 7,000 years ago (Faraclas, 1995:175).

One of the main breakthroughs in this context, Faraclas points out, is the landmark work of Joseph H. Greeberg (1963) who demonstrated that most of the languages that can be shown to be related to the Semitic mother languages of Western Civilization are spoken in Africa. In addition to the classification of the four families of African languages(1) Afroasiatic, (2) Nilo-Saharan, (3) Niger-Congo, and (4) Khoisan, Faraclas adds a fifth family: i.e. the Austronesian. This family encompasses hundreds of languages spoken from Easter Island, off the coast of South America, to Madagascar (Faraclas, 1995:176-178).

Employing several methodological approachesclimatological, ethnographica, and linguistic, Faraclas finds that the epicenter of Afroasiatic expansion (the area where the boundaries of the Afroasiatic language groups converge) is the Darfur-Kordofan region along the present border of

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Chad and The Sudan. He therefore postulates that this is the Afroasiatic homeland and cites lake level measurements, pollen counts, and other climatological data which indicate that the Sahara/Sahel region passed through six wet and dry phases over the past 30,000 years (Faraclas, 1995:183):

(1) 28000 BC-1800 BC Wet spell (2) 18000 BC-10000 BC Major dry spell (3) 10000 BC-5000 BC Major wet spell (4) 5000 BC-3000 BC Drier (5) 3000 BC-1000 BC Wetter (6) 1000 BC-Present Drier Faraclas points out that during the wet phases, the Sahara/Sahel region was lush, green, covered

by grass, swamps, lakes, and creeks; thus, it could support a thriving population. Relating available linguistic data to archaeological and climatological data, he shows that the wet Sahara/Sahel region was originally the home of various hunting, herding, and fighting groups (Faraclas, 1995:183).

During the last Major Dry Spell (i.e., 18000-10000 BC), Faraclas forther postulates, Lake Chad probably disappeared and the Niger River stopped flowing out from the Inland Delta. This means that the populations living in the Sahara/Sahel would have had to leave the area by going north or south, or they would have had to retreat to the few well-watered places left in the region. These areas would have included the Inland Delta of the Niger River to the west, the basin of Lake Chad in the center, and the swampy lands of the Darfur-Kordofan region on the Chad-Sudan border to the east. These developments, argues Faraclas, would have given rise to three of the four language families of languages on the African mainland: (1) Niger-Congo that radiates out of the Niger delta, (2) Nilo-Saharan whose nucleus is the Lake Chad area, and (3) Afroasiatic which convereges toward the Darfur-Kordofan region (Faraclas, 1995:185).

For more contemporary evidence on the African presence in Asia, it is no exaggeration to state that no other scholar has done as much work on the topic as Runoko Rashidi. In his recent work titled The African Presence in Asia: Introduction and Overview (2010), Rashidi reminds us that the story of the African presence in Asia is as fascinating as it is obscure, and it began, it would strongly appear, more than 100,000 years ago. In truth, he says, we now know, based on recent scientific studies of DNA, that modern humanity originated in Africa, that African people are the worlds original people, and that all modern humans can ultimately trace their ancestral roots back to Africa. Were it not for the primordial migrations of early African people, humanity would have remained physically Africoid, and the rest of the world outside of the African continent absent of human life. Since the first modern humans in Asia were of African birth, the African presence in Asia can therefore be demonstrated through the history of the Black populations that have inhabited the Asian land mass within the span of modern humanity.

Rashidi cites two recent DNA studies that strongly substantiate this. According to the first report, entitled Chinese Roots Lie in Africa, most of the population of modern Chinaone fifth of all the people living todayowes its genetic origins to Africa. An international scientific team has presented research findings that undercut any theory that modern humans may have originated independently in China. Populations from East Asia derived from a single lineage, indicating the single origins of those populations. It is now probably safe to conclude that modern humans originating in Africa constitute the majority of the current gene pool in East Asia.

