The Lynching of Desi Arnaz (1917-1951)

A commenter at Slate attempts to explain to Matthew Yglesias the answer to that journalist's question "Why does the census count me as Hispanic?" 

Latinos/Hispanics are individuals whose descent comes from Latin American countries and Puerto Rico (an American Territory). The white ones, who are the descendants mostly of Spaniards, but also of other Europeans who emigrated to Latin America and Puerto Rico are not considered white by most Americans and are therefore discriminated against by the Anglo (non Hispanic white) majority.

The problem, then, is the all encompassing, prevalent, institutional, personal racism of the Anglo (non Latino white) majority. 

Right. That's what caused the tragic lynching of Desi Arnaz in 1951 during the attempted filming of the first episode of the never-aired "I Love Lucy" series. As fans of Noel Ignatiev no doubt recall, a mob of furious whites in the studio audience, enraged at Arnaz laying his Spanish Cuban hands on the fair Lucille Ball, spontaneously tore the bandleader limb from limb. Historians sometimes speculate that if it weren't for the virulent white prejudice against Spanish Cubans miscegenating with whites, "I Love Lucy" might even have become something of a hit.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Xochitl Hinojosa: DoJ's Aztec Warrior Princess / Spokesmodel

The decision by pundit Matthew Yglesias to list himself officially on the 2010 Census as "Hispanic" has raised interesting questions about our new Hispanic elites.

For example, one striking name that has popped up in the news relentlessly during the Obama Administration is Xochitl Hinojosa, spokesperson for the Department of Justice on civil rights-related matters. Here's just the first page of Google News hits for Xochitl Hinojosa:

Motel pools rush to become compliant with updated ADA‎
"It's under review," said Xochitl Hinojosa, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice. A delay would be good news for businesses ... 

Alabama Women's Prison Inmates Sexually Abused By Guards ...‎
Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in an email that the agency is reviewing the allegations. A 2011 Huffington Post ... 

Voting Law's 'Preclearance' Provision Upheld on Appeal‎
Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement that the agency is pleased with the decision. The Voting Rights Act is “a ... 

Anastasio Hernandez Rojas Death: 16 Members Of Congress Call ...‎
When contacted for comment, DOJ spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told The Huffington Post that the "department's investigation remains ... 

Anastasio Hernandez Rojas Death Sparks Nationwide Call For ...‎
Department of Justice Spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told The Huffington Post that the "department's investigation remains ongoing," adding, ...  

Appeals court upholds key voting rights provision‎
... department will continue to vigorously defend it against constitutional challenges," said Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa. 

Pool-lift rule confuses hotels‎
“An existing pool must do what is readily achievable” defined as affordable and easy, Department of Justice spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa ... 

Wells Fargo Says DOJ May Seek Penalties in Fair-Lending Inquiry‎
Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment. Last year's lending inquiry, conducted by the Justice Department's ...  

Texas Gets Last Shot for July 9 Trial on Voter Photo Law‎
Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman, didn't ... 

Trayvon Martin: FBI Actively Pursuing Hate Crime Charge For ...‎
As previously reported by Newsone, U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said the department is conducting its own, ...

Let's find out what's on the web about the Obama Administration's face of civil rights enforcement:

"Xochitl and Scarlett were roommates in college. Scarlett was Xochitl's big sister in Alpha Sigma Alpha. They have shared so many good memories of Spring Break, boys, sorority life, and drinking wine in Napa Valley, and look forward to the many more memories to come!"

I don't know what Xochitl majored in at The University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, but her sorority big sister Scarlett has a degree in fashion merchandizing.

And here's a photo feature in The Washingtonian entitled The 23 Most Stylish People at Fashion: District:

Xochitl Hinojosa and Annalies Husmann

Xochitl is the daughter of a former Texas judge:

Joining Judge Hinojosa on the Senate floor were his daughters Gina Hinojosa-Donisi, her son Mateo, and Xochitl Hinojosa.

Xochitl's father, attorney Gilberto Hinojosa, is currently a candidate for chair of the Democratic Party of Texas. He even has his own Doonesbury cartoon about him in which Judge Hinojosa denounces Republican efforts to crack down on voter fraud. From Wikipedia's bio of Xochitl's dad:

While living in Washington, DC, Hinojosa worked as a Staff Attorney for the Migrant Legal Action Program, Inc.[citation needed] He later became the Director of the Migrant Division of Colorado Rural Legal Services, Inc., in Denver, Colorado.[citation needed] Upon his return to his native Texas, Hinojosa continued practicing law as the Managing Attorney for the Texas Rural Legal Aid, Inc., located in Brownsville, Texas. ...

Hinojosa was elected Cameron County Judge on November 8, 1994. During his administration, international bridges to Mexico were built ... 

On August 11, 2003, Hinojosa appeared before the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in support of Senate Bill 1329, which would provide assistance in the relocation of railroads to improve access for commercial traffic passing through Cameron County to and from the international border with Mexico. ... After the bill passed, the Cameron County West Rail Relocation Project was initiated which provided for the construction of a railroad across the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, with approximately $21 million in federal funds provided.[3]   ... 

