September 1, 2010

Adam Clayton Powell IV

Adam Clayton Powell IV, a black New York state Assemblyman from Harlem, who is the son of the famous black Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., is challenging Charlie Rangel for his seat in the House of Representatives. In 1970, Rangel defeated Powell Jr. (1908-1972) when Powell ran into corruption charges for paying a federal salary to Adam Clayton Powell IV's mother as one of his staffers even though she lived in Puerto Rico with their son.

But that raises the obvious question: How is Adam Clayton Powell IV the son of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.? Was there ever an Adam Clayton Powell III? How exactly does that work?

Otherwise, I can't think of any other heredity-related questions to ask about Adam Clayton Powell IV. 

Nope, I'm drawing a blank.

Oh, yeah, I wanted to ask: Where did Rep. Rangel get his accent? I know Mike Tyson got his from his trainer, Cus D'Amato, but where did Charlie Rangel's accent come from?

P.S. Here's a Powell family tree. I can't begin to make sense of it, but it's good to know it's out there.

74 comments:

  1. Maybe ACP Jr liked the name so much he used it for all his kids, but numbered them so he could keep them straight.

    Bad luck if there were any daughters.

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  2. Oh, yeah, like George Foreman:

    "Foreman has 11 children, and each of his five sons are named George: George Jr., George III, George IV, George V and George VI."

    Maybe Adam Clayton Powell III died young?

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  3. My understanding is that Jr. had two families, and he named the eldest son of his first family III, and his son in his second family IV. So III and IV are half-brothers, not father and son. There is a V, by the way, the son of IV, who just graduated from Columbia and was the Ivy League champion in the 50 yard freestyle. I think V went to high school somewhere in Westchester, but I couldn't swear to it.

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  4. Powell and his third wife, Puerto Rican Yvette Diago Powell, had a son Adam Clayton Powell Diago, so named in the matrilineal tradition of some Latino cultures. This son changed his name to Adam Clayton Powell IV when he moved to the mainland from Puerto Rico to attend Howard University to honor his family legacy. (This caused confusion because his nephew, only 8 years younger than he, already was named Adam Clayton Powell IV.)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell,_Jr.#Personal

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  5. Steve, two minutes on Wikipedia would have cleared this up.

    Sigh...

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  6. This guy would be considered white in Brazil.

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  7. "For example, III, now a vice provost at the University of Southern California, ....
    still lives in Washington most of the week": that's an odd way to run a university, isn't it?

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  8. Here's something a bit off topic but a good subject for a post, the racial categorizations of Latino/Hispanics. Here is one Salvador Landin-Castonon looking pretty much like an almost pure Indigenous Indian Mexican, not looking mestizo at all. Guess how the state of Utah classifies him.

    But then the Adam Clayton Powells are all "black" so there you go.

    Race is clearly a biological construct but the way some people choose to racially classify people and how they classify themselves often times betrays a willful ignorance of biology and history.

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  9. There is a V, by the way, the son of IV, who just graduated from Columbia and was the Ivy League champion in the 50 yard freestyle.

    Weird that the handful of West African swimmers we get in the USA - like Cullen Jones - seem to gravitate to the sprints.

    If there were such a thing as an East African swimmer, I wonder if he would tend to excel at the 400m and the 1500m?

    Or maybe the super-long endurance stuff?

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  10. Cassius Clayton9/1/10, 6:04 AM

    How are they related to the bassist for U2 ?

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  11. E. Henry Thripshaw9/1/10, 6:13 AM

    Ah, royalty...
    Perhaps it would be best to consult Burke's Peerage.

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  12. Adam Clayton Powell MMX9/1/10, 6:17 AM

    Adam Clayton Powell IV, a black New York state Assemblyman from Harlem, who is the son of the famous black Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,...

    It appears Adam IV is black because his father, Adam Jr., was black despite looking like a young Don Amiche doppleganger. And Adam Jr., appears black because his father, Adam Sr., was black. Or was he?

    Adam Clayton Powell was born in Franklin County, Virginia[2] to Sally Dunning, a woman described as mulatto but whose racial heritage is unspecified. The identity of his father is also unsubstantiated... Lawrence Rushing, a social science professor at LaGuardia Community College, has argued that Powell, who considered himself African American, actually had no identifiable African ancestry.

    Not that any of this matters except to Powell IV's Democratic backers and Democratic voters in that precinct who are obsessed with race.