Although few scholars today dispute the idea that the earliest ancestors of the human species evolved in Africa, Rashidi notes that there still is considerable debate over how modern humanity evolved from its more primitive ancestors. Many anthropologists believe that humans may have

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migrated out of Africa in waves. More than a million years ago, humanitys primitive ancestors, known as Homo erectus, walked out of Africa to colonize Europe, the Middle East and Asia. On that everyone agrees. Then several hundred thousand years later, some theorize, a second wave of more sophisticated tool-using humans migrated out of Africa and overwhelmed those earlier ancestors. According to that theory, modern humans are descended solely from those especially sophisticated tool-users.

According to Rashidi, an equally important report titled An Ancient Link to Africa Lives on in Bay of Bengal focuses on the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (a remote archipelago east of India), and the report states that they are the direct descendants of the first modern humans to have inhabited Asia. Their physical features, short stature, dark skin, peppercorn hair, and large buttocks, are characteristic of African Pygmies. They look like they belong in Africa, but here they are sitting in this island chain in the middle of the Indian Ocean, writes Peter Underhill of Stanford University, a co-author of the report.

Rashidi adds that only four of the dozen or so ethnic groups that once inhabited the island survive, with a total population of about five hundred people. This was before the December 2004 tsunami. These include the Jarawa (the largest group), who still live in the forest, the Onge, who have been settled by the Indian government, the Great Andamanese and the Sentinelese. These studies of the Andamanese suggest that they are part of what is described as a relict Paleolithic population, descended from the first modern humans to leave Africa. Rashidi cites Dr. Underhill, an expert on the genetic history of the Y chromosome, who said that the Paleolithic population of Asia might well have looked as African as the Onge and Jarawa do now, and that people with the appearance of present-day Asians might have emerged only later.

Rashidi further points out that not only were African people the first inhabitants of Asia, there is also abundant evidence to show that African people within documented historical periods created, nurtured or influenced some of ancient Asias most important and enduring classical civilizations. Sumer, considered the first great civilization of Western Asia, is perhaps the most prominent example. Flourishing during the third millennium BCE between the mighty Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, Sumer set the guidelines and established the standards for the kingdoms and empires that followed it including Babylon and Assyria. Sumer has been acknowledged as an early center for advanced mathematics, astronomy and calendars, writing and literature, art and architecture, religion and highly organized urban centers, some of the more notable of which were Kish, Uruk, Ur, Nippur, Lagash, and Eridu.

While Sumers many achievements are much celebrated, for Rashidi, the important question of the ethnic composition of its population is frequently either glossed over or left out of the discussion altogether. As topical as Iraq is today and since the civilization of ancient Sumer has been claimed by other peoples, it is important to set the record straight and we believe that we can state without equivocation that Sumerian civilization was but an extension of Nile Valley civilizations of which Egypt was the noblest-born but not the only child.

In terms of racial classification, Rashidi informs us that for well over a century, Western historians, ethnologists, anthropologists, archaeologists and other such specialists have generally and often arbitrarily used such terms as Negroid, Proto-Negroid, Proto-Australoid, Negritic and Negrito in labeling populations in Asia with Africoid phenotypes and African cultural traits and historical traditions. This has especially been the case with Black populations in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Far East Asia. In Southwest Asia, on the other hand, terms like Hamites, Eurafricans, Mediterraneans and the Brown Race have commonly been employed in denoting clearly discernible Black populations. In this work, Rashidi rejects such deliberately confusing nomenclature as obsolete and invalid, unscientific and racially motivated, and insists that we must comprehensively

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explore the full impact and extent of the African presence in the human cultures and classical civilizations of early Asia.

