September 12, 2011

UPDATED: Which state has the best blacks?

Audacious Epigone has a table ranking states by the ratio of the percent of blacks on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families versus the entire population's ratio. In one state, blacks are only very slightly more likely to use welfare than the general population. Which is it? Also, in which state are blacks the most likely to be on welfare relative to the whole population? 

The answers won't be too surprising to my long term readers:

45) Texas 2.39
46) Colorado 2.38
47) Mississippi 2.22
48) Rhode Island 2.11
49) New Mexico 1.70
50) Hawaii 1.06

So, the state where blacks are most equal, where there is the least local evidence supporting stereotypes of black fecklessness, turns out to be that hellhole of racial prejudice and bigotry where Barack Obama was forced to grow up in a discriminatory environment where, as he recalled decades later in Dreams from My Father, a white girl at his exclusive prep school wanted to touch his hair

Second best is frequent commenter Truth's New Mexico. I think the common denominator is that blacks in both states mostly got there through the military, or that they just had to be kind of independent-minded and self-starting to move there.


Anyway, some caveats: relative welfare usage is hardly the only measure of interest, but it seems like a pretty good single number measure of the intensity of underclass pathology.

I think the good ranking of Mississippi, the blackest state, is more a statistical artifact of Audacious comparing blacks to the entire population (including blacks) rather than to the non-black population or to whites. Say that blacks make up 40% of Mississippi's population and 100% are on welfare and 0% of everybody else is on welfare. Then, the ratio would still only be 2.50 (instead of the actual 2.22). Something similar is true for other highly black states like South Carolina and Louisiana.

Rhode Island seems to have pretty feckless white people, with RI whites with a lot on the ball moving to Boston or New York. Colorado strikes me as a pretty good all-around state that usually does well on state rankings on just about anything. Perhaps the altitude drives away the sickly and lazy?

The really interesting number here might be giant Texas, which suffers less from Mississippi-style statistical illusion because its black share is relatively modest. As you'll recall, during the orgy of media hate following Hurricane Katrina in which anybody who said anything obviously true was denounced, Barbara Bush got in trouble for saying that black refugees from New Orleans' long dysfunctional Lower Ninth Ward would be better off making new lives for themselves in Houston. There is a lot of evidence that blacks do relatively well in conservative-dominated Texas.

So, which states have the worst blacks relative to the general population? Once again, iSteve readers shouldn't be too surprised:
StateTANF
1) Wisconsin9.04
2) Minnesota8.90
3) Nebraska7.92
4) Idaho7.33
5) Iowa7.23
The peculiar awfulness of Milwaukee's black slums, relative even to, say, Chicago's black slums, has been on the radar for a long time. It's not a coincidence that a number of important innovations in policy aimed at blacks, such as welfare reform and vouchers and charter schools were heavily pioneered in Wisconsin in the early 1990s. 


Also, keep in mind that rural whites in Wisconsin have their act together more than rural whites in a lot of other states. Driving around back roads in Arkansas in the early 1990s, it wasn't uncommon to see thirtyish Winter's Bone white guys sitting on the porches of their shacks at 3pm on a Thursday, glaring at me as if I might be an undercover revenooer. Driving back roads in Wisconsin, in contrast, past all the lovingly maintained family dairy farms, it looked like rural Wisconsin would make a credible stand-in for rural Austria in a remake of The Sound of Music.

The roots of this appear to be Wisconsin's traditional social democratic tendencies. As Alice Cooper points out to Wayne in Wayne's World, Milwaukee three times elected a Socialist Party mayor. If you have a feckful, cooperative population like most of Wisconsin, then it made sense to set liberal welfare rules in the 1960s to make sure that neighbors in need weren't shut out by bureaucratic red tape. The problem with this generous attitude is that it attracted in the most parasitical blacks from the South and from Chicago. 


A long time ago in VDARE I mapped 1997 data on imprisonments by race by state. The three states with the highest ratio of black to white imprisonment were Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, which are three of the top five in Audacious's TANF ratio table.

UPDATE: Audacious has recalculated the rankings to get around the statistical problem I pointed out. Now, he's just looking at the black to white ratio in TANF usage rates. Fortunately for all the verbiage I wrote above, you get the same winner (Hawaii) and the same loser (Wisconsin). Different states have different eligibility levels for welfare, so it makes sense to report not the absolute black welfare usage rate, but their rate relative to the rate of whites in that state:


Best blacks relative to local whites (i.e., #50 Hawaii has the most equal blacks and whites):

41. Vermont5.27
42. Rhode Island4.93
43. Washington4.73
44. Alaska4.52
45. New Hampshire4.41
46. New Mexico4.15
47. Kentucky4.01
48. West Virginia3.45
49. Colorado2.75
50. Hawaii1.39
Now, Texas blacks falls out of the better reaches and right into the middle of the pack. Oh, well ... My  explanation above sounded highly persuasive while I wrote it.

Worst blacks relative to local whites (#1 Wisconsin worst):
StateB:W
1. Wisconsin27.75
2. North Dakota23.40
3. Minnesota23.15
4. New Jersey17.97
5. South Dakota16.50
6. Pennsylvania15.81
7. Nebraska15.00
8. Illinois12.55
9. Iowa11.30
10. Michigan11.10
To some extent this is unfair to blacks in the Upper Midwest and New Jersey because the white people there are pretty good about not being a burden on society (Italian-Americans are famous for not wanting to use welfare no matter how much they might need it). But it's still a pretty interesting way to rank states.

76 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course, this could be reverse engineered to calculate white performance.

However, what is more interesting perhaps is what percent of whites/black/hisp/Asian are taking government assistance.

Anonymous said...

