Mate, literally the original post in this thread contains white nationalist fever swamp speculation straight from the sewers of Youtube and alt-right Twitter.
BBC changing history
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Mate, literally the original post in this thread contains white nationalist fever swamp speculation straight from the sewers of Youtube and alt-right Twitter.
civver_764
Deity
I certainly can't find any evidence of an anti-immigration bias in the BBC, maybe you can help me out?
That's not an argument, mate.
Berzerker
Deity
Fathers often do have darker skin from more time in the sun, but that guy looks European/caucasian. The round face surrounded by grey hair tend to rule out black African ancestry, especially since the kid is about as white as mom.
danjuno
Cole Phelps, Badge 1247
Let's split the difference and say he was brown! 
Ajidica
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I think I have been vindicated as the OP decided to veer deeply into tin-foil-hat-land and propose, in apparent seriousness, said stuff like this:
We are talking about the BBC, right? The same company that has staked its reputation on producing stereotypically "Little England" shows such as Great British Bake Off and lavish costume dramas about the Queen and Monarchy?the OP said:
Berzerker
Deity
Well, I thought this would be easy. If it's not typical for a Roman family to have black members, then showing them as such isn't a good idea - it just generates the wrong idea.
But I noticed that the link wasn't to a BBC video, but was from someone else's channel. Unsurprisingly, the person who uploaded the video is a pretty big racist, based on the other videos they posted. It doesn't exonerate the BBC's error discussed in the first paragraph, but it also certainly is a datapoint. The main hits when I google this are Alex Jones related. Yay.
That said, London was interestingly diverse even right at the start. Calling an African Roman in London 'typical' is certainly deceptive. But if it leads to people googling, it can lead to more understanding. If the authors knew about this diversity, their implicit knowledge might have slipped into their portrayal as well. I often do this, when I discuss a one-in-a-million disease when discussing the genetics of a specific protein.
There's a bit more black in the Roman era of Britain than a lot of people would assume, it's worth googling before just assuming that the BBC is 100% wrong; people are rarely malicious.
But I noticed that the link wasn't to a BBC video, but was from someone else's channel. Unsurprisingly, the person who uploaded the video is a pretty big racist, based on the other videos they posted. It doesn't exonerate the BBC's error discussed in the first paragraph, but it also certainly is a datapoint. The main hits when I google this are Alex Jones related. Yay.
That said, London was interestingly diverse even right at the start. Calling an African Roman in London 'typical' is certainly deceptive. But if it leads to people googling, it can lead to more understanding. If the authors knew about this diversity, their implicit knowledge might have slipped into their portrayal as well. I often do this, when I discuss a one-in-a-million disease when discussing the genetics of a specific protein.
There's a bit more black in the Roman era of Britain than a lot of people would assume, it's worth googling before just assuming that the BBC is 100% wrong; people are rarely malicious.
I mean, this is explicitly a neonazi conspiracy theory. Ordinary migration as an elite conspiracy to destroy whatever the hell "native/white identity" is, for some undefined, nefarious end. It is trite, boilerplate stuff from that set.
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The "typical" part comes from the text in the description portion of the YouTube video. In the description, the BBC said it was a look at life in Roman Britain through the eyes of a typical family.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
Didnt the Romans set pigs on fire and send them into the enemy elephants ?
/shrugs at least its not the US level of revisionist trying to re-write its crazy slave history or its civil war
Borachio
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Spoiler :
As many have already said the ancients didn't understand race as it is understood in the west today after the "race sciences" of the 19th & 20th century. If they did, answering the question if it was normal for black people to be in the northern parts of the empire would be much easier today. But because they didn't the whole question is rife with anachronism, and here is why. For one we have to answer the question what is "black", and that is hard. When I look at people like Rhianna, who is black I am told, I have a hard time understanding why she is black. She is just a tad darker peige than I am. So "blackness" is more a cultural thing, than a skincolour thing, although that plays a part too. ”Blackness” is an idea peculiar to modern western culture, so asking if someone was "black" in antiquity is an anachronistic question. It’s like asking were there any finnish people living in the roman empire. Finnishness didn’t exist back then, it was invented in the 19th century.
