In the aftermath of last week’s earthquake in Haiti, the Dominican Republic has expressed solidarity with its neighbor.

Though Haiti and the DR share the island of Hispaniola, their histories, cultures and economies greatly differ. Racial tensions, stateless children and immigrant violence have created tensions along the border.

Martin Savidge hosts Marselha Gonçalves Margerin of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights and Michele Wucker of the World Policy Institute to discuss these unequal neighbors.

Dominicans of Haitian descent.

The show explores:

• the intertwined but distinct histories
• Haitian migrants in the DR and Dominicans of Haitian descent
• migration and trade along the border
• the statelessness of children born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian migrants
• the role of the Dominican Republic, the U.S. and international community

GUESTS:

Marselha Gonçalves Margerin is the advocacy director at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights working with RFK Human Rights Award Laureates from Latin America and North Africa. She works directly with Sonia Pierre of the Dominican Republic on issues of race and discrimination facing Dominicans of Haitian descent. She has also worked with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, as well as other non-governmental, academic and international organizations.

Michele Wucker is the executive director of the World Policy Institute in New York City and the author of “Why Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola.” She also was a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow working on evolving notions of citizenship, belonging and exclusion. Her work involves the politics and economics of immigration and integration, transnational political processes, the politics of culture, Latin America and the Caribbean and international finance.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Reid, who recently apologized, is quoted in a new book as saying Obama was electable because he is “light-skinned…with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Racial discrimination takes on many forms around the world.

In Iraq, some estimate that 10 percent of the country’s 29 million people are of African origin.

Much of the black population feel marginalized and are increasingly frustrated about not having a legally mandated share of parliamentary seats — unlike many of Iraq’s other minorities, including Kurds and Christians.

Watch a report by Omar Saleh of Al Jazeera English here:

In Australia, 21-year-old Indian student Nitin Garg was stabbed to death in Melbourne recently. And another Indian man was set on fire outside of his Melbourne home.

Australian police are still looking for the attackers but say they don’t think either crime was racially motivated.

This has upset many Indians — both in Australia and India. A series of violent attacks against Indians in Australia last year had already strained diplomatic relations.

Applications by Indians for Australian student visas have dropped by half, and at least one protest has taken place outside the Australian High Commission in New Delhi.

Watch a recent report by Ashima Thomas of Al Jazeera English on the violence in Australia:

Global Voices blogger Kevin Rennie, a former secondary school teacher and resident of Melbourne, offers a wrap-up from Australian bloggers.

The murder of an Indian man in Melbourne has reignited the debate about racism in Australia and the safety of overseas students. It has also severely strained relations between Australia and India.

And lastly, in our Worldfocus broadcast tonight, we discuss the discrimination faced by Afro-Peruvians.

For the first time, the government of Peru has apologized to the African-Peruvian population for centuries of abuse, exclusion and discrimination.

The government said it hoped the apology would help promote the “true integration” of Peru’s multi-cultural population.

Africans first arrived in Peru in the 16th century as slaves of Spanish conquerors. Today Afro-Peruvians account for 5 to 10 percent of Peru’s 29 million people.

On the blog “Living in Peru,” Andres Flores writes about the history of Africans in Peru:

“According to the anthropologist Humberto Rodriguez, traces of the African culture are strongly marked in the capital. “There are streets in Lima called Malambo, inhabited by large numbers of African descendants. Their roots are not confined only to music and food, they are also seen in their lifestyle, their creolism, language and customs of the city.”

- Geneva Sands-Sadowitz

Troy Davis

Troy Davis is a prisoner on death row in the state of Georgia, convicted purely on eye-witness testimony for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer that he has always maintained he did not commit. Seven out of the nine eyewitnesses have since recanted or contradicted their testimony, yet until early this week, Troy’s efforts to get this and other possibly exculpatory evidence a hearing were repeatedly dismissed on procedural grounds. Troy has faced execution three times in the last two years, once being granted a stay less than two hours before he was slated to die. On Monday, to the relief of Troy Davis supporters everywhere, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Georgia federal judge must give Troy an evidentiary hearing. Though the fight is far from over, this could be the difference between life and death for Troy Davis.