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  13. Perhaps this is a question Truth can answer: at what point does a person's black ancestry become so diluted that African Americans will not consider him black (and, hence, he won't gain any political benefit from his black ancestry)?

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  14. The Adam cuatro that is running for congress looks sort of like Chevy Chase in the picture in the New York Times family tree article. Can he say, I'm Adam the IV and your not!?

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  15. "Otherwise, I can't think of any other heredity-related questions to ask about Adam Clayton Powell IV.

    Nope, I'm drawing a blank."

    Are you sure that you are not Adam Clayton Powell III, Steve? There is a certain resemblence there.

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  16. Here's a priceless story:

    On summer evenings toward the end of his life, Robert Todd Lincoln liked to be driven up the road from Hildene, his home at Manchester, Vermont, to the Equinox House for dinner. It was a charming resort hotel, marred for the old man only by the black bellboys who hurried out to open the door of his RollsRoyce. The Emancipator’s son had come to dislike blacks, and when any dared touch his gleaming door handle, he angrily rapped their knuckles with his cane. To keep Mr. Lincoln happy, the manager paid one youth, lightskinned enough to pass for white, ten extra dollars a week just to meet his limousine. Lincoln was said to be so pleased to be greeted by an apparently white servant that he tipped him an additional silver dollar every time he was ushered into the hotel.

    The lucky bellboy was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who gleefully recounted the story in his 1971 autobiography, Adam by Adam. As Charles V. Hamilton’s solid, balanced life Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma (Atheneum) demonstrates, this was just the first of many times that Powell would profit from the special lunacy of race relations in America. It would be part of his appeal to his black constituents all his life that he had deliberately chosen to identify himself with them rather than with the whites among whom he might have lived in greater ease.

    He was brought up as the pampered son of the most influential man in Harlem, the Reverend Adam Powell, Sr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, whose pulpit he would one day inherit as his own. A frail, beautiful, goldenhaired little boy, he was doted upon by his parents, his older sister, and the ladies of his father’s congregation. That rarefied upbringing armed him with a brash self-confidence that stayed with him almost to the end, but it also rendered him perennially delighted at his own naughtiness, unhappy whenever the spotlight shifted from him even for a moment, and unable finally to distinguish between his own cause and that of the dispossessed people who believed in him.

    http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1992/4/1992_4_14.shtml

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  17. Johnny B. Goode9/1/10, 7:49 AM

    Adam Clayton Powell whatever looks like you, Steve.

    Your explanation of Tyson's accent explains Floyd Patterson's. I always thought that Tyson patterned his accent after Patterson. Now I know they both imitated Damato.

    Off topic, but on your beat:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100825/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico

    72 migrants killed in Mexico. 72 Ecuadorian migrants, so they don't count. What if that happened over the border in Arizona? Think Obama would raise a stink?

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  18. What do you notice about Charlie Rangel's accent? The voice has a gravelly timbre for sure. To my ears, he has an old school, working class, WHITE New York accent. It is definitely not a Black accent (Charlie Rangel's mother was Porto Rican). I'm from New York, it used to be fairly common that one would meet Black men (Porto Rican men too) who spoke with the classic white New York accent, no doubt owing to growing up in white neighborhoods and having mainly white friends. Not much of that anymore. In fact, the classic white New York accent seems to be dying out in New York City proper. It is clearly extinct in Manhattan.

    It seems that in California, at least, white working class youth are adopting a semblance of the classic Chicano accent.

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  19. Powell is one of the few Welsh names that is actually from Welsh, i.e. not like Williams or Jones. Ap Howell, or Ap Hywel --> son of Hywel, Hywel meaning 'exalted', which itself is a surname of course. I dunno, maybe these guys are related to Thurston Howell III.

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  20. Adam Clayton Powell IV, a black New York state Assemblyman from Harlem

    Black.

    Black?

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

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  21. Looks like I'm a tanning booth trip away from running to be the House rep of East Cleveland (seriously though, when Stephanie Tubbs Jones died they had an informal get together of possible candidates and it was like four black people and one white guy, FUNNY STUFF!)

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  22. My quick count indicates that black politicians are crooked at at least four time the rate of whites.

    Politicians of all hues seem to be preternaturally corrupt in a way that few other professions are. For example civil service bureaucrats are also government workers but are almost never involved in personal corruption. When you read about a scandal involving a government manager it is almost always a political appointee.

