This week, the story broke of California Governor Ronald Reagan calling African delegates to the United Nations, “monkeys” in a 1971 slur that sparked chuckles from President Richard Nixon.
A newly unearthed audio recording reveals that Reagan phoned Nixon at the White House to complain about the countries that had sided against the United States, in a key vote the day before, to expel Taiwan and recognise the People’s Republic of China. Representatives from Tanzania dressed in traditional wear celebrated with a victory dance in the General Assembly hall.
“To see those monkeys from those African countries, damn them,” an enraged Reagan declared, to loud laughter from Nixon. “They are still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”
Clinical Associate Professor of History at New York University, Tim Naftali released evidence of the unedited conversation in a special article for the respected American literary and cultural magazine, the Atlantic. He was the first director of the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. In other recordings shared by Naftali, Nixon recounted his conversation with the Governor who went on to become a popular President, describing the delegates as “cannibals.”
“The past month has brought presidential racism back into the headlines. This October 1971 exchange between current and future presidents is a reminder that other presidents have subscribed to the racist belief that Africans or African Americans are somehow inferior. The most novel aspect of President Donald Trump’s racist gibes isn’t that he said them, but that he said them in public,” Naftali wrote. The current president is facing mounting criticism for his withering attacks on prominent politicians of colour, including four democratic congresswomen who he told to “back home.”
The 1971 exchanges were taped by Nixon, but the racist portions originally withheld by the country’s National Archive, only came to light, with the recent release of complete versions to Naftali following his research request last year and an earlier court order for a complete chronological review.
“These new tapes are a stark reminder of the racism that often lay behind the public rhetoric of American presidents,” Naftali observed. “Nixon never changed his mind about the supposed inherent inferiority of Africans. At the end of October 1971, he discussed the UN vote with his best friend, Bebe Rebozo. Bebe delighted Nixon by echoing Reagan: ‘That reaction on television was, it proves how they ought to be still hanging from the trees by their tails.’ Nixon laughed.” Some Presidents lack even private shame.
On this Emancipation Day nearly 50 years on, racism, ignorance and divisions continue to haunt us whether in the U.S or Guyana. Yet geneticists know that we are indeed all descendants of ancient apes and our species Homo sapiens is universally an African one, for Africa is where the species first evolved and dwelled the longest.
The Americans have Kennewick Man; the Chinese, Peking; the Indonesians, Java, but diverse Africa is most blessed as the indisputable rich cradle of mankind, with a range of choices from the legendary Lucy and Ardi in Ethiopia, where such fossils date to around 200,000 years ago, to the Black Skull of Kenya, Toumai in Chad and Twiggy from Tanzania. These are legendary finds that have helped chart and change our understanding of human evolution over millions of years.
At the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology still on Main Street, in Exhibit B45, Guyana has our precious indigenous Eve and even she carries proof of these distant African origins, from the Neolithic timeline of human history, roughly 10 000 to 5500 years ago, before the Bronze Age. A more than 7 200-year-old young likely Warrau woman, forever frozen in time, her full-term baby fatally caught in the breech position, Eve was carefully laid to rest with her Adam, probably, and two others at Barabina in the North West District where she was found by the world renowned archaeologist, Dr Denis Williams.
By now, we should be all familiar with the so termed “Out of Africa” model, under which humans dispersed across Asia and Australia in a single wave about 60,000 years ago. However, the story is being revised, with the latest technological advances in the analysis of our DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, the molecule composed of two chains that coil around each other to form the famous double helix of life, carrying unique genetic instructions that makes each of us who we are.
According to research from Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, recent discoveries show that humans left Africa multiple times prior to this date, and that they interbred with other hominins in many locations across Eurasia.
By mapping the appearance and frequency of genetic markers in modern peoples, the scientists can track when and where ancient humans moved around the world. These great migrations eventually led the descendants of a small group of Africans to occupy even the farthest reaches of the Earth. Modern human fossils in far reaches of Asia are potentially much older with multiple sites in southern and central China dating to between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago. Additional discoveries indicate that modern humans also reached Southeast Asia and Australia before 60,000 years ago, the Institute said.
Studies confirm that all present-day non-African populations branched off from a single ancestral population in Africa at this time. Evidence indicate that there were multiple, smaller dispersals of humans out of Africa beginning as early as 120,000 years ago, followed by the major event. While the recent dispersal contributed the bulk of the genetic make-up of present-day non-Africans, the earlier ones are still evident, the researchers said.
The Institute explained these initial movements were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations including our own. But the genetic evidence is also there in each one of us, irrespective of race and religion, Presidents and prejudices, for the major ‘Out of Africa’ event some 60,000 years ago.
ID knows that the human genome shows our closest living ape relatives share 96 percent of our DNA. The number of genetic differences between humans and chimps is ten times smaller than that between mice and rats.
