Ethnic Names and Occupational Success in the Last Era of Mass Migration
Sewall Wright on race differences, group selection, and cultural selection among humans (1978)
Racial Differentiation in Mankind
The existence of conspicuous diversity among human populations in physical appearance has been common knowledge at least since the time of ancient Egypt. The subject is discussed at length in numerous books on physical anthropology and need not be considered here in detail.
There is no question that all mankind constitutes a single species in view of the absence of any physiological bar to hybridization between the most diverse races or of any recognizable loss of vigor in the first or later generations.
There is also no question, however, that populations that have long inhabited widely separated parts of the world should, in general, be considered to be of different subspecies by the usual criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair in spite of so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other.
[. . .] It has been indicated earlier that such an evolutionary process as that of man is much more understandable if it occurred by the shifting balance process. Simultaneous sampling drive at thousands of sufficiently neutral loci provides different material in innumerable localities without appreciable cost, material that can give the basis for effective interdeme selection.
Was the population structure of primitive man favorable to this process? There have been a number of studies of the few remaining peoples at the hunting and gathering level of culture that bear on this matter. Birdsell (1972), in an intensive study of Australian aborigines in western Australia, has described their population structure. The primary territorial unit is the band, consisting of a group of related families. Marriage is exogamous but largely restricted to the tribe, a group of bands in which the same dialect is spoken. He estimates the average total number in a tribe to be about 500, with a breeding population of about 185 and an effective number of about 100. This is small enough for the building up of considerable differences among large areas at each nearly neutral polymorphic locus merely by sampling drift. There is thus the basis for operation of the shifting balance process. [. . .]
The actual process of interdeme selection may take different forms. At one extreme, the local appearance of a superior genetic system is followed by expansion of its territory accompanied by complete elimination of its neighbors until it occupies the entire range of the species. At the other extreme there is merely excess diffusion from the superior center. Neighboring populations are graded up until they reach the point (the crossing of a saddle in the surface of selective values) at which mass selection carries them autonomously to the new selective peak, or perhaps beyond, if they contribute something that improves on the latter. The locations of the population with the highest selective peak may shift from place to place in the course of time, as a group of neighboring populations step each other up to heights well above the general level.
Bigelow (1969) has emphasized the importance of tribal warfare in the operation of this process. A tribe that is generally successful because of superior intelligence, capacity for cooperation, and high frequency of the heroic virtues as well as physical prowess, tends to increase its territory and also to grade up what is left of the defeated group by hybridization. The process is illustrated by the incessant tribal warfare of the tribes of American Indians observed by the European settlers in America, in which some tribes such as the Iroquois expanded at the expense of their neighbors.
The heroic virtues, including willingness to sacrifice one's own life for the good of the tribe, are traits that can hardly be developed (insofar as they have a genetic basis) by purely individual selection. They may to some extent arise as a by-product of familial selection in which close relatives with heredities strongly correlated with that of an individual who gives his own life to save them. As noted earlier, the effectiveness of familial selection in general is testified to by the improvement of milk production in cattle and of egg production fowls, mainly by selection of males on the basis of the performance of close female relatives. The importance of this sort of intergroup selection in evolution has been emphasized as noted in chapter 7 by Hamilton. The increase in frequency of traits deleterious on the average to their possessors but beneficial to the deme may also, however, be increased by interdeme selection (referred to as intergroup selection in early articles) if the benefit to the deme sufficiently outweighs the damage to the individual. A more rigorous demonstration of this mode of evolution of "altruistic" characters as been given by Eshel (1972).
Not all interdeme selection in man has consisted of intertribal warfare. According to Birdsell, about 15% of marriage among Australian aborigines were intertribal; not enough as shown by the wide variability of gene frequencies to homogenize the whole population but enough to permit effective interdeme selection if exchange was asymmetrical, predominantly from the more to the less successful. That differences were not swamped was presumably due to the exchange being largely between neighboring tribes which differed little, as indicated by the semiclinal nature of the pattern of gene frequencies. The average effective immigration from the population as a whole, the m of formulas, was thus very much less than 0.15. [. . .]
Evolution Since the Origin of Agriculture [. . .]
We can form a better idea of the course of event than in any earlier period but the interpretation is confused by the exponential progress of a second evolutionary process, barely existent at all in any other animal, and little if any more rapid in the earlier history man than his biological evolution.
This is the evolution of culture with its line of transmission largely from speaker to listener, supplemented in the last three thousand years by transmission from writer to reader. It began to become of major importance with the origin of language, but during the hunting and gathering phase of human life the slow advance of culture is indicated by that in the fashioning of stone tools and weapons. It was probably accompanied by relatively rapid diffusion of knowledge of such advances as were made. The success of tribes thus probably depended to a greater extent on capabilities, determined by their genes, than on the possession of techniques not known to their neighbors.
The mode of evolution of culture is analogous to that of the genetic system. Invention is the analog of mutation. Diffusion of culture is the analog of gene flow. Cultural variation is continually subject to selection on the basis of utility. There is random cultural drift, exemplified by the breaking up of languages into dialects. Finally, the most favorable conditions for cultural advance is local isolation, providing the basis for simultaneous trial and error among many variants and the diffusion of the more successful ones in analogy with the shifting balance process in biological evolution. We think here of the multiple competing cultures in ancient Southwest Asia, the evolution of culture among the city states of ancient Greece, and in much divided Europe from the Dark Ages to modern times. The great empires of the ancient Southwest Asia of Alexander and of Rome constituted an overbalancing final phase in the process, giving widespread diffusion but less progress by trial and error.
There has undoubtedly always been a considerable but incomplete correlation between the two kinds of evolution. The state of the culture has been to a considerable extent an index of the rank of populations genetically in the distinctive human line of evolutionary advance, and reciprocally the demands of culture have been the primary selective agent in this advance in its later stages. Aspects of culture are continually being borrowed, but whether such borrowings are effectively integrated into the existent culture to form new peaks (as most conspicuously in the recent period in Japan), or are adopted only superficially and to the detriment of the previous culture, is also an index of genetic capability.
The treatment of either the genetic capabilities or the cultures of peoples as if they could be ranked on single scales is, of course, a gross simplification. If the multiple genetic aspects of mental ability could be measured more independently of culture than is the case, it would no doubt be found that each local race has its own unique combination of favorable qualities. At present only IQ seems to have a repeatability that permits evaluation of the contributions of genetic and nongenetic variabilities to its variability, discussed in the previous chapter, and this only within a particular culture.
On the other hand there have probably always been wide differences among the peoples of the world in average intellectual ability and cultural level from the standpoint of progress toward the situation in civilized man. This was presumably related to the environmental conditions. Men could not endure the northern winters without fire, the use of which is documented by hearths found in France dating back over half a million years and somewhat later in Hungary and in China but only about one-tenth as far back in Africa (Campbell 1974).
The capacity to anticipate and plan for the future is a mental attribute which would be favored under northern conditions and selected for insofar as it has a genetic basis. This would presumably have come to be more advanced in the temperate zone than in the tropics. [. . .]
Linguistic evidence indicates the establishment of an important center of diffusion in east-central Europe some 5,000 years ago from which wave after wave peoples moved in all directions. The Hittites carried an Indo-European language of the western (centum) type into Asia Minor and established an empire some 4,000 years ago. A thousand years later the Iranians, who had moved east into what is now southern Russia and Turkestan, brought an Indo-European language of the eastern (satem) type into the original cultural center and later established the Persian Empire. They also carried another Aryan dialect to India. Other tribes moving south from the east-central European center reached Greece in several waves which, after mixing with the indigenous people, produced classical Greek civilization.
Other waves moved to the southwest into Italy, giving rise to Latin and other Italic languages; to the west, giving rise to Celtic languages in what is now southern Germany, France, and the British Isles; and to the northwest into what is not northern Germany and Scandinavia, to give rise, in much altered form, to the Germanic languages. Subsequent migrations greatly expanded the areas occupied by derivatives of Latin and Germanic branches at the expense in Europe of the Celtic. All the tribal migrations were undoubtedly accompanied by much intermixture with indigenous peoples, but the diffusion of language also undoubtedly implies considerable gene flow.
[. . .] The history of Europe, especially western Europe, was thus prevailingly one of inflow of genes up to the relatively recent period in which it itself became a center of massive outflow.
Related posts:
- Sewall Wright on Coefficients of Inbreeding and Relationship (1922)
- Hamilton on inclusive fitness and social behavior in humans
- More from Hamilton on kin recognition and intergroup hostility
- R. A. Fisher on group selection in humans
- James Neel and early human population structure
- Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe
- More ancient DNA evidence of Indo-European mass migrations
- C. S. Coon on the endocrine system and racial differences in temperament
Sewall Wright on Coefficients of Inbreeding and Relationship (1922)
@johan stavers:I attempt yet again to get across to JayMan that the table of coefficients of relationship he looked up on wikipedia in no way proves that "unrelated" members of a given race share no kinship relative to members of other races (if JayMan were correct, of course, observable racial differences would not exist; JayMan inadvertently assesses his own level of knowledge in an unrelated twitter comment: "according to people who don't know science, there's no such thing as race."). Sewall Wright explicitly noted in the 1922 paper in which he defined coefficients of relationship that values like ".50 for brothers" hold "in a random stock" and that individuals belonging to an "inbred subline" will share relatedness relative to the general population.coefficient of relationship is flawed, if a man fathers a child with his sister his child is more than 50% related, this extends to niece/nephew mating and therefore logically also to mating within ethnicity or even nationNo, coefficient of relationship is perfectly fine.
