May 19, 2014

Eric Holder isn't black: just ask his mom

Attorney General Eric Holder wants to talk about race some more.

It's quite interesting how Americans find Eric Holder's ancestry invisible to them. Most of Eric Holder ancestors weren't black. His recent ancestors were middle class mulattos in Barbados who carefully avoided marriage to blacks. (See the last chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" for a description of how people who look like Gladwell and Holder were bred.) Holder grew up in a middle class West Indian enclave in NYC that tried (and in Holder's case succeeded) keeping out black American influence.
   

46 comments:

  1. Holder looks black to me.

    He definitely has predominant Sub-Sahara features.

    Not that he looks entirely black; obviously he has other ancestry; but the dominant black features do come out.

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  2. "my people"

    I don't imagine Holder's kids went to or go to majority black schools.

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  3. """"""""""""Holder grew up in a middle class West Indian enclave in NYC that tried (and in Holder's case succeeded) keeping out black American influence."""""""


    How do they do it? Must be all that nurture at work.


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  4. So Eric Holder is the Kwisatz Haderach?

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  5. Here in South Africa he would be called coloured not black. And before the whiny left winger with the PC carrot up his ar$e says this is all so racist to say, in South Africa this is the official term that is used by government and society in general.

    In the past coloureds had more priviledges than blacks, now it has being somewhat reversed because in some cases they are not seen as African enough for certain affirmative action criteria.

    If he wants an honest conversation about things, then the honest thing is that he is clearly a coloured not a black, but America seems to be a country so beset by fear and dishonesty, I suspect is what he really wants to do is lecture and bully rather than have a conversation about such things.

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  6. But is the Law Squaw a Cherokee?

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  7. Great topic Steve, since Holder wants us to talk about race 24x7. I have some first-hand experience with Bajans and found they tend to operate in America as race-shifters, black when convenient, kinda-white otherwise. They want to live in their own neighborhoods or in a white one, God forbid a black one which they refer to as "ghetto." Black kids are "off limits" as friends for their teenage daughters, they hang with other Bajans or whites. High school is a white one, you can be sure of that, however they tick the "black" check box on college admissions. Being lectured by Bajans about race is just part of their schtick, but just ask them where they live and where their kids go to school to keep things real.

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  8. Americans think that a black person with congoid features is "Spanish" because he comes from the Dominican republic, and a brown person with mongolid features is "Latino" because he came from Mexico, so I don't know what you expected here.

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  9. Anybody who is half Black is basically Black. Everyone views them that way. Pretty much the same with a quarter Black.

    There may be gradations that are important within the Black community, but since apparently most White genes are recessive, any recent Black ancestor makes a person Black.

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  10. Holder and his family seem to occupy the sweet spot: black enough, but not too black. Or, mostly but not entirely white.

    These seem to be the people who derive the greatest benefit from affirmative action and grievance-based policies.

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  11. When I was a boy, you'd walk across the golf course, and through Forbes College, to the train station, and take the little connector train out to Princeton Junction, and then take the big train to Newark, and from there either take the bus out to EWR airport, or else go in to NYC Penn Station.

    And there was that little convenience store down there that sold raspberry Entenmann's Danish Twist.

    I wonder if White People ride the train anymore?

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  12. I believe that hi-yalla blacks in Barbados are actually called (and call themselves) "white".

    There was some singer from Barbados (famous girl, can't remember her name) who talked about how strange it was when she moved to America and everyone insisted she was actually "black" and not "white".

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  13. Let's see how well the "staying apart from Black American culture" project is working for Eric Holder:

    Names of Children: Maya, Brooke, and Eric. Solid names. Nothing carrying the taint of ghetto culture.

    Wife: Sharon Malone Holder. Light, bright, and damn near White.

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  14. I'm seeing other examples of this in NYC with young light skinned Haitians. In Haiti they are NOT black. Here it pays so they are "persons of color."

    Most of them are quite bright & multilingual. Very employable. Hey, blame us, not them. If I were them I'd be out of Haiti and into the United States of White Guilt in a flash.

    BTW there's an interesting BBC documentary about the whites of Barbados. Google it.

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  15. You see this a lot in America. Fairer-skinned blacks, blacks with Haitian, Barbadian, Jamaican, eastern African admixture and or mulattoes do well economically compared to dark-skinned descendents of Western Africans

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  16. Harry Baldwin5/20/14, 6:44 AM

    All the more important for him then to represent the ressentiment.

