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| Society of American Baseball Research meeting |
Ever since Obama's re-election, there has been a lot of odd chest-thumping in the press conflating minorities, youth, women, and ... sabermetricians (a.k.a., hobbyists devoted to sophisticated baseball statistics) versus the evil (but, fortunately, doomed) Old White Man demographic. Josh Levin, executive editor of Slate, pulls the entire emerging meme together:
Miguel Cabrera Is Mitt Romney
The Tigers slugger was the candidate of old white men. Lucky for him, that’s who decides baseball’s MVP awards.
Mitt Romney lost the popular vote. He lost the electoral college, too, finishing behind President Obama in every swing state but one. But the GOP nominee didn’t get crushed across the board. Sixty-two percent of white men voted for Romney, and 61 percent of white men and women 45 and older voted for the former Massachusetts governor. The problem for Romney wasn’t his opponent.
It was the electorate. If he wanted to find a bloc of voters that was more susceptible to his charms, he should’ve announced his candidacy for another fiercely contested race: most valuable player of the American League.
On Thursday, Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera defeated Angels center fielder Mike Trout, winning the AL MVP award with 22 of 28 first-place votes. Trout, a 21-year-old rookie, was the youthful insurgent in this contest.
Among his backers was Nate Silver, who—years before he became a political seer—made his name by inventing a system to project baseball players’ stats. Earlier this week, Silver explained why Trout, not Cabrera, was the best choice for AL MVP ...
Cabrera, by contrast, was the candidate of the establishment. While Trout led all of baseball in the sabermetrically approved Wins Above Replacement statistic, the Tigers’ slugger paced the league in batting average, home runs, and RBIs, winning the first Triple Crown since 1967.
So, I thought I'd go look up the demographics of hobbyists in advanced baseball statistics. Clearly, vibrant young minorities must predominate.
Oddly, even though sabermetricians are good with numbers, they don't seem in any hurry to publish demographic statistics about themselves. So, let's just look at pictures from Society of American Baseball Research conventions. At the top is one from the NYT. Here's one from ESPN:
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| Jim Bouton greets his fans at SABR meeting |
Seriously, virtually any volunteer group in modern America with an eccentric and elite taste in pushing forward the intellectual analysis of just about anything in their spare time for the sheer of love of learning is going to be dominated by white people, typically by white men. I went to a golf course architecture aficionado's weekend: same thing. I attended a couple of Amnesty International meetings in 1982 chaired by Kundera's translator Michael Henry Heim: same thing. Evolutionary psychology meetings have a higher proportion of women, but, pretty much the same thing.
America's Vibrant Future is going to be cognitively catatonic.
They have conferences? And people go to them?
ReplyDeleteOh, and there is an Asian guy right in the center of the photo (back of head to us). Diversity!
Steve, not sure if you saw the profile of the campaign's CTO: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/?single_page=true&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=86da5 Looks like all bearded (youngish) white guys.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, while the guy who recruited them, Chris Sacca, is very political, they sound a lot less impressed, initially, with their jobs and with their candidate.
'They learned what it was like to have -- and work with people who had -- a higher purpose than building cool stuff. "Teddy [Goff] would tear up talking about the President. I would be like, 'Yeah, that guy's cool,'" Reed said. "It was only towards the end, the middle of 2012, when we realized the gravity of what we were doing."'
Yes but females dominate Facebook and Pinterest, so there's that.
ReplyDeleteBut the GOP nominee didn’t get crushed across the board. Sixty-two percent of white men voted for Romney, and 61 percent of white men and women 45 and older voted for the former Massachusetts governor.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone else noticed that the media will tie themselves in knots to avoid saying Romney won the White vote? Not just old dudes, but chicks and dudes of all ages.
Of course if Trout had won, it would've been because the evil old (racist, but that goes without saying) white men wanted to vote for the all-American white wunderkind over the brown dude.
ReplyDeleteChris Sacca. What a story. His father is a lawyer from Lockport, NY - a suburb of Buffalo, NY. I did my alumni interview w/ him for school. Chris graduated a year ahead of me ('97) from GTown. He was a cocky SOB. We weren't friends. Anyhoo, Chris got a job at google, was made fun of by gawker, and eventually left with some $$, but not a lot. He took what he did have, invested in a few firms like Twitter, and appears to be profiting handsomely.
ReplyDeleteI followed him on twitter, and we shared a small bond as we both rooted for the success of some of our local sports franchises - not a bad dude. We actually had several random interactions.
Later, when debating health care policy, he blocked me when we disagreed over whom should be paying for whom under Obamacare. Smart, yes he is. Thin skinned, yes, also that. If he buys the Buffalo Bills after Ralph Wilson dies, I'd be fine w/ that.
http://twitter.com/klejdys/status/220999420303515649
Regarding white males' higher-than-average tendency to demonstrate a "sheer love of learning." Could this have anything to do with why whites have been so spectacularly successful in the last 500 years? Is it perhaps a lack of intellectual curiosity of varying degrees among non-whites that has led to their being outpaced in, well, everything -- from science to art to culture -- by whites in that span, and not, as the prevailing wisdom goes, that white men spend all their free time thinking up the best ways to oppress everyone else?
ReplyDeleteShorts, socks and formal black leather shoes.
ReplyDeleteA great look!
any volunteer group in modern America with an eccentric and elite taste
ReplyDeleteBut these activities are worthless. What about running the leading universities and business institutions? Are those the guys who couldn't handle golf course architecture? How is the representation among those administering the public fisc?
"Shorts, socks and formal black leather shoes. A great look!"
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to get into that whole George Costanza's Dad look.
Of course, Frank Costanza berated George Steinbrenner for trading Jay Buhner for Bill James' hero Ken Phelps.
ReplyDelete"Seriously, virtually any volunteer group in modern America with an eccentric and elite taste in pushing forward the intellectual analysis of just about anything in their spare time for the sheer of love of learning is going to be dominated by white people, typically by white men.
ReplyDeleteAmerica's Vibrant Future is going to be cognitively catatonic."
And that future is going to be catatonic because those white men are wasting their time screwing around with ephemera like baseball statistics, model trains, civil-war reenacting, and similar drivel. They should be concerned with the future of their grand-children and of their country.
"What about running the leading universities and business institutions? Are those the guys who couldn't handle golf course architecture?"