Asel Asleh was a seventeen-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, shot at point blank range in the neck by Israeli security forces during a demonstration outside his village of Arabeh in the north of Israel on October 2, 2000. None of the eyewitnesses at the demonstration (including the policemen, one of whom pulled the trigger) tried to claim that Asel had been involved in any act of violence. The Israeli government set up a commission of inquiry to examine the killings of Asel and twelve other Palestinians inside Israel in the first days of the second intifada. The commission ended with a recommendation that the police conduct an internal investigation. The police closed their investigation before they ever opened it, blaming the families of the victims for not cooperating. On January 27, 2008, the Attorney General of Israel proclaimed the investigations closed.

What links Asel and Troy, one a Palestinian citizen of Israel executed by an Israeli police officer; the other an African American from Savannah, Georgia, imprisoned for killing a white police offer?

Troy’s nephew, a fifteen-year-old young man named Dejaun, spurred me to ask that question. Incredibly poised and articulate for his years, Dejaun recently spoke at the NAACP centennial conference about the racism that he has personally experienced growing up in Savannah, Georgia. “When people hear that I am in the honors program at my school, that I did a summer course at American University, that I plan to study robotics in order to develop medical technology, they tell me that I’m an exception. No, I tell them back. I’m not an exception!”

I’m not an exception. Shivers went down my spine as Troy’s nephew uttered those words. I flashed back to what Asel’s older sister Nardin once told me. She has spoken to me at length about Asel’s life, his murder and her experience growing up and living as a Palestinian inside Israel.

Asel Asleh. Photo courtesy of Jen Marlowe.

“We are here, they (Jewish Israelis) know we are here, but they try to minimize our place in their consciousness. When I fully get into someone’s consciousness, they are always surprised,” Nardin told me.

“They ask ‘How do you know such good Hebrew?’ and ‘How come you dress like any other Jewish girl? They might live ten minutes away from me, but they feel good with their ignorance, they don’t do anything to fight it. And then, whenever they meet me, they say ‘Oh, you’re an exception.’ They don’t realize how many of our young people go to university, study and get doctorates, become professors, speak perfect Hebrew. They don’t admit that we are at the same level of intelligence and knowledge and motivation as they are, that we are good people, have families, jobs, a normal life. They just dismiss us! And they say, ‘Oh, you’re an exception.’”

Nardin, now a doctor, spoke about her own process of transformation, how as a teenager being told she was an exception made her feel special. It wasn’t until she was in university that she stepped out of feeling special and into anger, and began to answer people with the same sentiment that Dejaun arrived at by the age of fifteen.

“No! I’m not an exception!”

To try and portray the situation and sentiments of African Americans in the U.S. and Palestinians inside Israel as parallel would not only be overly simplistic, but a denial of the communities’ very different origins, histories, experiences of injustice, and struggles.

But despite the differences, the words that I heard from Troy’s nephew and Asel’s sister contain the same cry of anger against the dismissal, invalidation and invisibility they have felt all their lives.

I had lunch yesterday with another friend of mine. Amal is also a Palestinian citizen of Israel. She has been studying in Seattle the last three years, and every time she goes home, she tries to take the political pulse. “People are in despair. It feels worse than I can ever remember, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why,” Amal confided in me. “On the one hand, if you go to the mall or to a Jewish Israeli place, you can see Arabs there more than ever. But there is less true integration between the societies. There is no merging. Shops in the mall are willing to take our money, but that’s it.” She struggled to find the words. “We are barely tolerated…we are definitely not wanted.”

When I visited Asel’s family in their home last week, Asel’s father Hassan similarly expressed his feeling that the Palestinian community inside Israel was preparing itself for a worsening situation. Something, he felt, would soon be coming to a head. I remember talking to Hassan soon after the Israeli Attorney General announced that Asel’s case and the cases of the other Palestinian victims inside Israel would be closed. He was upset, angry and disappointed…but not surprised. “There is justice,” he told me then. “And there is justice for Arabs.”

