Kyrie Irving is in hot water for posting a link to the documentary Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black Americato his Twitter account. The movie is a film adaption of the Independently Published book by the same name. It is alleged that the movie has much antisemitism in it, (I disagree but that’s a different post), and Irving has since taken the tweet down and apologized to the Jewish community via an Instagram post.
This post is about how he found the documentary and what Indie Authors can learn about platforms.
Kyrie Irving found the documentary by researching Yahweh on Amazon, saying that’s what his name translates into. According to this interview, he typed the name in the search engine, and the movie came up.
Many Indie Authors have long-cut ties with Amazon, which is their business. What I hope we can gain is an understanding of how people search for information, namely books, and the role that it plays for us as authors.
Photo by Ricardo Esquive
Amazon is not a distributor or bookstore. Amazon is a retailer that sells many things but is known for books. They are known for books because, in addition to selling books, they operate a Self-Publishing arm called Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP. Amazon is so very well connected with books that bookstores hate them, and people who think of buying a book (and now movies) turn to Amazon almost instinctively.
Amazon is also the world’s second-largest search engine, with Google being the first.
“Amazon, with 54 percent of product searches taking place, is the world’s largest search engine for e-commerce. Technically, Amazon is the second largest search engine in the world excluding Google.”
Decoding the World’s Largest E-commerce Search Engine: Amazon’s A9 Algorithm
When someone wants to search for a book and does not want to visit an offline bookstore like Barnes and Noble, where will they search first?
Today (11/2022), it is a #1 Bestseller with tons of new reviews. Yes, he searched for the movie, but the book is a #1 Bestseller.
All because a rich and famous celebrity tweeted the link.
And this celebrity found it on the second largest search engine in the US.
The Point
When deciding what platforms to put your book on, consider not what you want but what readers want.
When your average reader wants to look up a movie, topic, or book, they are not going to Smashwords. They are not going to Draft2Digital. They are not even going to Goodreads like that. They are also not flooding B&N.com, though they’ll visit the brick-and-mortar bookstore (catch that).
When people (not necessarily people who are always on the internet and are familiar with the book world but everyday people with jobs who happen to want to buy something) want to look up information, they go to Google and Amazon.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
Ignoring this is just not good business sense, except that your goal is not to make money from your books or bring a whole lot of awareness to it, which is cool. Not everyone publishes a book for these reasons.
(It is also not wrong to be on the other platforms, also known in the Indie community as “going wide.” It means you are not exclusive to Amazon but have your book available at other online retailers, which is awesome. I go wide myself. At the risk of steering away from the topic, that’s a post for a different day.)
However, for those of you Self-Publishing books you want people to buy, not being on Amazon is not bad or wrong, but it is leaving a lot of money (and exposure) on the table.
This post is a nudge to consider more strongly the platforms you wish to sell your book (if you are selling it).
It is a reminder to go to the places where your potential reader will most likely hang out.
That is the message.
Kyrie Irving found Hebrews to Negroes and made it a bestseller by posting the Amazon link (without a caption) because the book was sitting on a platform where readers are most likely to search for books.
Go where your readers are most likely to hang out, and search for books like yours.
Indie Author Basics simplifies and streamlines the Self-Publishing Process so authors can Self-Publish high-quality books without pulling out their hair.
Welcome back to another Black History Fun Fact Friday.
Today, we are talking about how important it is for us not to let the dreams of our ancestors die. We are talking about picking up the mantel, reversing generational curses, and rededicating ourselves to our forefathers and fore-mother’s legacy. We are also talking about being careful with internet research and sharing disinformation, and we are doing it by looking at the life of one man, Benjamin Montgomery and his son Isaiah.
Benjamin Montgomery was born a slave in London Country VA in 1819 and was sold to a Mississippi planter named Joseph Davis. Davis was the older brother of Jefferson Davis who later served as President of the Confederate States of America. Montgomery was taught to read and write by Davis children and was tasked with running Joseph’s general store on Davis Bend plantation. Montgomery did so well that he was promoted to overseeing Joseph’s entire purchasing and shipping operations. Benjamin learned land surveying, techniques for flood control and the drafting of architectural plans. Montgomery was also a mechanic and an inventor but as an enslaved man, his inventions were denied patents. And even though Jefferson Davis made it a law to allow slaves to file patents, Montgomery’s inventions were still denied. But Montgomery’s inventions was not his only passions. Benjamin also had dreams of owning his own land.
