MacDonald on Kaufmann

Update: Prozium and Vanishing American comment.

Kevin MacDonald reviews The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America at VDARE (longer version):

Kaufmann charts the decline of Anglo-Saxons and the rise of the Jews in all areas of the American elite, from university departments of political science to the federal civil service. “For twenty years, the de-WASP-ing of the ruling elite in America has proceeded at a breathtaking pace.” Kaufmann cites the important study of Lerner et al. (American Elites,Webbug 1996) showing that by the1990s there were “roughly the same proportion of WASPs and Jews at the elite levels of the federal civil service, and a greater proportion of Jewish elites among corporate lawyers.” Jews outnumbered Anglo-Saxons 58–21 among elites in television, 48 to 25 among “public interest” elites, and 40 to 21 among legal elites. The same study found that, “in stark contrast to the Jews, WASPs were not overrepresented within the ranks of the national elite.”

Given that Jews constituted less than 3% of the population, these are very high overrepresentations indeed. In contrast, White Protestants became underrepresented in corporate elites by the 1980s, and there was a steady decline in their political power in Congress. [. . .]

A final lapse in Kaufmann’s argument: he never mentions coercion and the penalties that are imposed on people who dissent from the elite cosmopolitan consensus. The fact is, Whites who violate these strictures are severely censured — a phenomenon with which I have considerable personal experience.

Kaufmann presents the views of elite Whites who are cooperating in the demise of their own people as nothing more than the enlightened opinions of an intellectual and moral elite. But it is far more than that. Since the 1960s, Whites who depart from the consensus of cosmopolitanism have been penalized in a wide variety of ways — from lack of access to the mainstream media, to firing from their jobs, to social opprobrium. Conversely, those who collaborate are rewarded. This revolution is neither peaceful nor bloodless.

[. . .] although the cosmopolitan revolution took advantage of pre-existing Anglo-Saxon tendencies toward individualism, in the end the institutional structure that is being pursued after attaining power is profoundly anti-individualist. America remains somewhat of a laggard in these trends because of the First Amendment, but other Western societies, lacking such formal declarations of individual rights, have succumbed to a stifling political correctness that essentially legislates the triumph of cosmopolitanism - and Western suicide.

If a robust Darwinian intellectual elite had remained in place despite the assaults of the Boasians, the Frankfurt School, the Marxists, and the New York Intellectuals, the cosmopolitan revolution never would have occurred. The Anglo-Saxon movement of ethnic defense culminating in the immigration law of 1924 would have become institutionalized. A robust, sophisticated Darwinian culture would have provided a powerful argument for ethnic defense. Critically, such a defense would have emphasized creating a culture in which individualism was seen as a valuable Anglo-Saxon ethnic trait — as was the case during the 18th and 19th centuries. Immigration policy would have been carefully formulated to ensure that immigrants were similar to the founding stock and to ensure the continued dominance of peoples prone to individualism — just as American immigration policy was in fact crafted until 1965. This ethnic defense would have been energized by the sociobiological revolution of the 1970s and the firm mathematical grounding for the understanding that all peoples have ethnic genetic interests.

Instead, in cosmopolitan post-America, even the sociobiological revolution has been stripped of its most dangerous and powerful ideas. As Frank Salter has shown, the revolution in population genetics of the1970s demonstrated very clearly that people controlling a piece of land have a huge genetic interest in preserving their control--but this finding has been suppressed and misinterpreted by people at the top of the academic hierarchy.

This suppression must continue--because cosmopolitanism has a hopelessly shaky intellectual basis. Built on theories that were motivated far more by ethnic interests of the rising elite of Jewish intellectuals than by a respect for scientific truth, cosmopolitanism has no choice but to secure its future by coercion.

And for the Anglo-Saxon Americans--indeed all Christian-stock Americans--this substitution of cultures is a disaster of cataclysmic proportions.

More on "Old Americans"

I came across a 1917 publication (full text freely available at Google Books) in which Hrdlicka outlines his rationale for studying "Old Americans" and some of his preliminary findings. More complete findings were published in 1925 in The Old Americans.

The Old White Americans
Ales ̆ Hrdlic̆ka.
Published: Washington DC : [s.n.], 1917.
Series: Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists ; 19th, December, 1915.

Introduction

FROM early in the seventeenth century the Temperate Zone of North America has been receiving successive contingents of the white race who have settled on the available land and multiplied and spread, thus forming the American nation. These newcomers were derived from Europeans of various physical types, ranging from the prevalently tall, blond, blue-eyed dolichocephalic Northmen to the mostly dark-haired, brown-eyed, medium tall, and brachy- cephalic Celts; and according to all indications they were, as a lot, physically, and especially mentally, above the average of their parent groups, for both the pioneers, whose ideals were religious and political liberty, and who would brave the dangers of the long sea journey with the hard conditions of life in the New World, as well as those commonly classed as adventurers, can well be assumed to have been on the whole men with a surplus of mental power and physical energy.

The men, and the women who accompanied them and who were probably of similar good material, encountered in large measure new environments and lived a new life. They reared their families under these changed influences, and the children accommodated themselves completely to the new conditions—they became Americans. Then followed intermarriage, both within and without the various contingents that reached this land, and the original heterogeneity slowly gave place to a blend which constituted the body of the rising nation.

How successful this new conglomerate proved to be, morally, intellectually, in defense and otherwise, are matters of history. It is certain that there was no loss of the original endowments; and also that there resulted in the course of time a considerable approach to unification of all those characteristics of mentality and behavior which are most readily subject to adaptation. It may be safely said that so far as outward manifestations are concerned, the descendants of the Old Americans constitute today a fairly easily separable strain of white people, which is no longer English, Dutch, French, or Irish, but American.

In view of these interesting facts anthropology for a long time has been confronted with the question, Have there also taken place in the descendants of the Old Americans physical changes which produced, or tend to produce, a separate sub-type of the white people?

[. . .] Possibly even in some important respects the type has already passed its zenith, as would seem to be indicated by the lowering birth-rate among its latest representatives, a rate now hardly sufficient in many districts to keep up the numbers of the Old Americans. And how will the type, if it exists, be affected by the growing mixture with whites of recent immigration? Would it be well to try to keep it pure—have the Old Americans marry only among Old Americans—or is new blood desirable?