So what is it that is actually asked here? The question is about skin complexion, I gather. For the romans, being a citizen was more important than skin colour, though. And in the end of the video the person basically says that he is loyal to the empire. So he is a loyal roman citizen. So what’s the problem? He is integrated into the roman way of life. Even if he is an ”immigrant” he has been assimilated into the ”roman culture”. I don’t know enough about granting of roman citizenship in Hadrian’s time to have a definite answer, but I think it is a bit outlandish to say that that person is an immigrant to the Roman empire, because he is a general in the roman army! Most likely his family had lived in the empire quite some time and was quite well off to have a child become a general. Sure the romans used germans etc. as auxiliaries, but those guys tended to stay where their tribes lived, right? The idea that there was a roman general of dark complexion in the roman Britain is not that outlandish. Although I'm not sure that just saying that someone is from North Africa means that he/she has a dark complexion is correct. It's hard to say from what part of Africa that cartoon person is from. His complexion is fairly light, darkish brown, and he has a large nose. I don't know. He could as easily be from the Middle East. The daughter’s complexion thought is so weird, it’s kind of blueish, almost as if she was some sort of wight. I agree, though, that that family is far from ”typical”. As someone in this thread said, the family is very well off. So nothing typical about that.
All that being said I get why you feel that it is pushing an agenda of tolerance. There are subtle hints, person of dark complexion is the master, person of light complexion is the slave; the daughter wants to be a general; a person of dark complexion is said to be a typical roman, while most of the locals are of light complexion. But the kind of tolerance that the video pushes is not multicultual, it is actually monocultural. As I pointed out, the person of dark complexion is roman in culture. Whatever might be assumed of the culture of his forefathers or nativity on the basis of his complexion, that culture seems to be forgotten by this roman general. So.. The secret agenda is what? The BBC wants immigrants to assimilate into the british culture? And also, the romans were invaders. So again, the secret message is what, black people are invading Britain?
Borachio
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No. I'm guessing the "secret" agenda of the BBC is that it wants people of African descent, who are second or third generation immigrants, to have positive self-images.
Whether this agenda will succeed or not is another matter. And it's debatable if this particular cartoon will promote this agenda.
Whether this agenda will succeed or not is another matter. And it's debatable if this particular cartoon will promote this agenda.
But why sacrifice historical accuracy to give them that positive self-image? Wouldn't the BBC be better served in that objective to air some documentaries about the proud moments and achievements of African civilizations? You know, make them see that they have plenty of reason to be proud of who they are and where they come from.
It's not necessarily historically inaccurate. There have been remnants of upper class people* of african descent found in roman Britain. If the male general was named and we had some sources describing him as a blue eyed blonde, then that would be historically inaccurate. As the video stands it is more history culture than a historical documentary. But the idea of portraying blackness in the past and linking it to blackness in the present is problematic.
edit: The peoples of darker complexion in modern Britain have no other connection to the people of darker complexion in roman Britain than their dark complexion. There is no "black roman culture" that survived the middle ages. So drawing an equation mark between those two groups of people is kind of racist, I'd say.
*
Spoiler :
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I said that in one of my posts, whilst also pointing out that the described family are clearly not typical, due to being very wealthy and privileged. A rich family living in a luxury villa being described as typical apparently totally bypassed the people causing the minor Internet furore, but a black person in Roman Britain, that can't be doing!
