March 16, 2012

As Affirmative Action-Eligible as We Wish to Be

In the NYT, author Thomas Chatterton Williams opines:
As Black As We Wish to Be

MY first encounter with my own blackness occurred in the checkout line at the grocery store. I was horsing around with my older brother, as bored children sometimes do. My blond-haired, blue-eyed mother, exasperated and trying hard to count out her cash and coupons in peace, wheeled around furiously and commanded us both to be still. When she finished scolding us, an older white woman standing nearby leaned over and whispered sympathetically: “It must be so tough adopting those kids from the ghetto.”…. 
Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black — and interracial couples share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look. 
… Maybe that’s why we live now in a culture in which many of us would prefer to break clean from what we perceive as the racist logic of previous eras — specifically the idea that the purity and value of whiteness can be tainted by even “one drop” of black blood. And yet, however offensive those one-drop policies may appear today, that offensiveness alone doesn’t strip the reasoning behind them of all descriptive truth. 
In fleeing from this familiar way of thinking about race, we sidestep the reality that a new multiracial community could flourish and evolve at black America’s expense. …. 
That shift is expected to change the way test scores are categorized, altering racial disparities and affecting funding for education programs. For this reason and others, the N.A.A.C.P. and some black members of Congress have expressed concern that African-Americans are at risk of being undercounted as blacks compete more than ever with other minorities and immigrants for limited resources and influence. 
Scholars have long maintained that race is merely a social construct, not something fixed into our nature, yet this insight hasn’t made it any less of a factor in our lives. If we no longer participate in a society in which the presence of black blood renders a person black, then racial self-identification becomes a matter of individual will. 
And where the will is involved, the question of ethics arises. At a moment when prominent, upwardly mobile African-Americans are experimenting with terms like “post-black,” and outwardly mobile ones peel off at the margins and disappear into the multiracial ether, what happens to that core of black people who cannot or do not want to do either? 
Could this new racial gerrymandering result in that historically stigmatized group’s further stigmatization? Do a million innocuous personal decisions end up having one destructive cumulative effect? 
LAST year, I married a white woman from France; the only thing that shocked people was that she is French. This stands in stark contrast to my parents’ fraught experience less than 10 years after the landmark 1967 case Loving v. Virginia overturned anti-miscegenation laws. It is no longer radical for people like my wife and me to come together. 
According to the Pew report, while 9 percent of white newlyweds in 2010 took nonwhite spouses, some 17 percent of black newlyweds, and nearly one-quarter of black males in particular, married outside the race. Numbers like these have made multiracial Americans the fastest-growing demographic in the country. Exhortations to stick with one’s own, however well intentioned, won’t be able to change that. 
When I think about what my parents endured — the stares, the comments, the little things that really do take a toll — I am grateful for a society in which I may marry whomever I please and that decision is treated as mundane. Still, as I envision rearing my own kids with my blond-haired, blue-eyed wife, I’m afraid that when my future children — who may very well look white — contemplate themselves in the mirror, this same society, for the first time in its history, will encourage them not to recognize their grandfather’s face. 
For this fear and many others, science and sociology are powerless to console me — nor can they delineate a clear line in the sand beyond which identifying as black becomes absurd. 
Whenever I ask myself what blackness means to me, I am struck by the parallels that exist between my predicament and that of many Western Jews, who struggle with questions of assimilation at a time when marrying outside the faith is common. In an essay on being Jewish, Tony Judt observed that “We acknowledge readily enough our duties to our contemporaries; but what of our obligations to those who came before us?” For Judt, it was his debt to the past alone that established his identity. ...
And so I will teach my children that they, too, are black — regardless of what anyone else may say — so long as they remember and wish to be.

This is all very eloquent, but what's left out are two highly relevant facts:

1. Of course he will encourage his children to check the black box: the bennies from affirmative action and being eligible for payoffs in disparate impact discrimination lawsuits are golden. 

2. There's no cost to the black community in terms of lower population numbers to be used in disparate impact lawsuit denominators from people checking both black and something else because the Clinton Administration decided right before the 2000 Census to count everybody who checks black and white as fully black for the purposes of making sure quotas are as big as possible.

In contrast, American Indian tribes get finite benefits -- e.g., one casino, mineral rights to tribal land, and so forth -- so they are constantly kicking out members who fall below the "blood quantum" in order to maximize the payout to the inner circle. But blacks and Hispanics don't do that because there are no theoretical limits on the payouts for being black or Hispanic.

84 comments:

Anonymous said...

When she finished scolding us, an older white woman standing nearby leaned over and whispered sympathetically: “It must be so tough adopting those kids from the ghetto.”

This never happened.

Extropico said...

This man speaks of the draw of affirmative racism for nonwhites and "hispanic" whites. Only eliminating this law will terminate the Democrat advantage among the groups eligible for it.

I bet a large part of this gentleman's real angst is his unease with his own rejection of his black half. He chose a white wife... for the usual reasons that black men have for preferring lighter skinned females. It angers the hell out of him and he whines about perceived racism from whites as a reverse projection of his guilty preference for whites.

R. Shackleford said...

I am a mixture of various European ethnicities. It was natural for me to look at each one and decide that I'd rather associate with the ethnicity that had the highest achievement. I always lamented I did not have any German in me since I hold those folks in high esteem.

What I don't understand about people today is that they all seem to want to identify with the lower achieving part of their heritage. For example, if you see a person like this author, he promotes his black heritage. No disrespect intended, but if you have a choice between the glories of France versus sub-Sahara Africa, don't you want to claim the higher achieving portion? The same can be said of those with meso American and European heritage.

I even am seeing this now among Europeans. For example, I know someone who is part English with ancestors who fought in the Revolution. And they are part Greek. They totally associate with the Greek part even though Greece has been a loser for at least a millennium. In fact I have tried to convince this guy that he could join the Sons of the American Revolution, yet he seems to be uninterested. But he gets all excited about anything to do with Greece.

Shoot, I'd love to be able to claim an ancestor from the Revolution. You'd think in every nation, everyone would love to be associated with their nation's Founders. Oh well, forty plus years of Cultural Marxism have had their effect.

DaveinHackensack said...

"But blacks and Hispanics don't do that because there are no theoretical limits on the payouts for being black or Hispanic."

Perhaps, but in reality there are only so many spots in Harvard or Stanford's freshmen class (or in Y Combinator, for that matter, when it gets forced to embrace diversity), and if this writer's 3/4ths white kid gets one of those spots, that's one less for a black kid whose ancestry is mostly black.

Anonymous said...

Despite the tremendous societal progress these recent changes in attitude reveal in a country that enslaved its black inhabitants until 1865, and kept them formally segregated and denied them basic civil rights until 1964, we do not yet live in an America that fully embodies its founding ideals of social and political justice.



I foolishly thought that he would then explain what an America which fully embodies its founding ideals of social and political justice would like like. But it was not to be.

I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters said...

Yeah, so now we hit South Africa's problem; when you distinguish by race, what do you do when it isn't clean? Some Philippinos I know wanted to go to school there, and the school administration didn't know how to sort them for school. They weren't white, but they weren't colored, black, or Indian either. So, white it was. They did average to very well so, it was fine. Some of the whites there sported African style hair, too, as was uncommon but happened. So in the margins, race /is/ a social construct.

Maybe whites should start checking 'black', and ask the govt. to prove them wrong. Use its weakness to pull the whole thing down. (Would they look at your parents' races, perhaps? How would they know they didn't have a little black blood and were trying to 'pass'? I can't imagine them doing tests.)

Anonymous said...