After the end of the Civil War, Joseph Davis sold his plantation to Montgomery and his son Isaiah. Benjamin and Isaiah set out to fulfill Benjamin’s dream by using the land to establish a community of freed slaves but natural disasters ruined their crops and they were unable to pay off the loan to Davis. As a result, the land went back to Joseph and Montgomery died the following year.
Even though this is sad, it gets better. Isaiah (Montgomery’s son), did not let his father’s dream die. He purchased 840 acres of land along with a number of former slaves and founded the town Mound Bayou in Mississippi in 1887. You remember Mound Bayou right? It‘s the first all-black town of Mississippi I talked about it hereback in 2016. Isaiah was named the town first mayor.
Be Careful with Black History Memes:
Before I leave you, I must share a word of caution. Since it’s “cool” to be “woke” now, I’ve been seeing a lot of disinformation about black history circulating on memes on social media. Sadly, a lot of these memes are not historically accurate. Hurricanes do not come from the spirits of “enslaved black women.” That’s not true, and that’s not where Hurricanes come from. There is one about Charles S.L. Baker that says that he invented heat. This is also not true. Charles S.L. Baker improved on the Friction Heater and was one of many who received a patent for it. He did not invent heat. Heat had already existed for thousands of years before S.L. was born. Additionally, the meme says the man next to him is his assistant. This is also not true. Some sources say this man is Charles’ brother but no one really knows who the other man is.
There is another meme out about this story that says Montgomery bought the land he was enslaved on. This is false. Montgomery did not buy the land as you have just read. The land was given to him on a loan and then it was taken back. The victory in this story is his son’s determination to pick up where his father left off and to establish a community for freed blacks. That is what this story is about. Isaiah paid attention to his father’s vision, and he dedicated himself to his father’s memory.
Our history is far too rich and deep to have to make stuff up. Please make sure you are fact-checking before spreading information and Wikipedia is not a credible source for research. Only use it when the information presented can be verified by another, credible, source.
The Road to Freedom is being revised and I am looking for readers to give me feedback on it before having it re-edited. Below is what the book is about, and a link to the book on Amazon. I have reduced the price to 99cents for those of you who would like to help me out! (I just changed it so if it’s not showing up yet as 99cents, please check back later.) Simply read the short book and get back to me with feedback and if you are willing, I’d also appreciate an honest review. Thanks so much!
About
Deeply concerned about the state of Black America, a fight with his brother compels a young Joseph to leave his mother’s house and join his friends for a trip to Atlanta for SNCC’s (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) second conference. Excited to live life on their own, Jo and his friends have left school and the lives they were living for a chance to become part of the movement. With no money and essentially no plan the seven friends, three black and four white, set out for the road when they are stopped by a racist cop who makes them exit the car. The teens are unaware that a mob of Klansmen also await them at the New Orleans bus terminal. Find out in the 3rd installment of the Stella Trilogy how Joseph and his friends discover the truth about themselves in the Jim Crow south on The Road to Freedom.
“Wow this was a Great Read!! The road to Freedom:Joseph’s story, may be set In the time frame of the early 60’s but its content is very relevant to today’s current events. The writer takes you on a journey through the eyes of a young man named Joseph. He and his friends begin down a road with only the hope of wanting to somehow help the fight for equality of “African Americans” and to stop the mistreatment they suffered under segregation and Jim Crow laws. They realize that this task would be harder than they imagined.” – Amazon Customer Review
I have a lot to say so this is only part one as there were multiple dynamics to this film.
WARNING: THIS POST HAS SPOILERS. IF YOU DIDN’T SEE THE MOVIE YET, GO SEE IT AND THEN COME BACK TO THIS POST 🙂
What is Blackkklansman about? First, we should know that the story is based off a true story and a memoir. From Rotten Tomatoes:
“From visionary filmmaker Spike Lee comes the incredible true story of an American hero. It’s the early 1970s, and Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Determined to make a name for himself, Stallworth bravely sets out on a dangerous mission: infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. The young detective soon recruits a more seasoned colleague, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), into the undercover investigation of a lifetime. Together, they team up to take down the extremist hate group as the organization aims to sanitize its violent rhetoric to appeal to the mainstream. Produced by the team behind the Academy-Award (R) winning Get Out.”
