₦airaland Forum

PoliteActivist:
Means below Sahara and tropical

Henrydonland:
But then what can we do about it.They are always Calling Africa the dark continent even in the Olympics logo Africa is represented by a dark colour.

Martian:
Below the Sahara. In the case there should be a Sub Amazon South America and Sub Alpian Europe. If it's really tropical, what's wrong with using the proper word?

Martian:
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-people-realize-that-sub-Saharan-is-a-racist-term
I don’t suspect you’ll ever get an honest answer from those who entire worldview is based on African/Black degradation as clearly demonstrated by the responses here. To answer your question, they cannot EVER accept that “sub-sahara” is a racist concoction because then it means they are not responsible for what they claim: building modern civilization. The western world is build on the delusion that nothing happened in the world until Europe rose up however, nothing could be further from the truth. The “sub-sahara” theory and its beginnings are WELL DOCUMENTED. Many Europeans scholars have written extensively on the supposed inferiority of the “negro” (a term making its 1st appearance in mid 1800’s) and it is during the worldwide development of racism/white supremacy that the bogus “sub-saharan” race theory was crafted. The racist theory surmises that Africans had never developed out of barbarism and therefore were too primitive to cross the desert to build Egypt…they didn’t have shoes to deal with the hot sand, one comment even claimed. There is a good 4-part documentary called Racism - A History for those on here claiming sub-sahara is just a geographical marker separate from the race theory that was developed at the same time.




https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/what-exactly-does-%E2%80%98sub-sahara-africa%E2%80%99-mean
The widespread use of ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ makes no sense and is undoubtedly a racist geopolitical signature.

It appears increasingly fashionable in the West for a number of broadcasters, websites, news agencies, newspapers and magazines, the United Nations/allied agencies and some governments, writers and academics to use the term ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ to refer to all of Africa except the five predominantly Arab states of north Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) and the Sudan, a north-central African country. Even though its territory is mostly located south of the Sahara Desert, the Sudan is excluded from the ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ tagging by those who promote the use of the epithet because the regime in power in Khartoum describes the country as ‘Arab’ despite its majority African population.

But the concept ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is absurd and misleading, if not a meaningless classificatory schema. Its use defies the science of the fundamentals of geography but prioritises hackneyed and stereotypical racist labelling. It is not obvious, on the face of it, which of the four possible meanings of the prefix ‘sub’ its users attach to the ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ labelling. Is it ‘under’ the Sahara Desert or ‘part of’/‘partly’ the Sahara Desert? Or, presumably, ‘partially’/‘nearly’ the Sahara Desert or even the very unlikely (hopefully!) application of ‘in the style of, but inferior to’ the Sahara Desert, especially considering that there is an Arab people sandwiched between Morocco and Mauritania (northwest Africa) called Saharan?

PRE-LIBERATION SOUTH AFRICA

The example of South Africa is appropriate here. Prior to the formal restoration of African majority government in 1994, South Africa was never designated ‘sub-Sahara Africa’, unlike the rest of the 13 African-led states in southern Africa, which were also often referred to at the time as the ‘frontline states’. South Africa then was either termed ‘white South Africa’ or the ‘South Africa sub-continent’ (as in the ‘India sub-continent’ usage, for instance), meaning ‘almost’/‘partially’ a continent - quite clearly a usage of ‘admiration’ or ‘compliment’ employed by its subscribers to essentially project and valorise the perceived geostrategic potentials or capabilities of the erstwhile regime.

But soon after the triumph of the African freedom movement there, South Africa became ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ in the quickly adjusted schema of this representation. What happened suddenly to South Africa’s geography for it to be so differently classified? Is it African liberation/rule that renders an African state ‘sub-Sahara’? Does this post-1994 West-inflected South Africa-changed classification make ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ any more intelligible? Interestingly, just as in the South Africa ‘sub-continent’ example, the application of the ‘almost’/‘partially’ or indeed ‘part of’/‘partly’ meaning of prefix ‘sub-’ to ‘Sahara Africa’ focuses unambiguously on the following countries of Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, each of which has 25-75 per cent of its territory (especially to the south) covered by the Sahara Desert. It also focuses on Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan, which variously have 25-75 per cent of their territories (to the north) covered by the same desert. In effect, these 10 states would make up sub-Sahara Africa.

Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the five Arab north Africa countries, do not, correctly, describe themselves as Africans even though they unquestionably habituate African geography, the African continent, since the Arab conquest and occupation of this north one-third of African territory in the 7th century CE. The Western governments, press and the transnational bodies (which are led predominantly by Western personnel and interests) have consistently ‘conceded’ to this Arab cultural insistence on racial identity. Presumably, this accounts for the West’s non-designation of its ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ dogma to these countries as well as the Sudan, whose successive Arab-minority regimes since January 1956 have claimed, but incorrectly, that the Sudan ‘belongs’ to the Arab world. On this subject, the West does no doubt know that what it has been engaged in, all along, is blatant sophistry and not science. This, however, conveniently suits its current propaganda packaging on Africa, which we shall be elaborating on shortly.

It would appear that we still don’t seem to be any closer to establishing, conclusively, what its users mean by ‘sub-Sahara Africa’. Could it, perhaps, just be a benign reference to all the countries ‘under’ the Sahara, whatever their distances from this desert, to interrogate our final, fourth probability? Presently, there are 53 so-called sovereign states in Africa. If the five north Africa Arab states are said to be located ‘above’ the Sahara, then 48 are positioned ‘under’. The latter would therefore include all the five countries mentioned above whose north frontiers incorporate the southern stretches of the desert (namely, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan), countries in central Africa (the Congos, Rwanda, Burundi, etc., etc), for instance, despite being 2000-2500 miles away, and even the southern African states situated 3000-3500 miles away. In fact, all these 48 countries, except the Sudan (alas, not included for the plausible reason already cited), which is clearly ‘under’ the Sahara and situated within the same latitudes as Mali, Niger and Chad (i.e., between 10 and 20 degrees north of the equator), are all categorised by the ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ users as ‘sub-Sahara Africa’.

2012 WORLDWIDE CLASSIFICATORY SCHEMA?

To replicate this obvious farce of a classification elsewhere in the world, the following random exercise is not such an indistinct scenario for universal, everyday, referencing:


1. Australia hence becomes ‘sub-Great Sandy Australia’ after the hot deserts that cover much of west and central Australia.

2. East Russia, east of the Urals, becomes ‘sub-Siberia Asia’.

3. China, Japan and Indonesia are reclassified ‘sub-Gobi Asia’.

4. Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam become ‘sub-Himalaya Asia’.

5. All of Europe is ‘sub-Arctic Europe’.

6. Most of England, central and southern counties, is renamed ‘sub-Pennines Europe’.


7. East/southeast France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia are ‘sub-Alps Europe’.

8. The Americas become ‘sub-Arctic Americas’.

9. All of South America, south of the Amazon, is proclaimed ‘sub-Amazon South America’; Chile could be ‘sub-Atacama South America’.

10. Most of New Zealand’s South Island is renamed ‘sub-Southern Alps New
Zealand’.


11. Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama become ‘sub-Rocky North America’.

12. The entire Caribbean becomes ‘sub-Appalachian Americas’.

RACIST CODING

So, rather than some benign construct, ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is, in the end, an outlandish nomenclatural code that its users employ to depict an African-led ‘sovereign’ state - anywhere in Africa, as distinct from an Arab-led one. More seriously to the point, ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is employed to create the stunning effect of a supposedly shrinking African geographical landmass in the popular imagination, coupled with the continent’s supposedly attendant geostrategic global ‘irrelevance’.

‘Sub-Sahara Africa’ is undoubtedly a racist geopolitical signature in which its users aim repeatedly to present the imagery of the desolation, aridity, and hopelessness of a desert environment. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of one billion Africans do not live anywhere close to the Sahara, nor are their lives so affected by the implied impact of the very loaded meaning that this dogma intends to convey. Except this steadily pervasive use of ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is robustly challenged by rigorous African-centred scholarship and publicity work, its proponents will succeed, eventually, in substituting the name of the continent ‘Africa’ with ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ and the name of its peoples, ‘Africans’, with ‘sub-Sahara Africans’ or, worse still, ‘sub-Saharans’ in the realm of public memory and reckoning.

PoliteActivist:
No, that's not how nomenclature works. It is like "The West" or America. America means one country. But not Europe or Africa. South Africa means one country but not South America. Etc.

fachfouch:
In north Africa we identify as Africans in fact we are Africa literally... And for the love of god stop treating Africa as a country with one people and same culture it's a continent with various regions and sooo many countries and people and cultures and languages and sometimes they're so different from each other so that's why UN use this terms to better dissect and meet every region's challenges which do differ a lot from area to another and even country to another.