    A mid level manager in private industry is also not likely to be a crook but probably more so than a comparable public sector manager. But higher up the hierarchy this reverses. Corporate officers (CEOs, CFOs, and such) are probably less crooked than senior politically appointed agency directors or Mayors and City Supervisors.

    Obviously doctors are less troubled by personal corruption than are lawyers. We just never hear of cases where an unscrupulous doctor exploits an elderly patient and takes all her savings.

    At the macro level we have Transparency International - the organization that assures us that Finland is honest and all sub-Saharan African countries are corrupt. But we need a similar analysis of individual politicians.

    Albertosaurus

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  23. Sounds like Lawrence Eagleburger, who was briefly Secretary of State under Bush 41, who named all three of his sons Lawrence.

    And, uh, not to ask the obvious question, but how is it these men get to qualify as in any way "black"? That guy is whiter than my insurance salesman.

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  24. So what race is he running as? There have always been a lot of Puerto Ricans in Harlem, so he has himself a two-fer if he wants to take the Diego back. Looks like he might suffer the same fate as Barack Obama in his first attempt--not black enough. Hardly black at all actually, but he's got the name.

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  25. Mr. Rangel is part Puerto Rican (don't know if that's affected his accent).

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  26. I would have assumed the gentleman pictured is Sicilian, rather than black.

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  27. How is it that this guy is described as "a black New York state Assemblyman from Harlem"?,

    Must be the one drop rule. This guy looks like a quintoroon at most in terms of his black heredity.

    And this harkens back to Google censuring certain words. The word quintoroon does not show up at all in Google suggestions, and is not even in Google dictionary. It does show up in Dogpile however, as a person of 15/16 white heritage.

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  28. Clayton Adams9/1/10, 10:35 AM

    A little off topic but the Hagio-Pic Keep the Faith, Baby had Harry Lennix as Adam Clayton Powell, Jr when Ron Siver was the obvious choice. Wonder why Ronnie didn't get the part?No idea, none at all.

    KTFB is utterly hilarious -- think Mommy Dearest with some as-subtle-as-an-army-training-documentAHray "civil rights" thrown in. I've seen it a few times, cracks me up just thinkin' 'bout it.

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  29. "Some years ago I was a defendant in a lawsuit brought by a creepy fascistic outfit (they are now out of business), and the question before the jury was whether I and the magazine I edited were racist. The attorney had one weapon to use in making his point, namely that we had published an editorial about Adam Clayton Powell Jr. when he made a terminally wrong move in his defense against federal prosecutors. The editorial we published was titled, “The Jig Is Up for Adam Clayton Powell Jr.?” On the witness stand I argued that the word “jig” could be used other than as animadversion. The feverish lawyer grabbed a book from his table and slammed it down on the arm of my chair. “Have you ever heard of a dictionary?” he asked scornfully, as if he had put the smoking gun in my lap. I examined the American Heritage College Dictionary and said yes, I was familiar with it. “In fact,” I was able to say, opening the book, “I wrote the introduction to this edition.” That was the high moment of my forensic life. And, of course, the dictionary establishes that the word “jig” can be used harmlessly."

    http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/217685/just-what-did-you-mean/william-f-buckley-jr

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  30. Off topic, but liberal whites are better off with an achievement gap between white and black students.

    You said foreign language was one way parents could discriminate against black nannies and the education gap is one way white parents can openly discriminate against black students. "My Johnny is one STDV smarter than Tyrone so they should be in different classes". As you've pointed out this difference is a property and not an accident.

    Most white parents have no intention of letting their kids attend racially integrated schools, even if there was no achievement gap and even if the black kids came from families with similar income to theirs.

    Since there is still demand for discrimination, how will whites discriminate if there was no achievement gap? Location? sure that works in the suburbs, but not in the cities.

    Is closing the achievement gap something super-elite private school whites champion as a way of punishing the upwardly mobile whites in high achieving public schools?

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  31. Aha... that explains "Prince Michael Jackson II"... I think...

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  32. That guy is black?!?

    Must be an "undercover brother" then. (Yes I'm aware of the standard meaning of that phrase.)

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  33. Some of you guys really crack me up. A quintoroon? You mean one-fifth black? How does that work? And Sicilian? Hardly. Adam(iv) is too light for that. My guess is that his Puerto Rican mother is substantially Northwest European racially and probably part Visigoth. The other Adam(iv), the scientist, has at least some identifiable sub-saharan facial morphology.
    It is ACPjr, by the way, who looked Mediterranean—Levantine, even.

