I did not bother to challenge you a few years ago when you said that the phrase, "The real McCoy" did not, in fact refer to Elijah McCoy. whose twenty-five inventions of lubricators (1872-1898) made, among other advantages, train travel more efficient. I was taught about his gifts to humankind in my segregated Georgia school; perhaps you were not in segregated Kentucky schools.
However, I cannot stay silent when Grant Barnette refers to the pharaohs of Egypt/Kmt in antiquity as from the "Middle East."
The pharaohs were from dynasties in Egypt/Kmt, a country in the continent of Africa, a country whose culture was informed by Kush and other nations going toward the equator not toward the Mediterranean.
It is lamentable that in the 21st Century one would need to challenge supremacists views!
Mrs. Tchaiko Kwayana, National Board Certified 1995-2005, AVID & GATE Certified
When I look up "Middle East," my dictionary says: "an extensive area of southwestern Asia and northern Africa, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Pakistan and including the Arabian peninsula."
torpeau said:
When I look up "Middle East," my dictionary says: "an extensive area of southwestern Asia and northern Africa, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Pakistan and including the Arabian peninsula."
My geography is not strong, but my reference materials are. Egypt does, in fact, lie on the continent of Africa. Still, almost all of the reference materials I have consulted include Egypt in their definition of "Middle East." Interestingly, the same references also include Egypt in the definition of North Africa. Its unique position, it seems, allows for Egypt to be considered both at once.
My mind races to the great candy vs. breath mint debate. Or for us geeks, the great wave / particle paradox.
I'm neither a geographer nor an anthropologist, but I have always thought of the "Middle East" as the parts of Africa and Asia that are (with the exception of Israel) mostly Muslim, largely desert, and inhabited mostly by lighter-skinned people, such as the Arabs; an analogue of the ancient Caliphate ( 
) excepting the parts of Europe which were later re-conquered by the Catholic church (such as much of Spain). Of the African countries, I would include Lybia, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. I often hear it contrasted in discussion with "Sub-Saharan" Africa, which is largely savanna and rain forest and largely inhabited by darker-skinned people.
Ancient Egypt pre-dated all of that, of course, so maybe it's better to say that Pharaohs ruled in "what is now considered the Middle East?" Is that level of specificity really necessary?
Anyway, I'm sure Grant wasn't being a "supremacist" of any kind.
I wouldn't reference Ancient Egypt with the contemporary Middle East due to cultural connotations contained in the Middle East. The Arabs didn't come to Egypt until several centuries after the pharaohs were gone. Islam and Christianity didn't even exist as religions for the vast part of Ancient Egyptian history. That being said, the first claim about the Black African roots of Egyptian culture are far from accepted in the scholarly community.