A lot of North Africans think of themselves as Arabians first and Africans second.
It's always a heated topic of discussion on any African based internet forum, with sub Saharan, central and western Africans getting into it with north Africans. The biggest flare up of this discussion lately was around the AFCON football/soccer tournament, with regards to bias and so on.
It makes sense. The Sahara desert is much more real, on a human scale, than arbitrary continental divisions based on geology. Historically it makes a lot more sense to consider Egypt, Morroco, Spain, and southern France to be part of the same region than it does to include Tunisia with Ghana.
arab is the ethnic category. arabian is a mostly outdated term for someone from the arabian peninsula, who would more likely describe themselves in terms of their nationality (i.e., saudi or yemeni)
A lot of North Africans think of themselves as Arabians first and Africans second.
It's always a heated topic of discussion on any African based internet forum, with sub Saharan, central and western Africans getting into it with north Africans. The biggest flare up of this discussion lately was around the AFCON football/soccer tournament, with regards to bias and so on.
It makes sense. The Sahara desert is much more real, on a human scale, than arbitrary continental divisions based on geology. Historically it makes a lot more sense to consider Egypt, Morroco, Spain, and southern France to be part of the same region than it does to include Tunisia with Ghana.
arab is the ethnic category. arabian is a mostly outdated term for someone from the arabian peninsula, who would more likely describe themselves in terms of their nationality (i.e., saudi or yemeni)