Talk:Semitic people

Seeming Contradiction

Hello! I'm not usually someone to contribute to Wikipedia pages. I ordinarily just like browsing articles I find interesting. But today I was struck by what has to be the most blatant contradiction between two Wikipedia pages I've ever seen, and I wanted to bring attention to it.

I want to preface this by apologizing if I am wading into a sensitive topic area. To be clear, my interest is purely academic and in the interest of Wikipedia's internal consistency. I understand that "Semitic people" as an ethnic category has been manipulated in the past, predominantly in the anti-Israel corners of the Arab world, in an attempt to escape justified accusations of anti-Semitic bigotry. The argument is usually something like: "We can't be anti-Semitic, we're Semitic people ourselves," ignoring the fact that, as used in the Western world, anti-Semitism is simply a way of referring to anti-Jewish prejudice. I'm not interested in excusing this type of disingenuous evasion.

Nonetheless, this article does seem to have a problem. I arrived here from Wikipedia's page for Arab People, as I was curious about the ethnic and cultural history of the Arab world and how it shapes contemporary politics in the Near East. That page has an early section on the ethnic origin of Arabs as a "Semitic people," which links directly to this page. Yet as soon as a curious reader actually arrives on this page, they are greeted with an article which abjures the concept as obsolete and pseudo-scientific.

So, which is it? I mean, the answer does actually seem pretty straightforward. The same page on Arab people has a subsequent sentence, backed with what appear to be high-quality scholarly citations, which states that DNA evidence indicates a close ethnic relationship between contemporary Jews and Arabs. Most of those citations are more recent than the ones cited on this page which suggest that the concept is obsolete.

Perhaps this is a manner of scholarly terminology, and I don't know the appropriate way to refer to this ethnolinguistic grouping. For other groups (Bantu peoples for instance) the curious reader can find a page which outlines the pre-historic origin of the grouping in question and trace it historically over time as people of those ethnicities have migrated and expanded. Yet here it is stated that an actually ethnolinguistic group encompassing Jews and Arabs (and probably several other groups of people besides) does not actually exist, in spite of both groups of people speaking Semitic languages and having a high degree of genetic overlap. In this case, the curious reader meets with a historical dead end, and a fairly blatant contradiction between two Wikipedia articles, one of which links to the other.

Some clarification would be helpful, perhaps on the state of contemporary scholarship on this topic. It would seem to me that this page itself needs to be edited to reflect such context, such as it is. It also seems like there should be a Wikipedia page, whether this page or a differently titled one, which also fills the broader role for talking about the common ethnographic origins of peoples in the Near East, similar to that of pages on Bantu peoples or Indo-European peoples. I am hopeful that one of the editors of this page can provide this context and suggest a constructive path forward. SetaceousCharacter (talk) 12:26, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for highlighting this. I have removed the link here from the Arabs article.[1] The problem is that "Semitic people" is still used as a shorthand for "speakers of Semitic languages". It would be better if we were to do away with this nonsensical 250-year old Biblical terminology for race altogether, but whilst it it still used in common parlance, we describe it here. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:46, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh, and the broader page is at Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:54, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the prompt reply, Onceinawhile! That certainly goes a long way to clearing up the problem. SetaceousCharacter (talk) 13:19, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I have to confess, though, that I'm not entirely satisfied. I understand your point that "Semitic" in this context is exclusively used to refer to the linguistic grouping, and that's fine. But the genetic evidence and common linguistic history seem to clearly indicate that Arabs, Jews, and other ethnicities do form a contemporary, extant ethnolinguistic group. So, taking that it should not be called Semitic, what is the name for this group? Is there an existing article about it on Wikipedia?

While I appreciate the link to the article on ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, these are not ancient peoples, but modern ones, and they share not just a linguistic heritage but also, apparently, ancestry. Maybe there just isn't scholarship formulating such a concept, but it does seem like there should be a page for a group which encompasses these contemporary ethnicities in the same way there are for Bantu or Indo-European peoples, in addition to many others. SetaceousCharacter (talk) 13:29, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

There is no article on Indo-European people, only Indo-European languages, just as there are only Sino-Tibetan languages and Afroasiatic languages and nothing about the peoples. You are making an incorrect assumption that language = ethnicity. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

Having said which, you make an interesting point. If enough people believe that they are Semitic people, does that make it a real thing, irrespective of the views of social scientists who say the concept is obsolete? Onceinawhile (talk) 13:42, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I was just about to to comment that I was incorrect about this. It is curious that there is a page for Bantu peoples, separate from the Bantu language family, which seems a bit anomalous. I had simply assumed there were ones for others. But Wikipedia is big place, so there's bound to be some variation.

I suppose it comes down to social construction, in terms of contemporary identification. In the US, many people now consider themselves to be "White" when generations ago they might have thought of themselves as separate European ethnicities. It depends on what labels people adopt.

I will try to defend myself and say that I am explicitly NOT trying to make that assumption, though I was clumsy with my framing. The common ancestry of Arabs and Jews is derived quite independently from linguistic roots, and relies on genetic analysis. It's understandable that, before such technology existed, people might object to the suggestion that common linguistic roots implied common heritage between Arabs and Jews. Anyone can learn a language, after all. And not being an expert in ethnography, perhaps some other Semitic-language speakers are not very closely related to Arabs and Jews. That's certainly true of most US English speakers.

I suppose I think that having a concept which enables one to trace back that common ancestry between these peoples would be useful, but maybe haplogroups already fill this role. In any case, this is getting byzantine and the main issue seems to be resolved. Thanks for your time, and for the information! :) SetaceousCharacter (talk) 14:00, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful response. As an aside, the genetics points you are making are not quite that simple in reality. You might find Zionism, race and genetics and its talk page at Talk:Zionism, race and genetics an interesting read, showing the complexity and diversity of views around this topic. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:09, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

It's not about what people believe, it's about what WP:RS say. Andre🚐 17:54, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I have to agree that there is a serious problem with this article. Since the semitic languages are related to each other, there was clearly at one point in antiquity a single semitic people who spoke a single semitic language. To deny this is like denying evolution; it is unscientific. This article is a glaring contradiction with articles like Germanic peoples, Celtic peoples, etc. Pro-Jewish bias has infected this article and made it non-scientific. What an embarrassment to Wikipedia.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Westwind273 (talk • contribs) 20:26, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

@Westwind273: please sign your comments and please search for RS instead of unspecifically accusing editors of "pro-Jewish bias." Rsk6400 (talk) 06:11, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Westwind is likely looking for Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:21, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

RfC on scientificity

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Closing for procedural reasons: WP:RFCBEFORE not met, question not clear. Rsk6400 (talk) 13:44, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

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There's an ongoing disagreement about whether Semitic people constitute a valid ethnolinguistic grouping of Semitic-speaking peoples or is pseudoscientific. Any comments are encouraged. – anlztrk (talk) 13:31, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

antisemitism was always hostility towards Jews; not circuitous

The 'antisemitism' section currently opens with a misleading statement:

"The terms "anti-Semite" or "antisemitism" came by a circuitous route to refer more narrowly to anyone who was hostile or discriminatory towards Jews in particular"

There was nothing 'circuitous' here -- the term always indicated hostility towards Jews, which is affirmed by the citation for that section (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-Semitism). Perhaps 'circuitous' refers to the 'semitic' in anti-semitism, but even in that case, it's a strange description for a single decision by an antisemite to obscure/redefine his prejudice.

AdamChrisR (talk) 22:40, 31 October 2023 (UTC)