As a Mexican I find the comment section nitpicking every word of the article as racist very funny. Americans have really thin skin. Political correctness is indeed drowning the exchange of ideas!
Americans have really thin skin because they fought a civil war over whether people with one color of skin could own people with a different color of skin. And until very recently,[1] people with one color of skin had to go to different schools than everyone else, they couldn't get married to each other, etc.
[1] To put things into context, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and the other tech luminaries in their generation would have gone to segregated schools had they been born in the south instead of in California and Washington. If Ken Thompson had exercised his right to vote in his native Louisiana when he turned 18, he would have done so on ballots that, pursuant to state law, listed the race of each candidate.
The Voting Rights Act (which made it illegal to have "whites-only" hotels) and Loving v. Virginia (which ended laws banning interracial marriage) are roughly contemporaneous with UNIX--both being products of the late 1960s.
I'm from the South where this has been beat into us from youth. It's not fun to know that your state at one point seceded so the wealthiest elites could practice slavery. That and the Jim Crow laws are to our eternal embarrassment. The only good thing about it is our opportunity to learn from it.
I take some exception to your response, however, which seems very directed. There is not a single spot on this earth which hasn't had problems with racism, or a single one of us who has an ancestor who wasn't a racist. Latin America has its own problems with racism, as does Europe, Asia, and god-forbid even enlightened parts of the North and Pacific Northwest, too.
I don't disagree with your point, but I'm not sure of its relevance.
Of the "western democracies", or the "industrialized western countries", or however you want to lump those countries together:
* The US has unusual size, both geographically (which matters here) and population
* The US has unusual diversity
* The US has an unusually toxic history with racial diversity, in large part because unlike (say) Belgium, their racial history occurred almost entirely within their own borders
The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries.
We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black. The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole! As a demographic, they get less value from the public school system than any other, and so we have persistent pipeline problems reinforcing these disparities. Black people can't even reliably rent rooms on Airbnb. In 2016.
"Race realists" and "HBD people" would have you believe those phenomenon are due either to biological differences between black and white people, or to our pathological responses to those biological differences. That's horseshit, as the HBD's aptly demonstrate when they try to deploy and extrapolate from their corpus of dubious or cherry-picked statistics.
So I'd say: unless you truly believe that the black/white disparity in the US is genetic, the evidence for the US's outlier cultural issues with racism is right there in the numbers.
We're politically correct in part because we're right in the middle of trying to fix these problems.
Political correctness isn't a good thing. Also: when I take antibiotics, they wipe out my gut bacteria and give me stomach problems. That's not a good thing either! It is, in fact: a bad thing! But I don't call the whole enterprise of eradicating a bacterial infection in my body into question over it, nor do I back off the dose to try to minimize the bad side effect.
I don't disagree with your general point, which from what I understand is that the US has had, and still has, some nasty problems with racism.
But I have to take issue with this statement:
>racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries.
The two countries that you mentioned, Belgium and Japan, have absolutely horrific history of violent occupation/repression of other ethnic/racial groups, anchored in no small part by racist ideology. I'll throw in Germany as well, but I think just about any country/culture with much of a history will have some examples of the abysmal treatment of some minority group.
I dispute your view, if I understand it, that the US has a worse history or track record with racism. I'd say by in large, human history has a pretty poor track record in this respect.
> The two countries that you mentioned, Belgium and Japan, have absolutely horrific history of violent occupation/repression of other ethnic/racial groups, anchored in no small part by racist ideology.
Now imagine that 12% of the population of Belgium is Congolese, or that 12% of Japan is Korean/Chinese. Picture what that would do to the cultural and political dynamics of those countries.
The U.S. is relatively unusual in that its culture and political institutions have had to adapt to integrate a large minority population that, until recently, it viciously oppressed.
> The U.S. is relatively unusual in that its culture and political institutions have had to adapt to integrate a large minority population that, until recently, it viciously oppressed.
The US is relatively unusual in that these oppressed populations remain visible minorities. Without that difference lots of countries have similar problems, but if you are mostly only able to distinguish the oppressed group from the favored group by things like accent and elements of culture that blend with integration, you don't really have the same durable problems.
Both Belgium and Japan have horrific track records of racism, and Japan's remains part of its culture, but the US is unique in that its worst problems with racism have been contained within its own borders. Ordinary Belgian citizens weren't routinely confronted with the Congolese.
I think I understand your point. Not to be argumentative, but the slave trade was a global enterprise. Beyond that, US support of European colonial rule, US support for apartheid South Africa, the war in Vietnam, there are many examples. These all had their racist overtones, if not outright racist justifications. I don't believe such a hegemonic culture/country has managed to keep its racist elements contained within its borders.
I'm not disputing that racism is endemic to humanity and prevalent in all cultures. I'm saying that the US is unique in having racism challenges that impact all its citizens on a day-to-day basis, directly, in ways that it is actively struggling to mitigate and/or metabolize. I'm not making a moral argument, just a descriptive one.
You keep responding as if to rebut an argument that the US is the world capital of slavery, or that the Europeans somehow have clean hands. I'm the wrong person to have that argument with.
> The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries.
I think this is completely fair, but I also wonder if it's just because of America's inherent exposure. In Latin America, for example, "race" isn't as pointed (see the notion of a Mexican race), but skin color sure as hell does matter on a lot of levels, and that's because the rulers (Spanish) were light-skinned. That divide is still endemic and the cause of many issues in those countries. Is that any less toxic than what's happening in America? If you are one of those affected there, obviously not, and even to those not directly affected, it is arguable, or rather, it can't be argued at all.
> We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black.
Absolutely. The system targets African-Americans. But what might be even more important is what % of our prison population is poor. Poor people go to prison because the system doesn't care about them, whether that's due to skin color or being born into the wrong family in a small town or any number of issues.
> The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole!
This is undoubtedly true, but keep in mind that African-Americans are only about 12% of the population, in other words, they should be 1/10th of your co-workers (if we're going by ratio of the entire US population), which isn't as extreme as the racial disparities we might expect. Hey, in the Southwest, the bigger disparity lies with Hispanics - they are not represented fairly in tech, but we often don't think about them to the same extent.
If I'm trying to make a point, it's that these issues are endemic, and they are hugely problematic, but we have an undue focus on different parts of our society, whereas the problems that create them are often much wider in scope. We're looking for a bug in function B when it's really in function A and it's causing problems in function C, too...
What's happening is our modern economic system is balanced against a lot of people. If you are poor, your condition sucks, no matter your skin color. African-Americans see this disparity and it enrages them (as it should), and that creates movements (political or not). Poor whites see their condition and their (incorrect) recourse is to fight against this vague notion of "political correctness", and then you see the rise of Trumpism and other bad things.
I think trying to focus too much on race is to miss the larger systematic issue in our society, which is crony capitalism combined with globalism, and that doesn't care about your race.