It this about best blacks or worst whites? And the data can be used favorably by both libs and cons. Libs can say Hawaii, New Mexico, and Rhode Island have long been Democratic, and that's blacks there are better off.

It probably also had to do with the relative economies of the state. Wisconsin is big in agriculture, but farming folks would rather hire Hispanics than blacks. As for Wisconsin industry, I don't think much exists anymore, which means not many jobs for blacks.

Anonymous said...

What percentage of Hawaiians are black? If a black guy moved all the way to Hawaii, he must have had a good reason, meaning he was probably more ambitious. I mean why move so far out when you can get government assistance in the states?

Anonymous said...

I think demographics plays a role here. Or as the great prophet Enoch Powell said, "Its all about the numbers". States like Hawaii, etc, with very few blacks, are not likely to attract MORE of them (except perhaps under unusal circumstances, like say the pentagon decides to build a huge new base there). With few, or very few, blacks around, blacks tend to behave themselves and act better. Fewer traditional black pathologies rear their ugly head as there simply are not enough blacks around to create the types of venues, outlets and atmosphere that produce them. Even a hardened thuggish ghetto black is likely to act more cautiously if he has very few of his fellow blacks around.

beowulf said...

One problem with your methodology is that social welfare programs are mostly funded by Uncle Sam but are actually administered and partially funded by the states, which each set their own benefit levels and eligibility requirements.

Looking at a 2009 Urban Institute study comparing welfare benefits by state (linked below), TANF comparisons by state are useless when eligibility for a family of three in Mississippi requires an income under $458 per month, while in Alaska, income threshold for the same family would be $1,554 per month (table L5). I guess funding the state govt with oil royalties instead of taxes puts Alaskan politicians in a generous mood.
http://anfdata.urban.org/wrd/databook.cfm

Clearly if liberals had any sense, they'd push Congress to federalize welfare programs (taking the burden off of state govts), scaling benefits up to Alaska levels while they're at it.
Better still was Nixon's plan (that Ford kept pushing on for a while) to federal welfare programs long enough to zero out all spending and then provide aid to the poor with a negative income tax
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3356/is_4_53/ai_n28809872/pg_6/

Anonymous said...

The "mini-riot" of "teenagers" in Minneapolis last night seems to fit the pattern.

Here is video, although turn your sound off unless you want to hear the vocabulary of the idiots who filmed this (which doesn't say much for the white population):

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/09/riot_minneapolis_dance_party.php

Anonymous said...

Feckful? Oh feck, I rather like that.

This is a sort of off-topic comment, but I don't think anyone ever wanted to touch Obama's hair. This is an oft-told black fantasy. Maybe some white person somewhere wanted to touch that cotton candy and that became an entire urban legend, firmly rooted in black mythology.

I can't think of anything less sexy than running my fingers through nappy hair. Blacks themselves hate their hair, a topic dealt with semi-honestly by Chris Rock in GOOD HAIR. Chris went halfway there but not the whole way. The reason blacks don't like their hair is because isn't because of slavery. It's because it's ugly.

Haters Gonna Hate said...

Jesus Christ, in this piece it's as though every phrase within every sentence contains a new & unique hate fact.

Peasants [-er- bruthas], get your pitchforks.

Audacious Epigone said...

Upon Steve's suggestions, I used a better method to calculate which states have the relatively best blacks. It's here for those interested.

Audacious Epigone said...

Beowulf,

But the state-level figures are arrived at by in-state comparisons of racial groups. It's still pretty close to an apples-to-apples comparison (although not exactly so).

Jim O said...

Anon @ 2:58:

I haven't taken a survey, but I'll bet good money that an unusually high percentage of Hawaiian blacks are veterans who were serving there as they were about to be discharged,and said to themselves "hey, it's nice here, why not stay"?

Or their descendants.

Lots of white veterans did exactly the same thing. I almost did. Without looking it up, I would guess that Oahu, a/k/a Honolulu County, has the highest ratio of active duty military to civilians of any populous county in America. And vets to civilian non-vets, too.

Vets, whether black or white, tend to be a cut above the average members of their ethnicity.

TGGP said...

Since you've talked about "Whitopia" before, I thought you'd be interested to know that the Pittsburgh metro is whiter than that of Lancaster, Salt Lake City, Des Moines and Boise. Of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, only the one containing Scranton is whiter. From the Pittsburgh Gazette. I'll have to ask IOZ what he thinks about that.

Anonymous said...

Boy, when Steve makes a mistake it's a doozy.

"I think the common denominator is that blacks in [HI and NM] mostly got there through the military, or that they just had to be kind of independent-minded and self-starting to move there."

Nope. HI contains a lot of fat, happy-go-lucky Polynesians living off the dole. In NM, you have a huge population of Mexicans sponging up the publicly funded largesse. Blacks don't stand out as moochers in these places. That's all.

Anonymous said...

(Italian-Americans are famous for not wanting to use welfare no matter how much they might need it)

I've never heard that before. Where did it come from? (Not doubting, just curious.)

Anonymous said...

Anon 3:47 - the hair touching is a girl thing. No wonder poor Barry didn't like it.

I wanted to touch my black friends' hair but the cornrows their mother had spent so much time braiding were off-limits, to them also. I still think it's nifty how black hair stays where it's put. OTOH, the two of them loved to brush and try to braid my flyaway blond hair, which fell out of every arrangement. Silky but not sculptural.

Where do you think stereotypes come from, anyway?

Anonymous said...

Italian-Americans are famous for not wanting to use welfare no matter how much they might need it

What? The Italian-Americans I've known must never have heard of this rule.

Whiskey said...

What's going on in Idaho? I don't get it.

Anonymous said...

It's a matter of feck.

Audacious Epigone said...