ReplyDeleteKind of. Golf course architecture is perhaps the great WASP art form. That and cocktail-mixing.
Put them together, and you have decline.
Steve Sailer said...
ReplyDelete"What about running the leading universities and business institutions? Are those the guys who couldn't handle golf course architecture?"
Kind of. Golf course architecture is perhaps the great WASP art form. That and cocktail-mixing.
Put them together, and you have decline.
Reminds me of the joke:
Q How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
A Two. One to mix the martinis, and one to call the electrician.
Steve, I'm only half-interested to hear it anyway but do you have a position formulated on whether Senators/assemblymembers/aldermen should be paid more? I was reminded of this during the mention of San Antonio's apparently high-flying city manager. Whenever the topic recurs there are always people to make the point in a colorful way (once on ABC's Politically InCorrect panel the comic George Wallace summarized it, "When you pay peanuts you get monkeys") but it never goes anywhere, probably because Congressional staffs & auxiliary busybodies are 10,000x more costly than a decent raise for the elected suits. Anyway Robert Novak believed the number of House should be expanded by 10,000...
ReplyDeleteSteve you're doing it wrong. Instead of looking at photos you should be using LOGIC:
ReplyDelete1. Math said Obama was gonna win
2. But whites slightly preferred Romney
3. That must mean whites hate math
4. Math also says Trout is the best
5. Who hates math? Whites! (see 3)
6. So they probably favored Cabrera
QED
I can see nothing wrong with this ironclad logic.
"Shorts, socks and formal black leather shoes.
ReplyDeleteA great look!"
It's the look that got us to the moon and back. You young guys will be lucky to have garbage pickup.
America's Vibrant Future is going to be cognitively catatonic.
ReplyDeleteSomebody over at AoSHQ was just mentioning Marva Collins, and her Wikipedia page linked to the following story:
Marva Collins School to close
Thursday, June 05, 2008
abclocal.go.com
...But Collins is closing her South Side school because, she says, more parents are seeking alternatives to the $5,500 tuition, which has led to a steady decrease in funds...
The pre-K through 8th grade school originally called Westside Preparatory is closing after 30 years...
The school is now located on the South Side of the city and ran [sic] by Collins' daughter, Cynthia. Over the years, enrollment has dwindled from 130 students to about 30.
The school released a statement on Thursday: We are closing our school... because the community we wanted to serve has not supported, or could not support the school, to the extent financial considerations demand...
In other words, unless it's "free stuff", the "community" just ain't buying it.
PS: I wonder whether Barry and Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky funneled her any of the Annenberg loot?
Somehow, I imagine not.
It frustrates me as an Indian male that none of my Indian friends have any interest in anything eclectic from model train conventions(I know I know) to Renaissance esoterica.It is usually whites who are willing to tag along to me listen to some guy talk about about the Psalms influenced Gothic architechture.
ReplyDeleteHeck its only white guys who I can get interested regarding geometric minutae of Rg Vedic fire altars!Although when it comes to stuff like its European whites(particularly Germans and French) rather Americans who are far more receptive
Have any of you considered the possibility that these old men have the time and money to indulge a silly hobby? Women generally get hobbies like sewing and gardening that have a productive result. Few people other than white men have ever been allowed to indulge in these hobbies. Why simply jump to the conclusion that "white men are better than everybody else."
ReplyDeleteLooking at the picture I see a bunch of pensioned retirees (not white people), most likely from government jobs, but a lot of them probably were working so long ago they had private sector pensions. White people have big pensions, and few grandchildren perhaps from failed families to raise.
ReplyDeleteSo what is interesting to me is who in society has free time. When it is the youth you get musicians like Scott Joplin to the Beatles. When it is the old you get Saber-whatca-ma-call-its. Why don't you cover model railroads, I like model railroads but don't have the time.
Jack Bolling wrote:
ReplyDelete" Is it perhaps a lack of intellectual curiosity of varying degrees among non-whites that has led to their being outpaced in, well, everything..."
This has been the clear European/White advantage over East-Asians (despite the latter having higher IQs and larger populations).
If something is not a test, East-Asians tend to not want to know about it. East-Asian education [still] focuses essentially entirely on rote memorization, which has been -- implicitly or explicitly -- shunned in the Western tradition since the days of Socrates (at least).
Defenders of Confucius would tell us that their tradition of avoiding intellectual-initiative-taking/curiosity provides stability. Maybe so, but it also makes life a lot more...boring.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/06/is-there-a-jewish-gene/
ReplyDeleteohhhhhhhh boy. lewontin again.
"Seriously, virtually any volunteer group in modern America with an eccentric and elite taste in pushing forward the intellectual analysis of just about anything"
ReplyDeleteAlso true is any volunteer group in modern America with an eccentric and elite taste will be dominated by whites (with a few Asians). Hiking and national parks, extreme sports, etc. Too bad for Ken Burns but I don't think blacks will ever be interested in camping. Maybe the national parks will be the last stand of white America, if they aren't trashed beyond recognition by drug dealers.
Old white guys dominate these intellectual pursuits because they have the money and the leisure time to do this. Going forward I doubt this will carry over since young white guys smoke pot and play Xbox.
ReplyDeleteThere is a very simple solution to all this. Ban white males from all math and STEM courses for the next twenty years. Why should they get to hog all the seats in calculus classes?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/11/06/31697/
ReplyDeleteelitographics
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/22/things-you-never-thought-possible/
ReplyDeleteAnd that future is going to be catatonic because those white men are wasting their time screwing around with ephemera like baseball statistics, model trains, civil-war reenacting, and similar drivel.
ReplyDeleteBut white men always did those things in their spare time. The difference now is we live in an environment where them getting together formally to do anything else regarding politics, public policy is oppressing women/minorities.
rob: "but chicks and dudes of all ages"
ReplyDeleteRomney lost the single white woman vote. The alternative right media seems to be tying themselves in knots to avoid acknowledging this.
"America's Vibrant Future is going to be cognitively catatonic."
ReplyDeleteWould that be a bad thing? Do we need more naval-grazers, and "stuff?"
Of course, if Trout won, it would be racism preferring the young pure white jerk over the kindly Hispanic veteran.
ReplyDeleteIt's always about how whites are wrong.
@ Rob
ReplyDeleteRomney won white YOUTH (18yo-29yo) by 54-41% IIRC. An almost complete reversal of 2008. Media will of course not mention this either.