Citing Cheikh Anta Diop, whose work has in so many ways formed a model for much of our research efforts, Rashidi states that it expressed a keen understanding of the nature and ramifications of the phenomena. Rashidi also cites a November 1985 interview with the Journal of African Civilizations during which Charles S. Finch pointed out that there seems to be a growing consensus or idea in the literature of anthropology that there is no such thing as race. Continuing, Rashidi adds that Finch noted that one consequence of this thinking is the idea that Black people in India, Asia and the Pacific Islands who have almost the identical physical characteristics as Africansthat is, black skins, kinky hair, full lips, broad noses, etc.are said to be totally unrelated to Africans. In his response, Rashidi notes that Diop, speaking deliberately and uncompromisingly, pointed out that a racial classification is given to a group of individuals who share a certain number of anthropological traits, which is necessary so that they not be confused with others. There are two aspects which must be distinguished: (1) the phenotypical and (2) the genotypical. Rashidi has frequently elaborated on these two aspects.

If we speak only of the genotype, says Rashidi, we can find a Black who, at the level of his chromosomes, is closer to a Swede than Peter Botha is. But what counts in reality is the phenotype. It is the physical appearance which counts. A Black person, even if on the level of his cells he is closer than Peter Botha when he is in South Africa, he will live in Soweto. Rashidi insists that throughout history, it has always been the phenotype which has been at issue; thus, we must not lose sight of this fact. The phenotype is a reality, physical appearance is a reality.

Now, every time these relationships are not favorable to the Western cultures, argues Rashidi, an effort is made to undermine the cultural consciousness of Africans by telling them: We dont even know what a race is. For Rashidi, it is the phenotype which has given us so much difficulty throughout history, so it is this which must be considered in these relations. It exists, it is a reality, it and cannot be repudiated.

According to Jide Uwechia (2010), for the Asian region that is today considered the Middle East, for thousands of years, the Black Arabs of Basra lived and prospered in Basra as rulers, administrators, musicians, and scholars. Their origins are varied, although they obviously share one common genetic ancestor in some distance past on the shores of Africa. Many of them are from the district of Zubair, descendants of the people who came to Iraq either from Central Arabia, or from East Africa. Some came as sailors, whereas others came as traders or immigrants or religious scholars over the course of many centuries.

Uwechia points out that Arab myths agree that the Cushitic King Nimrod crossed from beyond the waters of Ethiopia in the earliest times with a fine crop of soldiers and established what was to become the worlds oldest civilization. Many existing sites in Iraq are still named after Nimrod. And, Hebrew myths recount the tale of King Nimrod as well. It is stated in the book of Genesis that Nimrod was a mighty hunter of renown and the first to begin building cities over the face of the world. He ruled in Mesopotamia, in the area covering Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. All the ancient traditions agree that Nimrod was a Black man, and that his soldiers were Ethiopians and Azanians, from what is now called East Africa. Their descendants live in the region to this day. He was said to have built Erech, Elam, parts of Sumeria, Akkadia and Babylon. The Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumeria, Babylon, Erech and Elam which thrived in the regions where modern Iraq covers today were thus Black civilizations.

Uwechia cites Runoko Rashidi who demonstrated that the civilization of Sumer was founded by Nile valley migrants from Africa. The Sumerians called themselves the black-headed people and spoke a derivate of Semitic language, a language branch which rose initially from Ethiopia. Innumerable evidence from various cranial, skeletal, archaeological, sculptural and textual sources

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has confirmed the racial origins of the Sumerians as Nile valley Africans that migrated to Mesopotamia. Uwechia also cites Martin Bernal who showed that the ancient Greeks designated two populations of black people with the name Ethiopia, one approximated Elam, and one pertained to a group which lived south of Egypt. Elam was a Kushite colony and its heartland was Susa the capital of Elam. Present day descendants of the ancient Elamites still live in southern Iranian province of Khuzestan, and they are very dark in skin color. Between then and the rise of Islam, different population demography drifted in and out of the Mesopotamia region wherein lies Basra. Some of those population shifts had political and demographic consequences which bore different fortunes for the Black Iraqis, and Iranians of Basra and Khuzestan respectively.