JayMan, the fact that the table of "coefficients of relationship" on wikipedia is not valid for the purpose you're attempting to use it is not some subtle issue that's open to debate, but a point that follows directly from the definitions of the relevant terms.
Thus, if we can calculate the percentage of homozygosis which would follow on the average from a given system of mating, we can at once form the most. natural coefficient of inbreeding. The writer3 has recently pointed out a method of calculating this percentage of honmozygosis which is applicable to the irregular systems of mating found in actual pedigrees as well as to regular systems. This method, it may be said. gives results widely different from Pearl's coefficient, in many cases even as regards the relative degree of inbreeding of two animals.Taking the typical case in which there are an equal number of dominant. and recessive genes (A and a) in the population, the random-bred stock will be composed of 25 per cent. AA, 50 per cent. Aa and 25 per cent. aa. Close inbreeding will tend to convert the proportions to 50 per cent. AA, 50 per cent. aa, a change from 50 per cent. homozygosis to 100 per cent. homozygosis. For a natural coefficient of inbreeding, we want a scale which runs from 0 to 1, while the percentage of homozygosis is running from, 50 per cent. to 100 per cent. The formula. 2h-1, where h is the proportion of complete homozygosis, gives the required value. This can also be written 1-2p where p is the proportion of heterozygosis. In the above-mentioned paper it was shown that the coefficient of correlation between uniting egg and sperm is expressed by this same formula, f 1-2p. We can thus obtain the coefficient of inbreeding fb for a given individual B, by the use of the methods there out- lined.
The symbol rbc, for the coefficient of the correlation between B and C, may be used as a coefficient of relationship. It has the value 0 in the case of two random individuals, .50 for brothers in a random stock and approaches 1.00 for individuals belonging to a closely inbred subline of the general population. [. . .]
If an individual is inbred, his sire and dam are connected in the pedigree by lines of descent from a common ancestor or ancestors. The coefficient of inbreeding is obtained by a summation of coefficients for every line by which the parents are connected, each line tracing back from the sire to a common ancestor and thence forward to the dam, and passing through no individual more than once. The same ancestor may of course be involved in more than one line.
Coefficients of Inbreeding and Relationship
Sewall Wright
The American Naturalist
Vol. 56, No. 645 (Jul. - Aug., 1922), pp. 330-338
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2456273Go ask Greg Cochran about this if comprehension continues to elude you.
From Wright's 1943 paper on "Isolation by distance" (pdf):
Study of statistical differences among local populations is an important line of attack on the evolutionary problem. While such differences can only rarely represent first steps toward speciation in the sense of the splitting of the species, they are important for the evolution of the species as a whole. They provide a possible basis for intergroup selection of genetic systems, a process that provides a more effective mechanism for adaptive advance of the species as a whole than does the mass selection which is all that can occur under panmixia. [. . .]Sewall Wright, incidentally, was of New England Puritan stock.THE INBREEDING COEFFICIENT
Departures from panmixia may be expressed in terms of the average inbreeding coefficient of individuals, relative to the total population under consideration. This coefficient has been defined as the correlation between uniting gametes with respect to the gene complex as an additive system. It has been shown that its value can be found for any pedigree by finding all paths by which one may trace back from the egg to a common ancestor (A) and thence forward to the sperm along a wholly different path. [. . .]
The inbreeding, measured by F, may be of either of two extreme sorts: sporadic mating of close relatives with no tendency to break the population into subgroups, and division into partially isolated subgroups, within each of which there is random mating. The latter is the case in which we are primarily interested here.
"Mormons are largely Puritans" (JayMan's latest embarrassing averral)
This is of course simply false. While Puritan ancestry is found at higher levels among Mormons than in the US population in general, it's not true that Mormons today are of predominantly Puritan descent. (Nor is any other major population in America today of predominantly Puritan descent.)
In addition to Scandinavians, converts from missionary efforts in Britain form a major component in the ancestry of those with early Mormon roots. Moreover, most of the British converts came from areas outside of East Anglia and should tend to be "clannish" relative to New England Puritans in the JayMan understanding of things.
Hail, looking at Mitt Romney's ancestry, found:
The current president of the Mormon church, Thomas S. Monson, has no colonial American ancestry whatsoever. He's half Scottish, 1/4 northern English, and 1/4 Swedish.
- Most of his ancestral stock consists of early converts to Mormonism from Britain (most from Northwest-England and Scotland) who were impelled to the USA from the 1830s to the 1850s, settling directly in Mormon communities.
- Colonial-Yankees account for 27% of Romney’s ancestral stock.
- 12.5% (one-eighth) of his ancestral stock comes from Northern-Germany.
What makes this all even more amusing is that Glenn Beck was not even born a Mormon. He's a convert, and per wikipedia:
He is descended from German immigrants who came to the United States in the 19th century.[24] Beck was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Mount Vernon.Glenn and his older sister moved with their mother to Sumner, Washington, attending a Jesuit school[25] in Puyallup.
Reply to RCB on the evolution and adaptiveness of ethnocentric altruism
"you are unable to explain to a competent person why you believe what you believe."
I'm trying to be patient here, but I don't know how much better I can explain this. You either get it, or you don't. If you don't, you're not as competent as you believe; you either don't really understand the basic concepts we're talking about or have mental blocks when it comes to applying them to humans, and this is something you need to deal with yourself.
No matter how many times I explain this, you don't want to get it. Your starting point is that Salter can't be right; so when I explain to you how your reasoning is flawed, regardless of how many times we go through this or how many times I address a particular objection, your response is just to throw out additional confused reasoning, often forgetting things you previously agreed I was correct on and switching back to objections that have already been addressed.
The benefit of the ethnocentric altruism alleles comes from between-group selection, not within-group selection. Even in the first generation, an allele for ethnocentric altruism can potentially boost its odds of representation in future generations by, for example, reducing the chance of extinction of the group it's found in (whether by contributing to avoiding defeat and extermination by rival groups in an ancestral environment, or resisting replacement-level immigration in the modern world).
It makes no difference whether there is enough between-group relative to within-group competition at modern scales to maintain or grow this sort of variation in the long run (and certainly Hamilton speculated that self-sacrificing altruism would be found at higher levels in tribal people than in the long-civilized). In a particular instance of intergroup competition of the sort we're discussing, ethnocentric altruism alleles attuned to Hamilton's rule would by definition be adaptive.
This will always be true, regardless of scale, and regardless of how often the group is actually faced with the threat of intergroup competition. In the face of such a threat, the alleles (ones that enhance group competitiveness in a generalized fashion and are sensitive to cost, benefit, and relatedness) will be adaptive.
Your argument is somewhat analogous to claiming sickle-cell alleles can't be adaptive (or even exist in the first place!) in a malarial environment because their frequency would not increase in the long run in the absence of malaria. Even if malaria is nearly wiped out and the frequency of sickle-cell alleles begins to decline, this does not prove that if a mosquito with malaria does land on you you'd be better off not having a sickle-cell allele.
"Yes, the behaviors are polygenic. But all genes have to start at low frequency, and you have not explained how they get to high frequency"
Again: positive selection will come from intergroup competition. If your argument is that all relevant variants would be snuffed out immediately, leaving no variation on which group-level selection could act, this is of course absurd. Yet again: we're talking about very large numbers of weakly-selected variants, and a large surface on which new mutations can arise.
Crow and Aoki modeled group selection for polygenic behavioral traits. Again, it boils down to Hamilton's rule.
Group selection for a polygenic behavioral trait: a differential proliferation model [pdf]
Group selection for a polygenic behavioral trait: estimating the degree of population subdivision [pdf]
Our general approach is to use molecular markers, which are selected very weakly at most, as neutral indicators of population structure. GST gives us an appropriate description of the relevant aspect of the structure. By using Eq. 3 we can state the maximum value of cost/benefit of a quantitative trait if that trait is to increase in average value or frequency in the population. GST describes the present structure of the population; it does not tell us how it got that way. If this value has been roughly stable in the past, we could expect that traits with c/b up to this value would have increased in the population, assuming of course that such traits exist and have heritability greater than zero.
Empirically, ethnocentrism exists, and no doubt has since before we were humans. Empirically, ethnocentrism has heritability greater than zero.
Nature, nurture, and ethnocentrism in the Minnesota Twin Study [pdf]
Common Heritable Effects Underpin Concerns Over Norm Maintenance and In-Group Favoritism: Evidence From Genetic Analyses of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Traditionalism [pdf]
- Genetic evidence for multiple biological mechanisms underlying in-group favoritism [pdf]
Your issue is with reality, not with Salter or me.
"Of course, ethnic altruist genes could be maladaptive relics of the past, when groups were small. But Salter says they are adaptive now."
Again, see above.