There aren't many items in the GSS that relate to personal welfare utilization, but a question was posed in 1986 that read as follows (GETAID): "Have you personally ever received income from Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), General Assistance,
Supplemental Security Income, or Food Stamps?"

Sample sizes are modest, but for ancestral ethnic groups with 40+ respondents, the % that reported having received at least one of those benefits:

African -- 31.4%
Mexican -- 31.2%
Native American -- 22.5%
Irish -- 16.7%
English -- 14.3%
Polish -- 14.3%
German -- 12.8%
Italian -- 10.5%

Anonymous said...

"(Italian-Americans are famous for not wanting to use welfare no matter how much they might need it)."

They got the mafia to take care of things.

Caleo said...

Anon.6:23- Then you haven't known any Italians.
Italians/Sicilians in the U.S. are notoriously anti welfare, for themselves and/or anyone else.
I'm of southern Italian extraction, and grew up in New York.
No one I've ever known would touch welfare under any circumstances, and had barely concealed contempt for the usual suspects who seem to need it for years ( or decades ) on end.
Most Italian Americans are quite proud of the fact that our grandparents came here in large numbers, were generally despised by the Anglos and the Irish ( especially the Irish ), and pulled themselves up the ladder before anything like welfare even existed.

Chicago said...

Most welfare blacks in Wisconsin, particularly those in Milwaukee, came from Chicago starting at least in the 80's and continuing through the 90's. They're the ones who had a commitment to being on welfare and hopped on a Greyhound bus to get to the land of greater benefits. The current crop by now must be the second and third generation of the original welfare migrants.
The generous people of Wisconsin learned no good deed goes unpunished
Most blacks in Chicago, however, have origins in Mississippi, having migrated in waves northward. Therefore, Mississippi is the root of all evil in this case, having exported their most problematic residents elsewhere.

rho said...

Living in Mississippi as I do, I understand the ranking perhaps a bit better. Black or white, class is class, and those that don't want to be low class very quickly leave it.

Anonymous said...

African -- 31.4%
Mexican -- 31.2%
Native American -- 22.5%
Irish -- 16.7%
English -- 14.3%
Polish -- 14.3%
German -- 12.8%
Italian -- 10.5%


Lol, take that, haters.

Caleo, it's a similar story in Australia. Most Italians (and other s. europeans) settled in the poorer parts of town and were extremely disdainful of the anglo-saxon welfare class, who are some of the most shameless (and most feral) grubbers I've laid eyes on. They probably have nothing on blacks, but then that's apples-to-oranges.

Silver

jody said...

lol @ story about arkansas. i had a similar experience in tennessee and this was all the way back in...2009.

further south you go, the worse the european settlers seem to have been. virginia and kentucky are transitional states. once you get to north carolina, which i would say is the best state in the south now, as soon as you leave the cities and suburbs, you're quickly back in "da souf".

NC is certainly not bad like the gulf states in that regard, the backwardness factor is not as high, but it reminds you fast that you're just a yankee who's not that familiar with the difference between the rural north and rural south.

i mean, once you go ONE state south, into south carolina, you're back into a place that is clearly being passed up not only by the north and west coast, but by the rest of the first world nations.

Anonymous said...

"I've never heard that before. Where did it come from? (Not doubting, just curious.)"

I'd guess it has something to do with relatives willing to take you in if you're in a rut.

Anonymous said...

There aren't many items in the GSS that relate to personal welfare utilization, but a question was posed in 1986 that read as follows (GETAID): "Have you personally ever received income from Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), General Assistance,
Supplemental Security Income, or Food Stamps?"



Interesting, but I'd prefer to see data which is less than 25 years old. And ideally it would include Medicaid usage.

Anonymous said...

Most Italian Americans are quite proud of the fact that our grandparents came here in large numbers, were generally despised by the Anglos and the Irish ( especially the Irish ), and pulled themselves up the ladder before anything like welfare even existed.


Sounds almost exactly the same as the experience of the Irish, the Jews, the Poles, the Greeks, etc.

Anonymous said...

If one in ten Italian-Americans have used welfare, it hardly seems accurate to say that - "Italian-Americans are famous for not wanting to use welfare no matter how much they might need it".

Anonymous said...

re Italians shunning welfare...

What's the old saying: "doppo Roma, Africa" if I have it right. Recall for instance Dennis Hopper's amazing monologue to Christopher Walken about the history of Sicily in "True Romance."

What I mean is, Italians (esp Southern Italians/Sicilians, who make up most of the American cohort) may feel themselves especially allergic to welfare in order to preserve/conserve their "white" identity, and make sure no one thinks they've slipped over the line, to which they are simply closer by heritage. In contrast, say, no one would make that mistake about the Irish or the Poles, and from the other end of the spectrum, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans seem less likely to be touchy on the subject. Which may explain why they'd be less concerned about welfare being radioactive.

But this is all just speculation -- anybody got any personal evidence that would tend to either confirm or falsify it?

Steve Sailer said...

You know, Quentin Tarantino isn't really an expert on population genetics.

Anonymous said...

"Quentin Tarantino isn't really an expert on population genetics."

True, but I'm talking about people's perceptions and self-perception. Human self-image is largely subjective. In reality many or most invaders of Sicily were Arabs and Berbers, but if the Sicilians themselves are uptight/insecure about something else (even if it's largely untrue), then their insecurity is what's relevant to my point, not what's actually true.

"Doppo Roma, Africa" may or may not be true, but if the Milanese *believe* it, then that's what matters for the purposes of my point.

Capisce?

guest007 said...

Hawaii has very few blacks because blacks who have lived there such as active duty military generally hate Hawaii.

There are so few blacks in Hawaii that there are few if any blacks churches, restaurants, hair salons, etc. In addition, playing the race card does not work in a state dominated by Asians.

Peter A said...