It is well known that such nationalities as the French, English, German, and others possess, notwithstanding their mixed and relatively recent origin, distinctive physiognomy and other physical features by which in a large majority of cases it is possible to segregate both men and women who belong to them, and the claim has often been made that much the same is true in relation to the Americans. Writers and illustrators have made frequent efforts to define this hypothetical American type, and have even arrived at certain crystalized conceptions, such as "Uncle Sam", the "American girl", and the "American young man", though inconsistently leaving out the remaining periods of life. The Southerner in particular, and the Yankee, as well as the Westerner, a're believed each to have distinctive characteristics by which in the majority of cases they can readily be identified; yet at the same time these "types" are supposed to differ from each other so that any one of wider experience can readily distinguish them. Writers who attempt to define the American physical type do so generally without entering into embarrassing particulars; and the artist either follows certain famous or admired individual types or creates abstract conceptions of what he would have as Americans. Suggestions have even been advanced by some, who might have been expected to know better, that the American type is approaching that of the American Indian, the idea being presumably that the American environment produced the Indian and that it would in due time shape other peoples here to the same mold. Finally, certain scientific reports on the physical changes of Jewish and Italian children in this country appeared to show that the type of the immigrant changed with remarkable rapidity.1 Were this true, the formation of a new, more homogeneous American type ought to be a question of but a few generations, and the type should be already well advanced toward maturity among the descendants of the oldest American families. Unfortunately, however, although under good direction, the examinations on which these results were based were made by college students and not by trained anthropologists; the grandparents and parents of the supposedly changing children were not examined, nor were the children themselves studied at different periods of development; and no data have been given on the important and often significant variations in the children of individual families; so that it is not certain whether the differences the Jewish and Italian children seemed to show from the general type of their nationality or group were not perhaps fortuitous, or hereditary, and thus of pre-American origin.

The above uncertainties can properly be met in but one way, and that by anthropological observations on normal living representatives of the oldest American families, carried on under favorable circumstances and with the greatest possible care and precision. Such a test the writer decided to apply, so far as it might be in his power; and with this view arrangements were made, in the fall of 1912, in the anthropological laboratory of the United States National Museum, for a series of investigations which should extend to at least 300 healthy adult descendants from old American families. Since that time, save for interruptions due to other demands on the writer's time, the work has been progressing slowly. The number of subjects stated, 150 men and 150 women, is regarded by the writer as the smallest number which in a fairly uniform group would cover the more important individual variations in the group and thus give a reasonably clear notion of the type. To make certain that only those would be included in the series whose families have long been subject to the effects of the American environment, it was decided to examine only those who on both sides were American for at least three generations; in other words, those whose parents and all grandparents were born in this country. As to locality, Washington was recognized as the most suitable for the study, for among those settled here as well as among visitors there are Americans from all parts of the country. The measurements and tests, finally, were to be sufficiently thorough to show clearly the physical type of those examined, but involve only a minimum of inconvenience to the subject and a minimum of exposure of the body. To avoid including those not fully developed and the decrepit, the age limits were set at from 24 to 60 years; otherwise there was no selection. [. . .]

As a total result of the efforts made there have been examined to date 140 men and 135 women, including representatives of some of the very oldest and best American families. The conditions of the examination have been ideal: a well-lighted laboratory, the best of instruments tested by standards, no haste, and every subject dealt with with all due care by the writer himself; the possibilities of error, therefore, it is safe to say, have been reduced to the minimum, and the data obtained may claim more than ordinary confidence. They are presented here in preliminary form, yet even thus they are of considerable interest.

The present report will deal, for the sake of easier presentation of the results, with the first 100 men and 100 women who were measured. The data will be given in brief form only, detailed discussion being reserved until the work shall have been completed. The results will doubtless be modified somewhat by the additional number of subjects to be examined, yet on the whole the changes can not be expected to be very material and the data as here presented may already be regarded as fairly definite. [. . .]

Besides the individual variations, certain marked differences will be seen to appear in both the physical and the physiological status between the two sexes. On the whole, it may be said that the male representatives of the Old Americans are excellent specimens of humanity, and there are also physically splendid individual women; but a certain proportion of the latter sex shows a physical development, especially in the upper part of the body, which leaves more or less to be desired. It seems, however, that this is largely a result of long-lasting defects in the proper rearing of female children from the physical standpoint rather than a matter of heredity, and that conditions in this respect are much improved in the present generation of young women. [. . .]

The head among the Old Americans is in many cases remarkable for its good development. This is particularly noticeable in the males, as will be seen from the following tables, especially from that showing the cephalic module, or mean diameter of the head. It will be interesting to note in this connection that among twelve groups of male immigrants from Europe measured within the last two years at Ellis Island under the writer's direction, and comprising together more than 500 individuals, not one group equals in this respect the Americans, the closest approach being noted in the Irish, English, Poles, and North Italians. [. . .]

Conclusions

The study of the actual representatives of the oldest American families has proved throughout one of absorbing interest. The results, however, may prove quite sober and disappointing to those inclined to expect sensational revelations. Nevertheless, they will be valuable both to science and in application. They show quite clearly that no definite, already formed, strictly American type or
sub-type of the whites as yet exists; and as intermarriages of the Old Americans with more recent elements in this country are rapidly becoming more numerous there seems no chance for the formation of something like a separate American type of population, at least within many centuries.

The examinations have shown in many instances a remarkable persistence of heredity characters and their strong individuality, as we may express it, with slow, irregular, unwilling yielding to a complete and permanent fusion with other characters of the same class.

Yet there are indications that some progress has been made toward such a fusion, and that if the Old American families could be kept in full vitality and free from intermixture with newer elements for several more centuries, there would eventually come into existence in this country a real separate sub-type of white people, which would possess numerous if not great distinctive characteristics from the European whites and would be strictly American.