The justice system in the U.S. is fraught with racial overtones as well. The application of the death penalty is one egregious indicator. The Yale University Law School held a study of Connecticut death sentences in 2007. The study revealed that when victims are white, African-American defendants are three times as likely to receive the death penalty as white defendants. In Georgia specifically, 65 percent of the homicide victims are African American, yet white victims account for 90 percent of Georgia’s death row cases.

The struggle for justice in Asel’s case came to a dead end over a year ago. The struggle for justice in Troy’s case has a new hopeful opening. But the ever-present racism that has made both struggles necessary means that neither Troy nor Asel; Dejaun nor Nardin are exceptions. That Dejaun and Nardin are intelligent, hard-working, high achieving individuals is certainly no exception. That Troy Davis is a black man who has spent 18 years on death row for the murder of a white off-duty police officer though he has compelling evidence to prove his innocence, is no exception. And the fact that Asel Asleh, a seventeen-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, was killed by police forces who carry the same passport as he, and there was no serious effort to hold the one who pulled the trigger accountable, is no exception.

When racism is combined with mechanisms of power, the result is not only an absence of justice but an absence of equal value for human life, sanctioned by the state. This is also, tragically, not an exception.

- Jen Marlowe

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Shah Rukh Khan’s name came up on a computer alert list and he was then questioned at length. Khan, a Muslim, was in the U.S. to promote a film, “My Name is Khan,” that explores the racial profiling of Indian Muslims living in the U.S. after 9/11.

Following the incident — which was widely reported in the Indian media — several of Khan’s supporters gathered in India to protest, and some burned an American flag. View a video of protests in New Delhi courtesy of YouTube user midday:

Was Khan’s detainment the result of insensitive racial profiling, or was the actor simply accustomed to India’s VIP culture?

Worldfocus asked Nitin Govil — an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego and the co-author of “Global Hollywood” — for his thoughts on how the incident has been perceived in India:

For much of his career, Shah Rukh has rather carefully avoided putting his Muslim identity at the forefront. This is why his forthcoming film “My Name is Khan” is so interesting given the context of his stardom in India.

Responses in India have varied from protests to the burnings of U.S. flags, condemnations by high-ranking Indian politicians, celebrities, cricketers and other public figures, to a kind of “what else can one expect in America” kind of attitude that confirms what most around the world think about the U.S. policy on travel and detention.

Given that all Indians have a deep familiarity with bureaucracy in their everyday lives, there has been a general sense that a short questioning period for Khan might have been alright, but that U.S. authorities clearly took things too far. Although Khan has called for folks back home not to, in his words, “take things too far,” at the same time, many think that he has quite smartly used the incident as a way to promote the new film as well as the issues it addresses.

NDTV, a leading English-language news channel in India, covered the incident — calling it “a huge, huge embarrassment” — and spoke with Khan:

Comments on an Indian social networking site, iTimes, reflected the smattering of opinion in India:

Gayatri Goswami writes:
This is no joke people. Shah Rukh Khan is the biggest movie star in India, a country of 1.3 billion people, thereby making him the biggest movie star in the world. I’m struggling to find a comparable here in the US. No offense to Will Smith or Matt Damon or Pitt, Cruise, Clooney, Angelina or whomever else you can think of, but they all pale in comparison.The detention was shameful and U.S should apologize, they better

Dilnaz Seth writes:
i think U.S should apologize, but why r we making so much of noise abt it, because it is SRK, there are so many innocent muslims with surname Khan who go through this everyday, what about them, do we care for all or just the celebs

Kaushik Sanyal writes:
Hey guys, I think India should learn that, “VIP treatments” which are part of everyday life in India, does not happen in other parts of the world. Even, ex-president of USA Al Gore has to go through security checks in US airports ! I don’t know why SRK is making such a big issue out of it or so called patriotic Indians are raising such a noise ! Everyday in our lives, we see or meet people who takes advantage of their VIP status in India and resent that - why should it be different in this case. I am no USA lover but I recognize the fact that a small time Immigration official can insist to follow the rule book. I hope it also happens in India.