Language Stereotypes
“Why do you talk like that?”
I was in the backseat of my cousin’s friend’s car. He was dropping me off at a family members house when his question came.
“Talk like what?” I asked, confused.
“Like that. Proper. You say everything right.”
I frowned, “What?”
I start with this experience because stereotypes concerning language is the foundation of this movie. It is the stereotype concerning Blacks and the English language or the “King’s English,” that makes the plot possible. In social psychology, a stereotype is an over-generalized belief. Stereotypes are generalized because one assumes that the stereotype is true with no real basis or evidence of the belief. There’s no such thing as talking black or talking white. How a person communicates is determined by his upbringing, education or environment, not by his or her race or nationality. But some black people who articulate words well have been teased for years for “trying to talk white.” They have been deemed Uncle Tom’s, sell-outs or simply made fun of and mocked.
Can we talk about how sick this fro is though? I know it’s a wig but still…lol
In Blackkklansman, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) uses this language barrier or stereotype to his advantage. Ron speaks proper, to the extent that (according to general thought), he sounds just like a typical European. Ron pretends to be a white guy on the phone who is interested in joining the Klu Klux Klan and mistakenly uses his real name. The person on the other end of the phone invites him down for a meeting except Ron can’t go, obviously. Ron is not white.
Stallworth can’t show up in person as a Black guy so in comes Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a Jewish man who pretends to be Ron in person. Because of the stereotype surrounding language, Ron can infiltrate a white racist organization with nothing more than a proper English accent.
Language stereotypes have their roots in Scientific Racism. Scientific Racism is the belief there is scientific proof to justify racism. Examples of such thought is Blacks are related to monkeys, their brains are smaller than other races, and they are less intelligent than other races. In the event someone Black is intelligent, surely it is not of his own doing. He is almost always certainly trying to be like someone else.
Nineteenth-Century scientists were convinced the white race was superior to other races and this superiority can be found in Darwinian Theory. Coined by the cousin of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, Eugenics comes from the Greek word eugenes, meaning “well-born.” It is a racist scientific process set out to prove, through alleged psychological and medical evidence, the inferiority of Blacks. Eugenics was put into practice by eliminating those born without “well born genes” from the population. From 1924 to 1936, thirteen states in the U.S. utilized eugenics programs that ranged from isolating those deemed “feeble-minded” from the general population to forced sterilization.
Because of Scientific Racism even among blacks, there is a common misconception that if you are a black person who speaks intelligently, proper, enunciate words correctly, or have an extensive vocabulary, you are “talking white.” This belief exists because of the stereotype in many circles that only “white” people can speak intelligently.
Does speaking a certain language and the enunciation of words define a person’s allegiance to a certain group of people? Am I a sellout, coon, or Uncle Tom because I like to read and speak a certain way? Because of Scientific Racism and stereotypes concerning language and intelligence, Ron Stallworth joined the Klan without even showing his face.
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
The headline I am using, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is inspired by a book released in 1991 by the Nation of Islam by the same name that asserts Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade and has been widely criticized for being antisemitic. (Another book to read is The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler as well as Jews Selling Blacks also by The Nation of Islam detailing slave sale advertising by American Jews.) But, Jews involvement in the Slave Trade is not the secret relationship to which I am referring.
In Blackkklansman, Ron is a Black guy, but he cannot show up at KKK meetings as a Black guy. So, he recruits the help of Flip Zimmerman who would pretend to be him in person. As it stands today, 2018, Jews are known and recognized as the chosen people of “God.” Their heritage and identity are said to go back to that of the ancient Israelites and the land of Israel /Jerusalem is known and recognized as their land. But there are several historical occurrences that makes this inaccurate.
According to the biblical table of Nations (Gen. 10), the earth was repopulated after the flood by Noah’s three sons and their wives. Shem (Shemites), Ham (Hamites) Japheth (Japhites). According to the bible, the Israelites lineage goes back to Shem but Ashkenaz is the descendant of Noah’s son Japheth.
Ashkenaz is the first-born son of Gomer, again, descendant of Japheth. History traces the descendants of Japheth back to the European nations.
Ashkenaz in Hebrew means German. This means that Asheknazi Jew literally translates, “German Jew.”