Sicilians and Southern Italians won't take welfare, but they very happily manipulate municipal and government contracts to their benefit and create cartels (or "mafia" if you will) to keep these contracts in house. The moral difference, and burden on the honest taxpayer, between that behavior and a welfare mother is fairly small, except that arguably the mother on welfare is being more honest about where her money comes from.

Peter A said...

"it looked like rural Wisconsin would make a credible stand-in for rural Austria in a remake of The Sound of Music."

You're right, but not in the way you think. Rural Austrians tend to be very suspicious, inbred and don't like outsiders. One of the meanest, most unfriendly towns I have ever encountered in the US was in rural Wisconsin. Maybe it is in the blood.

Carol said...

"What's going on in Idaho? I don't get it."

I suspect the social workers elsewhere are recommending their clients move to places like Boise, which was growing leaps and bounds through the housing boom, under some delusion that one could get a job there.

But wherever they go, there they are, so they avail themselves of the "services" originally designed for the more unfortunate natives.

Selene said...

whites wanting to touch blacks' hair? Anything is possible and some kids are curious enough;but blacks' wanting to touch white kids hair is infinitely more common as any school teacher in a "mixed" school will tell you. Like so many of their notions, they're projecting. They are not known for being rational, although those that do have plain old common sense often make far more sense than most white liberals.
Anyway, Obama is so bogus (obvious to the most obtuse by now) that his book is just an Ayre's fable. Tiger Woods told some even worse fibs to get sympathy. He slandered his school by saying little kids tried to string him up on the first day of school.
Now white kids in the 80s had no idea of doing such things even were they physically possible. It sounded absolutely absurd and I never believed it for a minute. This wasn't Ol' Miss in 1930. I doubt a bunch of elementary children would have thought of such a thinkg even in that time and place. But 1980s America?
What a pathological liar. I'm glad the truth came out and I wish the teacher in that school, and maybe the accused kids, would sue him.

Charlotte said...

"Most Italian Americans are quite proud of the fact that our grandparents came here in large numbers, were generally despised by the Anglos and the Irish ( especially the Irish ), and pulled themselves up the ladder before anything like welfare even existed."

Interesting. The Irish took the practice of Catholicism a lot more seriously and Irish style Catholicism predominated in the classrooms, though all the art and beauty and interesting saint stories came from the Italianate influences. I grew up in a mostly Irish neighborhood but our church was modeled after a Romanesqe Italian church and it was famous for its "spiritiual" atmosphere. Just so beautiful, like a miniature St. Peter's.
Anyway, the two groups must have made their peace because by the late 40s (a lot of my friends were italo-irish blends) they were marrying each other fairly often (at least in my heavily white ethnic city) and statistically their marriages were known for being especially good. Though Mr. Andrew Cuomo and Ms. Kerry Kennedy are notable exceptions.

beowulf said...

"But the state-level figures are arrived at by in-state comparisons of racial groups."
OK, that's a fair point. It makes it all the more astonishing that so few whites (relatively speaking) in generous welfare states like Wisconsin sign up for benefits.

For apples to apples state comparisons, I guess the better gauge is food stamp usage. Uniform benefit level and more or less uniform eligibility (though states differ on whether to disregard personal vehicle on the assets test).
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/applicant_recipients/eligibility.htm

Duncan said...

No doubt, the VT, NH are just attracting "on average" outliers. I'm still surprised when I see blacks drive through my small town. I just assume they are driving through, but the novelty hasn't warn off.

beowulf said...

"You know, Quentin Tarantino isn't really an expert on population genetics."
Right, Sicilians are descended from slaves but not African slaves, their ancestors were brought to Italy from the Middle East.
[Tenney Frank] wrote periodically for the American Historical Review, including a paper on the demise of the various ancient Italian peoples that comprised the Roman ethnicity in Julius Caesar's day. Arguing that Roman expansion brought in masses of foreign peoples and slaves that over time changed the ethnic make-up of the Roman populace and contributed to the empire's ruin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenney_Frank

Duncan said...

Rhode Island has settled into what I call "Mediterranean Stasis". It functions, doesn't have major swings of prosperity or poverty, it just gets along okay.

The stark gradient of economic dynamism from Providence northward to Central NH can be noticed by a native New Englander. Far Northern, NH is a different situation altogether (Winter's Bone North).

Duncan said...

Charlotte,

Interesting comment, the Italo-French-Irish mix (with some Polish thrown in occasionally) seems to be the predominant working class catholic stock in Central Mass and also in much of NH. SWPL's they are not, but hard working agreeable people they tend to be. Rhode Island is not dis-similar but heavier on the French/Italo.

Interesting note, the Irish/Roman church virulently stamped out French language workship in New England, and yet in later generations didn't seem to give a damn about Spanish language worship. Seems to me that the Irish knew who their rivals were and that is why they took such a hardline on their fellow Europeans.
Also, Irish dominantion of the Democratic machine caused the French to delve into the Republican side (especially in RI where it may be the only thing that sustains any semblance of republicanism)

One thing is for sure when push comes to shove I don't see these folks giving up any ground to NAM's without blood.

Anonymous said...

"Rhode Island seems to have some pretty feckless white people..."

"Italian-Americans are famous for not wanting to use welfare..."

Steve, Rhode Island is 19% Italian-American.

The metric igores the individual states' participation in the public assistance programs. Massachusetts is one of the most liberal payers of public largess, where neighbor New Hampshire has long opperated on the idea that welfare consists of a bus ticket to Boston.

Caleo said...