@ Mr Anon
ReplyDeleteSadly, yes. White men should remember John Adams, "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."
Instead they are saying "I must study for the GMAT so for one generation we can live in a gated community"
Mr. Sailer has a point when he says it's white guys who make these sorts of hobby movements go but those who say:
ReplyDelete... those white men are wasting their time screwing around with ephemera like baseball statistics, model trains, civil-war reenacting, and similar drivel. They should be concerned with the future of their grand-children and of their country.
... have a strong point as well. It would be interesting to go around an AIPAC meeting and ask the men if they have any hobbies and then go to a model railway meeting and ask the men if they engage in political activism.
Unanimous said...
ReplyDelete"Shorts, socks and formal black leather shoes.
A great look!"
It's the look that got us to the moon and back. You young guys will be lucky to have garbage pickup.
Wernher Von Braun was actually quite stylish. He and his fellow engineers would never go out in public dressed like that old goofball.
Of course they wouldn't go out to a silly baseball stats convention either.
We could get diverse youths interested in sabermetrics if we used rap to explain it to them:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/nyregion/columbia-professor-and-gza-aim-to-help-teach-science-through-hip-hop.html
"Next month, the two men, along with the popular hip-hop lyrics Web site Rap Genius, will announce a pilot project to use hip-hop to teach science in 10 New York City public schools. The pilot is small, but its architects’ goals are not modest. Dr. Emdin, who has written a book called “Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation,” hopes to change the way city teachers relate to minority students, drawing not just on hip-hop’s rhymes, but also on its social practices and values."
Regarding white males' higher-than-average tendency to demonstrate a "sheer love of learning." Could this have anything to do with why whites have been so spectacularly successful in the last 500 years? Is it perhaps a lack of intellectual curiosity of varying degrees among non-whites that has led to their being outpaced in, well, everything -- from science to art to culture -- by whites in that span, and not, as the prevailing wisdom goes, that white men spend all their free time thinking up the best ways to oppress everyone else?
ReplyDeleteYes and someone else would agree, too:
Victor Davis Hanson: Carnage & Culture
Thhe two longest chapters (Technology, Capitalism) in the book deal with exactly that idea.
- from Germany
The 2013 British Ruby (Ruby is a programming language) Conference was just cancelled:
ReplyDeletehttp://2013.britruby.com/
A Jewish Ruby programmer from San Francisco who's involved in Ruby conferences and orgs made a stink on Twitter about the BritRuby conference speaker list not being diverse enough so it ended up being cancelled:
https://twitter.com/joshsusser/status/269844125363339264
By the way, why is it the Society for American Baseball Research? Don't they think there's anything to glean from stats from Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, the DR, Taiwan, etc.?
ReplyDeleteMost of these countries have small, tight leagues, like the pre-expansion majors, where the Giants and Dodgers played 22 games with each other every season. Don't tell me the loss of that familiarity, that intimacy, hasn't had an effect on baseball in the U.S.
Has anyone researched this? (Am I a nerd even to care? Or just an old white guy?)
If you really want to drive a stake into Affirmative Action, Disparate impact, and the like, whites should start declaring themselves en masse to be minorities. If Elizabeth Warren can get away with being a native American because she has a fictional great-great-great-great Cherokee grandmother, then anyone can declare to be 1/32nd Native American, 1/8th Mestizo, 2.35% octoroon, 3/163rds Ecuadorian River Monkey, whatever. Just be consistent, pick one and stick with it. If everyone is a minority, then no one is.
ReplyDeleteRomney lost the single white woman vote. The alternative right media seems to be tying themselves in knots to avoid acknowledging this.
ReplyDeleteIt's called alpha aloofness game. I'd think you'd know about this.
A Jewish Ruby programmer from San Francisco who's involved in Ruby conferences and orgs made a stink on Twitter about the BritRuby conference speaker list not being diverse enough so it ended up being cancelled:
ReplyDeleteEngland is gone. Too many immigrants with too many muslims among them, too much political correctness. I just hope we manage to salvage ARM, Rolls-Royce and their nuclear weapons before some mullah does.
Have any of you considered the possibility that these old men have the time and money to indulge a silly hobby? Women generally get hobbies like sewing and gardening that have a productive result.
Sorry, what? Your fancy, reliable, foreign-made car wouldn't work without statistical methods in manufacturing and assembly. Most of the math in the last century was probably useless until engineers came along and made use of it. Einstein spent his free time thinking of relativity theory - a quite esoteric task to figure out what happens when you accelerate for a long long time within a gravity field. But without it one cannot build a (working) GPS.
Few people other than white men have ever been allowed to indulge in these hobbies.
Yeah, right.
- from Germany
Karen nailed it. Also one of the guys who invented the Rotisserie fantasy sports league went on to be the New York Times' ombudsman/"public editor" for a couple of years--talk about meaningless hobbies...
ReplyDelete@Steve Sailer
ReplyDelete"America's Vibrant Future is going to be cognitively catatonic."
Nonsense. Just because Latino immigrants are not intellectuals now does not mean that they won't produce many i the future.
With the exception of a few political refugees, people do not emigrate because they are doing too well economically or because they are great thinkers. How many of the Irish immigrants who came to America during the potato famine were geiuses or even mere intellectuals? What about the German peasants who came to America from the Rhineland in the 1850's? How many Gausses and Goethes were amongst them?
How can you compare two groups(Anglos and Latinos) that are separated in America by centuries? Anglos have been living in an advanced capitalist market society for centuries, while Latino immgrants come from semi-feudalistic societies where they were kept down by an oppressive social system where a tiny elite has access to all opportunity in the Society.
Also, Sailer, stop bringing up this stupid point about America intellectually declining due to Latino immigrants. The average white American cannot locate his own country on an Atlas and cannot name who was president during the American Civil War. All of America's intellectual achievements are made by a tiny elite that represents a small fration of one percent of the population. And a lot of them are foreigners.
And finally, America was never a very intellectual country anyway, with or without Latinos. The two greatest American geniuses, Edison and Henry Ford, were practical iventors who wanted to get rich and not theoreticians. Like president Calvin Coolidge once said:
"The business of the country is business."