Some anatomical trivia

"The anthropoid pelvis is common in men and occurs in 20%- 30% of white women and nearly 50% of black women." [Source]

"The anthropoid pelvis is present in about 85% of black women and 20% of white women." [Source]

"The anthropoid pelvis receives its name from its resemblance to the pelves of monkeys and apes" [Source]

Intermarriage and Social Distance

[Intermarriage and Social Distance Among U.S. Immigrants at the Turn of the Century
Author(s): Deanna L. Pagnini and S. Philip Morgan
Source: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Sep., 1990), pp. 405-432 Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781107]

The pattern of assortative mating among European immigrants and native whites is examined by ethnicity and generation using a na­tional sample drawn from the 1910 census manuscripts and a sam­ple of marriages registered in New York City between 1908 and 1912. The pattern of assortative mating is virtually identical in the two data sets. Endogamy was strong for all groups examined, but was castelike for the "new" ethnics from eastern and southern Europe. Marriages between "old" and "new" ethnics were espe­cially rare. The pattern of ethnic intermarriage was nearly identical for men and women. [. . .] While the existence of ethnic and generational endogamy at the turn of the century is not surprising, its strength has not previously been estimated with appropriate statistical tech­niques. Further, these techniques reveal more detailed features of the pattern of assortative mating that are not well known and pro-vide important facts for theories of immigrant assimilation and as­sortative mating.

[. . .] This im­migrant flow included a number of what historians termed "new" immi­grants. These included immigrants from southern and eastern Europe: the Italians, Russians, Poles, and Jews, who had not emigrated in large numbers before the 1880s. These groups were very different from the "old" British, Irish, Scandinavian, and German immigrants in appear­ance, customs, and demographic characteristics (Lieberson 1980; Higham 1963; Abrams 1973; Kraut 1982). [. . .] The groups most inclined to congregate in the cities were the Jews, Irish, Poles, and Italians. [. . .]

While physical distance was a factor affecting mate selection, social distance was important also. The ability to speak English, which allowed for interaction with those of other ethnic groups and with natives, was an important aspect of social distance. The new immigrants were the least likely to speak English (table 2, col. 2), especially the Poles and Italians (see Cheney 1988).4

Further social distance arose from the xenophobia of the native whites. Native whites perceived the new immigrants as a threat to the old Ameri­can order and as a possible contamination of the white American race. While each immigrant group had its own stereotyped reputation, the new immigrants were always perceived as the worst. The new immigrants were seen as inferior in looks, morals, and intellect (see Hall 1915, pp. 69-70). According to a sociologist at the time, that the new immigrants "are morally below the races of Northern Europe is as certain as any social fact" (Ross 1915, p. 74). [. . .]

Xenophobia, coupled with the high birthrate of the new immigrants and the low fertility of the native whites, led to the fear that the American race was being diluted by "unworthy bloods." Many believed that "the peoples of the Mediterranean region were biologically different than those of northern and western Europe and that the differences sprang from an inferiority of blood and could be observed in certain social characteris­tics" (Handlin 1957, p. 77). Ross stated that "it is fair to say that the blood now injected into the veins of our people is sub-common" (1915, p. 73). Those concerned over the intermingling of blood clearly opposed inter-marriages. The fact that some immigrants were seen as providing good genetic stock while others were undesirable provided ideological support for a range of sanctions against intermarriage. Resistance to intermar­riage may have come from within the immigrant groups as well, as the older generation tried to maintain the traditional culture.

[. . .]

Net of the social distance parameter between old and new immigrants, an examination of residuals revealed several additional areas of special affinity. First, as mentioned previously, there was a much greater ten­dency for British and Irish immigrants to marry each other than other-wise implied by model 2 (such a match was over five times more likely than one with other old immigrant groups [. . .]

The next pattern of attraction crosses the new-old ethnic boundary: Germans were much more likely to marry Poles than any other new immigrant group. Furthermore, Germans were the only old immigrant group especially likely to marry Poles. If national data are used, German-Pole marriages were 5.5 times more likely than any other new-old immi­grant match. The greater ethnic detail in the NYC data allows us to say that disproportionate numbers of these German-Pole marriages are with Poles from Austria-Poland, not those from Russia-Poland.

The third pattern of attraction is between the central and eastern Euro­pean Jews. This is the strongest pattern of intermarriage by far. In the national data, eastern-central European Jewish intermarriages are close to 500 times more likely than any other Jewish intermarriage. In the NYC data the effect is roughly two times larger-Jews from central and eastern Europe were over 900 times more likely to marry among themselves than to marry other groups. Thus, while there was social distance between these two groups of Jews, marriages with other Jews were clearly more common than marriages with non-Jews. Attitudinal data presented by Bogardus (1928, table 4) from native-born Jews are consistent with the actual marital data we present. He demonstrated that Jews clearly pre­ferred to marry other Jews.

The final two zones of attraction also involve Jews but are different in two respects. First, they are only fitted to the NYC data; there were too few Jewish intermarriages in the national data to detect these patterns. Second, these are the only asymmetric effects fitted in either table. To explain, a Jewish husband (from central or eastern Europe) was less likely to marry an Italian or Polish woman than a woman from the old immi­grant stock (i.e., a British, Scandinavian, or German woman). Net of other effects, Jewish men were only about .3 times as likely to marry these non-Jewish new ethnics as those from the old ethnic groups. The result is that the old-new social distance effect is partly neutralized for Jewish men. Again, such preferences for old stock groups, following the prefer­ence for Jewish intermarriage, can be seen in Bogardus's (1928, table 4) attitudinal data. For "Americans," new immigrants, and especially Jews, were the least-desirable spouses. For Jews, the old immigrants were the first preference as intermarriage partners after other Jews. The NYC data suggest these differential social distances are canceling one another out. We are unable to explain why this effect is asymmetric, holding only for Jewish men. But perhaps successful Jewish men were able to marry "up" in status while Jewish women were less able to do so. The final effect operates in the opposite direction for eastern European Jewish women. They were three times more likely to marry Italian men than Polish men (or, net of other effects, men from old immigrant groups). Perhaps Jewish women, unable to marry "up" as Jewish men did, "settled" for Italian men who far outnumbered the available Italian women. Detailed tabula­tions (using the NYC data) not shown here reveal that these Jewish-Italian marriages most often involved men from southern Italy and Jew­ish women from Hungary and Russia. Both of these asymmetric effects operate regardless of spouses' generations.

