Reflection and Analysis

The Moors (5/6/2022)

My mind keeps coming back to something I read when I was reading up on Blackwashing where a non-Black character is played by a Black actor or actress and I'm definitely bothered by the discovering that there are individuals out there who are arguing the Moors are in fact Black because I've long known they are not, but as I thought over what I discovered thanks to the essay I mention in my last reflection is that--in order to promote how amazing Black culture is compared to white culture--they are Blackwashing another POC groups culture and claiming it as their own.

Part of the problem comes from this misunderstanding that the word negro was used exclusively for Black people because--gasp!--the word translates to black so whenever a negro is referenced in historical documents it must in fact be referring to a Black person rather than any person of color who was visibly a person of color.

So, while it is true that the Moors were all considered to be negro (a person with dark skin color) they were not all Black (a person with the darkest skin color or someone who can trace their ancestry to such a person). This isn't to say some Moors were in fact Black, but even among the Moors those who were Black were in fact a minority.

Yet people are arguing that the Moors are Black which is why they're arguing that any historical figure whose rumored to have Moorish ancestry or even confirmed Moorish ancestry could in fact be played by a Black person and that it isn't historically inaccurate. Not only is it historically inaccurate, but Black people are doing to other POC what has been done to them by white people while justifying it as a form of justice because that other POC must actually be white because the Black person said so.

To which I go back yet again to that poll (2016 I think) that I mentioned in last reflection where representation for Blacks in entertainment was 5% more than what the Black population was, nor was this 5% shifted away from white actors and actresses but instead from Hispanic and Asian actors who are still underrepresented. It's also playing into this idea that race and ethnicity is white vs. black while leaving out everyone else, or claiming they're part of the other group.