For awhile, a story has been going around that Sen. Barack Obama Jr. isn't really African-American at all, that he's 7/16th Arab and only 1/16th sub-Saharan African. Well, it's not true. Here's a picture of his parents.It's quite possible that Barack Obama Sr. might have been a little bit Arab, and it's certainly possible that some of Sen. Obama's ancestors sold their fellow black Africans to Arab slavetraders. But this rumor that Barack Obama Sr. was 7/8th Arab is silly.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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22 comments:
Is that you posting this stuff testing99?
Eastern Africa, it seems, produces a disproportionate number of "smart blacks," and the influx of Arab blood seems a perfectly logical explanation as to why. This influx could've happened generations ago, of course.
Is it 7/16ths or 7/8ths?
Thanks for clearing that up Steve
Interesting.....my first raction upon seeing his picture for th first time a few years ago was, hmm, he looks as much like a grownup Arab street urchin as he does like a black.
"Eastern Africa, it seems, produces a disproportionate number of "smart blacks," "
Yea the place certainly looks like its being run by "smart" blacks! The road north from Nairobi is the ONLY road on which I took a fall with my off-road bike, because it must be the worst road I ever travelled on. But maybe Obama is going to use this unkept ex-Colonial road as a blueprint for the US highway system.
Steve, it's perfectly possible that some of your ancestors and mine sold their fellow Europeans to slave-traders: everyone kept, bought and sold slaves until comparatively recently. It's remarkably hard to find out just when and why it stopped. When, for instance, did slavery die out in Ireland, Scotland, England? The answer for England is, I understand, "some time after the Norman Conquest". But when? For Scotland, I don't know (though there was a remarkable attempt to reinstate serfdom for coal miners in the 17th century!). For Ireland - again, I don't know, but presumably when Anglo-Norman influence overwhelmed Gaelic influence: but when exactly? Put otherwise, when was the last slave in Obama's maternal line?
Anonymous wrote:
"Eastern Africa, it seems, produces a disproportionate number of "smart blacks," and the influx of Arab blood seems a perfectly logical explanation as to why. This influx could've happened generations ago, of course."
Where is your evidence that Eastern Africa produces a disproporionate number of smart blacks compared to, say, West Africa? What evidence do you have that that if this is true this is due to "Arab blood"?
The Horn of Africa is the only place I can think of in Easten Africa where there might be significant Arab and other non-Sub-Saharan African admixture, but I'm not sure how influential this may have been in making them more intelligent relative to other Africans. From what I've come across, Ethiopia has one of the lowest mean IQs on the African continent.
Also I should point out that in Kenya there are actual Arabs or mixed Arab/Bantu African people who live in places like Mombasa and Lemu Island.
daveg, don't flatter testing99. Rather, it's because shitting on everything Arab is the only chic and acceptable form of "freedom of dissociation" these days.
JD
"Well, it's not true. Here's a picture of his parents."
I always love the scientific trial method of determining racial heritage on this site. If I remember correctly the same Galileo-Copernicus methodology was used to dispute the findings of Dr. James Watson's DNA exam.
Now if you opined that his mom was 7/16th Arab,I'd be very happy!
A Somali once told me he knew his male line for 16 generations. Though I doubt he knew the names of any of his great-grandmothers, or, with one exception, their husbands.
The family tree posted for Obama looks the same, on his father's side: male line for hundreds of years, and nothing else.
Obama's maternal ancestry is almost all Middle Atlantic or Southern, but you can follow his mother's male line to Woodbridge, N.J., where two couples, the Dunhams and Fitzrandolphs, fled from Massachusetts in the late 17th century. (Obama's no more than 0.6% Puritan stock, however, so no cracks from the Lost Cause gallery...)
What's interesting about the Fitzrandolphs is that they're said to have the longest known male line of any colonial family in America-- it reaches back before the Norman Conquest.
(Obama's no more than 0.6% Puritan stock, however, so no cracks from the Lost Cause gallery...)