I believe crony capitalism and poorly managed "globalism" are serious problems, but I see time and again direct evidence that economic circumstances aside, there is a black/white racism problem in the US, and I object to the pretense that we can ignore it while working on some fundamental root problem that will be a cure-all for other problems as well.
Wealthy black people have trouble getting rooms on Airbnb. Wealthy black people get stopped by the police at a disproportionate rate. The cops aren't doing that because Alcoa told them to.
I don't advocate ignoring it. In fact, I'd prefer that we did a much better job of desegregating the major cities (especially the school districts). It just doesn't do us any good to act like race in America is a southern problem, and it's odd to only cast it as such, which is what the OP did.
It's the same issue. You can't ignore problems, but you can't also assign them to a different scope than they are.
> It just doesn't do us any good to act like race in America is a southern problem, and it's odd to only cast it as such.
I don't think that's what was being said. The original comment was very specifically talking about the south in the past, and how past southern practices may have informed peoples experiences if they grew up there, and how recent some changes are.
But again, why bother talking about the south at all?
We are now far afield, and I'll stop arguing the point after this, but the topic is about Mexico, which then led to a discussion about "political correctness", and then the post in question which tried to say the reason Americans have issues with race are...only southern examples specifically cast against Western states.
Those same Western states have issues with racism; they would be just as effective to cite.
> But again, why bother talking about the south at all?
To specifically cast the experiences of people growing up in different parts of the country with different against each other to highlight how their views on race and racism may differ. The South is not being used for the purpose of vilifying it, but to explain how as a country people over a certain age may have had very different experiences with race in different areas of the country. It says absolutely nothing directly about the current state of the South, that's something you seem to have inferred from the comment (and whether it was meant as an implication is debatable, but it is not factual).
A statement could be made comparing and contrasting experiences of certain citizens of the United States 150 years ago and some other country that did not allow slavery. I wouldn't necessarily think that's meant to cast the US in bad light, but to use it as a tool to illustrate a point. It's obvious the US of today is not the same as the US of 150 years ago. It's also obvious the South of 40-50 years ago is not the same as the South today.
I think perhaps you're just a bit more emotionally invested in the perception of the South, and have seen the South as it currently is denigrated unfairly to a degree, which I'm sure happens, and you are conflating that type of occurrence and this. I just don't think they are equivalent.
> * talk about racist policies against the Chinese in California in the 1800s
Which does not directly affect current discourse, being removed by multiple generations from those alive today.
> * talk about racist policies against the Irish and sentiments against Catholics throughout the country even just prior to JFK's election in 1960
Sure, but then you're bringing religion into the mix. That seems unwise when trying to make a specific point that to that point has not included religion. It will just muddy the waters.
> * talk about racist views and policies towards interracial marriage in the South and Southwest
Also applicable, but less well known.
The point isn't to correctly spread the blame for bad behavior around equally, it was to explain why Americans have thin skin regarding race issues. The South is a valid example of this,and is the common example because it is so well known and recent. That may strike you as unfair, but fairness wasn't the point, communication was.
>In Latin America, for example, "race" doesn't matter,
Unfortunately that is very wrong. The non-indigenous populations have very prejudice views of them throughout the region (central / south america). Not always overt (but often is) but from ingrained, subconscious views of them as lazy, slow, drunks etc.
Generally, if you watch the news here or TV in general you would be forgiven for thinking there are no indigenous peoples and would be shocked to find out that in fact they may make up 20, 30, 40+ of the population (depending on country).
> Latin America, for example, "race" isn't as pointed (see the notion of a Mexican race)
The notion of the Mexican race (more accurately, the Mexican-originated concept of a distinct Ibero-American race which had ancestry in all of but was distinct from the other races) was a 20th Century deliberate propaganda construct of the Mexican Revolution, specifically intended to (and not entirely successful at doing so, though it certainly had some effect) address the fact that race was historically an enormous dividing force in the country -- which had the same kind (with different details) of official complex categories of pure and mixed races and social hierarchies between them as many other heavily-race-divided societies.
So, it kind of illustrates the opposite of your point.
And, in practice, while the detailed hierarchy and rules of mixture no longer exists, and efforts to create a unifying identity have nibbled away at the edges, the high level social hierarchy between European, indigenous, and African races is still very much a thing (and not just a matter of "skin color", though, as most places, that's obviously one of the most visible and powerful indicators of race.)
African-Americans see this disparity and it enrages them (as it should), and that creates movements (political or not). Poor whites see their condition and their (incorrect) recourse is to fight against this vague notion of "political correctness",
Totally false.
Asian Americans outscore their counterparts in every academic endeavour, and we wouldn't attribute their success to anything but their hard work.
Now - because 'Blacks are poor and commit a vast amount of crime' - they are justified in indicating this is due to racism - but when White people are poor - your indicating it must be their own fault.
This is delusional liberal thinking.
Yes, their is racism in America. Have you ever hung out with a group of Asian friends and gone drinking - and then asked them what they think of Black people? My cousin married a Chinese woman who is not hostile, but openly thinks blacks are inferior. She's not really even aware that it's 'racist' to her, it's just a matter of fact.
Most success and failure in America is due to what people chose to do with their lives, macro economic factors, and class. Not race.
> Now - because 'Blacks are poor and commit a vast amount of crime' - they are justified in indicating this is due to racism - but when White people are poor - your indicating it must be their own fault.
I don't think that was the assertion. I think he was saying the cause it poverty, the reasons for poverty are sometimes shared and sometimes different, but they attribute the source of the cause differently. If I understand him correctly, then his point is that poverty is the cause for problems, not racism, and both white and non-white people often assess the cause incorrectly, but in different ways.
But I think that the default assumption by so many is:
'Racism exists, ergo, racism is the primary driver of poverty, inequality' etc..
I strongly object to this assertion.
Of course racism exists, and it's a problem, and it needs to be dealt with - however - I don't think it's the primary root cause of anything. In fact - 'over aggressive policing' is probably a function of 'mass crime zones' - and not the other way around. Obviously there is a feedback loop here, in that extra hard policing creates more negative outcomes ... but if there weren't crazy amounts of crime, cops would be chill.
My grandparents were born on farms and grew up very poor by today's standards. They had almost nothing. There were guns on every farm ... and yet crime was rare. There were no gangs. They were of specific ethnic groups and certainly faced open discrimination - many would not speak or interact with my German great-grandparents. My grandfather's extended family did not attend his wedding because he married a Catholic (!). My great-grand parents on one side were disowned by both families because she was 'French Quebecois Catholic' and he was 'English Upper Canadian Protestant'. And yet somehow there wasn't 'mass crime'.
I'm not insensitive to the systematic issues some people face - and it's terrible - but by positing that 'the system is the problem' entirely removes really bad individual decisions that are made on a daily basis within some communities and this I find to be wrong and we have to be careful about.
We give a 'free pass' to some groups for upholding as 'de facto' role models, the absolute worst, most terrible role models imaginable.