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  17. I always thought he resembled a meerkat. Looks like it runs in the family.

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  18. What we need is a great Broadway musical about modern genetics.

    Too many Americans are fixated on the analog (blood) theory of race dramatized in the first act of 'Showboat'.

    Julie is a quadroon who has been passing. Her white husband - who disappears from the show after this scene - cuts her finger, drinks the blood and announces to the cops when they tell him about the 'one drop rule', that he has more than one drop of negro blood in him. Therefore their marriage is not miscegenation.

    Great theater but bad biology.

    Race isn't about blood. At one time I imagine white people were reluctant to get a transfusion from a black blood donor. But that's just superstition.

    But many people think of race as subject to medieval mixing of 'humors'. Barack Obama helps this idea persist. His father was very black. His mother was very white and so just like getting the guys at Home Depot to mix you up a batch of gray paint - you get the in-between color President.

    But that's an illusion. Properties are passed as discrete entities not continuously variable essences.

    And no one is much interested in skin color differences. They are really interested in neurological differences and use skin color as a proxy. They are interested in brains.

    As I remember there are 112 human SNPs associated with IQ. Most have only a small association with phenotypic intelligence. That is to say each variable allele only contributes a small amount to explained variance. (I hope I said that right)

    We know that the IQ of Africans in Africa is around 70. It is around 85 in African-Americans and Caribbean Blacks. That's a big difference - a full SD. Some of that difference is certainly environmental - probably nutrition. But some - maybe most - is the effect of genes these mixed populations got from whites.

    So the old time racists got it backwards. It wasn't that one drop of negro blood that made you worse. It was that tiny infusion of white SNPs that made you better.

    Pat Boyle

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  19. Holder famously referred to blacks as "my people". (Something which if done by a white AG would have been grounds for termination)

    But his attitude of using blacks while looking down on them makes him a perfect fit for Obama and the Democratic party in general.

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  20. These types are the worst anti-whites of all. Since they can't be fully white, they think nobody else should be.

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    1. A longtime stereotype (aka approximation to the truth?) is that it's the halfies who are the most neurotic and resentful. In D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (which Spike Lee got NYU's film school to remove from lab years ago), the creepiest villain is a halfie woman; practically the entire Reconstruction period is blamed on her.

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  21. Remember when mixed-race ancestry, no matter how obvious, was treated as something obscene to not be mentioned in polite company? A lot of that changed when the multiracial census movement began in the late 1990s, striking terror into the hearts of - not white supremacists - but the black and black-identified mulatto elites. Indeed, if not for black opposition, there would be little or no controversy about mixed-race categories at all. There seems to be a real fear that the loss of European and other non-black DNA from the legally non-existent but popularly believed (mostly among blacks)"one drop rule" will diminish the "black race." That's why it's not at all unusual for blacks who are strongly opposed to official interracial marriages with whites are happy to jump at the chance to marry or incorporate into their race someone who is predominately white, looks white, but publicly claims a "black" identity. The white race is hated, but its genes are hotly desired.

    Eric Holder is "seen" as "black" because he publicly claims to be "black." The far, far darker Vijay Singh is NOT seen as "black" because he does not identify that way. Most people are too polite to publicly question someone's stated racial identity. Blacks are an exception (Goggle "passing for white" and you'll see what I mean) but even they are very careful not to offend Hispanics and Arabs who look a little too "mulatto."

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  22. The one drop rule as a social institution served its purpose: Historically, in America, the gene flow went almost exclusively from white to black.

    If you allow light skinned, mixed race people to pass for white and therefore erode the taboo against whites procreating with them, you will eventually end up with a color gradient like you've got in Brazil (no one drop rule)

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  23. "Race isn't about blood. At one time I imagine white people were reluctant to get a transfusion from a black blood donor. But that's just superstition." - back in the days before screening it was simple prudence. And even today there are groups that engage in so much risk that we simply ban them from donating, though WWG has either gotten that proscription removed or is working on it.

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    1. Dr Livingstone5/20/14, 10:36 AM

      Never blame fear of a tropic disease like AIDS if you can ascribe it to irrational Racism from whites.