It is true that the majority of modern Italians/Sicilians are the descendants of the slave populations of the Roman Empire, as well as the Germanic/Celtic/Arabic invaders who swarmed into the boot after the fall of Rome.
In fact it could be said that the original Roman stock doesn't exist in any form today.
But all modern Italians can lay claim to being the direct inheritors of Roman culture and civilization.
Just to clarify for all the race baiting cranks out there, all the genomic research conducted in Italy/Sicily for the past 20 years has consistently shown Italians and Sicilians to have effectively no SSA admixture.
So all the nonsense about Italians being mixed with Africans is exactly that... nonsense.

Camlost said...

The black population density is also a factor.

In highly segregated places like Milwaukee you have all of the blacks clustered in tenements, projects, high-rise apartments or other very dense neighborhoods, where black habits are magnified in intensity absent the guiding hand of white folks (who call the police or actually take the neighbors to task if their felon teen children are running amok). Most blacks there go to a few majority black urban high schools and have few daily interactions with whites. Regression (reversion) to the African mean kicks in there.

There's been numerous studies showing that blacks themselves benefit (especially educationally) from being distributed as the minority across majority white school, rather than sequestered into majority-black institutions.

Thus, despite all the weeping and moaning about the Southern States being so "racist", blacks are much better off since the population density is so much lower there, and with blacks distributed throughout suburbs as well (often attending pretty decent public schools that are 20-40% black, instead of the largely dysfunctional urban northern schools that are) The Atlanta metro area has virtually no northern-style projects, even the worst Atlanta neighborhoods see blacks living in dilapidated single-family homes or duplexes.

Kylie said...

"Recall for instance Dennis Hopper's amazing monologue to Christopher Walken about the history of Sicily in 'True Romance.'

What I mean is, Italians (esp Southern Italians/Sicilians, who make up most of the American cohort) may feel themselves especially allergic to welfare in order to preserve/conserve their 'white' identity, and make sure no one thinks they've slipped over the line, to which they are simply closer by heritage."


You know, I think you would have been on firmer, if less germane, ground had you chosen to recall, for instance, Orson Welles's amazing monologue to Joseph Cotten about the comparitive histories of Italy and Switzerland in "The Third Man".

RKU said...

Sailer: Say that blacks make up 40% of Mississippi's population and 100% are on welfare and 0% of everybody else is on welfare. Then, the ratio would still only be 2.50 (instead of the actual 2.22).

And under that scenario in the original framework, Mississippi blacks would be classified as being among the best in the country. Yep, that's what I *really* call a "statistical artifact"...

Anonymous: "Doppo Roma, Africa" may or may not be true, but if the Milanese *believe* it, then that's what matters for the purposes of my point.

And don't forget that great one-liner widespread in Italian politics: "Garibaldi didn't unite Italy---he divided Africa!"

Anonymous said...

With all the social engineering in place, I don't know how to make such comparisons accurately. Is affirmative action considered a form of assistance? How about other forms of preferences? Surely such programs that choose winners and losers by government decree skew the results for whites and blacks everywhere.

The problems of the rural South go beyond the stereotypical stupid whites. I don't buy the claims that there is a real genetic difference between founding stocks, since there was always a fair amount of intermingling before the Civil War, and even in the deepest South, settlers came from all areas of England and Scotland--just as in the North. Most states in the South also received a fair amount of German and French Protestants early on, as well carpetbaggers and opportunists following the Civil War.

The greatest obstacle faced by the South is not stupid whites, but being torn between regional and national interests. That issue has really only been solved in the last 50 years.

Anonymous said...

"Arguing that Roman expansion brought in masses of foreign peoples and slaves that over time changed the ethnic make-up of the Roman populace and contributed to the empire's ruin."

Interesting. I've often noticed that the statues don't look like the people who live there now. How about Greece?

Tenney Frank's Wikipedia article doesn't seem to have that quote now, and the links to the source don't work.

Robert Hume

Eric Rasmusen said...

Top five Norwegian states:
North Dakota
South Dakota
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Washington

Bottom five Norwegian states:
Lots tied at 0.4%
South Carolina 0.3%
WV Lousiana Mississippi 0.2%


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_American#Norwegian_Americans_by_state

Charlotte said...

"Also, Irish dominantion of the Democratic machine caused the French to delve into the Republican side (especially in RI where it may be the only thing that sustains any semblance of republicanism)"

Had no idea about all that anti-French stuff going on in New England. There was nothing I wanted more than to learn French. Nothing more painterly than kneeling on red-cushioned priere-dieux in front of holy statues. Even Camille swooned onto one at some point. Politicians What were those people thinking? Truly, St. Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland and turned them into (some) politicians.

As far as accepting the Spanish language, Hibernian descendants of the wrecked Armada notwithstanding, it is probably just a case of different times requiring different remedies. I'm sure the Church, like most phone directories, will just introduce a press "one" for English prayers rather than lose any more members.

Charlotte said...

"priere dieux"

I mean prie-dieu.

The persecution of those Irish pols has had a deleterious effect on my French spelling and someday I will sue them for it, now I know about what they did.

Anonymous said...

"Since you've talked about "Whitopia" before, I thought you'd be interested to know that the Pittsburgh metro is whiter than that of Lancaster, Salt Lake City, Des Moines and Boise. Of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, only the one containing Scranton is whiter. From the Pittsburgh Gazette. I'll have to ask IOZ what he thinks about that."


Thank goodness I live in Pittsburgh, and I am Indian!

Paul Mendez said...

Back when they were debating PRWORA, the typical TANF recipient was actually a white woman in her mid-thirties.

Most of the RECIPIENTS were white women who needed temporary help because of divorce, death or illness of spouse, or other hardship. These recipients typically stayed on welfare for less than 2 years.

However, a significant portion of the BENEFITS were going to "welfare queens" who had a multi-generational history of welfare dependency.

Hence, PRWORA's 2-year limit and 5-year lifetime limit on receiving TANF benefits.