Hinojosa was elected Chairman of the Cameron County Democratic Party on November 12, 2007.[4] One day after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Hinojosa attended the Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting held in Washington, DC. On January 23, 2008, he nominated Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to head the Democratic National Committee.[1] Thereafter, a unanimous vote made Governor Kaine the new leader of the Democratic Party. 

From Judge Hinojosa's announcement of his candidacy for chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, we have a clear statement of the Hinojosa Strategy:

President Barack Obama borrowed a phrase made famous by a small, humble and unassuming union leader from California by the name of Cesar Chavez: "Yes we can!" Or as Cesar Chavez called to action the once powerless farm workers of California: "Si Se Puede!" YES WE CAN be the Party that elects leaders who will build a stronger, better educated, more innovative and more caring Texas for ALL Texans. ... 

These strategies must primarily focus on achieving a majority by ensuring that, before anything else, the full potential of the Democratic Base is achieved. We will not give away any part of the electorate to the Republicans, but we must recognize that we will only become the majority party in this State when we have done everything possible to turnout the Democratic base at election time. 

Obviously, a key part of that base that is far from achieving its full potential are Latinos. When Latinos, who make up 40 percent of the people in this State and who vote for Democrats over Republicans by two to one margins, are turning out to vote at rates far below other demographic groups, it is difficult for our Party to a achieve a majority in this State. The only way that I believe we can ensure that Latinos are voting at or near normal rates is through a concentrated effort to register, engage, and turnout Latino voters utilizing innovative "boots on the ground" tactics which wisely and effectively use our limited resources. ... 

And we don't have to reinvent the wheel. States, like Colorado, Nevada and California, with far smaller Latino populations, have been able to achieve a Democratic majority with strong Latino mobilization efforts. Yes We Can! And Yes WE Will!

And here is a picture of Gilberto M. Hinojosa, professor of history at Xochitl's alma mater, University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio:

I don't know what the relationship (if any) is between Professor Gilberto M. Hinojosa and the younger Judge Gilberto Hinojosa. (By the way, the President of Mexico's name is Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, but I don't know of any evidence that Xochitl Hinojosa is related to the Mexican President's maternal family.)

A reader comments: "In general, it takes a couple generations of success before Hispanics go all liberal"

Indeed, elderly Professor Hinojosa appears to be a bourgeois Catholic antiquarian (perhaps related to the conservative Cristero movement of Guadalajara out of which emerged Mexican President Calderon Hinojosa's parents, or, perhaps more likely, a Tejano of old family), whose CV is largely lacking in po-mo titles.

Judge Hinojosa is a Hillary Democrat.

Xochitl Hinojosa is one of the leading names of the Obamaite Diversitocracy.

Yes, I know, it sounds like I just made up the Hinojosa family to illustrate what I've been saying for years about the Hispanic activist elites who get quoted so often in the newspapers. But, I'm not making the Hinojosa family up!

I want to come back to an epistemological question raised in Jim Manzi's book Uncontrolled. As a key example in his attack on observational (i.e., non-experimental) social science, Manzi devotes about a half dozen pages to the failure of Steve Levitt's popular Freaknomics theory that abortion-cut-crime.

But I draw a different example from that controversy. Sure, experimenting, when feasible (and, of course, experimenting is not feasible regarding abortions), is good, but, as Yogi Berra said, you can observe a lot just by watching. In particular, the deeper you dig into a subject, the more vivid become the examples, as with the Hinojosas.

With abortion-cut-crime, for instance, Levitt's theory was based on his observation that crime was lower in 1997 than in 1985, so, he reasoned, Roe v. Wade probably had something to do with it.

But then, when Levitt's theory got a big write-up in the Chicago Tribune in the summer of 1999, Greg Cochran downloaded the total number of homicides in America by year, which showed that murder had spiked up between 1985 and 1997. Oh, yeah, the Crack Years! Then I started looking at homicide offending by age group to see the impact of abortion legalization on the not-yet-born and it turned out that the homicide offending rate for the cohort of 14-17 year olds born in the half decade after legalization was almost triple that of the cohort born in the half decade before legalization. And then when I looked at black teens, because blacks had the highest abortion rates in the 1970s, the post-legalization homicide rate for black teens quintupled! And if you looked at the big states that legalized abortion before 1973's Roe v. Wade, California (late 1969) and New York (1970), well, that's where the Crack Wars started: remember West Coast rap v. East Coast rap?

In other words, the more you drill down into Levitt's theory, the more implausible it becomes. It seems more like the dominant effect on crime rates was that the more liberal a state with a lot of blacks had been in the late 1960s and 1970s, the more likely it would have a lot of abortions early and the more likely it would be that its blacks would get into crack dealing and murdering each other on a vast scale earlier in the 1980s-1990s.

In contrast, with the theories that I harp upon -- like my idea that Hispanic ethnic activists are largely self-interested white people trying to set their children up to live expensive lifestyles of drinking wine in Napa Valley and at Washington fashion events by expanding through immigration the number of brown Hispanics whom they can claim to  represent -- the more you drill down into the evidence, the more stereotypical -- and thus funnier -- the details become.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Undocumented workers" in U.S. = "Illegal infiltrators" in Israel

From the Jerusalem Post:

Illegal infiltrators threaten Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic country, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday. 

