
Roman Britain in Black and White - DanBC
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/roman-britain-black-white/
======
uyhso8
This whole thing strikes me as sad. The argument could have gone an entirely
different way.

Taleb blasts the nature and tone of the argument, concluding "scholarship is
dead in the UK,"([https://medium.com/incerto/something-is-broken-in-the-uk-
int...](https://medium.com/incerto/something-is-broken-in-the-uk-intellectual-
sphere-7efc9a1f154a)) but the irony is that if it's ending, it's ending in
part because of behavior such as his.

I actually agree in general with his perspective on the cartoon, but found his
behavior unacceptable. The other side of the argument isn't unreasonable, even
if you conclude it's maybe not the best side of the argument.

In some ways it doesn't matter, but I'm getting tired of the right setting up
this dynamic where they engage in ad hominem bullshit, and then act offended
when other side responds. I say this as someone who often identifies with the
right--it's alienating and pushes reasonable people away. Rather than
apologizing about not being respectful of Professor Beard, he becomes
defensive and somehow tries to rationalize it.

Next time Taleb, could you please just take the high road in your behavior?
Even if the other side is totally full of shit, and acting inappropriately,
you'll look better and everyone will win by being the better one. I even agree
with you and you've turned me off of your own damn arguments.

Jeez.

~~~
autokad
> I'm getting tired of the right setting up this dynamic where they engage in
> ad hominem bullshit

its not different than the way the left attacks people as: racist, homophobe,
mysangist, uneducated, hillbilly, etc.

the last one i find quite interesting, a party that is supposed to stand
against stereotypes, labeling, and skin color references uses hillbilly / red
neck a lot.

~~~
sqeaky
Calling someone out for being racist or bigoted in some other should be
acceptable, because that behavior is not acceptable. Preventing people from
being called out on their bigotry is tolerating intolerance, and we shouldn't
have any of that.

I do agree it is not a real rebuttal if the other side has a point unrelated
to their bigotry.

~~~
natecavanaugh
Well not only that, but it's also like saying that an officer using force
should be acceptable. It's true, but it doesn't mean that it's the only way to
handle a situation, and often, claims of racism and bigotry are used to end an
argument as if it were an argument itself. I'm not saying that "the left
always does that", but each side had their share of desperate ad hominem
attacks, and racism accusations is one often used by those on the left (though
on the right it's used, just either reworded, or subtly redefined).

~~~
autokad
thats exactly what i am saying

------
Red_Tarsius
It's not an isolated incident. The same show depicted ethnic people in
questionable situations.

– Sub-Saharan Celts
[http://i.imgur.com/WSHbj36.png](http://i.imgur.com/WSHbj36.png)

– A Sub-Saharan English Nobleman, 1215AD
[http://i.imgur.com/Y5WFtXO.png](http://i.imgur.com/Y5WFtXO.png)

– A Sub-Saharan blacksmith, Iron Age Britain
[http://i.imgur.com/XptrQDP.png](http://i.imgur.com/XptrQDP.png)

– A North-African Norman priest
[http://i.imgur.com/5JHBzMN.png](http://i.imgur.com/5JHBzMN.png)

The criticized video was supposed to be " _An exploration of life in Roman
Britain shown through the eyes of a typical family._ "
[http://i.imgur.com/tg25juJ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/tg25juJ.jpg)

~~~
ng12
Christ, this needs to be further up. All this discussion of whether or not the
cartoon was politicized becomes moot when they have dark-skinned Celts.

~~~
lhopki01
Celts are a fabricated identity. The modern representation arose out of trying
to have a pan European ancestry and identity in the 19th century.

~~~
ng12
Do you have a source for this? Who exactly were the Romans conquering if not
Celtic Britons?

------
ZeroGravitas
I'm kind of amazed at how seriously people are taking this.

The guy is the editor for a literal conspiracy theory website that condones
the idea that Sandy Hook was staged by the US government. And long list of
even more ridiculous and appalling things.

They make their money selling pseudoscientific "wellness" products of the kind
that Gwyneth Paltrow sells on Goop.

The main star of Infowars recently admitted it was just an act of
entertainment because if he didn't a divorce court would have ruled him a
danger to his children based on things he says and does.

Back to the matter at hand, he's literally proposing a conspiracy theory,
based on an educational cartoon, for children, about the Roman empire. Just
let that soak in.

The BBC are, in this theory, intentionally promoting "mass uncontrolled
immigration" to children via animations about the Roman empire. Step 2 ???.
Step 3. White Genocide.

It's an embarrassment to us all as a species that this passes for political
discussion today.

