tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post219373112328370747..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Caste and the ConstitutionDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-9481930041614441672021-07-07T16:47:48.162-04:002021-07-07T16:47:48.162-04:00Professor
Re castes...
Let us advert to a conditio...Professor<br />Re castes...<br />Let us advert to a condition of bondage very similar to slavery.<br /><br />Almost half the European colonists who landed here were put in it, on auction blocks identical to Africa slave block auctions, for bondage from 4 to 7 years, often under conditions of bondage identical to those of negro slaves.<br /><br />See Colonists In Bondage, written by a highly respected CIA historian, Abott Emerson Smith. See also Bailyn, Voyagers.<br /><br />All the best<br /><br />Bozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-7526581721812562272021-06-26T01:16:00.220-04:002021-06-26T01:16:00.220-04:00Professor
Let's ignore Wilkerson for a moment...Professor<br /><br />Let's ignore Wilkerson for a moment.<br /><br />Re castes, guilds, nobility, Genghis Khan, and genetics, see David Reich, Who We Are, Index, India, Yamnaya, ANI, etc.<br /><br />See also Wade, Before The Dawn, A Troublesome Inheritance, Genghis, Giocangga, McDonnell, A History of Britain from the Genome's Viewpoint, surnames.<br /><br />All the best, Bozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-10119212668433656602021-06-11T20:19:31.634-04:002021-06-11T20:19:31.634-04:00Professor
Here is just an angle, regarding ritual ...Professor<br />Here is just an angle, regarding ritual and societal ritual purity and impurity, associated with what were in some societies called untouchables aka the unclean, to reflect on, for a moment, in Wilkerson's text context.<br /><br />The Kings of ancient, and probably prehistoric, Hebrew groups, very early on, split ruling functions from priestly ones. <br /><br />One ostensible ground, among several certainly, was the ritual uncleanness of the warrior elite as a group, call it a nobility, of violence in war and defense, as well as enforcing penal laws involving execution of offenders and the handling of corpses.<br /><br />This is only a flawed thumbnail sketch of a lot of varied history.<br /><br />But the concept of an untouchable was also connected with ritual impurity associated with a kind of role within ancient as well as modern societies.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-91694596217883385432021-06-11T12:25:18.889-04:002021-06-11T12:25:18.889-04:00Professor
Fn2
In the old days, it was either left...Professor<br />Fn2<br /><br />In the old days, it was either left nurture liberals, or right creationists, arguing mainly either with or against against either stripe of archaeologists and/or anthropologists or philosophers of religion or "critical" biblical studies.<br /><br />Now it is geneticists, paleogeneticists, and genomics in the mix. <br />Whole different ball game.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-63054968021445466562021-06-11T11:49:05.034-04:002021-06-11T11:49:05.034-04:00Professor
Fn
Wade's Before The Dawn, an early...Professor<br />Fn <br />Wade's Before The Dawn, an early work in this rapidly emerging field, is still very much worth reading. I consider it a must read.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-38275475201820074912021-06-07T12:19:42.607-04:002021-06-07T12:19:42.607-04:00Professor
Just a caveat if anyone bothers to read ...Professor<br />Just a caveat if anyone bothers to read Reich. <br />His discussions are quite complex. Both the research on Africa and India require close inspection.<br /><br />Although Africa is now, only in recent millenia, a highly genetically diverse continental race population, it was not so much so for countless thousands of years. Caste still exists within Africa populations.<br /><br />Reich does not like Wade, but Wade makes some important points against Reich's ideological biases.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-83231168061424957742021-06-01T17:35:57.047-04:002021-06-01T17:35:57.047-04:00Professor
Since the beginning, arguably, with Jeff...Professor<br />Since the beginning, arguably, with Jefferson's Declaration, but certainly since the accession of FDR, American liberalism has stood opposed to racial distinctions and to any significant societal distinctions that aren't ostensibly socially rather than racially generated, and stood in favor of existing so called skin deep racial distinctions melting together by David Reich's pacific racial mixing. <br /><br />These liberals stand radically and increasingly militantly against any talk of distinct races, a la The Amherst Common Language Guide, despite the fact that Reich's own liberalist slanted research conclusions render their position indefensible.<br /><br />Wade points out that on moderen and progressive scientific conventional biological classification principles, human races should really stand to each other not only not as one indistinguishable species, but rather as distinct sub species.<br /><br />Wade edited the Science desk at the NYT, and is not a slouch.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-12071873597005172462021-05-29T13:43:56.070-04:002021-05-29T13:43:56.070-04:00Professor
