tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post43897484980826439..comments2024-03-14T03:14:22.144-04:00Comments on The TOF Spot: The Tyranny of GenesTheOFloinnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-31408813968857668592020-09-28T10:55:31.867-04:002020-09-28T10:55:31.867-04:00Being African American isn't about slavery, bu...Being African American isn't about slavery, but being visibly black in the sense that Obama and Harris would like to pass themselves off as victims of racism, but it isn't true. Descendants of Nigerians, West Indians, Jamaicans and even Haitians prosper better in America than descendants of English.<br /><br />The racism against American blacks is classism, "looking like trouble." Having come from a middle-class background, Obama was, in Biden's racist words, "a well-spoken black man".DanMarshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17405725584072624237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-44071422039530424752017-09-26T19:06:36.136-04:002017-09-26T19:06:36.136-04:00"has anything to do with black Americans, who..."has anything to do with black Americans, who are from the Senegambia and adjoining regions"<br /><br />This isn't entirely true. Some slaves came from Portuguese East Africa, especially after the British Navy shut down the slave trade from West Africa. I'm a black American, but my Y DNA (paternal line) originated in southern Mozambique. CJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13883761718979175423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-75186677188557580902017-09-21T12:12:16.976-04:002017-09-21T12:12:16.976-04:00I can't decide which part of G. K. Chesterton&...I can't decide which part of G. K. Chesterton's essay "On Celts and Celtophiles" to quote here, so I'll just recommend the whole thing. It's Chapter 13 of "Heretics", pretty short, and well worth the read.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-33763443758061833592017-09-21T08:56:32.839-04:002017-09-21T08:56:32.839-04:00They were right that the Lebanese are not Arabs; t...They were right that the Lebanese are not Arabs; they weren't right that, for example, their language is not Arabic. Many Lebanese nationalists insist Lebanese Arabic is actually Phoenician, but that would look more like Neo-Aramaic, which, like Phoenician, is Northwest Semitic; what they speak in Lebanon is definitely Arabic, albeit with a strong Northwest Semitic substrate. (It would be like if a French nationalist took <i>nos ancêtres les gaulois</i> so literally as to claim French was a Celtic language. Celtic and Italic are roughly as close as Northwest Semitic and Arabic, but nevertheless French is demonstrably an Italic, specifically Romance, language, not a Celtic one, even though it has, IIRC, the strongest Celtic substrate of any major Romance language.)<br /><br />Of course, "Arabic" is mostly a legal fiction; calling what they speak in the Levant, Egypt, and Arabia the same language, is like calling the French, Spanish, and Italian of the Early Modern period "Latin". They generally have to switch to Modern Literary or Classical/Quranic Arabic to be understood by each other, much like Early Modern Europeans switching to Humanist or Church Latin.Sophia's Favoritehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871625814389904112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-48590806821944348232017-09-21T06:51:24.843-04:002017-09-21T06:51:24.843-04:00WRT #2--So, does this mean the Phalange were right...WRT #2--So, does this mean the Phalange were right after all? <br /><br />(BTW--do they even still exist?...)Edgewisehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04431767608390745048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-51869191023256743852017-09-20T17:25:12.116-04:002017-09-20T17:25:12.116-04:00On the other hand, though, if Barack Obama was &qu...On the other hand, though, if Barack Obama was "representin'", he'd sound like Thurston Howell III. He was raised by old-money WASPs, and that's what he really is; if you've ever seen his mother's high-school yearbook picture, she <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham#/media/File:Stanley_Ann_Dunham_1960_Mercer_Island_High_School_yearbook.jpg" rel="nofollow">looked like H. P. Lovecraft in Stepford Wife crossplay</a>.Sophia's Favoritehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871625814389904112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-90675074962927698512017-09-20T16:47:57.607-04:002017-09-20T16:47:57.607-04:00A good point, but it mostly indicates that "A...A good point, but it mostly indicates that "African American" isn't about slavery, it's about being visibly black in the US and identifying as such.*<br /><br />Sort of like how Pelosi is a "Catholic Politician," or (according to my Mormon friends) Reid is a "Mormon Politician," but they don't have much to do with the actual faith.<br /><br />It's sort of like how my grandmother had a picture of JFK, the Pope and Jesus on a wall-- and I couldn't say who was at Jesus' right hand. <br />It doesn't quite fit, because all the information on JFK not being a very good Catholic seems to be fairly modern in folks knowing about it and the news back then was very scared because he was so Catholic, but it's a comparison. <br /><br />* thinking about it, this would mean that "racism" in the US isn't about slaver, it's about rather nasty Democrats forcing everyone to conform to their biases, IE Jim Crow. I don't think they checked to see where you were from if you looked Black back then? Foxfierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10161683096247890834noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-73005479212201550962017-09-20T16:25:24.513-04:002017-09-20T16:25:24.513-04:00IIRC, most Europeans aren't actually related t...IIRC, most Europeans aren't actually related to Basques; the Basques and Sardinians have a number of weird genetic markers not shared with the rest of Europe. I think the people the Indo-Europeans conquered would be "Celts", with the understanding that that's not a linguistic classifier yet. Because Celts are as close to a "generic European" as you're going to get. (Except in northern Norther Europe, where you're probably dealing with the ancestors of people like the Finns.)<br /><br />The most interesting and/or amusing thing, to me, is that there is no such thing as "black"; if two African groups didn't share territory, they're likely no more related to each other than to Swedes. With the relatively recent overlay of the Niger-Congo peoples (especially the Bantus) in the last 3000 years, admittedly.<br /><br />If you want to piss off white supremacists and black nationalists simultaneously, point out that nobody in Africa—not cities like Great Zimbabwe, not the vicious militias of the Congo—has anything to do with black Americans, who are from the Senegambia and adjoining regions (okay Timbuktu might, since it's in Mali and some of the "black diaspora" came from there).<br /><br />Black Americans voting for Barack Obama—whose ancestors came from the opposite side of Africa from theirs—makes about as much sense as people from Hyderabad voting for an Irishman as "one of us".Sophia's Favoritehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871625814389904112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-48072333145974267652017-09-20T15:19:05.309-04:002017-09-20T15:19:05.309-04:00Oooh, that's cool-- did they get a decent numb...Oooh, that's cool-- did they get a decent number of genetic samples to compare to? Since you're sharing it, I'd assume so, but there might not be enough to be a really good number so worth asking-- I know it says over three hundred ancient, but my grasp of what's a good sample over a period of time like that is...hazy. <br /><br />The Lebanon thing is also interesting. <br /><br /><br /><br />On an aside: Oh, thank goodness, you went a totally different direction than I feared-- you looked both at *populations*, and at *historic populations*, in contrast with the modern individual tests where people declare "I thought I was X, but my test says I'm Y, based on what area has a modern population most closely matching my genes!" *tiny type, much bigger on the website, explains that it's basically a "who is most like you right now based on our samples", but that's not what the ads imply*<br /><br />(I was <i>really</i> not looking forward to trying to defend that based largely on the example of "who are you more closely related to, your mother or your sibling?" Answer, for those who didn't have the same text books I got-- it depends, because you have half your mother's DNA, but your sibling can be anything from identical to no shared markers. So unless both parents are picture perfect examples of the locations they've got a test for, and first generation... you have a mess.)Foxfierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10161683096247890834noreply@blogger.com