I'm thinking 'Chief Keef' to start with. Brilliant artist. But his brand of music is boils down to: 'Look at me funny and I will kill you. See: here are the guns I will use. Of course, a 13 year old kid mocked him on youtube, and a few hours later, the kid dead, murdered by one of Chief Keef's goons. His videos boil down to shirtless teens in a room with guns, Ak-47's pointed at the camera - in threatening poses. So 'we' as a society - handed him over $1 Million dollars for a recording contract. Because of his ethnic background - we turn a blind eye to his call to mass murder- worse, we make him the role model for the community, what everyone else aspires to be. Nobody on CNN calls it into question. It's complete insanity. In 2016, you can literally call people to murder others, make a video about it, and as long as it has a nice beat - and you are from a group that is marginalized - you're a hero, you get a million bucks and hundreds of acolytes around town trying to copy you. These cultural issues I believe are closer to 'root causes' than police, trying to do their jobs, some of whom are idiots.
"Mass crime zones" are a direct product of racism. There's a reason that all the crime in Chicago is concentrated around Lawndale and Englewood: black people were redlined into the those neighborhoods, until the early 1970s.
I linked upthread to a Ta Nahesi Coates article. I think you should take 30 minutes and read it with an open mind. I thought I was on top of this stuff. But, damn.
> I linked upthread to a Ta Nahesi Coates article.
Okay, I just wasted more time than I'm comfortable admitting looping through trying to look for that link, getting distracted by new parts of the conversation, and starting over. Mind pointing it out?
Oh, that wasn't directed at you. I'm just too frazzled by the week I've had (first week back from vacation is always a zinger) to to function well at the end of a Friday, so figured I would cut to the chase. :) Thanks!
As for the Coates Article - I agree with a lot of the sentiment. And thanks for the link by the way.
Listen - I AGREE - that perhaps there should be 'reparations' - I'm not really against that. I AGREE that historical injustices have led to Black people being marginalized. I generally support affirmative action programs. I AGREE that copes, in some circumstances are simply racist idiots and something must be done about it.
But listen - in 1962 - young Black kids, with incredible poise, had to face down KKK open-racism to get to school.
In 2016 - the 1/2 Black Chicago police force had to create 'golden paths' - specially protected zones for kids to get to and fro school safely - so as not to be killed by other Black people. Getting kids to attend school, let alone graduate - is a serious problem. There are tons of resources and people doing everything they can to help. This is the opposite of the 1960's.
The situation is not anymore like the 1960s. We now have a large cohort of African Americans who seem to be doing pretty well - improving. But another cohort who are out of control. The rate of crime in some areas of America is the highest in the world where it's recorded. Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore - all have higher crime rates than those 'crazy violent' countries like Nicaragua, Coloumbia etc.
In the early 1960's - still very 'racist America' - there was 1/8th as much crime as there was in 1992, and the crime rate now is still about 4x what it was during 'racist America'. Nobody can say the America is 'more racist' now - the article affirms this.
So why - after so much 'social progress' - is there massively more crime in these areas?
I fully support addressing this problem - but racism is not the cause of 'mass violence' - and that we turn a blind eye to terrible behaviour is adding to the problem.
"Mass crime zones" are a direct product of racism. "
This is mostly false.
Many ethnic groups faced (and continue to face) serious racism over the years - and yet those places did not turn into war-zones.
Have you travelled the world? You will find 'high ethnic concentrations of marginalized people' in almost every country.
Go to a Korean enclave in Japan: the Koreans face open and overt discrimination and racism - and yet - no mass crime. In fact, hardly any crime at all.
Black people are openly discriminated against in Northern Africa by the Arabs there - but guess what - no mass crime. Crime by Sub-Saharan Africans in the Maghreb (at least in Tunisia) is lower than that of African Americans in America.
Americans are in reality some of the least racist people in the world. Outside of the Western world - racism is basically the standard - it's out in the open. It's not often considered a 'social issue'.
Do you see racist acts around you? Probably not. Is it acceptable for anyone to use the n-word? No way. It's exceedingly rare for Americans to act in overtly racist manner, though obviously, a lot of systematic racism exists.
On the contrary - there is an extreme degree of racial sensitivity in America in almost every organization and societal level.
Obviously - African Americans are a very special case, and racism is a contributing factor - but it is not the root cause.
Turning a blind eye to extraordinarily bad behaviour - and worse - glamorizing it - is probably the worst thing we could possibly do to help. Validating the worst possible people as 'role models' for young, troubled men is basically insane.
See what I mean? This survey got 1/10th the responses that a previous survey of the same cohort of experts did, and a 7% response rate overall. But here we go with a survey cited as "the majority of anonymously surveyed geneticists and behavioral psychologists".
Come on. Try harder. This rebuttal is practically in the abstract you cited.
But this is how it works. It takes virtually no effort to paste a citation to underpowered research studies, but a lot of effort to rebut those citations, which serve as appeals to authority in discussions. This works to create the impression that "HBD" is far more seriously scientific than it actually is.
Your rhetorical strategy here is to try to shift the burden for your argument back to me?
I'm especially amused by the fact that you tried to deploy this clever switcheroo after having your source shot down, and without acknowledging that fact.
My advice is: just give up on the argument. People are people.
I didn't acknowledge your criticism of the source because it doesn't seem to reflect a look at the paper, let alone an earnest analysis of it. The response rate for the survey was explicitly stated as 20%, well in line with expected response rates for these sort of external surveys. Your figure of 7% seems to be invented whole cloth.
That, along with your characterization of my response as a "rhetorical strategy", makes it quite clear you don't have any interest in engaging in the topic critically.
To anyone reading, I encourage you to open the study, Ctrl-F for tptacek's "7%". Confirm for yourself whether or not he's being honest, and consider what that implies about our respective positions.
You're right. I'm wrong. I had accidentally used the total number of targets from a previous study to calculate that percentage.
A total of 1345 people received emails.
The questions about ethnic differences were answered by 71 respondents.
The actual rate was 5%.
I regret the error.
The abstract itself cites the low response rate. It's a stated problem with the survey. How are you not familiar with the document you brought to the debate?
> It's not fun to know that your state at one point seceded so the wealthiest elites could practice slavery.
Civic pride is an interesting concept that can have positive and negative impacts on behavior and psychology. Your desire to feel proud of your state is impeded by its history of slavery, but I'd argue that you shouldn't feel ashamed of living someplace simply because of its history. I feel proud to be part of a culture and civilization that openly acknowledges the mistakes of the past. I also feel distraught that so many people continue to hold on to racist beliefs, but I don't let this make me ashamed of the state I live in.
First and foremost, we are humans. We should feel bonded by that before being bonded as Louisianians, Californians, or by any other political structure. And as you rightly point out, no US state can point to a clean history of love, peace, and harmony. So don't feel bad to be from the South. It sounds like you reject that ugly piece of its history anyway, so as long as you stand up for what's right today, then you can rightly feel proud of yourself and your fellow citizens.