Rragijav Achar writes:
I feel appreciating the US for talking this step. They have given the highest level of interest to their countrymen, unlike India. Wake up India, the US doing the right stuff so only they could stop the terror in their country. Imagine India how many times this happened with us and what actions we have taken against it. They have full rights to do so, as they consider their countrymen as their biggest asset. Count how many times the underworld dons escaped from the hands of Indian government and image what would have US done if the same thing had happened. Think out of the box. Wake up India wake up… it’s time for tight security… I would appreciate if India takes similar actions against each and every person enters and exits India.

In Brazil, as in the United States, the issue of race raises passions. Photo: United Nations

Questions of race and poverty raise difficult problems and passions in Brazil, a colossal country of 200 million people where the answers are never any more simple than they are in the United States.

A report released today by the Brazilian government and UNICEF studied the violent deaths of adolescents throughout the country, with some chilling findings. Statistical projections show that 33,000 young people in Brazil will have died as a result of violence between 2006 and 2012, and black children are more than twice as likely to be killed than those classified as white.

The fundamental question, of course, is to determine the source of all violence — and the joint report cites drug-dealing, poverty and the availability of guns. But the question about racial differences is sensitive for Brazilians. Their tendency has often been to defensively compare their country to the United States, and conclude that Brazil is fare more egalitarian, and far more racially blended.

The problem, many Brazilians say, involves class and not race, in which poor whites and poor blacks suffer equally for economic reasons, not for reasons of skin color. The argument doesn’t convince.

It is hard in Brazil to say who exactly is African-Brazilian, and which Brazilians identify themselves as having African heritage: there must be a dozen terms for different skin hues used in common discourse. “We all have African roots,” a Brazilian diplomat once told me at the Brazilian foreign ministry in Brasilia. He appeared to be Caucasian, and his last name was the name of a Portuguese count. The only people I saw there in the Palace of Itamaraty who appeared to be black were serving coffee or waiting to drive ministers to their next meeting.

Last year, there was another report about related issues from the United Nations, quoted by a Brazilian news agency, that “infant mortality among white children…is considerably lower than that registered among black children.” The same report said that while 98 percent of Brazilian young people are able to go to school, “of 660,000 students out of school, 450,000 are of African descent.”

That U.N. report said Brazil has made great strides in combating racism, and that more needs to be done.

Much can be said the same for the United States, which now has a president of African descent.

Brazil and the United States both have far to go. One need think no further than the outrageous case this week in Cambridge, Mass., where one of the nation’s most important scholars and teachers, Henry Louis Gates, was arrested on suspicion for breaking into his own house. He is an African-American who happens to live in a well-to-do neighborhood, where few people are black.

- Peter Eisner

African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma.

Last week, South Africa went to the polls in the country’s fourth national elections since the end of apartheid. According to final results announced Saturday, the ruling African National Congress won, though it fell short of a two-thirds majority. 

The ANC has faced increased criticism in recent months, often centering on party president Jacob Zuma, who had faced charges of fraud and corruption, though they were dropped. 

Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner measures South Africa’s progess, however imperfect the country and its leaders may still be. 

South Africa’s president-elect, Jacob Zuma, capped off his remarkable political resurgence last week in another solid victory for the African National Congress. His election victory can be viewed in more than one way.

In one sense, it was an endorsement of his charismatic style and a confirmation of the ANC’s prominence in the 15 years since the ascension of Nelson Mandela and the collapse of apartheid. Zuma will take office in May as a result of nationwide balloting that took place peacefully and without incident.

The unfortunate way of viewing the South African election would be to overemphasize unfair complaints that South Africa has not progressed much since the end of apartheid.

South Africa is a vastly different country from what it was under white minority racist rule. Despite persistent poverty and unemployment, South Africa today is a truly democratic state, and the African National Congress has accomplished much. If it is not enough to say that the country’s 80+ percent black population lives now freely and with dignity, the ANC’s other successes are significant. Even the poorest of South Africans have benefits their families could not dreamed of a generation ago.

There is much work to be done, especially in the areas of health care and education, but the ANC has established social programs, provided housing and some basic needs such as electricity to millions of South Africa’s 49 million people.