All of America's achievements were made under the capitalist hydra. America has not produced any great philosopher, artists, physicists or mathematicians. No Nerwtons, Gausses, Eulers or Leibnizes. Americans do not excel at theorizing because there is no money to be made there. The fundamental flaw of America as a civilization is a lack of appreciation for the higher realms of abstraction, human thought and individual expression, those areas where the meaning of life, our place in the Universe and the ultimate nature of reality are questioned. Hence, no great American artists, philosophers or theoreticians. Americans have historically regarded the arts as wasteful, philosophy as useless, mathematics and the more abstract reals of physics as pointless. Some 95% of funds in America for science goes into experimental physics and engineering. That is, areas that have practical application and where a profit can be made. It is not surprising that CERN was built in Europe and not America even though Europeans are not as rich as Americans, because Europeans just care more about this kind of thing than Americans do.
So it's not like Latinos are dragging down American Society. America has been dragged down from the start. It was always a more or less utilitarian Society and not a philosophically-minded Society. The ancient Helles, Americans are not. Also, you need Latinos to keep the little industry you still have running.
STEVE, WILL YOU PLEASE RESPOND TO RICHARD LEWONTIN IN THE NYRB?
ReplyDeletepretty please. sorry for the caps.
Steve, please stop using the word "meme"
ReplyDeleteTruth said: Would that be a bad thing? Do we need more naval-grazers, and "stuff?"
ReplyDeleteHunsdon laughed: I think you meant "navel gazers." Naval grazers? Sea cows. yes, Truth, the great problem facing America is the dearth of sea cows. Naval grazers. As my granny used to say, "Well I swan!"
Anonydroid at 10:17 am said: A Jewish Ruby programmer from San Francisco who's involved in Ruby conferences and orgs made a stink on Twitter about the BritRuby conference speaker list not being diverse enough so it ended up being cancelled:
Hunsdon replied: I thought the Jews programmed Ruby in Dallas.
Off topic, but: encouraging that Mark Steyn, whose demogrqaphic telescope has heretofore focused exclusively on the Islamization of Europe, has finally turned to the Hispanicization of the USA:
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Census, in 1970 the “Non-Hispanic White” population of California was 78 percent. By the 2010 census, it was 40 percent. Over the same period, the 10 percent Hispanic population quadrupled and caught up with whites. That doesn’t sound terribly “natural” does it? If one were informed that, say, the population of Nigeria had gone from 80 percent black in 1970 to 40 percent black today, one would suspect something rather odd and unnatural had been going on. Twenty years ago, Rwanda was about 14 percent Tutsi. Now it’s just under 10 percent. So it takes a bunch of Hutu butchers getting out their machetes and engaging in seven-figure genocide to lower the Tutsi population by a third.
All I can say is...wow.
Lots of attention given to the mostly well-known asshats within the GOP, like Grover Norquist, who are suddenly announcing that amnesty is the magic solution. But there are other voices in the GOP finally coming to their senses.
There's a mistake here - most members of SABR are not sabermetricians. They're just really big baseball fans, most of whom aren't remotely interested in statistical number-crunching.
ReplyDeleteThe "sabermetricians" are generally a lot younger than your typical SABR member. But yes, they are also overwhelmingly white.
It's been said elsewhere as well, the BBWA selected Cabrera over Trout because the BBWA didn't want to be seen as racist. That and, maybe, because Trout had already just won the ROY, so why not share the adulation. Anyway, it's pretty hard to argue against the Triple Crown winner as MVP.
ReplyDeleteI would wear shorts with black socks and shoes if it would get me women like this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.volokh.com/2012/11/15/litigation-strategy-and-coalition-to-defend-affirmative-action-v-regents/#disqus_thread
Whites Build, Yellows Maintain, Blacks Destroy.
ReplyDeleteThe history of the world in six words.
Have any of you considered the possibility that these old men have the time and money to indulge a silly hobby? Women generally get hobbies like sewing and gardening that have a productive result. Few people other than white men have ever been allowed to indulge in these hobbies. Why simply jump to the conclusion that "white men are better than everybody else."
ReplyDeleteWhite men are simply better than everyone else at creating the kinds of societies white people like. Doesn't depend at all on sabermetrics or other esoteric pursuits (though they might both depend on the same thing, which is germane).
OT:
ReplyDeleteThe 2013 Rhodes Scholars
Not as many Asians as among the National Merit list. They're chosen by region, for geographical diversity. What this means is that talented students from upper-middle-class "Belmont" suburbs across the country go to Harvard or Yale, then apply based on their home addresses. 13 of the 32 Rhodes are from Harvard or Yale this year. That's 40 percent. Much like the Supreme Court numbers.
http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/135856/
http://www.rhodesscholar.org/
https://s3.amazonaws.com/rhodesscholars-fileshare/US_winners_bios_11_17_12.pdf
"It's the look that got us to the moon and back."
ReplyDeleteNonsense. Black socks with shorts may go way back, but shorts were only worn on certain occasions like to the beach. My grandfathers never went to any public event looking like these guys. Elderly people dressing like sloppy 12-year-olds is fairly new.
America has not produced any great philosopher, artists, physicists or mathematicians. No Nerwtons, Gausses, Eulers or Leibnizes.
ReplyDeleteEurope hasn't produced a mathematicians as great as Gauss or even close to as great since Gauss. No one has. And notice that three of the four great men in your list were German. The production of greatness has not been equally distributed within Europe, no matter that there are many places there that have been less corrupted by the "capitalist hydra" than America. There must be some other factors worthy of consideration.
"White men are simply better than everyone else at creating the kinds of societies white people like."
ReplyDeleteFunny, but we seem to do a pretty damn good job creating the kinds of societies that black, Asian, and Hispanic people like, too.
"The average white American cannot locate his own country on an Atlas and cannot name who was president during the American Civil War"
How much better can the average black or Hispanic American do?
You see the reports about how few Americans know these things, but (conveniently) they never break out the respondents by race. If you looked only at white Americans, I suspect that (compared to blacks) a very high percentage would know both.
America has not produced any great philosopher, artists, physicists or mathematicians. No Nerwtons, Gausses, Eulers or Leibnizes.
ReplyDeleteCharles Sanders Peirce.
The 2013 British Ruby (Ruby is a programming language) Conference was just cancelled:
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty funny. That guy's concern trolling on Twitter ended up causing the conference to be cancelled:
https://twitter.com/BritRuby/status/270221926490857474
"#BritRuby’s decision to cancel was thought-out and based mainly on financial implications that arose from what happened on Twitter"
He does have a point about Americans not being terribly disposed to abstract thought for it's own sake.