My main point is that the 'feel-good' you get from blind flag-waving patriotism is not worth the price you pay: that price is ignorance or hand-waving about historical evils. Recognize the evils of the past, but don't let that make you feel ashamed about your citizenship.
If you're from the South, then you know it's been beaten into you with a wink and a nudge. The South is terrible for the "but everybody REALLY knows" line that happens when you are no longer in mixed company.
Most Southern whites are particularly thin-skinned when it comes to anyone calling them out on either their racism or their inability to perceive racism... and I say this as a white guy whose family owned plantations.
I personally feel no shame for the sins of my ancestors. They lived in their own time with their own set of rules and laws and morals. It's the behavior of my living kin that bothers me.
I've found that here in Louisiana people tend to be less racist overall, while those who are don't hide it. There are the guys who get drunk and throw slurs around, and worse, but I've also never seen as many interracial couples anywhere else. The openness makes it easier to know who your friends and enemies are.
I agree with not feeling ashamed about the sins of your ancestors, but I also don't believe in blaming others for their ancestors' sins. One branch of my family owned a plantation in Haiti. Then the revolution came, and that branch came to an abrupt end. While I'm extremely bothered that the revolutionaries killed the children as well, I'm not going to blame their descendants.
Comparing America, which since World War I has been the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth, with some backwater country in Asia or Africa which has oppressive, racially motivated policies is not really honest.
The South has a lot of problems many of which it created for itself by not keeping up with the times and instead violently opposing those changes. This pattern plays out again and again and again with a multitude of important issues: Inter-racial marriage, gay rights, gay marriage, climate change...
Attitudes can change if the extremist activists stop creating an environment where there's such tremendous social pressure to conform to these extreme views. It's difficult to be an outlier in some parts of the US because you'll be persecuted, shunned, all but run out of town. The loud, angry Tea Party crowd puts everyone in a difficult position.
So congratulating yourself that South Carolina isn't as racist as South Sudan is really not helping.
> Comparing America, which since World War I has been the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth, with some backwater country in Asia or Africa which has oppressive, racially motivated policies is not really honest.
Who should we compare America to then?
France? France is hardly a model society with its outlawed burkas on beaches and the home of the LePen family. Moreover, apparently anti-semitism is such a pressing issue that it has been outlawed in France (along with Holocaust denial) since 1990.
Greece? The Golden Dawn Party (a Neo-Nazi party) holds 18 of the 300 seats (6%) in the Greek parliament.
South Africa? The end of apartheid is barely twenty years old and racism is apparently "alive and well"[0].
Norway? In 2011 a far-right extremist group (anti-Muslim) killed 77 people and members of the UN claim the government is doing too little too combat right-wing extremist violence against Muslims.[1]
Germany? In June a poll found that more than 40% of Germans support a ban on Muslim immigration.[2] Additionally, apprently 60% of Germans believe Islam has no place in their country, and last year attacks on refugee camps increased 500%.
The Balkans? In the '90s these countries were entirely reformed through a nearly 10-year period of war and ethnic cleansing.
Sure, maybe the ideal might be similar to Canada, Australia, or Great Britain, all of which are predominantly single-race societies. But where is that shining city on the hill out there that we should be comparing ourselves to? I can't find it. Our goal can't be to become "less racist" than any of those "Western" countries listed above. It just has to be to get better.
For clarity, I'm not claiming that the U.S. is any more or less racist than any of countries above. I'm just saying they all have their problems too.
Canada and Australia have really shameful legacies of mistreatment of indigenous people. Much of which happened while these two countries were legally and culturally part of the UK (Dominions). The UK has a really complex past full of its own great crimes against humans.
I agree with your larger part in that racism is a human problem. I don't think that acknowledgement serves to excuse anything the US has done.
Of those countries mentioned only South Africa is one on-par with the level of consistent, simmering racial tension as the US.
France, Greece, Norway, Germany they all have their minority populations for various reasons, in the case of France and England it's largely due to colonial history, but there's an important distinction here.
In none of these cases were the minorities imported as slaves and then emancipated and later systematically discriminated against, marginalized, and basically left to die. Although some of these countries participated in slavery, the legacy of those policies lives on in places like Brazil and various ex-colonies in the West Indies.
> Sure, maybe the ideal might be similar to Canada, Australia, or Great Britain, all of which are predominantly single-race societies.
Wrong. Canada has a significant indigenous population, as does Australia. Great Britain has several groups with a very strong identity that do not always get along. The simmering tension in Northern Ireland is, to this day, a serious problem that's largely along religious/cultural lines. Canada is not immune to criticism here, but these groups were never kept as slaves, nor forcibly segregated. Where discrimination exists, and it does, it's often personal attitudes that need to be fixed, not the express policy of any local government.
The problem with America's racism is unlike Poland or Lithuania where minorities are rare, America has states with a significant population of African-American or Latin-American people that to this day are treated very, very poorly.
Demographically America is on track to be a "majority minority" country within decades. That's a sign that as a country America needs to get its shit together and deal with its past.
There was a really good article in a Boulder (where I live) newspaper recently about how living in a majority white area can really skew people's ideas of racism since they aren't confronted with its challenges on a daily basis like people in the South: http://www.boulderweekly.com/news/black-in-boulder/
I mean, just go to certain parts of LA, or the entirety of Boston, to get a good dose of any kind of racism. The idea that racism is the South's problem or that all racial tension is the South's fault boggles my mind and has, in my personal experience, been a extremely accurate indicator that the person who parrots such things has never in their life had to live in an area where you are forced to coexist with people of a different race or ethnicity.
It's been found time and time again that the refusal to acknowledge racist attitudes within one's own community, regardless of one's personal or outward ideology or rhetoric, is one of the largest contributors to the vicious cycle that perpetuates discrimination. But I guess given recent events I shouldn't be surprised that we're still seeing such denial.
It's just funny to me how the vast majority of the POC I know from my hometown and college ended up moving to "racist" places like Greenville, Nashville, New Orleans, and Atlanta instead of "enlightened" cities like Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and Portland. Weird, huh?
The point, as I see it, was to compare and contrast the experiences people may have had growing up 30-50 years in the past, not to say anything about the current state of the South. Part of accepting past bad behavior and mistakes is letting it be used as examples where applicable. The only thing getting defensive in this case does it make it harder to discuss past mistakes, which in turn makes it easier to repeat them. Every state (or country, for that matter) has parts of its past it would rather not discuss, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed.
I think if you feel the South is being attacked in this instance, it's more your perception than reality.
I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say here, but if you don't think GGP's almost explicit inference that if those men had been in the "racist" (read: "South Eastern") parts of the US we wouldn't have had their contributions to society isn't a form of dog whistle than we're not going to have a constructive conversation here.
