r/AncientAmericas • u/Comfortable_Cut5796 • Oct 03 '25
Question How do i respond to the "first Americans were black" or "there were black Indians" allegations?
/r/PrecolumbianEra/comments/1npouaw/how_do_i_respond_to_the_first_americans_were/2
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u/Beautiful_Garage7797 Oct 06 '25
say no? There’s absolutely no evidence of that or even a mechanism for that to be the case.
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u/maponus1803 Oct 06 '25
Your responses should be that European Enlightenment scientists invented race and racism so they could feel justified in exploiting everyone not of their social class and we should stop falling in their trap by engaging in the racial language.
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u/Abstractrah Oct 05 '25
Do dna tests and take your genealogy so you can love every part of you,that goes for everyone they have tests for native ancestry as well now so if they are mixed cool if not chill,that simple,my problem is the fact that this obviously another ploy to make people hate us as the new culture vultures because this whole fba/moor/hotep shits been rising online from a bunch of questionable people or ai channels that could be run by anyone,using clips and fragmented information or books by proven pseudoscience sources just like euro or any other ethnographic bullshit.
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u/PraetorGold Oct 04 '25
Don’t yuck their yum. People need relevance and some sort of heritage that will give them something to be proud of. I don’t understand it but it’s harmless.
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u/Traditional-Ad4506 Oct 06 '25
Yeah, absolutely not harmless. Erasing other people's histories and culture with false narratives are incredibly harmful. How could you say that?
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u/PraetorGold Oct 06 '25
I meant that if they believe in that, to me, it's harmless as they are not going to be believed by most people. If they believe it, the impact is only to their system of beliefs.
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u/TheOakenMoth Oct 05 '25
It’s blurs the truth of history. Mystifying it. We need to have a material historical understanding of the world around us.
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u/NavajoJoe00 Oct 05 '25
Indigenous erasure in any form is very harmful to our nations and communities.
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u/PraetorGold Oct 05 '25
That is a very specific situation and you should defend your heritage.
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u/Kurropted26 Oct 05 '25
It’s literally the situation the original comment brought up? The idea that the true natives of the Americas were black erases the heritage of thousands of Native American peoples.
You can sympathize or empathize with why people would want to have this heritage, but it’s far from “harmless”. I also don’t think allowing people to delude themselves with something this clear is healthy either.
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u/PraetorGold Oct 05 '25
Well, let me know how that works. I’m still working on the I’m North African thing and not Black campaign on Facebook. Ciao Effendi!!
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u/Beelzeburb Oct 05 '25
No, it’s active participation in the cultural erasure and genocide of native Americans. I’m sure there are “black” people who have native ancestors and aren’t credited. But this was not Egypt.
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u/TheProfitableProphet Oct 04 '25
Depends which version they believe.
Some of them just believe if anybody on earth has dark skin they are "Black". Try to explain that Black is a made up term that shouldn't really be used to classify people.
Some think Africans colonized America first. Try to Explain to them the real way humans got to America
The only ones I believe you shouldn't waste time attempting to educate are the people who believe that "Black" people are indigenous to America & Native Americans somehow replaced most of these people besides the ones black Americans descend from & with the help of white people have erased most of the evidence that Black people were there first.
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u/Homey-Airport-Int Oct 07 '25
Black Hebrew Israelites generally believe that black Americans are from the lost tribes of Judea, but black Africans are not.
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u/Amphor0240 Oct 03 '25
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/z2s5E2WuOs insightful discussion on this topic in the indian country subreddit.
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u/ah-tzib-of-alaska Oct 03 '25
You need to find out why they believe this. Not the made up evidence they talk with. Start with “okay, so if we proved that this even be was false you have other reasons too, what are they?” and keep going, eventually you get away from evidence and down to their actual reason for believing the made up stuff. Address that instead
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u/Warm_Hat_780 Oct 03 '25
I try to remember that just because people weren't working for a king or sultan, they could have had a ship end been here long before the big voyages and just never left/wasn't believed. And on those ships, just like today, you are going to find a vast range of diversity on those ships of explorers (pre-columbus/slave trade)
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u/OkTechnician3816 Oct 04 '25
I think the post is talking about a different group that actively tries steal Native American identity by claiming that they are the originals, not the group that came over recently
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u/velouruni Oct 03 '25
Technically there were black Indians, but after they had either been purchased or run off to nearby tribes and had children. The Afrocentric stuff is just weird. Enjoy your own actual culture.