Differences in TANF usage among different ethnic groups could, therefore, be explained by things like family stability. If Italian women got divorced less, they might not need TANF as much.

josh said...

I like the way you make all these distintions.with different levels of blacks.Milwaukee got a bad load,but Hawaii got the good ones! Riiight!! And the "military" blacks are some sort of wonderful elite. HA!!! And the Black Middle Class....

Bill said...

where, as he recalled decades later in Dreams from My Father, a white girl at his exclusive prep school wanted to touch his hair.

You know, as someone who grew up in an integrated environment, that looks pretty disingenuous to me.

In my experience, it was always blacks who wanted to touch (and braid) white kids' hair. My sister was a platinum blonde as a girl, and black girls always wanted to braid her hair.

It's probably gone the other way from time to time, but really, to make an issue over that...

Of course, in the 80s when I was a kid, all the black girls (and a lot of boys) put relaxer in their hair, and you wouldn't want to get that stuff on your hand -- it would grease up the whole house. Probably made fingerprinting pretty easy for the cops back then.

Anonymous said...

This is a sort of off-topic comment, but I don't think anyone ever wanted to touch Obama's hair. This is an oft-told black fantasy. Maybe some white person somewhere wanted to touch that cotton candy and that became an entire urban legend, firmly rooted in black mythology.

I can't think of anything less sexy than running my fingers through nappy hair. Blacks themselves hate their hair, a topic dealt with semi-honestly by Chris Rock in GOOD HAIR. Chris went halfway there but not the whole way. The reason blacks don't like their hair is because isn't because of slavery. It's because it's ugly.


-

Except "White Person Wanted to Touch My Hair" stories aren't ghetto fables about just how sexy black hair is.

They exemplify how majority whites tend to see token blacks as aliens.

I saw it happen a few times as a teenager living in Minneapolis suburbs, circa 2000.

Anonymous said...

Even on blackplanet.com, there aren't so many posters who are so quick to refer to people as "trash." It's really a disgusting habit.

Naturally I bridle at this as well. Like I'm going to give people their worn-out pass for calling only Whites "trash."

But the real target seems to be NAMs. The idea being, it's not exceptional for them to produce trash. So everyone gets slapped around by the term.

Anonymous said...

Interesting note, the Irish/Roman church virulently stamped out French language workship in New England



Eh? The "Irish/Roman church" {sic} had zero power to stamp out any language 'workship' in New England, or anywhere else for that matter.

It's peculiar how any mention of the Irish brings out the moonbats.


Irish dominantion of the Democratic machine caused the French to delve into the Republican side

Bizarre. Historically the Irish and the French were on the same side - the side against the English. A lot of Irish fought in the French army.

And historicaly, America was on the anti-English side as well. Not that anybody knows history anymore.

S.Anonyia said...

"Interesting. I've often noticed that the statues don't look like the people who live there now. How about Greece?"

To be fair, those statues don't look like any particular group of Europeans at all. The statues tend to have long straight noses, eyes that are much longer than wide, flat foreheads, along with other odd features. I think it was more an artistic ideal than an attempt to replicate the average Roman.

Anonymous said...

"This is a sort of off-topic comment, but I don't think anyone ever wanted to touch Obama's hair."

If you've noticed blacks, they often put their hands on other people: this is especially true with black males and white girls. The black guy will just put his hand on the white girl's shoulder like he's entitled to. The white girl will say nothing since if she tells him not to touch her, she's 'racist'. And if her white boyfriend is around, he'll say nothing cuz he's afraid of getting beat up.

Anonymous said...

Touch his hair? I would have thought people woulda wanted to touch his big ears. He's sensitive about people remarking about that too. I think he's very proud of his chin. He likes to lift his head high and show off his chin. I'll bet a whole bunch of people wanna clock it by now.

Duncan said...

I hate to go on a tangent, but the anonymous above who doubted my reading of church history that the Irish bishops ruled the church and used it to stifle Francophone worship in New England. You are wrong, and I don't have a dog in the fight since I have both Irish and French in my background.

Excommunication of Francophones

Anonymous said...

Imagine if a white female politician said she was offended when some black guy asked her if he could touch her hair(and maybe not necessarily what's on her head). She would have been hounded as a 'racist' who saw the black guy as a kind of animal.

But in the case of Obama, a non-black person wanted to touch his hair, and he's the poor victim. HE was treated like an animal by a 'racist'.

Maybe, what Obama really means is "I was never happy with my nappy hair and was upset that someone noticed.".
Indeed, it would be funny if he grew his hair kinky and stuff. But he cut it down to make him look more like a bald-headed whitey than a black guy.

One thing for sure, Obama wants to touch our wallets and purses.

Anonymous said...

Obama is thin-skinned. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, didn't mind other people touching his hair(and other parts of his body). If anything, he said COME ON COME ON COME ON TOUCH ME BABE, CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I'M NOT AFRAID...
Well, he shoulda been.

Though Obama doesn't want people to touch his hair, he sure doesn't mind them kissing his behind.

Bill Clinton's body politics: suck it.

Barack Obama's body politics: kiss it.

jody said...

i don't think those numbers for pittsburgh are correct. i checked them against some other cities that were more homogenous. pittsburgh was not at the very top like that article makes it out to be. places like billings, montana and fargo, north dakota were 95% homogenous and detroit is up there at 85% homogenous. there were some towns in LA that were easily 85% mestizo when i was there and that was 5 years ago. they could only be more homogenous now.

although i don't doubt that it's about 80% europeans. it's a lot nicer than philadelphia which has turned into a dump. and it has almost zero mexicans. like, literally none, which should be shocking to people from the southwest. how does anything get done in one of the most livable cities in america if there aren't 1 million mexicans around to do all the stuff "white people wont' do." almost all of the non-european immigrants in pittsburgh are asians and indians who are going to CMU and university of pittsburgh, or coming in to work at UPMC hospitals, or at google or the various small tech and medical companies here.

the steel industry is mostly gone and the city is very clean, the landscape is very lush and forested. all the sports teams have new stadiums. houses cost nothing. most people can afford a boat for cruising the 3 rivers, et cetera.

