It'd be hilarious if they did a cartoon about the Zulus, but made Shaka and half the Africans white for no reason whatsoever, just to see what happened.
He dodges the question in the replies, but I'd actually be curious to know what % of the population he's talking about. I'm sure there were a few black people in Roman Britain, plus some more North Africans, Middle Easterners, etc. but I'm skeptical of them being a significant fraction of the population. Primarily because I don't think the evidence suggest people from elsewhere in the empire being that large of a portion of the overall population. Modern DNA analysis of British people shows little to no evidence of Roman ancestry. The soldiers, etc. were always pretty small compared to the native population that numbered in the millions. And within that group, Middle Easterers and North Africans would be a minority, and black Africans would be a very small minority.
I'm not an anti-diversity alt-right supporter, but I think this guy is certainly looking at things himself through a politicized lens. I've noticed this is a kind of a double standard by many on the left - if someone today who came from a small town that was 95% white told them they were from a diverse area, they'd laugh at them and tell them off. But when talking about the past, apparently a society was racially diverse if there was even one black person living there at some point.
Looks like the Beeb did took that video down, so probably an acknowledgment there that their treatment of the source material (whatever they were using) was poor.
That said, Septimius Severus did spend significant time in Roman Britain, and contemporary depictions have him with a darker complexion, which makes sense as his father was of Berber ancestry and his mother a Syrian Arab. He probably didn't look much like the black British "Roman" in the cartoon, but I think they probably were just trying to show how the civil administrators of the empire were drawn from all over.
I'm aware of Septimus Severus's background. I'm not denying that the Roman Empire overall had a lot of people from many different backgrounds and there was some population movement, I'm just saying there's little to suggest that Britain in those days was racially diverse in modern terms. And even by the standards of the time, simply taking into account different ethnic backgrounds, I'd be shocked if the native Britons were less than 90-95% of the population. Granted they weren't a homogeneous group themselves.
Oh, sure, yeah, I was agreeing with you. Extrapolating one historical anecdote about a "Moorish" legionary to mean that Londinium was full of black British people is bad history. Just puzzling through why they made it that way in the first place.
I imagine whoever did the video mistakenly conflated "African" with "black", and that's why it turned out the way it did, and why it was taken down.
11 comments
1 SnapshillBot 2017-07-28
Did you know that the bathtub was first marketed in north america as a horse trough and dog scalder?
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1 80BAIT08 2017-07-28
Typical manlet
1 Ennui2778 2017-07-28
No. Next brainbuster, guys?
1 ricardogce 2017-07-28
I feel like I understand the "women like bad boys" trope now.
1 Teresa_May 2017-07-28
Outrageous cultural erasure... Beeb having a supposed "Roman" bloke speaking the mongrel tongue of barbarians - English - instead of proper Latin.
1 Thulean-Dragon 2017-07-28
It'd be hilarious if they did a cartoon about the Zulus, but made Shaka and half the Africans white for no reason whatsoever, just to see what happened.
1 walkthisway34 2017-07-28
He dodges the question in the replies, but I'd actually be curious to know what % of the population he's talking about. I'm sure there were a few black people in Roman Britain, plus some more North Africans, Middle Easterners, etc. but I'm skeptical of them being a significant fraction of the population. Primarily because I don't think the evidence suggest people from elsewhere in the empire being that large of a portion of the overall population. Modern DNA analysis of British people shows little to no evidence of Roman ancestry. The soldiers, etc. were always pretty small compared to the native population that numbered in the millions. And within that group, Middle Easterers and North Africans would be a minority, and black Africans would be a very small minority.
I'm not an anti-diversity alt-right supporter, but I think this guy is certainly looking at things himself through a politicized lens. I've noticed this is a kind of a double standard by many on the left - if someone today who came from a small town that was 95% white told them they were from a diverse area, they'd laugh at them and tell them off. But when talking about the past, apparently a society was racially diverse if there was even one black person living there at some point.
1 Teresa_May 2017-07-28
Looks like the Beeb did took that video down, so probably an acknowledgment there that their treatment of the source material (whatever they were using) was poor.
That said, Septimius Severus did spend significant time in Roman Britain, and contemporary depictions have him with a darker complexion, which makes sense as his father was of Berber ancestry and his mother a Syrian Arab. He probably didn't look much like the black British "Roman" in the cartoon, but I think they probably were just trying to show how the civil administrators of the empire were drawn from all over.
1 walkthisway34 2017-07-28
I'm aware of Septimus Severus's background. I'm not denying that the Roman Empire overall had a lot of people from many different backgrounds and there was some population movement, I'm just saying there's little to suggest that Britain in those days was racially diverse in modern terms. And even by the standards of the time, simply taking into account different ethnic backgrounds, I'd be shocked if the native Britons were less than 90-95% of the population. Granted they weren't a homogeneous group themselves.
1 Teresa_May 2017-07-28
Oh, sure, yeah, I was agreeing with you. Extrapolating one historical anecdote about a "Moorish" legionary to mean that Londinium was full of black British people is bad history. Just puzzling through why they made it that way in the first place.
I imagine whoever did the video mistakenly conflated "African" with "black", and that's why it turned out the way it did, and why it was taken down.
1 Kekistanian9000 2017-07-28
If they were not diverse, PC fags will be angry.
If they were diverse you can say that Roman Empire became weak af at the end and was fucked by barbarians and PC fags will be angry.
Because there's no situation where they are comfortable with anything.