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Telegraph.co.uk reports that 'A Black History Month website' has made claims such as :

[white people are the] genetically defective descendants of albino mutants

[white man can] “fantasise that he is genetically equal to the black male”.

Telegraph did not mention which website was in question, nor was there direct link to (archived) source. Archives of most likely source blackhistorymonth.org.uk/ has many edits and rudimentary search yielded me with nothing.

Thus, source is wrong or claims never existed. Either way, I remain skeptical.

Did 'A Black History Month website' make claims that whites are genetically inferior?

If so, which site?

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    Lost in all this is that the core of the Telegraph story was that government agencies were somehow spending money on ads that appeared next to the content in question. Oct 6, 2021 at 1:28
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    Deleted an, at times, heated and unhelpful discussion. In summary: Yes, this is notable. Yes, newspapers sometimes don't link to the websites they are talking about. No, we don't trust news sites implicitly. No, the OP doesn't know what site they are talking about, but is making a reasonable guess. Let's now focus on the answers.
    – Oddthinking
    Oct 6, 2021 at 5:28
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    Not what the question is about, but I'd like to point out that this is genetically illiterate nonsense. These claims do not match the available evidence about skin colour evolution nor the mechanisms of skin colour. Oct 6, 2021 at 19:02
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    blackhistorymonth.io is currently available for $60. If I bought it and hosted a website on it claiming "the sky is orange" then the headline "A black history month website claims the sky is orange" would be true, but not meaningful. The article linked by OP even points out that organizers have disavowed the website, which they had nothing to do with creating. Of course this is not reflected at all in the headline, because the attack pattern in use is "incite racism in the headline, cover your ass in the body which no one reads" Oct 8, 2021 at 3:41
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    @QuadmasterXLII: You're right that the existence of a website would, by itself, seem pretty disinteresting -- since, yeah, there're plenty of wacky websites out there. However, when a publication like the Telegraph reports on something like this, there's an implicit claim that the subject of their reporting is newsworthy -- this is, that the website is somehow notable. As such, a good answer to this question would need to establish not just that the website exists, but also address that implicit claim of its notability.
    – Nat
    Oct 8, 2021 at 13:19

3 Answers 3

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It is indeed the site that you found. The article was entitled "Frances Cress Welsing: Melanin Theory". Frances Cress Welsing was a homophobic black supremacist writer. She claimed that the melanin in the skin of black Americans is able to talk to plants and can pick up signals from outer space and sense the existence of extrasolar planets. The website also had a part 2 and part 3 which credited Welsing with "changing our conversations on racism".

The Telegraph article notes that this website is privately run, "controlled by a white man," and that "one of the founders of the Black History Month celebration" complained about the website. It's not clear what this privately run website has to do with the UK's Black History Month. Anyone can create a website about anything.

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Here's a cache'd snippet from Duck Duck Go pointing to this article.

snippet of blackhistorymonth.org calling white people "Genetically Defective Mutants"

https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/science-and-medicine/frances-cress-welsing-melanin-theory/

This now 404's

Here's an archive link to the actual article:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210516082124/https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/science-and-medicine/frances-cress-welsing-melanin-theory/

So to answer your questions, Yes- BlackHistoryMonth.org.uk posted an article that promoted the ideas of a late anti-white racist. This article was written by Abdul Rob, 08/01/2016.

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    The actual article you linked to is a description and critique of the idea? As far as I can tell, it only "promotes" in that it "platforms" them (ie, talks about them).
    – Yakk
    Oct 6, 2021 at 14:05
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    Oh? Exactly what critique was offered? I only noticed fawning from the author for the late "thinker."
    – Izzy
    Oct 7, 2021 at 10:13
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It's not limited to one Black history website.

The site "Black Then: Discovering Our History" says:

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing is a psychiatrist who is noted for the “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation,” which explores the practice of ‘white supremacy.’ She is also the author of The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, in which she explores the possibility that white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants.

Dr. Welsing was born Frances Luella Cress in Chicago, Illinois on March 18, 1935. Her father, Henry N. Cress, was a physician, and her mother, Ida Mae.

In the 1960s, Dr.Welsing moved to Washington, D.C. and began her career practicing psychiatrist starting her career at Cook County Hospital as an intern, 1962-63. She also work at St. Elizabeth Hospital, resident in general psychiatry, 1963-66; Children’s Hospital, fellowship child psychiatry, 1966-68; private practice in general psychiatry, Washington, DC, 1966, and general and child psychiatry, Washington, DC, 1968; Howard University College of Medicine, assistant professor of pediatrics, 1968-75; Hillcrest Children’s Center, clinical director, 1975-76; affiliated with Paul Robeson School for Growth and Development, North Community Mental Health Center, Washington, DC, 1976-90.

In The Isis Papers, Dr. Welsing described the “melanin theory. The claim is that white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants. She wrote that due to this “defective” mutation, they may have been forcibly expelled from Africa, among other possibilities. Racism, in the views of Welsing, is a conspiracy “to ensure white genetic survival.” She attributed AIDS and addiction to crack cocaine and other substances to “chemical and biological warfare” by whites.

According to Dr. Welsing's Isis Papers:

White skin is a form of albinism. There is no difference, microscopically speaking, between the white skin of a white person and the skin of a person designated as an albino. My central thesis here is that white- skinned peoples came into existence thousands of years ago as the albino mutant offsprings of black-skinned mothers and fathers in Africa. A sizeable number of these Black parents had produced, rejected and then cast out of the community their genetic defective albino offspring, to live away from the normal black skin-pigmented population with the awareness of their rejection and alienation (as in leper colonies).

See also the Black radio station website Wurdradio which has a January 2016 article written by Black author Liron Anderson-Bell which also explains:

In The Isis Papers, Dr. Welsing put forth Melanin Theory, which suggests that people of African descent are genetically superior and that whites are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants who may have been expelled from the African continent.

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  • True — although the website in question in this case was rather more mainstream and associated directly with the popular Black History Month, I gather. Perhaps that is the reason this website was singled out.
    – user2785
    Oct 5, 2021 at 17:20
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    I don’t think the existence of an extreme belief somewhere on the Internet addresses the question, though. Oct 6, 2021 at 1:21
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    I'm failing to see the question actually addressed in this answer as well. It seems the justification that this answer's content is relevant is a conflation of anthropological use of the word "history" and the social use of the word "history" in the phrase "black history month".
    – user11643
    Oct 7, 2021 at 21:01
  • @fredsbend Blackthen.com is a Black History website with numerous articles about Black History Month such as "The Significance of Raising the Black Liberation Flag to Commemorate Black History Month" blackthen.com/…
    – DavePhD
    Oct 8, 2021 at 1:48
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    After reviewing the question, I think I will take back my previous comment. It might be helpful however to show what gravity these websites have (typical viewers in a month, etc). Hopefully that can be used as a proxy to determine why the telegraph thought it was worth reporting. Also, "fringe creep" into mainstream matters. The website suspected in the question is not addressed here...
    – user11643
    Oct 12, 2021 at 16:23

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