You also have to note that they're so intent on yelling that the BBC is pushing an agenda when the obvious response is that the person writing the video description made a mistake. It wouldn't stop people pushing conspiracies such as mentioned in the OP if the video description hadn't used the word 'typical', of course, but then they'd just find something else to complain about, because (of course) on the Internet, someone is always wrong.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
While Romans obviously though they were the best people in the universe, i dont think they put much attention to race. They gave roman citizenship to anyone who behaved nicely, from Pictland to Nubia, from Hispania to Germania and equally enslaved and killed whoever behaved badly without any racial consideration. Probably didnt even have a clear concept of what race is (or better said, had a clearer concept than us). Racism as we westerners know it is a modern thing coming from 16 or 17th century, with america discovery, african colonization, atlantic slavery trade and such.
From DNA of 4 skeletons from Roman time London:
"London appears to have been just as ethnically diverse when it was founded by ancient Romans as it is now, when only 45 percent of its residents are Caucasian and people of various neighborhoods speak more than 100 languages. Researchers examined the DNA and teeth of four skeletons from the Roman era to find these people were from all over the map. And the Museum of London has 20,000 more ancient skeletons that promise to give a detailed history of the English city"
I think they should do some more than just 4 of those 20,000 skeletons available, before drawing real conclusions.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news...may-have-been-ethnically-diverse-today-004682
If you look at the DNA of the current UK population, there seems to be not much left of any Roman DNA, or Mediterraneum DNA, according to the following article with many graphs:
"You can have a huge impact culturally from relatively few people. There is no evidence of a Roman genetic signature but there is evidence of what the Roman's achieved. Dr Michael Dunn, of the Wellcome Trust, which funded the study, said: 'These researchers have been able to use modern genetic techniques to provide answers to the centuries' old question – where we come from".
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...h-DNA-Romans-left-no-trace.html#ixzz4ob9D5Rej
EDIT added:
The following article, discussing a book of Stephen Oppenheimer: The origins of the British, goes even so far, that according to his DNA research:
"Now Stephen Oppenheimer’s groundbreaking genetic research has revealed that the ‘Anglo-Saxon invasion’ contributed only a tiny fraction to the English gene pool. In fact, three quarters of English people can trace an unbroken line of genetic descent through their parental genes from settlers arriving long before the introduction of farming".
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/origins_of_the_british.php
Threequarter being neolithic original !
That somehow fits well with the proud independence and selfdetermination of the British people.
"London appears to have been just as ethnically diverse when it was founded by ancient Romans as it is now, when only 45 percent of its residents are Caucasian and people of various neighborhoods speak more than 100 languages. Researchers examined the DNA and teeth of four skeletons from the Roman era to find these people were from all over the map. And the Museum of London has 20,000 more ancient skeletons that promise to give a detailed history of the English city"
I think they should do some more than just 4 of those 20,000 skeletons available, before drawing real conclusions.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news...may-have-been-ethnically-diverse-today-004682
If you look at the DNA of the current UK population, there seems to be not much left of any Roman DNA, or Mediterraneum DNA, according to the following article with many graphs:
"You can have a huge impact culturally from relatively few people. There is no evidence of a Roman genetic signature but there is evidence of what the Roman's achieved. Dr Michael Dunn, of the Wellcome Trust, which funded the study, said: 'These researchers have been able to use modern genetic techniques to provide answers to the centuries' old question – where we come from".
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...h-DNA-Romans-left-no-trace.html#ixzz4ob9D5Rej
EDIT added:
The following article, discussing a book of Stephen Oppenheimer: The origins of the British, goes even so far, that according to his DNA research:
"Now Stephen Oppenheimer’s groundbreaking genetic research has revealed that the ‘Anglo-Saxon invasion’ contributed only a tiny fraction to the English gene pool. In fact, three quarters of English people can trace an unbroken line of genetic descent through their parental genes from settlers arriving long before the introduction of farming".
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/origins_of_the_british.php
Threequarter being neolithic original !
That somehow fits well with the proud independence and selfdetermination of the British people.
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Borachio
Way past lunacy
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I remember when I said something complimentary about the Chinese people, taillesskangaru (changed his username I guess) accused me of being racist.
So. Racist!
Yeah.
Spoiler :
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