[. . .] the greater endogamy for new (compared to old) immigrants that we document still persists, although endogamy is much less extreme for all white ethnics now. In the contemporary period, Lieberson and Waters (1988) partly attribute this greater endogamy of the new immigrants to less intermarriage in the past, giving these groups less highly mixed an­cestral categories. Our paper shows which groups intermarried at the turn of the century, yielding more mixed groups. An important difference in the historical and the contemporary pattern lies in the strength of the old-new distinction. Marriages across this old-new distinction were quite rare in 1910. Historians of the turn of the century, and writers at the time, described the discrimination, differences, and social distance between the old and new immigrant groups. In large measure, our analysis of data on assortative mating fits well these characterizations of intergroup rela­tions. This old-new distinction is much less visible now (see Alba and Golden 1986), a change that reflects the socioeconomic integration of these groups (see Neidert and Farley 1985; Lieberson and Waters 1988).

[. . .] Lieberson and Waters show that intermarriage rates between two groups are higher when the proportion of Catholics in the two groups is similar. This result implies that ethnic intermarriages are frequently religiously endogamous. We found this to be true at the turn of the century for Jews, and possibly for Poles and Italians. But we found no heightened tendency for Irish to marry Poles and Italians-a straightfor­ward expectation if religion played a dominant role in assortative mating. Other work (see Peach 1980a, 1981) has challenged the claim that there was a Catholic melting pot including Irish, Poles, and Italians. The ab­sence of any special affinity between these groups illustrates the over­whelming power of nonreligious factors reflected in the old versus new distinction. These factors included (1) high levels of residential and occu­pational segregation, (2) period of immigration and the selectivity operat­ing in different immigrant streams, which produced ethnic socioeconomic differentials, and (3) great social distance between groups supported by an ideology heavily laced with xenophobia.

"WASPs" vs. Jews, pt. 6

Beckert recognizes that one of the most significant components of the New York bourgeoisie's self-identity was anti-Semitism. By the 1890s, upper-class anti-Semites had driven Jewish members out of the Union Club, closed Saratoga hotels to Jews, and banned Jewish organizations from the Social Register. Beckert, however, downplays this prejudice. He emphasizes that Christians and Jews interacted in a range of institutions extending from the Democratic and Republican parties to the Hardware Club. The Chamber of Commerce increasingly welcomed Jews as well as other Christian immigrants. At the Philharmonic, the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Steinways, Seligmans, and Rothschilds all rubbed shoulders while listening to Mozart and Beethoven. Anti-Semitism "captured the imagination of bourgeois New Yorkers," argues Beckert, but those religious identities "did not overwhelm class identities" (pp. 265-69).

But does listening to classical music in the same orchestral hall signify a shared social identity? In many ways- participation in party politics, the creation of trade associations, the increasing hostility to organized labor, the construction of armories-elite New Yorkers of all religious and ethnic persuasions shared common economic interests and interacted within certain circles. But consensus over one's enemies, be they unions, socialists, or single-taxers, does not a culture make. Some will argue that these examples reflect convenient and temporary coalitions. The imposition of anti-Semitic quotas at elite northeastern universities in the early twentieth century and the persistence of ethnically defined law firms, banking houses, and accounting institutions well into the century more accurately reflect the workplace division and chauvinism among the New York bourgeoisie. Most conspicuous was what many demographers and students of ethnic identity consider the best measurement of assimilation or the breakdown of ethno-religious identity-intermarriage. The absence of significant levels of intermarriage between Jews and Christians during this time illustrates the persistence of identities determined by social and religious factors rather than those found in the workplace.

[Review: Making an American Upper Class
Author(s): Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Reviewed work(s): The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 by Sven Beckert
Source: Reviews in American History, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 279-287]

Note, though, that even during the era of "anti-Semitic quotas" Jews were overrepresented at Harvard, and the restrictions were driven by quite rational calculations.

As the nation moved to limit the number of Jewish immigrants, the Big Three confronted their own "Jewish problem." Harvard, just minutes away from the nation's fourth-largest concentration of Jews and long considered more open and democratic than Yale and Princeton, was particularly vulnerable to a "Jewish invasion." By 1918, when the Association of New England Deans first discussed this issue, Harvard's freshman class was 20 percent Jewish. This was by far the highest proportion in the Big Three: three times the percentage at Yale, six times that at Princeton.

A vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, President A. Lawrence Lowell was no friend of the Jews. But even had he been free of anti-Semitic sentiments, he would have had reason to worry about the consequences for Harvard of its growing Jewish presence on campus. For at a certain point, the arrival of the Jews would mean the departure of the sons of the Protestant upper and upper-middle classes whom Harvard most wished to enroll. Far more than an expression of cultural prejudice, Harvard's preference for these young men -- which it shared with all the other leading private colleges -- was quite rational from an organization perspective. After all, who but the sons of the Protestant elite would provide the "paying customers," the gentlemanly atmosphere, and the future leaders in business and government -- not to mention generous donors -- on which Harvard's claims to preeminence ultimately rested?

For anyone who doubted the existence of a "tipping point" of Jewish enrollment beyond which the WASP elite would abandon a college, Columbia served as a sobering example. [. . .] a visitor to Princeton reported sentiment among the students that the Jews had already ruined Columbia. [. . .]

By the time Columbia finally moved vigorously to repel the "Jewish invasion," it was far too late. Though the proportion of Jews, which had reached perhaps 40 percent, was reduced to 22 percent by 1921, the sons of the Protestant elite had abandoned Morningside Heights, never to return. In the 1920s, just 4 percent enrolled at Columbia; meanwhile, 84 percent matriculated at the Big Three. A contemporary observer, writing under the veil of anonymity, captured what had happened to the Columbia campus:

As one casually observes the men of the College, one is struck by the complete lack of undergraduate atmosphere about any group of them. Singularly absent is the grace, the swagger, the tall attractive sleekness which, if it does not always dominate the usual college group, at least always touches it importantly. These men, one senses at once, are not of the highest caste, nor have they among them an influential sprinkling of members of the highest caste for their models . . . Seen quickly, there is even a certain grubbiness about them. One somehow expects them all to be Jews, for it is usually the Jewish members of such a group who lower the communal easy handsomeness.

Lowell explained that his main concern was that the sheer number of Jews would cause the flight of the Protestant elite and thereby "ruin the college":

The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate, not because the Jews it admits are of bad character, but because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also. This happened to a friend of mine with a school in New York, who thought, on principle, that he ought to admit Jews, but who discovered in a few years that he had no school at all. A similar thing has happened in the case of Columbia College; [. . .]