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  34. What was up with Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.'s accent? See it here. A classic "big man." For what it's worth ACP-JR reminds me of Cab Calloway. Hi de hi de hi de hi! Ho de ho de ho de ho!

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  35. Onesdtv, it's 'down low brother.'

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  36. I am Lugash.

    My quick count indicates that black politicians are crooked at at least four time the rate of whites.

    Almost all of them, white and black, are corrupt. Black politicians get ensnared in stupid smoking gun things, like giving government scholarships to your own grandkids. White politicians engage in the quid pro quo corruption, so there's plausible deniability.

    I am Lugash.

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  37. " at what point does a person's black ancestry become so diluted that African Americans will not consider him black (and, hence, he won't gain any political benefit from his black ancestry)?"

    At right about the point you find out that he's plowing your daughter, and heartilly welcome him into the family.

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  38. "Are you sure that you are not Adam Clayton Powell III, Steve? There is a certain resemblence there."

    You know, now that it has been mentioned, Steve-O, I took a look at both mug shots...

    (Again, you were adopeted right Steve? James Watson was 16% black, and he makes you look like a swarthy Iberian.)

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  39. Jonathan Silber9/1/10, 12:57 PM

    Let commentator Gag Reflex say what he will, Visigoths have it rough in America.

    They can find no work except in stereotypical roles as "Visa-goths" in TV ads for Capitol One credit cards.

    Unless these descendants of Alaric 1
    can get a fair shake here, then the terrorists will have won.

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  40. If he wins we will have two Mustiphinos in Congresss, the other being G.K. Butterfield.

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  41. Steve, for the sake of your foreign readers: who is this Adam Clayton Powell IV and what is the significance of this person?

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  42. This clan counts as black??
    LOL. Are they all octoroons or something?

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  43. Powell's candidacy is impacted by the fact that Manhattan has gotten so expensive that its black population has been falling like a stone.

    Have you checked the prices of Manhattan condos recently? Some of the partners (partners!) in my law firm can't take it anymore and are moving to Los Angeles for the lower cost of living

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  44. It seems that in California, at least, white working class youth are adopting a semblance of the classic Chicano accent.

    I found the California accent very odd. It almost sounds Canadian sometimes, then it hits you, it's from the Spanish.

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  45. At right about the point you find out that he's plowing your daughter, and heartilly welcome him into the family.


    So, Steve, can you explain to us your comment moderating policy? It seems that certain people, like "Truth", have free rein to post whatever trash is flitting past their synapses at any particular instant. But I notice that this same latitude is not granted to everyone here. What's the deal?

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  46. Albertosaurus,

    "Politicians of all hues seem to be preternaturally corrupt in a way that few other professions are. For example civil service bureaucrats are also government workers but are almost never involved in personal corruption. When you read about a scandal involving a government manager it is almost always a political appointee."

    You do hear about corruption with civil service bureaucrats, particularly ones that have procurement responsibilities.

    "A mid level manager in private industry is also not likely to be a crook but probably more so than a comparable public sector manager. But higher up the hierarchy this reverses. Corporate officers (CEOs, CFOs, and such) are probably less crooked than senior politically appointed agency directors or Mayors and City Supervisors."

    Top level corporate execs are less likely to be corrupt because they can pay themselves lavishly without being overtly corrupt. The biggest temptation for corruption is when a modestly paid individual is responsible for making decisions that will make others a lot richer.

    "Obviously doctors are less troubled by personal corruption than are lawyers. We just never hear of cases where an unscrupulous doctor exploits an elderly patient and takes all her savings."

    Doctors employ subtler forms of corruption, e.g., ordering unnecessary tests that they send to labs they own to run, etc. There are also doctors involved in disability fraud -- think of those LIRR workers on Long Island where almost all of them were on disability by their early 50s and spent their days playing golf. Every one of those fake disabled workers was abetted by a doctor.

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  47. Truth,

    "At right about the point you find out that he's plowing your daughter, and heartilly welcome him into the family."

