Somewhere on the internet, a chinegro Jamaican is babbling excitedly about Yankees "preaching diversity" and "SWPLs" being "literal" Puritans. When challenged, "JayMan" is unable to list a single actual name of a "Yankee" preaching diversity. Others engage in similar behavior. These are people whose love for abstraction outruns their knowledge, or who are motivated by ethnic animus. They don't like to name names, and when they do, they tend to be very selective or hilariously incompetent at driving forward this line of thought.
It's should be simple enough to just pick an actual category of people (less meaningless/amorphous than "SWPL") and look at their names.
Inspired by a recent Education Realist article, and since college administrators are commonly among the more vocal and destructive proponents of "diversity" today, we'll start by looking at UC system presidents.
The incoming UC president looks like some kind of beast but is said to be half Italian and half "German and Austrian". For those hard of seeing, she's not a Yankee. Nor were most of her predecessors during the period in which members of the group that founded the University of California saw themselves largely dispossessed of it.
Among 4 UC presidents since 1992, I count 2 Jews, one presumably British-descended Canadian with a Jewish wife, and one child of English/French(-German?) immigrants.
Among the 4 office holders for 1958 to 1992, I see one person with probable New England ancestry, two other Americans without obvious New England connections, and one Jew.
Among the 11 UC presidents from its founding in 1870 to 1958, I count 8 with at least half New England ancestry.
New Englanders disproportionately contributed to building the UC system. Others are leading the way in destroying it.
[2013- ] Janet Napolitano - "Janet Napolitano was born on November 29, 1957, in New York City, the daughter of Jane Marie (née Winer) and Leonard Michael Napolitano, who was the dean of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.[6] Her father was of Italian descent and her mother had German and Austrian ancestry.[6][7]"
[2008-2013] Mark G. Yudof - "In 1993, he and his wife, Judy, were the co-recipients of the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award."
[2003-2008] Robert Carr Dynes - Canadian (who happened to be married to a Jewess at the time he was appointed UC president).
[1995-2003] Richard Chatham Atkinson - Born in Illinois; father from England, mother from Alsace-Lorraine (source).
[1992-1995] Jack W. Peltason - Born in St. Louis, Missouri; "s. of Walter Peltason and Emma Hartmann" (presumably Jewish). Author of such books as "Fifty-Eight Lonely Men: Southern Federal Judges and School Desegregation".
[1983-1992] David Pierpont Gardner - "Gardner was born in Berkeley, California to Reed S. Gardner and Margaret Pierpont Gardner. [. . .] Gardner was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)". Presumably has some New England ancestry (the only person on the list up to this point we can say that about). Incidentally:
The Hispanic Coalition on Higher Education, representing 83 statewide educational and civil rights organizations, gave Gardner's affirmative-action record an "F" grade and released a "letter of no confidence" by a UC staff group. The letter sent to Gardner by the University of California Chicano-Latino Consortium complained that the UC administration has demonstrated only a "mechanical interest" in reversing a "serious underrepresentation" of Latinos and other minorities among students, faculty and management.And:
As president of the University of California nine-campus system, from 1983-1992, President Gardner met with intense controversies over issues ranging from affirmative action and animal rights to AIDS research and weapons labs.
[1975-1983] David S. Saxon - "David was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on February 8, 1920, the older of two sons. His parents moved to Philadelphia when he was a young boy. His upbringing in a large and lively Eastern European Jewish household instilled in him a deep commitment to both family and education. [. . .] A few years after his arrival, David found himself embroiled in what became known as the loyalty oath controversy. The University of California Board of Regents, responding to postwar pressures to remove alleged Communists from university faculties, instituted a requirement that all faculty members must sign a loyalty oath as a condition of employment. David was one of thirty-one faculty who refused to sign, along with such distinguished older figures as psychologist Edward Tolman and the medieval historian Ernst H. Kantorowicz. " Summary or excerpt of a 1976 article:
David Saxon, president of the University of California, says that the school's program to encourage minority enrollment is the only way to correct social inequities caused by past racial discrimination. The University has a responsibility to attract more minority students.
[1967-1975] Charles J. Hitch - "Hitch was born in Boonville, Missouri to Arthur M. Hitch and Bertha Johnston." Father's parents from Delaware; mother's parents from Missouri (source).
