MovieChat Forums > True Romance (1993) Discussion > The moors were not black

The moors were not black


They were arabs.

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Who are almost black

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The heart of the Moorish empire was in Northern Africa, and while people from that region tend to be darker than whites, they are still lighter than those from sub-Saharan Africa. Moors are more middle eastern than they are black as we like to think of it.


"Gold buys a mans silence for a time. A bolt to the heart buys it forever"

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Who are almost black

I don't know where you get your facts from, but middle eastern/Arabs are white in ethnicity. do some research.

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So by that logic. I guess the 9/11 hijackers were white huh?

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For government record keeping (e.g. the Census), Middle Easterners are classified as white/Caucasian, but I think we are all in agreement that they are not white as it is typically thought of - being of Northern European descent.

Probably appropriate as outside of being slightly darker and largely embracing a different religion, they are remarkably like whites in other aspects. Much more so than blacks, Asians, or even Latinos (who also often self-identify as white)



"Gold buys a mans silence for a time. A bolt to the heart buys it forever"

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it's always funny to watch young people talk as if they're educated about stuff like this.

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For the Census, Middle Easterners are whatever they self-identify as when they fill out the Census...the government does not classify them as 'white'.




Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

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For the Census, Middle Easterners are whatever they self-identify as when they fill out the Census...the government does not classify them as 'white'.
Speaking as someone who worked for the Census, that isn't exactly correct. It's true that anyone filling out a Census form can put in any answer they want. But that doesn't mean that "the government" doesn't have guidelines for these things, and for the record, the manual given to enumerators instructs them to explain to respondents that "White/Caucasian" includes people of Middle Eastern and North African descent, not just European descent.

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I'll take your word for it...and I'll also let you ponder why the US government would want to classify someone in the US, particularly those non-citizens, as "white" versus "Middle Eastern" or "North African".



Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

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I'll take your word for it...and I'll also let you ponder why the US government would want to classify someone in the US, particularly those non-citizens, as "white" versus "Middle Eastern" or "North African".
Where did you get the idea that Middle Easterners are "non-citizens"?

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Boy, your reading comprehension is lacking....not all slick, but 'particularly' those that are....as a professional census peddler, surely you know we count non-citizens, right chief?



Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

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Why bring citizenship into the discussion at all? How is that possibly relevant to the question of whether Middle Easterners are classified as white? Of course not all Middle Easterners in this country are citizens, but the same is true of Europeans. You made it sound as if citizenship is some kind of a prerequisite for whiteness. If that isn't what you meant, I'll take your word for it, but if so, the problem isn't my reading skills--it's your writing skills!

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I bet they were ghost white just before those planes hit the buildings.

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I don't know where you get your facts from, but middle eastern/Arabs are white in ethnicity. do some research.


Arabs are Semitic. Persians are Aryan.

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Says who? they are a semitic people. Not european at all.

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"middle eastern/Arabs are white in ethnicity"

Eh, not really. Perhaps in ancient times, as Phoenicians (semites) settled on the coast of North Africa, but there were also indigenous people that were darker, so it was a mixed society. The arab invasion that began in the 7th century overwhelmed the northern coast of African and extended all the way into southern europe (including Sicily) where they stayed for centuries. This invasion did result in a more swarthy complexion for inhabitants of Northern Africa (and Sicily). But no, they weren't sub-saharan black, just darker than northern European whites.

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cameron diaz is a down trodden minority.

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Northern Africa is not part of the Arabian Peninsula. At the time, those people were called Berbers and eventually they were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. They didn't have the very dark complexion of sub-Saharans, but a complexion similar to what you will see in the region now.

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Do you expect historical accuracy from Tarantino? He should've been listed in that thread here titled "White guys who act black", to be honest. He always acts like he's in tune with the African-American culture, when he has no clue. I generally like him, but he's completely embarassing when he tries the race schtick.

Great scene, just don't think much into it, I guess.