[Jerome Karabel. The Chosen.]

Muscular strength, appearance, and race

A few more notes from aborted replies to Guy White:

In testing the muscular strength in the south African natives the writer was somewhat surprised to find that these negroes gave rather smaller figures than one could expect with regard to their generally fine physiques.
[. . .]
the average strength is 29.5 for the right hand in men and 23.7 for the same hand in women. These figures, so far as the males are concerned, are decidedly behind those of whites. Hrdlicka,13 in normal “ Old Americans,” using same type of instrument and same method, found the pressure strength in the right hand to average 41.8 kg. in the males and 23.2 kg. in the females.
[. . .]
These differences are noteworthy. [. . .] Every student carefully observing the everyday life of intelligent people will surely have noticed the fact that their physical output of work is often remarkable even with relatively poor muscles. This and observations such as those above render it probable that, other factors being equal, the more intelligence there is, the more physical as well as other efficiency.
[V. Suk. Anthropological and physiological observations on the negroes of Natal and Zululand. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 10 Issue 1, Pages 31 - 64 1927]

Strength has a large CNS component.

The central nervous system (CNS) is of paramount importance in the exertion and development of muscular strength. Muscular strength is determined not only by the quantity of involved muscle mass but also by the extent to which individual fibers in a muscle are activated (by intramuscular coordination).
[Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer. Science and practice of strength training.]

There's a fair amount of evidence whites average greater strength per unit of muscular cross section than blacks.

Among young men in the U.S., blacks are certainly leaner on average than whites. They probably average slightly greater muscle mass -- though, I don't know whether or not the difference would remain after controlling for higher levels of physical activity and greater energy intake in black males. The differences in muscle mass are also not of sufficient magnitude to explain the awe in which certain [1] internet posters hold black male physiques.

[1] Usually, it seems, "ethnic" urban types, as I suspect guywhite is. See also Peter "ironrailsandweights" Rosa, Steve Sailer, and too many Jews to count.

This goes out to agnostic

Marius Zaromskis winning the Dream Welterweight Grand Prix earlier this week.

(CTRL+F "Finland" here for context. Zaromskis is Lithuanian, which I figure is close enough. For anyone wondering, "agnostic" is a gnxp poster of no consequence, but his delusional thinking and hilariously off-base theories sometimes make for unintended entertainment.)

Race and physical activity

Guy White asserts blacks are "physically superior", his proof being:

Their physical ability is obvious when looking at the physique of the average black and white man. Look at all those black men whose bodies look like Greek gods without spending any time in the gym. You can’t argue that they commit more crime due to higher testosterone without admitting that testosterone also makes them stronger.

I was going to reply at Guy White's blog around the time he first posted this, but I must have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of bizarre assumptions underlying the comment and never completed a response.

For the moment, I'll just point out that more black than white young men in the U.S. report engaging in weight-lifting (44.5% vs. 30.7%) and calisthenics (41.9% vs. 28.9%) [1]. How Guy White came to the opposite conclusion, I have no idea. Perhaps he was applying his brand of "logic" and generalizing from something like Herschel Walker's infamous claim of having never lifted weights.

[1] Dowda et al. Correlates of physical activity among U.S. Young adults, 18 to 30 years of age, from NHANES III. Annals of Behavioral Medicine Volume 26, Number 1 / August, 2003

"Anglo-Saxon Apartheid" theory in Harvard Magazine

For later: "Who Killed the Men of England?"

Speciation

"Study catches 2 bird populations as they split into separate species (7/17/2009)":

The question of whether these two populations are on the road to speciation comes down to sex. When two populations stop exchanging genes-that is, stop mating with each other-then they can be considered distinct species. Uy and his team wanted to see if these flycatchers were heading in that direction. [. . .]

That males from the two populations no longer view the other as a reproductive threat is a good indication that not much mating is taking place between the two groups. Their evolutionary paths are diverging, Uy and his team found-all because of a change in plumage.

The researchers then went a step further. They looked into the birds' genomes to see what genes may have played a role in the different plumage pattern. They found only one: the melanocortin-1 receptor gene (MC1R). The MC1R gene regulates the production of melanin, which gives skin and feathers their color. The all-black and chestnut-bellied birds had different versions of the MC1R gene, which gave rise to the plumage change.

That change appears to have been enough to create a reproductive barrier for flycatchers. Not every species is so picky, so a color change doesn't always drive speciation. Nonetheless, these results suggest that it can take as little as one gene, in the right spot in the genome, to cause a fork in the evolutionary road.

Richard Dawkins (in The Ancestor's Tale):

As I said, zoologists define a species as a group whose members breed with each other under natural conditions — in the wild. It doesn't count if they breed only in zoos, or if we have to use artificial insemination, or if we fool female grasshoppers with caged singing males, even if the offspring produced are fertile. We might dispute whether this is the only sensible definition of a species, but it is the definition that most biologists use.

If we wished to apply this definition to humans, however, there is a peculiar difficulty: how do we distinguish natural from artificial conditions for interbreeding? It is not an easy question to answer. Today, all surviving humans are firmly placed in the same species, and they do indeed happily interbreed. But the criterion, remember, is whether they choose to do so under natural conditions. What are natural conditions for humans? Do they even exist any more? If, in ancestral times, as sometimes today, two neighbouring tribes had different religions, different languages, different dietary customs, different cultural traditions and were continually at war with one another; if the members of each tribe were brought up to believe that the other tribe were subhuman 'animals' (as happens even today); if their religions taught that would-be sexual partners from the other tribe were taboo, 'shiksas', or unclean, there could well be no interbreeding between them. Yet anatomically, and genetically, they could be completely the same as each other. And it would take only a change of religious or other customs to break down the barriers to interbreeding. How, then, might somebody try to apply the interbreeding criterion to humans? If Chorthippus brunneus and C. biguttulus are separated as two distinct species of grasshoppers because they prefer not to interbreed although they physically could, might humans, at least in ancient times of tribal exclusivity, once have been separable in the same kind of way? Chorthippus brunneus and C. biguttulus, remember, in all detectable respects except their song, are identical, and when they are (easily) persuaded to hybridise their offspring are fully fertile.

