Does the man in the picture look black to you? A lot of people might say “yes.” But this immigrant in Detroit has spent 30 years trying to get the government to see him for what he knows that he is: A black man.

Mostafa Hefny can’t, for some reason, get the US government to change his racial designation. He has even reached out to President Obama for assistance, and has been fighting on the issue since he arrived to the United States from Egypt. Thus far, the federal government has classified him as white.

“As a black man and as an African, I am proud of this heritage,” Hefny told the Detroit News. “My classification as a white man takes away my black pride, my black heritage and my strong black identity.”

Hefny was born in Egypt and says that when he arrived in the US, the interviewer from the government told him, “You are now white.” According to the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East” is classified as “white.” This is confusing and sad for darker-skinned immigrants who come from these places.

Hefny says that he is Nubian, from the northern part of the Sudan. He says that he’s been denied promotions after demanding that he be recognized as a black man. He could not get a teaching position at Wayne State University because the job called for a minority.

“I have been awarded, inadvertently, the negative effects of being black such as racial profiling, stereotypes and disenfranchisement due to my Negroid features,” Hefny said. “However, the legal demand of my racial classification of ‘white’ prevents me from receiving benefits established for black people.”

Hefny is campaigning online to get his designation changed. The Association of Black Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Nubian Advocates has an online petition on his behalf. The petition thus far has only collected 30 signatures, but he’s got our vote.

Petition Background
Dr. Mostafa Hefny, a naturalized American citizen, who is an indigenous Egyptian Nubian, has been subjected to forced assimilation and destruction of his culture and has been deprived of his integrity, cultural values, and ethnic identity, as a distinct person of the region of Nubia. For the past 25 years, he has suffered from the orchestrated process of the White Supremacist movement to erase the history and existence of the Nubian people in an effort to steal the credit and achievements of Nubia's ancient civilization. Currently, in the United States any Negroid person, who is indigenous to North Africa, is classified as White.

Historical continuity of racial and ethnic data is important to many data users. Over time, however, there have been variations in how the Nation's principal population groups have been classified according to race and ethnicity; such differences have occurred even within data sets. In decennial censuses, for example, a question on race has been included since 1790. There have been many changes in the broad racial categories, the specific components of the categories, and whether data on ethnicity were collected. Asian Indians, for example, were counted as "Hindus" in censuses from 1920 to 1940, as "White" from 1950 to 1970, and as "Asians or Pacific Islanders" in 1980 and 1990

Reporting race is also less consistent for multiple-race persons, Hispanics, the foreign born, and persons who do not read or speak English well. NCHS found Asians and American Indians are sometimes misreported as "White" on death certificates, and this causes an underestimation of death rates for these groups. Nevertheless, these data quality problems are not so severe as to make the data unusable for most purposes.

PAGAN 9JA:
who cares what america classifies pople as. first of all which country classifies based on race its usually by country. this americans are bloody racists.

+ we are not blacks. and this man is Nubian and he is brown skinned. most of all , he is[b] NUBIAN[/b], so what nonsense black pride is he talking about

eGuerrilla:

See, this is the problem I have always had with your particular brand of cultural Nationalism on these boards.
One minute you are to be found advocating for the rights of those you term 'ethnic' people; yet in the very next breadth you feel no compunction playing the game of semantics, by fostering labels drawn from your purview only on these very same 'ethnic'people,

When you are not championing an ethnocentric-based "racial purity" that keeps your so-called 'ethnic people' apart, you are lampooning others - like Dr Hefny - for the choices they make.

Question is; where do you really stand? What is your vision? What is your mission?

PAGAN 9JA:


race / skin colour means nothing to me. it is the same as eye colour , hair colour, lip colour, nail colour, etc/ race is colonial mentality.

i stand with Tribal purity. even among full-blooded Hausa , you find some variations in skin tone , etc. it means nothing to us. skin colour can change over time, due to external pressures, temperature, selective breeding , etc.

however tribe/bloodline/ ethnic group will never change and will remain forever/

my Vision is for all tribes to maintain their ethnic and integral identity and purity. at the same time, all tribes around the world must be united. to me, a dark skinned Masaai tribesman is no different from a Malay-Dayak Tribesman from Borneo/Sumatra. i view all tribals and ethnic peoples on equal basis. apart from that, it so happens that all tribals and ethnics also tend to practice Paganism or are of individual Pagan heritage.

MY mission is to educate people on my views and to conduct my own work with regards to this. i also wish to draw a clear line between Africans and akatas. racism is not a part of us Africans. maybe it is a part of europeans/americans/akatas, but not in our mindset. you send oyinbo or Chinese to a remote African village and you see how warmly they will be treated and greeted without bias.

also it is not a question of his choice. at the end of the day, he is NUBIAN, not black. i am Hausa but i cant choose to cal myself Fulani just because we share the same land, etc. NO!
a donkey cant become a stallion even if it wants to. it will always remain a donkey.

“a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East” is classified as “white.”

eGuerrilla: Detroit Man Livid Because Government Classifies Him as “White”


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Orikinla:

A TYPICAL DESPERATE NIGERIAN WOULD NEVER PROTEST IT. MAJORITY OF NIGERIAN WOMEN WOULD RATHER BE LABELLED WHITE THAN BE BLACK AND THAT IS WHY THEY ARE BLEACHING, TONING, SKIN WASHING AND CRAZY FOR WEAVE ON HAIRSTYLES TO MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE WHITE CHICKS.

PAGAN 9JA:
who cares what america classifies pople as. first of all which country classifies based on race its usually by country. this americans are bloody racists.

+ we are not blacks. and this man is Nubian and he is brown skinned. most of all , he is NUBIAN , so what nonsense black pride is he talking about

PAGAN 9JA:


race / skin colour means nothing to me. it is the same as eye colour , hair colour, lip colour, nail colour, etc/ race is colonial mentality.

i stand with Tribal purity. even among full-blooded Hausa , you find some variations in skin tone , etc. it means nothing to us. skin colour can change over time, due to external pressures, temperature, selective breeding , etc.

however tribe/bloodline/ ethnic group will never change and will remain forever/

my Vision is for all tribes to maintain their ethnic and integral identity and purity. at the same time, all tribes around the world must be united. to me, a dark skinned Masaai tribesman is no different from a Malay-Dayak Tribesman from Borneo/Sumatra. i view all tribals and ethnic peoples on equal basis. apart from that, it so happens that all tribals and ethnics also tend to practice Paganism or are of individual Pagan heritage.

MY mission is to educate people on my views and to conduct my own work with regards to this. i also wish to draw a clear line between Africans and akatas. racism is not a part of us Africans. maybe it is a part of europeans/americans/akatas, but not in our mindset. you send oyinbo or Chinese to a remote African village and you see how warmly they will be treated and greeted without bias.

also it is not a question of his choice. at the end of the day, he is NUBIAN, not black. i am Hausa but i cant choose to cal myself Fulani just because we share the same land, etc. NO!
a donkey cant become a stallion even if it wants to. it will always remain a donkey.

Arosa: So it pays to be black. interesting.

Arosa: I disagree with you on this, a good job is more important than any race classification.

eGuerrilla: Detroit Man Livid Because Government Classifies Him as “White”


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