[1958-1967] Clark Kerr - "Kerr was born in Stony Creek, Pennsylvania, and earned his A.B. from Swarthmore College in 1932, an M.A. from Stanford University in 1933, and a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1939."
[1930-1958] Robert Gordon Sproul - "Robert Gordon Sproul was born in San Francisco on May 22, 1891. His father, Robert Sproul, an auditor of the Southern Pacific Company, was a native of Scotland and a graduate of the University of Glasgow. His mother, Sarah Elizabeth (Moore) Sproul, was a New Englander." Wikipedia:
By the time he left office in 1958, the University of California, Berkeley was a distinguished university recognized worldwide for the excellence of its programs. And the University of California had a total of eight campuses from Davis to Los Angeles. There is a Sproul Hall on every UC campus, except for the recently opened and not fully built-out UC Merced, as well as the UCSF campus.
[1923-1930] William Wallace Campbell - "He was born on a farm in Hancock county, Ohio, the son of Robert Wilson and Harriet Welsh Campbell."
[1919-1923] David Prescott Barrows - "David Prescott Barrows was born in Chicago on June 27, 1873. The family moved to California in 1874, and Barrows was reared on a ranch in Ventura County." According to this bio, Barrows was "of New England ancestry".
[1899-1919] Benjamin Ide Wheeler - "Benjamin Ide Wheeler was born at Randolph, Massachusetts, on July 15, 1854, the son of the Rev. Benjamin and Mary Eliza (Ide) Wheeler. His father was successively a church pastor in Plaistow, New Hampshire; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Randolph, Massachusetts; Haverhill, Massachusetts; Saco, Maine; Franklin, New Hampshire. His mother, Mary Eliza Ide, was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, daughter of Ebenezer Ide of the Ide family which had its origin in South Attleborough, then Rehoboth. Their only son, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, had his education first in the public schools of Haverhill and Saco, Maine. [. . .] Under Wheeler the University of California underwent one of its periods of greatest growth." (Note: This is what an actual Yankee looks like. Also, note the date.)
[1893-1899] Martin Kellogg - "Martin Kellogg (March 15, 1828 – August 26, 1903) was born in Vernon, Connecticut to Allyn Kellogg and Eliza Kellogg née White. He graduated from Yale as valedictorian of the Class of 1850. He was ordained as a missionary in the Congregational Church and served as a pastor in Shasta, California in 1855, then in Grass Valley, California from 1857 to 1860, and then in Oakland, California starting in 1861." (Another actual Yankee.)
[1880-1890] Horace Davis - "Davis was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He attended the Worcester public schools and Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard University in 1849, and then studied law in the Dane Law School of Harvard University [. . .] Davis sailed for San Francisco, California around Cape Horn in 1852, and upon arriving, engaged for a brief time as a gold miner, a lumber supercargo surveyor for a coastal steamer, and a purser for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. In addition he helped found the Mercantile Library Association of California (its oldest public library). [. . .] he was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives of the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1877 - March 3, 1881), where on June 8, 1878 he spoke in support of a bill to restrict Chinese immigration." (Yankee.)
[1885-1888] Edward S. Holden - "He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1846 to Jeremiah and Sarah Holden. From 1862-66, he attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he obtained a B.S. degree. He later trained at West Point in the class of 1870." (New England stock on at least his father's side.)
[1881-1885] W.T. Reid - "W.T. Reid (1842–1922) was born in Jacksonville, Illinois and served as the Fourth President of the University of California from 1881 to 1885."
[1876-1881] John LeConte - "LeConte was born in Liberty County, Georgia to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted LeConte family. He attended Franklin College at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society and graduated in 1838."
[1872-1875] Daniel Coit Gilman - "Born in Norwich, Connecticut,[2] the son of Eliza (née Coit) and mill owner William Charles Gilman, a descendant of Edward Gilman, one of the first settlers of Exeter, New Hampshire, Daniel Coit Gilman graduated from Yale College in 1852 with a degree in geography.[3] At Yale he was a classmate of Andrew Dickson White, who would later serve as first president of Cornell University. The two were members of the Skull and Bones secret society, and traveled to Europe together after graduation and remained lifelong friends. Gilman would later co-found the Russell Trust Association, the foundation behind Skull and Bones." (Yankee.)
