Talk:Habesha peoples/Archives/2020/June

Synthesis, POV

I believe this article, as currently written, has WP:NOR (more specifically, WP:SYNTH) and/or WP:NPOV issues. This article makes the assertion that various interpretations of "Habesha" are "ultra-neo-conservative," and/or held by ultranationalists, scientific racists etc. but the cited sources, so far as I can tell, do not make these assertions nor do they mention these terms. The article by Yäafrika, for example, does not mention the words "conservative," "race," "racism," "nationalist" nor "nationalism." Edward Ullendorff's "Abyssinians proper," as mentioned in the Levine source, does seem like it would be attractive to nationalists, and I don't doubt that they hold a point-of-view like this. But that's not for us to say, and Levine (for example) doesn't say this, either. I'll put it another way, I'm certain that there are nationalist or ultranationalist movements in Ethiopia that adhere to this strict definition of Habesha, but the cited sources don't say this (or at the very least, they don't describe them as "ultra-neo-conservative") and it's not up to Wikipedia to do so. I think the last sentence in the lede paragraph, based on the cited sources (particularly Levine), could possibly be rewritten thusly: "Some scholars, such as Edward Ullendorff, assert that the Tigrayans and the Amhara comprise 'Abyssinians proper' and a 'Semitic outpost,' while Levine points out that this 'neglects the crucial role of non-Semitic elements in Ethiopian culture.'" Furthermore I don't think "ultra-neo-conservative" makes sense in the context of this article, in any case, as neoconservatism describes an American political movement. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:18, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Something else I've noticed, although unrelated to Synthesis or POV, but regarding a source supporting this version of the article: I can't find the Yäafrika article in International Journal of Ethiopian Studies. The inline reference only mentions "Summer/Fall 2018" but doesn't specify a volume number, which might make it easier to find the issue containing this article. I don't have immediate access to a library that carries this journal. However, judging from the publisher's website, there were apparently two issues from 2018, comprising volume XI (Issue 1, Issue 2). Neither one mentions the cited article, "What do you mean by Habesha? — A look at the Habesha Identity (p.s./t: It's very Vague, Confusing, & Misunderstood)". I'd already flagged the source with {{volume needed}} but this really needs to be verified. To be frank, that article doesn't read like an article in a peer-reviewed academic journal (for example, using inline citations, presenting the author's credentials), and while it's written more thoroughly than a typical blog post it has, indeed, essentially been published as such. On its own (without the ostensible inclusion in the journal), it would've raised WP:SPS issues. I'm also skeptical that it ran for 16 pages in the journal (at least, as cited). Maybe I'm wrong and it did appear in that journal, but I for one am unable to verify this. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 00:59, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Google Scholar shows the article being cited on Wikipedia and its mirrors, but not elsewhere. I've contacted the IJES publisher and asked for clarification. Meanwhile this citation also appears at Eritrea–Ethiopia relations and Amhara people. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:23, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but it's interesting.[1]. Doug Weller talk 20:53, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I saw that, and I had removed it from the infobox ([2]). It doesn't seem to have any currency outside of that article, and (previously) this Wikipedia article (or copies thereof). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:16, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

It certainly looks more like a non-academic piece written to put forward some sort of political argument, perhaps for the Habesha Union. I don't see it as a reliable source, although that's not a general comment on him. Doug Weller talk 21:08, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm thinking the same thing, but I'm not encouraged by someone citing this as though it came from an academic journal, if it did not. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:16, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I say keep it. Others sources cited in the Wikipedia Article back up similar points made by the journal article in question. HoAHabesha (talk) 18:27, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

As the person who added the reference, would you please address the preceding concerns regarding its provenance? And I'd also suggest reviewing WP:RS. Also, as the editor who added the content in question, can you address my original concerns about WP:SYNTH? Again, none of the sources make the assertions you've included with your edits. Thanks. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:49, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Although the OR and POV issues still remain, I've removed the Yäafrika source. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:51, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I've made an attempt at re-writing the content in question, and (as the person who placed it) I've removed the maintenance banner from the top. I found an additional citation of the Yäafrika source and other duplicate citations (there may be others). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:39, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Definitions of Term