Calling the issue “very grave” and a threat to the “social fabric,” Netanyahu said, “If we do not stop the entry, the problem, there are now 60,000 illegal infiltrators; could easily grow to 600,000 illegal infiltrators. This would inundate the state and, to a considerable degree, cancel out its image as a Jewish and democratic state.” 

The prime minister spoke of the importance of finishing construction of the Egyptian border fence and working to send away “those [illegal migrants] who are already inside.” 

Netanyahu said the latter will be done in part by punishing employers who hire illegal migrants. 

The growing population of more than 50,000 illegal African migrants has become a hot-button issue, with the weekend editions of all three major Hebrew dailies featuring lead stories relating to the issue. 

A little over three weeks ago, African migrants were targeted in a series of Molotov cocktail attacks in south Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood. In addition, there have been a series of sexual assaults in Tel Aviv over recent weeks that police say were carried out by African migrants. 

Also on Sunday, Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) repeated his call to jail illegal African migrants, most of whom he said were involved in crime.

Netanyahu is at a peak of popularity and power within Israel at the moment. He recently called for elections, then called them off when a major opposition party, seeing the writing on the wall, agreed to join his coalition as subordinate partners. So, he's dealing from a position of strength here, with his team holding 96 of 120 seats in the Knesset.

Generally speaking, much can be learned from Israel about how an intelligent people govern themselves.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Jim Manzi's "Uncontrolled"

From my book review in Taki's Magazine:

In his impressive first book, Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society, entrepreneur/intellectual Jim Manzi has the makings of an airport best seller in the genre of Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. Indeed, Uncontrolled is far more reliable than those two sometimes-dubious tomes.

Read the whole thing there, where I discuss what, exactly, is wrong with the social sciences.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

PISA scores for immigrants

Anatoly Karlin, who is making himself the go-to guy on analyzing the investment implications of international school test scores (a potentially lucrative niche), has a long, fascinating write-up of PISA scores adjusted by immigration status:

One thing that immediately leaps out from above is that just as US scores leap upwards (from 496 to about 525, in line with Australia and Canada) once only whites are considered, so do scores in many European states when only natives are considered (e.g. Germany from 510 to 533; Switzerland from 517 to 542; the Netherlands from 519 to 533). In fact, the Germanic nations equalize with Japan’s 529, Taiwan’s 534, and South Korea’s 541 (the natives of these developed East Asian societies also score a lot higher than their immigrants, but the overall effect on the national average is modest because migrant children are such a small percentage of their school-age populations). In other words, in the worst affected European countries, immigrants are lowering the mean national IQ (converted from PISA scores) by as much as 3 points. 

This might not seem like much, but it is highly significant when bearing in mind the extremely close correlation between national IQ and prosperity. Furthermore, since immigrant population tend to be highly variant – for instance, Britain has a lot of Poles, who are essentially equal to the natives in cognitive capacity (maybe even superior, once you adjust for the fact that it is better-educated Poles who tend to emigrate), and a lot of Pakistanis, who are far below them. This is a good explanation for the general sense of dereliction one sees (and the crime one is likely to experience) when entering Pakistani ghettos in the UK. 

Also note from the graph that there is typically a very high degree of overlap between 1st and 2nd generation immigrant children. The 2nd generation children DO typically perform better, presumably because 1st generation immigrants may frequently have language difficulties and problems with adjusting to a new culture. But the degree of convergence of 2nd generation children to the native mean is modest, despite their transferal to typically far more advanced educational environments. Convergence is almost inconsequential in most European countries like Germany, France, Benelux, Norway, and actually negative in the US (i.e. American 2nd generation immigrant children do worse than the 1st generation).

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Matthew Yglesias, Hispanic

Matthew Yglesias writes in Slate:

It’s rare that a Census Bureau press release dominates the front pages, but last week’s headline “Most Children Younger Than 1 Are Minorities, Census Reports” was the thrilling exception. The shortage of white Anglo babies, the press was eager to tell us, was a glimpse of things to come, of America’s future as a majority-minority nation. 

I have my doubts. “A minority,” the census release clarified, “is anyone who is not single-race white and not Hispanic.” It’s not that the census is counting the wrong thing. Rather, I suspect an awful lot of these “minority” babies are going to be white when they grow up. 

When I filled out my 2010 census form I was, like many Americans with Spanish surnames, a bit puzzled. Prompted to ask if I am “of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin” I said that I was. But it seems like a bit of a fraud.

Was somebody holding a gun to his head? Or, despite it's moral fraudulence, did it seem like the rationally self-interested thing to do, career-wise? If a media organization wants to put Matthew Yglesias in the Diverse box on their federal reports, it could be embarrassing if he admitted he didn't check Hispanic on the 2010 Census. Or is it just being cooperative? The federal government (which, by the way, has nuclear weapons) goes to an enormous amount of trouble to have people identify themselves as Hispanic (unless, of course, they've just committed a crime), so it might seem like a waste of the taxpayers dollars not to oblige.