~~~
emmelaich
"The guy?" Which guy? What website?

~~~
mhw
The '"alt-right" commenter' referred to in the second paragraph kicked the
whole thing off, and was then replied to by Mike Stuchbery here:
[https://twitter.com/MikeStuchbery_/status/889846960139751424](https://twitter.com/MikeStuchbery_/status/889846960139751424)

Unfortunately twitter doesn't seem to be presenting the thread of Mike's
replies any more, which seems like a failing of the platform.

~~~
norikki
Do you mean these replies?

Al Binnie-Lubbock @alastairis · Jul 26 Replying to @MikeStuchbery_ and
@PrisonPlanet I enjoyed this thread apart from the ableism in the first tweet.
Not cool.

4

38

Mike Stuchbery Mike Stuchbery @MikeStuchbery_ · Jul 26 I apologize
unreservedly. I will do better.

~~~
mhw
No. Mike originally replied in a thread of several messages, each a reply to
the previous one. When I first read the thread a few days ago twitter would
show you all his replies in one page so you could read through them. The
Telegraph seem to have replicated the thread into the article they've written
about the incident: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/27/alt-right-
comment...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/27/alt-right-commentator-
gets-schooled-historian-diversity-roman/)

My guess is that as the thread became popular and more people replied to parts
of it, twitter favours presenting more of the recent replies and the original
thread becomes harder to see.

------
pja
Mary Beard’s proper title would be Prof. Beard of course. Something she
extended the courtesy of to him, but apparently he couldn’t be bothered to
extend the same to her.

The falling back on 'I got more citations than you, so ner' isn’t exactly a
good look either.

~~~
unknown_apostle
Taleb calling people Ms and Mr here was obviously about being firm. As in
Agent Smith saying "MISTER Anderson". If anyone wants to suggest that Talib
pulled some kind of gender card on her, that's pathetic. It actually
strengthens the idea that academia needs to be wary of identity politics
creeping in (and also bad manners).

Btw Taleb was a huge fan of Beard. Until a few days ago that is.

~~~
pja
Nice use of the passive voice there.

In what way am I 'pulling the gender card' exactly?

~~~
unknown_apostle
That's what the Ms vs Prof thing was about.

~~~
pja
It would have been equally sloppy in the circumstances to use "Mr Beard" had
Taleb been arguing with a man. When arguing with someone on their academic
specialism using an incorrect title looks like a subtle (but deniable! how
cute) insult. No gender politics required.

------
aaronbrethorst
The author, Mary Beard, is a classicist and the UK's top Roman scholar. She's
also the author of the critically acclaimed _SPQR_ :
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/books/review-in-spqr-a-
hi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/books/review-in-spqr-a-history-of-
ancient-rome-mary-beard-tackles-myths-and-more.html)

~~~
ch4s3
For those who haven't read the book, SPQR is an excellent piece of writing.

------
bionsuba
It's interesting that she decided to leave out the fact that Taleb's comment
on citations was him firing back after she called anti-fragile et. all "pop
risk books": [https://medium.com/incerto/something-is-broken-in-the-uk-
int...](https://medium.com/incerto/something-is-broken-in-the-uk-intellectual-
sphere-7efc9a1f154a)

~~~
ar-jan
Also, even if you disregard the "pop risk books" qualification, her argument
comes down to "what did you publish on Roman Britain", instead of engaging
with Taleb's argument.

~~~
panzagl
Taleb is disregarding the entire field of history because it is 'Anecdotal' as
opposed to 'Statistical'. Since there are no 'statistics' from the period he
is acting like he knows as much as one of top living scholars on Roman
history. The written and archaeological record shows that auxiliaries were
often stationed far from their home territories, but I guess that was all part
of a 2000 year plot to make Britons accept immigrants.

~~~
ar-jan
No, all he's saying is that you cannot ignore genetics, and that genetics is
more reliable than fragmentary historical records. And that those Roman
auxiliaries would have been Mediterranean, not sub-Saharen Africans.

~~~
DanBC
> and that genetics is more reliable than fragmentary historical records

Geneticists disagree.

------
emmelaich
I like the article in The Atlantic about this.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/dna-
roma...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/dna-
romans/535701/)

As it says, it's mostly people talking past each other.

Taleb is unnecessarily un-collegial though.

