Let’s put the unassimability, or otherwise, of Jews, and the poor leadership, or otherwise, of Indians, aside for the moment. Let me offer a parable (and, if you heathens have read your new testament, you know that it’s not the same as an allegory.)

I think Rob is right. The question is: why do black men do so badly in the US?

Is there something about the economic/family system that just doesn’t mix well with the black male psychology? Duende? wanna tackle this?

Let’s look at what black men excel at. They dominate in sports. They invented jazz, which depends on improvisation to a degree unknown in other forms of music. And they are also terrific at endeavours that require slashing verbal aggression and a certain kind of verbal hustle. They make great politicians and salesmen.

They seem to stink at the routine, the regimented and the get-along-go-along managerial jobs that so dominate the white-collar world.

What can we conclude from this?

slave-trading seems to have been common in africa from the time of the muslim empires onward when west africa truly became part of the world-wide trade-network via the sahara caravans. before that, who knows? it might behoove us to look at societies where slavery has had a smaller impact-perhaps deep into the interior of central africa?

of course, slavery & dislocation are part of the human experience-slavs for instance were a widely traded commodity-al-andalus, muslim spain, had a large community, and they were common-place in the turkish polity….

Posted by Rob at February 24, 2003 05:59 PM
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That’s a million dollar question don’t you think ?
There might be genetic reasons for the dire situation we (i am one) find ourselves in. But to what degree ? I don’t think that’s settled. I think historical/cultural circumstances have played a very serious role in our predicament though.

An aside : i read steve sailer’s recent article about fostering in west-africa in which he described some parenting patterns. Those patterns are assumed to have been in place almost forever.I’ve wondered though, just how much of what we think as traditional african culture is truly that. How much of the cultural patterns that we see are the result of the utter dislocation and degenerescence of society caused by the centuries of war,famine, slavery and anarchy that followed the fall of the sahelian states ?
I know this will not be popular in this forum but the impact of widespread, pandemic slavery can’t be underestimated. And i”m not really focusing on the number of people who were taken, but more on the climate of complete instability that this must have created everywhere in black africa. Once the coastal states got into the whole slave trading business, they engaged in *constant war* because they had to get more and more merchandise .
Who knows, maybe a lot of the african in the diaspora came from cultures that were already ground up . I hope to learn more about this.
BTW : this is not victimology. The africans themselves had a large hand in creating this mess and i fully understand that.

“I wouldn’t dispose of Jewish clanishness so quickly. First : It would make sense (from a layman’s perspective) for a persecuted outsider minority to develop a strong in-group preference.
Second: Even with a high intermarriage rate, there is some concept of ‘jew’ left in the USA. Compare this with German-Americans, who also have a high intermarriage rate but do not retain a sense of separate identity.”

Maybe I’m the odd man out here, but what’s wrong with “retaining a sense of separate identity,” whether it be for Jewish-Americans, German-Americans, or any other Americans?

Ikram: “Part of the refusal of Jewish-americans to fully assimilate may be cultural, … “

Jews aren’t fully assimilated? Growing up in Queens, NYC, I knew almost nothing but Jews — and they always looked pretty assimilated to me. I don’t see how they could get more assimilated without actually changing into some other group — and even that wouldn’t make them more “assimilated,” any more than the other group would become more “assimilated” by changing into Jews.

Of course, you can go to infinite recursion saying I’m genetically programmed to like snobbishness or dislike black hair, but let’s keep it real and in bounds here.

1. There are far fewer blacks in the UK than the U.S. There just aren’t that many black mates to choose from, so they look farther afield.

2. England has a pseudo-Hellenic cultural veneration of the beautiful boy, which educated British blacks seem to share. I think this makes white men and boys far more attractive to black women than in America, where beautiful boy worship seems confined to teeny boppers and gays.

3. Class was traditionally the big issue in England, not race. Blacks seem to assimilate quite well into the various class structures depending on their education levels.

Interestingly, on British TV one sees FAR more WM/BF couples than BM/WF pairs. That may just be the chicken and the egg. I couldn’t really say. Though the black women nearly always look half-white.

Ikram, why would you not dismiss the clannishness thing?

German-Americans from the early/mid-19th century until the WWI period (when there was intense anti-German prejudice) were very self-identified as German, in the US. Even until WWII; there were Bunds, etc.