Whenever I ask myself what blackness means to me, I am struck by the parallels that exist between my predicament and that of many Western Jews, who struggle with questions of assimilation at a time when marrying outside the faith is common. In an essay on being Jewish, Tony Judt observed that “We acknowledge readily enough our duties to our contemporaries; but what of our obligations to those who came before us?” For Judt, it was his debt to the past alone that established his identity.




This is hardly a new observation, but still one which needs to be made: The "identity" which is so good and necessary a thing if you are black or Jewish is for some mysterious reason a hideous evil monstrosity if you are German or English or white.

I'm not saying that I expect people like Williams and Judt to be completely swayed by this observation, but it strikes me that sooner of later, they do at least have to acknowledge it and try to come to some accommodation with it.

Anonymous said...

Is there a black backlash against mixed-raced persons? Check out this same author getting excoriated in the comments section of The Root:

http://www.theroot.com/views/passing-black

A lot of the anger might be black women seeing 1/4 of their men marrying outside the race, but there also seems to be a "race traitor" undercurrent.

Lara said...

R. Shackleford,
Excellent point. I had ancestors who were here at the time of the American Revolution. For a long time I didn't tell people because it seemed nerdy and somewhat racist. After reading on these sites, I've come to be proud of it again.

call me incredulous said...

"A lot of the anger might be black women seeing 1/4 of their men marrying outside the race, but there also seems to be a "race traitor" undercurrent"

I'm sorry, but I'm going to need a bit more convincing on that one. ONE IN FOUR? No way. Even considering that we're not always talking "marriage" strictly speaking. Maybe he means black men in his neighborhood.

Noah172 said...

The guy in the photography looks Arab to me -- Levantine perhaps.

Always with these mulattoes-who-don't-look-black (e.g. Jeremiah Wright), you get this overcompensating clinging to their "black" identity, often rather contrived.

If he just looked a little more visibly African, maybe he could feel comfortable with his white side.

This mixed-ethnicity insecurity is not limited to mulattoes, BTW. For example, the leader of the Irish republican movement was Eamon de Valera, who I suppose needed to prove that he was a real Paddy.

Nanonymous said...

Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black — and interracial couples share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children

Wow. "Moral obligaion"! The morality is a bit one-sides though. NYT would never, ever, publish something like "interracial couples share a moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of white heritage and racial identity".

pinky said...

"How would they know they didn't have a little black blood and were trying to 'pass'? I can't imagine them doing tests.)"



I found out a while ago my father's parents were both mixed. Their families were called "mulatto" until the 1900 census when the only categories, with few exceptions, were black and white. I think the absurdity of white people identifying as "black" drove a lot of people out of that culture, despite their strong roots. One of their ancestors was a Connecticut Yankee who had a realtionship with a "mulatto." I found out this Yankee was descended from early colonial families and was related to a number of illuminaries such as Aaron Burr and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Hmmm. HBS? Maybe that's why... but I digress.
When I found all this out, my opinion of blacks changed not one whit. As before, I like some, remain wary of most due to boundless experience in my part of the world.
I felt absoltuely no sudden connection with them. Nada. Facts are facts. I did have a DNA test and it showed 99% European and 1% American Indian (!?) No African. And yes, I do look like my dad and his family. So DNa tests don't necessrily tell all. Maybe it just breeds out genetically. I have extremely blue eyes (from my mom, but dad had bluish eyes too) and my various neices and nephews are as blond as can be. If 1/4 of black men are actually "marrying" out, I'd say the race problem may be on its way to being solved. But I doubt that's the case. In the DC area I see thousands upon thousands of blacks (and whites) and by and large, they are not inter-marrying or inter-breeding. Sure, you see some regularly. I have at least 2 white woman/brown child sightings at my local Trader Joe's a month, but it's not going to change the mixed demographics anytime soon. I think this guy may be over-projecting onto the rest of the world, his own situation and paranoia. White people do not make race-obvious observations, in hearing or in public. It's illegal these days.

A-Nonnamissy said...

Anonymous 3/16/12, 4:27, it did so happen.

And Tiger Woods was tied to a tree when he was 5 while being called "Cablanasian."

****

Extropico: I suspect his real angst arises from the fact that he hates being part black and wants to breed it out.

Anonymous said...

I don't think it's "eloquent" at all, just self-absorbed.

Anonymous said...

"What I don't understand about people today is that they all seem to want to identify with the lower achieving part of their heritage."

They do this only because the elites of the society in which they live gives faux praise for that "lower achieving part of their heritage" and because the society in which they live gives freebies for that "lower achieving part" and because the society in which they live no longer has the guts to say, "Wow, that part of your ancestry is a piece of crap. Lucky you turned out okay."

Maya said...

"I bet a large part of this gentleman's real angst is his unease with his own rejection of his black half. He chose a white wife..."

Not only did he marry a white woman, but a blue eyed blonde at that... And so did his father. As far as I read, white men show no clear preference when it comes to eye/hair color in women. Do black men?

Truth said...

"This never happened."

Really? share with us what YOU HEARD that day.

Truth said...

"Always with these mulattoes-who-don't-look-black (e.g. Jeremiah Wright), you get this overcompensating clinging to their "black" identity, often rather contrived."

So you wouldn't mind him marrying YOUR daughter?

Hail said...

NY Times published:
"Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black"

Notice how matter-of-factly he says this. It's beyond the possibility of reasonable dispute to him.

Anyone with an 'out', out of the evil world of whiteness, must take it.

Reminiscent, almost, of the part-Black but White-looking actor Wentworth Miller's attitude toward Race.

Maya said...

"Always with these mulattoes-who-don't-look-black (e.g. Jeremiah Wright), you get this overcompensating clinging to their "black" identity, often rather contrived."

Of course! The kid in my class who keeps grumbling about not liking white people is the lightest one of his peers with reddish hair and hazel eyes.

Also, the youngest one in our family who was actually born in America and has trouble reading/writing in our language of origin is the only one of us who joined the ethnic club in high school, chose to represent our country of origin in Model UN and volunteered to carry the flag of our country of origin at graduation last year.

AMac said...

Thomas Chatterton's article appears to be another Sailer-inspired parody, ripped from the pages of The Onion.

I could count the ways, but so can most other readers. Vibrantly good fun!

Iberian said...

Noah172 - The guy is not mulato. Mulato is someone 50/50 white and black. He is, at least, 70% caucasian. If you want use Portuguese words, call him mestiço (mixed). And he not "look" Arab/Levantine; Sadam Hussein or Baschar al Assad "look" Arab. He looks like some Arabs(and Americans)with 20% or 30% of Negro genes...

Anonymous said...

What I don't understand about people today is that they all seem to want to identify with the lower achieving part of their heritage.

”As a rule, hybrids do not represent the form exactly intermediate between the parental strains…Those traits that pass into hybrid association entirely or almost entirely unchanged, thus themselves representing the traits of the hybrid, are termed dominating, and those that become latent in the association, recessive.”

- Gregor Mendel (1865)

“If two beavers working on the same dam have different genes for dam height, the resulting extended phenotype will reflect the interaction between genes, in the same way as bodies reflect the gene interactions. There could be extended genetic analogues of epistasis, of modifier genes, even of dominance and recessiveness.”

- Richard Dawkins (1982)

pinky said...

