Angela Davis, Pilgrim
Angela Davis recently made an appearance on Louis Gates’ “Finding Your Roots” program. She got a bit of a surprise:
Angela Davis bought the guns used in a courthouse raid that murdered a judge, and she later served as Gus Hall’s running mate on the Communist Party presidential ticket. But the former member of the FBI’s Most Wanted list also hails from, much to her displeasure, a patrician lineage.
“Did you ever in your wildest dreams think you descended from the people who laid the foundations for this country?” Henry Louis Gates asks the professor on his PBS show Finding Your Roots. Davis laughs in disbelief and repeats, “Never.”
Gates informs her that William Brewster, the only college graduate among the pilgrims and the likely author of the Mayflower Compact, came before her in her family line.
She actually repeats “Never” five times, by my count:
Angela Davis' ancestors arrived in America on the Mayflower. pic.twitter.com/dnwrG6fB6U
— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) February 22, 2023
Well, if she never thought of it, that was very dumb. I say that for two reasons. The first is that we all have enormous numbers of ancestors, if we go back a ways (I have somewhat fewer than most other people because of a tendency in one half of my family in the old country to have married cousins, over and over, so that three family names keep repeating themselves. But I digress.) The second is that most if not all black people in the US have a very significant amount of white ancestry. That’s obvious, and it’s especially obvious with someone who looks like Davis.
So why should a Mayflower ancestor have been so surprising to her? It shouldn’t have been. But it reflects the power of her political and racial and cultural identification with the left and with the oppressed, which meant she could not and cannot countenance such a fact. Actually, the early Pilgrims flirted with socialism themselves, until they discovered that it doesn’t work. And Davis also discovered that she has slave-owning ancestors. That should be no surprise, either, for reasons that I think are obvious.
The larger point is that we are not responsible for what our ancestors did. And we all have so many ancestors, even in just the last few hundreds of years, that we can pick and choose from a huge variety of them if we want to research things and claim a certain heritage. I don’t mean just ethnically – my ethnic heritage is about as unitary as it gets, for example. But the variety of personalities and lives is vast. None of my ancestors were on the Mayflower, either; of that I’m certain. Some of them were Communists, though, including one grandparent. But many loved liberty, as do I. We are all individuals, responsible for our own actions in the lives we live. As is Angela Davis.
Her ancestors having been slaveowners means that Davis does not qualify for reparations and that she must instead pay reparations. (!)
Don Cheadle on that show was also shocked into a stunned silence when he learned that his enslaved ancestors were owned by Cherokee Indians, not white people. Ever.
Chayevsky had an eye for the likes of angela davis he dubbed her lorraine hobbs its hard to know if dunaways christensen or her character was more cynical.
Her memoir is an exercise in torture
Anyone who has met recent immigrants from Africa, especially West Africa, where most people enslaved here originated, can see that large numbers of American blacks have at least some non-African ancestry. Some of the people who identify as “black” show little visible sign of the connection. Nor were all of these historical black-white connections abusive, although some of them were.
All this talk about ancestors gives me the creeps when I think about how the population is shrinking. I had two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and sixteen great-great grandparents. And now that’s funneled down to just me, only one person. The planet will be depopulated in no time at this rate!
But seriously though she is the vector for the legalization of crime
The Hon. Harold J. Haley could not be reached for comment.
I agree with you wholeheartedly Neo. How can anyone even be responsible for the actions of their parents, let alone generations further removed? Any rational person can see that reparations are an exercise in futility.
And haven’t we been paying reparations since LBJ’s Great Society?
Ha! I guess because some of her ancestors were slave owners and some were slaves she owes herself reparations!
Well, I’ve got news for her – she also owes me and my brothers reparations as well. Our family didn’t own slaves, nor were we slaves here in the US; but, we lost ancestors and the family farm, which had been in the family since the late 1600s, because my grandfather’s grandfather had to go fight in the civil war to end slavery.
Claiming credit because of ancestors only goes in some directions.
The family name came to Canada with Wolfe’s army to fight on the Plains of Abraham. Went to upstate New York in late nineteenth century. Haven’t missed many wars, since.
So that makes my granddaughters…..what?
Were with Navarre at Coutras, left when our Henry decided Paris was worth a Mass.
Okay….
Can make a neat HF novel, I suppose.
What can i claim….
Well said, Neo. We are not responsible for the actions of anyone but ourselves and those under our legal sway (children and agents). And a good thing, too: it’s hard enough being responsible for oneself.
I had a cold laugh watching Davis choke over Gates’ revelation of her lineage. But she’s a pro. She’ll go right on hustling her hateful wares.
I think my favorite instance of “guess who you’re related to” was when it came to light that Strom Thurmond and Al Sharpton are distantly related. And while I don’t remember where their geneologies linked up, iirc it wasn’t all that far back.
Every Ashkenazi Jew on the planet has relatives that were slaves more recently than Davis’ relatives.
And haven’t we been paying reparations since LBJ’s Great Society?