My grandfather is José Yglesias, and his parents immigrated to the United States from Cuba. He grew up speaking Spanish at home in the Spanish-dominant community of Ybor City in Tampa, Fla. His books are published (in English) by Arte Público Press as part of their Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic Literature series. It’s right there on the cover. And I am, obviously, a descendant of my own grandfather. So if he’s a pioneer of Hispanic literature, then clearly I am of Hispanic origin.

Back in the real world, though, I’m just another white dude. My three other grandparents are all of Eastern European Jewish extraction. I grew up speaking English at home, though I once took a summer Spanish class at NYU. ... 

As books like How The Irish Became White and How Jews Became White Folks: And What That Says About Race in America make clear, whiteness in America has always been a somewhat elastic concept. 

As you'll recall, heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan, whose parents were born in Ireland, was wildly unpopular in the 1880s-1890s because he wasn't considered white, so there was a huge cultural frenzy among American whites to find the Great White Hope title contender who could beat Sullivan and wrest the title back from this nonwhite. Oh, wait ... I seem to be getting John L. Sullivan confused with Jack Johnson. In reality, it says in Wikipedia's bio of Sullivan:

He was the first American sports hero to become a national celebrity and the first American athlete to earn over one million dollars.

Gee, think how much more money he would have made if he were white! Or, perhaps Noel Ignatiev's ideological framework isn't ideal for helping one remember the actual facts of American history.

It’s conceivable that 40 years from now nobody will care about race at all. But if they do still care, it will still be the case that—by definition—whiteness is the racial definition of the sociocultural majority. If the only way for that to happen is to recruit large swathes of the Hispanic and fractionally Asian population into whiteness, then surely it will happen. Indeed, while the Census Bureau has always been very clear that some people are white, others black, and yet others Native American or Indian, the federal government has frequently changed its mind about the rest.

If you examine your history critically, you'll see that the trend before during the liberal mid-20th Century, before the invention of affirmative action in 1969, was toward more people being defined as white by the government. For example, there was no Hispanic or Latino or Mexican or whatever category at all in 1950 and 1960 because LULAC just wanted people descended from a Spanish-speaking cultural background to be considered part of the white majority.

The trend after 1969 was toward fewer being white: e.g., the creation of Hispanic Ethnicity as entitled to preferences and the the transfer of South Asians in 1982 from Caucasian to Asian. I'm not aware of any group switching to non-Hispanic white since the beginning of racial/ethnic preferences over 40 years ago.

Why would they give up these preferences to be just legally unpreferred non-Hispanic whites? The only way that marginal nonwhites will give up the legal privileges of nonwhiteness is for a Republican administration to push through massive changes in government policy that deprive Hispanics and Asians of their legally preferred status. In particular, abolish the entire legal category of Ethnicity, which only currently benefits Hispanics. But, of course, that would be racist, so nobody ever evens mentions the faintest notion of trying to do this. In the Yglesian worldview, all these legally nonwhite people are just supposed to give up their legal privileges on their own accord, so there's no need to worry about, you know, policy.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Mark Ruffalo is chairman of the NAACP? Who knew?

Hulk smash brown paper bag test!

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Hey, who lives in Tinley Park?

I keep reading about this incident in a Tinley Park, IL restaurant, in which a bunch of leftist white thugs armed with hammers attacked a small group of diners who say they are part of a "European Heritage" organization. But I keep getting distracted by the thought that I've heard of Tinley Park not that long ago. Who lives in Tinley Park who used to be in the news? 

Oh, yeah, Mr. Officially Not News. The Rev. He Who Must Never Be Mentioned Again lives in a 10,000 square foot house he built in 2008 in a golf course development in Tinley Park. 

Speaking of the man whom all right-thinking folks recently decided must never be spoken of in polite society, former New York Times Magazine chief editor Edward Klein says that the Unmentionable Personage was offered $150,000 hush money by Dr. Eric Whitaker, one of Barack and Michelle Obama's four closest friends. 

As I blogged on April 29, 2008, when The Occluded One had returned from his cruise and derided the honesty of Obama's mellifluous race speech of March 18:

One little-mentioned aspect of Barack Obama's on-going fiasco involving his spiritual mentor is that it makes him look feckless. 

Rev. Wright has been a problem Obama knew he was going to have for, roughly, ever. But what has he done about it, besides giving a 5,000 word speech? Did he switch to a Washington D.C. church when he was elected to the Senate in 2005? Did he persuade Trinity to stop selling Wright's sermons on DVD? Did he provide any sort of narrative about the evolving ideological differences between the young and mature Barack Obamas? 

In contrast, do you remember how in February 2004, Democratic frontrunner John Kerry was rocked by rumors that he was having an adulterous affair with a young woman? You probably don't remember because, although for about a day it looked like it might derail Kerry's victory march through the primaries, the story quickly went away -- when the young lady went away, leaving the country. 

Problem dealt with. 