"The guy is not mulato. Mulato is someone 50/50 white and black. He is, at least, 70% caucasian. If you want use Portuguese words, call him mestiço (mixed). And he not "look" Arab/Levantine; Sadam Hussein or Baschar al Assad "look" Arab. He looks like some Arabs(and Americans)with 20% or 30% of Negro genes...:"

Agreed, technically. But prior to the 20th century, all persons known to be of mixed ancestry (usually 50% or less) were called "mulattos" in American society, prior to the 20th century. It was a legal term, and used on censuses. Mulattos were sometimes termed light mulattos, or dark mulattos. Those who passed for white were "passe blancs." They did not consider mulatto a term of derision--they were proud of it. One quarter black persons were "quadroons" and one eighth, "octoroons." Less than 1/8 black and you were legally white, in the ante-bellum era. I am specifically speaking of the French/Spanish/English/American creole society of the southern United States, but the terms were known and used throughout the country.

Anonymous said...

Noah172 - The guy is not mulato. Mulato is someone 50/50 white and black. He is, at least, 70% caucasian. If you want use Portuguese words, call him mestiço (mixed). And he not "look" Arab/Levantine; Sadam Hussein or Baschar al Assad "look" Arab. He looks like some Arabs(and Americans)with 20% or 30% of Negro genes...

Quadroon is the term you are seeking.

Chicago said...

Don't these types of folks ever get tired of talking and writing about themselves? It's just some endless me me me narrative 24/7. He acts as if it were some agonizing decision to go for the white woman but, trooper that he is, he went ahead with it. If he was really so worried about about his future children he'd have gone for a black woman, thus removing any identity problems they might have. He wants a medal for his mental anguish and suffering from the white readership for doing what he probably wanted to do all along. You know this is pitched to the whites; I think most blacks would just dismiss him as one more fast talker hiding behind a smokescreen of words to justify going white.

Rev. Right said...

Let's not forget our mixed race President, who was raised completely by the white side of his family yet consciously cultivated a black identity to facilitate a political career.

When given the choice to (correctly) indicate his mixed heritage on his 2010 census form, he checked "Black" instead.

Matthew said...

"As far as I read, white men show no clear preference when it comes to eye/hair color in women."

One recent study actually found that it was women who are most likely to be picky about race(preferring their own), not men. Women are the limiting factor in mixed-race relationships.

I only dated a black girl once when I was single. She had a white mother and fairly light skin for a Halfrican, but of course she identified as black and had no use for the white half of her identity. That was one thing that turned me off of black women.

Matthew said...

The "identity" which is so good and necessary a thing if you are black or Jewish is for some mysterious reason a hideous evil monstrosity if you are German or English or white.

Not really. People proudly proclaim their Italian-ness or Irishness or even Scottishness all the time. It's "whiteness" that
isn't allowed. You might try clinging to your European-ness, but with ~70% of the people around you sharing same, no one would care. Group cohesion only really works well when your group is a minority.

The problem with German- or English or Scottish-Americans is that most of our ancestors came here so distantly that we have no family memory of the old country. You either have to do your genealogy, or else make a best guess based on the surnames of your grandparents or great-grandparents.

Anonymous said...

"Scholars have long maintained that race is merely a social construct".

Any 'scholar' who really and seriously 'maintains' that position isn't a scholar at all - in fact he isn't fit to shovel sh*t.

Anonymous said...

The whole lunancy of this article can be summed up thus:

Supposing a regular white guy, of pure European ancestry, 'self-identifies' as black, because genuinely or no he strongly feels he belongs to the 'social construct' of 'being black'.

Do you think for one moment, that he will be eligible for affirmative action?

Anonymous said...

As, I've long argued, basically America has developed a caste system for itself, nanlogous to India's, which is maintained by secular religion ie PC rather than Hinduism.
It has hints of old European feudalism as well, as fiefdoms and priveleges are issued on account of ancestry.
At the top of the pyramid are blacks, at the bottom white males.

Hail said...

Rev. Right wrote:
"Let's not forget our mixed race President, who was raised completely by the white side"

Fear not, for he has taken the ethical position on Whiteness and has thus delivered us from Evil. For his is the nation, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Anonymous said...

@call me incredulous

Here in Britain, it's half of all Afro-Caribbeans.

Silver said...

I bet a large part of this gentleman's real angst is his unease with his own rejection of his black half. He chose a white wife... for the usual reasons that black men have for preferring lighter skinned females. It angers the hell out of him and he whines about perceived racism from whites as a reverse projection of his guilty preference for whites

I agree. The last thing in the world self-deceivers like this want is to be perceived as black.

I mean, lol, who the hell does he think he's kidding? He's so strongly self-identified as black that... he chooses a white wife. But hey, loopy white liberals lap this sort of thing up, so desperate are they to believe that a mass multiracial society (with the consequent ever dwindling proportion of whites, eventually becoming near-zero) is an improvement on a mass monoracial society.

Of course, what really drives the self-deception of people like this is anti-whitism. It's a combination of intense anti-white animosity ("people stared at me, boo hoo hoo") and a total inability to acknowledge that whites are people too, with their own group concerns and rights. That's why they're not concerned about the endless contradictions they subscribe to: being anti-white trumps all logic and reason (and, I would add, even basic human fairness).

Silver said...

Steve, maybe pro-black affirmative action is the reason the NYT prints this opinion, but you can bet it's not the reason why the upwardly mobile post-black but still real black man with a white wife penned it.

alexis said...

One quarter black persons were "quadroons" and one eighth, "octoroons." Less than 1/8 black and you were legally white, in the ante-bellum era. I am specifically speaking of the French/Spanish/English/American creole society of the southern United States, but the terms were known and used throughout the country.

My grandfather and his friends used these terms occasionally. I guess the 80's was the the last time I heard them used.

Hail said...

"As, I've long argued, basically America has developed a caste system"

Paul Craig Roberts introduced that concept to the public in an essay 10 years ago: "The New Feudalism".

Anonymous said...

Anon who posted Vitalstat list here. The first set lists the top 50 counties with the highest fraction of babies born with black fathers out of all babies born to (non-hispanic) white mothers (in 2009). Clayton county which had the highest incident of mulatto births is around 52% black and in the Atlanta metro area.


The following table lists the counties with the highest half-white, half-Asian births.


Hawaii County,HI 0.256684492
Hawaii counties <100,000 population 0.2564102564
Honolulu County,HI 0.2554811206
Hawaii 0.2547250859
Maui County,HI 0.2478336222
Robeson County,NC 0.155234657
Santa Clara County,CA 0.1500426257
San Mateo County,CA 0.1400966184
San Francisco County,CA 0.1361809045
Alameda County,CA 0.1272797827
Alaska counties <100,000 population 0.1182377713
Alaska 0.1177697705
Anchorage Borough,AK 0.1171088747
Oklahoma counties <100,000 population 0.1152102745
Contra Costa County,CA 0.0917830167
Oklahoma 0.0911937782
Los Angeles County,CA 0.0867091672
Solano County,CA 0.0854392298
Tulsa County,OK 0.0831260365
Orange County,CA 0.0819685829
New York County,NY 0.0774241121
King County,WA 0.0773358586
Coconino County,AZ 0.0768321513
Monterey County,CA 0.0741646292
Yolo County,CA 0.0737527115
San Diego County,CA 0.0737035525
California 0.0715811966
Clark County,NV 0.07045053
Arlington County,VA 0.0696696697
Montgomery County,MD 0.0672340426
Fairfax County,VA 0.066164942
Terrebonne Parish,LA 0.0658873539
Hudson County,NJ 0.0633213859
Cleveland County,OK 0.0628401781
Nevada 0.0605551497
Howard County,MD 0.0602572783
Humboldt County,CA 0.0596562184
Sacramento County,CA 0.0591929449
District of Columbia 0.0579710145
District of Columbia 0.0579710145
Comanche County,OK 0.0574948665
Alexandria city,VA 0.0568535826
Ventura County,CA 0.0568079351
San Juan County,NM 0.056384743
Kitsap County,WA 0.055972014
Washington County,OR 0.0555296314
Santa Barbara County,CA 0.0530152419
Marin County,CA 0.0517584605
Loudoun County,VA 0.0513661202
Pierce County,WA 0.0505824647
Queens County,NY 0.0499136713

pinky said...