      A lot of whites involved in the Empires saw things like AIDS and Ebola close up. Let alone Malaria and such.

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  24. helene edwards5/20/14, 10:58 AM

    "It was that tiny infusion of white SNP's that made you better."

    I just finished reading "The Ivory Grin" by Ross McDonald (1952). Of all the action characters, the most admirable and purest of motive is a light-skinned black girl who's 'passing' through life. Second is her dark-skinned boyfriend, wrongly accused of murder. The sheriff calls her a "dinge," the Italian is a gangster, the Mexicans are fat and sloppy, and the WASPs are a playboy and a cuckold.

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  25. Americans think that a black person with congoid features is "Spanish" because he comes from the Dominican republic, and a brown person with mongolid features is "Latino" because he came from Mexico, so I don't know what you expected here.

    If Guatemalan Mayans, Dominican Blacks, German Brazilians, Italian Argentenians, and British Chileans are "Latinos", than Kenyans, Scotsmen, Nigerians, Americans, and Canadians are "Anglos".

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  26. Looking at the content of his character, he's the most crooked AG in my lifetime. White or Black.

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  27. If you allow light skinned, mixed race people to pass for white and therefore erode the taboo against whites procreating with them, you will eventually end up with a color gradient like you've got in Brazil (no one drop rule)

    Brazil is different because Male European DNA is predominant in the entire population thanks to the Conquistadores being almost all men and very few women.

    The gene flow was initially basically from white male to Amerindian and black female slaves.

    That was the first miscegenation and made the population mestizo and mulatto.

    The second miscegenation came from European immigrants who fled Europe due to WWI and WWII, immigrants from Portugal, Italy, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, plus Middle Eastern places such as Lebanon and Syria and East Asian countries such as Taiwan and Japan.

    Some of those immigrants intermingled with the already mixed-raced populace and "whitened" the population.

    That made the population quadroon (75% white/25% Amerindian) and castizo (75% white/25% Amerindian.

    Afterwards, the white immigrants started practicing cousin marriage and excessive inbreeding, while prostitution became another hotbed of miscegenation.

    Hence, the average Brazilian today is anywhere between 70 to 85% white thanks to prostitution becoming normalized in the culture thanks to white men.

    Brazil has 66% illegitimacy (cohabitation) rates. That's almost 70% bastardy rates among two-parent households.

    But hey, the average Brazilian is whiter (>70% white).

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    Replies
    1. A lot of the non-Portuguese European and Japanese immigrants to Brazil don't seem to have interbred at all. There are plenty of Japanese Brazilians who look entirely Japanese ethnically and German Brazilians who look 100% European.

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  28. AMac: "These seem to be the people who derive the greatest benefit from affirmative action and grievance-based policies"

    The irony of affirmative action is that it helps white people. Its greatest beneficiaries are heavily white African descendants who wouldn't be considered black in most countries, and white (or mostly white) people with Latin American roots.

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  29. Anonymous said...

    Holder looks black to me.

    He definitely has predominant Sub-Sahara features.

    Not that he looks entirely black; obviously he has other ancestry; but the dominant black features do come out
    ----
    Not really strong sub-saharan traits at all. He's the kind of guy who would easily have a completely White looking child with a White woman.

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  30. Anonymous BurplesonAFB said...

    The one drop rule as a social institution served its purpose: Historically, in America, the gene flow went almost exclusively from white to black.

    If you allow light skinned, mixed race people to pass for white and therefore erode the taboo against whites procreating with them, you will eventually end up with a color gradient like you've got in Brazil (no one drop rule)
    _________________

    Wrong. Racial mixture also increased the white race - it's simply not talked about in public.

    http://therumpus.net/2013/03/the-rumpus-interview-with-joe-mozingo/

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/26/white-descendants-gather-honor-st-black-doctor-tombstone-unmarked-nyc-grave/

    http://freethoughtblogs.com/ashleymiller/2013/07/01/dna-test-reveals-i-am-not-100-white/

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/01/1104445/-Slippin-into-whiteness-Melungeons-and-other-almost-white-groups

    http://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/melungeons/

    http://hamptonroads.com/2004/08/blackandwhite-world-walter-ashby-plecker

    http://www.firstladies.org/ancestral-wilson.aspx

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbone_%28ethnicity%29

    http://ereserves.mcneese.edu/depts/archive/FTBooks/redbones.htm


    http://nativeamericansofdelawarestate.com/plecker.htm

    http://jonathantilove.com/jefferson-kin/

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9439103/Barack-Obamas-mother-probably-the-descendant-of-a-black-slave.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Duncanson