Martian:
How does the term “sub Saharan” help the U.N. better direct and meet every regions challenges?
How does Madagascar’s challenges compare to Nigeria. Does Botswana need the U.N. as much as Somalia?

Aegions there are sub regions frica consists of 54 countries, so maybe they should identify which one they are talking about. If the current Arab residents of Africa want to separate themselves, then refer to North Africa when talking about the countries they occupy and refer to Africa when talking about countries in the West, East, and South, and when you are talking about the whole continent. If you one needs to refer to a particular country, then use the name of the country.

When you say the “U.N.” came up with the classification, keep it in mind that the actual person(s) responsible are likely from the cultures that came up with the term “sub human”.

fachfouch:
Because North Africa is culturally very different from The rest of Africa and the Sahara desert is responsible for that it separates the continent almost into 2 main regions and in these regions there are sub regions like in North Africa the Maghreb region is different than Egypt but still they have a lot in common that's how things works take Asia, no one is saying Indians are not Asians because they're different from the rest of it or even middle east its an Asian region like east Asia and south east Asia yet they're rarely mentioned together because of the deep difference in term of everything and no one complaining and labeling it as racist and European supremacy, honestly discussing such things really weird... Again Africa is big but geography dictated that there's a big barrier separate the continent it's not wrong in using it as marker.

Martian:
Note your use of cardinal directions to describe all these other places compared to “Sub Saharan” Africa. You don’t need to tell me about nomenclature.

The use of the sub term is borne of the attempt to separate the ancient civilizations in North Africa from the rest of the continent. It’s is borne of racist colonial theories that thought northern Africa more culturally developed and posited African inferiority to justify “white” hegemony. This was done to support claims that the “black race” never achieved anything till european “discovery”.

PoliteActivist:
But Ethiopia is not sub-saharan Africa, neither is Somalia

Martian:
There is no big barrier separating the continent. The Sahara is a geographical feature of the continent just like the Kalahari. The countries of Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania have the Sahara desert in the territory, so how are they sub Saharan?

You say it’s to delineate cultures between Arabs in North Africa from the rest of the continent as if there is no variation of cultures between the other people on the continent. No one is saying your example is racist because it’s not. Even if there are cultural differences, why is one part referred to using a cardinal point? If they need to highlight difference they might as well use the other three directions because I’m sure Ghana/Nigeria/Mali in the West have more in common compared to Eswatini in the East.
What I’m saying is that you didn’t use the prefix “sub” to describe any of those other places or to bundle them together.

PoliteActivist:
But Ethiopia is not sub-saharan Africa, neither is Somalia

Martian:
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-people-realize-that-sub-Saharan-is-a-racist-term
I don’t suspect you’ll ever get an honest answer from those who entire worldview is based on African/Black degradation as clearly demonstrated by the responses here. To answer your question, they cannot EVER accept that “sub-sahara” is a racist concoction because then it means they are not responsible for what they claim: building modern civilization. The western world is build on the delusion that nothing happened in the world until Europe rose up however, nothing could be further from the truth. The “sub-sahara” theory and its beginnings are WELL DOCUMENTED. Many Europeans scholars have written extensively on the supposed inferiority of the “negro” (a term making its 1st appearance in mid 1800’s) and it is during the worldwide development of racism/white supremacy that the bogus “sub-saharan” race theory was crafted. The racist theory surmises that Africans had never developed out of barbarism and therefore were too primitive to cross the desert to build Egypt…they didn’t have shoes to deal with the hot sand, one comment even claimed. There is a good 4-part documentary called Racism - A History for those on here claiming sub-sahara is just a geographical marker separate from the race theory that was developed at the same time.


https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/what-exactly-does-%E2%80%98sub-sahara-africa%E2%80%99-mean
The widespread use of ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ makes no sense and is undoubtedly a racist geopolitical signature.

It appears increasingly fashionable in the West for a number of broadcasters, websites, news agencies, newspapers and magazines, the United Nations/allied agencies and some governments, writers and academics to use the term ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ to refer to all of Africa except the five predominantly Arab states of north Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) and the Sudan, a north-central African country. Even though its territory is mostly located south of the Sahara Desert, the Sudan is excluded from the ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ tagging by those who promote the use of the epithet because the regime in power in Khartoum describes the country as ‘Arab’ despite its majority African population.