Pinky, in some parts of the country, a full quarter of all babies born to white women are half-black.

In some parts of the country. In massive parts of the country, it's not happening. I used to think it was, or soon would be happening throughout the land. But no. In my very mixed place of work (or school, or recreation, or shopping, doesn't really matter) blacks and whites may be congenial enough, but they self-segregate. They communicate and relate to their own group better. As sailer himself has noted, the greater number of Hispanics in this country has resulted in fewer, not more, hispanic/white marriages. The more blacks around, the fewer of them mix with whites. It's a general rule.
They've been promoting this mixedrace society for decades now, and quite frankly, I don't see much difference. There were always mixed race people around. I went to Catholic schools, and they were there. It MAY result in a few more whites marrying or breeding with mixed race people. But not enough to make it all blur into quadroon heaven.
Most of the mixed-race marriages whites engage in are Asian or some sort of hispanic. As far as men being indifferent to race--I think not. Their esthetic preferences are such that whatever race they are attracted to, the woman must have certain charactertistics. Unless the guy is desperate I guess. They just don't call those characteristics "race" anymore. Also, there's a difference between getting laid and getting married. White Americans don't always differentiate this in their minds, but various others (middle easterners and Indians especially) do so in spades. Men have always had the luxury of cohabitating with whomever. Among Arabs, a woman would NEVER be married to non-Arab, defniitely not a black. But Arab men could take non-Arab wives if they wanted. In the old South, white men could cohabit with blacks. No great problem. But unless he was in an area where the white women were demanding European-born husbands (white creoles) they didn't set up house too often. And when they did over a long period of time, the "black" women were only partly black, generally. So call it "race" or call it something less conscious, men do exert "choice." Indeed, they were the ones with almost the choice until quite recently, and race did not disappear.

Gene Berman said...

Anonymous:

"I did not realize that a quarter"

That triggered my curiosity, as well. But, almost immediately, a slightly different interpretation was suggested that I think makes more sense: that, of black men who marry, a quarter marry "outside."

Statistics of this sort are rendered less meaningful (toward any understanding of reality, which is what statistics are meant to convey) by the common acceptance of self=description in any of the various collections of data which include race. For each self- expression of race, a different motive may be operable (and it is equally obvious that only the full elimination of legally-sanctioned advantages shall have any chance of restoring even a semblance of sanity).

JSM said...

"Maybe that’s why we live now in a culture in which many of us would prefer to break clean from what we perceive as the racist logic of previous eras — specifically the idea that the purity and value of whiteness can be tainted by even “one drop” of black blood. And yet, however offensive those one-drop policies may appear today, that offensiveness alone doesn’t strip the reasoning behind them of all descriptive truth.
And yet, however offensive those one-drop policies may appear today,"

That this person feels that us ackowledging the fact of his one drop (or more) is offensive, is proof that this person feels deep in his OWN heart that pure Whiteness is the valuable thing.

Gene Berman said...

Anonymous:

"Despite...keeping them formally segregated and denied civil rights until 1964."

Bullshit. Of course, it's only partially bullshit (but when you mix shit with other stuff, what you wind up with might as well be shit)

Formal segregation and denial of civil rights were, by and large, existed only in the states of the former Confederacy. And, though the preponderancy of the black population of the time lived within that area,
they were not prevented from migrating for better political and social conditions (and many did just that).

And, though the civil right to vote for representation of which you approve is very important, actually voting is "not so important," as evinced by turnout (whether black or white). And, though you (and many others, including me) find the burden (of segregation and the denial of civil rights) intolerable, it's an undeniable "fact on the ground" that large numbers of blacks resident in the South preferred those circumstances, at least to the extent of not "voting with their feet."

Anonymous said...

Not really. People proudly proclaim their Italian-ness or Irishness or even Scottishness all the time. It's "whiteness" that
isn't allowed.



Even assuming that's true (and it's not) so what? Whiteness is in fact directly analogous to blackness.


The problem with German- or English or Scottish-Americans is that most of our ancestors came here so distantly that we have no family memory of the old country.


And how much memory of the "old country" do African-American possess? For that matter, how much memory of the "old country" do American Jews possess?


Group cohesion only really works well when your group is a minority.


That's a very American thing to say, but it's also complete and utter nonsense. If what you say were correct then nationalism would be an impossibility. The Japanese, for instance, could not have any group cohesion because they are not in the minority in Japan. You're been marinating in left-wing claptrap all your life and have absorbed some of it without even knowing it.

Matthew said...

"Pinky, in some parts of the country, a full quarter of all babies born to white women are half-black.

"Clayton County,GA 0.1489361702
Prince George,MD 0.1123218776
Charles County,MD 0.0992268041
Richmond County,GA 0.0767097967
Etc...."

Forgive, but what does that mean? Does the number for Clayton County mean that 14.89% of the children of white women have black fathers, or that 14.89% of the kids in that county are mixed race, or what, exactly?

Clayton County is 260,000 people and only 38% white. Even if 25% of the white women there are having kids with black men, it doesn't necessarily signify a larger trend. Given its location (Metro Atlanta) and its high % of blacks, most of the whites who remain there are probably very poor indeed.

Deckin said...

It's not 25% of all black males who marry outside their race. Good God, 25% of black males never marry at all, let alone outside their race. It's 25% of those black males who marry. That's not a whole lot of intermarriage, but given the facts listed by anon above, 25% outbreeding among black males may be correct.

Anonymous said...

"I did not realize a quarter of black men married outside their race. Is that a expression that they are ashamed of who they are?"


Operative word here is "marry".

Generally black men don't marry.

Women want marriage more than men.

They will marry beneath them to get the higher status of wife instead of girlfriend or ex girlfriend.

Men will marry if they can get a higher status woman aka beautiful, aka as white as possible.

Doug1 said...

Scholars have long maintained that race is merely a social construct, not something fixed into our nature, yet this insight hasn’t made it any less of a factor in our lives. If we no longer participate in a society in which the presence of black blood renders a person black, then racial self-identification becomes a matter of individual will.

He mentions with approval and agreement that scholars maintain that race is merely a social concept, and then in the next breath refers to the presence of some amounts of black blood as a matter of not socially plastic (scientific) fact. Black blood of course refers to black ancestry, which can be and all the time is measured by genetic methods.

Typical left liberal doublethink and doubletalk.

No race is not primarily a social construct, but the one drop rule is. Just where the racial boundaries are is often considerably a social construct, but there’s nearly always a strong underlying biological reality to it as well.

SFG said...

"Quadroon is the term you are seeking."

You guys are missing out on all the great politically incorrect Latin American terms for the various mixes!

We all know
White+Indian=Mestizo
White+Black=Mulatto

But how about
Indian+Black=Zambo
White+Mestizo=Castizo
White+Mulatto=Morisco
Indian+Mulatto=Chino
Indian+Mestizo=Cholo
Black+Zambo=Zambo Prieto
White+Morisco=Albino


This dude sounds like he'd be a Morisco (Moor): 3/4 white, 1/4 black.

Anonymous said...

Half of all children not growing up with both biological parents is romantic.

Hail said...

"The following table lists the counties with the highest half-white, half-Asian births."