I have no idea if the rumors about Kerry were true or if the girl's timely departure from America was a coincidence or what. But, let's assume the worst about Kerry: he wrote a big check from the allowance his wife gives him to his mistress in return for making herself scarce. What can you then say about Kerry? 

Well, one thing you can say is that he had a problem and he dealt with it. All else being equal, I'd rather have a President who had a problem and dealt with it than a President who had a problem and failed to deal with it. 

Wright should not have been an unsolvable problem for Obama. Wright likes the spotlight, but he also likes other things. (He drives a Porsche, for example). 

So, Wright likes money. Obama has friends with money. Right there, you have the makings of a deal. (The payoff didn't have to be crass -- just that in return for Wright maintaining a low profile all year, in December 2008 Obama's supporters would start up a charitable foundation for Rev. to run. Obama could have asked Bill and Hill for advice on the fine points of foundations.)

Then, in August 2008, New York magazine reported that Rev. Wright was going to publish a book in October 2008 (as I had predicted on April 2, 2008). Big Trouble.

But, quickly, that news was denied. As I blogged at the time:

Update: Now, Rev. Dr. Wright's daughter says that isn't true. She asserts her father is in an electronically inaccessible region of Ghana and will issue a statement when he emerges from "email hell." 

I must say, the news that Rev. Wright is currently hanging out with Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Kurtz makes Obama look much more Presidential than did the endless Obama-Wright psychodrama of last spring. 

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Inherent Cracks in the Obama Coalition

The New York Times has finally picked up on that funny story I noticed last month ("George Lucas to show Marin dark side of the Force") about how Mr. Star Wars' neighbors in Marin County, where John McCain got only 20% of the vote in 2008, won't let Lucas build a film studio on a fraction of the eight or so square miles he owns in Marin, so he's decided to erect "low-income housing" there instead. The problem is that Marin is so exquisitely rich, liberal, and environmentally sensitive that you can qualify as low income there while making $88,000 per year, so George probably won't get away with erecting Hunter's Point North as his vengeance. The development will likely wind up being restricted to, say, widowed Marin school teachers or something similarly nonvibrant. 

On the other hand, George might have some domestic motivation to go all the way in trying to bring diversity to Marin. His girlfriend is Mellody Hobson. She is president of Ariel Investments, the money management firm founded by John W. Rogers Jr., former Princeton basketball teammate of and then employer of Craig Robinson, the brother-in-law of Barack Obama, whose Administration has been giving Marin County the evil eye legally for not being diverse enough. 

This little tiff in Marin reminds me that keeping Obama's Coalition of the Diverse together is going to be a full time job, requiring nonstop demonization of the Nondiverse as being divisive in order to distract attention from inevitable internal divisions among the Diverse.

By the way, John W. Rogers was a childhood friend of Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan. A reader explains:

Okay, I think I see what's going on: George Lucas is enabling Arne Duncan to create a network of militarized charter schools to raise a Clone Army of people dumb enough to want to watch George's movies.

By the byway, in this photo, Spike Lee's wife appears adorably nerdetteish. She looks as if she were genuinely thrilled to meet her childhood hero George Lucas.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Comedian Russell Peters: the anti-Sacha Baron Cohen

Russell Peters is a highly successful Canadian-born comedian, now living in L.A. and Las Vegas, whose shtick is to ask immigrants in the audience where they are from and then make fun of their accents (video on Indian accents) and customs (video on why whites should beat their children so the white kids don't feel left out when talking to their nonwhite friends). He loves ethnic stereotypes and is clearly a student of them. Judging from the video I saw of his show in London, nonwhites turn out in huge numbers for him. (Forbes said he made $15 million in 2010, mostly from ticket sales.)

Peters begins the one special of his I've seen talking about how Indian he is, about how he's not white, about how brown he is, presumably to reassure the audience that what is to follow is okay to laugh at. Yet, he certainly doesn't sound Indian. (He sounds like, I dunno, Don Rickles or Rodney Dangerfield in Caddy Shack.) But he apparently hadn't been out in the L.A. sun much before the show I saw (in contrast to the video clips above where he is well-tanned). I was struck by how, when not tanned, he's not terribly Indian looking. He looks like he's from somewhere in between India and England. So, I guessed he must be a Parsi, the Persian ethnicity of Bombay.

But, on RussellPeters.com's FAQ:

Is Russell Peters your real name?  

Yes it is. My family and I are Anglo-Indian. Anglo-Indians are a community of Indians, from India who were mixed with the British when they occupied India. Both of my parents are Anglo-Indian and both of their parents were Anglo-Indians and so on. Anglo-Indians traditionally always married Anglo-Indians. 

Anglo-Indians are Christian (I'm Catholic, as is my mom and my brother, my dad was Anglican), which also goes back generations. The first language for Anglo-Indians is English and our communities could primarily be found in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. 

This is the question that I get asked the most often and I'm always amazed as to how many Indians, especially the younger ones, don't have a clue about our history. Go ahead and GOOGLE 'Anglo-Indian' and check yourself!

