Parsing Words

153 thoughts on “Parsing Words”

1. “”But why should people have to move because every business in a town — say — is run by racists?””

   That argument was shot through the heart by the interstates and through the head by the internet. That “town” no longer exists.

   1. Not true. I’ve dealt with racism big-time from stores in a section of the city I live in.

      My answer was to not go to those stores, ever, never-ever-ever.

      Treat me poorly because of my skin color? Sucks to be you.

      Dealt with this garbage at diversity seminars at work. Until I shoved it down their throats. Been racially profiled? Yep. Been discriminated against because of my race? Yep. Been discriminated against because of my religion? Yep. Because of my sex? Yep. Marital status? Yep. Music I listen to? Yep yep yep.

      Which supposedly never happened because I’m a fat, pasty-white male Catholic who doesn’t like rap or jazz or most country and is married and can’t (not won’t, can’t) work outside due to my allergies and that pasty-white complexion (which can and does burn on a cloudy day…)

      1. But you could always get to another source of what you needed. Not “The only butcher shop that I have any knowledge of won’t allow me to buy meat.”

      2. Oh! you are a dumpling! Welcome to the club. Meetings on Wednesdays. Dutch treat (Which is of course, a slur.) I was born a dumpling too. Fat red-headed white boy, never tanned, burned under a 60 watt light bulb. In grade school the other kids used to take turns running up to me and hitting me on the back of the head, or back, or whatever with whatever stick/rock was handy. Then they would run away secure in the knowledge that I couldn’t catch them, and was too nice to sneak up and kill them at the water fountain.
         I won’t bother with the name calling. Now, all of these kids were paler than copy paper, but that didn’t matter. I knew a few who were brought up in very racist households. On reflection, years later I realized that Daddy’s race hate had a lot to do with his own shortcomings, as he couldn’t keep a job and was a bully and all-around nasty person.

2. This essay is as refreshing as a draft of cold water. Seriously. So few people say what they think, and say it logically. (And I agree with it, which doesn’t hurt.)

3. Me, I’m from pure Irish stock. I know it to be true as my mother oft told the story of the great grandmother, who was part German, pricking her finger to let all the German blood run out.

   1. ROFL

   2. My mother got into genealogy in a big way. She found a great-aunt who was one of the last of her family to leave Ireland during a particular famine, came to the United States to be reunited with her clan, went out on a harvest as soon as she was able, fell off a potato wagon onto a pitchfork, and died.

      Obviously not a direct ancestor, but a sure sign of an Irish heritage.

4. That Idiocy called “White Privilege” started when a Wealthy White Woman looked at all of her advantages (which realistically came from her wealth) and decided that her advantages came from Being White.

   Of course, there is the Crazy Idea that All Blacks Are Poor and No Whites Are Poor.

   As far as I’m concerned anybody who talks about White Privilege Being Real is a Racist. 😡

   1. No Irish Need Apply.

      1. Don’t remember where I saw it, but some idiot teacher tried to claim that the “No Irish Need Apply” signs Did Not Exist.

         Unfortunately, a student found pictures of those signs on-line. 😈

         Of course, some of the stories about the Irish “Little People” and their Larger Counterparts would make me agree that “we don’t want those sorts around”. [Crazy Grin]

         1. Heh. Herself did a graduate level (wile in highschool) dissertation (from what I recall) on NINA. Pure leveled the wanker.

            Some? SOME?!

            Apparently we do be slacking.

            1. Apparently we do be slacking.

               Good. [Very Big Dragon Grin]

   2. Yep – wealthy and well-positioned white upper middle-class women are trying to make excuses for their own upper-middle-class privilege by dumping all over poorer whites. It’s disgusting, infuriating and snobbish.

      1. Humanity’s search for acceptable targets is always ongoing.

5. Some police departments still have crime maps. Even better, they have crime maps by type, so you know to rent a delivery locker if it’s porch pirates, or store your car in the garage if it’s catalytic converter thefts. (Recently helped someone looking to rent in a historically sketchy area by sending over a link to one of those maps.)

   1. Non-trivial points.

6. I refuse to engage in anything ‘race based’ with them (the neo-Jacobins) because their ulterior motives are everything. Race only matters to them (the neo-Jacobins) because they want to sort, then divide, then conquer/control. Merit matters, the alternate term for affirmative action (programs) is ‘positive discrimination’ which becomes the justification for preferential treatment. Merit matters, we should be advancing the bright bulbs and not the dim or lazy bulbs.

7. Leftists believe that not only speech but thoughts that are contrary to leftist ideology should be prohibited. They use ever changing definitions of words in pursuit of that goal, as they envision making it impossible to even conceive of any thought that is contrary to the narrative at any given moment.

   They are truly using 1984 as a “how to” guide.

   Under their definition of racism, MLK was a racist, because he dreamed of a time when people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, the exact opposite of what the left demands these days. Indeed, the left is overtly racist, and genocidally racist at that, as they demonize and ultimately demand the elimination of entire racial groups that they view as “oppressor groups”.

   Their goals may be that of the global communists, but they are willing to use the Fascist economic methods Mussolini used while incorporating the Nazi’s racial/identity group hierarchical fanaticism. They just call it “intersectionalism” and Critical Race Theory, which itself is simply the Nation of Islam’s “white people are the devil” dressed up in the language of academia.

   Fortunately they are for the most part incompetent, but they certainly do not lack intent, and that intent is to eliminate everyone they don’t like in the fullest sense of the word. Indeed, they think reducing the population of the Earth to around 50 million or so is “necessary to save the Earth”.

8. I spent a small part of my childhood in a neighborhood full of Hawaiians, Filipinos, 2 black families (it was the late 60’s – that was the term) and us. If you can’t tell from my picture, I’m so white that it’s my actual skin tone, not my race. When neighborhood kids were told to “go play with the colored kids” – that was us. I was over racism before I was out of diapers.