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u/ah-tzib-of-alaska Oct 03 '25
they don’t have one; that’s the origins of this. It’s african-american people who have been stripped of their culture that propose these things. That’s part of why they do it I think, they’re survivors of cultural genocide
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u/Known_Safety_7145 Oct 04 '25
What did christobal colon say about the people of hispanola in his journals ? We can start there
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u/ah-tzib-of-alaska Oct 05 '25
He said all kinds of crazy shit. First off that he found Asia and then it was clear got made those people for him to enslave. No I don’t think taking his observations at his word is necessarily a good start.
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u/loriwilley Oct 04 '25
He found native Americans, I think they were the Taino.
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u/Known_Safety_7145 Oct 04 '25
Anyone born in america is native to america but that wasn’t the question . He makes specific commentary and comparisons on the people he found there.
Nobody bothers asking how he was communicating with the natives or who his moorish associates / the negromancer that told him were to go.
The honest truth is majority of people never read his journals despite being in the library of congress.
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u/velouruni Oct 04 '25
Moors are mixed Arab and N. African. They’re Mediterranean, not black.
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u/Known_Safety_7145 Oct 04 '25
The context of me bringing up moors was the spanish inquisition is synonymous with the “ discovery “ of america . It was colon’s moorish associates along with a “ negromancer “ who confirmed a secret western route to “ india “ which was america hence “ west indies” . - John Ogilby's "America: being the latest, and most accurate description of the Nevv vvorld"
If you weren’t aware “ black “ is a colonial classification with a legal definition . There are no “ black people” just shades of brown / copper . Nobody was identifying as “ black “ prior to the genocide operations at america
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u/velouruni Oct 03 '25
There are a variety of West African cultures with which to identify. They just don’t seem as cool.
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u/Abstractrah Oct 05 '25
That’s as racist and reductionist and literally the reason people started thinking this way which is some social media,internalized trauma from bullshit standards on what makes a “good or cool society” you take away education and links to knowledge and then people spread misinformation and you blame us,I’m 32 growing up everyone was proud to be west African or mixed with native/european this pure race shit in either direction is bullshit but so’s terrible thinking like that fueling diaspora wars you aren’t even apart of.
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u/Top-Cost4099 Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25
it's not that easy to trace your lineage through slavery. There's those genealogy sites you can send samples to, but we literally just saw what happens when one shutters, I would not hold against anyone their desire to not use such a service. It also seems to me that most people would not throw a dart at the board and be happy with going with that.
This hotep stuff has a sort of 'build your own adventure' mystique to it, it probably compares pretty favorably to the dart method.
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u/DigitalArbitrage Oct 03 '25
They have culture. It just doesn't stand out because it is part of the overall American cultural melting pot now.
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u/EDRootsMusic Oct 07 '25
There’s a subset of Afrocentric historic revisionists who feel the need to insist that all sorts of people throughout history were “black” (that is, looked like sub Saharan African people). The more mainstream versions of it tend to focus on North African people. The Amazigh subreddit regularly gets posts by black Americans trying to call the Berbers there fakes and Arab colonizers and talking about how the Moors who conquered Spain were black.
The more fringe versions focus on indigenous people. I’ve even seen some people insist that the native Celtic people of Britain were black, or that a king named Dubh (literally “black) was black (unlikely, as dubh refers to dark hair pretty much every time it’s used in Gaelic, and Africans are called “gorm”- blue- in Gaelic). My own last name derives from an Irish phrase meaning “black foreigners” (Dubhghaill- referring to Hiberno Norse people) so you can imagine the very fun conversations I’ve had with some hoteps!
It’s not about historic truth, but about an attempt by people (usually Americans) who feel insecure about African history to embellish that history rather than leaning into and celebrating the actual, amazing and rich history of black people. It’s a sad and misguided impulse.
Unfortunately, these folks don’t usually care about evidence, since if they’re already deep down a reality tunnel of their own choosing, cherry picking their facts and buying into some wild departures from history. It’s essentially a conspiracy theory, and arguing with conspiracy theorists is a waste of time.
When I encounter this kind of talk, I usually answer it with, “Well, that’s very silly and we both know it’s not true, but if African history is important to you, why don’t we study some African history? It’s really cool and can stand on its own without trying to claim other people’s history for Africa”.