I am basing my judgments on having done a fair amount of reading on the subject, and having talked to folks like Eric Reeves, who know this subject as well as any living individual. From those sources, I would say that the African peoples of the Darfur would identify themselves two ways — by their ethnic group identity [Fur, Masseleit, Zaghawa, Birgid, etc.] and by what they have in common vis-a-vis the NIF regime in Khartoum and the Arabic Janjaweed militias which attack them, their African cultural traditions. There is a national liberation movement/organization in Darfur, and it organizes itself around the notion of African peoples.

Leo

Finally, Jonathan is right, you’re welcome to email me about topics, or essays you may have. We’ve been in the process of ways of expanding the writers who write regularly, and those who write on a one shot basis. I’ve been working on bringing on at least one more new teacher, and on some other projects for the blog. Stay tuned on that end. I should say, I can’t guarentee everything would go up, immediately, or later.

I have started checking usage. The US and British media agree with you, but in the spirit of “the terms the people in these areas have chosen for themselves” I have thrown the question to a reference librarian.

I would have called speakers of Nilo-Khardofian languages black, and speakers of Arabic semitic. I would leave aside African for one and not the other, since 100,000 years of African descent would seemingly qualify all groups to be considered African, but I will dig for an answer supported by more than my supposition.

I am asking. And in the meantime, I withdraw my previous comments.

Asking is not very hard, but I notice that it is rarely done. I know that no one asked the black and caribbean kids in my school if they would prefer to be considered african-american, but members of my faculty (and administration) have chosen to refer to them as such. (I’m lying. I’ve asked some of my students. They generally prefer black.)

And as I wait for my librarian to answer, how do you know how people in the Sudan consider themselves? I am finding it hard to find a reasonable source.

Not for a Social Studies teacher — you Math teachers are always too literal in your approach {-;]. Yes, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, etc, are all located on the African continent, but they do not think of themselves as Africans, but as Arabs. And certainly their cultural traditions, starting with their language, belongs to the Arabic traditions. And sub-Saharan Africans don’t view them as part of Africa, or in the African traditions. When we teach global studies, we teach the Maghreb as part of the Middle East, not Africa.

This distinction is important not just for the sake of social scientific accuracy, but also because some of the very few places in the world to still have slavery today sit on the border between the Arabic world and sub-Saharan Africa [in addition to the Sudan, the other major area of slavery runs through the Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania area at the northeastern end of the continent], and have a distinctly ethnic component to them.

I see that you would prefer that I use terms like white and black, but those are not the terms the people in these areas have chosen for themselves, and not the terms through which they understand these conflicts. Terms such as African and Arabic properly describe the cultural background of the different peoples, and the way in which the people understand themselves.

the people in the north of the Sudan are just as African as the people in the south, who are just as African as the people in Darfur and the west. That was all I meant to say. There is no good served in denying the Africanness of the “bad guys” in this story, which your post inadvertently did by using “African” to mean “Black.”

I am familiar with the rest of the history.

Jonathan

The war in the South of the Sudan, which seems to be abated in a tenuous armistice at the moment, is long-standing, going back decades, and has claimed more than a million people. It was conducted by a regime which is both fundamentalist Islamic of a Taliban sort in its religious make-up [bin Laden actually fought on behalf of the NIF regime for a number of years] and Arabic or Semitic in its ethnic/racial character. The peoples of the South were either animist or Christian in their religious outlook and African in their ethnic/racial character. By contrast, the ongoing genocide in the west of the Sudan, or Darfur, is being conducted against Islamic but African peoples, and with the support of Islamic and Arabic/Semitic militias.

Since the peoples of the South included Christians, they received a lot of support for fundamentalist Christians in the US. The Islamic peoples of the West, who clearly are being targetted on the basis of race/ethnicity, are not receiving that support.

” Yet as you read these words, an ongoing genocide is taking place against people of African descent in the western Darfur region of the North African nation, the Sudan.”

“For two decades, Sudan has fought a genocidal war, with as many as three million victims, against the African peoples in the south of the country. ”

I am quite certain you don’t really mean “people of African descent” or “African peoples.”

All of Sudan’s people, ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ black and white, christian and muslim, are Africans and are “of African descent.”

Are you just trying to avoid the word “Black?”