Are Somalis Black?
In: Ancient History, African History [Edit categories]
The DNA Ancestry Project
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No, Somalis are not "black" for two main reasons:
1) The term "black" is a scientifically invalid label that lumps together disparate human populations solely on the basis of similar skin color. This is problematic because skin color is regulated by one's environment; it is not in and of itself a sign of shared racial ancestry. The Dravidians of South Asia, for example, are darker than many "Black" Africans, yet they do not share any biological affinity with the latter nor are they branded as "black". Dravidians just happen to have also evolved in a hot, equatorial climate, as have Australian Aborigines, another dark-skinned people.
Furthermore, skin color often changes many times over the course of an average person's life. This fact only serves to make skin color an even more useless variable for determining a given person's or population's biological "race".
2) Somalis have biologically, linguistically, and culturally more in common with the peoples of Southwest Asia and North Africa than they do with Black Africans. Since this is demonstrably the case on numerous variables, it makes no sense to group them with Black Africans solely on the basis that they both happen to share a continent. For instance, East Asians and South Asians also share a continent, but that does not prevent South Asians from having genetically more in common with the peoples of Europe than they do with their fellow Asians in the East. The same can be said of Somalis with regard to Black Africans.
Further reading:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=HUBe0wj ... is&f=false
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v13/ ... troduction
I think they are yellow. I could be wrong though.