And Salter never claims we are well-adapted to ethnic competition in the modern world. If he'd believed that to be the case, he would have had little reason to write the book. From the introduction:
On Genetic Interests is an attempt to answer the empirical question: How would an individual behave in order to be adaptive in the modern world? I adopt the neo-Darwinian meaning of adaptive, which is to maximize the survival chances of one’s genes. I begin by describing humans as an evolved species and thus as creatures for whom genetic continuity consists of personal reproduction or reproduction of kin. [. . .]Humans can no longer rely on their instincts
There is nothing immutable or necessarily perfect about adaptations or the understanding, appetites and preferences they organize. Natural selection is constrained by evolutionary history and environment. It shapes bodies and behaviours in small increments by modifying existing species. Much in nature is badly designed, if one examines it from an engineer’s viewpoint. [. . .]
Like adaptations that advance them, proximate interests can be imperfect in promoting genetic interests. The main problem is the slowness of natural selection compared to the rapidity of technological and social change since the Neolithic. The inertia of adaptations can cause them to continue to promote proximate interests that no longer serve fitness. For most of humans’ evolutionary history, adaptations tracked slow-moving environmental change, including technological advances. In the species’ distant hominid and pre-hominid past, proximate interests that reduced an actor’s fitness were valued less and less as the genes that coded for such valuation failed to reproduce. For this reason, at most moments in time proximate interests have correlated with ultimate interests because the environment has changed so slowly that physiology and behaviour could keep track with it. Proximate and ultimate interests have been in equilibrium except where rapid changes in environment occurred. The equilibrium applying to humans has been upset in recent generations, so that we can no longer rely on subjectively designated proximate interests to serve our ultimate interest. We must rely more on science to perceive the causal links between the things we value and formulate synthetic goals based on that rational appraisal.
Proximate interests, often reflected in consciously held values, have become increasingly fallible guides to ultimate interests because modern humans live in a rapidly changing world. Humans evolved in small bands consisting of a few families, sometimes grouped into tribes numbering in the hundreds. For most of their evolutionary history humans made a living by hunting and gathering in largely natural environments. They lacked formal organization and hierarchy. Adults coordinated activities by negotiating simple demographic role specializations — by age and sex — on an egalitarian basis with familiar band members. Most information was common. Humans now live in societies numbering in the millions where the great majority of interactants are strangers or acquaintances. They make their living through a great diversity of occupations resulting in radical asymmetries in information. They live and work in largely man-made urban environments. They are formally organized into states administered by extended hierarchies of rank and resources actuated by authoritative commands, impersonal contracts enforced by the state authority, and powerful forms of indoctrination performed by universal education, centralized media and entertainment.
However, to the extent we are able to correctly reason about what would be adaptive in the context of intergroup competition, and act in accordance with this, we have the equivalent of our generalized ethnocentric altruism alleles.
Related:
JayMan continues to talk about things he doesn't understand
However, common among people who have a superficial and/or selective understanding of heritable group differences is belief in conveniently inaccurate claims. One of these erroneous ideas that White nationalists in particular have latched on to is the belief in “ethnic genetic interests” – that is, that kin selection has led individuals to favor people of their own race/ethnic group over others. This of course is bunk. Natural selection doesn’t work that way, since individuals within an ethnic group aren’t closely related enough for this to work. This has been explained repeatedly, lately by Misdreavus:It is impossible for such a thing as a “race altruist gene” to evolve, because sacrificing yourself on behalf of strangers does nothing to increase the frequency of the gene under any set of circumstances. It doesn’t matter if the frequency of a such a gene “magically” originated with a frequency of 4 in 10 Chinese people. The Chinese who don’t have the gene, on average, would have a higher fitness, resulting in the frequency decreasing monotonically over time.He continues to argue there, which is worth a read for anyone seriously interested in the matter.
After anyone seriously interested in the matter gets done studying the confused rantings of JayMan's gay sidekick, I would recommend they at least take a few minutes to skim the work of the man who coined the term "ethnic genetic interests". Doing so would have saved JayMan and misdreavus at least some measure of embarrassment.
A copy of Frank Salter's On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, And Humanity In An Age Of Mass Migration is freely available online.
If you want to talk about ethnic genetic interests, read it.
The actual definition of ethnic genetic interests
Frank Salter defines "ethnic genetic interests" as:
The number of copies of a random individual's distinctive genes in his or her ethny, not counting the copies in kin. The size of ethnic genetic interest is relative to the kinship of genetic competitors. When competitors are closely related ethnies, the interest can be relatively small. When competitors are distantly related, especially from different geographical races, ethnic genetic interest can be many orders of magnitude greater than familial genetic interests.
To deny that ethnic genetic interests exist is to deny that human population structure exists (or to hilariously misunderstand basic population genetics). Ethnic genetic interests exist regardless of whether or not one believes group selection has played any role in human evolution and regardless of whether or not people naturally favor others from their own group.
The issue of the degree to which group selection or kin selection favored the evolution of ethnocentric altruism in humans has no bearing on the reality of ethnic genetic interests. It's a separate issue, on which JayMan/misdreavus are also wrong (one can debate the issue, but not on the confused grounds JayMan and misdreavus have attempted to debate it).
Misdreavus's confusion about coefficients of relatedness
One area of confusion for misdreavus in the linked thread:
The coefficient of relatedness between a Swede and a non-related Swede is zero. The coefficient of relatedness between a Swede and a black African is also zero. You simply do not seem to understand this.I replied at the time:
This is exactly the misapprehension I just got done correcting for JayMan: http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/02/kinship-coefficients-and-ethnic-genetic.html
The coefficient of relationship is simply twice the coefficient of inbreeding between the hypothetical children of two individuals. Inbreeding is defined relative to some population. It’s often convenient to disregard non-recent inbreeding in calculating coefficients of relationship, but this only makes sense with respect to a particular [approximately random-breeding] population, and, holding the base population constant, a Swede absolutely does not have the same coefficient of relationship to a sub-Saharan as to another Swede. Nor is there any difference in kind between the type of relatedness indicated through Fst and the type shared by close family members.
Even after having it explained to them again, Misdreavus (and apparently JayMan) still failed to understand this very basic concept.
Misdreavus's confusion about the viability of genes for altruism
This is another extremely basic issue: frequencies of genes harmful to an individual's fitness with respect to his group can increase globally if his group expands relative to other groups. If misdreavus had read and understood pretty much anything written about altruism and kin selection or group selection within the past half century, he would have grasped this.
If groups with high frequencies of ethnocentric people expand at the expense of groups with low ethnocentrism, genes for ethnocentric altruism can increase in frequency.
Even misdreavus's (anti-group-selectionist) idol understands this (or did at one point):
Imagine that in much of history, people lived in small groups that often fought with their neighbors. In that sort of situation, selection for group altruism is at least possible, since the group is full of close relatives, while the opponents are less closely related. Both sides are probably members of the same broad ethnic group or race, but that doesn’t matter : only the kinship coefficients matter.Related:
- Kinship coefficients and Ethnic Genetic Interests (JayMan embarrassing himself again)
- Remedial population genetics for Greg Cochran
- Hamilton on inclusive fitness and social behavior in humans
- More from Hamilton on kin recognition and intergroup hostility
- R. A. Fisher on group selection in humans
- Robert Axelrod on the evolution of ethnocentrism
- Gender and Politics Among Anthropologists in the Units of Selection Debate
Self-reported vs. genetic ancestry in a large US cohort
Using genome-wide genotypes, we characterized the genetic structure of 103,006 participants in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California multi-ethnic Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging (GERA) Cohort and analyzed the relationship to self-reported race/ethnicity. Participants endorsed any of 23 race/ethnicity/nationality categories, which were collapsed into 7 major race/ethnicity groups. By self-report the cohort is 80.8% white and 19.2% minority; 93.8% endorsed a single race/ethnicity group, while 6.2% endorsed two or more. PC and admixture analyses were generally consistent with prior studies. Approximately 17% of subjects had genetic ancestry from more than one continent, and 12% were genetically admixed considering only non-adjacent geographical origins. Self-reported whites were spread on a continuum along the first two PCs, indicating extensive mixing among European nationalities. Self-identified East Asian nationalities correlated with genetic clustering, consistent with extensive endogamy. Individuals of mixed East Asian-European genetic ancestry were easily identified; we also observed a modest amount of European genetic ancestry in individuals self-identified as Filipinos. Self-reported African Americans and Latinos showed extensive European and African genetic ancestry, and Native American genetic ancestry for the latter. Among 3,741 genetically-identified parent-child pairs, 93% were concordant for self-reported race/ethnicity; among 2,018 genetically-identified full-sib pairs, 96% were concordant; the lower rate for parent-child pairs was largely due to inter-marriage. The parent-child pairs revealed a trend towards increasing exogamy over time; the presence in the cohort of individuals endorsing multiple race/ethnicity categories, creates interesting challenges and future opportunities for genetic epidemiologic studies. [. . .]In this Northern California sample, less than 1% of the self-identified "European/West Asian" group showed evidence of Amerindian ancestry, and less than half a percent showed evidence of black admixture.The initial analysis showed, as expected, a clear Ashkenazi cluster and a larger cluster depicting the northwest-southeast European cline (Price et al. 2008; Tian et al. 2008c).
