Rick Riordan Quotes
A legacy that powerful does not disappear. Next to the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans were babies. Our modern nations like Great Britain and America? Blinks of an eye...The very oldest root of civilization, at least of Western civilization, is Egypt. Look at the pyramid on the dollar bill. Look at the Washington Monument—the world’s largest Egyptian obelisk. Egypt is still.......very much alive.
Riordan, Rick. The Red Pyramid. Disney-Hyperion, 2010.
What Garvey believed about Egypt was not quite true. However, there was a more important grain of truth in Garvey’s assertion, but he was not aware of it as the science did not emerge until the latter part of the 20th century. Specifically, all humans today genetically had a common Black ancestor in Africa. In that sense, at one point, there were no other humans but Blacks, and they certainly ruled their world. However, man moved out of Africa to inhabit much of the world and different racial attributes evolved over time. See {618972} for a modern pickup of Garvey’s notion. The majority of historians and archeologists believe that ancient Egypt was a multi-racial society with extensive intermarriage. The Nubians to the South (Sudan) were and are very dark-skinned, the Lybians in North Africa were much like the Arabs of toady, and there were Greeks and other Caucasians who were in Egypt which was one of the centers of world civilization that attracted people from all over. The Pharoh of Egypt, Ptolemy was a white Greek—one of the Generals of Alexander the Great, (for whom Alexandria was named) and Cleopatra was descended from him and more traditional Egyptians.
Russell like the rest of the Southern Congressional delegation, though members of the President’s own party were vehemently opposed to any civil rights legislation that would erode the legal racism and segregation that was prevalent in the South. The irony of Russell’s statement is that by Russell’s definition of a “mongrel race” the South was just that. And in a very real genetic sense all the great civilizations were characterized by interbreeding which is what Russell and other Southerners were paranoid about. The Southern institution of slavery was rife with the sexual abuse of the female slaves by the white masters and/or members of their family, overseers and other whites with power over the slaves. While many of the offspring were identifiable as mixed race (defined as Black by the laws at the time) many appeared to be white and light skinned enough to “pass” and did. A very large percentage of Southern white and black families had mixed blood in the family when Russell was complaining. More to the point, although it was not known at the time, we now know that every human being on earth can be genetically traced back through myocardial DNA to Blacks emanating from Africa. However, even using his narrow vision of race, his history was wanting. A number of great civilizations were of mixed race. One dramatic example was the great dynasties of Egypt. Cleopatra, herself, was from the union of Alexander the Great’s Greek General Ptolemy and the traditional line of Egyptian Pharos. Alexander’s Greek Soldiers interbred, as part of Alexander’s policy of occupation as suggested by Aristotle. All those societies thereafter were “mongrel” races at least in the ruling and upper classes. Actually the United States and the Soviet Union, the two super powers of the day both were ethnically and racially, highly diversified and both had a great deal of miscegenation. Scientists had made a very good argument that miscegenation strengthens a people—not weakens it.
He was agreeing with the Right Wing racist Dutch politician Geert Wilders that one of the dangers of immigration of different races and ethnicities is that their children would not be capable or able to contribute to America or in his view make America Great Again as it has been diminished by all these immiogrant babies of the last few generations. There are very few areas of civilization where America is not greater today than ever before.
Richard Russell Riordan Jr. is an American author. He is known for writing the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, about a teenager named Percy Jackson who discovers he is a son of the Greek god Poseidon. Riordan's books have been translated into forty-two languages and sold more than thirty million copies in the US. 20th Century Fox adapted the first two books of his Percy Jackson series as part of a series of films. His books have spawned related media, such as graphic novels and short story collections.