P.S. I'd invite you to visit any of the southern cities I mentioned above to discuss past inequities with any of the hundreds of political organizations that make it their duty to right those past wrongs. Regardless of what you want to believe, we're not all hillbillies spitting into confederate spitoons whenever someone of color walks by, and we most assuredly do not deny the atrocities that occurred in the name of our geographical region. Something tells me you won't take me up on that offer though.
> I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say here, but if you don't think GGP's almost explicit inference that if those men had been in the "racist" (read: "South Eastern") parts of the US we wouldn't have had their contributions to society isn't a form of dog whistle than we're not going to have a constructive conversation here.
I don't think that was what was being said at all, if I did then I would agree with you. I think "tech luminaries" were used as examples of people that would be known here, and that have fairly liberal views on race that could have been different with a different environment when young.
That the South has in the recent past (relatively, as in people are alive today that experienced it) had policies that contributed to racism and occurrences of extreme racism is not in question. That makes it fair game to illustrate a point.
That point was to explain to some degree why Americans have "thin skin" regarding some race issues. As I understand it, the point was to point out that people have seen fairly distinct differences in how different parts of the country have treated people based on race, within their lifetime.
None of that says anything about the South as it is now. It does say some factual things about the South as it was. By conflating this with some negative assessment of the South as it currently is, I think you're accidentally presenting a straw man argument.
To put this another way, I will make a definitive statement. The South had racist policies. Unless you find reason to argue against that statement, I'm not sure what your problem is with the original comment, since I think for the purpose of what you're upset about, they reduce to the same thing.
> I don't think that was what was being said at all, if I did then I would agree with you. I think "tech luminaries" were used as examples of people that would be known here, and that have fairly liberal views on race that could have been different with a different environment when young.
Bill Gates is actively trying to segregate schools by forcing public school systems to adopt magnet and charter schools. Statistically, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the creation of magnet and charter schools results in increased segregation. Sacrilege, I know.
To put this another way, I will make a definitive statement. The entire US is filled with racist policies regardless of region, both in the past and present. Unless you find reason to argue with this statement I'm not sure what your problem is with my refusal to accept the pigeon-holing of the South as the US' paragon of racism.
> Bill Gates is actively trying to segregate schools by forcing public school systems to adopt magnet and charter schools. Statistically, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the creation of magnet and charter schools results in increased segregation. Sacrilege, I know.
I think that topic is complex enough that a simple correlation based on what maybe proposed is not easily provably, much less a causation. Unless you are making an argument that he's both aware of race problems this might cause and doesn't care (as in, has no plans to mitigate or reverse it in any way), I'm not sure how this speaks towards his feeling on race equality, and therefore I'm not sure how it's relevant.
> Unless you find reason to argue with this statement I'm not sure what your problem is with my refusal to accept the pigeon-holing of the South as the US' paragon of racism.
Since you've graciously given me an opening to express what I think is wrong with that statement, I'll do so, rather than ignore it in favor of a non-sequitur. Everywhere in the US is filled with racist policies, regardless of region. Some places more so than others, either currently or in the past. That makes them useful as examples. Just as Everywhere in the world is filled with racist policies, regardless of country. Some places more so than others. That doesn't mean we can't draw meaningful comparisons based on how they compare relatively.
Unless you are ready to address why it's unfair to reference past southern racism, which I've gone to pains to point out I think was the point and you haven't refuted in any way, I don't see any reason to continue. I get it, your're upset at how the South gets singled out. That doesn't really make it unfair. It's possible and understandable for both to be true.
Interestingly, despite all the problems in the U.S., there is an argument to be made that America is among the least racist countries in the world[0]. I also imagine fighting a civil war in which race was a controlling issue within the last 200 years is something a sizable share of nations have done.
I don't know if it's so much as collective thin-skinnedness as it is that diversity is such a cornerstone of our society that we're forced to deal with the tensions it creates on a constant basis. This foments debate, much of it good, and some of it trollish, but I see it as a natural result of the freedoms and diversity that America has aimed to aspire.
I don't mean to say that achieving diversity is some kind of Grand Experiment designed by the Founders, but it's what we have because of our past and geopolitical circumstances, and we've struggled with and benefited greatly from it.
> I don't know if it's so much as collective thin-skinnedness as it is that diversity is such a cornerstone of our society that we're forced to deal with the tensions it creates on a constant basis
I don't think that argument holds: Canada is a pretty diverse place but I don't think there are simmering/barely-contained tensions there as much as in the US.
I think a lot of the tension results from specific 'environments'; in reverse chronological order: the "southern strategy", Jim Crow laws and ultimately chattel slavery. For most of its history, the prevailing, unquestioned belief was that one race was inherently superior. It will take several generations to rollback that mindset back to any significant degree
For the purpose of a discussion about diversity, I think the more important measure is how they identify themselves culturally. Being able to genetically trace your roots to the mayflower but being raised steeped in Mexican (to avoid the term in question) culture (for example, adopted) would still yield more diversity, by the definition we are usually using when referring to national diversity (which I think is generally interpreted as cultural diversity of a nation).
They're not considered white by the locals until they lose their accent. White is what you're considered by the relevant whites under discussion, not a meaningful physical category. Mediterranean-bordering, Irish, and Slavic people have just gotten to be white in the US fairly recently.
"The locals" is an odd term. I lived in New Mexico, where some of people who are raised in Spanish speaking households trace their local ancestry back to before the founding of the US.
The Hispanics of Puerto Rico were there before the US took it over as part of the Spanish–American War.
These Hispanics are more local than the new-comer English-speaking people, no?
This is a very good explanation of why some humans might have negative emotional reactions to a rational discussion of science.
Nevertheless, jpablo is right to call this out as a terrible failure of rationality on our part. 20 years before I was born, some folks that vaguely look like me were total jerks to other folks that look a bit different from me! That doesn't mean I should turn off my brain and reject science that triggers negative emotions.
Ignoring reality won't help us achieve our goals, whatever they happen to be.
> To put things into context, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and the other tech luminaries in their generation would have gone to segregated schools had they been born in the south instead of in California and Washington.
They still probably went to segregated schools. I certainly did, in Chicago, in the 80s. We had one white kid at our school from K - 8th grade. His name was Patrick. His stepfather was black, and his mom had died.
You might not be aware of this yet, so read up a bit on sistema de castas [0].
Both Americans and Mexicans have the strength to change what can be changed, and the resolve to endure what cannot. But being American myself, I think that only the Mexicans also have the wisdom to know the difference.
Are you really going to cure racism with an essay written into the comments section of an article? Really? No. But we Americans are generally ashamed and embarrassed by those aspects of actual historical events that tend to contradict our beliefs in American ideals. One of those ideals being "all men are created equal", the natural conclusion is that America cannot be racist. But it is. It is so very racist. And so the idealists have to plug their ears and loudly sing "lalalalalala" whenever the actual evidence of it appears.
I'm glad that people of other nationalities find it amusing, but they don't have to live with those people.
>>Americans have really thin skin because they fought a civil war over whether people with one color of skin could own people with a different color of skin.