9. Repeating comment from 21 July 2019:

   I am ever so amused at the various utterly insane accusations that you are “racist” or “sexist” or “anti-immigrant” or even “species-ist” and other such utter bilge. Not that I SEEK such amusement – really, Humanity ought to be SMARTER than ox! NOT make ox head hurt!

   1. ” Humanity ought to be SMARTER than ox!”

      The Reader thinks that is not the way to bet. He is sorry that it makes Ox head hurt.

   2. Smarter and wiser are different things…

   3. We’re a long way from Mycenae.

      And mortals have decided we are untruths, with SCIENCE! (TM) and so they turn and make other mortals the monster over the hills, the woman who steals the children, and the long sharp knives in the dark places, instead of those of us who are those things.

      1. I rather like science. It’s such a pity that so few claiming to go it actually bother even a semblance of it. But you know what? Go have another LONG pull from the jug. Call it… research… or making sure the data is repeatable. Right proper science, that!

   4. I am speciesist. I can’t stand homo sapiens stupidus.

      1. More like Homo Un-Sapiens. 😛

10. “—ist” is sliding down there with “—phobe.” Phobia used to mean irrational fear that required serious help to deal with, especially things like agoraphobia (people who flat out cannot leave their house because of the absolute terror that overwhelms them.) Now it means “you disapprove of my lifestyle/philosophy.” Which is a disservice to people who need clinical help to function around a phobia.

    Am I “studentist” because I refuse to be alone in a classroom with a student unless we are both in view of the open door, with at least two feet of space (or a desk) between us? “Sexist” because I go out of my way to avoid anyone else thinking that I might be planning to compromise a male associate/colleague/friend? It sure looks from outside as if I’m avoiding students and men out of prejudice, IF you assume that that’s my motive.

    1. “That’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.” Bernard Woolley in Yes Minister.

    2. “Phobia” still does mean “irrational fear that requires serious help to deal with,” which is how “whatever-phobe” gets used as a single-word kafkatrap. The claim is that the whatever-phobe’s opposition to and arguments against whatever can be dismissed as irrational and false. They’re solely due to irrational fear and mental illness, rather than evidence and reason – and of course the more we argue the greater the ‘proof’ is that we ‘-phobes’ are delusional and wrong.

       (The “needs serious help to overcome” element is in play too – the people using whatever-phobe terms would love to ‘re-educate’ us.)

       1. “They’re solely due to irrational fear and mental illness, ”

          And to think, it’s also the Left that does most of the whining about how mental illness needs to be de-stigmatized by allowing it to go completely untreated, and to be publicly expressed in whatever way the mentally ill desire to at the moment.

          1. To a certain extent, yes. However, they still want the ability to declare anyone who does not agree with them as mentally ill, requiring removal of legal weapons or re-education.

    3. I’m amused by the various YouTubers who’ve been using “istaphobe” as shorthand for “the Left doesn’t like me”.

       1. The left are dextrophobes

    4. My beloved leaves his door open whenever he has a female client. When he was the owner it was company policy that if any preparer felt uncomfortable with any client, for any reason, they were to call him and the client would be reassigned. ( I hope that’s still true, but the new management is making lots of changes).

       1. The Reader left his door open for ALL one on one meetings for the last 20 years of his career. The only exceptions were a single handful of people he trusted explicitly. Out of those 5, one was female.

11. I have been to Madrid and several places in Turkey. I was surprised to see how easy it was to tell the Spaniards from the Germans from the Dutch from the Icelanders from the Turks. There were tourists from all these places visiting where we were.
    I guess if they want to intermarry they come here.

    The few of Americans we saw stood out, especially in Turkey. My blond blue-eyed daughter, who is fluent in Turkish caused a minor sensation everywhere we went on the Asian side of Turkey. Very few Americans travel where we were and virtually none of them speak Turkish. They were thrilled that an American would learn their language.

    1. I was actually rather astounded when we lived in Spain, about how easy it was to distinguish Roma (Gypsies) from Spaniards. Their skin color was much different, eye and hair color often similar – but yes, the Roma looked … different.

       1. If you think about it until maybe 150-200 years ago when steam (trains and boats) really let people start to move around people didn’t move much. Populations were quite inbred (and folks like the Roma and the Hebrews who frown on exogamy outside the group even more so). If you got 50 miles from where you were born you were unusual. I suspect that’s part of why America (and Australia and a couple others) are sort of unusual. They had people come from elsewhere and then more just kept coming. Some would settle and stay, but every once and a while the wandering gene would pop up and off they’d go. But even here once here people would settle. I and one other cousin were the only ones of our generation who ever really left the hometown ( and the cousin went back part time). Not like I went that far, I’m maybe 150 miles from where I started, and being of a Hobbitish tendency tend to not like wandering about.

          1. It is nice to be able to move 2000 miles away from family drama, though I missed out on some of the better stuff. (For values of “better”, waggles hand.) Makes funerals a cast-iron bear to deal with. Flew once, drove once, and did “virtual” for the last. Didn’t like to do so for that one, but had very good reasons.

             FWIW, Grampa Pete had a bit of wanderlust (managed to avoid a front-row seat in WW 1 because of it), as did $SPOUSE’s father. The rest of the family, not so much. After the major moves (circa 197mumble and Y2Kish), we’ve set roots. Don’t wanna move no more.

          2. There was a reason paternal grandmother had uncles who never married. Her mother and at least one aunt married foreigner’s who emigrated into the area, in late 1800’s. Even grandma married from “out of the area”, relatively “late” (mid-20s). As grandma stated, “All my classmates, until I left for Teachers college were cousins”. There are a number of “double cousins” in the area now. Second to fourth cousins marrying. Didn’t know they were cousins.

       2. Romanians have a different cast of features from western Europeans. There really is a “slavic,” type. And yes, the Roma don’t look Romanian, either.