As expected, all individuals who self-identified as European/West Asian had evidence of European/West Asian genetic ancestry. The next largest genetic ancestry component in this group was South Asian (4.3%), primarily attributable to individuals of West Asian ethnicity. Because there is a continuum of genetic ancestry from Europe to West Asia, Central/ South Asia to East Asia, genetic overlap exists for individuals whose national origins are geographically between these divisions (Li et al. 2008). Nearly 1% of this group also had evidence of Native American genetic ancestry, while a smaller fraction had evidence of African or East Asian genetic ancestry (0.3% and 0.4%, respectively). Nearly all individuals (99.7%) self-reporting African/African American race/ethnicity had evidence of African genetic ancestry; 91% also had evidence of European genetic ancestry, consistent with broad European admixture among African Americans. Native American and East Asian genetic ancestry occurred in this group at a similar low level as observed in the Europeans/West Asians (1.3% and 0.5%, respectively). Among self-reported East Asians, all had evidence of East Asian genetic ancestry; a sizeable proportion (21.7%) also had evidence of Pacific Islander genetic ancestry, but this likely represents difficulty in differentiating East Asian and Pacific Islander genetic ancestry. A modest subgroup (3.4%) had evidence of European/West Asian genetic ancestry (majority are self-reported Filipinos), while small proportions had evidence of African or Native American genetic ancestry (0.1% and 0.5%, respectively). Among the Latinos, nearly all had evidence of European/West Asian genetic ancestry; a similar high proportion (94.2%) had evidence of Native American genetic ancestry, and an additional 27.7% had evidence of African ancestry. A substantial number of self-reported Pacific Islanders had evidence of East Asian genetic ancestry (91.3%) in addition to Pacific Islander genetic ancestry (66.3%); these results are again likely due to close genetic similarity between East Asians and Pacific Islanders. There is also evidence of substantial European/West Asian and South Asian genetic ancestry in this group (57.6% and 26.1%, respectively). The former reflects a high rate of European admixture among some self-reported Pacific Islander groups, while the latter likely reflects Fijians of Indian origin.
Gender and Politics Among Anthropologists in the Units of Selection Debate
In recent years evolutionary theorists have been engaged in a protracted and bitter disagreement concerning how natural selection affects units such as genes, individuals, kin groups, and groups. Central to this debate has been whether selective pressures affecting group success can trump the selective pressures that confer advantage at the individual level. In short, there has been a debate about the utility of group selection, with noted theorist Steven Pinker calling the concept useless for the social sciences. We surveyed 175 evolutionary anthropologists to ascertain where they stood in the debate. We found that most were receptive to group selection, especially in the case of cultural group selection. The survey also revealed that liberals and conservatives, and males and females, all displayed significant differences of opinion concerning which selective forces were important in humanity’s prehistory. We conclude by interpreting these findings in the context of recent research in political psychology.Peter Turchin:
A particularly interesting recent study is the one by William Yaworsky, Mark Horowitz, and Kenneth Kickham, Gender and Politics among Anthropologists in the Units of Selection Debate, published a month ago in Biological Theory. It’s interesting because it addresses the question of group versus kin selection, which is of course one of the most dividing issues in evolutionary science.Related:Yaworsky and colleagues obtained 175 surveys from evolutionary anthropologists who served faculty in graduate programs in various universities (which means that they are training their own graduate students). Their analysis of the questionnaires showed that there were very striking differences between different groups of anthropologists. Liberals were much more likely to disagree with the statement that tribal conflict was a principal evolutionary force that shaped human behavior. Conservatives, on the other hand, thought that tribalism was a fundamental human trait. They also tended to agree with the notion that homicide was frequent in early human societies.
The differences between male and female evolutionary anthropologists were even stronger than between different parties. Women were very resistant to the ideas that tribal conflict was an important selective force and that homicide was common in prehistory. [. . .]
And I expect that the questions of the importance of between-group competition and the frequency of lethal violence in prehistory will eventually achieve the same level of consensus. It may take many decades, but my hunch is that it will happen more quickly than that.
In fact, it’s already happening. The data of Yaworsky and colleagues show that 80 percent of respondents disagree with Pinker’s assertion that group selection is a useless concept. A similar proportion thinks that group selection is an important process, and 55 percent consider group selection as a more important process than kin selection. In contrast, among the professors who trained this cohort of respondents, the previous generation, only 8 percent were strongly in favor or “leaned” towards group selection. We are winning!
“Nos ancêtres les Gaulois”: Ethnicity and History in Vermont
Also see: Burlington, VT: "The Myth of a Yankee Town" (1937)
“Nos ancêtres les Gaulois”: Ethnicity and History in Vermont (pdf):
Note that Cora Cheney was not a Yankee, but a transplant from Alabama, of Southern ancestry. Actual Yankee sentiment on immigration was a bit different:Canadians, French and English speaking, make up the largest ethnic group in our state. 1 “Our ancestors the Canadians” raises the array of issues, the universals and the particulars, that are germane to the definition and the importance of ethnicity in Vermont history. Who is ethnic in the Green Mountain State? Is Vermont history fundamentally different from the main American narrative whose title could be “A Nation of Immigrants”? Is Vermont a state of immigrants? If the Green Mountains are replete with Canadian Catholics, Italian Socialists, and Russian Jews, why are we fascinated with “Real Vermonters”: the Protestant “Last Yankees” who milk their historical constructs for Vermont Life?
I once had a student who defined “member of an ethnic group” as “a person who moved from somewhere else.” This is an excellent, if incomplete definition of who we are. We are all Vermonters and none of us are real, first, or native, not in a way that should matter. Our understanding of Vermont’s past should not overstate claims to the status of being first, or dwell upon the persistence or preponderance of any single group among us. What does “First” or “Real” Vermonters mean? There is something fundamentally evil in proclaiming to be the first when territorial occupation is the subject of history. Such pretensions, especially those accompanied by claims to divine election, are at the root of nationalism. There are no First Vermonters; only Abenakis who have left their mark upon the land for thousands of years. There are no First Vermonters; only European immigrants who planted themselves in Western Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, and elsewhere just long enough to become Americans before transplanting their roots into Vermont soil. The majority of these early Vermonters stayed in the Green Mountains no more than two or three generations before scattering to a West that unfolded to the Pacific. 2 Others—Canadians, Irish, Italians, Swedes, Poles, Lebanese, etc.—came, early and late, in large and small numbers. 3 For the most part, they did not identify their role in daily life with power and ascendancy; they failed to become bankers, railroad magnates, lumber barons, admirals of White Fleets, governors of the state; or if they did, they had no compulsion to define their roots or proclaim the special status of their ancestries. In short, insofar as ethnic identity is concerned, unless they could claim a Yankee lineage and in that way pass for white, Vermonters who made history remained as shrouded, ethnically speaking that is, as women. Most Vermonters, Yankee white or not, made the history of which I speak: the history of textile workers, mostly women and children, and lumberjacks, mostly men, of farm hands and quarry workers. It is the history of Canadians—of French Canadians who worked in the tanneries of Pownal, of Scottish Canadians who made their way to Barre, of Irish Canadians who toiled in the railroad repair shops of St. Albans, of English Canadians (my litany follows the order of numerical importance), 4 and of course, of direct immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Italy, Poland, etc. Is this history, the history of ethnic Vermont, important enough to merit a major part of our attention?
The answer is yes, emphatically. If we are all ethnic, then ethnicity lies at the heart of a definition of Vermont. But today, much if not most of our history focuses, often with insistence, on one of the state’s ethnic groups: the Yankee. Vermont’s construct of ethnicity is synonymous with whiteness, a most peculiar brand of whiteness at that. Vermont’s definition of ethnicity, the source of much racial, gender, and ethnic prejudice, inequality, and intolerance, is closely associated with the narrative that we have built around the Yankee, the Native Vermonter that Frank Bryan has tried to transform into a witty, taciturn, likeable “Real Vermonter” who does not milk goats. 5 The nature of this prejudice is, in a way, our claim to fame: Vermont’s original contribution to the American experience. We have made much of the environment, the small demographic scale and the racial and ethnic “natural selection” that has saved us from the violence of the Watts’s of this country, the urban blight of the Lowells or Manchesters of New England, the sterile sprawl of the Levittowns of postwar America. George S. Weaver, in his piece, “Vermont’s Minority,” a paper read before the 1888 meeting of the Providence (Rhode Island) Association of the Sons of Vermont, captured the essentials of this long-lived ideology that has turned Vermont into the cultural product we market so successfully today. Evoking the settler days, the time of Vermont’s “minority,” Weaver transforms the Green Mountains into the setting for a eugenic Arcadia: [. . .]