What can we infer from that? Did the black slave owners own whites? For a short period, whites were even indentured servants. Are you going to equate white slavery experience with black slavery? How many blacks owned slaves, were they really black or mulatto, did ruling whites only accept that practice during a short early colonial period or did that practice proliferate until the Civil War? Could freemen be buying slaves to free a family member, where they actually were not subsequently treated as slaves?
The only question of yours that is not answered by the Wikipedia link I provided is the timing (although I'm sure you can google that ) - this went on from the very
beginning of the transatlantic slave trade in the U.S. all the way through the civil war.
And the point of course is that the civil war wasn't fought to abolish "the right of whites to own blacks" as things were a bit more complex than that. Cherokee Indians for example owned thousands of slaves too. There's a pretty interesting issue that goes on right now with descendants of Cherokee-owned slaves suing the Chetokee nation for the right to be a part of the Cherokee nation.
I still don't get the point you are trying to make. In 1830, 3,776 free blacks owned 12,907 slaves, out of a total of 2,009,043 slaves owned in the entire United States. Many of those slaves owned by blacks may have been treated as slaves but many were also bought to be freed, as they were family members. Whites could be indentured servants but they were not slaves for life. By the 1700s indentured servants were scarce.
The point I'm trying to make is that the statement I originally replied to (with a quote so not sure what's not clear exactly) inaccurately states that the civil war was fought to abolish the system of ownership of blacks by whites.
I'd hardly call uniformed commentary on the internet "political correctness drowning the exchange of ideas", however, it's ironic that those accusing the author of racism are inadvertently casting support for the racist idea that arbitrarily defined racial labels like "Mexican" have an inherent meaning that supersedes the actual genetics; the article is literally a case study of how our crudely defined racial groupings are insufficient descriptions of underlying genetics.
A Mexican. For instance: Louis CK is a Mexican. Except around people that think the word "Mexican" is derogatory word...in which case you pretend that people from Mexico don't exist because that hurts their feelings.
Yup. It's funny because I find being called Hispanic/Latino in order to avoid calling me "Mexican" annoying. But I would be corrected by some San Francisco diversity leader that being called "Mexican", and now even "Hispanic", should be offensive to me.
I don't find Mexican to be derogatory in and of itself (obviously someone could use it in a derogatory fashion), but I would avoid assuming that any random Hispanic person is Mexican though. Does that mean I'm being "politically correct?"
Should I start calling every Asian person I see Chinese to prove how non-PC and what a "free thinker" I am?
Just calling me Mexican because of how I look is different. But when you know I'm from Mexico and you avoid calling me Mexican because of PC reasons, that's where the problem lies.
What? Is this for real? Is "Mexican" considered offensive? In what context? Like, there's a Japanese gentleman slacking off and someone says "Oh you're such a Mexican". Or more like people from Colombia and Spain are referred to as Mexicans?
As a Mexican living in Mexico, I found this very interesting.
In certain contexts, yes, particularly, its not uncommon for non-Hispanics to use the term to refer to any person whose features seem to suggest Latin American descent, a practice which can be offensive, for different reasons (some of which I'll note for each category) to all of Mexicans (whose identity it genericizes), Americans of Mexican descent (whose Americanness it erases, making them part of the alien "other" within their own country), and Hispanics who are neither Mexican nor of Mexican descent (whose entire identity it erases.)
(No doubt, some people -- particularly outside of those groups -- who are part of the crowd that treats offensiveness of terms as something independent of context have noted that there are some contexts in which "Mexican" is offensive to some people, and concluded improperly that "Mexican" is, therefore, categorically offensive and inappropriate.)
I wrote almost the same post as yours then refreshed, so have an upvote.
I do want to address one thing:
it's very common for whites to use the term...
I feel this should be qualified with xenophobic or racist whites, not whites in general. Many of us are quite capable of recognizing that a Latino or Hispanic person isn't necessarily Mexican and use the correct terms when appropriate to use them at all, or inquire if we actually are interested in their nation of origin.
I've rephrased the bit you took issue with a bit differently than you suggest; I agree that it was misstated, but its not, AFAICT, universally motivated by actual xenophobia or racism, and is quite often just plain ignorance by people who wouldn't do it if they recognized that there was a difference.
Fair. There's definitely a distinction to be made between conscious and unconscious behaviors. And telling someone in the latter camp their statement is "racist" or "xenophobic" tends to throw them into a defensive mode, rather than offering a chance for a more constructive exchange. But we also need to help people (particularly white Americans because they don't experience or witness it the same way) understand the concepts of systemic discrimination as well. Where the individual doesn't do or say anything at all xenophobic or racist, but unwittingly still perpetuates the mechanisms that keep the population segregated (by location, by opportunity, or other means).
Difficult conversations to have, these days in particular.
I agree, though I find people commonly reference various nationalities as if they represented a "race" of peoples. I'd also point out that "Hispanic" is an even less genetically precise term than "Mexican".
I agree, I'm only pointing out that in terms of genetics, the term hispanic is even less precise because it is commonly used to describe any person that originates from a region where Spanish is predominantly spoken (i.e. covering a much broader range of peoples without regard for genetics).
Some of the nitpicking is funny, but the lede is kind of terrible: "Imagine if people from Kansas and California were as genetically distinct from each other as someone from Germany is from someone from Japan."
Just imagine if California contained people as genetically distinct as a person from Germany and a person from Japan!
I understand what the lede is trying to say, and I understand what the average (that is, mean) person probably thinks. Take a random person from that place. I think it's more likely the author meant take the median, or even better for diverse locations, the mode.
This is exacerbated by the believe of Americans (myself included) that we are a uniquely diverse place, reinforced by our education and mythology. We're diverse. We aren't that diverse.
P.S. It is rather funny that California was used in that example rather than some other state. It's one of the few states approaching the level where the majority population will soon buy Hispanic, if it isn't already, making the statement somewhat pointless.
Where do you see a comment section? Ah, maybe it is hidden in my browser.
It is looking at genetic differences between humans, which is something to be careful with. Though only US-americans (and Nazis, weird coincidence) think that genetic differences between humans mean that they are of a different race.
The article itself is less surprising than one might think. Mexicans in the north, center and south already look very different, with very typical types of looks being common in those areas. And I'm not talking about clothing and style here. It is not surprising that those visible differences show deeper differences.
> Though only US-americans (and Nazis, weird coincidence) think that genetic differences between humans mean that they are of a different race.
I don't even know what this comment is supposed to mean. Is it saying that other nations don't subscribe to the notion of "race?" Because that's complete BS, as anyone who has travelled outside of the US would know.
Do we bring up apartheid in South Africa? European colonialism, and their views on race? Chinese views on race? Racism in Brazil? Saudi Arabia? Russia? I'm just confused as to what you mean.
Here's a simple example: The Wikipedia article on Race (human categorization), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization), has a list of translations in the left column, with something like 60 languages listed. I can only read four others (Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese), but they all say pretty much the same thing as each other.