    That was funny. I was going to argue it wasn't true, and use Harold Ford, Jr. as an example, but then I saw this online, "Could Harold Ford, Jr. get elected Dogcatcher in Blackland?". That article (which has a photo of Ford and his lily-white bride) includes this quote from a black voter,

    "I think he has not given his political career any thought. If he runs for any office again, surely he won’t win. You don’t carry the black vote and marry white. I will never vote for him again."-- Pat, Memphis

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  48. Sicilian huh?

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  49. "... moving to Los Angeles for the lower cost of living .... "


    when professionals, whether they be investment bankers or biglaw partners move from Manhattan to the West Cost, many of them feel they are moving in to a higher class.

    In Manhattan, law firm partners and investment banking partners are constantly made to feel poor and inferior by the wealthy hedge fund guys. I mean the wives of the law firm partners hang around with the wives of the hedge fund guys and the wives of the hedge fund guys subtly belittle and insult and laugh at the wives of the law partners.

    But in West LA this doesn't happen and law firm partners are closer to the top of the heap.

    Another thing -

    An average normal family sized manhattan four bedroom condo apartment was $4.0 million at the peak of the market (average aprtment, OK views but not great) , then fell 35% down to $2.6 million at the bottom and since then has rebounced back to $3.0 million.

    Where we sit today, start of September 2010 that family sized condo costs 3.0 million in manhattan

    Now this is average for Manhattan South of 96th street.

    Some neighborhoods are considered "boring" and in those neighborhoods this four bedroom can be had for less than $3.0 For example, the 30s are considered sub par (both on the East side and on the West side, the 30s cost much less money than other neighborhoods)

    On the other hand in the more popular neighborhoods (Soho, meatpacking district etc), the price of a family sized apartment is much more than $3.0 million.

    But the average is $3.0

    If you move from Manhattan to Santa Monica or from Manhattan to Brentwood you typically sell your primary residence in Manhattan for $3.0 million and then buy a primary residence in Santa Monica (North of Montana) or Brentwood for the same $3.0 million

    But the key thing is that the manhattan people can sell their house in the hamptons at the same time.

    In manhattan they feel it is mandatory to have the $3.0 million house in the hamptons as well as the primary residence in Manhttan for $3.0 million

    But in Santa Monica and Brentwood, no one at all, in any professional circle, insists that you own a second home. Second homes are almost unheard of among professionals in Santa Monica and Brentwood vs almost required in many professional circles in Manhattan

    So all in all, moving from Manhattan to Santa Monica or Brentwood is a huge bargain not because of any savings in cost of primary residence, but because moving allows people the freedom to not be required to own a second home

    This phenom doesn't really impact Studio City - as far as I know few people move from Manhattan family sized condos to Studio city - the usual is Manhattan to Santa Monica or Brentwood

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  50. And this harkens back to Google censuring certain words. The word quintoroon does not show up at all in Google suggestions, and is not even in Google dictionary. It does show up in Dogpile however, as a person of 15/16 white heritage.

    That's because the far more traditional term for someone 15/16 white (or 1/16 black) is "mustee". (The heroine who helps Harry Flashman out of a pickle in the antebellum South in Fraser's novel "Flash For Freedom!" is a beautiful mustee who can largely pass.

    1/2 = Mulatto
    1/4 = Quadroon
    1/8 = Octoroon
    1/16 = Mustee
    1/32 = Southern Gen'l'man who'd rather not inquire too deeply into his family tree

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  51. ohio stater wrote:
    Most white parents have no intention of letting their kids attend racially integrated schools, even if there was no achievement gap and even if the black kids came from families with similar income to theirs.
    =============================

    White parents don't avoid having their kids in schools with Asians (east or south)--at least not in my part of the world.

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  52. "But I notice that this same latitude is not granted to everyone here. What's the deal?"

    Does it take a genius, Sport? I fork over massive amounts of Cayshe.

    "I will never vote for him again."-- Pat, Memphis"

    LOL

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  53. Anonymous, are you telling me, that Watson might really be 25% black?!?!?!

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  54. Severn:

    Why is it that you guys are always so concerned about what Steve feels is best for his website. Sometimes he allows it, sometimes he doesn't if you can't handle it, man up and start your own blog.

    That's the way we do it in this country, Nicolai.

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  55. White parents don't avoid having their kids in schools with Asians (east or south)--at least not in my part of the world.

    I recall reading an article about a parents at a school district up in the Silicon Valley, Aptos, Santa Cruz area who were complaining that the high school was becoming too Asian. That is, to do well their kids had to study hours and hours, so that things like sports , marching band, etc -- all the normal things that used to make up part of the American High School experience -- were getting short shrift.

