Why do certain foreigners have an obsession over our skin tones and insist we are either Black or a mix, and when we Greeks try to educate them on that matter, they exclaim that we are gaslighting them?
Educate them on what? If I may say, you are not asking the right question.
Think about it. You do not have to educate someone on what Greeks look or used to look like. These days, any serious person who is curious for some reason about Greeks' looks only needs to google it. They can google "greek celebrities, greek models, greek athletes, modern greek poets, ancient greek philosophers, greek actors, greek people, greek men, greek women, greek statues" etc etc etc etc etc It takes about a few seconds to type the query and get numerous results.
Do you really believe that these people who promote a Black Greek theory genuinely have no access to the Internet, encyclopedias, geography books, human geography, art, heck, even youtube videos made by Greeks? Or do you think that the people who hear them and believe them do not have equal tools available for research either?
The thing is, these people do not care about what Greek people look like. They only care about what rhetorics they can form through a claimed connection to the ancient Greek civilisation - even distant. The West has studied the Greek civilisation thoroughly but not sensitively; the motivation was not exclusively the desire for knowledge and understanding. The West has built a foundational myth on the basis of the achievements of Ancient Greeks and it has enwrapped it with connotations of superiority, the superiority of the Western Civilisation. In the western world this myth has been so engraved and accepted by people of all political convictions that as a consequence claiming some sort of relation to Ancient Greeks is a form of validation or perceived superiority.
Now, even the suppressed people groups in the West are members of the Western society and part of the western cosmotheory. A black person born and raised in the USA along with all their family is a person that usually knows nothing ouside the American cultural sphere. So, the symbols of validation and superiority stand for them as well. For example, the black women who produced the Netflix documentary about Cleopatra... they were not making a documentary about Greek history. They were in fact not even making a documentary about Ancient Egyptian history. They were making a manifesto for black / African women empowerment, and they were ready to appropriate and misuse history for this purpose. It's similar to the horrible way feminism is exploited in our days - instead of women respecting themselves and creating powerful original roles for themselves while also embracing the strengths of a woman, the resilience of her will and body, the complex and understanding mind, the deep perception, the wisdom, they have turned modern feminism into movie crybabes whining "they can do it better than men" and start punching and knocking out 15 dudes in a row, all while weighing 50 kilos for the male gaze. The modern movements are failing because the suppressed groups speak the tongue of their suppressor rather than their own, unapologetically and proudly. And that's how you end up making a fool of yourself.
The - hopefully small - part of the African American woke community and their allies who claim the Ancient Greeks only do it because they use what is a standard measurement unit of value to the western whites. This is why they are also so quick to take any role in European history movies, instead of funding and investing in the exploration and promotion of African culture and history. They try to fight anti-black racism by subordinating to white supremacy symbols. Isn't that... sad?
For me, people saying Greeks are blacks is one of the least concerning inaccuracies rallied regarding Greeks. And that is because it is the easiest one to disprove. You basically only need eyes. Thirty million people travel in Greece every year - more and more white and black Americans every year. They can look at us, you know? This theory will not be believed and it is not believed.
But you will never be able to change the opinion of the very people who promote the theory, because those people do. not. care what the Greeks look like. They are only interested in crafting a myth of superiority for themselves, which is ultimately their misplaced need to compensate for centuries of injustice. So, when you really go into the process to explain to them what you look like - which is such a surreal situation and a lost cause from the get go - they cannot take this as information given to them, they see this as you distancing yourself from their cause of assuming symbols of validation and supposed superiority, and they eventually take you for an enemy and a racist. It is crazy but it is true.
Meanwhile, there are Europeans who say that Modern Greeks originate from sub-Saharan Africans whereas Ancient Greeks were the ancestors of Albanians, as some Albanians say, or of Germans as some Germans say (including Hitler) and so on. Why is that? Well, because there are indeed many racists in Europe and for them to be from sub-Saharan Africa is considered inferior. So they claim the Ancient Greeks for themselves, despite the absence of even a single piece of evidence for their claim, and for their superiority myth to work, they have to remove Modern Greeks from the equation, because we ruin their image, the image of the powerful West and of them being each time the prime examples of continuation of that powerful West.
Here I must add that most Greeks have internalized the European foundation myth and they consider it a good thing. While it can be flattering on a surface level, it is a double edged sword and so far I perceive we have mostly been cut by the bad side. It could have theoretically worked to our benefit but we have not managed to do it and this is largely our fault.