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herriman

    http://www.studio360.org/story/161397-secrets-of-a-blonde-bombshell/

    http://hollywoodlandforever.blogspot.com/2014/04/sisters-secrets-ina-ray-and-june.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Boundaries

    http://www.motherjones.com/media/2007/11/autobiography-ex-white-woman-bliss-broyards-one-drop


    The standards for "white" can get far lower than you thought:

    http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/07/egyptian-immigrant-wants-to-be-reclassified-as-black/

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  31. The irony of affirmative action is that it helps white people. Its greatest beneficiaries are heavily white African descendants who wouldn't be considered black in most countries, and white (or mostly white) people with Latin American roots.


    And women of all races. For some reason that aspect of affirmative action usually eludes people.

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  32. If you allow light skinned, mixed race people to pass for white ..


    What do you mean, "allow" them? Light-skinned mixed-race people desperately want to be regarded as black and not white. All sorts of financial and cultural rewards accrue to them as "blacks" which they could never get as whites. Holder and Obama owe their current positions to being seen as black.

    You get more of what you reward and less of what you punish. In 21st century America we reward people for being non-white and punish them for being white, so everyone who can semi-plausibly claim to be non-white does so.

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  33. Oswald Spengler5/20/14, 4:51 PM

    Eric Holder's theme song.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1rvUMO24eI

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  34. There was some singer from Barbados (famous girl, can't remember her name) who talked about how strange it was when she moved to America and everyone insisted she was actually "black" and not "white".

    Rhianna claims to have been bullied at school for being white.

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  35. Basic law of nature:

    white + color = color

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  36. As I remember there are 112 human SNPs associated with IQ.

    Perhaps 112 are currently known, but that will probably not end up being the whole story of the genetic architecture of intelligence.

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  37. It is obvious by Eric Holder's phenotype that he is a Mixed Race Mutt and not pure Black.

    Phenotype wise there is a big difference between Eric Holder and Michael Jordan for example.

    Eric Holder is a Mulato/Pardo and Michael Jordan is a Preto/Negro.

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  38. Strange discussion. Obama is considered black by all but pundits with axes to grind. His kids are black (because Michelle).

    Holder is black. Susan Rice is black. Obviously only moderate black ancestry in both, but black. Rice's kids are white.



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  39. Anonymous:"Basic law of nature:

    white + color = color"

    Actually, No. Check out Razib Khan's stuff on this topic. Loss of function is easier than gaining function. Hence, the offspring of a light-skinned person and a dark-skinned person will be closer to the light-skinned parent's complexion.

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  40. Anonymous said...

    If you allow light skinned, mixed race people to pass for white ..


    What do you mean, "allow" them? Light-skinned mixed-race people desperately want to be regarded as black and not white. All sorts of financial and cultural rewards accrue to them as "blacks" which they could never get as whites. Holder and Obama owe their current positions to being seen as black.

    You get more of what you reward and less of what you punish. In 21st century America we reward people for being non-white and punish them for being white, so everyone who can semi-plausibly claim to be non-white does so.

    ___________________________

    You don't know much about this subject. Blacks are constantly denouncing part-black people who don't want to identify with them.

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  41. Labels are what some people use to try and keep people seperated.... and thus deemed a minority.....give me a break.... all of the labels can go away.... if you have grandparents of different races doesn't make their grandchildren not of their DNA...no matter what they look like... Take the Bible for instance.... when they speak of lineage... it is always so an so begot so an so... and the lists are lengthy.... doesn't change the DNA... even 100 generations... no matter what the appearance may look like... It is just a scheme to keep people seperated...

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  42. Labels are what some people use to try and keep people seperated.... and thus deemed a minority.....give me a break.... all of the labels can go away.... if you have grandparents of different races doesn't make their grandchildren not of their DNA...no matter what they look like... Take the Bible for instance.... when they speak of lineage... it is always so an so begot so an so... and the lists are lengthy.... doesn't change the DNA... even 100 generations... no matter what the appearance may look like... It is just a scheme to keep people seperated...

    ReplyDelete

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