Taking this to talk to avoid an edit war. I shortened the lead paragraph today by removing the phrase "but in a broader contemporary sense includes all Ethiopian-Eritrean ethnic groups." I did this because the claim was not substantiated by the sources cited. SHIELD-1.0 then undid the change alleging that I violated a rule & cherry-picked sources. This seems unnecessarily antagonistic: There was certainly no violation of rules, & I didn't cherry pick sources: I examined the sources that previous writers had cited, & removed none of them. The edit summary reads: 'Deletion of sourced pertinent information in this manner is unacceptable and is in violation of Wikipedia rules POV-pushing via the use of cherry-picked sources.' I'm moving the discussion here to avoid edit warring. SHIELD-1.0: The three cited sources are:

1. Sarah Moore Oliphant's 2015 doctoral dissertation "The Impact of Social Networks on the Immigration Experience of Ethiopian Women"
2. Jonathan Miran's Red Sea Citizens
3. Messay Kebede's article "Eurocentrism and Ethiopian Historiography: Deconstructing Semitization" from the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Ethiopian Studies

I didn't add any of these sources & I've removed nothing. I can't find anything in any of these three sources that justifies this usage of the term. I don't have an ideological bone to pick here: I just think that if the term is used to apply to Ethiopians & Eritreans who speak non-Afro-Asiatic languages, the evidence for it doesn't come from these sources. What are you finding in them that I'm missing? Pathawi (talk) 06:53, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Looking at previous discussions, I'm now seeing reference to Dr. Habesha Gaaffaa-Geeska Yäafrika's article "What do you mean by Habesha?" (published on Medium) which actually does substantiate this usage. It would be a more appropriate citation. Again: I have no axe to grind, here, with regard to the usage of the term itself. My concern is with citations that don't substantiate the claims for which they are adduced. Pathawi (talk) 07:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a tool for propaganda and most mainstream sources refer to the Amhara, Tigrayan and Gurage as Habesha, not all inhabitants of Eritrea or Ethiopia. Neither does the image of the Ethiopian empire 1954 state that these are the native borders of the Habesha people. Last but not least the population estimate is based on the Eritrean and Ethiopian population estimates, which again includes many ethnic groups apart from Habesha.

Here is a great source that describes the meaning of Habesha encompassing the Christian highlanders such as Amhara, Tigray and Gurage[3] --AlaskaLava (talk) 13:28, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Google Books links drive me crazy: They so often just don't work (what's visible of book X to you in your country may not be visible to me), & they don't allow one to read the whole book. I was able to check the book itself, & it looks like this is the citation in question:

Prunier, Gérard and Éloi Ficquet, eds. Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi. London: Hurst & Company, 2015. pp. 17–23.

