vulcanoes:

lavienoire:

nijireiki:

socialnorms:

raes-of-sunshine:

misssynph:

theafrosistuh:

SOURCE

The true identity of Ludwig van Beethoven, long considered Europe’s greatest classical music composer. Said directly, Beethoven was a black man. Specifically, his mother was a Moor, that group of Muslim Northern Africans who conquered parts…

Yeah, if the author weren’t anonymous, could actually cite the source that says that Beethoven’s mother was a “Spanish Moor” and could actually acknowledge the very real tendency of 18th and early 19th century Europeans to refer to anyone who had black hair and a dark (as in Mediterranean  -Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek…) complexion “brown” or “moorish” in appearance, then I might actually entertain the idea of possibly considering the validity of this argument. Until then, step off, anon pseudo-scholar… Also, Idk why the author doesn’t look for descriptions of Beethoven’s brothers, who were full, and not half brothers, and so should also be described with similar terms, if they were indeed of half-African extraction. Also, I’m a bit offended, just on principle if for no other reason, that the author of this article *actually* suggests with very many words in the second part of their “Beethoven was black - why can’t everyone just admit it” argument that the reason Beethoven was *capable* of writing music that so revolutionized Classical music - with masterful use of syncopated rhythms - was because he genetically knew how to do so due to his African blood. Are you serious? I read it twice, just to be sure, but that’s what the author does say. As if Bach, Handel, Mozart and others weren’t experimenting with such things at the same time and earlier than Beethoven himself… Just because Beethoven used these techniques particularly well, probably because he could hear them better due to his decreased aural acuity and the fact that people who are partially or entirely deaf can often hear beats relatively well, even when they can’t hear much else - it still doesn’t mean that he must have been black.

Furthermore, the author mentions, as if in passing, that Beethoven’s teacher Haydn was also black and no one ever talks about that either. A painting done from life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn Does he look black? Um… Not so much…

This kind of half-assed, don’t actually know what they’re talking about “historical scholarship” is dangerous. It’s why there are people running around with notions like Abraham Lincoln was gay because he used terms of endearment in letters to close male friends and Thomas Jefferson was autistic because of *one* (and only one) written description of him by a Frenchman that he had a tendency to shake his hands as if in nervousness, written during Jefferson’s time in France when he was recovering from a severely dislocated wrist which caused his lingering discomfort(!), coupled with the fact that he didn’t talk publicly very much when he was in the Continental Congress or ever if he could help it and he was a bit of an odd bird (oh, and Mozart, Einstein, and Van Gogh were too because misunderstood, ahead-of-their time genius always = autism, don’t you know?). No, they weren’t, and Beethoven wasn’t half-African either!

I am reblogging this again for commentary. Thank you, Rachael, for the perspective. I didn’t critically analyze this while reading, I was too busy being shocked that I never knew that Beethoven was black and didn’t know why it wasn’t more widely known.

parte deux

Yes, the article tried to push pure speculation into “irrevocably truth,” but the comments there already covered all she said. Also, this woman is making me roll my eyes so much.

world please stop believing everything you read without thinking critically about it

They actually have no evidence whatsoever that conclusively or even suggests that Beethoven was of African descent, much less that his skin was as black as any African. He might have been 1/4 Flemish, and that Flemish might have had some African in there “because where the Flemish were in Spain was close to Africa” That, ladies and gentlemen, is their evidence, besides the fact that he had a swarthy complexion and a flat nose, small eyes and wide mouth, none of which are strictly African traits. Beethoven wasn’t black (would they have hired a black man back then? NO) and Jesus wasn’t white. Not everything was whitewashed.

Thanks for all of your comments and knowledge on this.  Like socialnorms, I was just floored and bamboozled.