pconroy: 
 
"If you look far enough" 
 
yep. 
 
key words. 
 
When were the Irish taken from their land to a place they would always be visible minorities, not allowed to speak their language, not allowed to marry, not allowed to read or do math, given new names, and given a new religion where they were taught for hundreds of years the religion (that they can't read the Holy Book of) clearly states they were made inferior and subordinate by God? 
 
I don't recall that chapter in Irish history, but feel free to enlighten me.  
 
The most important things about the Irish to me was their faith they largely retained (Catholic), their land (most Irish were never forcefully removed from Ireland a land where they were always the majority and knew was theres unquestionably, and most important very few if any Irish look visibly different from the English...you can only tell by name which is easy to change and not always by name. 
 
If the Irish looked like Dravidian and lived next to the English...you have have had a different story altogether. 
 
In fact black slaves were favored eventually because Irish and Welsh indentured servants kept running off. In the end, if one managed to change their accent or if their kids have none and change their names they are just like everyone else. Blacks slaves were obviously black and suspect to be runaways which is why they had to carry "free papers". 
 
You are right no people have a monopoly on suffering or oppression. 
 
My only point is that every situation is unique and to try to minimize what someone else has been through by comparing it to others when the situations were not directly comparable is not in anyone's interest and is not conducive to making anything better. 
 
Saying "get over it it happened to your great great grandfather well it happened to my great grandfather X 5 is only serves to make people resentful and defensive. 
 
Its like me going to the Holocaust Museum and walking up to a Jewish guy whose parents survived that and saying..."well wasn't that bad...hell genocide was relatively common before WWI"... 
 
That may be true but that doesn't help anything.

Richard: 
 
If I got that write you are Aussie not a Brit? My hanzi is quite bad now.

p-ter: 
 
That's my fault I miswrote. The article I got that information from above says nothing about heart disease, but about "hypertension". 
 
American whites and blacks have lower hypertension rates than many Europeans, such as Germans, Fins, and Spaniars. WHite Americans specifically have lower rates than Canadians, Italians, and Swedes, British. 
 
 
For some reason when I click on the link above the article does not show up: 
 
It does appear on google. Title is: 
 
"Higher rates of hypertension in African Americans unlikely to be related to genes" 
 
On Medscape Medical News.

p-ter: 
 
"latitude is not the causal agent here, obviously. it's a proxy for climate. the climate in NYC is not similar to that in Sicily." 
 
Quite true. I guess I was thinking that this may have something to do with sunlight exposure and calcium production...well that was where I was headed. 
 
If you are talking about temperature, then I would say that you should be able to see a clear cline in hypertension if you took samples in Toronto of Afro-Caribbean, NYC of African Americans, Washington DC, Cleveland, Atlanta, Miami, and then some Caribbean nations down to Trinidad. 
 
At ever point the temperature will increase and "summer" will be longer, so you should see a corresponding increase in hypertension because all of these populations are predominately descendant of slaves, however you still might want to norm for European(or other) ancestry, especially in the United States. 
 
I would still want to see the difference in diet and how Afro-Caribbean fair in Toronto and London as compared to African Americans at various climates in the United States, from Atlanta to Stamford. 
 
Unfortunately I don?t know of any studies such as these. 
 
It is interesting to me also that American whites have lower heart disease rates than many Western Europeans. According to your theory it would imply (assuming no significant dietary differences) that white Europeans are not as adaptive to Europe as blacks are to West Africa, but then again one can argue that people have no been in Europe as long as in tropical Africa.

I would like to see what the hypertension rate of Africans living in Europe is or specifically Carribeans living in the UK. 
 
I would also like to see a a comparison of food average yearly intake of sodium for African Americans as compared to white Americans. Then look at the same thing for Afro-Carribeans in the UK and whtie Brits. This might prove to be quite instructive about the significants of dietary habits.

Interesting theory, however European Americans and Hispanics (of more Iberian ancestry) are well below the latitude of Europe. Even New York City is far south of Rome and more similar in Latitude to North Sicily or so. 
 
Most U.S. cities, like Washington D.C. or below are in the same latitude as Tokyo, Northern India, and North Africa. 
 
It was interesting though that a few weeks back it was discovered that there was a common gene in white Americans that lead to hypertension but it was not common in African Americans, so as to not be the source of the African American hypertension rate. 
 
The article below is interesting because one can argue that Carribean blacks live in a tropical climate such as West Africa (or closeer to than the U.S.) however black American hypertension is lower than many white populations in Europe. 
 
"Higher rates of hypertension among African Americans compared with whites has produced speculation that black populations are more susceptible to hypertension and led to a genetic hypothesis to explain these differences, the researchers write. However, this research has been limited mainly to the US. International studies comparing populations could shed light on the issue, but comparisons have been hampered by a lack of standardized methods between surveys. Within the past decade this has changed, with more comparable methods being developed, they write.  
 
This report used 11 such surveys to glean information on about 85 000 participants in three black populations in the US, Jamaica, and Nigeria and eight white populations in the US, Canada, and Europe. Cooper et al report that US black populations did have a higher prevalence of hypertension than both African and Caribbean blacks and higher than white North Americans, but the prevalence was actually lower than most of the predominantly white European populations.  
 
There was significant variation in hypertension prevalence within both black and white populations, ranging from 27% to 55% for whites and 14% to 44% for blacks. " 
 
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/538627 
 
This in no way means genetics is not at play due to a bottleneck or environmental pressure making genes express differently, however baring in mind American whites have lower hypertension rates than many Western Europeans and Canadians, and the majority of black Americans live in the sub-tropical South of the United States...I can't imagine that environmental pressure due to climate is so much more in Georgia than it is in Jamaica to nearly double the outcome of hypertension cases.

I wonder how the Olympics will go in China next year. :-)

TGGP: 
 
China is like 93% Han Chinese. That means though, that out of 1.3 billion folks, you have 91 million minorities? 
 
The thing is most of these minorities live on big reservations (autonomous regions). 
 
I would say though, after living in China, this is misleading. Anyone from Beijing who has lived in Shanghai will tell you they act differently and the local dialect is quite different from Mandarin so you will not be able to understand people on the street unless they speak to you in Mandarin. Also Chinese tend to treat people who don't speak their dialect (hence from their region in China) as outsiders. 
 
My experience is China is a much more low trust society than Japan or Korea for example, however I"m not sure if that is "natural" or due to 50 years of communism. 
 
It might be instructive to observe Taiwanese or Hong Kongers to see if this is cultural or a result of politics.

Caledonian : 
 
Africa has far more languages and ethnicities than Europe, but then again Africa is as big as North America and Europe combined with a relatively low population density...

"trust isn't very high in homogenous africa either" 
 
Africa not even close to homogenous.

Issue is who is having the increased children? Immigrants or 'indigenous populations'.

Oui!

I write left and throw right...right hand is strongest, left more control. 
 
My wife was born left, parents made her use her write hand as is normal in Asia, well in the 70's.