Good advice. The Wikipedia article on Anglo-Indians is pretty interesting:

The first use of the term [Anglo-Indian] was to describe all British people living in India [e.g., Kipling]. This is the definition contained in the Indian Constitution. However in popular usage the term changed to describe Anglo-Indians as people who were of mixed blood descending from the British on the male side and women from the Indian side.[14] People of mixed British and Indian descent were previously referred to as 'Eurasians' but are now more commonly referred to as 'Anglo-Indians'.[15] 

During the British East India Company's rule in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was initially fairly common for British officers and soldiers to take local Indian wives and have Eurasian children, due to a lack of British women in India at the time.[16][17] By the mid-19th century, there were around 40,000 British soldiers, but less than 2,000 British officials present in India.[18] As British females began arriving in British India in large numbers around the early to mid-19th century, mostly as family members of British officers and soldiers, intermarriage became increasingly uncommon among the British in India and was later despised after the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857,[19] after which several anti-miscegenation laws were implemented.[20][21] As a result, Eurasians were neglected by both the British and Indian populations in India. 

Over generations, Anglo-Indians intermarried with other Anglo-Indians to form a community that developed a culture of its own. Anglo-Indian cuisine, dress, speech and religion all served to further segregate Anglo-Indians from the native population. They established a school system focused on the English language and culture and formed social clubs and associations to run functions like their regular dances on occasions like Christmas and Easter.[14] 

... A number of factors fostered a strong sense of community among Anglo-Indians. Their English language school system, their Anglo-centric culture, and their Christian beliefs in particular helped bind them together.[22] ... 

During the independence movement, many Anglo-Indians identified (or were assumed to identify) with British rule, and, therefore, incurred the distrust and hostility of Indian nationalists.[citation needed] Their position at independence was difficult. They felt a loyalty to a British "home" that most had never seen and where they would gain little social acceptance. (Bhowani Junction touches on the identity crisis faced by the Anglo-Indian community during the independence struggle.) They felt insecure in an India that put a premium on participation in the independence movement as a prerequisite for important government positions. 

Most Anglo-Indians left the country in 1947, hoping to make a new life in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Nations, such as Australia or Canada. The exodus continued through the 1950s and 1960s and by the late 1990s most had left with many of the remaining Anglo-Indians still aspiring to leave.[23] 

Like the Parsi community, the Anglo-Indians are essentially urban dwellers. Unlike the Parsis, the mass migrations saw more of the better educated and financially secure Anglo-Indians depart for other Commonwealth nations.

Peters caused a stir while visiting India by saying:

“I hate Bollywood. The films are all garbage, just terrible. It’s my opinion — obviously there are billions who love them. I have never seen a Bollywood film in my life. I have refused to do them earlier and will do so in future,” Peters claimed at a press conference. 

As per few media reports, Peters allegedly also cracked some jokes about Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan’s mediocre acting skills and even joked about her pregnancy. According to sources, he however retracted his statements on Bachchan later. Whatever the case be, Peters is nonchalant about the angst he seems to have evoked amongst Bollywood fans.

This was not popular with self-appointed offense-takers in India:

The political wings of India also condemned Russell’s alleged statements on Bachchan’s pregnancy. Shalini Thackeray, cine-worker’s union president of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) commented, “Bollywood is a vast industry, which churns out more films than anyone else in the world and Peters has no right to talk ugly or disgrace our industry or its actors. His comment on Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan is indeed in a bad taste, but I think his irrelevant comment should not deter or affect an actor of her calibre.” 

A leader from Shiv Sena, on the condition of anonymity, said, “Who is this Russell Peters and why should we entertain him? I think he should be banned in the country if he doesn’t respect our traditions and films.”

Peters was unimpressed:

Standing by his opinion, Peters tweeted, “There is no reason for me to like everything you like, my opinions are just that — my opinions. There are plenty of things I love that you won’t! The fact that my words have upset some of you so much only makes me victorious!”

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Intelligent Sandwich Preparation

Tom Doctoroff, head of the J. Walter Thompson ad agency's China office, explains in the WSJ what he's learned from a couple of decades in China:

To win a following among Chinese buyers, brands have to follow three rules. First and most important, products that are consumed in public, directly or indirectly, command huge price premiums relative to goods used in private. The leading mobile phone brands are international. The leading household appliance brands, by contrast, are cheaply priced domestic makers such as TCL, Changhong and Little Swan. According to a study by the U.K.-based retailer B&Q, the average middle-class Chinese spends only $15,000 to fit out a completely bare 1,000-square-foot apartment. 

Luxury items are desired more as status investments than for their inherent beauty or craftsmanship. The Chinese are now the world's most avid luxury shoppers, at least if trips abroad to cities like Hong Kong and Paris are taken into account. ...
Public display is also a critical consideration in how global brands are repositioning themselves to attract Chinese consumers. Despite China's tea culture, Starbucks successfully established itself as a public venue in which professional tribes gather to proclaim their affiliation with the new-generation elite. Both Pizza Hut and Häagen Dazs have built mega-franchises in China rooted in out-of-home consumption. (The $5 carton of vanilla to be eaten at home is a tough sell in China.) 