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  56. That guy is black?

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  57. Reply to D'York Said:

    Your link was interesting. If that guy is "White" then I am the emperor of Japan!

    Why does the govt do this? To try to inflate the "White" crime rate perhaps?

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  58. Anonymous, are you telling me, that Watson might really be 25% black?!?!?!

    Yeah, that's right, Watson is black just like Beethoven.

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  59. @albertosaurus said:

    "Politicians of all hues seem to be preternaturally corrupt in a way that few other professions are."

    It turns out there's a theory to explain that.

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  60. "Weird that the handful of West African swimmers we get in the USA - like Cullen Jones - seem to gravitate to the sprints.

    If there were such a thing as an East African swimmer, I wonder if he would tend to excel at the 400m and the 1500m?"

    Actually, the only surprising thing would be if West African sprinters did not gravitate to the sprints. Look at what they do in track: you rarely see one who is world class beyond 800 meters, and they totally dominate the sprints. Their advantages in swimming are their wide shoulders, narrower hips, longer arms, and greater strength, on average. Their disadvantages are their greater body density and heavier bones (i.e., less flotation) smaller lungs, and shorter torsos (the ideal swimming build is more like Michael Phelps's, with a relatively long torso and shorter legs).

    I'm not sure what a good example of West African sprinting ability ACP V is, btw, as he looks about as black as his father.

    As far as the East Africans, as dominant as they are at distance running, I doubt they would be particularly good at swimming. They just don't have the same amount of muscle/strength as West Africans, and buoyancy is more of a necessity in distance swimming.

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  61. Melykin said . . .
    White parents don't avoid having their kids in schools with Asians (east or south)--at least not in my part of the world.

    Where do you live? I have talked to whites in several places, including northern and southern California, who prefer that their kids not go to school with (lots of) Asians, in order to protect them from the pointless, wasteful, hyperactive academic competition.

    Steve mentioned in another post the increasing tendency of Asians to concentrate themselves into majority Asian schools (I don't know whether he is right about this, though). This can't happen without whites going along because there are plenty of rich whites, so that housing prices alone can't do the work of segregation as they can with NAM/non-NAM segregation.

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  62. It is my understanding that Prof. Watson's ancestors have been definitively traced to Europe which makes it highly unlikely he has any significant amount of non-white ancestry. These stories are likely disinformation campaigns by the usual suspects.

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  63. "It is my understanding..."

    You have to love an argumentitive post that starts like this.

    "These stories are likely disinformation campaigns by the usual suspects."

    Like the lab that administered the test?

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  64. Why is it that you guys are always so concerned about what Steve feels is best for his website.


    I just want to see the same rules applied to everyone. If you're going to be allowed to post an endless stream of posts which consists of nothing but crude and rude attacks on other commenters, fine.

    But in that case, I think that other commenters should be allowed to respond to you in like fashion. And we're not so allowed.

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  65. Change your race to one of the favored races. Sequence your DNA at some Back to Africa DNA website. Get an expert opinion of your African roots based on the sequence. Apply for a correction to your birth certificate and DL. Tell your employer to change your race on your employee files. You are now an official NAM.

    For 60 years Indian courts have been clogged with "who's an AA" cases. Jews are duking it out in "who's a Jew" cases in Israel as differnet groups struggle over who will rule the Jewish people. The issue isn't social justice, it's just a titanic worldwide struggle over wealth and power on the one hand, and guilt and inferiority on the other. Since you can pick, who would you rather be?

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  66. "If you're going to be allowed to post an endless stream of posts which consists of nothing but crude and rude attacks on other commenters, fine."

    I called you "Einstein." I don't think that that is particularly "crude" or "rude."

    Another poster called me "Dickh*ead" a few days ago, that is crude and rude, but hey, I got over it.


    By the way, you posts are nothing but a bunch of "crude and rude attacks" on general groups of people in case you hadn't noticed.

    Man up Buddy!

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  67. John Craig: Actually, the only surprising thing would be if West African sprinters did not gravitate to the sprints.

    Right, that was my point.

    John Craig: As far as the East Africans, as dominant as they are at distance running, I doubt they would be particularly good at swimming.

    Keeping a swimming pool filled with clean, filtered, chlorinated, heated water, on a 24x365 basis, is just insanely expensive.