Hawaii Births, 2008...
...in Total
19,484: Total
17,382: Race of Father Recorded
2,967: One parent White, one Asian/PI [17.1%]

...to an Asian/PI Mother
12,917: Total
11,644: Race of Father Recorded
1,705: White Father [14.6%]

...to an White Mother
5,874: Total
5,163: Race of Father Recorded
1,262: Asian/PI Father [24.4%]

What explains why Asian and ethnic-Hawaiian men ("Pacific Islanders") would be so relatively successful with White women out there? To what extent does this reflect East-Asian male romantic success with White women, and to what extent are the numbers inflated by loads of ethnic-Hawaiian 'Pacific Islanders', I don't know.

The share of babies who had two White parents in Hawaii was only 21.3% in 2008. The share of mixed White-Asian/PI babies was 17.1%. One wonders when the crossover will be, i.e. in which year there will be more Asian-White newborns than White-White newborns.

(All data from the CDC).

Anonymous said...

That this person feels that us ackowledging the fact of his one drop (or more) is offensive, is proof that this person feels deep in his OWN heart that pure Whiteness is the valuable thing.

If that were the case, wouldn't he try to "pass", like people like him might have in the past? He said he's married and has kids with a white woman - his kids probably look very white, but presumably he tells them they're black and all that. Wouldn't he also have his kids "pass"?

Beecher Asbury said...

Gene Berman said, "Formal segregation and denial of civil rights were, by and large, existed only in the states of the former Confederacy."

Brown versus the Board of Education occurred in Kansas, not only a Union State, but one which prided itself with the moniker 'Free State' as it engaged in pre Civil War skirmishes with Missourians. You'd think if any state were good to blacks, it would have been Kansas.

Anonymous said...

Pinky said...

The more blacks around, the fewer of them mix with whites

But most of the racemixing is taking place in the South, i.e. the part of the country with the most blacks.

Anonymous said...

If what you say were correct then nationalism would be an impossibility. The Japanese, for instance, could not have any group cohesion because they are not in the minority in Japan. You're been marinating in left-wing claptrap all your life and have absorbed some of it without even knowing it.

Before nationalism, regional and local identities were more prominent and there were conflicts among them. Central governments, including in Japan (see the Meiji Restoration and period), broke down more regional/local identities and cultivated larger national ones, partly to compete against large political units and engage in empire.

Anonymous said...

His children will not look black. Black men seem to want to breed themselves out of existence.

jody said...

"Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black — and interracial couples share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look."

this is preposterous.

Hail said...

"One wonder when the crossover point will be"

Hawaii is, of course, very unusual.

While 3,000 mixed White-Asian/PI babies were born in Hawaii in 2008 (17% of Hawaii's births), in the rest of the USA only ~73,000 such babies were born. (This is counting all 'Asian'/PI new parents, a clumsy racial categorization, and also includes White Hispanics). Most of these mixed babies -- approaching two-thirds -- had White fathers.

In total, 4.23 million babies were born in 2008 in the other 49 states. The CDC has records on the race of the father for 3.42 million of these.

Thus, among babies for whom parental race data is available, the share of White-Asian young children in the USA is 2.1% (.073/3.42). The true share is probably under 2.0%, factoring in the 'unknowns' -- I'd think it relatively more uncommon for the race of the father to be unknown in White-Asian pairings.

The 'mainland' USA will not become Hawaii anytime soon.

pinky said...

Pinky, in some parts of the country, a full quarter of all babies born to white women are half-black.

"Clayton County,GA 0.1489361702
Prince George,MD 0.1123218776
Charles County,MD 0.0992268041
Richmond County,GA 0.0767097967
Etc...."

Ok. I Live right next door to PG County, Maryland. I am not sure of the white/black percentages, but in the last 30 yrs it has become majority black (and of course, problematic and more crime prone; it is the suburb where many blacks employed in the government live and where the Univ. of Maryland is located.) There is an element of well-off whites. There are a few all white neighborhoods where I looked at a house for rent. They are not mixing. There is NO WAY that 1/4 of all white females left are having black babies. What may be happening is that there are more white/hispanic alliances since hispanics are becoming a dominant element in and around PG county.
While I respect statistics, there is something deeply bogus trying to get people to believe that 1/4 of all black men (who don't often marry anyway) are engaged in long-term relationships with whites who also produce children with them. FCOL, 5% of the population, black men, commit 50% of the murders in this country. A huge portion of them are in the criminal justice system. The large minority who are not, are being scarfed up by whites? Or are the whites less picky and waiting for the jailbirds to return so they can celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary someday? As one justice of the peace who refused to marry a mixed couple noticed: there are very few older mixed couples. They come together because of fetish usually, and once lust has been satiated, have little in common. True perhaps of many, but of this duo, especially true. The IQ averages a whole standard deviation lower than whites, and IQ is the strongest single factor in friendships and marriages; and it is a factor of which the possessors are largely ignorant or indifferent. Yet it still obtains.
I'm sorry. 1/4 black men are not "breeding out." Even where I have worked, the educated, smart black guys--a lot of them in lower level IT positions--are usually married to black women much like themselves. Not to whites.
So if the "stats" are so misleading about an area whose demographic I see on a daily basis, then what am I to think of others about which I know nothing directly?
There has always been race mixing. White men, like men of all races, would "do it" with whoever was willing and reasonably age-appropriate with few repercussions. Yet despite this easy access, no more than 10% of the blacks in the Gulf region, c. early 1800s, had mulatto children. They seemed num erous because they stand out and because they bred among themselves. The mulatto class were carried on mostly by mixed people marrying mixed people. The ones who turned out extremely white, tended to go white, probably because that is what they mostly were genetically.
I can't believe in the one-drop rule. I have personal experience and it makes no sense, physically or mentally. OTOH, blacks who really look to have significant black "blood" do share traits of looks, communication-style, intelligence level, interests, etc. Of course they will continue to seek each other out.

pinky said...

"The more blacks around, the fewer of them mix with whites

But most of the racemixing is taking place in the South, i.e. the part of the country with the most blacks."

All those white Southerners are now rabid race mixers when their pappies were shooting down the "freedom riders?" Really? Too many Mandingo paperbacks being read.

Actually the higher PERCENTAGES of mixed marriages (and I mean marriages) occur among blacks from the upper mid-west in areas with very few blacks. Obviously I don't mean Detroit or Madison, Wis. I met a very intelligent professor type of black (gay guy) from that area. He said the blacks there had been there a long time and were known for their professional attainments. The area didn't have many blacks. Whites intermarried with them probably because so many were no different than whites in all but looks. Girls from these areas are known for this. Kind of like Scandinavians. They just don't "get" blacks, or the race thing. Their naivitee is jaw dropping. As long as they stay where they are they do ok, but when they move to some black-majority metropolis, it can get weird for them.
As far as the South, I'm familiar with it; have connections in the Big Easy Race Center, aka New Oreleans. The black portion of New Orleans, introduced to us during Katrina, is not mixing much. Mostly the whites are trying to figure out how to avoid them after dark, not hook up with them.
Look. If one black in four were really willing to live happily ever after with a white person, we'd have no race issues. It just isn't happening. Not now and not in the foreseeable future. What's more, I see little salvation in the mixed race children when they are bullied into being black. It just fortifies the black race with white genese and gives nothing to the whites, not even full acknowledgement. To wit: Obama, and his My Daddy/My Black-Self book.

Anonymous said...

"For this reason and others, the N.A.A.C.P. and some black members of Congress have expressed concern that African-Americans are at risk of being undercounted as blacks compete more than ever with other minorities and immigrants for limited resources and influence."

Just the way the democrats want it.

Anonymous said...

"Not only did he marry a white woman, but a blue eyed blonde at that... And so did his father. As far as I read, white men show no clear preference when it comes to eye/hair color in women. Do black men?"