I think any person with any understanding of the subject can agree that scientifically, the categorization of humans into "races" is meaningless and absurd, but this certainly doesn't mean that people all over the world do have this social construct. And most cultures also have a long list of stereotypes and assumptions that they apply to different "races."
That's not the core part of my comment, it was a side remark. I think it is kind of interesting in context of PC, but not more.
Read the wikipedia article you linked. The very first sentence talks about race as a social construct, and goes on to explain that it is a biological concept no longer used for humans . You'll find an article about that in every language, that does not imply the same usage. You won't find the idea of different races between humans in media or official forms in many countries outside of the US, according to my experience – which does not really mean you will find it nowhere, of course.
Race is in the US used as a stand-in for ethnics. Distinguishing between ethnics you find everywhere, mixing that with the term race you don't. Not if not following Nazi-ideology.
Personal experience. Those "race" elements in official forms – and, more so, the use of that word in everyday media speak – I only saw in the US, and they'd be impossible where I come from.
That was my initial feeling as well when I moved to the US. But then I learned that it tends to be Democrats that favors such information gathering, because it supports affirmative action, whereas Republicans would generally like to ignore race differences altogether
The whole enterprise is flawed anyway. Being Spanish (from Spain), the official definition of Hispanic applies to me, which entitles me to receive special attention that is obviously intended for non-Europeans.
Sometimes it's hard to see the importance of racism for someone who isn't part of a minority group day-in-and-day-out. In terms of racial identification, are you part of the majority in your country?
I've often wondered why Mexican people look so different from people in the US. Wikipedia makes me believe that Mexicans are generally a mix of European and native ancestry. But why does Mexico have so much more of that than the US? Especially considering we stole much of our land from them...
Why does the average person in Texas (excluding Mexico->US immigrants) look so different from the average person a few hundred miles south, but yet looks similiar to someone a few hundred (or thousand) miles north?
Because the population density was much lower in pre-Columbian America than in pre-Columbian Mexico[0]. Note how Argentina has a similarly low population density - their current population also has a low level of indigenous ancestry.
There are some other nuances as well, like how the existing social structure was preserved in Mexico. Check out Why Nations Fail[1] for the details.
"Population density"is a nice way to put it but hides fact that the local population was exterminated in the british colonies, and not in the spanish ones. That's why there is so few people of aboriginal descent in the US and not in Latin America.
Population density isn't "a nice way to put it", it's data from before colonization began. Regardless of what happened afterwards, the starting conditions were very different in what is now the US and Mexico.
> Wikipedia makes me believe that Mexicans are generally a mix of European and native ancestry. But why does Mexico have so much more of that than the US? Especially considering we stole much of our land from them...
Because the US (starting before it was the US) engaged in policy of separation from, genocide against, and subjugation-in-separate-polities of the natives, whereas the Spanish in Mexico (and elsewhere) implemented the encomienda system (essentially, a quasi-feudal manor system, where the natives were essentially in the role of peasants, but -- by royal decree -- free peasants, not chattel slaves like blacks in the US.)
> Wikipedia makes me believe that Mexicans are generally a mix of European and native ancestry.
The interesting aspect of the article is that the "native ancestry" part is very diverse itself.
> But why does Mexico have so much more of that than the US?
The Spanish mixed with the native population and created communities with them since the beginning. This process is 500 years old. Race boundaries have been erased. In the US this process is 100-200 years old.
> Especially considering we stole much of our land from them...
A lot of the land was very sparsely populated. Most migration to the West occurred after the 1840s. People coming from the East (NY, Boston, Philadelphia, Louisiana, etc). This explains why they are so similar to them.
"The Spanish mixed with the native population and created communities with them since the beginning. This process is 500 years old. Race boundaries have been erased."
It isn't true that boundaries have been erased, though it may seem that way because a majority of Mexicans are mixed European and indigenous (62%).
But about 10% is European, 7% indigenous and 21% predominantly indigenous.
Well you would have to understand that Mexico is a mix, but not a perfect mix. Southern Mexican states have more Indigenous people, and mestizos there have more indigenous characteristics, but if you go to Northern states it won't be difficult to find blond people, that's because there were less native Americans in the north than in the south.
Then you have to understand that the poorest states of Mexico are in the south, therefore a lot of people from the South emigrates to the US, and that's where Americans get the stereotypical look for a Mexican.
As an anecdote, I live in a Mexican Northern state, in my last year of college I got the opportunity to study as an exchange student in Charleston S.C., I went there with other 3 students, the three of them were what Americans would call "White", some people were confused, how a Mexican could be white? They had a clear picture of how a Mexican should look like, and usually that picture comes from Mexicans with a little more indigenous blood in their veins, as myself, I have black hair and my skin is clear brown even though two of my grandparents had blue eyes.
So yeah, it all depends on where in Mexico you go, there are white Mexicans, native american Mexicans, even black and Asian Mexicans in the whole territory but we're part of a not so perfect mix, there are zones where one genetic pool is stronger than the other.
Someone more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm wrong, but the diversity of Mexico might have to do with how strong the Central American nations were at the time of colonization. They had huge cities and much more complex government systems than their Northern native neighbours. There was thus less massacres and more intermingling down there.
The modern distinction may have been caused by the border itself (e.g. if you are a new immigrant in US, you probably have better opportunities away from the border).
I think I read somewhere, that as the central and south American civilisations were settled, with towns, cities and a ruling elite. The Spanish just replaced this ruling elite.
Whereas in north America, it was more nomadic peoples, so the Europeans couldn't just replace the existing rulers and carry on as normal, thus the eradication policy.
Because the native aztec population was not exterminated as the indians in US were. The spanish mixed with the locals but there weren't that many of them (spanish).
> Wasn't interracial marriage illegal in the US until the 20th Ceentury?
Yes, and no. That is, it wasn't established as a federal Constitutional right until the decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967), but there were many states where it was legal prior to that (in fact, it was legal in 6 of the 13 original colonies at the time of independence, and there are several states that never passed laws prohibiting it.)
And even then, the laws that were passed only consistently prohibited whites from marrying blacks, though some of them also included all or specific other non-white "races".
I was reading about this case yesterday and found it really fascinating how the anti-miscegenation law in Virginia was crafted in what I imagine as the meanest way possible.
Why the surprise? Mexico is part of a land bridge between two continents. Both have been invaded multiple times by distant populations. It's next to the Caribbean, a host of islands which are known to accelerate genetic changes. With all these peoples coming and going I'd be shocked if it wasn't so diverse.
There are two big mountain ranges crossing Mexico North-South. That probably kept some of the indigenous groups isolated from each other for a long time.
There is also the division between Mesoamerica (South) and Aridoamerica(North). Two different sets of cultures that needed different technologies. Settlers and Nomads.
That may be so but the take away should be it's not just intuition but it's documented and contributes to scientific knowledge and inquiry and may lead to direct improved knowledge about those pops leading to better medical understanding and treatments... And no just for them but other genetically divergent groups around the world.