Anonymous said...

As a Minnesotan I am not surprised to see these data; they confirm first-hand observation.

A friend of mine, now retired, was for many years an administrative law judge for the Minnesota welfare system. He once observed to me that the state has a great problem with what he called "tourists from Chicago" - i.e., welfare clientele who moved to Minneapolis or St. Paul, mainly from Chicago, to claim the more generous benefits offered in Minnesota. Some were "double-dipping" by being on the welfare rolls both in Minnesota and in Illinois. In the days when one had to show up personally at a welfare office to pick up a check, this meant taking the bus once a month from one location to another.

With the present use of EBT cards, even this is no longer necessary. One of the odd results of the issuance of EBT cards has been that it is now possible to track the spending of welfare recipients by location. A few years ago, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Hennepin County welfare authorities had identified the most popular location for the use of EBT cards by its clientele. It turned out to be an ATM at Mystic Lake Casino, an Indian casino in one of the Minneapolis suburbs. Our tax dollars at work!

About 20 years ago, in a brief spell of conscientiousness, the state legislature passed a modest residency requirement - I think it was 6 months - as a condition for claiming welfare benefits. It was challenged by some organization such as the ACLU and thrown out as unconstitutional by a Federal judge named Miles Lord, and old DFL hack who got on the bench thanks to the patronage of Hubert Humphrey. Thus there is effectively no way to police "welfare tourism."

The vast majority of the welfare tourists are black, and they have brought with them the usual baggage of lumpenprole criminal culture. In Minneapolis and St. Paul there are now gangs, drug dealing, and violence on a par with those in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. There are almost no blacks anywhere in the rest of the state, except in the state prisons at Stillwater and St. Cloud. The black population in Minnesota according to the 2010 U.S. census is 5.2%, but the black population in the state's prisons is close to 50%.

Minnesota has long been a bastion of political liberalism, producing such well known figures as Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, and Walter Mondale. This is in keeping with its historic ethnic make-up. The state was first settled by New Englanders who brought their skills in the lumber industry to its virgin forests, and then by Scandinavians and Germans who came here to farm. All these populations were placid, industrious people, exhibiting little social deviance or criminality. It's easy to be liberal when it doesn't cost too much, and it didn't for many years.

Now, with black and Hispanic elements contributing to the "vibrancy" of our Twin Cities, it does not seem surprising that a couple of the suburban districts have sent very conservative Republicans to Congress, and both houses of the state legislature are now controlled by Republicans. The 2010 election of a liberal Democrat, Mark Dayton, as governor, was largely due to a third-party candidacy that siphoned votes from the Republican candidate and left Dayton with a bare plurality. No longer solidly in the Democratic column, Minnesota is now a "purple" state. The growth of its non-white population will prompt more and more whites to vote Republican.

Anonymous said...

"...I find the whole business about "bonobos are peaceful cuz they make love than war" rather ludicrous. Chimps have a lot of sex."

Liberals never understand the full implications of what they adore or embrace. I don't know how peaceful and kindly bonobos are, but let's assume it's essentially true that they are far less aggressive and brutish than chimps(and certainly gorillas).
Scientists theorize this is so because bonobos evolved or speciated away from other apes due to geographic isolation. Bonobos could afford to be less aggressive and more cooperative since fewer competitors and predators posed a danger to them. Bonobos were not only separated from gorillas but also from the more violent chimps.
In other words, bonobos could be less aggressive and brutish ONLY BECAUSE they lived in their own domain that is homogeneous(only bonobos, no chimps and gorillas) than diverse. The bonobo homeland in the Congo has no chimps or gorillas. So, the lesson from bonobo-ism is IF YOU WANT TO CREATE OR MAINTAIN A PEACEFUL SPECIES OR RACE, SEPARATE THEM FROM DANGEROUS PREDATORS AND/OR AGGRESSIVE COMPETITORS.

So, everything that liberals love so much about bonobos exists only because bonobos had the luxury and luck to evolve away from other apes and more dangerous predators.

Using this logic, couldn't we argue that white Europeans and East Asians are less wild and aggressive--and more cooperative and sharing--than black Africans because people of the Northern hemisphere had fewer monstrous animals to contend with for 1000s of yrs and were thankfully separated from Bantu blacks--unlike the unfortunate bushmen and their kind in Southern Africa? Also, whites and Asians didn't have to run like a mothaf---- from lions and leopards(and elephants and hippos)day and night.

And indeed in the US, whites in whiter states tend to be more easy-going and nicer whereas whites in the Deept South--with a lot of blacks--often feel on the edge because of the threat they feel from crime and etc.

Also, if Europe is to continue being a nice and friendly place, it needs a homogeneous population of like-minded and like-temperamented people. Europeans have been known for political & tribal violence, but once the borders were firmly drawn, there has been social cohesion within each nation. By allowing in lots of black Africans into Europe, this bonobo-istic balance is overturned.

The problem of black violence is more prickly cuz the roots of black conflict & aggression is often less political or ideological than biological/psychological. We saw in WWII and communism/Nazism that whites and Asians can act crazy due to nutty ideas, insane leaders(like Hitler or Mao), or national conflicts. But once those pass away, individuals and communities can work together to maintain peace and stability. Look at Germany and Poland today. Or Japan or China today. But with blacks, even absent political or ideological differences, violence flares up on the individual or local level cuz too many blacks just like to talk shit and act crazy. Violence is at the core of the black heart.