ReplyDeleteWe've had world class scientists, but this is definitely more of an engineering oriented society than science, for example.
I've got a semi-headache, and I'm not going to google it, but I'd be willing to bet that after you adjust for ethnicity and the population difference, France is better than we are at producing "world class" mathematicians. Physics and the rest of the math heavy sciences too.
Anonymous @ 12:58
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points, but you are missing a big one. Go to La Griffe du Lion"s site and read COGNITIVE DECLINE: THE IRREDUCIBLE LEGACY OF OPEN BORDERS to better understand the effects of "Latinos...dragging down American Society". The argument presented uses statistics and probabilities. It is convincing.
"Have any of you considered the possibility that these old men have the time and money to indulge a silly hobby? Women generally get hobbies like sewing and gardening that have a productive result. Few people other than white men have ever been allowed to indulge in these hobbies. Why simply jump to the conclusion that "white men are better than everybody else."
ReplyDeleteWomen of the wealthier classes have always had plenty of time for "hobbies." The first modern "novel", c. 1500s, was the Princess de Cleves, by a French lady pursuing her hobby of writing on love themes. This was not practical and considered quite pointless and bizarre in its day, as it was not a proper poem or song, play or ballad, the form in which most such stories were told. Rather it dealt with the inner motives and psychology of the subjects. Quite a new idea for the time,
During the 19th century, probably more time than most of the men of the day. Generally, as we know, very abstract subjects do not hold womens' concentration too much. There has to be some tangibility in view. The 19th c. was the century of female eccentrics who did untraditional things.
Wood carving was popular, and the daughters of Dr. Henry Liddell of Oxford, sculpted a huge pair of doors, 2nd half, 19th c. One of the daughters was Alice Liddell, of Alice in Wonderland. Two of his other daughters did devote talents to social work. But my point is, eccentric hobbies were quite common among upper class European and American women, the only kind of the era I know much about. There's a reason Madame Blavatsky could not have come from any other time and place, despite her "eastern" focus.
"Whites Build, Yellows Maintain, Blacks Destroy.
ReplyDeleteThe history of the world in six words."
Certainly applies to the Americas, if not the whole world. It's not blacks in and of themselves (or maybe it is)--it's their numbers. The first few are fine. When they get to be over 15%, high society is pretty much over.
Actually it is white people who are responsible for most destruction over the years, since no other race has embraced building empires and subjugating other races with the zeal that white people have.
ReplyDeleteAnd I would also say that blacks have built a great deal. All modern music you listen too have their origin in black culture. White people merely copied what black people created.
America has not produced any great philosopher, artists, physicists or mathematicians. No Nerwtons, Gausses, Eulers or Leibnizes.
ReplyDeleteAll dead for centuries.
The most historically important and most brilliant physicists alive today, Charles Hard Townes and Edward Witten respectively, are both Americans.
Possibly the most important living scientist of any stripe is James Watson, an American.
come on, there were cleary...3 or 4 guys under 40 in there!
ReplyDelete"Anglos have been living in an advanced capitalist market society for centuries, while Latino immgrants come from semi-feudalistic societies where they were kept down by an oppressive social system where a tiny elite has access to all opportunity in the Society."
ReplyDeleteWell that's because 'Anglos' have these unfair, evil, and magical fairies that rig the game and give them the type of advantageous systems you discuss above. If it wasn't for these pixies then the rest world would show the 'Anglos' how it's really done. But alas the 'Anlgos' and their evil genies rigged the game long time ago.
P.S. These bad-a** imps also give 'Anglos' (males only that is) all the time in the world for hobbies. Mark my words - if it wasn't for these evil creatures then 'Anglos' would not be so motivated to build train sets.
"America has not produced any great philosopher, artists, physicists or mathematicians. No Nerwtons, Gausses, Eulers or Leibnizes."
ReplyDeleteGibbs, Pauling
Robert Hume
"Marva Collins"
ReplyDeleteFor a minute there I thought that link was about a high priced secretarial school. Anyone else here get Marva Collins and Mavis Beacon mixed up?
""White men are simply better than everyone else at creating the kinds of societies white people like."
ReplyDeleteFunny, but we seem to do a pretty damn good job creating the kinds of societies that black, Asian, and Hispanic people like, too.
"The average white American cannot locate his own country on an Atlas and cannot name who was president during the American Civil War"
Ridiculous. You must be including the black and hispanic ones, because I've known many, many prole (I was working class) kids, and all but a few of the dimmest knew these things. My brother, who later majored in physics, and I, used to read the one set of encyclopedias in our home constantly, along with the comic books, as we were growing up, just for fun. He was very into sci fi; I not so much, but it got me thinking about space outside my neighborhood. I don't think we were that rare. Many kids I knew had read kids' biographies & histories, or had absorbed the info from tv and movies. If you can't absorb that kind of general information in this society, where school attendance is 100%, tv & movies often deal w/historic subjects, and books are free in schools and libraries, not to mention the internet, then you're pretty dumb.
And I have met some pretty dumb people of all races.
If you only test whites, and leave out the browns (except Asian Indians of course) and blacks, Americans differ little from Europeans. This also applies to things like crime and IQ.
How can you compare two groups(Anglos and Latinos) that are separated in America by centuries? Anglos have been living in an advanced capitalist market society for centuries, while Latino immgrants come from semi-feudalistic societies where they were kept down by an oppressive social system where a tiny elite has access to all opportunity in the Society.
ReplyDeleteMestizos have had 500 years to soak up western civilization. Blacks have had 3,000.
The Germanics caught up with the Romans in 500 years, and this was long before instant global communications, computers, strong institutions, foreign aid, etc. They went on to far surpass the Romans. Mestizos and blacks would've done it in the last 100 years, if they were capable.
He does have a point about Americans not being terribly disposed to abstract thought for it's own sake.
No, he doesn't. Yes, 100 IQ is fairly dim from a higher vantage. But 85 and 90 are further down, still. That and the x factor of the rest of their behavioral genetics put them below the civilizational threshold Europeans find acceptable.