The ANC came just short of winning a two-thirds absolute majority in the South African parliament, meaning Zuma will have to negotiate and work hard to win over skeptics. Meanwhile, he comes to office at a tough time for any world leader –- South Africa is deeply affected by the world recession and financial issues will be key. He’ll he hard-pressed to follow through on his basic promise: “an equitable, sustainable and inclusive growth path.”

Among the skeptics are some members of his own party, where former leader Thabo Mbeki once stripped him of the role of deputy president because of corruption charges. The corruption charges have since been withdrawn and Zuma has also faced and been acquitted of rape charges.

Phillip Van Niekirk, a prominent South African journalist, notes that even South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority, responsible for the apartheid system, largely prefers Zuma to Mbeki.

“When talking to the business community, foreign dignitaries or journalists, Zuma can be equally impressive. He has great personal warmth and is lucid on the challenges ahead. He wants a crackdown on crime and corruption, greater accountability from politicians and office bearers and a concerted effort to deal with the country’s neglected education and health systems.”

- Peter Eisner

Liberia was settled by freed American slaves, and now, as Worldfocus special correspondent Lynn Sherr and producer Megan Thompson report, Liberia is trying to shape an identity it can call its own.

Watch an extended interview with the U.S. ambassador to Liberia: An impatient Liberia confronts high expectations, sacrifice.

Brazilian immigrants march in California.

Recently, a Brazilian immigrant in Switzerland made headlines when she claimed to have been attacked by skinheads, and the initials SVP (representing the right-wing Swiss People’s Party) were carved into her chest though she was pregnant.

The case drew media attention in both Switzerland and Brazil, television screens broadcasting the graphic images of the injured woman.

However, police say that she was not pregnant and may have carved the symbols into her own skin.

Natalia Viana is an investigative journalist who lives in São Paulo, Brazil. She writes at the “Frontline Club” about how Brazilian immigrants are seen abroad after such instances.

The changing image of Brazilian immigrants

Last week pictures of 26-year-old Brazilian Paula Oliveira, with the initials of Switzerland’s main right-wing party cut into her body were printed all over the world. She claimed to have been attacked by skinheads in Zurich, but later reportedly confessed to self-mutilating. Now she is being investigated for misleading the police.

The fact is that Brazilians are committing more crime abroad — and being more noticed for that. Today there are about 3.5 million Brazilians living abroad, including a proportion of illegal migrants. About half of them go to the U.S., but Europe and Japan are also key destinations. In London where I lived, it was common for Brazilian to be involved in all sorts of scams, from recruiting illegal workers to arranged marriages to Europeans.

Only this week, 50 Brazilians were arrested on suspicion of faking and selling fake passports in Mantova, Italy. A similar operation had taken place in Spain in January, with 33 Brazilians arrested as fraudsters.

As a consequence, the image of Brazilian immigrants is now changing. For many, they are no longer seen as the smiling hard working types, but as potential criminals, fraudsters or illegal workers. More than that, such perception has started to influence the attitude of several foreign authorities towards Brazilians.

When I first lived in the UK in 1999, saying that you were from the land of football and samba always meant a warm welcome. Nowadays, any Brazilian travelling abroad must expect to be treated as a criminal until proven otherwise.

Take the UK, for instance. It is estimated that about 200 thousand Brazilians live in the country, half of them illegally. Since 2006, about 6 thousand Brazilians are deported every year – making Brazil the leader in “returned” citizens. Last year the Home Office included Brazil in a list of 11 countries whose citizens should require a visa before travelling to the UK.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user unsure shot under a Creative Commons license.

Worldfocus special correspondent Martin Seemungal explores the rising poverty in South Africa’s white community.

But a gap still exists today between have and have-nots, and many of the poor are black. They may be equal on paper, but because of impoverished conditions, many still feel unequal.

Worldfocus special correspondent Martin Seemungal takes look at the “new” South Africa, beginning in Soweto, a former black township in Johannesburg that came to symbolize the repressive “old” days.

Below, bloggers in South Africa and elsewhere discuss the state of race relations in the country. Also watch an extended interview: Class divisions widen in racially free South Africa.