Maya here is an interesting post by abagond that is semi-related. His assumption, that facial features are overall more important to whites than skin tone/eyes/hair seem to back up what you see. Those are probably more indicative of the suite of recessive traits that we have.

http://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/black-women-that-white-men-like/

Anonymous said...

One quarter black persons were "quadroons" and one eighth, "octoroons." Less than 1/8 black and you were legally white, in the ante-bellum era. I am specifically speaking of the French/Spanish/English/American creole society of the southern United States, but the terms were known and used throughout the country.

No, the term for 1/16 black was mustee, and there are documented antebellum cases where even that low an admixture was enough to warrant the one-drop rule coming into effect.

corvinus said...

Hawaii Births, 2008...
...in Total
19,484: Total
17,382: Race of Father Recorded
2,967: One parent White, one Asian/PI [17.1%]

...to an Asian/PI Mother
12,917: Total
11,644: Race of Father Recorded
1,705: White Father [14.6%]

...to an White Mother
5,874: Total
5,163: Race of Father Recorded
1,262: Asian/PI Father [24.4%]

What explains why Asian and ethnic-Hawaiian men ("Pacific Islanders") would be so relatively successful with White women out there? To what extent does this reflect East-Asian male romantic success with White women, and to what extent are the numbers inflated by loads of ethnic-Hawaiian 'Pacific Islanders', I don't know.


Hail:
Firstly, U.S.-born Asian men do better with white women than FOB Asian men do. However, they still don't do as well among whites as their sisters do.

Secondly, I don't think you looked at the headcount: WM-AF births numbered 1,705, whereas AM-WF births numbered 1,262. That's the figure you need to look at, not what percentage of white women are having children with Asians. It doesn't tell you what percentage of white men are having children with Asians.

It doesn't matter the overall percentages, but numbers. And clearly, white men still win in Hawaii over Asian men.

Anonymous said...

Pinky, have you ever been to Baltimore?

pinky said...

"One quarter black persons were "quadroons" and one eighth, "octoroons." Less than 1/8 black and you were legally white, in the ante-bellum era. I am specifically speaking of the French/Spanish/English/American creole society of the southern United States, but the terms were known and used throughout the country."

"No, the term for 1/16 black was mustee, and there are documented antebellum cases where even that low an admixture was enough to warrant the one-drop rule coming into effect."

I know the terminology and there were terms for even less and for various admixtures with Indians. There was a legal case of a woman said to be 1/32 who wanted to be considered white, but her case was turned down and this was the 20th century. I've read the ante-bellum laws for the State of Lousiana and other Gulf area states, and documentation for them, though admittedly I could not site the source right now. This is, however, pretty mainstream history if you've read books on the subject. I have also wondered how this played out in society and probably any known black ancestry was enough to make you an untouchable to most whites, but not all. Even in the 20th century, "negros" did have a lot of legal restrictions, and being legally white was a bonus. The "one drop" is well known to have become the rule after the Civil War. Most passe blanc mulattos chose to remain in that status for family and cultural reasons. Many owned land and property bequeated by white ancestors. Once the 20th century began and these reasons receded in relevance, they left the black race with no regrets that I've ever heard of.

pinky said...

Anonymous said...
"Pinky, have you ever been to Baltimore?"


Knew someone intimately who lived there for years. Don't get me started on that place.
If you want a really ludicrous stat, tell them 1/4 of Baltimore blacks are marrying whites.

Anonymous said...

So the chicken has finally come home to roost? You whites were the ones who came up with the "One Drop Rule". Do not forget it and quit complaining about it so much. You are behaving "niggardly", lol.

Too Tall Jones said...

Sailer says:

This is all very eloquent, but what's left out are two highly relevant facts:
1. Of course he will encourage his children to check the black box: the bennies from affirmative action and being eligible for payoffs in disparate impact discrimination lawsuits are golden.


Sailer's statement is all very wrong of course. Sailer has no idea that the man will "encourage" his children to check the black box. In fact to the contrary he has strong incentives to check them as white, since the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women.


2. There's no cost to the black community in terms of lower population numbers to be used in disparate impact lawsuit denominators from people checking both black and something else because the Clinton Administration decided right before the 2000 Census to count everybody who checks black and white as fully black for the purposes of making sure quotas are as big as possible.
Actually Sailer once again is out of touch with the realities of the workplace and research in the field. "Affirmative Action" quotas never were, and are not a significant factor in black economic and social progress as Sowell (1983, 2004, 2005) convincingly demonstrates. The main beneficiaries of AA are white women as studies such as Bose and Spitze (1987- Ingredients for women;s employment policy), and Jacobsen (2007 The economics of gender) show, and the sharp pen of conservative female writer Camile Paglia show. Notions about an alleged wave of AA quotas dominating the workplace are fantastically bogus.


Extropico says:
I bet a large part of this gentleman's real angst is his unease with his own rejection of his black half.
No, actually he makes it plain what his angst is - idiotic white people.

I did not realize a quarter of black men married outside their race. Is that a expression that they are ashamed of who they are?
Actually this statement is wrong. 25% of black men do NOT marry outside their race


The "identity" which is so good and necessary a thing if you are black or Jewish is for some mysterious reason a hideous evil monstrosity if you are German or English or white.
^^Dubious. There is no shortage of "identity" nor is it a "hideous evil" if you are German, English or white. In fact, said white groups are doing relatively well socially and economically, and mainstream Americanism is quite strongly identified with such white groups. The situation is hardly the vale of tears some make out. If this be "suffering", hell, blacks and Hisanics need a lot more of such "oppression."


Lara said: Excellent point. I had ancestors who were here at the time of the American Revolution. For a long time I didn't tell people because it seemed nerdy and somewhat racist.
^^Having an ancestor from the American Revo was hardly ever considered racist. It is the ACTIONS of CERTAIN white descendants of such people that have been called into question as racist, such as excluding the superb opera singer Marian ANderson from singing at COnstutution Hall because she was black. Critics cite Anderson as one of the richest contralto voices of the 20th century, but that didn't mean anything. All that counted to the white "blue bloods" - supposed paragons of "merit - was that she was black.

Too Tall Jones said...

Anon:
White people do not make race-obvious observations, in hearing or in public. It's illegal these days.
Actually they do, only in coded language, and it is not "illegal" at all to make "race" observations in public or wherever. And of course on the NEt, speech is wide open.

Anon:
"What I don't understand about people today is that they all seem to want to identify with the lower achieving part of their heritage."
Dubious. They "all" do not want to identify with being black. In fact many will tell you that white racism or insensitivity forced them to do such. They also have such problems from the other side as well. As for low achievers, there are plenty such among whites who are rather dismal "role models" for anything. See for example Sowell's data on white Irish or white southerners, and Charles Murray's recent data on white decline in his "Coming Apart." Putative white "role models" are unimpressive on numerous fronts.

Anon says:
They do this only because the elites of the society in which they live gives faux praise for that "lower achieving part of their heritage" and because the society in which they live gives freebies for that "lower achieving part"

Actually "society" gives plenty of praise (and sometimes cash) to low acheving parts of white society, from white beer-guzzling slackers, to corrupt union feather-bedders. As for freebies, white society hands out plenty to white low achievers- from the higher proportionate percentages paid to white welfare recipients in states with high white welfare populations, to low-academic ranking white union teachers - raking in a comfortable suite of cash and benefits while delivering mediocre "education." These white slackers get paid even while they are not working, as New York's comfortable "rubber rooms" for white teachers demonstrate.


"Scholars have long maintained that race is merely a social construct".
Reply: Any 'scholar' who really and seriously 'maintains' that position isn't a scholar at all - in fact he isn't fit to shovel sh*t.