Gomer, the first born of Japheth, has been traced back to the Celtics, Goths, Hungarians, Sloths, the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland.
Javan, fourth son of Japheth, has been traced back to the Greeks and Magog has been traced back to the Russians.
According to the bible, the Israelites will be returned to their land by the messiah. This is not how the Jews entered the land of Israel. The British Empire conquered Jerusalem and had a mandate of the land from the Turkish Empire. They gave it to the Jews after the 2nd World War when the Jews said they needed their own land because of the Holocaust. This was done by way of The Balfour Declaration of 1948.
The parts of the earth inhabited by Shem were the territory of Assyria and Persia east of the Tigris River, the eastern part of Syria and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. All the children of Shem were black.
Abraham, father of the Hebrew-Israelite and Arab nation was black.
The Arab nation is made up of black Hamite / Egyptian mothers and black Shemite fathers. Hagar, the black Egyptian is mother of Abraham’s son Ishmael. Ishmael married black Egyptian women and gave birth to 12 sons who became 12 tribes. They inhabited the region from the Euphrates to the Red Sea in the Arabian Peninsula and they were black.
Joseph was second in command in Egypt when the famine drove the eleven sons of Jacob to Canaan to buy food. Joseph’s brothers did not recognize him. First, he had grown into a man since they last seen him and secondly, they could not distinguish him from the black Egyptians because he was black also.
After Pharaoh commanded that all the Hebrew babies be killed by way of his “Birth Control” mandate, Moses passed as the pharaoh’s black grandson for 40 years. This could not happen if Moses, the Israelite “Jew” was not also black.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the 12 tribes were all black.
Due to the mountain of evidence concerning the identity of the ancient Shemites and Japhethites, it is my belief that the so-called African American, Negro, Black, Colored person, are the original “Jews” and true children of Israel and that the Jews we know today are instead the European nations.
With this understanding, the fact that Zimmerman, a Jew, is pretending to be Ron, a black man, in this movie is revealing and I wonder if Spike Lee and Jordan Peele did this on purpose. After all, it wouldn’t be Spike Lee’s first time doing this.
In his movie Bamboozled, a satire of network television’s pitfalls and prejudices and a humorous look at how race, ratings and the pursuit of power lead to a television writer’s rise and tragic downfall, Pierre Delacroix (played by Damon Wayans) is in a room with the writers for his sitcom and a Jewish man is wearing an Afro. Pierre jokes about blacks always being late or on “CP Time” (“Colored People Time”). He then pauses and looks at the Jew with the Afro and his words are: “And no. That Afro does not qualify you my young Jewish friend.” He meant, that Afro does not make you black. (Lee also uses the language stereotype in this movie. More on this in part 2 when we explore the caricature of the Uncle Tom.) This happens all the time in Hollywood where blacks and Jews are jokingly intertwined with one another.
In Blackkklansman, Zimmerman is not really Ron, a black man, just as the Jews are not really the children of Israel, who are black. The secret relationship between Blacks and Jews is that Blacks are the original “Jews,” and everyone knows it but black people. (That’s why it’s a secret).
The Klan and Police Force Connection
In Blackkklansman, Ron is a Black police officer who sincerely believes that justice can take place from within the system. He befriends a young lady named Patrice, an Angela Davis character, working for the Black Panthers as part of Stokely Carmichael’s team. While their relationship attempts to take a romantic turn, her problem with him is his connection to the force (she eventually discovers he’s an undercover cop). At the end of the movie he confirms that while he has turned in his Klan membership, he is not ready to turn in his allegiance to the police force. Her response: “I can’t sleep with the enemy.”
Why did she consider him an enemy for being a police officer?
During the institution of chattel slavery, controlling the actions and whereabouts of slaves was of vital importance. As nothing more than a commodity, slaves were worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. Big feet, for example, may indicate to a slave owner that his slave may be strong and a stout one day while his “skin and bones” appearance may bring down a hopeful price. “Through care and discipline, slaves’ bodies were physically incorporated with their owners’ standards of measure.” (Walter Johnson, Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market)
If a slave approached the auction block with two fingers cut off, for example, both of which were done in the slave’s desperate attempt to escape chains–choosing rather to go about with eight fingers than to become a slave–the true manner of his disablement would be concealed for the time being. Basically, the fact that this slave cut his own fingers off would be a secret for now. The owner would instead lie about the enslaved man’s attempted escape. Maybe a doctor cut off one of his fingers due to illness and the slave, to comply with the doctor’s orders, cut off the other one.