The description given there roughly matches my previous understanding of the term. I want to reiterate that I'm not advocating for one particular usage of the term "Habesha" (I know the term thru Arabic, & it seems entirely likely to me that Arabic usage in the Sudan differs from English usage in talking about Ethiopia & Eritrea), but simply that the claim for a broader usage was not supported by the sources cited. Obviously, as AlaskaLava says, Wikipedia isn't an appropriate forum for propaganda, but if there are multiple established usages it wouldn't be inappropriate to note this variation. However, this needs good citation, & the previous cited sources did not—as best I can tell—actually support this broader usage. Pathawi (talk) 15:33, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Pathawi: As I mentioned in previous discussions, Yäafrika's article is self-published. Later on I found out that the ostensible publisher, "Habesha Union", is also the name of blocked user Habesha Union (talk · contribs). (See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hoaeter/Archive#28 April 2020) This edit pattern has been going on for a while, and probably longer than that account's creation. The thing is, I am certain that at least one of the (reliable) sources did back up the assertion that, at least for some, "Habesha" is more-or-less synonymous with "Ethiopian" or "Eritrean." However, the previous editor(s) have not done themselves any favors by misattributing a given sentence to the wrong source (which has happened time and again) and now I can't remember in which source I read it. I'll just say that it's an attested usage, and if/when we can figure out the right source, it ought to be included. (I've said before that I have no problem with mentioning this interpretation of "Habesha", my problem is with the way that sources have been misattributed, or outright fabricated, along with other collateral damage like messy page moves.) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:49, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I am wondering if/how to move forward where the upkeep of this article is concerned. In the past, several editors (and some associated sockpuppet accounts) who have been most actively involved with editing this article (from various points-of-view) have all found themselves blocked or topic-banned; see 2017 WP:ANI discussion. Other editors trying to mediate or mitigate have found themselves exasperated and/or burned out by their involvement in this topic area (again, see ANI discussion). One of the things that came out of that ANI discussion was a proposed discretionary sanction for all Horn of Africa-related pages. That seems rather severe, and repeat sockpuppeteers aren't interested in abiding by the rules anyway. All I know for sure, right now, is that about two days elapsed after this article's page protection expired, and we were right back to the old flareups that led to the protection. I don't think that's the way forward, in any case. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:16, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

This whole page is so wrong and is full of misinformation

The Amhara and Tigray are not the only people who are Habesha. All Ethiopians and Eritreans are Habesha. This is full of misinformation and is offensive to all Ethiopians and Eritreans.

From my many times reading this page, over the years, the information went from outdated racist terminology and sources to a well written accurate understanding of the Habesha peoples, and now has gone bad and is no starting to sound like something written by people completely misinformed only paying attention the outdated old historical clames only and dismissing modern sociological sources show re-ethnogenesis of Habesha culture and identity within the Habesha community. Habesha is a pan-ethic group that includes all Ethiopian-Eritrean ethnic groups the same exact way that there are many ethnic and national groups that are part of the Habesha pan-ethnicity. AntiRacist Watch (talk) 16:43, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I got drawn to this article because of a dispute on a page in which I'm actively engaged, & fairly well informed: Beja people. A sockpuppet of Hoaeter added it to the category Habesha peoples, & the Gyrofrog undid the edit. When speaking Arabic, all the Beja people I know who've discussed the issue distinguish themselves from Ḥabašīs. I was curious about this issue, but have no particular investment in how the term 'habesha' is used in English when talking about Eritrea & Ethiopia. What I have found on this page is poorly written & poorly sourced. I understand that you dispute the perspective which uses the term just to describe one subset of Ethiopians & Eritreans. The problem with the counter claims is that in most locations, here, they are either completely unsourced or they have referred to sources which do not actually back those claims. Less frequently they've drawn on sources which aren't reliable sources (WP:RS). This isn't a matter of differing opinion: This is a matter of quality. As things stand, a large portion of this page should really be re-written. I think that there's a productive way that this could incorporate multiple perspectives. But that really can't be achieved through mis-citation or un-cited assertion. Pathawi (talk) 17:19, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I've never read that all inhabitants of Eritrea and Ethiopia identify as Habesha. Most anthropological works would agree on this. Most work denote Habesha as Amhara, Tigrayan and Gurage. The largest group in Ethiopia, the Oromo do not identify as Hebesha and most scholarly sources would agree. I would fair for the page if both meanings of the term Habesha are outlined on the page. --AlaskaLava (talk) 19:11, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Pathawi: You put it more succinctly than I guess I've done, but what you wrote is pretty much all that I've been trying to say all along (except the part about Beja people, with which I've otherwise had little or no involvement). Thank you. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 00:07, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