Obama might be less than one percentage Puritan in blood, but he's one hundred percent Puritan in spirit. He's great-grandfather was named Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham, which gives us some indication that the Dunhams were proud of their Puritan heritage.
"Puritans long ago abandoned anything that might be good in their religion but have never given up the notion that they are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America, and the world, into the perfection of their own image." -- Clyde Wilson
If I remember correctly the same Galileo-Copernicus methodology was used to dispute the findings of Dr. James Watson's DNA exam.
I didn't even read the comments in question, but I'd be surprised if the dispute didn't also include a few caveats about the granularity of the tests, the margins of error, what small admixture percentages really mean, etc.
Then again, most of those on "my" side might've found the dispute roughly as uninteresting as I did and refrained from commenting.
You know cherry-picking your (collective) opponents' worst arguments is basically the straw man fallacy, right? Just thought I'd ask because you do it constantly and I doubt it does you much good in the credibility department.
Oh, come now, Mr Travis. Virginians pioneered multiculturalism in 1608, miscegenation in 1612, and multiracialism in 1619-- all before the first Pilgrim disturbed Bay sand. They set a gold standard to which the Puritans have been playing catch-up for almost four centuries.
I just find it ironic that the "first black [fill in the blank]" has what may be the longest (known) black male line in America, and is only two or three female descents off the longest (known) white male line in America.
He's African, and he's American, but he sure isn't African-American!
"You know cherry-picking your (collective) opponents' worst arguments is basically the straw man fallacy, right?"
I'm puzzled, I've always thought that that's exactly what good debaters did. Hey, I did win awards for it, but what do I know.
I'm puzzled, I've always thought that that's exactly what good debaters did. Hey, I did win awards for it, but what do I know.
Well, Mr. "Truth" (what a hideously pretentious nick), that's exactly where your error is. Science is NOT about winning debates -- although debates are easily won by rhetorical tactics; we call that "sophistry." Science is about Truth.
If we followed your method, we would have no observational and statistical proofs left. Heck, even math would be in trouble. Just check out this argument, for example: for any integer n, n-squared is greater than n. Ah, but we forgot the bloody number 1 -- which is generally in the habit of messing up plain arguments. So what are we supposed to do? Normal humans add a qualifier for the range of n -- i.e. for any integer n *that is at least 2*...etc.
You, however, would want us to dump the whole argument, right?
Because you're enjoying the sick pleasure of calling Watson African so much, right?
Try to grow a pair of nuts so that Truth becomes more of a concern to your brain -- rather than seeking the womanly pleasure of achieving higher status by winning debates.
JD
Mr. and Mrs. Obama look about as intimate as a knife and fork.
--Senor Doug
"Because you're enjoying the sick pleasure of calling Watson African so much, right?"
Why exactly would quoting a verified genealogical exam be a "sick pleasure?"
Maybe we should open a speakeasy for people who like to recite their blood types?
Actually, I feel that my point was valid:
Item 1) Dr. James Watson takes a blood test which identifies him as having African heritage. Mr. Sailer and his denizens here say that the test in invalid simply because they say so.
Item 2) Barack Obama's father is reputed to be of majority Arab heritage. Mr. Sailer and his denizens here say that the reputation is invalid, simply because they say so.
If I care to invalidate years of IQ research in conjunction with your (collective) observation evidence that blacks are less smart than white simply because I say so, what would be the reaction?
PS: No offense Steve, you know you my boy Dawg.
Strange. Ann Dunham isn't blond.
truth said
simply because they say so
That's what you'd like people to think. But we have read the posts.
Now we know truth's claim to intellectual dominance, and why we're all "his dawg": he attained the heights of high school debate! Congratulations, dawg!
(Seriously, truth, I think you're partly right about the Watson thing - no one has convincingly shown that the test was a phony or even inaccurate. The "race realist" side would do better to be quiet about that one, at least until they have a better comeback, assuming they ever do. But remember, exceptions prove the rule.)
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