In such case the slave is seen as so stupid and imitative that he would mutilate himself because it’s what the doctor did. For the auctioneer, this increased his chances of selling this slave. Showing stupidity for obedience was better than showing rebellion, which would decrease the auctioneer’s chances of selling the slave.
These kinds of situations, and the constant running away of slaves, caused for serious security over the slave’s whereabouts and required a policing of them known as Slave Patrols.
Slave patrols were organized groups of white men who monitored and enforced discipline upon black slaves during chattel slavery in the U.S. The slave patrols’ function was to police slaves, especially runaways and defiant slaves. These patrols were formed by county courts and state militias and were the closest enforcers of codes governing slaves throughout the South.
Overseers – On large plantations, the person who directed the daily work of the slaves was the overseer, a white man OR an enslaved black man (driver) promoted to the position by his master. Some plantations had both a white overseer and a black driver, especially in the deep South or on plantations where the master was often absent. The overseer had special privileges. He may get to ride around on a horse instead of pick cotton in the fields. He may live in a brick house instead of a slave cabin, and he may get to sit at the masters’ table on special occasions and eat with him.
Many people assert the word “officer” is a direct relation to “overseer,” which is taken to mean that the overseer of slave plantations have become police officers. I don’t know about the name correlation, but I do know that black cops are often teased and accused of being “overseers” by other blacks who have come to distrust the system of American policing overall. For many, police cars have replaced horses and badges have replaced hoods.
This may be because modern-day police enforce the laws of the land and are the most brutal force toward African Americans and black related crimes in this day as well as back in the day. Patrice considered Ron an enemy because Slave Patrols, Night Watches, and Overseers were designed for managing slaves in the same way that modern day Police Departments manage black related crimes. As David Giacopassi and Margaret Vandiver state in Ignoring the Past: Coverage of Slavery and Slave Patrols in Criminal Justice (2006:186) remark:
“the literature clearly establishes that a legally sanctioned law enforcement system existed in America before the Civil War for the express purpose of controlling the slave population and protecting the interests of slave owners. The similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement.”
And the National Humanity Center, Slave Drivers, Overseer, Enslavement:
“How did black drivers relate to their masters, and to their fellow slaves over whom they held authority? How did they adapt to the vulnerable position between master and slave.”
These are questions many blacks have for black police officers. How does a black police officer, aware of the racist practices of his job, relate to the people of his race who are being mistreated and over whom he has authority? How does he balance this allegiance? For women like Patrice and many in the African American community, there is no balance.
My Thoughts
I thought the movie was decent. It didn’t wow me. It was just okay. I loved all the connections and messages of the movie and the history. I just thought the movie would do more with those connections. I loved listening to the powerful speech of Kwame Ture or Stokely Carmichael as played by Corey Hawkins, who did an AMAZING job!
Obviously, I did not read the book before seeing this movie so I did not know how it would end. While I don’t believe every officer is evil (just like I don’t believe all blacks are illiterate and ghetto, not all Mexicans are criminals who got to the U.S. illegally, and not all white people are racists), I thought Ron would get more involved with the politics of the Black Panthers and less involved with the police force with all the information he now had. I thought with all the connections, subtle or otherwise, this would lead Ron to leave the force and the movie was going to take a turn similar to Sam Green’s The Spook Who Sat By the Door. This book (so controversial it was removed from shelves) is a fictional account turned movie in the 60s about the first black CIA agent who, after quitting, takes all he has learned from the agency and trains his brothers in the inner-city how to fight. A movie was made of the book in 1973. (There was also a movie released in 1966 called Black Klansman where a light-skinned black man (Richard Gilden) infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan to avenge his daughters murder after she is killed in a church bombing.)
It is important not to get emotional about it. I am just going to discuss the facts. Let’s just be real for one second here people. If they won’t even show you that the Egyptians were a BLACK SKINNED people, why would anyone admit the Israelites were black? (Who were often mistaken as Egyptians…also Israel is in Northeast Africa by the way.)