[1870-1872] Henry Durant - "Henry Durant (Acton, Massachusetts, June 18, 1802 – Oakland, California, January 22, 1875) was the founding president of the University of California.[1]" (Yankee.)
"Chinegro?"
ReplyDeleteActually, if you actually read some of the stuff I've written (which you can see here, Flags of the American Nations | JayMan's Blog), you will find that I have said (as David Hackett Fischer and Colin Woodard have) that the Puritans were intensely xenophobic, many of them remain indifferent to outsiders today. I have also said (see in the first link) that the ideas of inclusion and tolerance were actually Quaker/Midlander (German) (and, to a lesser extent, Dutch and French) values. Modern American White liberals are a fusion of many groups, particular the largest two, the Yankees and the Midlanders. I also shouldn't have to mention that American Whites have heavily intermixed with one another, particularly throughout Southern/Western New England and the Midlands.
It would appear that modern liberal ideals – including that of today's Puritans – have embraced the ideas of tolerance and diversity. It is the modern Puritan cause. Mentalities can get hijack/redirected to other purposes – the secularism that has arose out of the deeply religious Puritan mind is one example.
Do you not find it interesting that the exclusionist Yankees you note all come from way back when, almost a century or more ago?
"Modern American White liberals are a fusion of many groups, particular the largest two, the Yankees and the Midlanders."
ReplyDelete"American White Liberals" have been disproportionately Jewish and Catholic for as long as there have been Catholics and Jews in America. Nor, even excluding Catholics and Jews, does it ever make sense to say shit like "SWPLs are literally Puritans".
"I also shouldn't have to mention that American Whites have heavily intermixed with one another, particularly throughout Southern/Western New England and the Midlands."
No shit?
Note also that colonial stock whites didn't merely mix among themselves, but have substantially mixed with later immigrants (northern New England, too, is full of Irish Catholics and French Canadians). Nor is there any reason to believe identities or cultures neatly blend. Many people with fractional Irish or German ancestry identify simply as Irish or German.
"including that of today's Puritans"
"Puritans" haven't existed in a couple hundred years.
"Do you not find it interesting that the exclusionist Yankees you note all come from way back when, almost a century or more ago?"
"Yankees" (substantially pure New Englanders raised in the society of other actual New Englanders) don't exist in appreciable numbers today. The white Protestants who remain in New England remain to the right of their Catholic and Jewish neighbors.
@n/a:
ReplyDelete"'American White Liberals' have been disproportionately Jewish and Catholic for as long as there have been Catholics and Jews in America."
That's not my experience up here in Maine. Do you have evidence to support this?
"Nor, even excluding Catholics and Jews, does it ever make sense to say shit like 'SWPLs are literally Puritans'"
I'm sure they came from Mars. Where do you think they came from?
"'Yankees' (substantially pure New Englanders raised in the society of other actual New Englanders) don't exist in appreciable numbers today. The white Protestants who remain in New England remain to the right of their Catholic and Jewish neighbors."
There are plenty of them here (well, intermixed with Scot). I'd like to see your data supporting your claim.
"That's not my experience up here in Maine. Do you have evidence to support this?"
ReplyDeleteIf you weren't aware of this fact, you're definitely not in a position to be commenting (or recycling the commentary of others) on American culture.
The evidence is every exit poll ever.
"I'm sure they came from Mars. Where do you think they came from?"
"SWPLs" are whoever happens to fall into whatever definition you happen to be using for "SWPLs". Under no even remotely meaningful definition would people of New England Puritan stock constitute a plurality (much less a majority or the entirety) of "SWPLs".
What fraction of whites in NYC do you think "Puritans" make up today?
How about in Austin or Nashville (or Atlanta or L.A.)?
"I'd like to see your data supporting your claim."
Pick a set of public figures (people still in public life in New England right now). Look at their genealogies. See what fraction have substantially unmixed New England ancestry.
@n/a:
ReplyDelete(part 1 of 2)
"If you weren't aware of this fact, you're definitely not in a position to be commenting (or recycling the commentary of others) on American culture."