So, the question to ask is not "why some people say the Greeks were black" but "Why do so many people in the West find it so easy and unproblematic to exploit the history and identity of the Greek people in order to serve their own interests and narratives"?
I believe a big part of the answer is that it is a bit as if we do not exist. We are in every way a protectorate concealed under loud proud cries of old glory. USA says jump and we jump. UK was saying jump and we jumped. Germany says jump and we do. Israel now says jump and we do that too. Lately, it becomes more and more obvious to me with every day that passes and I cannot believe I had not seen it earlier. Our economy is controlled, our agriculture is controlled, for the study of our history we trust British retellings more than the studies of our own people. Historiography, admittingly, is not a very objective field of science by default - so you will not get perfect accuracy by the Greek historians but you won't get it either from British historians - let alone that like I have said Greek history has been seized from us to be used for all purposes and narratives since the 19th century already.
I have spoken before about the decent book "THE GREEKS" by the British Roderick Beaton. A book that remains consistently good more or less until it reaches the later years and especially the point of the Greek Revolution, which is squeezed in, like, two pages (he wrote more pages about the financial crisis), and in which he mentions only three people, Kolokotronis under a negative light (!!!), Kapodistrias fleetingly in literally a three-line paragraph (!!!!) and Mavrokordatos, whom he praises. Why is that? Well, because Kolokotronis prioritized the unity of the Greeks over the interests of the guarantor powers, the British and the French wanted to depose Kapodistrias and supported the revolts of the Maniots, whereas Mavrokordatos was explicitly British-friendly and served the British interests, sometimes even at the expense of Kapodistrias and the Greeks. I could not believe what I was reading, even a few foreign readers in Goodreads complained that the chapter about the Greek revolution was too short and hazy and that this was actually the part of the Greek history they did not know much about and wished to learn. So, I checked his sources. And I could not believe it. The source that this widely acknowlegded historian of Greek history used for the Greek Revolution was one (1) : the British consulate in Greece!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you wrap your mind around this? This is how the author of an otherwise very decent book completely lost his integrity in two pages alone. The only way he mitigated this obscenity was by admitting fleetingly that "sometimes the UK served its own interests and exploited Greece". But he did not say that the UK still refuses to publicize the archive files about the assasination of Kapodistrias, 194 years after his death, something that happens within 30 years with all other sensitive files.
But most Greeks have internalized these things and they have put their trust in western European narratives. More excavations take place by foreigners rather than Greeks. Half of the population is brainwashed to hate Byzantium because that's what the western views on Greek history traditionally instructed (how convenient to destroy the link between ancient and modern Greece huh?). We don't serve our own interests in politics. Our economy is shattered, we are indebted to everyone and, for lack of a better phrase, we are groped by the balls. We have no agency, no face out there and our politicians have clutched the seats of the ministries and the parliament by serving foreign interests instead of those of the Greek people.
Most of the people who would write essays on why Greek gods can look like anyone or that Cleopatra was black because her grandma said so, do not know where Greece is in the map. And they don't care to know, because this has never been about the Greeks. We, with our choices, with our mistakes, have allowed Greek history to become public domain. The British Museum thinks it can make a better job at presenting Greek culture than the whole of the Greek state and says that to our face. The Germans think they understand Classical Greece better because they are the true inheritors of ancient greek intellect. The African Americans think Ancient Greeks were black. The South Slavs think they are the Ancient Macedonians. And our main concern is how to whine on the internet and expect an ex deus machina powerful nation to step forth and protect us, our borders and our history. Some think it's gonna be the Americans, some the Russians, some the Israelis.
Have these Greeks ever thought who's gonna give us our dignity back instead?
You may think I am diverging but I reassure you I am not. You are seeing a surface symptom but you are not seeing the ultimate root of all our problems. The problem is that Greeks and Greece have become free real estate for every rhetoric, every agenda, every historical revisionism. Not that a small bunch of folks envision a black Athena.
This cannot be solved by attacking them all one by one. What we need to do is change our place in the world. We need to stop being the rug others clean their shoes on. And I don't mean we need to become mean to someone else in order to achieve this (because all loser or evil states think they need to step on others' throats in order to improve their condition). We only need to regain our dignity and believe in ourselves and work to better ourselves on all aspects. To prosper. Finally, remember two things: a) respect is earned, not demanded or granted and b) you will never be respected unless you first respect yourself.
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