^Actually a majority of scholars of evolution and anthropology reject race as a valid biological species or subspecies categorization for human diversity, as statements by the American Assoc of Anthrolopogists and others show. Humans for example are much more similar genetically to one another, compared to other primate species and how they differ. Indeed this is one of the things that makes humans distinctive in the mammalian-primate kingdom. Those who deny such elementary facts are themselves shoveling sheeyit..


The whole lunancy of this article can be summed up thus: Supposing a regular white guy, of pure European ancestry, 'self-identifies' as black, because genuinely or no he strongly feels he belongs to the 'social construct' of 'being black'. Do you think for one moment, that he will be eligible for affirmative action?
Nothing wrong with Sailer critiquing AA, but what you say above is already being done. For one thing, the overwhelming beneficiaries of AA are white women, and white guys who play the Hispanic angle have been profitting for decades. As Sowell 2004 shows, the white Fanjul family from Cuba for example, with a fortune exceeding $500 million - received huge contract set asides for minority businesses. White European businessmen from Portugal received the bulk of the money paid to "minority owned construction firms" between 1986 and 1990 in Washington D.C. White people have been cashing in on the AA gig for decades since it really got rolling in the 1970s. And of course, prior to the 1970s, AA quotas were mostly "white only need apply." Books such Ira Katznelson's "When Affirmative Action Was White" (2005) lay out many of the ugly facts in detail.

Anonymous said...

^Dubious. There is no shortage of "identity" nor is it a "hideous evil" if you are German, English or white. In fact, said white groups are doing relatively well socially and economically, and mainstream Americanism is quite strongly identified with such white groups. The situation is hardly the vale of tears some make out. If this be "suffering", hell, blacks and Hisanics need a lot more of such "oppression."



If you want some of that "oppression", then I suggest that you quit whining about how tough you think blacks and Hispanics have it and try a little hard work. That's the white mans secret.

Anonymous said...

Sailer's statement is all very wrong of course. Sailer has no idea that the man will "encourage" his children to check the black box. In fact to the contrary he has strong incentives to check them as white, since the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women.



That is spectacularly stupid. Of course we have no way of knowing the sex of his children. But even if they are female, he can put down that they are black and female and gain a double advantage.

if you really are upset about white women getting affirmative action, we could all just agree to scrap the whole stupid and unconstitutional idea.

Anonymous said...

2. "Affirmative Action" quotas never were, and are not a significant factor in black economic and social progress as Sowell (1983, 2004, 2005) convincingly demonstrates.


Again, you don't read too well. The 2000 Census was about Congressional seats. Inflating the numbers of "blacks" inflates the number of black Congressional seats. Black social and economic progress had nothing to do with it.

Too Tall Jones said...

Pinky, in some parts of the country, a full quarter of all babies born to white women are half-black.

^^No doubt true in some localized parts, but interracial hookup numbers are still minor overall. LESS than ONE-HALF of one percent of total marriages for example are white-black. Despite all the drama surrounding such unions, in the overall picture, they remain trivial. Even supposedly "liberal" Hollywood subtly discourages IR hookup depictions, conveniently casting black male leads with "Hispanic" actresses for example, or using plot devices to make sure potential on-screen romances do not happen, or portraying such romances with an unpleasant taint of some sort.

It is pretty transparent what they do. Hence in "Jungle Fever" the IR sex is portrayed as uncomfortably as possible- the IR couple gets it on awkwardly on a hard office desk. In Men In Black, white actress Lionda Fiorentino conveniently loses her momory next to Will Smith, nixing any possible interracial romance, and various other standard ploys are used such as killing off white female characters or portraying them as crazy/tainted in some way. The hysteria in some quarters re waves of interracial mixing is dubious, as are claims of evil white liberals leading the charge for "miscegenation." White liberals talk a good game, but even in Hollywood, they are holding the race line. In view of such hypocrisies one recalls Malcolm X's comment- he preferred to deal with a straight up, honest white racist, than a hypocritical white liberal.

Curiously though, a large number of IR unions take place among members of the armed forces, a relatively conservative area politically, compared to trendier liberal venues. Some might argue that the military delivers more of the "real deal" in this case, for those who enter into such IR relationships, that a hypocritical Hollywood, boasting about its enlightenment.

Too Tall Jones said...

Inflating numbers of political seats for a particular constituency is nothing special. All political parties and ethnic groups do it to protect or gain a seat. The white Irish are notorious for such political machinations as are white southerners. It is only when black folk show up for a piece of the action that certain white hypocrisy labels it "wrong."

And the notion that "there there are no theoretical limits on the payouts for being black or Hispanic" is dubious. For one thing, population sizes and locations will always limit black and hispanic gerrymandering, as will competition from white groups for resources. Even a "theoretical" category definition also works the other way. There is no "theoretical" limit on payouts to white people either. And "disparate impact" lawsuits touch on economic and social issues as well, so they do not miraculously disappear from the table. More political seats for example, are themselves an indicator of social progress.

Furthermore, if the Clinton Admin encouraged black-white "dual checkers" to be counted as black- that is noting special either. For one thing, SOCIALLY, dual checkers would for the most part be considered black anyway- under white America's "one drop rule." Secondly, the numbers of such dual checkers are miniscule. They would be primarily children of IR unions which overall are trivial in number. 2011 stats show less than one percent of marriages are interracial marriages. Hispanic -white is the major category, with black-white the smallest. There is no "huge" wave of racial "dual checkers" (cue drums of doom..) that are going to upset body count voting numbers in congressional or other voting districts, because the "dual check" numbers are trivial. Putative "no limit" dual-checking for racially mixed people means little given the minor numbers involved.

pov said...

The situation is hardly the vale of tears some make out. If this be "suffering", hell, blacks and Hisanics need a lot more of such "oppression."

Uh--we're still the majority but only just.

My father worked in a ship related industry in the 70s. They would only hire blacks as a result of AA, who were harder to train and despised learning the trade although some of them were capable enough.
A Vietnam vet who worked on training men for working on high-rises was forced to bring on and train, you guessed it, mostly blacks. Unfortunately they were not trainable for highrise work and the American Indians on the job refused to work with blacks who proved incompetent. Apparently there is a certain rhythmn to the work, and if any are out of sync, disaster results. They were so incompetent that older white and Indian guys who should have been doing easier work were forced to stay on the job, endangering themselves.
This Vet had been committed to racial integration but found it didn't work. He also recalled that in Vietnam it was rare for a black to be able to read maps; or blueprints. He wrote a report on this, which I found on the web, but have difficulty locating now. Wonder why. It reminded me of my father's experience.
It was the white collar brigade (who, you're right, are less affected by AA) who were forcing the white workers to integrate blacks however senseless it was. BTW, one of the reasons blacks did work out well in the building industry is because they were not only hard to train for the highrise work but because they were also unreliable about showing up on time. The one black guy that "got it" ended his employment by not showing up too many times.
As far as us whites having a hard time with "minorities" (are they still? not for long) is that almost everyone I know in any area with a large black population, has been a personal victim, or knows a relative or friend who has been a victim, of serious black crime. Serious as in violent rape, murder, armed robbery and attempted murder. The cities built by whites to last hundreds of years, like the ones in Europe, have been decimated by blacks as if by biological weapons of mass destruction. I know whole schools once known for their elite graduates who have been turned into holding pens for "youths."
I do believe this country is under a kind of curse because of slavery, yet most societies have had slavery, often based on the slaves being of a different ethnicity. What makes this country special is that the larger founding population has conceded to such an extent, to incoming, alien populations. It is the only group to my knowledge that discriminates against itself. This made some kind of sense in the mid-20th century, to help blacks "catch up." Now they have more electrical gadgets per schoolchild than to whites. There is no digital divide. They live better than most people have ever lived anywhere in the world. We owe them nothing more. As far as Marian Anderson goes, she would never have had a forum for her talents were it not for the white society that enabled her. It's good she lived to see the breast-beating of guilty whites and her name got to live on not only as a great singers but as the Rosa Parks (a staged appearance also) of the opera world. Not to bad a legacy after all.