"Hunsdon laughed: I think you meant "navel gazers." Naval grazers? Sea cows. yes, Truth, the great problem facing America is the dearth of sea cows. Naval grazers. As my granny used to say, "Well I swan!"
ReplyDeleteAnd the answer is...?
Oh, you don't have one. That's cool though, sport; solid, above average ridicule there.
@Matt
ReplyDelete"All dead for centuries.
The most historically important and most brilliant physicists alive today, Charles Hard Townes and Edward Witten respectively, are both Americans.
Possibly the most important living scientist of any stripe is James Watson, an American."
So what they have been dead for centuries? At least Europeans had greatness at SOME point. Where are the equivalent American geniuses of ANY era?
As for Ed Witten, he hasn't proven anything in physics. His string theory is UNPROVEN. And yes, he has won a Fields Medal, but there have been dozens of Fields Medals winners and none of them have produced mathematical insights on the level of Gauss or Euler. And talking about Fields Medals, the tiny country of France has 9 to America's 16 at only 56 million people. On a per capita basis, that is almost three TIMES the amount America has.
As for Charles Hard Townes, his works had PRACTICAL applications. He worked at Bell Laboratories, for f-ck sake! The guy was a capitalist servant, so nice way to shoot yourself in the proverbial foot. He worked on lasers and things like that.
As for Watson, yes, he is a great scientist. But most of the intellectual hard work was done by Crick and not him. And he took all the credit just for being an American. Kind of like Newton takes credit for the creation of calculus even though we utilize Leibniz's far more effective notation just because Newton was an Englishman and the Anglo-Saxon propaganda boosted Newton to ungodly genius level - and I am not taking anything away from Newton because this, notwithstanding, he WAS a great genius.
Face it: America does not appreciate the higher realms of pursuit of the human spirit, and has not achioeved much there. It is simply a fact.
I think it's funny that you guys would brag about Witten and such since in your high school days you would probably have called these same guys "geeks" and "nerds", in the grand old Aemrican tradition of scorning intellectuals.
"Truth said...
ReplyDelete"Whites Build, Yellows Maintain, Blacks Destroy."
So whites built the Taj Mahal, and blacks destroyed Dresden during WWII?
Got it."
--
" So whites built the Taj Mahal...."
If, like most Anthropologists you consider the Mughals (from around Afghanistan) to be Caucasian, then actually, you could argue that yes, whites built the Taj Mahal. In the pictures we have of the Mughal emperor we have from the time, he certainly looks pretty white to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_the_emperor_Shajahan,_enthroned..jpg
"....and blacks destroyed Dresden during WWII?"
Only in the Hollywood fictions of George Lucas. Though it is interesting is alot of people would probably assume it to be the case than the Taj Mahal being due to whites. Which just goes to show how screwed up the average person's views on reality are due to the entertainment industry, MSM, and academia promoting the Narrative.
And I would also say that blacks have built a great deal.
ReplyDeleteFirst lets note with a wry smile that you are informing us of this using a language originating in Europe (English), via a system (internet) created by white people using a device (PC, phone whatever) invented by white people.
All modern music you listen too have their origin in black culture. White people merely copied what black people created.
All? Thats a bit of stretch right there.
Anyhow the idea that blacks are the unique component in 'modern music' relies to some extent on excluding all sorts of factors to level the playing field.
As a little thought experiment lets remove all the white inputs into 'modern music' and see what creative blacks are left to work with.
Lets start of with live performance, we can start off by taking electric amplification out of the equation. Oh dear, thats a bit of a blow already isnt it. (I could just take electricity out of the equation right there but thats no fun). See, already something I know you've taken for granted is out of play and the musical landscape is changed.
Then lets have you list all the musical instruments you can think of that werent invented by whites.
Im going to separate conventional instruments from synthesizers, computers, software and studio technology. Obviously they are all off-limits now as well.
Then there is the listening part of the process, Ive already taken away amplification but now we have to take wax cylinders, vinyl records, radio, TV, internet, cassettes, tapes, CDs and MP3s away too.
So how is this black creativity going to work now, without 99% of the instruments, none of the modern studio technology, any form of reproduction etc.
This is all aside from other elements like musical forms and styles that blacks have copied and adapted from whites. Even the harmonic scales used in most modern music were a European invention.
"America has not produced any great philosopher, artists, physicists or mathematicians. No Nerwtons, Gausses, Eulers or Leibnizes."
ReplyDeleteWhat, Richard Feynman is chopped liver?
"And finally, America was never a very intellectual country anyway, ...
ReplyDeleteAmerica has not produced any great ... physicists or mathematicians."
Perhaps many do not know much about America or about the history of physics and math. Anyone who has ever taken an undergrad science and engineering course will remember all that vector calculus. Ever wonder who developed that? I mean, you can't do science or engineering anywhere in the world without being immersed in it.
(Three of the 4 names you mentioned were directly involved in the invention of the calculus, a once-in-history opportunity. You left out many others, in particular the Bernoullis, perhaps they undermine the lone genius theory of such things and raise genetic questions... Gauss came later, you might say he was kind of a clean-up hitter on a lot of things.)
But back to the inventor of vector calculus. It's likely most don't even recognize the name. Of course he had a lot of like-minded help, over a long time, as befitting someone representative of the subjects of this thread (and I don't want to slight Heavside or Grassmann):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs
"... he was largely responsible for the development of the vector calculus techniques still used today..."
Perhaps it's an American problem that we don't recognize and promote our "stars" in some of these areas as much as we might (but there are so many!). It may also say something about a more modest, self-effacing time, an approach and culture that would find today's constant loud self-promotion off-putting and outright vulgar. The older I get the more I've found some types of folks from some places just find this attitude alien and incomprehensible.
@Svigor
ReplyDelete"Mestizos have had 500 years to soak up western civilization. Blacks have had 3,000.
The Germanics caught up with the Romans in 500 years, and this was long before instant global communications, computers, strong institutions, foreign aid, etc. They went on to far surpass the Romans. Mestizos and blacks would've done it in the last 100 years, if they were capable."