From what I've read about animals, the isolated population of an island results in faster evolution due to 'close' breeding. Rare non-dominant genes are more likely to meet up and be expressed. The lack of geographic diversity also means that species need not evolve to be generalists. There is no advantage to adapting to anything but the island environment. In humans, by way of example, that might mean an island population more rapidly adapts to an endemic disease as they cannot escape it. They don't have people living elsewhere brining in non-adaptive genes and so the local adaptive genes spread more quickly than if they were on the mainland.
Well, it's not surprising given the racial makeup of the Iberian peninsula over history. (Celts, Romans, Vandals, North Africans) and then sending them to America to mix with native Indian populations and imported Africans.
That's what I thought at first. The interesting thing about the article is that it shows the native population was already pretty diverse by the time of first contact with the Europeans.
Also, a minor nit picking. Even if slaves brought to Mexico came from a very specific Portuguese enclaves within the African continent, the population within Africa is extremely diverse. It would not surprise me if they brought about as much diversity as the other two source "races", for lack of a better word. It seems a bit too simple to have them reduced to a note margin as in "imported Africans".
I remember a little while ago my dad went to an academic lunch with Dr. Craig Venter in Chiapas (MX), he was talking about sampling DNA from the Americas to register genes that could potentially help medical research and are endemic to the region.
My understanding is that all native american populations are from a relatively small and homogenous population that walked into Alaska 16000 years ago.
Which means that they're much less genetically diverse than the rest of the world.
This is hard to reconcile with the claims in this article.
I encourage you to read the wikipedia article on the settlement of the Americas, mostly because it's fun[0].
The landbridge theory has its supporters, but what's really interesting is the gaps in knowledge, and other theories about multiple waves of settlement, or settlement directly from seafaring peoples.
It's really just a fascinating mix of fields. You do yourself a disservice by reducing the settlement of the americas to 2 sentences like that.
I do believe the claim of less genetic diversity amongst indigenous Americans is correct. The excellent book "1491" even discusses how this could have contributed to the spread of disease: less genetic diversity meant less overall population protection.
Latest information is that there were at least two, maybe three waves of immigration from Asia. There were probably also small numbers of people who made it from Polynesia to South America.
conjecture: the population of Los Angeles County, if measured using the same approach employed by this study, would show more genetic diversity than the population of Mexico
The worst part about it, is that 5 or 10 years ago, these sorts of shrill arguments weren't nearly as dominant or widespread.
But most unbearable of all, within the past 1 or 2 years, all of the same hideous internet conversations (same theme, same points, same tone, all on the same shrill topics) are now invading real life encounters. No longer is the bullshit confined to a few shitty websites.
Now, everywhere you turn some asshole is whining or complaining about imaginary problems they've conjured as a fad, and maybe half the time they are surrounded with sympathetic dipshits, their faces contorted with concern and mirrored sadness, nodding and patting sad person on the back.
So, somewhere along the line, people have figured out that as an introduction, when meeting new people, a good strategy for choosing friends among peers is to zoom to the bottom with a sad story, dominate the discussion with how bad everything feels, and then wait for hugs.
People test their audience for warm reactions to sad tales, and then based on the degree of empathy, polarize their response and etiher wage total war on enemies, or cuddle snuggly with their new surrogate therapist best friends.
Only some forms of sadness are lauded as acceptable. Others are correct in their suffering and are expected to remain penitent, and ostracize themselves for the greater good.
There's always a serious historical debate about what caused a war, but tossing Molotov cocktails into HN threads is (a) not the way to invite one and (b) no way to behave here. Please don't post like this, and please don't create accounts to break the site rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
> If you truly think the civil war was fought over slavery
The Confederacy, quite overtly, seceded over and fought the war solely and entirely to protect slavery from what they expected (quite probably correctly) was an inevitable abolition within the United States.
The Union, OTOH, its true wasn't particularly fighting to eliminate slavery (especially not the slave states in the Union), but for the idea that admission to the United States was a one-way door. But, then again, the Union was heavily in favor of abolition, just not enough that it was worth splitting the country over (perhaps largely because many of them, like the Confederacy, could see where the long-term trend was headed.) Once the rebels caused the split anyway, that concern went out the door.
To the commenters responding to this comment saying the Civil War was about slavery, slavery was the trigger. The Civil War was in truth about whether the U.S. would remain "these united States" ("States" capitalized, "united" not), as the Founders set out, or become a centralized federal system where the States were parts of the whole rather than independent entities in a political alliance. The states in favor of a powerful centralized government prevailed, and the governmental model of the united States changed (into that of the United States).
"My paramount object, is to save the Union, and not either destroy or save slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing the slaves, I would do it. If I could save the Union by freeing some and leaving others in slavery, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all, I would do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps save the Union." - Abraham Lincoln
Having not lived in the American South and much preferring the idea of an entire Union than one divided into two or more feuding countries, I don’t meet your criteria.
However, the case in the States was that at the turn of the 19th Century, the States were all pretty much fine with slavery. By the middle of the 19th Century, the North had decided it was not fine with slavery. The South was still fine with slavery. The North decided the South was going to do what the North wanted it to do, whether the South wanted to or not. To do that, it was going to use a strengthened federal government.
How you feel about slavery is beside the point (obviously it’s a barbaric practice). The point is that one group of people had a change of heart, and used force to compel another group of people to kowtow to its whims. And that changed the structure of the country.
> However, the case in the States was that at the turn of the 19th Century, the States were all pretty much fine with slavery.
No, they weren't. The protections of slavery written into the original constitution (including the fact that slaves, despite not being property rather than represented citizens, were counted at all in apportioning House seats -- and therefore also electoral votes) were written into it specifically because at that time the slave states of the South were already convinced that the North -- and the majority of the represented citizenry of the country -- would be inclined to at least greatly restrict if not abolish it in short order, based on the abolitionist movements that actually existed at that time and had been successful in the North, some even before the Revolution.
The North tolerated slavery in the South as the price of Union, right up until the South decided to sunder the Union over it, but the idea that the whole country was "pretty much fine with slavery" even at the turn of the 19th Century is just plain historically indefensible.
One of the reasons that the South broke away from the union was that in the new states being formed out of unincorporated territory, immigrants from the North were outnumbering those from the South, and subsequently rejecting slavery.
The South discovered that no one outside the South was fine with slavery, and those people were willing to take up arms to keep it contained there.
Well the Vice President of the Confederacy [1] and the declaration of causes published by many of the states made it pretty clear that it was about slavery.
[1] "The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions--African slavery as it exists among us--the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution [...] The general opinion of the men of that day [Revolutionary Period] was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution [slavery] would be evanescent and pass away [...] Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."
Civil war was fought over Slavery as an economic system and with layers of morality in between. You cannot sanitize the Civil War from Slavery. They are intricately weaved issues, only slavery no. But Slavery is the big bad central theme.
