[Testosterone] is an element in aggressiveness, territoriality, and hoarding. Blended with adrenaline and smoothed over with cool judgment, it has marked the history of the Caucasoids in many parts of the world.More excerpts within (continue reading).
The [New York Times wedding] section was also, predictably, WASPier. About half the couples who were featured in the late fifties were married in an Episcopal ceremony. Today fewer than one in five of the marriages in the Times page are Episcopalian, while around 40 percent are Jewish [. . .] it's pretty clear the trends of the last 40 years have been bad for the Episcopalians and good for the Jews. [. . .]
The section from the late fifties evokes an entire milieu that was then so powerful and is now so dated: the network of men's clubs, country clubs, white-shoe law firms, oak-paneled Wall Street firms, and WASP patriarchs. Everybody has his or her own mental images of the old Protestant Establishment [. . .] The WASPs didn't have total control of the country or anything like it, but they did have the hypnotic magic of prestige. As Richard Rovere wrote in a famous 1962 essay entitled "The American Establishment," "It has very nearly unchallenged power in deciding what is and what is not respectable opinion in this country." [. . .]
Meanwhile, every affluent town in America had its own establishment that aped the manners and attitudes of the national one. There were local clubs where town fathers gathered to exchange ethnic jokes and dine on lamb chops [. . .] The WASP aesthetic sense was generally lamentable--Mencken said Protestant elites had a "libido for the ugly"--and their conversation, by all accounts, did not sparkle with wit and intelligence. [. . .]
Though this elite was nowhere near as restrictive as earlier elites--World War II had exerted its leveling influence--the 1950 establishment was still based on casual anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and a thousand other silent barriers that blocked entry for those without the correct pedigree.
On certain levels of the American race, indeed, there seems to be a positive libido for the ugly, as on other and less Christian levels there is a libido for the beautiful. It is impossible to put down the wallpaper that defaces the average American home of the lower middle class to mere inadvertence, or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers. Such ghastly designs, it must be obvious, give a genuine delight to a certain type of mind.This passage comes from a 1927 essay in which Mencken mewls about how ugly he finds "the coal and steel towns of Westmoreland county". It's hard to see how Brooks could have mistaken Mencken as commenting on the tastes of "Protestant elites". (Mencken notes "the valley is full of foreigners" -- although he ultimately blames America for its lack of aesthetics.) Brooks evidently consciously misappropriated Mencken's line to add some weight to his anti-WASP sniping.
My information is based upon a three-and-a-half-year study of the Italian slum district of "Cornerville" in "Eastern City." [. . .] In the social- and ethnic-group category, the most desirable woman for non-marital sex relations is the girl of old American-stock background, preferably blonde, who has a higher status than the corner boy. Once I was walking through the aristocratic section of Eastern City with a corner boy when we passed a tall and stately blonde, fashionably dressed, and very attractive. My companion breathed deeply as he said: "The old Puritan stock! .... The real McCoy! Wouldn't I like to give her a belt."Compare:
The attraction of the native stock is not confined to the lower-class Italian. Mario Martini was born in Cornerville, but as he became successful in business he moved out to a fashionable suburb. He married an Italian girl and raised a family, sending his children to private school. He had many business relations and some social relations with upper-class Yankees. He made a practice of hiring only girls of native background for his secretarial work, and on some of his business trips he would take one of these girls along-for sexual as well as secretarial purposes. One of Martini's former secretaries, who told me this story, was a girl of rather plain features, which emphasizes the prestige of the native back-ground even for a man who was as successful as Mario Martini.
[WF Whyte. A slum sex code. American Journal of Sociology, 1943]
One of the manifestations of this jealousy of the fair skin of the Nordics is shown in those numerous cases where members of the colored races, or even dark-skinned members of the Nordic regard the possession of a blonde woman as an assertion and proof of race equality. This has been true historically since the earliest times. It is more than ever in evidence at the present day.See also Philip Roth, Eldrige Cleaver, etc.
[Madison Grant. The Conquest of a Continent; or, The expansion of races in America. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933. p. 15.]
Regional differences in IQ are presented for 12 regions of Italy showing that IQs are highest in the north and lowest in the south. Regional IQs obtained in 2006 are highly correlated with average incomes at r=0.937, and with stature, infant mortality, literacy and education. The lower IQ in southern Italy may be attributable to genetic admixture with populations from the Near East and North Africa.Lynn calculates average IQs ranging from 89 in Sicily to 103 in Friuli-Venezia.
Based on their analysis of the SNPs, the researchers were not only able to detect the ancient Saqqaq's geographical origins, but also determine many of his traits. They found that he was an inbred male, with A-positive blood, brown eyes, non-white skin, thick dark hair, and shovel-graded front teeth typical of Asian and Native American populations. [. . .] Willerslev said he's optimistic that other samples will provide the DNA fragments needed for similar sequencing efforts.
The test revealed that Chris Darwin, and therefore his paternal great-great-grandfather, Charles Darwin, are from Haplogroup R1b, one of the most common European male lineages.Still waiting for anything substantial to come out of this project.
In the province of Zamora, if the total number of African lineages are taken into account (Hgs L1b, L2b, L3, M1, and U6a1a), the contribution represents 5.7% of the total Hg composition. [. . .] As regards sub-Saharan Hgs (L1b, L2b, and L3b), the high frequency found in the southern regions of Zamora, 18.2% in Sayago and 8.1% in Bajo Duero, is comparable to that described for the South of Portugal, but it does not have any parallels with any other analyzed areas in the Northern part of Iberia (Pereira et al., 2005).More excerpts within. (Continue reading.)