"Old Americans" of the South

Old Americans of the south. Anthropometry of college women of southern birth and ancestry
HARLEY N. GOULD
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, VOL. XXI, NO. 1
JANUAEY-MARCH 1936

The anthropology of the ‘Old Americans’ is a subject which has captured the interest of laymen as well as scientists since the publication of Doctor Hrdlicka’s classic work under that title in 1925. More subsequent studies might and should have been made to record the characteristics of this people, before it loses its newly acquired identity. Whatever the characteristics of the Americans of the future, their actual genetic connection with the settlers of the United States probably will be very tenuous. [. . .]

Several years ago Doctor Hrdlicka suggested to the writer the desirability of an anthropometric study of people whose ancestry was not only ‘Old American’ but ‘Old Southern.’ The subjects readily available were women of Newcomb College of Tulane University, New Orleans, and mostly of rather local origin. Casual inquiry disclosed that about one in three of them had all southern-born ancestry to the grandparents, at least. During 3 years, 200 such ‘Old Southern’ women were measured and those measurements constitute the basis of this paper. [. . .]

The results of the study have been such as to strengthen one’s confidence in the conservatism of those body characters commonly regarded as non-adaptive. Southern ‘ Old American’ women do not seem to diverge, anthropometrically, from other women of similar pioneer stock, except in those few characters which may be interpreted as individual adaptations. [. . .]

It was possible to assemble a group of seventy-one whose ancestors practically all appeared to have come from the British Isles. As will be shown, these people have a physique of significantly larger average than the rest. The amount of French ancestry in the 200 subjects was less than would have been expected in Louisiana, and undoubtedly less than if the sample had been drawn from the convents or from the colleges in the interior of the state. Only three out of the 200 appeared to be of practically pure French origin.

A group of forty-six young women who had, collectively, about 41 per cent of French ancestry was isolated and will be discussed, although it may be said here that the effect of French admixture, other than a lowering of stature, is not clearly demonstrated. [. . .]

The British subgroup averages larger in almost all measurements
than the entire 200 of whom they are a part. The
French-mixed group, on the contrary, averages smaller in
almost all dimensions. [. . .]

It was a surprise not to find more differences in the pigmentation of hair and eyes in these two samples, particularly since many of the old Louisiana French immigrants appear to have been of the southern or Gascon type. There was a somewhat smaller percentage of light eyes among the French mixtures (17.4 per cent as contrasted with 25.4 per cent in the British), but the proportion of brown eyes was almost the same (36.6 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively, in the British and part French). There were more ‘mixed’ eyes in the French mixtures (45.6 per cent) than in the British (38 per cent). The hair color ran a little darker in the French mixtures, and there was more spread of distribution through light brown, medium brown and dark brown, while in the British there was more concentration in the medium brown class. There was only one decided blonde among the French mixtures but she, although a mixture of French and Spanish with only one north European great-grandparent (Irish), had extremely light yellow hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, and light gray eyes with only a mere trace of brown; combined with rather full lips and a large, convex, Spanish nose.

To summarize, the characteristics of these two groups, the ‘British’ and the partly French, are just about what one would expect, except, perhaps, as regards pigmentation. The British are the tallest and largest skeletally, but are not relatively heavier. [. . .]

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

The outstanding result of this regional study of ‘Old American’ women is the evidence of close correspondence, in average physical measurements and morphological characters, with similar groups from other parts of the United States. There is very little suggestion of a development, through geographical isolation, of a ‘ southern type ’ of American woman. It is significant that the closest approximation of the different means is found where the location of points for measurement is most easily determined; while some of the wider divergences are in those dimensions wherein there might reasonably be expected more individual differences in the anthropometric technique of various observers; or in those which might be affected by environmental influences such as climate and physical activity. The group measured appears to have a more slender build, a slightly more dolicocephalic cranium, smaller lower face, flatter chest, and more slender hand, than the average ‘Old American’ woman of college age. There may possibly be a higher percentage of dark-eyed women among Old Americans of the Gulf Coast region than in other localities, judging from our sample, but there is no good evidence of any particular difference in hair color.


Stature in Old Virginians
ROBERT BENNETT BEAN
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, VOL. XV. NO. 3
APBIL-JUNE, 1931

This study was undertaken to assist in establishing standards for future comparison, at all ages and in both sexes, of a stock that has been in one environment for at least three generations. It is to supplement Hrdlicka’s studies on the Old Americans. Physical examinations and measurements have been made during the past twelve years on more than 3000 Old Virginians of both sexes between the ages of six and sixty years, whose families have been residents of Virginia for two generations or more, many since the earliest settlements. [. . .]

4. Conclusions

General. The Old Virginians and other Old Americans are the tallest great group of peoples in the world.

The Old Virginians of the mountain section of the state, the western part, including the Valley of Virginia and the Piedmont section, are taller than those from the Tidewater section on the east. This may be partly the result of environment, but is also partly the pioneer British, and especially the Scots, who make up the larger part of the population in the western portion of the state.

The planters of Albemarle county and other suburban residents are taller than the urban population. The Old Virginian students at the University of Virginia are taller than the drafted men or volunteers of the army in the World War, also Old Virginians. [. . .]

Throughout the world the peoples of the temperate zone are generally taller than those of the arctic or tropic zones and those of the interior are taller than those of the sea coast. [. . .]

"WASPs", Jews, and McCarthy

Kevin MacDonald has a new article up about Joseph McCarthy and the Jews, which primarily deals with Jewish opposition to McCarthy while acknowledging:

[. . . ] Joe McCarthy surrounded himself with Jews and did his best to ingratiate himself with the Jewish community [. . .]

Sokolsky also set up a meeting of McCarthy with the ADL. There are varying accounts of this meeting, but nothing positive came of it. One observer claimed that a drunken McCarthy stated “you just write what my credo ought to be and I’ll sign it” (p. 108), but the offer was turned down by the ADL representatives. [. . .]

The fact that McCarthy attempted to gain Jewish allies and did his best not to offend the Jews shows quite clearly that Jews were very powerful in 1950s America. [. . .]