Seems to me that as soon as Jews are treated as equals, their Jewish ID becomes much more inclusive or even degrades completely.

But I think I’m missing the point….maybe?

part of the reason we talk about blacks is that obviously there is a lot of media coverage of them from the race angle, and less from jews on the ethnic angle. but there was a whole thread on jews a little while ago….

Anyway, she is a careerist.

Sorry if the posts on race aren’t up to standards. I thought they were decent. Are you also counting posts on genetics that have to do with race?

Sorry I haven’t been blogging as much. I’m in thesis revision hell and I’m prepping for a couple job interviews.

Well – I wouldn’t dispose of Jewish clanishness so quickly.

First : It would make sense (from a layman’s perspective) for a persecuted outsider minority to develop a strong in-group preference.

Second: Even with a high intermarriage rate, there is some concept of ‘jew’ left in the USA. Compare this with German-Americans, who also have a high intermarriage rate but do not retain a sense of separate identity.

Part of the refusal of Jewish-americans to fully assimilate may be cultural, but in this blog, culture is the last place, not the first place, you look.

One of the problems is the reluctance of scholars to investigate slurs against Jews for any factual elements. That’s why I say the race agenda of this blog is set by outsiders with ideological motives. Blogs do not produce real original content, only cite outsiders. If the only outsiders doing work in the area are Rushton-esque, your blog will have an ideological bias even if you yourselves do not.

(As for voting rights and blacks in America — probably not the right forum to discuss it.)

(On South Africa: Steve Biko’s BCM in ZA in the 70′s used black to include indian. Some scholarly work on ZA still uses that terminology. In aparthied days, it was a useful set or terms. Possibly less useful now.)

I would enjoy a long discussion as to whether Jews are genetically predisposed to be clannish or pushy.

Hi guys, been busy. We have discussed Jewish genetic diseases a lot on this blog. I purposed refrain from bringing the tribe into the discussion–unless absolutely necessary–for fear of being acused of clannishness and pushiness. :)
Jews are, with some justification, accused of being obsessed with themselves, and I welcome the chance to discuss other issues.

That said, I think that you can analyze your questions relatively dispassionately, and this is the place to do it.

Regarding Jewish clannishness, we can dispose of that pretty quickly. Over 50% of the Jews who marry nowadays (and I think Jews have a pretty high marriage participation rate, even if the age of marriage is late-ish), marry non-Jews. To the eternal dismay of Ortho rabbis…but that’s a quite convincing refutation of Jewish clannishness.

Pushiness? Oh, hell yes. You don’t need a study for that.

But….the mid-Western Jews I’ve known are all so darned polite and soft-spoken. And I just had a conversation with a NY Irish-American in which we were both trying to get a word in edgewise….so what is it??

BTW, blacks in the south in 1965 had full voting rights.

This is my UnPC view

As I understand it, this board has a heavy influence of American racial politics, which has been messy since 1619 (and not just since affirmative action and bilingual education showed up), as mediated in many cases by middle class immigration from the subcontinent and the experience of the immigrants and their children. This is not bad in itself but I do see a negative trend. For me this is a pity because I’ve found a lot of interesting stuff here, for example the pre-pub article in Chinggis Qan’s descent, which happens to be relevant to my serious work and which I would probably not have found otherwise.

Earlier I made a separation between the heredibility of IQ (open question, but likely) and racial realism (a non-sequiter[sp.?]). I think that there’s a third separation, between racial realism and the various ethnic (and hereditary class) divisions there are in the world. There are various “inferior races” scattered all over the place, but if you look at them they have nothing at all racially in common. In the most striking case, Japan has a pariah group which is racially and linguistically identical to the Japanese, but which is despised for obscure reasons.

Another example is the Irish, which were despised in the British Isles, and here too when they first came over, but who have flourished here in every field.

I also mistrust psychologists’ ability to control for social and cultural factors, since most of them seem socially and culturally tone deaf.

One factor in American life that is not usually considered by racialists (I didn’t say the racist word) is that in 1965 black Americans in the south still did not have either the rights of citizens or the access to education which (even non-English-speaking) immigrant groups enjoyed immediately upon arrival. And even in the north, opportunity was relatively restricted by a variety of formal and informal factors.

If she’s so sizzling then why’s she single at 38yo- lemme guess, how many kids does she have, Pawan?

-honestly, I’m not trying to be insulting, just putting 2+2 together.