I have to disagree on this…@Goose Cracker
I was born in North Africa, and have a French education. In Spain and France we always referred to two different Africas, North Africa, and south of the Sahara Desert, it was Black Africa, and yes, it was because of the skin color of the people living there.
Racist, no, just a fact, and it did not bother the black intellectuals like Leopold Sedar Senghor, a well known poet and writer, member of the the prestigious Academie Francaise, who became President of his country, Senegal.
Mr. Senghor wrote many articles, poems and books about Negritude, which could be translated as “being black”. He wasn´t worried about it, but we are, we fear being labeled as racists, so now we call Black Africa “Subsaharan Africa”
^ A map from the 1930s, based on the alleged ethnic/ethnolinguistic backgrounds of the people living in African regions (Semitic, Hamitic, and broadly "Negroid").
"Semitic" is roughly accurate; Semitic languages are/were spoken across the Mediterranean coast and down into Ethiopia (and in Egypt but Egyptian isn't one). "Hamitic" is not; there's no such thing as the Hamitic race and it was made up by Europeans to invent why the Berber peoples weren't the same as the Mediterranean coastal peoples or Egyptians, or why they weren't "Negroes" either. Either way, "Semitic" and "Hamitic" are considered "Caucasian" there. And then there's "Negroids". Which... Well... Yes, but also no? Once upon a time, it just meant "people who are not European(-ish) or Asian(-ish) who have 'black' skin". The moronic pseudo-scientific-pseudo-historical "reasoning" at one point was they're descended from some other son of Noah who got cursed by God to have black skin or some such, and there were HEAPS of "This is why black people are super-duper inferior to us glorious whites" bullcrap excuses for "reasoning" that was just made up. (Ever hear of the disease inherent to the Black race that makes them inclined to laziness and want to escape bonded servitude? It was a "real" thing once, not even kidding. Stuff was screwy back then.) Racial? Yes, obviously. Racist? Uh well yeah, if people want to decide that they're better than others based on melanin content and physiological differences, but we still use the same basic stuff for literally every document I've had to sign where it asks for race/ethnicity: "White/Caucasian (including Hispanic/Latino sometimes), Asian, [preferable term for Black], Native/Pacific Islander, Other", usually. There isn't the time, nor do I have the knowledge, to go into a massive discussion of genetics and anthropology and all that, and this isn't really the place for it, either.
In any case, in a nutshell, yep, apparently calling it "Black Africa" based on skin color was indeed a thing through at least the 1930s. That said, I still stand by what I and others have said, that "The Dark Continent" does not purely refer to race (if it does at all). Paddington Bear didn't hail from "Inca-est Peru"; he hailed from "Darkest Peru" because his particular home in the jungle was all-but-unknown to anyone but marmalade-loving bears, apparently. Most if not all people on this site are going to say "Dark Continent" in that respect, if they say it at all. Doesn't bother me none (but I'm also the white descendant of white colonizers and am a Southerner in the US, so I'm already a bad guy for that, y'know? What's a little more Imperialism on top of that?
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I don't know the OP. I reckon he might've meant well, I try to give folks the benefit of the doubt and see the best intentions when I can, but it backfired and came off badly for him. Or he was trying to stir up the pot. Unless he comes back, couldn't say. Anyway, I wanted to share the map and say a little of my mind on it and that's all I've got for now.