The second rule is that the benefits of a product should be external, not internal. Even for luxury goods, celebrating individualism—with familiar Western notions like "what I want" and "how I feel"—doesn't work in China. Automobiles need to make a statement about a man on his way up. BMW, for example, has successfully fused its global slogan of the "ultimate driving machine" with a Chinese-style declaration of ambition. 

Sometimes the difference between internal versus external payoffs can be quite subtle. Spas and resorts do better when they promise not only relaxation but also recharged batteries. Infant formulas must promote intelligence, not happiness. Kids aren't taken to Pizza Hut so that they can enjoy pizza; they are rewarded with academic "triumph feasts." Beauty products must help a woman "move forward." Even beer must do something. In Western countries, letting the good times roll is enough; in China, pilsner must bring people together, reinforce trust and promote mutual financial gain. 

Emotional payoffs must be practical, even in matters of the heart. Valentine's Day is almost as dear to the Chinese as the Lunar New Year, but they view it primarily as an opportunity for men to demonstrate their worthiness and commitment. In the U.S., De Beers's slogan, "A Diamond is Forever," glorifies eternal romance. In China, the same tagline connotes obligation, a familial covenant—rock solid, like the stone itself. ... 

Chinese parents are drawn to brands promising "stealthy learning" for their children: intellectual development masked as fun. Disney will succeed more as an educational franchise—its English learning centers are going gangbusters—than as a theme park. McDonald's restaurants, temples of childhood delight in the West, have morphed into scholastic playgrounds in China: Happy Meals include collectible Snoopy figurines wearing costumes from around the world, while the McDonald's website, hosted by Professor Ronald, offers Happy Courses for multiplication. Skippy peanut butter combines "delicious peanut taste" and "intelligent sandwich preparation."

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Mark Zuckerberg gets married

From my 2010 movie review of The Social Network:

There’s much debate in the press about how realistically the film portrays the tycoon. The obvious answer is that [screenwriter Aaron] Sorkin is projecting onto Zuckerberg his own (perhaps not wholly undeserved) self-loathing over sex, drugs, and ethnicity. 

In Sorkin’s imagination, Silicon Valley looks like Jim Morrison’s Laurel Canyon in 1969, with barely legal stoned groupies swarming over the nerds. (The reality is that Zuckerberg has had the same unspectacular girlfriend, to whom he appears devoted, since he started Facebook. Monogamy is a huge time-saver.)

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Gay Marriage in Prisons?

A reader speculates:

It seems to me that one of these days, we're going to run into another collision of "rights", and it will be very interesting. 

Prisoners have the right to marry in every state. 

Gay marriage is legal in several states, and it won't be long until it's legal everywhere in the US. 

So what will happen when two cellmates apply for a marriage license?  On what basis will the prison be able to deny it? 

And couldn't this conceivably lead to bigger, stronger inmates forcing weaker ones into "marriages" against their will?  Will young white prisoners be the new "trophy wife"? 

Have you ever written about this?  I've looked around, and I can't find anything, except a brief NPR piece saying that no one has given it much thought, and no one knows how it will play out, but gay marriage in prison is inevitable.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Euphemisms guide for parents of foreign students

After the tragic murder of two Chinese USC students, their parents are suing the college on the grounds that USC's marketing materials described the campus as being in an "urban" location. In China "urban" means good things (fewer pig in street, no have to bend over all day in rice paddy), while "suburban" sounds like "below urban" to literal-minded Asians. We should create a dictionary of American euphemisms for their safety. I'll start:

Urban -- 1. Antonym of Urbane.  2. All right, try hard to picture the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank in Paris, where students have congregated for a millennium. Okay, got that? Well, it's not like that.

Vibrant -- 1. Boring.  2. Terrifying.

White bread -- 1. Where Asian parents want their children to live. 2. Incomprehensible ethnic slur.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Euphemisms don't translate well

The parents of two USC students from China who were murdered sitting in their BMW have sued:

Their parents filed a lawsuit recently accusing the university of misrepresenting safety at the campus, where nearly one-fifth of the 38,000 students are from overseas, including 2,500 from China. ...

In the lawsuit, the victims’ parents said the university made false claims about safety in a section of its online application. 

The 15-page lawsuit accuses the institution of hiding behind the word “urban” and not saying the campus is in a high-crime area. It also notes that Chinese students in particular would interpret “urban” to mean the university is in a safe area.

Which colleges are urban and in low crime areas? Kids these days like urban, with good public transportation (in part because drunk driving is punished much more harshly than a generation ago). NYU in Greenwich Village. Harvard, I imagine. Georgetown? Some of the lesser Chicago colleges in the Loop. Depaul is in the heart of Chicago's North Side yuppieville. The U. of Washington in Seattle? But it doesn't seem like that long of a list, unfortunately. Rice and UCLA, where I went, are nicely located in pleasant inner suburbs, but the areas don't really have the pre-Modernist big city feel that the new generation wants. Westwood was the place to go in 1982, but it's sedate today.