------
Klockan
I'd say that this is roughly on par with depicting Jesus as a white western
European, but I don't see any right wingers complaining about that.

~~~
Kevve
Jesus often gets depicted to match the local population. In Korea, for
example, he looks Asian. The difference is that it's done for religious
purposes, whereas an "educational historic video" like those made by BBC are
expected to have different motives and standards of objectivity.

------
bryananderson
It should be clear to anyone who has read this article by Dr. Beard (or her
phenomenal book _SPQR_ ) that it isn't really up for debate whether there were
Roman soldiers and civilians in Britain who came from the far reaches of the
Empire and beyond. Yes, including from Africa. Whether we would have looked at
these people and said they were "black" is, as Dr. Beard explains, pretty
unanswerable (not to mention a vain attempt to view the ancient world in terms
of group identities that are very modern indeed).

Dr. Taleb and others show a massive ignorance of how the studies of history,
archaeology, and biology work when they assert that we can just "look in the
genes" for an unambiguous record of _every damn person who has ever set foot
on the British Isles_. But a misguided desire to hold history to the same
evidentiary standards as, say, physics or mathematics - including by
physicists and mathematicians - is nothing new.

What's more worrisome is the determination of some to willfully ignore
historical evidence that might challenge their worldview.

Look around the Internet - there is a new revisionist history of the Western
world that is being pushed, one that holds a shared "white" or "European"
identity as paramount. These are the people who came after Dr. Beard as they
come after anyone who challenges their views.

These people are undoubtedly far less numerous than they appear; they use bots
and multiple accounts to make themselves appear more legitimate. This itself
is dangerous, as it may cause bystanders to view these people as more
mainstream than they truly are (and it's no secret that people ascribe more
credulity to an idea when it seems widely accepted).

This is not going to get better as neural networks improve at writing tweets
that sound human.

~~~
zpergs
You're making it sound more complex than it is. If Roman Britain was
ethnically diverse then what happened to the diversity? It's just not
represented in the modern population.

Furthermore, a study is probably incorrect if it can't withstand sanity
checking from simple population models based on data we do have from the time
(e.g. Roman garrison sizes).

> Look around the Internet - there is a new revisionist history of the Western
> world that is being pushed..

The revisionism is actually that Roman Britain was ethnically diverse. To
paraphrase the source of this controversy, Paul Joseph Watson: If Roman
Britain was diverse then modern day Japan is ethnically diverse.

The "we are all immigrants" narrative is pushed to justify mass immigration
and open borders. This might make academics like Beard feel cosmopolitan and
P.C. views might draw the attention of the Guardian and boost her book sales,
but tens of millions of people are suffering from the consequences of these
policies and feel alienated by an elite that they feel is working against
their will and best interests.

> These people are undoubtedly far less numerous than they appear; they use
> bots

Paul Joseph Watson has over 1m subscribers on YouTube and his videos have
hundreds of thousands of views. This places his daily circulation higher than
most newspapers. While only a small percentage of those people may agree with
his views enough to push them online, that is still a lot of people.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading "Skin in the Game" and wonder whether
this story will become another anecdote of Taleb's "Intellectual Yet Idiot"
social class.

~~~
laretluval
> If Roman Britain was diverse then modern day Japan is ethnically diverse.

I don't understand the argument this is making. Could you clarify?

~~~
Radim
East Asian countries, Japan included, see ethnic and cultural homogeneity as a
good and desirable thing (and are quite openly racist and xenophobic as a
result).

OP is making a joke -- if you want to call Romain Britain ethnically diverse,
you might as well call Japan ethnically diverse. The term becomes meaningless.

------
patrickg_zill
Go to Google Images, type in "European people history" and note the first ten
results. That is what this is about.

~~~
hn_anon_founder
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb)

~~~
cabalamat
In other cases where Google's algorithms have come up with something
embarassing, they have corrected it. It is revealing that they have chosen not
to do so in this case.

------
pm24601
Romans were in Britain 2000 years ago. In 2000 years, with negative
environmental selection - maybe the gene for black skin was turned off.
Everyone is focusing on skin color, what about curly hair or ...

This is all silly any how.

------
sremani
Prof. Beard is hiding behind the bad behavior of her opponents, there is no
cogent answer to the question..

where are the genes ?

~~~
pja
In her article, she points out that the same study failed to find Norman genes
either. So I might ask similar questions about them: where are the Norman
genes? Is the Norman invasion of Britain a hoax perpetrated by the alt-right
of yore?

etc. etc.

(In other words: it’s a legitimate question, but the way Taleb is using it as
some kind of gotcha! query suggests that he isn’t really asking it in good
faith.)

~~~
dragonwriter
> it’s a legitimate question, but the way Taleb is using it as some kind of
> gotcha! query suggests that he isn’t really asking it in good faith.

Or, more generously (as to Taleb’s character) that the implicit premise (if
there were ethnic diversity, we would have robust genetic evidence) justifying
his argument is itself not based on a well-informed understanding of the
context.

~~~
dibujante
It really isn't. It's very hard to identify genetic influences that go that
far back, especially given the subsequent major migrations to the British
Isles. You would be hard-pressed to demonstrate that Romans ever lived there
if all you had were the genes of modern Britons.