The general climate created by McCarthy delayed the triumph of these policies but could not ultimately hold them back. At least part of the problem was that McCarthy was not concerned with challenging the policy positions of the Jewish organizations related to civil rights, immigration, and the proposition nation, but focused exclusively on containing the internal security threat. The nexus among elites in politics, the intellectual world and the media was not threatened by McCarthy or his allies in the moribund conservative movement of the period, and indeed this elite ultimately caused his downfall.

This hostile elite — hostile to the traditional people and culture of America — is still in place. But unlike  McCarthy (and with the benefit of 50 years of hindsight), we now realize that the Jewish involvement in the transformations of recent decades must be discussed openly and honestly — even if mainstream conservatives are still terrified at the prospect.

Seymour Martin Lipset pointed out in 1955:

This defense of the minority groups and the under  privileged, and the attack on the upper class has characterized the speeches and writings of McCarthy and his  followers. McCarthy differs considerably from earlier  extreme right-wing anti-Communists. He is rarely interested in investigating or publicizing the activities of  men who belong to minority ethnic groups. The image  of the Communist which recurs time and again in his  speeches is one of an easterner, usually of Anglo-Saxon  Episcopalian origins, who has been educated in schools  such as Groton and Harvard. [. . .]

Over and over again runs the theme, the common men  in America have been victimized by members of the upper  classes, by the prosperous, by the wealthy, by the well  educated. When specific names are given, these are almost  invariably individuals whose names and backgrounds per  mit them to be identified with symbols of high status. As  McCarthy could attack other individuals and groups, this  concentration on the Anglo-Saxon elite is no accident,  What are the purposes it serves? [. . .]

On the national scene, McCarthy s attacks are probably  much more important in terms of their appeal to status  frustrations than to resentful isolationism. In the identification of traditional symbols of status with pro-Communism the McCarthy followers, of non-Anglo-Saxon  extraction, can gain a feeling of superiority over the  traditionally privileged groups. Here is a prosperity-born  equivalent for the economic radicalism of depressions.  For the resentment created by prosperity is basically not  against the economic power of Wall Street bankers, or  Yankees, but against their status power. An attack on their  loyalty, on their Americanism, is clearly also an attack  on their status. And this group not only rejects the status  claims of the minority ethnics, but also snubs the nou-  veaux riches millionaires. [. . .]

It is also interesting to note that McCarthy is probably  the first extreme rightist politician in America to rely  heavily on a number of Jewish advisors. These include  George Sokolsky, the Hearst columnist, Arthur Kohlberg,  a Far-Eastern exporter, and of course, his former counsel,  Roy Cohn. (These Jewish McCarthyites are, however,  unrepresentative of the Jewish population generally, even  of its upper strata, since all survey data as well as impres  sionistic evidence indicate that the large majority of  American Jews are liberal on both economic and civil  liberties issues.)

An attack on the status system could conceivably antagonize groups within the radical right: such as the  patriotic societies, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and members of old upper-status families like  Archibald Roosevelt, who chaired a testimonial dinner  for Roy Cohn. Yet, attacks on the Anglo-Saxon Yankee  scapegoat do not have this effect because they are directed  against majority elements in the society.

Criticism of  Jews or the Irish, or Italians or Negroes, would have  resulted in an immediate response from members of the  attacked group. Anglo-Saxon white Protestants, as a  majority group, however, are not sensitive to criticism,  they are not vulnerable to being attacked, nor do they  expect attack. McCarthy, on the one hand, can throw out  symbols and images which appeal to the minority ethnics,  to the Germans, to the Irish, and the Italians, without at  the same time securing the hostility of radical rightists  who also are members of the D.A.R., the Sons of the  American Revolution, the Patriotic Dames or any other  comparable group. 64 And in spite of his populist-type  symbols, he can retain the support of these groups and  the cooperation of some big businessmen. This is his  peculiar power. To the status-deprived he is a critic of  the upper class; to the privileged, he is a foe of social  change and Communism.

['The Sources of the "Radical Right"' in The New American Right]

This is the context in which the myth of old money liberalism was created and promoted. The story line in which "elite WASP" Alger Hiss represents a typical Soviet spy (see the Kevin MacDonald piece linked above if you are at a loss for the actual ethnicity of the typical Soviet spy) and Dean Acheson's support of Hiss demonstrates softness or sympathy toward communism by "elite WASPs" seems to be wholly accepted by various German-, Irish-, and other "ethnic"-identified types down to the present.

Hiss (note the very Anglo-Saxon surname), whatever pretensions his mother may have had, grew up poor in Baltimore after his "middle class wholesale grocer" father killed himself. One of the primary evidences of his "elite" status is having clerked for Oliver Wendell Holmes, but Hiss was chosen for this position by Felix Frankfurter.

Similarly:

Dean Acheson was not an American patrician. Nor was he born to great wealth.

Acheson was the child of immigrants of Irish (northern and southern) and Canadian origin. He may have gone to school with "elite WASPs", but it's hardly appropriate to hold him up as the exemplar of a group to which he did not belong.

Ethnicity and pain

I found this amusing:

Zborowski (1952) compared attitudes towards pain in three cultural groups from New York City by interviewing patients, doctors, nurses and other health professionals, as well as some healthy individuals from each of the cultural groups. The cultural groups were Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans and Old-Americans.

Italians were preoccupied with the sensation of pain and complained a great deal while they were in pain with moaning and crying, but once the pain was treated they resumed their normal activiites.

On the other hand, Jewish patients were also very emotional when in pain and tended to exaggerate pain symptoms. However, they worried more about the effect of the pain on their health and the overall welfare of their families than about the pain itself. At times, they had difficulty resuming their normal activities because of a preoccupation with the underlying cause of their pain.

The Old-American patients were more detached in their response to pain and they were more concerned with not bothering anyone. [. . .]

Zborowski (1952) believed that attitudes towards pain are part of any culture's child-rearing practices. He found that both Jewish-American and Italian-American parents in his study were generally overprotective and overly concerned about their child's health and their children were frequently reminded to avoid fights, possible injuries and catching colds. Crying elicited considerable sympathy.

However, Old-American parents were less concerned and expected that the child would not run to the parent with a small problem. Children were taught to anticipate some pain while playing and they were expected not to show excessive distress.

[Pain. Jenny Strong, Anita M. Unruh, Anthony Wright, G. David Baxter, Patrick D. (FRW) Wall]

(Via Mangan.)