To listen to your intramural remonstran...Professor<br /><br />To listen to your intramural remonstrances with Wilkerson, one would still nevertheless come away proudly thinking that the only racists in the world are white racists you look at in the mirror, and the 6 or 7 billion unwhite folks elsewhere are merely oppressed vengeful reparations hungry only partially liberated postcolonial anti racists, unracists.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-51455122646716695952021-05-28T19:08:33.559-04:002021-05-28T19:08:33.559-04:00Professor
Skimpole, warts and all, like Energyflo...Professor<br /><br />Skimpole, warts and all, like Energyflow sometimes, does a good chunky rant!<br />Charles K here not.<br />It is gallant he defends you.<br />Blood is thickere than water.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-36018705979859778042021-05-27T10:55:37.507-04:002021-05-27T10:55:37.507-04:00Pfofessor
I have been pursuing notes re the publi...Pfofessor<br /><br />I have been pursuing notes re the public forum power of big media. I do not slam the Fox News site, only because it is too low a hobby to shoot ducks in a barrel.<br /><br />The NYT today takes aim at the Catholic church, but all denominations are implicated by implication in the abortion issue.<br /><br />Why does the NYT pick on this to call out again and again? <br /><br />Mainly because it wants what little is left of religious power for itself, because it can use the constitution itself to slam any religious position to get more of their power, and because both its liberal Jewish and orthodox Jewish base are joined on this issue.<br /><br />It dovetails nicely with the NYT other biggie, BLM.<br />Let's just put it this way, to illustrate the NYT position on abortion, Roe v Wade, and women's liberty, analogizing women as put upon oppressed persons, call them Stokelys if not of color, by the largely white right:<br /><br />"Let my fetus go."<br /><br />This note is dedicated to Croc, re the NYT.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-6392132799217601442021-05-26T16:12:18.561-04:002021-05-26T16:12:18.561-04:00Skimpole offers some interesting history but doesn...Skimpole offers some interesting history but doesn't actually rebut any of the points in David Kaiser's piece.<br />Charles KaiserCharles Kaiserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11361450821533768036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-74621489374263044492021-05-24T01:39:42.346-04:002021-05-24T01:39:42.346-04:00Not having read Wilkerson's book, I'm not ...Not having read Wilkerson's book, I'm not in a position to judge it. But I think Kaiser's rebuttal shows a kind of American euphemism and evasion about slavery which can't simply be confined to its most infamous racists. <br /><br />To begin with, was it really "distances," that prevented British and French colonial powers from stopping slavery in their colonies? Several times Kaiser emphasizes that slavery was not unique to the American Republic, being common to Africa as well. And I am reminded that as a consequence of these and other deviations from Western civilization, almost the entire continent was colonized. As for Asia, from the Ottoman Empire to China the sovereignty of their states depended less on any legal standing, but on the inability of European states to agree on the division of the spoils. By contrast, I don't recall the great and good of the 19th century being upset with the Mexican war. <br /><br />There is a tendency to confuse a distaste of slavery with an effective abhorrence of it. There is also a tendency to elide opposition to slavery with equal citizenship, when the history of African-Americans is one of being repeatedly reminded of the difference. It is one thing to say that anti-slavery and the civil rights movements represents the most generous fulfillment of the ideals of the American revolution. But much of American political thought has been dedicated to the idea that such generosity (indeed precisely this generosity) is dangerously utopian and worse than any injustice. And a perusal of Alan Taylor's "The Internal Enemy," should make it clear that elite Virginians were souring on manumission by the late 1780s even before the cotton gin. Washington's own emancipation didn't even convince his own nephew, who was not just some