But the concept ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is absurd and misleading, if not a meaningless classificatory schema. Its use defies the science of the fundamentals of geography but prioritises hackneyed and stereotypical racist labelling. It is not obvious, on the face of it, which of the four possible meanings of the prefix ‘sub’ its users attach to the ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ labelling. Is it ‘under’ the Sahara Desert or ‘part of’/‘partly’ the Sahara Desert? Or, presumably, ‘partially’/‘nearly’ the Sahara Desert or even the very unlikely (hopefully!) application of ‘in the style of, but inferior to’ the Sahara Desert, especially considering that there is an Arab people sandwiched between Morocco and Mauritania (northwest Africa) called Saharan?

PRE-LIBERATION SOUTH AFRICA

The example of South Africa is appropriate here. Prior to the formal restoration of African majority government in 1994, South Africa was never designated ‘sub-Sahara Africa’, unlike the rest of the 13 African-led states in southern Africa, which were also often referred to at the time as the ‘frontline states’. South Africa then was either termed ‘white South Africa’ or the ‘South Africa sub-continent’ (as in the ‘India sub-continent’ usage, for instance), meaning ‘almost’/‘partially’ a continent - quite clearly a usage of ‘admiration’ or ‘compliment’ employed by its subscribers to essentially project and valorise the perceived geostrategic potentials or capabilities of the erstwhile regime.

But soon after the triumph of the African freedom movement there, South Africa became ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ in the quickly adjusted schema of this representation. What happened suddenly to South Africa’s geography for it to be so differently classified? Is it African liberation/rule that renders an African state ‘sub-Sahara’? Does this post-1994 West-inflected South Africa-changed classification make ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ any more intelligible? Interestingly, just as in the South Africa ‘sub-continent’ example, the application of the ‘almost’/‘partially’ or indeed ‘part of’/‘partly’ meaning of prefix ‘sub-’ to ‘Sahara Africa’ focuses unambiguously on the following countries of Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, each of which has 25-75 per cent of its territory (especially to the south) covered by the Sahara Desert. It also focuses on Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan, which variously have 25-75 per cent of their territories (to the north) covered by the same desert. In effect, these 10 states would make up sub-Sahara Africa.

Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the five Arab north Africa countries, do not, correctly, describe themselves as Africans even though they unquestionably habituate African geography, the African continent, since the Arab conquest and occupation of this north one-third of African territory in the 7th century CE. The Western governments, press and the transnational bodies (which are led predominantly by Western personnel and interests) have consistently ‘conceded’ to this Arab cultural insistence on racial identity. Presumably, this accounts for the West’s non-designation of its ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ dogma to these countries as well as the Sudan, whose successive Arab-minority regimes since January 1956 have claimed, but incorrectly, that the Sudan ‘belongs’ to the Arab world. On this subject, the West does no doubt know that what it has been engaged in, all along, is blatant sophistry and not science. This, however, conveniently suits its current propaganda packaging on Africa, which we shall be elaborating on shortly.

It would appear that we still don’t seem to be any closer to establishing, conclusively, what its users mean by ‘sub-Sahara Africa’. Could it, perhaps, just be a benign reference to all the countries ‘under’ the Sahara, whatever their distances from this desert, to interrogate our final, fourth probability? Presently, there are 53 so-called sovereign states in Africa. If the five north Africa Arab states are said to be located ‘above’ the Sahara, then 48 are positioned ‘under’. The latter would therefore include all the five countries mentioned above whose north frontiers incorporate the southern stretches of the desert (namely, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan), countries in central Africa (the Congos, Rwanda, Burundi, etc., etc), for instance, despite being 2000-2500 miles away, and even the southern African states situated 3000-3500 miles away. In fact, all these 48 countries, except the Sudan (alas, not included for the plausible reason already cited), which is clearly ‘under’ the Sahara and situated within the same latitudes as Mali, Niger and Chad (i.e., between 10 and 20 degrees north of the equator), are all categorised by the ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ users as ‘sub-Sahara Africa’.