The following passage from Cora Cheney’s storybook tales admirably sums up how Vermont authors have amplified Weaver’s themes:
“Grandpa, what’s a Vermonter?” asked a Yankee boy a hundred years or more ago. Grandpa thought a minute. “Why, son, it’s a person who chooses to live here and take part in the community,” he said. “There’s been a lot of talk about ‘Vermonters’ running the ‘foreigners’ out, but as I see it, all people were foreigners here once, even the Indians.” “I just wondered,” said the boy. “Some fellows at school talk about it. I’ll tell them what you said.” “Something about the Green Mountains makes the people who live here get to be a certain way,” said the old man thoughtfully. “The people who move here don’t change Vermont, but instead they change to Vermonters.” The boy took this thought back to school and became friends with the new Irish and French-Canadian children at recess. When he grew up, the boy married one of his French-Canadian neighbors and together they raised a family of Green Mountain boys and girls. 7
What degree of historical truth and reality can we lend these images of our past? Let us ask major voices. The first testimony comes from the pen of Rowland E. Robinson. The text, taken from Vermont: A Study of Independence (1892), reflects the sentiment of some of Weaver’s contemporaries as they had to grapple with new realities, changes that included the arrival of new “stocks.” Robinson, the son of a family who shepherded blacks to Canadian freedom, cast a different eye on what the aboveground railroad was ferrying from the North. The Sage of Rokeby refers to newcomers who fill the place left by the Yankee emigration to the West as “foreign elements,” “swarms,” “gangs.” 8 The verbs “maraud” and “pilfer” seem to find their way naturally into his dramatic prose. Words such as “infestation” and “inundation” prepare the reader for the following outburst of self-righteous contempt: “They [French-Canadian migrant workers] were an abominable crew of vagabonds, robust, lazy men and boys, slatternly women with litters of filthy brats, and all as detestable as they were uninteresting.” 9Robinson takes stock of what Vermont is becoming in its “majority”: “The character of these people is not such as to inspire the highest hope for the future of Vermont, if they should become the most numerous of its population. The affiliation with Anglo-Americans of a race so different in traits, in traditions, and in religion must necessarily be slow, and may never be complete. Vermont, as may be seen, has given of her best for the building of new commonwealths, to her own loss of such material as had made her all that her sons, wherever found, are so proud of,—material whose place no alien drift from northward or overseas can ever fill.” 10
Robinson’s lament elucidates the subtext of Weaver’s praise of “vigor” and “sound European stock” and it calibrates the dark intimations contained in such phrases as “They were not cousins who had intermarried for generations.” [. . .]
With hindsight, we can appreciate that Rowland Robinson was unduly alarmed. Vermont has domesticated the French Canadians and the Irish Catholics. Climate, geography, small-scale industries, and poverty have conspired to deny us our allotment of Blacks, Chinese, Eastern, or Southern Europeans. We are as white as a virgin page, as buffered as snow. We live in Senator Dillingham’s dream: Vermont has stayed that mythic kingdom that Currier and Ives can come home to. Much of this pious, infectious construct is dangerous and insidious. It blinds us to the nature of Vermont’s ethnic past and our role, our peculiar role in the history of American inequality and prejudice.
Vermont’s uneasiness with its ethnic past, its failure to valorize the accomplishments of French Canadians or Irish Catholics as such, its insistence on rescuing atypical blacks and other members of minorities, all these symptoms invite us to assess our fascination with what Weaver calls Vermont’s “minority,” and to explore the full meaning of our whiteness. There is much in the concept of whiteness as defined by contributors to The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness 12 that applies to Vermont, its ideology and its historiography; much in this second wave of whiteness studies to illuminate how Vermont “morphs” its ethnic past. [. . .]
Judging by the written word, historians and other intellectuals have not explored these aspects of our past. There is little in the epistemology of Vermont that could be construed as a reflection on the nature and complexity of our ethnic identity. Indeed, there is little but fortuitous, fragmented documentation to inform such a debate. Until such history is written, Vermont’s knowledge of its past will remain as disingenuous as the history lesson dispensed by Republican France to its metropolitan population as well as the teeming masses of the French Empire. “Nos ancêtres les Gaulois,” the opening words of the state- mandated history textbook, has made the French Republic the easy target of revisionists worldwide. 15 Can a more meaningful icon of colonialism be found than millions of black children preparing to be Président du Sénégal or Cardinal du Mali or Dictateur de la Côte d’Ivoire by reciting “Our ancestors the Gauls” as their first history lesson? The phrase “Nos ancêtres les Gaulois” is not only a superb illustration of colonialism, it is a rich, telling demonstration of history as a construct. In full denial of their Germanic, Frankish roots, French historians of the Bismarck era closed their eyes to a mountain of evidence, evidence as ready as the name “France” or “Frankfurt” for example, and created a preposterous caricature: Those irreducible Gaulois who defied Jules César. Let us not laugh too loudly or snicker at these “Real French- men.” Here in Vermont, the new history has hardly made a dent into “Nos ancêtres les Yankees.” How about “Nos ancêtres les Canadiens, les Québécois” to shake things up a bit? [. . .]
1 According to the 1990 Census, over 29 percent of all Vermonters report “French” or “French- Canadian” as one of their ancestries. Statistics on ancestry from the 1990 Census will be found in Census of Population and Housing, 1990: Summary Tape File 3A. Major tables will be found in 1990 Census of Population: Social and Economic Characteristics: Vermont (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of the Census, 1993). This French/French-Canadian ancestry is the largest reported for the state and we can safely assume that much of the reported “French” ancestry refers to a French-Canadian immigration to Vermont. See Joseph-André Senécal, “Franco-Vermonters on the Eve of the Millen- nium: Tales From the 1990 Census,” Links (Spring 1997): 8–11, 32.
The next group in importance is made up of Vermonters with an English ancestry (26 percent), followed by people with foremothers and fathers from Ireland (17 percent). Are these Vermonters who claim an ancestry from Great Britain (England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland) direct emigrants from the British archipelago, or could Canada claim many of them on the basis of a long stay (one generation or more), layovers lengthy enough to transform them into English Canadians? We are aware of the vast French-Canadian immigration to the U.S. northeast, but how many of us know that the English-Canadian immigration to the United States was slightly larger than the Québécois and Acadian? The most accurate and intelligent treatment of this phenomenon will be found in Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870–1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 117–148. Unless the multigenerational mobility patterns of the Anglo, Irish, Scotch, Scotch-Irish and Welsh Canadians who came to Vermont are vastly different than the dispersal of French Canadians who immigrated to the Green Mountains, the percentage of contemporary Vermonters who claim a British or an Irish ancestry, but who are also English Canadians, is very high, high enough to make Canadians (French and English Canadians combined) the largest ethnic group in Vermont. [. . .]
4 For statistics on the English-Canadian presence in Vermont see Leon Truesdell, Canadian Born in the United States: An Analysis of Statistics of the Canadian Element in the Population of the United States, 1850–1930 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1943). ... Two titles, Élise Guyette, Vermont: A Cultural Patchwork (Peter- borough, N.H.: Cobblestone Publishing, 1986), and Gregory Sharrow’s Many Cultures, One People : A Multicultural Handbook about Vermont for Teachers, [. . .]
The textbook highlights the history of more than fifteen ethnic groups in Vermont. The work is essential reading not only for the documentary base it provides for the study of these groups but because it aims to combat the historical legacies of whiteness in Vermont. The authors consciously treat the Vermont Yankees as one ethnic group and reserve one chapter, commensurate with the length of the other chapters, to deal with the topic. They are also conscious of their Eurocentric bias and go to great lengths to nullify it. For example, the words “settler” and “pioneer” are avoided in the discussion of English Vermonters. Sharrow is well-aware that such words “tend to elevate the Early English above the other ethnic groups.” Guyette’s Vermont: A Cultural Patchwork affords a summary but balanced and enlightened treatment of ethnicity in Vermont. The most important lesson of this textbook may be the ties that Guyette documents between the story of ethnic Vermont and the preponderance of manufacturing in the state. In cultivating our bucolic image we have evacuated from our collective memory the large, essential historical role of manufacturing, mining, and lumbering in Vermont. In the importance of manufacturing between 1830 and 1930, Vermont mirrors the rest of New England. Only the scales vary. At no time could we have found a Manchester (New Hamp- shire) or Lowell (Massachusetts) in Vermont, but the resources of the Green Mountain State pro- vided ample power and workers to support the important industrial complexes of St. Johnsbury, Bellows Falls, Bennington, and Brattleboro, to name but a few. The traces of the manufacturing vocation of those towns and large villages still linger in the decrepit Lombard factory architecture that one can observe in St. Albans, Winooski, or Rutland. But who remembers the vocation of Barton as the world capital of piano soundboards, the attraction of Jamaica as the site of a chair factory? Who remembers the importance of suspenders for the economic mainstay of Swanton, or wooden bobbins for the workers of Enosburg? Vermont’s ethnic history is tied to its industrial past and one narrative will not emerge without the other.
Burlington, VT: "The Myth of a Yankee Town" (1937)
Vermont Eugenics: A Documentary History. This
document is: "The City Selected," "The Myth of
a Yankee Town" (excerpts)We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in An
American City,
Anderson, Elin L..
1937.
http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/primarydocs/orelawa000037.xml
THE MYTH OF A YANKEE TOWN
WALKING along the streets of Burlington, the visitor sees nothing in the appearance of the citizens to remind him of the not-too-distant past when the shawl or apron of a foreigner was a usual part of an American street scene.
But to a Yankee farmer they are not all alike. To him Burlington has a lot of foreigners. As he walks along the main street, he looks in vain for a few faces which remind him of the features of Calvin Coolidge. Going into a store he may be greeted by a proprietor whose short and stocky build little resembles the long, lean Yankee storekeeper of earlier days. While waiting to be served he may listen abstractedly to an animated conversation between the clerk and a customer only to realize suddenly that he is listening to a foreign language. "French," he probably decides, as he turns to give his order. He goes into another store to be waited on by the Jewish proprietor, and comes out a little fearful lest he may have met his match in bargaining. If he stays in town for lunch, he will have to look hard along the main street to find a restaurant which is not Greek, or Syrian, or Chinese, or run by some other "foreigner." It is only when he goes into the bank that he can breathe easily, knowing that here he is still on Yankee ground.