The Androgen Receptor and "masculinization"

A question from the comments:

Do you know if T sensitivity has been examined for differences by race? For example, imagine that blacks produced twice as much of the T receptor. This should get them somewhat more masculinization at the same concentration of T.

What I think is undeniable is that "masculinization" is not simply a function of circulating testosterone levels and Rushton's notion of testosterone as a "master switch" that neatly explains myriad racial differences is overly simplistic at best.

Racial variation exists in the Androgen Receptor gene, but there's no reason to assume this variation underlies global differences in "T sensitivity" between races, or that racial differences in "masculinization" in a given domain should imply similar racial differences in masculinization in every other domains. Ultimately, the androgen/AR pathway signals/regulates genes, which themselves vary between populations. Without knowing what's happening downstream of the AR, racial differences in the AR gene are not terribly informative.

To give a concrete example of variation in the AR gene failing to predict a racial difference in a phenotype:

The most-studied polymorphism on the Androgen Receptor gene is a CAG repeat found to be "inversely correlated with transcriptional activity by the androgen receptor". Blacks average fewer repeats than whites, implying increased transcription by the AR in blacks. Intra-racially, a lower number of CAG repeats is associated with higher sperm concentrations. If those facts led you to predict black men have higher sperm counts than white men, you predicted wrong.

Could the differences in sperm concentration in various geographical areas be related to the ethnic origin of the studied populations? From the results shown in Table 3 it seems that the MSC of healthy men might be lower in Africa and South East Asia compared to other parts of the world.
[Semen quality and male reproductive health: the controversy about human sperm concentration decline]

The mean sperm density among the fertile population in this series was 71.2 million/ml which is statistically greater than the value of 46.8 million/ ml observed in the infertile marriage population (P<0.001). The mean sperm count reported in the literature for the Caucasian fertile population is higher, with a range between 79-137 million/ ml [Seminal analysis in fertile and infertile Nigerian men]

I'm unable to find direct comparisons between white Americans and American blacks, but the evidence I'm aware of is consistent with lower sperm counts in the latter: autopsy weighing indicates American blacks have smaller testes than whites. Another autopsy study:

For these preliminary studies, testes from five non-Hispanic Caucasian, five Hispanic, and five African American males of ages 28.2 ± 1.3, 27.8 ± 1.6, and 28.2 ± 1.3 years, respectively, were evaluated. Based on this small sample of men, there were no statistical differences among groups, respectively, for paired parenchymal weight (44.8 ± 5.3, 40.7 ± 1.8, and 34.8 ± 4.6 g), for daily sperm production per gram of testicular parenchyma (4.9 ± 0.3, 5.1 ± 0.7, and 4.3 ± 0.5 X 106/g), or for daily sperm production per man (224 ± 36, 211 ± 35, and 157 ± 33 X 106).

These findings are not statistically significant due to the very small sample sizes, but they are consistent with the other evidence.

Reply to Peter Frost

These findings were statistically massaged. As the authors state: “After adjusting for age, height, weight, ponderosity index, and Tanner stage, testosterone does not exhibit an overall significant racial difference in either sex”.

Height, weight, ponderosity, and Tanner stage correlate with testosterone-induced masculinization. If you correct for these factors, you also ‘correct’ for testosterone. In fact, this is noted in later publications about the Bogalusa Heart Study:

White males are taller and heavier than black males at every Tanner stage (table 1). They have identical or higher mean testosterone levels at 4 of the 5 intervals -- without any statistical adjustment (tables 2 and 3).

The fact that blacks enter puberty earlier is exactly why it would make little sense to compare hormone levels in (pre-)adolescent blacks and whites by age alone and expect meaningful results. I briefly considered pointing this out in my original comment but decided it was obvious.

Note however:

The mean age (Table 1) of black males
compared to white males at Tanner stage II by either staging
method is significantly lower, suggesting that black males
enter puberty before their white counterparts. At Tanner
stage V by either staging method black and white males
again show a significant difference in mean age with blacks
being older, possibly indicating that they finish puberty later
than white males.

White males are younger than black males at the final two Tanner stages. They are barely older at Tanner stage III.

I answered all of your criticisms previously, and at some length, see my blog post at:
http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2008/03/testosterone-and-human-variation.html

No. You attempted at length to rationalize away with wild speculation and reading incomprehension results that don't support your ideas. You're doing it again here, since you clearly skimmed the Bogalusa study with no aim beyond finding a pretense on which to dismiss it (thus failing to notice the items mentioned above).


The comment to which Peter Frost was replying:

Lindsey is mostly just repeating poorly-supported assertions from Peter Frost.

"Groups with the highest testosterone in the world today are primitive agriculturalists."

Wrong. Testosterone is markedly lower in Sub-Saharan Africans.

"Blacks have much higher testosterone levels than Whites from age 7-24. "

False. See above about blacks in their natural environment. In the U.S., only a tiny study of college students showed a "large" difference and this has never been replicated. Here is much larger study:

A large biracial cross-section of 1038 healthy children aged 6-18 yr with 519 blacks, 519 whites, 678 males, and 360 females was evaluated for Tanner stage and serum levels of androstenedione, dehydroepiandrosterone- sulfate, estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone. The anthropometric values of the blacks and whites were very similar at each Tanner stage with only minor differences in age, height, and weight related to an earlier onset of puberty in blacks. The hormones dehydroepiandrosterone- sulfate, progesterone, and testosterone did not exhibit any racial differences. Estradiol showed a significantly higher level among black males compared to white males (P 5 0.05) whereas androstenedione was significantly higher in both white males (P = 0.0001) and females (P I 0.01) compared with blacks.

[Steroid Hormones during Puberty: Racial (Black-White) Differences in Androstenedione and Estradiol-The Bogalusa Heart Study. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 75: 624-631,1992]

Black men in the U.S. and Africa are consistently found to have higher estrogen levels -- not testosterone levels.

"Black boys’ exposure to high testosterone begins in the womb. Black mothers’ wombs have higher testosterone, and this feeds to the fetus."

Testosterone exposure in utero is not simply a function of the mother's serum T levels.

"Assuming that higher Black testosterone levels are a causative agent in Black crime, aggression and lowered IQ"

Very bad assumptions.