Blogger “Ellie” at “PostBourgie” writes about what Barack Obama’s election meant to black South Africans:

Being abroad for Obama’s election was bittersweet. [...] True, the country has only been free from apartheid for 15 years, but the level of physical segregation and economic disparity are shocking by any standard. Life in the townships, where most Blacks and Coloureds are relegated, is a life of poverty and little opportunity, especially with regard to education.It’s often hard to see change coming; in one city, I saw a segregated toilet facility at a gas station. At least 20 women were in line waiting for the one toilet for Blacks, yet the Whites Only toilet remained locked and unoccupied, guarded by a Black employee. When I asked her how this could possibly exist, she told me that Blacks deserve this treatment because “we’re dirty and we don’t know how to flush.” I wanted to tell her that she was beautiful, and just as good as anybody else, but all I could do was walk away in shock. Black South Africans may be in charge of the government, but White South Africans control the two most important things: the money, and the minds of a people who have been taught to think of themselves as an inferior race.

Still, South Africans have an incredible sense of optimism and hope. This became especially clear to me after Obama was elected. [...] Why are South Africans so excited about Obama? Because, deep in their hearts, they are yearning for their own campaign of change, unity, and hope. Black presidents in South Africa have brought an end to legal racial segregation, but have failed to lift the overwhelming majority of South Africans out of dire poverty. What many South Africans are looking for is a candidate who won’t win the Black vote because he’s Black, or the White vote because he’s White, but a candidate whose vision of a better country inspires everyday citizens across color lines. That’s what Obama has done, and that’s what South Africa desperately needs to begin to heal the racial wounds of the past.

A blogger at “SA Expats” writes about why s/he moved away from the country, as one of many white South Africans who have left:

Granted, there are scores of white South Africans that left purely on racial grounds. Good riddance for SA, bad for the places they are staying know. However if you are still under perception it is only white people leaving SA, you’ll be sadly surprised.

The fact is more and more educated South Africans of all races find it hard to make ends meet in SA. When more than a third of your work forcé are unemployed, they need to do something…

I purely left because of a better work opportunity. I was reaching a stage in my professional career where affirmative action was stopping me from progressing. Although I understand the economic need for affirmative action and redistribution of income, I need to feed myself and my family and wasn’t going to “take one for the team.” Why should I, whom had no say in the previous apartheid regime, suffer for the sins of my forefathers? I wasn’t ready to live a life of poverty and constant struggling for the “greater good.”

I was also constantly concerned about safety in SA. You all know how it is. Yes, people say, “we should work together to make the country a better place.” I agree, we should, but it doesn’t seem the criminals care to much about that sentiment.

In her recent introductory post, South African blogger “MizzLee” paints a glowing image of progress since apartheid:

I’m a South African and as a South African I face many little “landmines” everyday. . . .Taxi’s, The Ekhuruleni Town Council, Potholes and power failures. As a way to passively get rid of all my frustration and perhaps get some insight I have decided to start blogging. Not only for my own sanity, but also to show the world how truly wonderful South Africa is, how far we’ve come since apartheid, how rich we are with culture and diversity and last but not least how South Africa truly is the best place on earth

However, in a later post, the same blogger deplores rampant crime and ineffective police:

My family and I have been living in the same house for just over 4 years now. The area is good and crime is relatively low in comparison to our neighbouring suburbs, but all that changed last week when the family 2 houses from me found themselves tied up and all their possessionswhere being loaded up into their own car by the thieves. [...]But as we all know South Africa is the land of crime with out punishment.

A map at United For Africa invites South Africans to document continuing xenophobic attacks in their country.

In Wide Angle’s Road to Riches, learn about Uthingo, the consortium of black-empowerment companies that manages the national lottery.

The Baalbek ruins in Lebanon, where Phoenicians once lived.

Tensions between Christian and Muslim communities in Lebanon have simmered since the country’s 1975-90 civil war. Currently, Lebanon’s power-sharing agreement provides for a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister and a Shi’ite Muslim speaker of parliament.