    2. I remember being in Athens and everyone automatically speaking English to me, I asked some of my work colleagues whether I had an “I am an American” sign on me and they told me no, they probably think you’re German, but they know you’re not Greek, I suppose all large sandy haired men look like Germans if one is Greek,

       1. Oh, yeah. The touts in Porto have nationality guessing to an art. You walk by a restaurant and are hailed in your language…
          My family was funny?
          Younger son, Portuguese. DIL, French. Older son, Italian. Dan, usually Portuguese. Me? English.
          Go figure.

          1. Giggling – there was a street beggar, who used to hang out in older and sort of touristic area in Athens, who played the ocarina – and he would play a tune identified with a nationality, whenever a foreign tourist walked by. I can’t remember the whole repertoire, but it was The Chicken Dance for Germans, and Frere Jacque for French. I can’t remember what tune he played for English. He’d take a look and guess, and play a tune…

          2. I’ve been mistaken for a gnu, a moose (huh?), and probably a few other creatures.

             1. I loved the “I don’t know why the gnu gave you axes, but I want to say we’re friends, right?”

                1. I am still so amused at the accidentally perfect timing.

                   1. Right? 😀

             2. Buffalo? Mule? 😛

                (Ox head hard)

                1. Poor ox.

                2. NEVER a mule.

                   1. I don’t want to think of our Ox as a steer. 😆

                      1. Uh, no, mules are genetically infertile. They’re not ‘fixed’.

                         1. Actually some are. If they are “male”, there’s usually some insurance snippage [totally a word] to make sure you don’t end up with a mule who acts like a stallion. It’s not common, but it can be a real problem for handling the animal.

                            1. I recall the line “When a mule foals” to be like “Once in a blue moon” but far more rare…. but NOT unheard of.

                      2. Nor do I. I, once again, point out that ‘ox’ is educated bovine. Now, that education might be very basic indeed… gee, haw, etc. But still, educated is the defining aspect.

                3. Might have been mistaken a for buffalo, or bison, or yak. But not a mule. Nor a mule.

       2. Oh, yeah – I was most usually taken for English, especially if I had my daughter with me – she was small, fair-haired and cute. (I myself had dark brown hair, was sort of pale and blue-eyed Nordic-looking.) If they spotted us in the car that I drove at the time (a Volvo) they would usually assume that we were Swedish.
          If I were alone – and I dressed very carefully to fit in – jeans skirt in middling length, long-sleeved blouse, clogs or practical shies – the shopkeepers in the local area usually started off talking to me in Greek.
          I worked very hard at blending in – there was at the time a pretty awful anti-American terrorism problem in Greece. It didn’t pay to advertise your nationality, even in the tourist areas.

          1. There are still issues in Athens. I got taken out though a back stairway once to avoid some …. Ummm …. Unpleasantnesses, There was a protest about changing the high school graduation requirements and they were marching whilst burning American flags. I asked my colleagues what we had to do with High School graduation requirements and they told me not to worry, burning American flags is what they do at marches don’t worry, they all have cousins in Astoria, until they looked out at someone else marching, said “I think we’d better get you out of here”, and away we went. They set off a bomb in the Athens intercontinental Hotel a few weeks later. that’s where I used to stay when In Athens. not good at all.

             We had been living abroad for several years at that point so we had English haircuts, wore English clothes and, most important, wore English shoes, When the wife and I play “spot the Yank” when we’re abroad, it’s the shoes we look at first.

             I’m blindingly Irish looking actually. My wife with her red hair and freckles makes me look Mediterranean.

             1. I still have the letter I got from King Constantine’s private secretary when I wrote the King of Greece asking for information for my sixth grade research project. He was a major and this would have been 1966. The packet of tourist brochures wasn’t much use, but I treasure that letter.

       3. People in Germany had a hard time with me. They all assumed I was German until I opened my mouth. They’d speak to me in German initially. Germans said it was because I didn’t act like an American, or a tourist.

12. I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland OH during the blockbusting of the 1960’s which changed the old de-facto racial segregation there. When I was four the street I lived on was all working -> middle class white and it was a pleasant safe neighborhood. By the time I was seven it was working -> middle class mixed black and white and was a pleasant safe neighborhood. Then the remaining white families started panic selling. By the time I was nine it was a poor -> middle class 90+% black neighborhood, starting to get more dangerous and we moved to a further out suburb.
    A year later I rode my bicycle down to the old neighborhood and a group of kids about my age tried to steal my bicycle from under me. I managed to get away from them.

    It’s easy for me to see why many people saw the crime maps as racist. The high crime areas I saw were almost exclusively ones with a high proportion of black people.

    But I had known good and bad people of different races by then and could see the mapping only went one way. There were majority black neighborhoods with low crime. It was culture, not race and the high-crime culture was far more closely associated with poverty than with race.

    That further out suburb we moved to was about 40% Jewish & about 10% black and was a pleasant safe neighborhood. The black percentage is much higher now but it’s still a pleasant safe neighborhood because the panic selling never happened so the working -> middle class people kept their homes and neighborhoods in good repair

13. “But, you say, Portuguese is not a race. Isn’t it?”

    100 years ago, it was commonplace to talk about the English race, the French race, the German race, and so on. This turns up frequently in Victorian-era books.

    1. And in half of Kipling.

       “In extended observation of the ways and works of man,
       From the Four-mile Radius roughly to the Plains of Hindustan:
       I have drunk with mixed assemblies, seen the racial ruction rise,
       And the men of half Creation damning half Creation’s eyes.

       I have watched them in their tantrums, all that Pentecostal crew,
       French, Italian, Arab, Spaniard, Dutch and Greek, and Russ and Jew,
       Celt and savage, buff and ochre, cream and yellow, mauve and white,
       But it never really mattered till the English grew polite;”

       https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/et_dona_ferentes.html

       1. Great quote.
          And I just ran across passages in Tarzan of the Apes in which humans and apes are described as being “of different races”.

14. On the mutability of race, it is rather striking when you compare Latin American categories with US racial categories. What in the US is defined as “white Hispanic” has a extremely complex range of categories back in their home countries.