No, Mestizos have not had 500 years to catch up. This is what you don't understand. In Latin America, European conquerors conquered the Amerindians and established a caste society where their descendants would rule, and the Amerindians and mestizos would be kept as their identured servants. Mestizos were barred from education, from opportunities in government and such. The elite also put on political reguçlations to forbid economic and technological progress because they didn't want any rivals for their power. With money comes political power, and if economic activity were free and all kinds of economic endevours allowed, a new class could arrise that would usurp their power. Hence, they maintained their societies primitive and agrarian on purpose. Did you know that, for instance, in Brazil it was forbidden BY LAW for there to be any industries up to the 1940s? How can you compare that to a country such as the U.S where, from the beggening, was established with the values of the bourgeoise merchant class from England, with it's emphasis on commercial ventures and economic freedom?
You seem to equate the higher development of America to higher intelligence. And yet, as little as 30 years ago the Chinese, who routinely outscore white American on IQ tests, were as poor as Namibians. Riddle me that? It is not intelligence, but the CAPITALIST BOURGEOISE SYSTEM that explains the greater economic and technological might of Europe and latter the U.S compared to the rest of the World. Here is why:
Intelligence can only work to produce things and discover things if it is ALLOWED to and if there is a MOTIVATION for it. In feudal societyies like those of Latin America or Tang Dynasty China, or in a Marxist society, there is no motivation. In a feudal society, there is no incentive to produce because the elite can rule by force and STEAL the wealth from commoners. Hence, all they need is maintain the status quo and rule by force. In a Marxist society, there is no incentive because, no matter what, you cannot better your station in life if not for the government deciding to.
What explains the economic and technological greatness of the West is the principle of EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW. This revolutionary idea is what propelled the rise of the West over the past centuries. When you cannot use force to steal wealth from others, the only way to increase your status and better your lot in life is to PRODUCE goods and services that others, voluntarilly, want to purchase from you. This means never-ending economic growth with greater production and consumption. Also, because technology vastly improves the quality of production and decreases costs, the politically equalitarian society fosters continued scientific and technological progress.
Latin America has actually progressed tremendously over the past 40 years since the educated upper middle-class has decided that they are tired of the feudal nepotism and clientelism of their societies and made their societies freer - except for Venezuela and Argentina. Brazil, for instance, has a larger GDP than Great Brtain, the #3 steel producer, the #4 producer of automobiles and the #1 producer of soy and coffee, as well as the #2 producer of rice.
As for your comments on Germanics catching up to Rome in 500 years, nonsense. The first contact between the Germanics and Rome were at the time of Gaius Marius, and 500 years latter, in 400 A.D, Rome was still VASTLY more advanced and richer than them. Even in 1,500 A.D, the German kingdoms still compared poorly to
Rome of Caesar's time in many areas like sanitation.
Josiah Willard Gibbs was certainly a world class intellect.
ReplyDeleteBut he was a long time coming. And if the US produced a similar mind in the time from Plymouth, Virginia, or Croatan, I'm drawing a blank on who it was.
Roughly 250 years or so to produce this individual. Edison was a different kind of mind, one more uniquely American I think.
And just as a quibble, I think Gibbs Free Energy is something I would have been prouder of if I were Gibbs than Vector Calculus.
ReplyDeletedcite said . . .
"The average white American cannot locate his own country on an Atlas and cannot name who was president during the American Civil War"
Ridiculous. You must be including the black and hispanic ones, because I've known many, many prole (I was working class) kids, and all but a few of the dimmest knew these things.
Did you know any prole white girls?
My brother, who later majored in physics, and I, used to read the one set of encyclopedias in our home constantly, along with the comic books
Question answered.
"The first contact between the Germanics and Rome were at the time of Gaius Marius"
ReplyDeleteThe Germanics and the early-Romans were of essentially the same deep racial-stock.
That is: Early Roman accomplishments and German(ic) accomplishments are both manifestations of the same thing.
The ("early") Roman core was overwhelmed by an imperial-era flood of immigration and profligate slavery. Roman decline set in. The Roman core population was disappearing. Inertia kept the multiracial Roman Empire plowing along for a while, but the creative spirit was exhausted (as the USA's increasingly is, today). Eventually it fell apart, and the Germanics picked up the pieces (cousins, broadly, of the Roman founding population).
"If, like most Anthropologists you consider the Mughals (from around Afghanistan) to be Caucasian,"
ReplyDeleteThe question is, what do YOU think? Are you ok, with these fine Aryan Afghans immigrating in mass, and bedding your daughters, or not?
"Only in the Hollywood fictions of George Lucas."
So the answer is "no" and the original point about whites, yellows blacks is moot, did I get this correct?
" Mestizos and blacks would've done it in the last 100 years, if they were capable."
ReplyDeleteMore sophist idiocy.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteAs for Charles Hard Townes, his works had PRACTICAL applications. He worked at Bell Laboratories, for f-ck sake! The guy was a capitalist servant, so nice way to shoot yourself in the proverbial foot. He worked on lasers and things like that."
Practical applications!? The Horror! The Horror. I mean.....lasers - what the hell good are those?
Of course, your ignoring a lot of other important American scientists: Gibbs, Millikan, Michaelson, Feynman, Schwinger, Gell-Mann, Neddermeyer, Anderson.
You are an ignorant idiot.
As for your comments on Germanics catching up to Rome in 500 years, nonsense. The first contact between the Germanics and Rome were at the time of Gaius Marius, and 500 years latter, in 400 A.D, Rome was still VASTLY more advanced and richer than them. Even in 1,500 A.D, the German kingdoms still compared poorly to
ReplyDeleteRome of Caesar's time in many areas like sanitation.
True, first contact was much earlier than 500 AD. But by 500 AD, the Germanics had dismantled Rome's empire, and 700 years later they'd largely caught up. By 1500 they'd largely surpassed Rome.
What were the other regions close to Rome doing?
More germane (sorry :) ) was my point about amenities. SSAs and Mestizos have had the whole thing handed to them on a platter.
No, Mestizos have not had 500 years to catch up. This is what you don't understand. In Latin America, European conquerors conquered the Amerindians and established a caste society where their descendants would rule
...and the Romans were humanitarians with broadband, and first contact with the Germanics was a love-in. Yeah, I get it.
tool:
ReplyDelete"Are you ok, with these fine Aryan Afghans immigrating in mass, and bedding your daughters, or not?"
Because, you know, Afghans = Germans.
Gradations are lost on some people.
"Gradations are lost on some people."
ReplyDeleteWhat need do we have for "gradiations
Mr. Sex and relationship expert? I'm interested in whether those people are white, or not!