Take Sweden. A peaceful low-crime nation of white bonobo Scandinavians. But with more blacks and Muslims, it's turning into a chimp hellhole.

So, the liberal adoration of bonobos is based on a kind of race-ism. Bonobos are more likable cuz they had the good fortune to racially evolve away from chimps--to the point of turning into a different species altogether. Indeed, if the bonobo homeland were to be invaded by chimpanzee tribes, it would prolly be only a matter of time before chimps rape, pillage,and destroy the bonobo community. In London, white liberals are no match for young strong and aggressive Jamaican immigrant 'youths'.

Anonymous said...

Also, the fact that bonobos and chimps are very close and once belonged to the same species before splitting off into different species proves that race is a scientific fact. Bonobos and chimps could not have turned into separate species overnight. Initially, via long period of geographic isolation, they became different races of another.. and then eventually turned into different species. No raciation, then no speciation.
But even if bonobos and chimps were still of the same species, they could still be regarded as different races of chimps. The common chimp would be the bigger, stronger, and more aggressive chimp while bonobos would be the smaller, kinder, and nicer chimp.

Idiot Bill Nye(Al Gore's pal)says race is a myth cuz people of two different races or dogs of two different breeds can produce a fertile offspring. But that's idiotic.
The race-ist argument was never that the races cannot interbreed. Race-ism argues that races or breeds belong to the same species. The real issue is that different races and breeds within a species can be generally or remarkably differnt in various aspects. After all, wolves and coyotes can interbreed and produce a fertile offspring, and so they can be said to belong to the same species(though they are often classified as different species). So, what does that prove? That any discussion of differences between wolves and coyotes is bigotedor 'racist'?

Anonymous said...

Another thing... though liberals praise bonobos for spending most or much of their time humping and sucking one another--and though that may well be better than killing one another--, that's the reason why bonobos are just apes incapable of creating civilization. All they care about is having an orgy.

Why would any man have bothered to invent the wheel or develop agriculture if the only thing he cared about in life was getting laid left and right?

In a paradoxical way, the liberal infatuation with 'nature' is the product of their separation from it. Not living in nature, they can idolize and romanticize nature as something 'harmonious' and 'holistic'. Though liberals know nature is brutish, they cannot help but to seek the Garden of Eden where animals don't struggle and fight and kill but live with love and without shame. So, Bonobos are like Adam and Eve before the Fall, before they learned of shame and struggle. A kind of ape nirvana, or nirbananas. Liberal utopian projection onto the bonobos can be pretty hilarious. Because some male bonobos seem to be sucking one another at times, they are even said to be 'bi-sexual'. Maybe bonobos moving around together is really a natural 'gay pride parade'.

But of course, liberals can only wax romantic like this because they are the beneficiaries of civilization with plenty of food, security, and comfort. If these liberals actually had to live IN nature, they would go hungry soon and even be hunting/feasting on bonobos for dinner--just like African natives have been doing for 100,000s of yrs.

Anonymous said...

somewhat off topic:

Iowahawk on Krugman, and replying to some smart people.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/badgering-the-witless.html

Anonymous said...

"(Italian-Americans are famous for not wanting to use welfare no matter how much they might need it)."

They got the mafia to take care of things.


And their mommas.

Sword said...

Anon wrote:
-----
Take Sweden. A peaceful low-crime nation of white bonobo Scandinavians. But with more blacks and Muslims, it's turning into a chimp hellhole.
------
Let´s look at some stats:
Infant Mortality Rate (by 1000 births)
Minnesota: 4.78
Sweden: 2.75

Murder rate (per 100000 inhabitants and year)
Sweden: 0.89 (2009)
New Hampshire. 0.8 (2009)

I could go on.

Sweden has its problems, but those that are due to foreigners are generally concentrated, since our immigrants from problem-generating countries tend to be very concentrated.

Another thing: the admissions to universities is completely based on grade averages in Sweden. There are no fudge factors such as extracurricular activites, society work, and stuff like that. Nor do good sportsmen get any help to get into universities. Grades only, and the minimum grade average necessary to make it into a line of study in any university is openly printed in the papers.

There is some affirmative action, but compared to the USA it is peanuts, both in amount and perniciousness.

mr_evergreen said...

Then here is a question. Why aren't more upwardly mobiie, professional African-Americans moving to places like Minnesota? I'm not saying they aren't moving to Minnesota, but so far, the pattern for professional African-Americans is to move to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, and Houston.

mr_evergreen said...

"Most welfare blacks in Wisconsin, particularly those in Milwaukee, came from Chicago starting at least in the 80's and continuing through the 90's. They're the ones who had a commitment to being on welfare and hopped on a Greyhound bus to get to the land of greater benefits. The current crop by now must be the second and third generation of the original welfare migrants.
The generous people of Wisconsin learned no good deed goes unpunished
Most blacks in Chicago, however, have origins in Mississippi, having migrated in waves northward. Therefore, Mississippi is the root of all evil in this case, having exported their most problematic residents elsewhere"

Chicago, I have family members who went to Milwaukee to work. They left Mississippi after WWII because of the lack of opportunities and the severe racism that existed down there. They found work in Wisconsin, raised their children right and their children have college degrees now. My father, among them, left Milwaukee after having issues finding a job in Milwaukee. He had a job in Milwaukee, and then was laid off. He got a masters degree later and still had problems getting a job. As a result, he left Milwaukee. He left right around the time some African-Americans from Chicago were trying to get welfare in Wisconsin. More African-Americans like my father are what Wisconsin needs, people who are professionals, who have goals, who raise their children right. It is the educated African-Americans who are leaving Wisconsin in what is known as the "Black Brain Drain".