I am sure we’ve all heard it by now. It’s all over social media. In the midst of Black History Month The Today’s Show decided to showcase an image of a white Nefertiti. Not only am I not surprised, but I think maybe we (so-called Black people) deserve it. Maybe this is what it takes for us to wake up and stay woke. Maybe these are the kinds of shockers that is necessary for us to realize the truth. You don’t have to know much about history to know that the Egyptians were a black skinned people. “Egypt is in Africa, not some small island in Sweden.” (Paul Mooney)
The word Ham in Hebrew is Khwam, and it means “hot, burnt, and black.” The first-born son of Ham, Cush, forms the Kushite nation. They were also called and known as the ancient Ethiopians. Ethiopia comes from the Greek word, Aethipos, which means, “burnt or black face.” The Greeks applied this name to the people living south of Egypt. The name Egypt comes from the word Aegyptus though the Egyptians called themselves Khemet / Kemet, which is a variation of the Hebrew word Khawm (Ham). It means, “People of the black land.”
Gerald Massey, English writer and author of the book, Egypt the Light of the World, wrote, “The dignity is so ancient that the insignia of the Pharaoh evidently belonged to the time when Egyptians wore nothing but the girdle of the Negro” (p. 251)
Sir Richard Francis Burton, a 19th century English explorer, writer, and linguist in 1883 wrote to Gerald Massey, “You are quite right about the ‘AFRICAN’ origin of the Egyptians. I have 100 human skulls to prove it.”
King Tut
King Tut
Scientist, R. T. Prittchett, states in his book, The Natural History of Man, “In their complex and many of the complexions and in physical peculiarities the Egyptians were an ‘AFRICAN’ race” (p. 124-125).
The ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century B.C.E., saw the Egyptians face to face and described them as black-skinned with woolly hair.
Anthropologist, Count Constatin de Volney (1727-1820), spoke about the Egyptians that produced the Pharaohs. He later paid tribute to Herodotus’ discovery when he said:
“The ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Romans and Greeks, must have lost the intensity of its original color, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold. We can even state as a general principle that the face (referring to The Sphinx) is a kind of monument able, in many cases, to attest to or shed light on historical evidence on the origins of the people.”
Volney also stated:
“What a subject for meditation. Just think that the race of black men today, our slaves and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, science, and even the use of our speech.”
Egypt: Ham’s second born son < Blood brothers to the Ethiopians
Ethiopian > Burnt Face
Egypt > Burnt Black
Phut: The Somalians – According to the ancient record of Egypt, Phut has been traced back to the Somalian
“Every man has flesh and blood, which includes a skin tone, but the Israelites and Egyptians were black, I’m just making it known.”
From Music Video: Remember the Time by Michael Jackson
The ancient Egyptians were the descendants of Noah’s son, Khawm, or Ham in English. Khawm means black, hot and burnt. Kush is Ham’s first born son. The Kushites are the Ethiopians and Nubians today. Ancient Ethiopia was located south of Egypt in what is called the Sudan today. Ethiopian comes from the Greek word Atheops, meaning burnt face. Egypt, Ham’s second born son, name means Burnt Black. The ancient Egyptians called their land and themselves Khemet, which in their tongue means “THE LAND OF BLACKS.”
The word Khemet is nothing but a variation of the word Khawm in the language of ancient Egypt. Shem’s descendents, the Israelites, are also a black skinned people. This is why they were often able to hide in Egypt and why they were often mistaken as Egyptians (as in the Israelite Moses who passed as the grandson of Pharaoh for 40 years). On the other hand, the descendents of Noah’s son Japheth has been traced back to the Russians, Celtics, Ashkenaz, Goths, Greeks, Indo-European people, etc.
Why are these basic Historical foundations excluded from today’s movies?
You telling me you couldn’t cast Denzel Washington as Pharaoh? Not even Idris Elba? Chiwetel Ejiofor is good enough for 12 years a slave but he can’t be Moses?
You couldn’t have made Angela Basset Pharaoh’s wife? Vivica as his daughter? Like could Jada Smith just be Mary? After all, the Egyptians did look like these people, or am I the only person who notices that Egypt is not in Europe?
And where are all the black producers with the capacity to make movies? Tyler, can we get an exodus movie? Spike Lee? John Singleton?
The PBS Blog 