Burlingtonians themselves are occasionally interested in speculating on the extent to which the city is no longer an Old American community. The Federal Census gives them some picture of the changes: according to the figures of 1930, 40 per cent of the population of 24,789 are either immigrants or children of immigrants, 12 per cent being foreign-born and 28 per cent of foreign or mixed parentage. This group of immigrants and children of immigrants is composed of several elements. The French Canadian, with 4,895 members, is the largest; it comprises one half of all the people of foreign stock belonging to the first and second generations, and one fifth of all the people of the community. The next largest group is that of English-speaking Canadians, who number some 1,208 persons. The Irish come next with 1,102; and the Russians and Poles (most of whom are Jews) come fourth with 741 persons. Other groups of some size are the English, with 457 members; the Italian, 392; and the German, 309. In addition to these, twenty-nine other nationalities are represented in lesser numbers.
The Census, however, does not tell the whole story, for it does not distinguish the nationality or stock of the grandchildren of immigrants. It is therefore only by a count of the three Catholic parishes - two French-Canadian and one Irish - that a more comprehensive picture may be obtained of the size of the ethnic groups of the city which have been here for more than two generations.
Such a count reveals that the French-Canadian element is much larger than it appears to be from the Census enumeration. By the priests' estimate there are in St. Joseph's, the first French-Canadian parish, some 6,000 souls of French-Canadian stock; in St. Anthony's, some 1,500; and in Cathedral, the English-speaking parish, at least 2.000. Hence, according to this count, the people of French-Canadian stock number approximately 9,500 and comprise almost two fifths of the total population of the city. In Cathedral, the English-speaking parish, there are also some 5,000 persons of Irish stock, and 1,000 Italians, Syrians, and persons of other smaller groups. In this Yankee community, therefore, 15,500 persons, more than three fifths of the population, are members of ethnic groups identified with the Roman Catholic faith; and when to this total is added the Jewish group, numbering 800 persons, the elements foreign to the Old Yankee stock are found to compose 66 per cent of the population of the city.
This does not mean that the remaining 34 per cent is a "pure" Yankee group. Rather, it, too, is composed largely of foreign elements, though of kindred ethnic stocks -English, English Canadians, Germans - with the Old Americans themselves, those of the fourth generation or more in this country, making up an extremely small part of the population of the city. Their ranks are reinforced by the peoples of the related ethnic stocks who are of the Protestant faith, and it is chiefly as Protestants in contrast with Roman Catholics that these form a cohesive group.
[pp. 21-24]
Every community contains its corps of people who consider themselves its charter members. They have determined its nature, created its organizations, fostered its development. In Burlington this corps consists of Old American Protestants -- the Yankees, as they still are called. They have always lived here, they love the place, they own it. No matter what changes may come over the city, no matter how far it has lost its early character, they watch over its development and growth with a certain sense of responsibility born of the feeling of proprietorship. This feeling is justified in a sense by the fact that most of the institutions around which the life of the city centers today were founded by their forefathers. These had, immediately upon their settling in 1763, set up a town government and public schools, and, as early as 1791, the University of Vermont. After these agencies symbolic of the principles of free government had been established, they turned their attention to the organization of a religious society, which was formed in 1805. Today the descendants of these Old Americans have to a large extent retreated from the commercial life of the city, but they still control the banks, most of the city's manufacturing, and the University. Furthermore, they have through their institutions, and aided by the fact that the immigrant invasion was never great enough to threaten their position of dominance, set an indelible stamp upon the life of the community. An internationally known writer who returned after years abroad to make his home in the city explained how deeply satisfying it was to find here a town where the spirit of early American democracy still endured; where independence of thought, appreciation of character on the basis of worth - qualities which are fast disappearing from the American scene - still survived. Here among the elm-arched streets he felt as if he were coming back to an early American democratic community in which Emerson might still be living.
The small Old American group has been helped to maintain its predominant position by the strength of its traditional feeling of the racial superiority of the Anglo-Saxon. As one woman, concerned about a more successful interrelationship between the various ethnic groups of the community, explained: "Of course you do believe that the English are the finest people yet produced on earth. You do believe that they have the most admirable human qualities and abilities that any people have ever had!" Interestingly enough, the newer peoples on the whole accept the Old Americans at their own valuation, perhaps partly because the premium placed on conformity to standards already set has not permitted them to value their own standards and interpretations of America. At any rate, they always speak highly of the Old Americans as fine people with superior ability, shrewd business men, and leaders of the community; though some qualify their appreciation by commenting that the Old Americans tend to be snobbish and ingrown, and that they place undue emphasis upon the forms of their culture, which they expect all newer peoples to emulate. The criticism, however, is always good-humoredly qualified by: "But they can't help themselves, you know. A Yankee just is like that. You have to accept that when dealing with him."
Traditions of family and name, of power and influence in the financial and civic life of the community, of race consciousness, plus a very deep conviction that the Protestant traditions of their forefathers are basically important to the development of free institutions in America, set the Old Americans apart as a group distinct from other people. Within that group there are the usual divisions of classes and cliques, of rich and poor; but the common elements of culture and tradition give an impression of a common unit in relation to other ethnic groups in the community. The Old Americans are charter members; they give a kindly welcome to newcomers, as behooves people of their position, but they expect in return the respect that is due charter members. One who can claim even remote blood connections with any of the group is cordially welcomed without question; he is "one of us," while one who cannot claim such connection is "accepted" only as he obeys the forms and the codes of the group, because, after all, he is "not one of us."
Freed from the kind of economic pressure that is known to a great proportion of the people in the other groups, the Old Americans are concerned primarily with "nice living." Their interests and activities connect them with persons outside the community more than with those within; thus they have broad views, wide interests in the arts, literature, and even international relations. In the community, however, their interest is in keeping their place and their prerogatives; their influence tends to preserve the status quo and puts a check on too rapid an invasion from the lower ranks into their society.
Barbara Ehrenreich: a more representative example of the non-"ethnic" element of our present elites than Garry Trudeau
Ehrenreich, one of Peter Dreier's "Fifty Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century", is the daughter of upwardly mobile, working class parents (her father was a copper miner who ended up a corporate executive).
Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town".[6] In an interview on C-SPAN, she characterized her parents as "strong union people" with two family rules: "never cross a picket line and never vote Republican".[2] In a talk she gave in 1999, Ehrenreich called herself a "fourth-generation atheist".[7]While, owing to heritable factors, we expect present elites will on average have forebears who are at least slightly above average in social status, the vast majority of their ancestors a generation or two ago were relatively unremarkable middle or working class people. The far-from-perfect heritability of social status and the fact that middle and working class people greatly outnumbered elites means there would have been significant upward social mobility in any case; but the massive expansion in the ranks of the college educated and white collar workers over the past century, along with mass immigration, means the overwhelming majority of present US elites have no special connection to the 19th-century or earlier American upper class."As a little girl", she told The New York Times in 1993, "I would go to school and have to decide if my parents were the evil people they were talking about, part of the Red Menace we read about in the Weekly Reader, just because my mother was a liberal Democrat who would always talk about racial injustice."[8] Her father was a copper miner who went to the Montana State School of Mines (now part of the University of Montana), and then to Carnegie Mellon University. He eventually became a senior executive at the Gillette Corporation. Her parents later divorced.
Even if we limit ourselves to the non-"ethnic" elements among present leftist elites, I have no doubt Ehrenreich is much more typical than Trudeau.
People have different interests and different dispositions. The "values" Ehrenreich belatedly claims as her cultural inheritance are subject to significant genetic influence. Though a range of political opinion has existed within every class throughout recent American and European history, traditional elites tended to favor the right, out of self-interest and likely also because some of the biologically-influenced traits associated with political conservatism favored entry into and retention in the elite. We now have whole segments of the elite where entry among non-"ethnics" is restricted to those who actively forsake their group and traditionalism. This does not favor "elite WASPs", but people who are genetically predisposed in that direction and relatively rootless to begin with.An acquaintance was telling me about the joys of rediscovering her ethnic and religious heritage. "I know exactly what my ancestors were doing 2,000 years ago," she said, eyes gleaming with enthusiasm, "and I can do the same things now." Then she leaned forward and inquired politely, "And what is your ethnic background, if I may ask?"
"None," I said, that being the first word in line to get out of my mouth. Well, not "none," I backtracked. Scottish, English, Irish--that was something, I supposed. Too much Irish to qualify as a WASP; too much of the hated English to warrant a "kiss Me, I'm Irish" button; plus there are a number of dead ends in the family tree due to adoptions, missing records, failing memories and the like. I was blushing by this time. Did "none" mean I was rejecting my heritage out of Anglo-Celtic self-hate? Or was I revealing a hidden ethnic chauvinism in which the Britannically derived served as a kind of neutral standard compared with the ethnic "others"?