    For that reason alone, I doubt that we will ever see anyone come up through the ranks in Ethiopia [which produced the likes of Abebe Bikila, Mamo Wolde, and Gezahegne Abera].

    On the other hand, there is Oussama Mellouli, of Tunisia, who won gold in the 1500m freestyle in Beijing.

    Mellouli might be roughly equivalent to, say, the middle-distance runner, Hicham El Guerrouj, of Morocco.

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  68. Anonymous --
    Melloulli actually reminds me of Mark Spitz, both facially and in his build. And yes, as a Tunisian he probably has some ethnic kinship with Moroccans Hicham el Guerrouj and Said Aouita, as well as Algerian Nourredine Morceli, all of whom held world track records at distances ranging from 1500 to 5000 meters. But Mellouli is tall (at 6' 3") and strong, both requirements for being a good swimmer. The three middle distance runners I mentioned above are all 5' 9". The two greatest East African distance runners, Ethiopians Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele, are 5' 3" and 5' 4" (admittedly, they are good at longer distances, from 5000 meters up to the marathon). I don't know to what extent nutrition played a role in their height, and there have certainly been taller East Africans, but my impression is that the ones who get tall (the Watusi?) still tend to be quite skinny, and don't put on all that much muscle, which isn't ideal even for distance swimming -- even if they had access to pools.

    The Arabs, like Mellouli and Morceli and el Guerrouj, while there's undoubtedly been some sub-Saharan admixture, look more Semitic to me than black.

    ReplyDelete
  69. "Severn said...

    But in that case, I think that other commenters should be allowed to respond to you in like fashion. And we're not so allowed."

    By all means, do reply to him in this fashion. I called "Truth" a d**khead. Chiefly, because of his rude, obnoxious habit of using little pet names, like "Sport", "Chief", etc. So I use my own little pet names for him, like "d**khead", idiot, nitwit, etc.

    I noticed that Steve became far more solicitous of my more scurillous posts after the Hartford shooting incident, when "Truth" predictably tried to make excuses for the media's obsession with the shooters offended racial sensibilities (I forget the shooter's name, and anyway he was a POS and not worthy of remembering anyway). Steve was obviously pissed off about it, and I think "Truth" pissed him off too.

    Still, "Truth" does serve the purpose of being the resident poster-boy (boy!) for that common type - the incompetent and arrogantly delusional black.

    ReplyDelete
  70. "So I use my own little pet names for him, like "d**khead", idiot, nitwit, etc."

    Aaaaah
    Lelcome back
    to Shao-lin
    Temple
    Glasshopper.
    The great dlagon of anger
    lelled up inside of you
    and bleathed it's fiery bleath!

    Steve-Sama, the elder monks, and I
    Were bedi-bedi-concerned about
    you absence...but the temple chores
    continued

    So tell us now glasshopper-
    In your three day exile to the outside world
    what did you learn?

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  71. "As far as the East Africans, as dominant as they are at distance running, I doubt they would be particularly good at swimming.

    Keeping a swimming pool filled with clean, filtered, chlorinated, heated water, on a 24x365 basis, is just insanely expensive."

    I don't see this. Kenyans, *they say* are good runners because they must run home from school 10 miles, barefoot, on unpaved roads, or get a whuppin'.
    Kenya is tropical No need to heat the water -- the sun will. Chlorine is cheap. Why can't they learn to swim in a pond without fancy accoutrements like they learned to run without them?
    (Hint: low body fat percentage lets you run fast -- and makes you sink like a stone.)

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  72. Nicholas Stix addressed the name comfusion, and confirmed Robert61's hypothesis: ACP named his kids III and IV -- I say because ACP Jr is an egomaniac -- like Michael Jackson's kids:

    Son #1: Michael Joseph Jr., known as Prince (b. 1997)
    Daughter: Paris-Michael Katherine (b. 1998)
    Son #2: Prince Michael II (aka Blanket) (b. 2002)

    Nutty, huh?

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  73. I believe the Powell's. Of the pastmade decision to identify as black possible for some gain on a whole. However the fight & 's passion he displayed for the oppressed in those volatile times were beneficial. I feel with changing surnames
    Unkown father of adam SR create some doubt of the African ancestry on a greater scale
    Unknown reasons and ulterior motives. Never will know h
    MR POWELL JR DIDNT HAV ANY AFRICAN features
    Maybe identifying with black and their struggle advanced their cause

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