I've read your post. You do know about the 1960s realignment in American politics, yes? New England has been solidly Republican for much of its history until then, while the Deep South was solidly Democratic. That the "Congregationalists" (the Puritans) would vote for the Republican is hardly surprising nor contradictory to what I've said.
Indeed, touching on this fact brings us to something which reinforces the very thing you decry. For all of American history, there has been a stark divide between the voting habits of Greater New England and the Deep South/Tidewater. The two nations are traditional rivals and have been long before the Ellis Island immigrants set foot in the country (never mind that they fought a war before these newcomers came with their supposedly liberal ways).
Your earlier post illustrates what is perhaps the beginning of the realignment.
"The evidence [that primarily Catholics and Jews vote liberal] is every exit poll ever."
You're kind of in a hard place here. Stated religion isn't an accurate gauge of ancestry (neither is, for that matter, even stated ancestry). There are certainly not enough Jews to explain the solid blueness of Yankeedom and parts of the Midlands. Even if certain groups who have some traditionally Catholic ancestry (that is, Catholic Irish/Southern Italian) were somewhat more liberal than people who claim to be of old-guard Yankee stock, that wouldn't mean much because:
a) in reality, they are all Yankee, to some extent
b) they are probably all part Catholic, for the same reason.
But on that point, it's worth noting that my rough investigation into the matter didn't find that to be the case (see A follow-up: Ethnicity and Politics | JayMan's Blog). People who claim Irish or Italian ancestry aren't any more liberal than those who claim to be of British descent. Not that that means much for a variety of reasons, but, there it is, anyway.
"'SWPLs' are whoever happens to fall into whatever definition you happen to be using for 'SWPLs'. Under no even remotely meaningful definition would people of New England Puritan stock constitute a plurality (much less a majority or the entirety) of 'SWPLs'.
OK, fair enough. Let's clear that up now. At least for now, when I use the term, I mean White American liberals (often, but not necessarily, of the "educated" classes), who are generally of New England or Left Coast extraction (and some from the Midlands).
"What fraction of whites in NYC do you think "Puritans" make up today? How about in Austin or Nashville (or Atlanta or L.A.)?"
With the possible exception of remote corners of New England, there are probably few people of pure-blooded Puritan stock anywhere in the country. If we are to be more liberal, so to speak, and mean anyone who is ≥50% Puritan ancestry, I'd say a fair number. In many places across Greater New England, perhaps the majority.
On that point:
"Pick a set of public figures (people still in public life in New England right now). Look at their genealogies. See what fraction have substantially unmixed New England ancestry."
(cont'd part 2)
(part 2 of 2):
ReplyDeleteThis isn't likely to be a very effective way to examine the issue because:
* There's always the issue of how to get a representative sample
* This doesn't speak to the population as a whole
* Even if we found less liberal voices claimed to be more of the old Yankee stock, an open question would be why? Perhaps the more liberal Yankees were less averse to marrying outside their group (something with which I have direct, personal experience)
Colin Woodard claims that the founding stock of each of the American nations set the "cultural DNA" of the region. I simply take that a step further and claim that the founders set the plain-old DNA of the respective regions. Even though the gene pools of the various regions have been diluted by newcomers, the fact that the colonial British genes remain expresses itself in the traits of the modern people, even if augemented by outsiders.
Internal, self-sorting migration likely also played a role. If you were born in Kansas, and have a left-leaning mind, you might want to move to Massachusetts. This couldn't be resposible for all of what we see, however, because it doesn't answer:
a) how the differences began
b) the historic data on regional voting habits other differences
Now as for the precise origin of modern White liberal ethos of "inclusiveness" and "diversity", that's another matter. But the problem is hardly just an American one, because that attitude is found all across Northwestern Europe (especially in places like Sweden, to many observers' dismay). But, that only fits with my explanation that such traits emerge from the traits of outbred Germanics – which includes the peoples of the Old American North (Yankees, Midlanders). And, as I've noted, such a trait didn't appear out of a vacuum in modern America; it was a distinctly Quaker trait.
I will concede that yes, definitive proof of my claims would be genetic data of White Americans across the country, coupled with voting habits, political attitudes, and cultural/behavioral traits. It would be awesome if we had that, but I believe we do have enough evidence to make the case that the ideologies of the "Founding Fathers" lives on and is visible in the traits of today's White Americans.