Throughout the 60's and 70's, I watched one group after another--African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans--stand up and proudly reclaim their roots while I just sank back ever deeper into my seat. All this excitement over ethnicity stemmed, I uneasily sensed, from a past in which their ancestors had been trampled upon by my ancestors, or at least by people who looked very much like them. In addition, it had begun to seem almost un-American not to have some sort of hyphen at hand, linking one to more venerable times and locales.
But the truth is, I was raised with none. We'd eaten ethnic foods in my childhood home, but these were all borrowed, like the pasties, or Cornish meat pies, my father had picked up from his fellow miners in Butte, Montana. If my mother had one rule, it was militant ecumenism in all matters of food and experience. "Try new things," she would say, meaning anything from sweetbreads to clams, with an emphasis on the "new."
As a child, I briefly nourished a craving for tradition and roots. I immersed myself in the works of Sir Walter Scott. I pretended to believe that the bagpipe was a musical instrument. I was fascinated to learn from a grandmother that we were descended from certain Highland clans and longed for a pleated skirt in one of their distinctive tartans.
But in Ivanhoe, it was the dark-eyed "Jewess" Rebecca I identified with, not the flaxen-haired bimbo Rowena. As for clans: Why not call them "tribes," those bands of half-clad peasants and warriors whose idea of cuisine was stuffed sheep gut washed down with whisky? And then there was the sting of Disraeli's remark--which I came across in my early teens--to the effect that his ancestors had been leading orderly, literate lives when my ancestors were still rampaging through the Highlands daubing themselves with blue paint.
Motherhood put the screws on me, ethnicity-wise. I had hoped that by marrying a man of Eastern European-Jewish ancestry I would acquire for my descendants the ethnic genes that my own forebears so sadly lacked. At one point, I even subjected the children to a Seder of my own design, including a little talk about the flight from Egypt and its relevance to modern social issues. But the kids insisted on buttering their matzohs and snickering through my talk. "Give me a break, Mom," the older one said. "You don't even believe in God." [. . .]
But, then, on the fumes of Manischewitz, a great insight took form in my mind. It was true, as the kids said, that I didn't "believe in God." But this could be taken as something very different from an accusation--a reminder of a genuine heritage. My parents had not believed in God either, nor had my grandparents or any other progenitors going back to the great-great level. They had become disillusioned with Christianity generations ago--just as, on the in-law side, my children's other ancestors had shaken off their Orthodox Judaism. This insight did not exactly furnish me with an "identity," but it was at least something to work with: we are the kind of people, I realized--whatever our distant ancestors' religions--who do not believe, who do not carry on traditions, who do not do things just because someone has done them before.
[. . .] In my parents' general view, new things were better than old, and the very fact that some ritual had been performed in the past was a good reason for abandoning it now. Because what was the past, as our forebears knew it? Nothing but poverty, superstition and grief. "Think for yourself," Dad used to say. "Always ask why."
In fact, this may have been the ideal cultural heritage for my particular ethnic strain--bounced as it was from the Highlands of Scotland across the sea, out to the Rockies, down into the mines and finally spewed out into high-tech, suburban America. What better philosophy, for a race of migrants, than "Think for yourself"? What better maxim, for people whose whole world was rudely inverted every 30 years or so, than "Try new things"?
The more tradition-minded, the newly enthusiastic celebrants of Purim and Kwanzaa and Solstice, may see little point to survival if the survivors carry no cultural freight--religion, for example, or ethnic tradition. To which I would say that skepticism, curiosity and wide-eyed ecumenical tolerance are also worthy elements of the human tradition and are at least as old as such notions as "Serbian" or "Croatian," "Scottish" or "Jewish." I make no claims for my personal line of progenitors except that they remained loyal to the values that may have induced all of our ancestors, long, long, long ago, to climb down from the trees and make their way into the open plains.
I have to talk about my family a little bit. There is a reason in my case why the constant linkage of God, family, and flag is upsetting to me, and it has to do with the history of my particular family. I am a fourth-generation atheist. My freethinking ancestors were not members of the "liberal elite" who are always getting bashed for being anti-religious, who are so hated by the current conservative elite. My atheist ancestors were miners, railroad workers, farmers, farm workers. Once they had been religious people, many of them Catholics.Related:The story is told that my great-grandmother, a Montana farmwoman named Mamie O'Laughlin, sent for a priest when her father was dying. The priest did not want to be bothered. (This is western Montana, the late 19th century, the trip would have been dangerous.) And he sent back a message to Mamie that he would come but only if she would pay him a fee of $25, which was a huge sum in those days and way beyond the means of my great-grandmother. So her father died without the consolation, whatever it may have been, of the sacrament. [. . .]
At one time there were dozens of freethought newspapers published throughout the United States. The freethought movement was very much connected to movements for social change of different kinds. In the Northeast, the freethought movement was linked to the working men's movement of the early 1800s, which was a progenitor of the trade union movement. In the West it flourished among miners and other low-paid working people who were drawn to the Wobblies and other unions at the early part of this century. [. . .]
But this is not how it worked in my family. My dad was a really hardline atheist. I am not as hardline as he is. He used to read us Ingersoll on Sunday mornings--that was family quality time. He really believed some of the things, I later found out, that it says in the bible; like that we shall be judged by the way we treat "the least amongst us." He believed that, because he had been one of those "least amongst us" in his life. [. . .]
Here's a strange story from my great-grandfather John Howes whose earliest rebellion against religion--I am slightly embarassed to say--was to pee in the holy water before Easter service when he was a young Catholic boy in Canada.
The Myth of Old Money Liberalism
Haidt on moral foundations 1/2
"No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization
Journal of Social History 36.2 (2002) 405-429
"No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization
Richard Jensen
Retired Professor of History, University of Illinois, Chicago
Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, "No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish--on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory. [. . .]
Ethnic origins of The Nation's "Fifty Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century"
Even on this list, weighted towards a time when people of colonial American stock, and particularly those with early New England ancestry, made up a much larger fraction of the US population than they do today, Yankees are a distinct minority. Only 5 out of 50 (10% of the total list, and 17% of the NW European portion of the list) are of over 1/4 New England ancestry, and 4 of those 5 were born in the 19th century.
As a point of reference, people of Puritan stock made up a much larger fraction of distinguished American scientists:
Cattell in his 1904 questionnaire to the scientists starred in 1903 (and to some additional persons who were almost starred, included to increase the number of returns to about 1000) found that "more than half of the scientists were at least of half Puritan stock." Since 1904, the Puritan stock in America has formed a declining percentage of the total population, partly because it was the first major American group to practice rigorous birth control. Also the millions of immigrants who have arrived in America since 1800 have contributed an increasing share of our population. These changes increase the desirability of obtaining information on the subject by the 1946 questionnaire. A total of 873 of the 905 scientists who replied reported on their "racial stock or blood." Tables 10-20 and 10-21 show the percentages which had various fractions of the chief "bloods." The Puritan stock led in each of the categories, full or nearly full bloods, 3/4 or more, half or more, quarter or more. However instead of the "more than half" found by Cattell, their contribution has declined to 31 percent which are half or more Puritan. Other English stock is second, German third and Scots and Scotch-IrishNote also that even on this somewhat whitewashed list, the total amount of New England ancestry (adding up to the equivalent of 6 1/8 individuals) falls below the amount of Jewish ancestry (6 Jews and one 1/2 Jew), despite the fact that the proportion of New England genes in the US was vastly higher than the proportion of Jewish genes for the period in which most of these people were born.
Related: "The 25 Most Influential Liberals In The U.S. Media" (2009) by ancestry
NW European (30/50)
Eugene Debs (1855–1926) (1 of 51) [Alsatian: "Eugene Debs was born on November 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Jean Daniel and Marguerite Mari Bettrich Debs, who both immigrated to the United States from Colmar, Alsace, France."]
Jane Addams (1860–1935) (2 of 51) [Something like 7/8 Pennsylvania German, 1/8 Pennslyvania English ancestry.]
Florence Kelley (1859–1932) (4 of 51) [Mid-Atlantic (including Irish) ancestry.]
John Dewey (1859–1952) (5 of 51) [New England ancestry. "Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, to a family of modest means.[5]"]
Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936) (6 of 51) [1/2 Canadian, 1/2 English.]
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) (8 of 51) [Southern (including Scottish) ancestry.]
Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) (9 of 51) [Irish Catholic ancestry.]
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) (10 of 51) [New England ancestry.]
Roger Baldwin (1884–1981) (11 of 51) [New England ancestry.]
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) (12 of 51) [New England ancestry.]
John L. Lewis (1880–1969) (13 of 51) [Welsh: "Lewis was born in or near Cleveland, Lucas County, Iowa (distinct from the present township of Cleveland in Davis County) to Thomas H. Lewis and Ann Watkins Lewis, both of whom had immigrated from Llangurig Wales."]
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) (14 of 51) [3/4 mid-Atlantic, 1/4 Southern (including Scottish) ancestry.]
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) (15 of 51) [1/2 Welsh, 1/8 Scottish, something like 1/8 to 1/4 New England, and 1/8 to 1/4 mid-Atlantic.]
