{"id":6104,"date":"2021-12-18T09:08:21","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T09:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6104"},"modified":"2021-12-18T09:08:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T09:08:23","slug":"was-pushkin-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6104","title":{"rendered":"Was Pushkin Black?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A while back something popped up on my Facebook stream claiming that Pushkin (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alexander_Pushkin\">Alexander Pushkin<\/a> &#8211; the Russian poet) was black as a way of saying &#8220;look at all these incredible things blacks have done&#8221;. I don&#8217;t have a problem with that. I might just question the logic of classifying Pushkin as black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course I also question the use of the colour of the dead stuff that keeps the squishy bits on the inside, to divide people into arbitrary categories. But we&#8217;ll gloss over that for now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pushkin was at least partially black because his great-grandfather (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal\">Abram Petrovich Gannibal<\/a>) was black; that&#8217;s one sixteenth. So he was also 15\/16ths white. Can someone be both black and white (presumably without <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blaschko's_lines\">stripes<\/a>)? Of course the racists amongst us were the ones who set the standard for excluding people from the privilege of calling themselves &#8220;white&#8221;. And just to irritated the bigots, it pleases me to declare that Pushkin was white; and to avoid making those who look to trumpet the accomplishments of black people foolish., it also pleases me to declare that Pushkin was black. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which is ridiculous of course, but that&#8217;s kind of what I feel about the whole obsession with skin colour anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And finally, take a look at Abram&#8217;s bio &#8211; he&#8217;s probably more accomplished than his descendant Puskin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"695\" height=\"928\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-king-alfred-looking-down-at-the-runners.jpeg?resize=695%2C928&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6062\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-king-alfred-looking-down-at-the-runners.jpeg?resize=767%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 767w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-king-alfred-looking-down-at-the-runners.jpeg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-king-alfred-looking-down-at-the-runners.jpeg?resize=768%2C1025&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-09-19-king-alfred-looking-down-at-the-runners.jpeg?w=1096&amp;ssl=1 1096w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><figcaption>King Alfred Looking Down At The Runners<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back something popped up on my Facebook stream claiming that Pushkin (Alexander Pushkin &#8211; the Russian poet) was black as a way of saying &#8220;look at all these incredible things blacks have done&#8221;. I don&#8217;t have a problem with that. I might just question the logic of classifying Pushkin as black. Of course <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6104' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7,6,3],"tags":[2072,2071,558],"class_list":["post-6104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-history","category-politics","tag-black","tag-pushkin","tag-racism","category-7-id","category-6-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1As","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6105,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6104\/revisions\/6105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}