" All of America's intellectual achievements are made by a tiny elite that represents a small fration of one percent of the population"
ReplyDeleteSame as Europe.
Since 1990 33 Nobel Physics winners were from the US.
20 from Europe including Russia.
A few were associated with a couple of countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics
I've met many Europeans and they aren't more intellectual than the average American.
"
ReplyDelete, America was never a very intellectual country anyway, with or without Latinos"
Really?
Nobel winners
Medicine Nobels since 1960
US 65
UK 10
Germany 7
Mexico has won 3 total, but only 1 in Science. The others are Peace and Liter.
per capita the UK and Sweden have done well
@SvigorTrue, first contact was much earlier than 500 AD. But by 500 AD, the Germanics had dismantled Rome's empire, and 700 years later they'd largely caught up. By 1500 they'd largely surpassed Rome."
ReplyDeleteLOL, the Germanics had not "surpassed" the Romans by 450 A.D. They were able to defeat the Romans militarilly because of their vastly superior numbers and because the Romans were cowardly and decadent by that point. Military power does not equate with having a superior culture. Going by your logic, the Mongols under Genghis Khan were culturally superior to the Tang Dynasty Chinese since they were able to conquer them. In terms of arts, literature, culture and science, the Romans were still VASTLY superior to the Germanic tribes in 450 A.D. In fact, the Germanics were on roughly the same level in 450 A.D that they were in 100 B.C when Marius fought them. And in 1,500 A.D, that was a THOUSAND years after Rome fell, and the Germans STILL lacked compared to the Romans from the time of Augustus. So how does this prove your point?
The instruments featured in Duelling Banjos was allegedly invented by the inventors of music (above) and we all know that they are essential in modern music.
ReplyDelete"Josiah Willard Gibbs was certainly a world class intellect.
ReplyDeleteBut he was a long time coming. And if the US produced a similar mind in the time from Plymouth, Virginia, or Croatan, I'm drawing a blank on who it was."
What's your take on the natural philosophy stuff by this guy Franklin?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Inventions_and_scientific_inquiries
Franklin? My impression is he was a talented amateur, a dabbler.
ReplyDeleteHe had a knack for finding problems of interest, even kind of starting to analyze them (see the population entry in that link along with Malthus).
But in the end he lacked two things:
1) Mathematical Sophistication
2) Focus. No matter what his contributions to the formation of this country, and his own business endeavors, he was in a sense wasting his time with Politics, Writing, and Printing.
He led his life in a normal manner for that day and time, but if you are going to make intellectual advances on par with people like Gauss, Euler, Gibbs you have to make that the center of your life.
Also, he had a sixth sense at finding interesting things, but did he have a high enough IQ to "bring it home?"
I have no idea. I somehow can't picture him ever being capable of achieving something like Maxwell's work.
My take is he was a talented amateur.
Yours may differ, and I'm only addressing his scientific and technical contributions.
I think it's funny that you guys would brag about Witten and such since in your high school days you would probably have called these same guys "geeks" and "nerds", in the grand old Aemrican tradition of scorning intellectuals.
ReplyDeleteScorning intellectuals (especially young intellectuals) is a very recent American "tradition". Gibbs grew up in a different world then we did, a very alien and "elitist" world. Even Edison had the choice to educate himself rather than place himself at the mercy of School and Church. And that was a time when schools were more about education than forced socialization.
You guys are aware that all of this 'ruin geeks lives' stuff is the way Americans let off steam at the 'Scots-Irish' in an environment where outright racism is verboten, right?
ReplyDeleteYou guys are aware that all of this 'ruin geeks lives' stuff is the way Americans let off steam at the 'Scots-Irish'
ReplyDeleteA majority of nerds and geeks are not Jewish. That's a stupid strategy, but "letting off steam" is usually stupid in general. Maybe WASP-American kids should try studying more and goofing off less.
Mathew said..
ReplyDelete"All I can say is...wow.
Lots of attention given to the mostly well-known asshats within the GOP, like Grover Norquist, who are suddenly announcing that amnesty is the magic solution. But there are other voices in the GOP finally coming to their senses."
I hope you're right. Right now there is a big choice facing the GOP. They've lost big which has put them in a state of shock. Knowing they're going to have to give in to Democrats they are debating what it should be. The knee jerk reaction of several analysts like Charles Krauthammer and Sean Hannity was "Amnesty! We give in!" They forget that the New York Times not that long ago was for limiting immigration from Mexico on behalf of the American worker.
If Republicans have to give something up it should be the tax issue. If raising taxes is really going to hurt the economy, oh well let Obama and Democrats take the fall on that one. Everyone who pays attention to the news knows whose fault that one is.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete@Svigor
..."You seem to equate the higher development of America to higher intelligence. And yet, as little as 30 years ago the Chinese, who routinely outscore white American on IQ tests, were as poor as Namibians. Riddle me that? It is not intelligence, but the CAPITALIST BOURGEOISE SYSTEM that explains the greater economic and technological might of Europe and latter the U.S compared to the rest of the World."
So, you're completely on board then with getting Latinos to vote nearly 100% Convervative and/or Libertarian?
See many Republicans have this notion that Latinos are natural Conservatives and will any day now wake to see this and become patrons of the Republican party, walking hand in hand with us to conserve upon our fine Christian/Individualist/Capitalist heritage.
Many here on Steve's blog don't see it that way. I wish you'd elaborate on why Latinos tend to vote as a bloc against the white bourgeois. And don't say it's because they believe we here will try to replace our meritocracy with a caste system in honor of their arrival in the US - we whites love our meritocracy. Alas, we'll go out of our way to promote Latinos and Blacks to the upper crust of our society even though many who are beneficiaries don't deserve it by meritocratic standards. The only thing that ever subverts our meritocracy is when we go out of our way to prove we aren't racists.
This post is brilliant, and if anything can put white men in an endearing light, it is their geekish hobbies (provided that the story isn't spun into one of privilege and free time).
ReplyDeleteCheck out this picture from a quick google search for "home brewing convention": http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MMqrTcU7n4Y/TgkqcVaMoFI/AAAAAAAAAe0/Z0oCKiC35mA/s1600/San%2BDiego%2B361.jpg
I'd like to see the Romney % of the vote statistics broken down into one more dimension: homebrewer or not. My guess is that the married, white male, homebrewer doesn't easily or readily fall for the typical Obama BS.