Furthermore, Uwechia notes that by the 9th Century, spurred by the zeal of Islam, a segment of the Afro-Arabian tribe of Kaab, including Kaab bin Rabia, a son of Beni Amir bin Zazaah, and Kaabs sons and brothers Uqayl bin Kaab, Muntafiq bin Uqayl bin Kaab (also known as the tribe Khuzail), Jadaah bin Kaab and Kulaib and other clans of Rabia left the southwest of Yemamah (north of the Rub al Khali) and migrated to Iraq and Syria to support other Arabian Muslims who had settled in those domains. These groups of Afro-Arabians had so consolidated their power that by the 16th Century, the clans of Kaab son of Rabia of the Banu Amir bin Zazaa began moving to Iran from Iraq and settled in the Khuzestan region of Southern Iran close to Iraq.

Uwechia further notes that George Rawlinson, a 19th Century European traveler, who passed through the region, described the Chab (also called in recent times Chub, Kaab, Kub) and Montefik bin Uqayl Arabs in Iraq and Khuzestan as nearly black and having the dark copper complexion of the Galla Ethiopians and other Abyssinians. Thus, according to Uwechia, we can see that in the late 19th Century, groups of Afro-Arabians were well established and living in the region of Khuzestan, Iran and around the Persian Gulf as well as Basra and the Shott al Arab in Iraq. They were known variously as Kaab, (Chaab or Chub), Kuleib, Al Muntafik (or Afek), Khuzail, Khafajah, Uqayl or Aqil, and Jada. Many of these men are the clearly documented descendants of the Beni Amir bin Sasaa of the Hawazin bin Mansour. They were described until the 20th Century as near black in color, tall and strongly built. In Iran, they are called the Tsiab. Many of their descendants who live there even today are still black in complexion. This group of Black Iraqis is therefore the remaining elements of the pure and original house of Arabia, which rose in ancient times from the Mountains of Ethiopia and migrated onto Iraqi and Khuzestan.

According to Uwechia, there was another smaller group of Black people, non-Muslims in outlook and practice, who settled in Iraq as victims of forced labour otherwise known as slavery. They were known as the Zenji, from the land of Zanjnia (close to modern Tanzania). However, it must be emphasized that there were also a great multitude of free Zenjis who had voluntarily settled in the Gulf. The Zenji concentrated around Basra and lived co-harmoniously with their Arabian hosts. Some Zenjis worked on the plantations around Basra, doing the hard labor, while others were free traders and landowners. The Zenji took over Basra following an insurrection which took place in the mid-800s. The Zenji then ruled Basra for about 15 years, until the Islamic caliph sent troops. Many of the rebels were massacred, and others were sold to the Arab tribes. Some under currents of racism that one finds in present day Islamic societies, adds Uwechia, developed from the fear and post-traumatic stress of the reign of the Zenji in Iraq. In addition, Uwechia informs us, many other Black people in Iraqi came as sailors, traders, immigrants or pilgrims who decided to remain in Iraq. They came especially during the era of the Moorish Islamic Caliphate of Cordoba, Granada, and Egypt (i.e. the Fatimids). Moors were Africans and Muslims of the Maghrib (also known as the western Sudan) who dominated Islam between the 9th and the 14th Century and established a global empire reaching from Senegal to the shores of China. Many of the Moors sailed in an ancient African ship called the dhow (or Arab dhow by Western historians) which traditionally traveled the Mediterranean and Red sea coast of Africa on to Arabia,

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India and China. Today, according to Uwechia, altogether, there are more than two million Black people in Iraq.

As it pertains to the area referred to today as Israel, Paul Hamilton (2009) informs us that after the fall of the Kingdom of Israel (Northern Kingdom) in 720 BC and the Kingdom of Judea (Southern Kingdom) 6th Century BC, there have been several groups that have either fled the land of Israel, or who were captured and removed as slaves, which in turn commenced a Diaspora that formed out of ancient Israeli ethnic groups. Throughout most of modern history, there were only two groups that had been officially recognized and sanctioned by the State of Israel as having descended directly from these ancient people. Those groups include the modern-day Jews who reside in Israel and Palestine and the Samaritans. Thus, Hamilton raises several important questions: What does it mean to be officially sanctioned? Is it possible for new groups to join this so-called officially sanctioned club? And if so, what would that entail?

