Comments on: ‘Southern White’ as an ethnicity

By: Meredith

Meredith — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:53:23 +0000

Meant to say, Hector! Well, too much pie-making! (Waiting for cooling is very taxing.) Hello to Hector and Harold both! Happy Thanksgiving!

By: Meredith

Meredith — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:31:35 +0000

Way late, Harold (in every way — I’ve been preparing pie crusts, for filling tomorrow — oh, and cornbread for the sage-cornbread stuffing from my Virginia grandmother), but as the proud daughter of Minnesota forebears, too (what with also my own sojourn in Michigan as well as Minnesota, for schooling formal and much more), I agree about the upper midwest. (I even had some very youthful formative experiences in New Mexico, so include the southwest. God’s country, at least, where I first appreciated the meaning of the phrase.) I am feeling thankful.

By: Peter T

Peter T — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:38:40 +0000

Mountain Man

I see Lewontin gently reminding people that the words they use do not, in everyday use, have the meaning they ascribe to them – that “race” is not biological, even though in some places biological markers are a major reference point; that “Jewish” is likewise not biological in the sense used in the biological sciences, that genetics is complicated and that as yet we really know very little (the simple Mendelian genetics I was taught in school does not appear in modern books; we are only on the fringe of epigenetics, gene interactions and gene-environment interactions). All good points,and ones often overlooked both by popularisers and science enthusiasts.

And, yeah, Pinker is a large sitting duck.

By: Harold

Harold — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:18:29 +0000

Lewontin’s targets, Pinker et al., were sitting ducks.

By: Hector_St_Clare

Hector_St_Clare — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 06:14:05 +0000

Meredith,

I’m more interested in Democrats focusing on keeping a lock on the Great Lakes region and the Southwest. Democrats can win without the South. And some portions of the South are getting more Democratic, partly because of Black people moving back to the south (e.g. North Carolina).

By: MountainMan

MountainMan — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 02:03:58 +0000

@Peter T:

My point is merely that a lot has changed since Lewontin’s heyday. He’s picked fights with Dawkins, Pinker, and (mostly notably) E.O. Wilson, and in retrospect looks rather foolish in almost every instance. Don’t get me wrong, I think the man is brilliant; however, the degree to which he goes out of his way to denounce the importance of genetics and their predictory power strikes me as odd.

Just look at his latest article in the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/06/is-there-a-jewish-gene/?pagination=false

Apparently unaffected by the computer age and scientific breakthroughs, his decades-old convictions remain fervent as ever. If this is what he has to say about Jews, I can’t imagine what he’d write about “Southern whites” and their weird fascination with genealogy.

By: Meredith

Meredith — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:31:12 +0000

Yes, the South is really different, and for obvious reasons. Using race as a wedge for exploitation and promoting certain class interests is as old as forever in this country, everywhere. (In northern cities as well as the rural south. Less in the rural north only because there are fewer blacks there?) To venture beyond the obvious, race isn’t the ONLY wedge here, even in the south. The idea of “government off my back” (cf. big landowners off my tenat-sharecropping-crofter back, England off my Scottish or Irish or Welsh back, lowland Edinburgh and Glasgow off my highland back, highland clan leaders off my — just get the hell off my back) is something the right plays into especially well in the south, especially in its mountain regions. Dems can fight back and win people over here, long-term, if they’re smart and don’t dismiss these people as beneath contempt.

By: Hector_St_Clare

Hector_St_Clare — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 23:00:17 +0000

Yes, rural New England is reliably Blue. Some rural sections of Minnesota and Iowa vote Blue as well, as do parts of northern Michigan and Wisconsin. A large swathe of rural Michigan and Wisconsin counties went for Obama in 2008 and flipped back to Romney this year. Which is disappointing, but at least it showes that a Black Democrat can win large portions of the rural upper Midwest in a good year.

Again, the South is really different from the rest of the country here.

By: corgan

corgan — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:27:17 +0000

totally unrelated, but just wondering what quiggin might make of this. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By: Meredith

Meredith — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:21:27 +0000

Hector@221: I can never figure out why rural New England, much (though not all) of which is reliably blue/left, doesn’t count. Why don’t dairy farmers in Vermont count, for instance? Or how about Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin: a lot of the rural people there, including farmers, are voting blue.

By: Hector_St_Clare

Hector_St_Clare — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 17:48:09 +0000

Re: Rural populations are always, and virtually in all respects, more conservative than the urban ones. And not just in the US, this is universal.

Uh, no, no it isn’t. In Latin America rural people usually vote for the left (look at a map of support for Chavez or Humala, or just about any other election in the region). This is generally pretty true in developing countries, I think. I’m not sure how patterns in European countries look, but it’s certainly not ‘universal’.

By: monboddo

monboddo — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:23:42 +0000

“A member of the Hispanic ethnic group is anybody who has an ancestor born anywhere in Latin America.”

Mitt Romney!

By: Meredith

Meredith — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 06:32:52 +0000

Harold, brilliant!
I’d add a link to Local Hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh0ja-BTpbk

By: rf

rf — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:20:17 +0000

So if John Yoo authorises Majid Khans torture, is that inter ethnic hatred?

By: Harold

Harold — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:03:31 +0000

Interesting that Mick Jagger’s dancing has the same up and down thigh movement as clogging.

Carolina Chocolate Drops: “Country Girl/ living in the South”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVIaiADsyYo&feature=related