There is no “authentic” culture
The New York Times publishes a lot of strange op-eds today. Yesterday I saw one titled “The Spectacle of Latinx Colorism”. The use of the term “Latinx” is a cue […]
Antiblackness and British South Asians – some cultures are to be judged, but others are not
BP-emeritus Zach posted this piece on Twitter, ‘I’m Bengali, my boyfriend was black – and my mum freaked out’. The piece highlights the reality that anti-black prejudice, in particular, is pervasive among South Asians (Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, etc.). I’m not super invested in the idea that this is due to colonialism, as I doubt it …
Do genes determine intelligence?
Both conservatives and liberals are ignoring the realities of biology
Do genes determine intelligence?
Both conservatives and liberals are ignoring the realities of biology
America has been good to immigrants and we should be honest about who we are
Since there has been rather persistent confusion about my Unherd piece I will clear up a few things. I am rather tired of talking about it now, as I “said my piece”, but sometimes things need to be done. First, for many months (years), friends of various backgrounds (brown and non-brown) have been speaking to …
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The genomic landscape of Brazil in 1950
A new whole-genome analysis out of Brazil has some interesting ancestry information. The preprint, Whole-genome sequencing of 1,171 elderly admixed individuals from the largest Latin American metropolis (São Paulo, Brazil): As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes the gold standard tool for studying population genomics and medical applications, data on diverse non-European and admixed individuals are still […]
The genomic landscape of Brazil in 1950
A new whole-genome analysis out of Brazil has some interesting ancestry information. The preprint, Whole-genome sequencing of 1,171 elderly admixed individuals from the largest Latin American metropolis (São Paulo, Brazil): As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes the gold standard tool for studying population genomics and medical applications, data on diverse non-European and admixed individuals are still […]
The white acting mother of a white presenting daughter
My Daughter Passes for White: She belongs in a way I never could. I’m comforted — and worried: I stand in the aisle of the school bus while the other seventh graders snicker and block me from sitting next to them, as they have for the entire school year. Taking my seat next to the …
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When you have a hammer everything is a nail
A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves An assault at a New Jersey high school football game had an unexpected cast of characters: Two 17-year-old boys accused of harassing four African-American middle schoolgirls — using racial slurs and urinating on one of the victims — are facing charges including bias intimidation and lewdness. The incident, …
Continue reading “When you have a hammer everything is a nail”
Rethinking privilege in the 21st-century
One of the strange admissions I will make is that I have not read Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. This is J. D. Vance’s book describing the various social and cultural forces which maintain deep pockets of poverty and dysfunction across much of greater Appalachia. Vance, though a Yale-educated …
Is the Asian American sex difference in outmarriage due to adoption of girls from East Asia?
I was revisiting the statistics on intermarriage rates of various Asian American ethnicities on the Asian Nation website drawn from the 2010 census. And something weird jumped out at me: the absolute number of 1.5 and 2nd generation “Asian American” women of some ethnicities is way higher than for others. For Korean Americans, it’s almost […]
Why There Will Not Be a Beige Future: Skin Color, Genetics, Race and Racism
There is more in heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in any human philosophy. This is why science is not philosophy. Those who map the skies, observe the…View Post
Skin color of South Asian groups
A massive new review, Shades of complexity: New perspectives on the evolution and genetic architecture of human skin, pointed me to another paper on South Asian skin color, The influences of genes, the environment, and social factors on the evolution of skin color diversity in India. I was very interested because South Asians have been … Continue reading “Skin color of South Asian groups”
Fading to white by 2050
When our current attorney general, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, was going through hearings there was an incident where he held his Eurasian granddaughter in his lap, and some people in the media made some off-color remarks. This was to be expected since Jeff Sessions is a white southern male of a certain age. And his […]
White people are not gods, they bleed
I’ve kept my mouth shut on this issue for a while, but it keeps popping up on my Twitter timeline. The comment above was directed at a piece in The Washington Post, White, and in the minority: She speaks English. Her co-workers don’t. Inside a rural chicken plant, whites struggle to fit in. You can […]
How Donald Trump is like Marxism and Psychoanalysis
Recently my Twitter and Facebook timelines have been littered with references to this story: Man, 92, Allegedly Beaten With a Brick & Told ‘Go Back to Mexico’ by a Mom in Front of Her Child. Terrible. It was posted on Twitter, and Facebook, as evidence that Donald Trump’s America was horrible. Some of the Twitter […]
Is everyone racist and I’m not aware?
The expulsion of two young black men from Starbucks is in the news, and people are sharing their experiences. To be honest I’m not surprised that this happened to young black men. What I am surprised by are South Asians who express their own fear of being seen to not buy anything (in part to … Continue reading “Is everyone racist and I’m not aware?”
What does Ajit Pai’s race have anything to do with net neutrality?
This comedian has some choice words for the FCC chairman pic.twitter.com/QKEalkZaWd — NowThis (@nowthisnews) November 25, 2017 Not surprise that Hari Kondabolu goes there. The problem with making everything about racial dynamics is that more white people in the United States might take a page from that. I don’t wish to encourage that. Also, believe … Continue reading “What does Ajit Pai’s race have anything to do with net neutrality?”
Race is not just skin color
“The southern Indians resemble the Ethiopians a good deal, and, are black of countenance, and their hair black also, only they are not as snub-nosed or so woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; but the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians in appearance.” – Arrian I might almost say that the same animals are to be … Continue reading “Race is not just skin color”
Reason is but a slave of passions as it always has been
David Hume stated that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” I don’t know about the ought part, that’s up for debate. But the is part seems empirically true. The reasons people give for this or that is often just a post hoc rationalization. To give a different twist to […]