According to Hamilton, it is now known that not all Jews live in Israel and that various groups from all over the globe have made numerous claims of affiliation. In this literary exploration, the claims of some Black people to include the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews), the Lemba Tribe of South Africa, and the Hebrew Israelites (Chicago Branch), and the so-called officially sanctioned Jews must be explored.

It is interesting to note that, according to the Memorial Gates Trust (2010), during the Second World War, some 375,000 men and women from African countries served in the Allied forces. They took part in campaigns in the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa, Italy, and the Far East. Men of the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions served with great distinction against the Japanese in Burma, as part of the famous Forgotten 14th Army. The 81st was composed of units from the Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast (now Ghana), while the 82nd comprised further reinforcements from Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Both Divisions formed part of the RWAFF (Royal West African Frontier Force).

The Trust adds that the Kings African Rifles (KAR) was composed of units from Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland (now Malawi), Somaliland (now Somalia) and Tanganyika (now Tanzania). The KAR fought in Somalia and Abyssinia against the Italians, in Madagascar against the Vichy French, and in Burma against the Japanese. Also, non-White South African participants included Cape Coloured and Indian members of the Cape Corps (CC), and Black South Africans who served in the Native Military Corps (NMC). Although both the CC and the NMC made extremely valuable contributions to the Allied cause in auxiliary roles, neither was used for combat, to the displeasure of many of their members. Out of a population of 42 million in the African colonies of the British Commonwealth, 372,000 served in the Allied cause during the Second World War. Of these, 3,387 were killed or reported missing; 5,549 were wounded.

In November of 2004, as Jules Quartly notes, the Saisiyat of Hsinchu and Miaoli performed a solemn rite to commemorate a race of people that they exterminated. Drinking, singing and dancing took place deep in the mountains of Miaoli and Hsinchu when the Ritual of the Little Black People was performed by the Saisiyat. For the past 100 years or so, adds Quartly, the Saisiyat have performed the songs and rites of the festival to bring good harvests, ward off bad luck, and keep alive the spirit of their race of people who are said to have preceded all others in Taiwan. In fact, the short, Black men the festival celebrates are one of the most ancient types of modern humans on this planet and their kin still survive in Asia today. They are said to be diminutive Africoids and are variously called Pygmies, Negritos and Aeta. They are found in the Philippines, northern Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra in Indonesia and other places. Chinese historians, according to Quartly, called them black dwarfs in the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220 to AD 280) and they were still to be found in China during the Qing dynasty (1644

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to 1911). In Taiwan, they were called the Little Black People and, apart from being diminutive, they were also said to be broad-nosed and dark-skinned with curly hair.

It was only quite fitting that on January 8, 2005, the African Students Convention (ASC), the first official gathering of African government delegates and African students in Malaysia, was convened by African Students in Diaspora (ASD) and INTI International University College in that country to discuss issues pertinent to the future of African youths. The event attracted over 800 Students from around Malaysia plus visiting delegations from Nigeria, Namibia, Libya, China, Australia, Indonesia, and some other African countries. It was one of the biggest events ever organized by the African Students in Malaysia (Maloh, 2005). The theme of the event was Effect of Skilled Migration on Economic DevelopmentA global Perspective, and the discussion centered upon issues pertinent to Africa and a vision of the future of the youth and the harmonization of the economic, political and educational strata in Africa (INTI College Sarawak, 2005). Afro-Asian Pan-African Movements and Organizations As Bangladeshi-Santhal Pan-Africanist Horen Tudu (2002) recounts, the early stages of human civilization in South Asia marked a glorious era in which African people practiced sustainable development, lived in peaceful, close-knit kinship societies virtually without conflict. As the barbaric Indo-European rose from the depths of his shallow burrows, he knew only those actions that were innate to his cold environment in the Caucasus, namely murder, war, rape, torture, genocide, conflict and destruction, the proceedings having been documented in the celebrated Hindu text, the Rig Veda. However, laments Tudu, history has taught us that this is not a unique circumstance of South Asia, wherever the Aryan has encountered African human beings, the end result has been tragedy beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

Tudu points out that India has maintained the stability of its social order through race-based fascism. Literally meaning skin color, the Varna system of racial apartheid was imposed upon the native Africoid inhabitants with the utmost brutality centuries ago in Northwestern India. Most characteristic of Modern Hinduism is the sheer hatred and contempt for Black African people. As clearly stated in widely read Hindu scriptures such as the Rig Veda Section II.12.4, Black Skin is Impious and Lowly. Citing section I.130.8, Indra protected in battle the Aryan worshipper, he subdued the lawless for Manu, and he conquered the black skin. In section IX.73.5, The black skin, the hated of Indra, were swept out of heaven. Moreover, along with the disdain for Blacks, Indo-Aryan white supremacy is endorsed, as section I.100.18 states: The thunderer bestowed on his white friends the fields, bestowed the sun, and bestowed the waters.

The invading Aryans, notes Tudu, enforced the caste system on the Black population with a merciless and bigoted spiritual philosophy, having whites occupy the top echelons of society, mixed races in the middle and the mass of the conquered Blacks at the bottom, today known as Dalits and Dravidians. The physical differences between the black-skinned Dravidian races of southern and eastern India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka and the Caucasoid Aryan races mainly comprising of upper caste Hindus and Sikhs is not the mere design of European colonialist historians, but a fact of human existence in the apartheid state of India. The indigenous people of the Indian Sub-continent are the descendents of the Dravidians that founded the celebrated Indus Valley civilization. Recent genetic evidence has confirmed what anthropologists have known all along, that the Dravidians, tribals and lower caste Hindus belong to the greater African Diaspora. As affirmed in the pioneering mitochondria DNA studies published in Human Biology (68, 1996:1): The caste populations of Andhra Pradesh cluster more often with Africans than with Asians and Europeans. Additionally, according to Tudu, another study done by the Department of Medical Genetics in

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Umea University, Sweden discovered that significant ethnic differences in single polymorphisms were found between all groups except for African BlacksDravidian Indians, who differed only in their MspI7-16-bp duplication haplotype distribution.

According to Tudu, the early stages of Pan-Africanism in the Western hemisphere focused on the principles and rhetoric of the great Jamaican born leader, Marcus Garvey. In recent times, global Negroland movements have sprouted all over the Indian Sub-Continent and are undergoing exponential growth in support. These movements comprise of all constituents of the Asiatic Black race (Sudroids), from the Santhal insurgents of Bangladesh to the tribal Gond militants of Madhya Pradesh and the Dalit Panthers of Bombay, Chennai, and Kerala. Furthermore, adds Tudu, it must be made abundantly clear that these populations are by no means marginal; the total over 350 million people, exceeding the combined populations of several western European countries.

Apparently, Tudu argues, the foundation and direct inspiration for these political and social movements come from the literature of great African American intellectuals such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Frederick Douglass and many others. In search for their true identity and history, the Dalits and Dravidians are making great efforts to expand on their African ancestry, making connections with their Black brothers and sisters around the globe. Tudu quotes Runoko Rashidi who states that They (Dalits) seem particularly enamored with African-Americans. African-Americans, in general, seem almost idolized by the Dalit, and the Black Panther Party, in particular, is virtually revered. Tudu recounts that in 1972, taking inspiration from the Black Panther Party, the Dalit Panther party was fashioned with circulating myths of actual Black Pan