entitled wastrel, but a justice for the Supreme Court for a quarter-century. And the alternative to slavery was almost never equal citizenship, but colonization. (It's hard to think of an idea so poorly thought out, supported for so long and by so many otherwise intelligent people.) <br /><br />There is a focus on "inevitability." Yet had the South concentrated after 1861 on using the Republic's anti-majoritan features it could have delayed emancipation for decades. That they choose independence was not (simply) because of vainglory, but because that after 85 years they though they were strong enough to form a new confederation. And they nearly succeeded. Assassinations made both the first and second Reconstructions a lot easier. Among some Americans it is not so much that the American Revolution can be redeemed, but that it has always been redeemed, and African-Americans should be grateful for the experience. Let's consider another aspect. It is not just the Franco groupies at National Review who hate the French Revolution. For a much broader section of American opinion, the Terror does not only discredit the entire Revolution, but anything about the Enlightenment they do not like. This isn't just the stuffy Whig/Gilded Age middlebrow culture. At the fall of the Berlin Wall Francois Furet was the hero of both the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. Let's consider a historian Kaiser has praised in the past, Liah Greenfeld. In "Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity," she argued that Britain and the United States got it right, and France, Germany and Russia got it wrong, out of envious spite. So let us compare the American and French Revolutions. Those who prefer the former have not just praised its "moderation," but the way it tampered democratic enthusiasm and protected property. (Not mentioning that for the USA's first 89 the most valuable property were slaves.) One would think that in making a moral comparison of the two revolutions, the presence of slavery would have to be considered. As I recall, Greenfeld devotes what, a couple of pages, a few inadequate footnotes to the subject?Skimpolehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03018415787269457067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-54138123407349378562021-05-23T18:14:52.906-04:002021-05-23T18:14:52.906-04:00Professor
Just try to tell Jews that their almost...Professor<br /><br />Just try to tell Jews that their almost prehistoric endogamy is bad.<br /><br />Let Wilkerson try to convince Hindus, including those who have read David Reich's book, that their hyper localist endogamy and caste system are bad.<br /><br />Let her try to convince the Chinese or the Japanese, or the Koreans, or the Vietnamese, that they may be merely equal, and not better genetically, than any other race whatsoever.<br /><br />Let her try to convince any native Africans that they are not superior to American or South American negroes or mulattoes. See what the answer is.<br /><br />Keep giving that a try.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-53857568706231891112021-05-23T04:07:13.165-04:002021-05-23T04:07:13.165-04:00I thnk isms are inherent in all of us. As a man I ...I thnk isms are inherent in all of us. As a man I understand myself better than women and have to struggle to find common ground and so on for racial, ethnic, religious differences. However, the more contact we have with others the less we are bothered by this as we learn to get along productively in a social or work environment of a very mixed sort. After a while barriers break down, even if it means that the next generation learns to better cooperate or even intermarry and release prejudices. One sees how a woman or black can be just as good a boss or surgeon for example and remain themselves in their identity perhaps as mother or culturally. White male job market participation plummets as factories close and need for higher education and female oriented service jobs climb. Why this atmosphere of oversensitivity to oppression just now as the system of white male control is slowly declining for good? Do those who have long suffered discrimination want to accelerate this natural decline, kick them while they' re down? Impatience is natural but this transition to a more diverse nation will certainly occur. Perhaps the real cause is that since 2001 or 2008 we have been suffering from the various crises which have been papered over, massive military involvements and popped financial bubbles resulting in incpome going to the wealthy and the middle class, of all races, declining. So fighting over a shrinking pie causes antagonism between races, sexes. Trump's solution was to champion the cause of the rust belt and the dems that of the urban classes, while Bezos and co. laugh all the way to the