    For another example, there is an actress who the Critical Drinker calls “Ginger Plank of Wood.” To American eyes, she reads as African American, and she describes herself as “mixed race”.

    The weird thing about the American slavery, I’m realizing I know very very little about what people thought about it at the time. School never covered the Lincoln Douglas debates, the works of Frederick Douglass or any of the major debates of the time, or even what the debates of the time even were.

    Feels like the schools either were afraid of Mill’s Trident, or more likely thought it was too much work…

    I have more research and more reading to do.

15. Jim-Crow laws were generally not part of reconstruction, but rather part of the backlash against reconstruction. The compromise of 1877 ended reconstruction and opened the door to the Jim-Crow era. One of the Southern objections to reconstruction was that former slaves were being allowed too many rights.

    1. Right. Sorry. I’m going down with whateverthehellthisis for the third time in two months. I stared at that sentence for like three minutes, then decided what the heck.

    2. The Jim Crow laws, as originally written, were also intended to keep poor whites and blacks from working together in groups like the Farmers’ Alliance. When the two did work together, they broke monopolies (jute) and threatened the Old Order of Things. “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman was quite clear that he had as little respect for yeomen whites as he did for blacks. He just faked it around those whites who voted. Over time, things shifted and most Jim Crow laws only affected blacks. But even then, if you look at the local level, you will find blacks serving in office and voting in some elections.

       1. Yeah, it’s hard to talk about history without oversimplifying and it’s hard to know how far to simplify to make a point.

16. Our Hostess said

    This puzzled living heck out of me, until someone on the blog pointed out that “homeless are usually black in the East.”

    That person was imprecise or perhaps misinformed. At least in the New England states who the homeless are depends on WHERE you are. New Hampshire/ Vermont/Maine (outside of perhaps Portland ME, and MAYBE Nashua NH) they’re of primarily Northern/Eastern European stock because honestly the number of folks of any kind of African ancestry is small to miniscule. Boston, more likely “white” (tanning ability poor to none unless you are near to North End) with some “African American” over toward Roxbury. Worcester a mix of “white”, South American Hispanic (which appears to be white that tans well and has Spanish or perhaps Portuguese as a mother tongue). Lawrence, New London, Bridgeport similar. Lowell adds in a small admixture of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese (almost never Hmong, they take care of their own). Hartford is probably the only New England city with a more distinct African American contingent outside of Boston.

    As for what people read its interesting. Wife Family is a mix of Second Generation Swede (her Dad Looked like a Viking) and third/fouth generation Northern Italian and Sicilian. Wife and sister read Northern European with pale skin tones (though olive undertones on my wife). Brother in law reads Italian(to be precise Sicilian) with dark hair and eyes. If the hair had a bit of curl he might read Mediteranean of some sort, deeply tanned North African or Middle Eastern. Me I’m that dumpling someone mentioned. I’m a Heinz 57 mix of all the British Isles+ Dutch Swede, French Canadian and (maybe though I can’t find explicit info back 6-7 generations) Mohawk. Wife jokes my ancestors were none to picky… Daughters are redheads, younger has green/ hazel eyes is two shades paler than me or mom but with Olive undertones and curly light auburn hair. Here that reads Irish especially given last name. She has been taken for Cuban in Florida, generally just baffled folks in Australia. Elder has DARK brown eyes with deep auburn hair that is straight and shiny, skin tones far more on the pink end of the scale but not as fair as her sister. Around here reads Irish (again last name) I think generally baffles folks elsewhere unless with sister. Girls have been thought to be twins though they are almost 3 years apart and to us are VERY different, was more common when they were younger and elder daughter still had some curl/wave to her hair.

    What this tells me is people see what they expect to see. Redheads here in greater Boston (with vaguely Irish surname) read Irish. But somewhere with Swedes or Scots they might read otherwise.

    1. They alo tend to think the boys are twins, and did before they were fully grown. 3 1/2 years apart.

    2. No one blinked at DadRed and I in Scotland, because we read Scots – red-hair or greying red, pinkish to white complexion, sturdy build, dress more English than American. When I spoke, I could mimic the local accent of wherever we were if I’d heard more than a few words of it. In Germany, my folks and I get pegged as English (shape, clothes, shoes) until we talk, then I’m Bavarian/Austrian who learned English in the States and my folks are American (or one small corner of England.)

       1. I’ve been mistaken for Scottish but only by Scottish people? It’s weird

          1. Redhead or Auburn yes? Scotland has the largest percent of redheads in its population in the world. Some places pick on their gingers, but Scotland loves them. They tend to forget that the primary source of that was likely invading vikings. Although Northern Italy has its share and redheads and the Roman nose might have been left by the Romans long ago. Some speculate that the redhead genes (M1CR) has the Neanderthals as it ultimate source… the world is really quite strange.

             1. Used to be very dark auburn. Now weird color going white

                1. the wife calls white hair Irish Blonde, it’s very common. She found her first grey hair when she was 11. She has no red left now, hasn’t for years, but to me she’s always a red head. Anyone married to a redhead will know why.

                   1. And here I thought white hair was a sign of Melnibonean ancestry 🙂

                      1. No, Elric was an albino. A lot of Melniboneans opposed his claim to the throne.

                   2. My first grey might have been around then, but went turbo at 28, which is normal for my family. I used to dye it its natural color. Now it has rests of that and a lot of grey and white.

                      1. “a lot of grey and white.”

                         That’s called testosterone blonde. You have a husband and two sons, after all…. 😎

                   3. Raises hand. Dad and his brothers all had white hair starting to show before they were out of HS. Never went bald (mom’s dad, brother, and nephews, were all bald before they were out of HS, or nearly … so missed that). My first white hair showed up at age 23 or 24. Started coloring it at age 30, when all the red auburn natural highlights were white. For the last two decades have been “temp” coloring lighter and lighter to ease in going fully white (with a lot of comments on “how do you get so many shades, as each “natural color” took the color product differently). Last 3 years now it is fully covid white, with some gray, and a few black, without any lines (my hair is NOT short). Mom says my hair is back to my white blond I had as a toddler.