Doug1 said...

In fact to the contrary he has strong incentives to check them as white, since the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women.

Even if this were true it makes no logical sense whatsoever. Are you really that dim? I guess so. If it’s a black boy it obviously doesn’t, it’s still and advantage to check black, and it is if a black woman as well – she gets AA for two reasons.

The only sense in which that can be said to be true is because there are a lot more white women than blacks. However very often white women no longer get any affirmative action. They don’t in most university admissions for example, or now most law or medical schools. As well the degree of affirmative action and in most cases disparate impact help that blacks get for each individual is much greater.

Anonymous said...

"since the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women."

This is my favorite lie blacks tell themselves because it is absolutely ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

I guess I just imagined all those middle aged white women with cushy middle management government jobs. Statistically and numerically, white women rake it in affirmative action style.

There are a few slots set aside for the twofer women, but nothing like what still gets set aside for whitegirls.

Too Tall Jones said...

My father worked in a ship related industry in the 70s. They would only hire blacks as a result of AA, who were harder to train and despised learning the trade although some of them were capable enough. A Vietnam vet who worked on training men for working on high-rises was forced to bring on and train, you guessed it, mostly blacks.
^^I can understand what you say, and would not be surprised that in SOME places, companies went overboard in showing "diversity" which would include mere window-dressing and tokenism strategies that made blacks highly visible in one or two areas, but changed little behind the scenes. The record is worse of course in various liberal "politically correct" venues, like universities. Years ago, one university deep in Big Sky country put out its catalog chock full of pictures of happy "colored" students, even though it only had 10 or 12 out of say 10,000, burnishing their "diversity" talking points with black "students" who were not even enrolled, apparent walk-on extras, in a bad "diversity" movie. So indeed, liberals play the tokenism game just like everybody else.

There is of course the flip side. The cold fact is that places like shipyards, with heavy gubment contracts, prior to the 1970s, often deliberately froze out skilled blacks entirely, or relegated them to only the worse jobs, despite a lot of hypocritical talk about "merit." Lawsuits typically forced the opening up of this cosy white-only jobs system. It was not simply that blacks be hired, but that black workers, who for years had been held back, were finally given a chance for promotion. The tragedy is that it had to take lawsuits to pry open these comfortable white-only sinecures.

As for training- welcome to the club. EEOC case files are filled with instances of experienced blacks held back, seeing new, unskilled white workers come in, having to train those novice white workers, then seeing those new white workers promoted and moved up, while they were held back because they were black. White unions were at the forefront of such practices. Conservative writer Walter Williams details even worse shennigans in his book- The State Against Blacks. In the history of the railroads for example, white unions actually pushed skilled blacks out of skilled jobs, pressuring employers to accept "white only" contracts that not only froze new black hires out of skilled work, but forced black men out of good jobs they had held for years, men who had paid their dues and played by the rules- only to be forced out. The legacy of bitterness still rankles many black old-timers.


What makes this country special is that the larger founding population has conceded to such an extent, to incoming, alien populations. It is the only group to my knowledge that discriminates against itself. This made some kind of sense in the mid-20th century, to help blacks "catch up."

^^Keep in mind that America has long absorbed incoming "alien" populations, often over substantial opposition by so-called "WASPs" - who denigrated Poles, Irish, Italians, and Jews as "lesser breeds" supposedly "unfit" to be Americans. This legacy has not totally disappeared- the Net is awash with harsh white fulminations against "the eternal Jew." Such immigration however has noting to do with any black "catch-up." I agree to the extent that there are clear dangers for unity where alien populations refuse to assimilate, and pursue separatist agendas.

Too Tall Jones said...

If it’s a black boy it obviously doesn’t, it’s still and advantage to check black, and it is if a black woman as well – she gets AA for two reasons. The only sense in which that can be said to be true is because there are a lot more white women than blacks. However very often white women no longer get any affirmative action. They don’t in most university admissions for example, or now most law or medical schools. As well the degree of affirmative action and in most cases disparate impact help that blacks get for each individual is much greater.

Actually it is quite dubious if there is any advantage to "checking black" these days. Most black students and workers do not rely on "affirmative action" for their positions, and historically never did to any significant extent. As Sowell 2004, 1983, 1994 shows, black economic and educational advance has little to do with AA quotas. Most blacks for example had ALREADY pulled themselves above the poverty line PRIOR to the start of AA quotas in the 1970s. Blacks earning college degrees and attending college, or gaining managerial, technical and professional jobs were ALREADY on the rise PRIOR to AA quotas. Single professional black women as early as 1969, had ALREADY posted incomes HIGHER than the white female average- a trend in motion BEFORE AA quotas came about. AA quotas, even when implemented, never accounted for any but a minor proportion of black employment or education despite the steady drumbeat of right wing propaganda.

"Checking black" does little these days in employent or education because (a) AA was minor to begin with as a tool for black advance and (b) the political and legal climate for AA has long since changed, and (c) numerous OTHER groups such as white women, or whites going under a "hispanic" label, claim AA preferences, diluting any supposed "black advantage." The rich white Fanjul family for example netted millions in gubment contracts, as did white Portugese contractors in Washington DC, again using the "Hispanic" angle.

And while general polls of whites show majority opposition to AA, in polls of whites IN WORKPLACES WHERE AA IS FUNCTIONING, *A VAST MAJORITY* OF WHITES FEEL THAT THEY HAVE BEEN TREATED FAIRLY (See Orlando Patterson's citation of 2 polls in his 1998 The Ordeal of Integration pg 152 ).

Furthermore most cases of reverse discrimination brought by white males s are dismissed, usually as without merit, according to court data (See http://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pol&action=display&thread=1068) Most of these suits by the way involve white females as opponents.


And it is equally dubious to say that white women "no longer" get AA preferences. They certainly do, and still benefit from preferential loans, gubment contracts and set asides, preferential programs in education, AND hiring preferences as credible scholars document. But alongside OPEN preferential treatment, white women benefit from "HIDDEN and/or INDIRECT methods that reinforce/support future preferential treatment. The white pipeline is primed in a more veiled way, while blacks are put out front to be scapegoated. In college admissions for example, white feminists, knowing females have greater verbal skill at certain ages pressured the SAT College Boards to add writing to the SAT test, a subject women tend to do well in. The Board caved in and did so, explicitly stating that the change was meant to increase female enrollment in college, particularly where high end courses were involved. Result- a steady decline of white males attending college, males graduating on time, and a decline in white males receiving degrees. The change is not 100% responsible for these trends but, together with similar changes to the curriculum at the lower levels, play a substantial role in the general direction desired by the white feminists.

Anonymous said...

Are you really under the impression that all racial mixture goes into the "Negro race" and never the white race?

A little dreaded Negro blood in the white race doesn't destroy the whiteness:

http://backintyme.com/ad238.php

http://www.danieljsharfstein.com/

U.S. Supreme Court Rulings on Who is White
http://thestudyofracialism.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3190

Anonymous said...

When I've checked all the boxes which apply to me, I've had employers and hospital personnel and school officials ignore what I've chosen and change it to "white" only. The same has been done to my son, except his race has been changed to "black" only. The subject of race in America continues to be awash with nonsense and madness and contradiction.