Recently, Lebanese geneticists mapping human migration discovered that both Christian and Muslim residents share Phoenician ancestry — a legacy that was a source of dispute during the civil war. The ancient Phoenicians thrived in the Mediterranean from 1500 to 300 B.C.

Juan Cole is a professor of history at the University of Michigan and writes at the “Informed Comment” blog about what the discovery will mean for Christian-Muslim relations in Lebanon.

Lebanese are Phoenicians after all; and so are many of the rest of us

A team of biologists at Lebanese American University estimates that 1 in 17 persons around the Mediterranean carries genetic markers distinctive to the ancient Phoenician people who resided in what is now Lebanon. The Phoenicians spread out in a trade diaspora two millennia ago, establishing colonies from Spain to Cyprus. The team also found that one third of Lebanese have the markers for Phoenician descent, and that these are spread evenly through the population, among both Christians and Muslims. In fact, all Lebanese have broadly similar sets of genetic markers. The lead researcher commented, “Whether you take a Christian village in the north of Lebanon or a Muslim village in the south, the DNA make-up of its residents is likely to be identical…”

In a Lebanese context these findings are politically explosive. There is a longstanding conflict among Lebanese as to whether they are Arabs or Phoenicians, with adherents of the Phoenician identity predominantly Christian. This sort of identity politics fed into the civil wars. In fact, Arabic is a language, not a race, and Phoenician descent is a heritage of all humankind by now.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but the presence those distinctive “Phoenician” haplotypes on the Y chromosome only tells us about a fraction of the descendants of Phoenicians. Let’s say you had a Phoenician father in the port of Tyre in 50 BC who only had two daughters and no sons. And let us say he married one daughter to a resident Greek merchant. The sons and male descendants of the Greek merchant would lack the Phoenician signature on their Y chromosome, but would have a genetic inheritance from their Phoenician female ancestor. Since most genes get mixed up in every generation, there just would not be any way, after a while, to tell it.

Almost everyone in the world by now probably has some Phoenician ancestry. What the LAU team is finding is those lineages that retain markers for it. It is conceptually a difficult thing to keep in mind, but I am alarmed that a kind of Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA fundamentalism will make people divide themselves up on these grounds and create new forms of racism.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user aldask under a Creative Commons license.

Racial issues came to the forefront in the recent U.S. presidential election, in which Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president.

Some thought that President-elect Obama would suffer from the “Bradley Effect” — referencing when African-American candidate Tom Bradley lost his bid for governor of California in 1982 despite polls showing him ahead.

In the end, exit polls showed that Obama garnered 44 percent of the white vote, more than John Kerry, Al Gore or Bill Clinton.

Though race was not part of Obama’s campaign strategy, bloggers worldwide nonetheless seized on the issue.

Jamaican blogger “b C” of “Stories of Me” says that many Jamaicans support Barack Obama simply because he’s a black man.

Brazilian bloggers posted a banner with the words “Não vote em branco” — a phrase which carries the double meaning of  “don’t cast a blank vote” and “don’t vote for a white person.” Worldfocus previously reported on Brazilian candidates who changed their names to “Barack Obama”.

Paula Góes of Global Voices Online’s “Voices without Votes” discusses the response of Brazilian bloggers to the race issue in this election.

Enrique Gonzales of “The Latino Contrarian” blog thinks Obama is the first Latino president in the same way that Bill Clinton was the “first black president.”

Jordanian blogger Naseem Tarawnah of “The Black Iris” says that the next U.S. president is unlikely to “change” much and attributes Obama’s prophet-like status to U.S. election culture. Tarawnah discusses the Bradley Effect and argues that race played an important role in the election.

The “Armenian Economist” blog writes that Armenians see the “Bradley Effect” quite differently — because Tom Bradley lost the race to George Deukmejian,  an Armenian American.

The New York Post reports that Obama’s racial and cultural background generate support from Arabs. Columnist Mohamed al-Menshawi calls the Christian Obama “the harbinger of solidarity between Americans and the Muslim world.”

An article at Japanese news site “Asahi” looks at the Japanese view of race in the election.

The “Grave Error” blog discusses European disbelief that Americans could elect an African American as well as lingering Spanish racism.