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Thing is, though, he nailed the Italian paranoia about being thought of as having descended from blacks. Worked with a bunch of Italians and, sorry to say, they pretty much preternaturally hated blacks.

Arabs don't like 'em, either. I'm from Dearborn, MI, now the capital of the Arab population in the U.S. apparently and that was actually a perfect place for them to put down roots. Dearborn was run at one time by a little dictator named Orville L. Hubbard. Hubbard tried to keep blacks out of Dearborn, even though Dearborn shared a boundary with Detroit. He was quite offensive about it. The whole Sudan and Darfur thing I think has been at least partly founded in discrimination against black Africans.

And then there are the peoples from the islands! As Rose Perez declared on The View the other day, the big secret among islands peoples including Puerto Ricans is that they are trying to distance themselves from a relationship with African blacks even though their genetic heritage includes slaves. My neighbor is from the Dominican Republic. Her skin is ebony and yet she talks about "blacks" as if they are the opposite of her.

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QT is down... Thats a fact. Every black person I know(And its Countless), including my best friend (Who calls Pulp Fiction the Best Film of All Time) hold him in high regards. QT gets *beep* for how he depicts conversation, especially from Spike Lee who I also support, but sit around a room with the type of Black Folks he writes about, that's EXACTLY how they talk. RZA, Jamie Foxx and Sam Jack ride with him, so do plenty of others. I think jealousy is the real issue. He appeals to such a large audience. Not many can say the same.

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it's mooPs

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^ this.

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that's a missprint

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I'm sorry. The card says "Moops."

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[deleted]

It's true, the Moors weren't black. They were white/Caucasian.

http://www.angelfire.com/md/8/moors.html

And Sicilians have less than 4% Moorish blood anyway.

http://italianthro.blogspot.com/2011/10/moors-expelled-from-sicily-and-south.html

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Moors were the Maghrebs people not sub Saharan African.

Guys who look like Edson Hazard, Zidine Zadane, Maroune Fillani, Badr Hari.

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They weren't white lol, are you kidding me. They were sand n***ers, there were blacks amongst them, but mostly they were arabs.

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Right or wrong, your point is irrelevant. Way to miss the point of the scene.





'Then' and 'than' are different words - stop confusing them.

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soodinum has nailed it, you have all missed the point!

He knows he's going to get tortured and so wants a quick way out. Hence he fabricatates a story that he knows will infuriate him so much he will kill him.

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First of all, whatever the truth or falsity of the speech, it's a great scene. The main point is how beautifully he "plays" these Sicilian mobsters by exploiting their ethnic pride.

But yes, the claims he makes in the speech aren't quite accurate. They're not 100% false, they're just..."mythological" might be the word. It is correct that the Moors, as North Africans, were historically considered part of the Caucasian race. (Indigenous North Africans aren't exactly the same as Arabs, though today they're often classified that way simply because they live in countries where Arabic is the official language.) Still, there are several points to consider:

(1) Hopper's character doesn't refer to the Moors as black; he refers to them as "N*****s." Racism isn't known for precision.

(2) In the past Europeans would often refer to just about anyone of African descent in Europe as a "Moor." Shakespeare's Othello, usually played by a black actor, is described in the play as a Moor. So is Morgan Freeman's character in the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

(3) There is in fact DNA evidence that many Southern European groups, including Italians, have tiny percentages of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (like around 2% or so). So Hopper's claim has some truth to it--just not in quite the way he understands it. He still takes for granted the essentialist BS that humans can be divided into pure, distinct groups and that race-mixing is somehow abnormal or unnatural. In reality, human populations have been mixing and re-mixing with each other for pretty much the whole history of the species, so that what we think of as distinct "races" today are little more than arbitrary divisions where probably everyone on the planet will turn out to be a mutt if you look back far enough into their genealogical past.

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The Moors were Black. And the Arabs were Black!

"SG"

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