                      1. My youngest brother went gray sort of like that. Just a sprinkling of gray hairs everywhere, slowly progressing over time.

                         He actually had some girls ask him how he did those highlights like that.

                         Fortunately for me, I got my graying pattern from my dad’s side.

                         1. “ask him how he did those highlights like that”
                            …

                            Still get that.

                   4. To be sure, I’ve the same. No grey, just white hairs feckin’ about, and multiplying like bloody hares.

                2. Yeah, your face has kind of a redhead shape, Sarah. Not full-blown Scottish redhead skull, but in that Neanderthal cross kind of neighborhood.

                   1. My mom has a Scandinavian face shape.

             2. Heh. My daughter and I had a running gag at one Ren Faire we worked where SHE was demanding a halberd so she could go join the militia, and I was snagging passing clerics to get them to bless her or exorcise her or SOMETHING. We were amused, the customers were amused, and then on Sunday I tried the shtick on a passing Rennie in plain brown gear. He took one look at my 6’1″, strawberry blonde kid and announced, “I’m with the Vikings. We’ll TAKE her!”

17. Re: reconstruction

    I’m pretty sure that was after reconstruction.

    Jim Crow/Segregation

    Which was political as all get out.

    Democrats in the south felt hard done by, and like Republican Reconstruction policy was discriminatory, punitive, thieving, and destructive.

    Obviously, the thing to do was to make sure that Republicans never again won any local elections. And in that decision they metaphorically damned themselves. When you fraud the system to disallow certain outcomes, you are choosing to accept the costs, some hidden or invisible, of that fraud.

    My view is that poverty in the South later makes a lot more sense as an invisible cost of fraud than it does ‘lasting consequence of Reconstruction’. But, ‘purely the lasting consequence of Reconstruction’ was a politically useful narrative.

    More recent policy is very likely to be much stronger as an influence than something that may or may not have happened fifty, five hundred, or fifty thousand years ago.

    Anyhow, a lot of the freedmen liked the Republican party more than they liked the Democratic party, so your alternatives for preventing Republican officials from being elected in freedmen majority locations were to either get rid of the freedmen, or to terrorize and defraud them from political participation.

    Now, the official narrative today was that this was purely racism.

    Issue is, they also hated carbetbaggers and scalawags, GOP or GOP adjacent whites from the north or south respectively. ”

    There is a case that they were more vehement in abusing blacks.

    There is a counter argument that they would have treated the carpetbaggers the same except for carpetbagger willingness to use lethal force in self defense, and the scalawags the same if not for self defense and connections to local kinship networks. How justified that counter argument, I really dunno.

    Letting politicians get away with stuff always has costs. The more extreme the getting away with, the more certain it is that the enablers will have cause to regret it.

    1. “carpetbagger willingness to use lethal force in self defense, and the scalawags the same if not for self defense and connections to local kinship networks. ”

       Willingness AND ability. Gun control was and is heavily race based.

       1. We used to live in Durham, NC (five years. Longest century of my life.), which is a liberal hellhole second only to Ithaca, NY. The hoops you had to jump through for a handgun were legion, springing from early laws that specifically forbade freedmen from owning guns.

    2. Now the Democrats are spreading their Jim Crow election fuckery nationwide. It’s become ‘the new normal’.

       Same with their racist ‘gun control’ laws.
       ———————————
       Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

    3. Some of both. Part of it was an attempt by those who were part of the old order to hold onto power. But there was also a heavy racial component, as well. Blacks were seen as a mentally inferior race even by many who were sympathetic to them, and that’s an attitude that persisted at least through World War 2.

       1. It’s still prevalent among Leftroids.
          ———————————
          Why do ‘progressives’ assume that their anointed Victim Groups are too stupid to fill out the same simple paperwork as everybody else?

          1. It’s not stated openly nowadays, though. For example, in World War 2, black units had white officers as it was openly assumed that blacks were mentally inferior, and thus could not properly fulfill the role of a unit’s officers. This was an attitude openly embraced by many (General Patton, for one, made a statement saying as much, though he also stated at the same time that he didn’t really care so long as they could fight well; the original Black Panthers, the 761st Independent Tank Battalion, was a part of his 3rd Army and reportedly had a good reputation). It’s possible that the mass enlistment involved in World War 2 and the subsequent Korean War (by which time the armed forces were desegregated due to Truman’s executive order in 1948) helped to push a more egalitarian attitude among the general public.

             1. I’ll have to do digging, but I recall hearing that was mostly Wilson’s doing. I gather Grant integrated the army, and Wilson vigorously de-integrated it, and they didn’t get over it until WWII’s impacts hit.

                1. I’m not aware of any desegregation in the army happening under Grant. I know during the war, the black units under his command had white officers. I’m not aware of any changes to that while he was in office. The famous Buffalo Soldiers were all-blsck cavalry units, for instance. They did eventually receive their own black officers, though I don’t know whether that was universal. It’s possible that these first black officers were accepted into West Point due to Grant’s presidential policies.

                   The Navy started out with integrated crews, likely due to the requirements of serving on a ship. However, once again blacks were enlisted only. AFAIK, Wilson’s segregation order only affected the Federal agencies, and the Navy wasn’t affected by it. However, a quick look on-line indicates that the Navy banned black enlistment in 1919, after World War One ended. Wilson was still president, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there was pressure from him involved. Or it might have been just the general attitudes of the times. Blacks were eventually allowed back into the Navy in the ’30s, but restricted to service roles (as seen in the recent movie, Greyhound, where the sole black crew member is the Captain’s steward). Despite this, one black sailor, Doris “Dory” Miller, was awarded the Navy Cross for manning an anti-aircraft gun at Pearl Harbor. While Trump was president, it was announced that the fourth Ford-class carrier (following Enterprise) will be named after Miller. It will be the second ship to bear his name.

                   The Army Air Corp was initially all-white when it was created. You’re likely familiar with the Tuskegee Airmen who changed that. Like their counterparts in the Army proper, they fought as part of a segregated unit.