A.J. Muste (1885–1967) (16 of 51) [Dutch: "A.J. Muste was born January 8, 1885, in the small port city of Zierikzee, located in the Southwestern province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. Muste's father, Martin Muste, was a coachman who drove for a family that was part of Zeeland's hereditary nobility.[1]"]
Henry Wallace (1888–1965) (18 of 51) [Something like 3/4 mid-Atlantic, 1/4 New England ancestry. "The Wallace family was of Scots-Irish Presbyterian stock, and had originally emigrated from Ulster, Ireland, to Pennsylvania."]
Walter Reuther (1907–70) (20 of 51) [German: "Reuther was born in Wheeling, West Virginia on September 1, 1907, the son of a socialist brewery worker who had emigrated from Germany." / "In the same year that he became president of the Labor Federation, Val Reuther married Anna Stocker, a recent immigrant from rural Swabia in southern Germany."]
Woody Guthrie (1912–67) (23 of 51) [3/4 Southern, 1/8 Irish, 1/8 New England. "Guthrie was born in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, the son of Nora Belle (née Sherman) and Charles Edward Guthrie.[4] His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey and the Democratic candidate soon to be elected President of the United States."]
Earl Warren (1891–1974) (24 of 51) [1/2 Norwegian, 1/2 Swedish.]
Rachel Carson (1907–64) (28 of 51) [At the level of her grandparents, appears to be 1/2 Scotch-Irish from Ireland and 1/2 Scottish or Scotch-Irish from America. "Carson was born on May 27, 1907, on a small family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania, just up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. She was the daughter of Maria Frazier (McLean) and Robert Warden Carson, an insurance salesman.[4]"]
Harry Hay (1912–2002) (30 of 51) [Something like 1/2 Scottish (at the level of his grandparents), 1/4 Southern, and 1/4 mid-Atlantic (some ancestors in this last 1/4 were born in New England, but they don't appear to have colonial New England ancestry, their ancestry instead being New York Dutch, recent English, Scotch-Irish, etc.]
C. Wright Mills (1916–62) (33 of 51) [3/4 Southern, 1/4 Irish Catholic. Born in Texas.]
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) (34 of 51) [Scottish Canadian: "Galbraith was born to Canadians of Scottish descent, Sarah Catherine Kendall and Archibald "Archie" Galbraith, in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada"]
David Brower (1912–2000) (35 of 51) [Appears to be around 3/4 mid-Atlantic and 1/4 likely New England.]
Pete Seeger (1919–) (36 of 51) [Roughly 3/4 New England, 1/8 mid-Atlantic, 1/8 French]
Michael Harrington (1928–89) (39 of 51) [Irish Catholic: "Michael Harrington was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 24, 1928, to an Irish-American family. He attended St. Roch Catholic School and Saint Louis University High School"]
Tom Hayden (1939–) (44 of 51) [Irish Catholic.]
Billie Jean King (1943–) (47 of 51) [Something like 2.75/8 mid-Atlantic, 1.25/8 Southern, 1/8 New England, 1/8 Scottish, 1/8 Canadian, and 1/8 unknown.]
Bill Moyers (1934–) (48 of 51) [Born in Oklahoma. Southern ancestry.]
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–) (49 of 51) [It appears that through her father she is 1/4 Southern and 1/4 a mix of Scottish and Irish, while through her mother she is 1/4 English and 1/4 Scottish (by way of Canada). 'Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town".[6] In an interview on C-SPAN, she characterized her parents as "strong union people" with two family rules: "never cross a picket line and never vote Republican".[2] In a talk she gave in 1999, Ehrenreich called herself a "fourth-generation atheist".[7]']
Michael Moore (1954–) (50 of 51) [Moore's father's mother was born in Ireland; his father's father was roughly 1/2 mid-Atlantic and 1/2 Southern, likely with more English than (Scotch-)Irish ancestry, but evidently this side also came to be identified as "Irish" within Michael Moore's family: "Both sides of the family originally came from Ireland -- the last to arrive being his grandfather, William Connors and grandmother Mary (Hogan) Connors, both of whom hailed from County Cork. The entire family was not only proud of being Irish, they were also grateful for its gifts of humor, Catholicism and music (though not necessarily in that order)." His mother's father was born in Canada, parents having been born in Ireland (I think they were likely Northern Irish Protestants, but presumably have been imagined as Irish Catholics within the obese director's Catholic family). His mother's mother's ancestry is 1/2 New England and 1/2 Northern Irish Canadian. In summary, it looks like Moore's ancestry is 5/8 Irish (part of this probably Northern Irish Protestant), 1/8 mid-Atlantic, 1/8 Southern, and 1/8 New England. "MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah, that's true ['had a very strict Catholic upbringing']. My parents are good Irish Catholics." '“My Irish American background has a lot to do with my work, both in terms of the values that I was raised with -- that we’ll be judged by how we treat the least among us -- and that the rich man is basically up to no good,” he says.']
Jewish (7/50)
Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) (3 of 51)
Sidney Hillman (1887–1946) (17 of 51)
Saul Alinsky (1909–72) (22 of 51)
I.F. Stone (1907–89) (26 of 51)
Betty Friedan (1921–2006) (38 of 51)
Harvey Milk (1930–78) (41 of 51)
Gloria Steinem (1934–) (43 of 51) [1/2 Jewish: "Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March 25, 1934.[2] Her mother, Ruth (née Nuneviller), was a Presbyterian of Scottish and German descent, and her father, Leo Steinem, was the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Poland.[14][15]"]
Black (11/50)
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) (7 of 51)
A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) (19 of 51)
Paul Robeson (1898–1976) (21 of 51)
Ella Baker (1903–86) (25 of 51)
Jackie Robinson (1919–72) (27 of 51)
Thurgood Marshall (1908–93) (29 of 51)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–68) (31 of 51)
Bayard Rustin (1912–87) (32 of 51)
Malcolm X (1925–65) (37 of 51)
The Rev. Jesse Jackson (1941–) (45 of 51)
Muhammad Ali (1942–) (46 of 51)
Hispanic (1/50)
Cesar Chavez (1927–93) (40 of 51)
Arab (1/50)
Ralph Nader (1934–) (42 of 51)
When readers of The Nation were asked to make their own nominations, the resulting list came out much more heavily Jewish than Dreier's original list:
NW European (4/11)
Robert La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) (3 of 11) As a US congressman (1885–1890), governor of Wisconsin (1901-1906), US senator (1907-1925), candidate for President (1924) and editor of La Follette's Weekly Magazine (founded in 1909 and later called The Progressive, still based in Wisconsin), "Fighting Bob" La Follette consistently and effectively challenged corporate power and militarism and inspired generations of reformers and radicals. [3/4 Southern (including Scottish or Scotch-Irish), 1/8 French, 1/16 New England, and 1/16 mid-Atlantic ancestry.]
Dorothy Day (1897-1980) (4 of 11) Day founded the Catholic Worker movement, combining militant pacifism, radical economic redistribution and direct service to the poor, including the homeless. [Dorothy Day was born on November 8, 1897, in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. She was born into a family described by one biographer as "solid, patriotic, and middle class".[1] Her father, John Day, was a Tennessee native of Scots-Irish heritage, while her mother, Grace Satterlee, a native of upstate New York, was of English ancestry.]
John Muir (1838–1914) (5 of 11) Muir was the "patron saint" of the environmental movement, the founder of the Sierra Club and a major force in the creation of America's National Parks system. [Scottish: "John Muir's birthplace was a four-story stone house in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland. His parents were Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye."]
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) (8 of 11) As president during the Great Depression, FDR instigated economic and social reforms that saved and humanized capitalism, despite the barbs of many critics, including most newspapers and business leaders, that his New Deal agenda was leading America to socialism. [Something like 3/4 New England, 1/4 Mid-Atlantic ancestry.]
Jewish (6/11)
Howard Zinn (1922–2010) (1 of 11) Zinn, an activist and scholar, changed the way Americans view their history.
Noam Chomsky (1928–) (2 of 11) Chomsky first made his mark as a brilliant linguist, but since the 1960s has been better known as a left-wing critic of the political and economic establishment, particularly on issues of war and human rights.
Amy Goodman (1957–) (6 of 11) Goodman is a progressive journalist, best known as host of the daily show Democracy Now!: The War and Peace Report, broadcast on over 800 radio and television stations as well as the Internet.
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) (7 of 11) Goldman was one of the most prominent radicals in twentieth-century America, an eloquent and inspiring speaker and writer who advocated anarchism, free speech, women's suffrage, birth control, free universal education without regard to race, gender or class and workers' rights.
Paul Wellstone (1944–2002) (10 of 11) Elected to the US Senate from Minnesota in 1990 by beating a much better-financed and better-known Republican incumbent, Wellstone became the most progressive senator, serving as the voice for labor, antipoverty, family farmers and antiwar movements.
Studs Terkel (1912–2008) (11 of 11) Terkel was a remarkable radio personality and oral historian whose interviews on his Chicago radio show and in his many prize-winning books celebrated the achievements of both ordinary and famous people.
Black (1/11)
Angela Davis (1944–) (9 of 11) Davis became a public figure almost by accident. In 1969, Davis was an acting assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA, a member of the Communist Party and an ally of the Black Panther Party. At the urging of California Gov. Ronald Reagan, the University of California's Board of Regents fired her because of her membership in the Communist Party. The controversy catapulted Davis into the public eye.