, yes I do consider them black (or at least those that self-identify as such, don't know if they're the majority) but I don't consider them African or of the African diaspora simply because of their appearance. To me black, African, AA (Afro-whatever) are not mutually inclusive terms; a person can be none, only one or all three depending on heritage, history and self-identification.
Since race is socially constructed and color is relative I, as an American of western African descent via the Middle Passage, can't really pass judgment on race and society outside my cultural context as a US black, especially a people whose history and culture is so very different. I'm in no position to criticize how other societies label people or how people from vastly different cultures choose to label themselves. Certainly many Australian aborigines (along with some South Asians, SE Asians, Pacific Islanders, etc) refer to themselves as 'black', especially in contrast to the Englishmen that colonized their homeland and subjugated them, so I have no qualms in calling them black also. I have heard of rights groups in Australia (as well as some in India) that look to the struggles of AAs, especially the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, for inspiration and see a connection with us due to color, history and treatment by the mainstream powers.
As for their relatedness to Africans and descendants of modern Africans, they basically aren't. At least no more so than the rest of humanity. They are no more related to Africans than are Europeans, South Americans, Asians. They are of the populations of humans that are least connected genetically to modern African populations; the ancestors of Europeans left Northeast Africa tens of thousands of years after the ancestors of Australians, New Zealanders, etc so basically white Euros have a closer connection genetically to the continent than do dark skinned, broad featured aborigines. Australians, etc are most closely related to other SE Asians though they often resemble them very little in terms of surface or 'racial' appearance.
Further proof that you can't prove relation through only looking at superficial characteristics, that humanity can't be divided neatly into neat categories and exemplifies how much environment molds appearance.
but to actually answer the question
That is tragic. She is pretty, for a light skinned person, but by no means the best representation of what India has to offer as far as looks--- there are so many beautiful people there who aren't light. But I have seen some beautiful brown Indians with gorgeous hair. I remember crushing on this Pakistani guy with gorgeous black locks and brown eyes and brown skin. Now that I think of it we were practically the same color, him being a little darker. Man... too bad his whole family was strict on him dating and all..
erplexed
African is not a nationality, because Africa is not a nation. We are not using nationality to describe ethnicity because ANYONE, (black white purple brown violet) can be of ANY nationality (think Albanians for example). It is a continent, like a person can be European American or African American. Nigerian is a nationality, however it is also an ethnicity. There are white Nigerians and white South Africans... but they are not ethnically so--- typically their ethnicity is some kind of European. You can refer to someone's ethnicity as African or Asian or European to be more general, instead of picking it apart by countries.
Did you see the "pretty aboriginal girl" or "pretty young woman" and "Aborigine with great hair" in the first link?...hmm, interesting.
Yes! Gorgeous hair
to me
DNA confirms Aboriginal Australian origins
Tuesday, 8 May 2007
by Hamish Clarke
Cosmos Online
New Guinean children: The founding group leaving Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago may have had similar physical features, which were then lost elsewhere, say researchers. The new analysis shows that aboriginal Australians and New Guineans share a common ancestry.
Image: Peter Forster
SYDNEY: Australian Aborigines descend from the same lineage as the first modern humans to migrate from Africa, DNA analysis has confirmed. The find is a further blow to the idea that the evolution of indigenous Australians was marked by many migrations from Asia.
"We wanted to know whether the same 'Out-of-Africa' migration that was responsible for founding the gene pools of Eurasia was also the basis for Australia's population… or were there several separate migrations?" said study co-author and evolutionary biologist Toomas Kivisild, of the University of Cambridge in England.
The Out-of-Africa theory argues that modern humans evolved in Africa 100,000 to 200,000 years ago and one group migrated out to the rest of the world between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, replacing – and not mixing with – ancient homo populations already there.
Alternative scenarios
Though many anthropologists accepted that Australia's native population arrived in a single wave 50,000 or so years ago, alternative migration scenarios have been proposed to explain confusing features in the aboriginal fossil record. For example, some experts argue that unusually small and less robust skulls compared to thicker later skulls found among early human remains found in Australia, are inconsistent with an Australian population that had been isolated since its inception.
In order to resolve these questions, lead author Georgi Hudjashov, of the University of Tartu in Estonia, and colleagues compared the DNA of living indigenous Australians in Kalumburu, Western Australia with DNA from people in New Guinea and around the Indian Ocean.
As a kind of belt and braces approach, the team followed both maternal and paternal lineages by analysing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome DNA respectively. MtDNA is used as a record of the maternal line of descent, as it only passes from mothers to daughters in their eggs. Likewise DNA on the Y chromosome is present only in males, so it can be used to trace our paternal lineages.
"Integrating the Y and mtDNA data is a good approach, as usually research teams rely on only the maternal, or paternal, evidence," commented Peter Brown, a palaeoanthropologist with the University of New England in Armidale, Australia.
Little gene flow
Their analysis showed that DNA from people in New Guinea and aboriginal Australians could be traced back to early branches of the human phylogenetic tree, associated with the first humans to leave Africa 50,000 - 70,000 years ago. The study is revealed today in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The DNA analysis also revealed very little gene flow into Australia and New Guinea in the 50,000 or so years since the initial migration. Australians evolved in relative isolation compared to other parts of the Indian Ocean, which were subject to much more genetic mixing, said the study authors. This in turn suggests that developments in language and tool use were not influenced by outside sources, they said.
Not everyone agrees about the proposed extent of differences in Aboriginal fossils anyway. "The variability amongst Australian fossils tends to be exaggerated," commented David Bulbeck from Australian National University's School of Archaeology and Anthropology in Canberra. He argues that differences can be explained by climate and it's effect on physiology, rather than a series of migrations from Asia.
According to palaeoanthropologist Mike Morwood, also of the University of New England in Armidale, the paper confirms what many experts already believed – "that modern humans first appeared in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and that they dispersed out of Africa."
Interesting article
click on the first link - there's one of a guy his caption says "great hair", then a mum and daughter, and a girl sitting staring off alone. All have great hair