                   Blacks weren’t the only segregated group. Filipinos, due to their unique status (residents of the only overseas territory) served in their own units. Japanese-Americans, or Nisei, did the same due to their politically suspect status. Chinese-Americans, the next largest non-white ethnic group, were fully integrated. Oddly, given our current view of things, Hispanics of that time were considered white. As a result, they weren’t segregated.

                   1. The Navy did eventually let black Sailors crew ships in more than just service roles during WWII. In fact, one ship, USS MASON (DE 528) had an all black crew and ended up commended for their escort duty. They made a movie about it, too, called Proud.

                      The current USS MASON (DDG 87) has the motto “Proudly We Serve.”

18. Race hysteria, ‘homeless’ people… Yeah, yeah. Lost power here for three days. Went to the library and asked to use the internet. They pointed to the elevator and said up a floor. I got on, went up. There were about a dozen PCs there, about half of them occupied, all by ‘homeless.’ (I put that in quotes ’cause I hate the term. They are not ‘homeless,’ they are damaged in some way and do not want to live in a ‘home’ as that requires they live according to ‘rules’ and some of them cannot and many will not.) Anyway, so there was one library attendant there, a young man who had on large earphones and stared at his PC screen, evidently not wanting to interact with any of the ‘homeless’ guys there. Yes, all guys, and some of them pretty feral and dangerous looking. They were either there for their on-line Shakespeare course or to surf the porn sites. (I’d vote for the latter). The point of all this… Well, the greater population, the ones that pay the property taxes (and their kids), all know that you don’t go up to the 2nd floor for the internet, that it’s all ‘homeless’ people, aka, druggies, alkys, and criminals. But I didn’t know that. I took care of my business and left.

    Then there’s the swimming pool. I go there a couple times a week. Went in and there was some ‘homeless’ guy with two huge duffel bags. I first assumed he was there to swim, but when I came out of the pool a half hour later and he was still there, figured out that he’s just ‘chilling’ in there. I mentioned it to the nice ladies at the desk and they nodded, but seemed to not want to comment on it. My point… another instance of ‘homeless’ people and their ‘influence’ on the rest of us.

    We, the taxpayers, cede territory to the ‘homeless.’ That ice cream shop we used to go to where the crazy homeless guy now screams at passersby… The Safeway where the homeless panhandle, etc. We avoid those places and go somewhere else. Where’s that lead?

    Race… Just sent a nasty email to the editors of Poets & Writers about their latest issue, ‘The Inspiration Issue,’ about how they have essentially (’cause I’ve been paying attention for over 30 years) ‘disappeared’ straight white male authors like myself from their magazine. I really gave it to them, in rhyme and verses.

    Take it from an old man who has been paying close attention for a long time… our world is being twisted, we are being fenced out, shunned… We just move on. Someday (I won’t be around by then), there will be no where else to go. What then?

    Sorry to bring people down, but I have to get things like this off my chest from time to time.

    1. Not bringing us down. This is not the way any of it goes. Not long term.
       Right now we move on, because it really doesn’t affect us drastically.
       But you’re talking of a tiny minority of the population trying to oppress the vast majority.
       That never works, in the history of ever. Not LONG term.

       1. Agreed, not long term. But the Russians and the Soviet nations had to put up with it for 70 years.

          1. Yeah, but do remember their nonsense has been going on for close to that.

19. c4c

20. “Hybrid”

    (Grin)

21. My thoughts now when somebody gets called “racist” are “That’s an old, worn-out magic word”. More and more people are seeing through the reflexive cry of “racism!” whenever the Left doesn’t like something. At this point, it only has power if one lets it have power. If one resists, the mob moves on fairly quickly.

    As for those Irish, I’m reminded of the line from Blazing Saddles: “We’ll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but we don’t want the Irish!”

22. Spousal unit found his very Italian family through 23 and Me and we were promptly invited to a family reunion last summer. His aunt, of course, immediately wanted to know where I was ‘from’ (um, the US, since about 1507, but I knew what she meant). Then she says’ “No, no, let me guess. Irish and German!”. She’s dead on of course, I lived in Europe for long enough to realize how very much folks there categorize more narrowly than Americans do, and how much different they see ethnicity. Where we would just lump all Europeans in as generically ‘white’, Europeans can tell who’s from where on sight.

    Fortunately, she decided to like me anyway since I make her new nephew happy and had some good strong boy babies.

    1. Dan looks Irish.

23. After much training, I can sometimes identify what (American or country-based) ‘race’ a person looks like…but it’s really far down the line in describing someone, and if I have any other information about them it tends to go out the window.

    For example, a friend who looks like an Okinawan– I’d never think of him that way, though, because he’s a third or fourth generation Californian Filipino.

    Heck, the old Spanish families in Cali, I’d never think of as “Hispanic”– and do not get me started on the reaction of the Basque family friends to being identified as “Hispanic”!

    1. Just a comment about “old Spanish Families in California”.

       I had a great-aunt who was a member of one of those families.

       She would have refused to call herself “Mexican-American” (I shudder to think how she’d respond to Hispanic).

       She was Spanish! (Forgetting the other European ancestry). 😀

       1. I absolutely respect her objection of Mexico’s attempt to claim the Spanish colonies in California. :grins:

          1. LOL

          2. My take on California history is this:
             The Indians stole the land from the animals.
             The Spanish stole the land from the Indians.
             The Mexicans stole the land from the Spanish.
             The Americans stole the land from the Mexicans.
             Who will steal it next?

             I am living history, an example of hybrid vigor, with ancestors from each of the groups, with more indian ancestry than the Senator from Mass. A descendant of one of the founders of San Jose, one of the first illegal aliens in California, and Germans who lived in Russia for generations, but stayed German. They came to America, and became American. I am the redneck from Berkeley.

             1. Problem being, Mexico couldn’t steal it, they just kinda announced that it was theirs, now, and tried to ignore the locals….