What I am saying is that this page leaves out modern sociological research (which have been sourced in this page in the past, the 9 sources that support this have been re-added) on how these communities identify themselves today. When it comes to cultural groups, its historical use should be mentioned like how this page is written right now, but there are huge holes on information about how the Habesha Community defines itself today. In order to fairly describe this cultural group, both definitions must be included. The infromation on this page is stuck in the past and hasn't taken much consideration for how the Habesha Community defines itself today. AntiRacist Watch (talk) 20:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

So, doing a little digging of my own, I want to offer this sort of casual synthesis from reading a few sociological & anthropological papers: Many Ethiopian & Eritrean immigrants & second generation children of such immigrants in North America use the term 'Habesha' as a broader designation as a supra-ethnic (I think one editor of this page uses the term 'pan-ethnic') identifier for all people of Eritrean or Ethiopian descent. However, within that same community this broader usage is contested: Some accept it, some find it politically charged & possibly racist. It looks to me like there's good scholarship to support this account, some of which has been cited by advocates here of the all-Eritreans-&-Ethiopians-are-Habesha viewpoint (the Goitom article in particular). I think that a couple of things need to happen to integrate this better:

1. There needs to be a bit of sorting of wheat from chaff. As examples, Mary Goitom's article "'Unconventional Canadians': Second-Generation 'Habesha' Youth and Belonging in Toronto, Canada" from Global Social Welfare is a reliable source & deals with this issue directly. Sarah Oliphant's dissertation is a reliable source, but really doesn't deal with this issue, & has been cited inappropriately (she uses the term once & glosses it very casually). Self-published articles are not reliable sources. We actually have to go into the sources & deal with them seriously. I propose that the following sources are pretty good starting points:
   • Goitom, Mary. "'Unconventional Canadians': Second-Generation 'Habesha' Youth and Belonging in Toronto, Canada.' Global Social Welfare, 4 (2017): 179–190.
   • Habecker, Shelly. "Not black, but Habasha: Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants in American society." Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35 (2012), no. 7: 1200–1219.
   • Mohammed, Mohammed Hamid. "Imagining and Performing Habasha Identity: The Ethiopian Diaspora in the Area of Washington, D.C." Phd diss. (Northwestern, 2006). (Really primarily useful for demonstration of how the term is contested.)
   • Ameyu, Godesso Roro. "The postponed discourse in Habasha identity: Real or performance?" African Journal of History and Culture, 73 (2015), no. 3: 79–84.

   I'm sure there are other useful reliable sources. This is just a starting point for anyone who wants to check out the account that I've given above.

2. We're talking about a contested point of view. We can do that in Wikipedia! But we have to address that sociologically/anthropologically—not as advocates. That means saying: 'These two conflicting views exist within this portion of a community that some (both within & outside the community) identify as Habesha.' Rather than saying: 'This view is archaic. This view is modern.'

I'm willing to do some work, here, reading & incorporating research that addresses a broader diasporic notion of Habesha-ness. I have two questions: For advocates of the all-Eritreans-&-Ethiopians-are-Habesha viewpoint: Does the account I just gave accord with your understanding? For everyone: Is this a path that we can move forward on? Pathawi (talk) 15:15, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Pathawi, thanks for putting in this effort. I wouldn't object to citing a dissertation in the context of (as you proposed) basically demonstrating the contested usage (or, if one prefers, varied usage). I'd say this is a good way forward. Outside of the Hoaeter-affiliated accounts, I can't discern anyone else currently advocating for the all-Eritreans-&-Ethiopians-are-Habesha viewpoint. But I think there's already a consensus that we should include this usage, if reliable sources could attest to it, and I think you've just demonstrated that they do (I think Goitom is one of the sources I was trying to remember in the previous section). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:57, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I've struck through two more socks. I admire anyone with the fortitude to deal with all of this, Pathawi. I had taken this article off my watchlist but I've put it back on, particularly after one of the socks decided to have a go at me. Doug Weller talk 19:19, 17 June 2020 (UTC)