bank, literally trillions wealthie as mass liquidations and foreclosures ensue. <br /><br />Your historical rebuttal is excellent. Cherry picking is not history. Usually ideologues win elections and work to divide peoples who would otherwise get along. Most wars would be avoided if commonsense prevailed but vocal people are not the nice, accomodative ones. Getting angry is usually a trait of meaner, short thinking people. Well thought out balanced answers speak for caution and reserve. Usually however lots of violence and bloodshed must ensue before the average man rises up in groups to stop the madness driven by crazy extremists, Trumpists or antifas. A few bad apples on the police force does not justify disbanding it for example. The universities and schools becoming places of indoctrination since the 60s for cultural marxism and in a top down manner through press and boardrooms imposing these ideas on the population, soviet light style is a sign of the times. Average white urbanite liberals are fighting back against ectremist ideologues, insisting on seeing everything in life through a certain lens, boook bannings, cancel culture, indoctrination sessions. It becomes all too much. The extremists are " jumping the shark" and will pay the price with a long period of shameif they are stopped soon and if not with a counterrevolution and equal animosity even from boring moderates. A revolution eats its children, as they say.Energyflowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-25382836980152000652021-05-22T15:33:38.680-04:002021-05-22T15:33:38.680-04:00Professor
Wilkerson's thesis of caste: does no...Professor<br />Wilkerson's thesis of caste: does not pass the smell test.I agree with much of your criticism. America, and the rest of the world has always been brimming with racism of all colors and flavors, not caste as such.But this is a great jab at Wilkerson, a proponent of negro racism (in disguise) against the white one against. Still, this discussion remains mired in a myopic US domestic race dichotomy tunnel vision she is trading on to even analogize the US situation to the Hindus. That caste system has existed nowhere else.Claiming that the North was better and less racist is both specious and Whiggish, and more importantly it weakens your argument against her megaWhiggish caste society claim.<br />Here was how the North, which had properly and politically wanted to rid itself of negroes permanently by electing Lincoln, handled them after: "Before 1800, free African American men had nominal rights. In some places they could vote. But free blacks gradually lost the rights that they did have. Through intimidation, changing laws and mob violence, whites claimed racial supremacy, and increasingly denied blacks citizenship. In 1857 Dred Scott declared blacks were not citizens of the United States. Segregation was rampant, especially in Philadelphia, where Negroes were excluded from concert halls, public transportation, schools, churches, orphanages, and other places. Negroes were also forced out of the very few semi skilled trades they had been working. soon after the turn of the century, African American men began to lose the right to vote -- a right that many states had granted following the Revolutionary War. New Jersey took the black vote away in 1807; in 1818, Connecticut took it away; in 1821, New York took away property requirements for white men to vote, but kept them for blacks. only a tiny percentage of black men could vote. In 1838, Pennsylvania took the vote away entirely. The only states in which black men never lost the vote were Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts.The northwest was worse. Ohio (land o Lincoln!), the state constitution of 1802 deprived blacks of the right to vote, to hold public office, and to testify against whites in court. Over the next five years, more negro restrictions. They could not live in Ohio absent a certificate proving free status, post a $500 bond "to pay for their support in case of want," were prohibited from joining the militia. In 1831 negroes were excluded from serving on juries, excluded from poorhouses, insane asylums.In Illinois there were severe restrictions on free negroes entering, and Indiana barred them altogether. Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin were no friendlier. Negroes in northwestern states never exceeded 1 %. Between 1820 and 1850, negroes were frequent targets of mob violence. Whites looted, tore down, and burned negro homes, churches, schools, and meeting halls, stoned, beat, murdered negroes. Philadelphia was the worst most frequent mob violence. Officials refused to protect negroes from white mobs and blamed negroes for inciting the violence with their "uppity" behavior." PBS Great post nevertheless. All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.com