                See also, the attempt to have their cake and eat it, too, that backfired so bad in Texas.

             2. Except that the Americans actually paid the Mexicans for it.

                1. One minor quibble with the “pay”, is that land ownership was supposed to be allowed to transfer intact. One paradoxic, good bad thing is that the large land grants ended up owned by the lawyers, con men who promised to “help” (but I repeat myself), or squatters. Being related to most of the old families either directly, or in just a few links. I am far too familiar with the actual history of the theft.

                   Peralta, Vallejo, Benicia, Moraga, Martinez, Cabrillo, if it is a Spanish name, I am likely related to them. Most of the Spanish settlers intermarried, so almost everyone is related fairly closely if you look. When your last name is the name of a prominent hill, where your family owns nothing, serves to remind.

                   The ironic benefit is that it broke up what would have been a coastal California owned by just a few rich families. (We do seem to be trying to replicate that). The squatters, starting with the gold rush, helped break up what would have been a land like the other Spanish colonies with most land owned by very few. So it was a good thing my ancestors lost their land. Otherwise I would just be a useless lazy 7th generation rich guy.

       2. Oh heck. Call a New Mexico Hispano (ancestors trace back to Spanish who moved in before or just after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680) a Latino or Mexican-American at your peril. And the more politically active recent immigrants resent the h-ll out of the attitude, based on what I observed a few years ago.

24. Racism is control. It always comes down to that.
    It;s like spending years at college trying to understand the difference between Morals and Ethics.

    It’s fucking simple.
    One is a noun
    The other is a verb.

    People are NOT born equal. Stupid does not equate to Genius and any ‘idiot’ who thinks law equates to nature should fooking move to France…who made that fatal flaw.

25. I’m surprised that in the two days since the FICUS ‘visited the border’ nobody has used the expression ‘Potemkin El Paso’. How can they resist?
    ———————————
    ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

    Yet.

    1. It’s been used, but by conservative sources so it’s being ignored.

26. The ear worm that made its presence know this morning was by Warren Zevon
    “Send Lawyers Guns and Money”.
    That amusingly has more to do with modern Racism in the USA than actually hating someone because of the color of their skin. It has become an industry worth billions, it is also a convenient way for Democrats to keep their ignorant pawns on the plantation. Before someone goes all nutzo on the word ignorant, the black population doesn’t have the numbers to swing elections one way or the other, except in a few locations, not nationally. No, most blacks are far too sophisticated for the lies of both parties. No, those lies are for the guilt ridden whites and to cross off a check box for whatever election they are having.
    “Which group do I need to pander to today?” Asked Congress Critter PickPocket
    “It’s Asian Transsexual Bi-Polar LongshorePeople, Congress Critter” his aide answered.

27. Jim Crow laws were widely admired by Northern Progressives in those distant days when being a racist was called “following the Science.” It was our first large scale experiment in social engineering. Though the Civil Rights movement got coopted by the Left, it’s actually encouraging that the “engineered” put up with it for less than a century.

    People forget about segregationist Progressives like Fulbright from Arkansas and much earlier, the father of the Federal Reserve system, Carter Glass of VA. The idea that segregationists were all atavistic redneck reactionaries is far from true. Wilson was not an isolated figure.

    1. I hate to say it, but I think a ton of Northern progressives were either segregationists, or eugenicists, from very early on. That’s why the revived KKK caught on so quickly, aside from the movie publicity.

       1. A lot of people in the north thought the ex-plantation slaves needed to be shipped back to Africa. Those already free needed to leave voluntarily. That it would have been essentially eugenicists was “Not our fault. It is their homeland.” It wasn’t pale colored Europeans getting off their boats and going inland Africa to round up those to be sold into slavery. Before the European slave trade to Europe and the Americas started, those who were rounded up were still slaves or (the majority) none useful killed on the spot.

    2. I know. All the science fiction writers of the twenties were for “racial hygiene.”

28. I’m curious as to what race Europeans would classify me as. Just idle curiosity though.

    1. IMO Racial “Classifications” are Pseudo-Science at best and are generally nonsense.

29. I am, according to my ancestry tracing, and DNA testing, English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish, with a bit of Danish thrown in. IOW, of British descent. In the UK, you’ll find very few people who are of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent. Sure, there are a few, but they don’t mix socially. And, everyone in the UK (well, almost everyone) can tell at a glance which one you are, or if you’re Cornish or one of them Channel Islanders. Oh, I’m apparently part Cornish too. In the USA, no one can tell that difference. But most of us who are one of them are at least three of them. Not as many Welsh around as the others.

    There’s a river that runs through Lancashire. I read onve that they did a DNA study and found there was a distinct DNA deiiference between people on either side of the river. People just don’tt move around as much in the UK, or so I understand, In Europe. Heck, we over here think anyone from Spain is Spanish. There are separatist movements in Spain because many don’t think of themselves as Spanish. Especially the Basque, But then, the Basque in Portugal and France don’t think of themselves as Poruguese or French either….

    One of the great successes of the founding fathers was being serious about “E Pluribus Unum” and from that creating Americans from all these separate groups. No other nations have pulled that off. Though the Romans tried… That’s one of the reasons I detest Democrats- they insist on viewing America as a collection of different competing groups rather than as a nation of cooperating individuals. And their path to power is setting these groups against each other…

    Here’s mine:

    I’m of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent- primarily. There are others thrown in. My children are all those, with German, Bohemian (don’t tell a Bohemian he’she is Czech or German…), and a few other Central European thrown in. Just had my wife’s DNA done. For grins and giggles, here’s her ancestry.com breakdown:
    Ethnicity estimate
    Eastern Europe & Russia 29%
    Western Czechia Northern South Bohemia Germanic Europe 25%
    Ireland 21%
    Sweden & Denmark 12%
    Scotland 6%
    England & Northwestern Europe 4%
    Baltics 2%
    Greece & Albania 1%
    and here’s mine:

    Ireland 41%
    Scotland 28%
    England & Northwestern Europe 25%
    Sweden & Denmark 6%

    The Sweden and Denmark come through the Vikings who settled in England. There’s no ancestors in either in any branch I can reliably trace. The Sweden and Denmark in her ancestry comes through the British Isles and her traceable English ancestors, like me.