The reason why urban and low crime don't go together for most colleges is something like this: the most prestigious colleges are old, rich, and have fancy campuses. But they all had to have their own cohesive, master-planned campuses, unlike European colleges, which tend to be scattered sites within a city. So, prestigious old American colleges are seldom located right downtown in the well-policed skyscraper districts, they are typically a few miles away, where they could obtain a big chunk of acreage a century or so ago for their campus. But the neighborhood is now a moldering inner city. USC is three miles south of downtown L.A. and the U. of Chicago is five miles south of the Loop.

NYU, the exception to this rule, gave up its West Bronx campus in 1973 for a hodgepodge of buildings around Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan, which almost wrecked the college at first, but now is a boon when crime is down 75% in New York.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"The Dictator"

From my review in Taki's Magazine:

The Dictator is Sacha Baron Cohen’s fourth and—surprisingly—funniest movie, a definite improvement over his biggest hit Borat. But critics, who raved in 2006 about how Borat exposed the anti-Semitism throbbing in Red State America’s heart, are now having second thoughts about Baron Cohen. As the Great Girls Whiteness Crisis of 2012 suggested, during the serious business of Obama’s reelection campaign anybody with a sense of humor is automatically suspect. ...  

Baron Cohen, a sterling British comedian who is a sort of elongated Peter Sellers, plays Admiral General Aladeen, strongman of the North African rogue state of Wadiya, which is trying to build a nuclear missile to menace Israel. 

What’s the common denominator behind Baron Cohen’s four movies, Ali G Indahouse, Borat, Bruno, and now The Dictator? This conundrum has baffled the best minds in the film criticism business. 

Find out by reading the whole thing there.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Creepy:" Was Martin-Zimmerman fistfight a gay bashing?

From the New York Times:

Martin Spoke of ‘Crazy and Creepy’ Man Following Him, Friend Says 

By Serge F. Kovaleski 

... In the sworn interview recorded on April 2, which runs more than 22 minutes, the unidentified 16-year-old said Mr. Martin described a man who was “crazy and creepy” and on the phone, watching him from a vehicle before he started to follow him on foot.

Keep in mind that the cops didn't get to talk to this unidentified girl until almost two weeks after attorney Benjamin Crump coached her through a talk with ABC News, and that there is no recording of this phone call (unless Echelon has it, of course). 

But, this new report, especially the word "creepy" (which might be, for all we know, attorney Crump's suggested replacement for Martin's even more explicit term for sexual deviance), fits in with my surmise back in March that Trayvon Martin might well have thought that George Zimmerman was following him for homosexual purposes. As I blogged then:

It's hardly implausible that Trayvon Martin might have worried that this strange man was following him in the dark for homoerotic purposes, and he might have mentioned that concern to his girlfriend over the phone.  

Of course, if he did, he probably wouldn't have used the term "homoerotic purposes."  

What if Trayvon used the (heavens) "3-letter F-word" to describe Zimmerman? What if he said to her, "I'm going to punch that f__ because I hate f___?"

Chaos in the courtroom!

The media originally pumped up this story under the mindset that, of course, a black child would be terrified of roving white racists like George Zimmerman. I mean, aren't we always looking for an example of an evil white male attacking unprovoked a 17-year-old black male for white racist reasons? Pulitzer! Movie adaptation! I'm sure Trayvon was just as Pulitzer-crazed as we are, so that must be what he was thinking, too, right?

But, what if it wasn't about race? It always made far more sense that if Trayvon was acting perfectly innocent and feeling perfectly innocent (i.e., not casing houses to break into and not looking to score drugs), then the youth was most likely experiencing fear and loathing of a man he suspected to be gay.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Long Live Life! (Death to Intelligence, Though)*

While Professor Jacqueline Stevens denounces laws of nationality and inheritance in the New York Times as "fantasies of immortality" intended to "alleviate anxieties about death" by reassuring doomed fools that families, nations, and racial groups "persist after one’s own life has ended," at least one American isn't discouraged by this atmosphere of nihilistic individualism that pervades our increasingly "liberaltarian" conventional wisdom. Desmond Hatchett is taking decisively proactive steps that ensure that some of his genetic patterns will help shape our nation's future long after he's gone. From Yahoo News:

Man who fathered 30 kids says he needs a break—on child support 

... a Tennessee man who has fathered 30 children is asking the courts for a break on child support. 

Desmond Hatchett, 33, of Knoxville has children with 11 different women, reports WREG-TV. 

The state already takes half his paycheck and divides it up, which doesn't amount to much when Hatchett is making only minimum wage. Some of the moms receive as little as $1.49 a month. The oldest child is 14 years old. 

Hatchett explains how he reached such a critical mass: He had four kids in the same year. Twice. 

Back in 2009 when Hatchett was in court to answer charges that many of the mothers were not receiving child support, he had 21 children. At the time, he said he was not going to father any more kids, but he ended up having nine more in the past three years.

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* In case you are wondering, the slogans "Long Live Death" and "Death to Intelligence" that I reference in the title of this and the next post down the page are attributed to the flamboyant Spanish soldier and intellectual Jose Millán-Astray.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer