Les Lester's Chronicle, Message Board: Re: North Africa: "Tunisian" family wins right to drop "slavery" reminder from name (article)

Most Black Americans are about 25% mixed with European, TheOne. But all Europeans are derived from Blacks. They simply have less melanin to facilitate Vitamin D processing, in non-tropic environs.

You know, the Koi Koi admixture in Southern Africa also makes the Bantu lighter than the stereotype white-media imposed depiction of melanated people.

West Africans are more brown when we critically look at the populations. North Africans have a pretty high admixture, yourselves. I think my gggrandfather would have fit in well with the Immortals of Mesopotamia (Northeast Africa).

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Yes, Les, I remember this great picture of your gggrandfather below, he looks a bit mixed though, and he was definitely ahead of his time to have done so(drop his slave name) at that time. And I thought the first AA to have dropped his slave name was MalcolmX, LOL, I was wrong.

""""In my novel, I gave one of the Egyptian characters the Arabic last name “Urbi,” which may be where the European “Irby” derived""""

Very possible, and that is because both the Bible and the Quran are rooted in the same ancient Middle Eastern (Semitic) history and share the same overarching prophetic lineage. Since Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic are closely related languages, the names are generally the exact same, just adapted to fit the spelling and pronunciation of different languages.

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This is great information, TheOne. So “Atig” means “liberated by.” That seems to be an indignity that would have been eradicated in the 1800s. It would seem the African Union would address such issues. My gggrandfather dropped his slave name, which was Irby. He chose the last name Thomas, instead. Some of his siblings kept the Irby name, meanwhile.

Paradoxically, we would not have been able to trace our family history as far back had not the “non-woke” family members kept the slave-era name.

In my novel, I gave one of the Egyptian characters the Arabic last name “Urbi,” which may be where the European “Irby” derived. I decided to keep my English last name after I realized the ease of tracing one’s ancestry under a uniform last name. Sometimes practicality trumps being woke.

Edwin Thomas - Irby

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This is a great move on the part of Tunisia back in 2020. Don't know how I missed this news!!

Notice this wasn't "Allah's" intervention in this man's case, instead it was a Tunisian court intervention that allowed an 81-year-old Afro-Tunisian man to remove a word that marked him out as descended from slaves from his name in Tunisia, North Africa. (Article below)