2012 WORLDWIDE CLASSIFICATORY SCHEMA?

To replicate this obvious farce of a classification elsewhere in the world, the following random exercise is not such an indistinct scenario for universal, everyday, referencing:


1. Australia hence becomes ‘sub-Great Sandy Australia’ after the hot deserts that cover much of west and central Australia.

2. East Russia, east of the Urals, becomes ‘sub-Siberia Asia’.

3. China, Japan and Indonesia are reclassified ‘sub-Gobi Asia’.

4. Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam become ‘sub-Himalaya Asia’.

5. All of Europe is ‘sub-Arctic Europe’.

6. Most of England, central and southern counties, is renamed ‘sub-Pennines Europe’.


7. East/southeast France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia are ‘sub-Alps Europe’.

8. The Americas become ‘sub-Arctic Americas’.

9. All of South America, south of the Amazon, is proclaimed ‘sub-Amazon South America’; Chile could be ‘sub-Atacama South America’.

10. Most of New Zealand’s South Island is renamed ‘sub-Southern Alps New
Zealand’.


11. Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama become ‘sub-Rocky North America’.

12. The entire Caribbean becomes ‘sub-Appalachian Americas’.

RACIST CODING

So, rather than some benign construct, ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is, in the end, an outlandish nomenclatural code that its users employ to depict an African-led ‘sovereign’ state - anywhere in Africa, as distinct from an Arab-led one. More seriously to the point, ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is employed to create the stunning effect of a supposedly shrinking African geographical landmass in the popular imagination, coupled with the continent’s supposedly attendant geostrategic global ‘irrelevance’.

‘Sub-Sahara Africa’ is undoubtedly a racist geopolitical signature in which its users aim repeatedly to present the imagery of the desolation, aridity, and hopelessness of a desert environment. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of one billion Africans do not live anywhere close to the Sahara, nor are their lives so affected by the implied impact of the very loaded meaning that this dogma intends to convey. Except this steadily pervasive use of ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is robustly challenged by rigorous African-centred scholarship and publicity work, its proponents will succeed, eventually, in substituting the name of the continent ‘Africa’ with ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ and the name of its peoples, ‘Africans’, with ‘sub-Sahara Africans’ or, worse still, ‘sub-Saharans’ in the realm of public memory and reckoning.

meobizy:
I stopped reading after three minutes. Someone should pay me to complete it.

Martian:
They are Sub Saharan Africa according to the designation. Pecuman

Martian:
This should be pithy enough for you:

Chad and Algeria both have the Sahara in their territories so what makes the former a “sub-Saharan” African country and the latter a “North” African country?

PoliteActivist:
See below

PoliteActivist:
See below

PoliteActivist:
Vast area of one is clearly below the Sahara while vast area of the other is above it

Martian:
This white American’s website is full of racist nonsense and he is not a reasonable support for the why Sub-Saharan African is an acceptable term. Look at one of his quotes below.

“We KNOW that blacks have lower IQs than East Asians. Even Gavin Evans will agree to that”
Francis Tapon.[b][/b]

He has a picture of his black Cameroonian wife on his website because he thinks that disproves his racism. Thomas Jefferson also thought “blacks” were inferior while impregnating one of his “blacks” repeatedly.

PoliteActivist:
Question: Can you hate blacks and marry a black girl who will have your kids, yet continue hating: blacks?

Answer: No

Martian:
How "vast" does the area have to be for it to be excluded from "Sub" Saharan? Does Niger have enough desert?

If it means "below" the Sahara, then including any parts of the Sahara in a country makes it excludable from the "Sub-Saharan" designation.

Martian:
Answer: YES.
Look up Thomas Jefferson, who is the most famous example of intercourse with the “inferior” “blacks”

Racists can be and are often attracted to the opposite sex of the people they deem inferior. I already posted his racist opinion about “IQ”.

The ones who hate Asian men usually lust after Asian women.

PoliteActivist:
Jefferson did not hate blacks. You are confusing being intellectually honest about your observations with hatred

Martian:
This should be pithy enough for you:

Chad and Algeria both have the Sahara in their territories so what makes the former a “sub-Saharan” African country and the latter a “North” African country?

PoliteActivist:
Jefferson did not hate blacks. You are confusing being intellectually honest about your observations with hatred

Pecuman:
He didn't exactly hate Blacks yes, but he still did see them as different, less intelligent and incapable to integrating into White society.

Like you don't hate a Rabbit but you don't consider it your equal either