    I have to fully agree with Sarah: Look, if there’s an American race, it’s “mongrel and proud.” And my children even moreso then me. In other countries, this would be to their detriment. Here? Each and every one of my five is financially better off then I was at their age. Their opposite sex relationships vary- I got lucky. My better half and I met at exactly the right time and were perfect for each other. met in late January, married Aug 16. One son has said that set unrealistic expectations for our children…. We never told them they had to do the same. We’re up to 6 grandchildren.

    1. HYBRID VIGOR!

       1. Absolutely

       2. That’s what my Da used to say. Very few unique surnames in my mother’s lineage. Very few indeed. I’m surprised they didn’t have eyes in their forehead.

    2. There are no basque in Portugal. Basque/Gascons are between Spain and France.
       In Portugal the North — hi — are Gallicians, and have more in common with Spanish Galicians than with the rest of Portugal, though.

    3. The researchers have been able to find people with very, very similar DNA to late Neolithic-early Bronze Age remains in England, in the same part of England. As you say, some folks didn’t wander.

       1. That would make them the indigenous people.

          Guess whether they are eligible for scholarship for the indigenous ?

          1. Scholarships are for visible minorities (and I wish I was making that up.) 😦

    4. The sharpest DNA divide in Europe was, in one study, found in the middle of Finland, separating east and west and running about exactly in the middle from south to north. In the west there is a lot of Swedish input, as those are the areas where the Swedes moved to during the era when Finland was part of Sweden, the eastern part is where you get more of those occasional shows of Asian genes, however small the percentage they do sometimes show in facial features (like with my mother who was a Karelian). But mostly we look similar enough that you can’t tell who is from what side of the country even when we are talking about people whose ancestors have stayed more or less put for centuries and have not married anybody from the other side of that divide.

       And let’s see how well I can manage to comment this time, for whatever reason I have had problems with this for some years now.

       1. It came through!

          YAY!

          Missed you. 😀

          1. I did too

       2. You’re back! Wheeeeeeeeee [gasps for air] eeeeeee!

       3. My mother’s 1% Russo-Finnish.

       4. throws confetti Welcome back!

30. I have been known to claim that two of my favorite African Americans are the author Peter Grant and the actress Charlise Theron. Both born and raised in South Africa.
    When visiting my grandmother’s sister in Ogden Utah as a child we were told that the black neighborhood was safe, but to avoid the Mexicans.
    A friend who moved from Detroit to Alabama once remarked that in the South black and white lived together but blacks weren’t allowed to get “uppity.” In the North blacks could get “uppity” but blacks and whites could not live together. This was back in the late 80s.

    1. My aunt lives in Washington State, that bastion of anti-racism. (Possibly because there’s like three black people in the entire territory.) She taught Sunday school for a while, and couldn’t believe the Actual Racism (they’re stupid, immoral, dirty, lazy, etc….) she heard toward all the native tribes in the area. But they’re not racist, nope.

       1. You interact with the tribes, especially on an official level, and your opinion does tend to go down. Rather quickly.

          I personally haven’t dealt with them, but they are obnoxious about land use if the land they sold to your ancestors is within the reservation boundaries, and they don’t bother to follow any reasonable game laws. Because they don’t have to.

       2. In Great Falls, MT there was a tribal judge who sent a kid back to his abusive home rather than give custody to white non-tribal grand parents.

          So there’s that.

31. My beloved and I were talking about the current, “We’re re-naming all those military bases named for (Racist! White Supremacist! Bad People!) Southern generals., ” trend. I commented (most of) the soldiers of the Civil War and their kids wanted to make peace and reconcile. Their great-great grandchildren want to punish, maybe to claim a share of a Great Cause. My beloved the former Yankee said (rather sadly), “I’ll give you another reason: jealousy. Their cities are rotting out and people are leaving.” And as I added, they’re saying to themselves, “We’re the Good Guys! We conquered you because you were the Bad Guys! How DARE you be happier and more prosperous than we are?!”
    Maybe because we got some sense kicked into to us by people who refused to learn the lessons for themselves?

    1. And some people refuse to believe that anyone on the “wrong” side (of anything) can still be good people who made hard choices. Or who honestly disagree over a basic premise (federal power vs. state power, individual liberties vs. social rights, you get the idea.) but still act as honorable, decent people and who can serve as role-models and examples in their fields.

    2. It’s much easier than giving up phones and other items made by slaves in China, and working for a living rather than forcing other people to work for your bennies — which fits the legal definition of slavery.

32. Lyrics from Kris Kristofferson’s “Jesus Was A Capricorn”:
    Some folks hate the Whites
    Who hate the Blacks who hate the Klan
    Most of us hate anything that
    We don’t understand
    Different does not mean bad or evil, but it sure seems to be too easy to go with that. For further musical Us’s Agin Them’ns, there is “The Merry Little Minuet”, recorded by The Kingston Trio.

33. Lusophone Supremacy FTW

34. Portland has a crime map on the city website <Portland.gov>, or at least it did 5 years ago.
    Just looked, nothing, unless you count a map of police districts as something – https://gis-pdx.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/PDX::police-districts-ppb/explore?location=38.516399%2C-126.458104%2C4.

    1. Who needs one? Just draw a big circle around Portland, label it HIGH CRIME ZONE and yer done.

       Say what you will about the Democrats, they do simplify things.

35. It is very human to vacuum the cat in order to put off doing something very difficult or bothersome.

    Making it into a virtue is dangerous.

    Fake sins like racism and fake problems like climate change enable real sins and problems to flourish unchecked.

    Though I expect “making innocent people feel guilt or suffer unnecessarily” is a side benefit to the psychos who rule us.

Comments are closed.