The notable innovations of the Great Society were Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps. The programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity were scarified during the Nixon Administration and are now a residue of slush funds for local government appended to which are means-tested subsidies to household utility bills. Urban renewal programs and public housing antedated the Great Society, though spending on them was enhanced. Ditto AFDC. Supplemental Security Income was created during the Nixon Administration, Social Security Disability during the Eisenhower Administration.
Note, the salient datum in support of your thesis would be the difference between per capita spending on black households and per capita spending on other households, multiplied by the number of black households. Keep in mind, though, that none of these programs had race among their eligibility requirements, and the only programs where even a slight majority of beneficiaries were black were AFDC and some housing programs.
The LBJ AFDC programs had incentives for single mothers and greatly aggravated the black family problems.
The larger point is that we are not responsible for what our ancestors did. And we all have so many ancestors
And even if we were, many of us come from post-1900 European penniless immigrants who were escaping pogroms and religious persecution. And we’re supposed to pay reparations for slavery that ended in 1863 to the likes of Angela Davis?
I watched that show. The very interesting thing was Jeh Johnson was a class act when finding his white forbears. He learned that there was love between his great grandparents, a white owner and his slave who had 11 children together. He also learned that after the Civil War the man moved into her house and the farm and they lived together as man and wife, although that would have been illegal. His legal wife and children were shown as living in a different house on a different farm in a US census. He had white ancestors on both sides, he certainly looks it. He was very reasonable. I found his take on it admirable. It made her look like she was hanging on to a grudge and did not intend to let it go.
Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics of a song for Angela Davis while she was on trial. I never read all the lyrics until now. I wonder if one can get in trouble for singing blackface, as Jagger does here, so he is even harder to understand than usual.
The lyrics are worse than I expected. But that was the kool-aid a lot of people were drinking in those days. Still are.
_____________________________
Sweet Black Angel
Got a sweet black angel, got a pin up girl
Got a sweet black angel up upon my wall
Well, she ain’t no singer and she ain’t no star
But she sure talk good and she move so fast
But the gal in danger
Yeah de gal in chains
But she keep on pushing
Would you take her place?
She counting up the minutes
She counting up the days
She’s a sweet black angel, woh
Not a sweet black slave
Ten little n****** sitting on de wall
Her brothers been a falling, falling one by one
For a judge they murdered and a judge they stole
Now de judge he going to judge her for all that he’s worth
Well de gal in danger
The gal in chains
But she keep on pushing
Would you do the same?
She counting up the minutes
She counting up the days
She’s a sweet black angel
Not a gun toting teacher
Not a Red loving school marm
Is someone going to free her?
Free the sweet black slave
Free the sweet black slave…
–Rolling Stones, “Sweet Black Angel” (from “Exile on Main Street”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atnvJG6zJLc
Refreshing my knowledge of Davis from wiki, I see that her doctoral advisor (yes, she has a Ph.D) was Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School. Back in the 60s/70s Marcuse was a big inspiration on the New Left. His essay, “Repressive Tolerance,” was one of the most dangerous influences on the Left.
Here we see the notion that tolerance which tolerates the enemies of the Left is not tolerance, but oppression. Thus, “Tolerance for me, but nor thee” which is the jackboot under which we live with today.
Ignorance is strength.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Intolerance is tolerance.
___________________________________
THIS essay examines the idea of tolerance in our advanced industrial society. The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed. In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period–a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice. Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.
https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html</I
Eh, Johnny-come-lately. Descended from the first settlers of French Canada — many of them, and a good chunk of them *more than once.*
The DAR really ought to give her immediate, unconditional membership….
If that’s not in the cards, she might think about starting a Black chapter.
BDAR?
Inject some fresh blood and/or ideas in the organization.
Walk around in period costume (bonnets, colonial dresses, aprons, etc.) but with clenched fists held high…
The LBJ AFDC programs had incentives for single mothers and greatly aggravated the black family problems.
==
The incentives were in the original legislation enacted in 1935. It wasn’t until 1958 that the correlation between AFDC rolls and the unemployment rate dissolved and the ratio of illegitimate to legitimate births began to climb. Note, AFDC was replaced in 1996 by TANF and the number on the rolls cut by 83% to date. It’s had no discernible effect on the ratio of illegitimate to legitimate births. Suggest the economic vector in this case is quite weak; cultural shifts are quite strong.
Does the ‘one drop’ rule apply here?
Suggest the economic vector in this case is quite weak; cultural shifts are quite strong.
Or that the economic vector’s impact was delayed a generation by the inertia of culture, but over time the economic incentives in welfare policies contributed to the erosion of the social stigma of illegitimacy–as suggested, for example, by this research.
30 generations back, everyone has slots in their family tree for 1 billion ancestors (2^30 = 1,073,741,824) in that generation. That was roughly 900 years ago, and there was only something like a half a billion people in the world then, so everybody’s ancestors are showing up multiple times in their tree even if descended equally from every living human at that time (and being the most mixed-race person possible).
The entire family tree has slots for 2 billion, starting with yourself and going back 30 generations.
If your ancestors were geographically confined, and most people’s were before a hundred years ago, it’s much more extreme. I have one ancestor who came to America from Ireland in the 1730s, which is 13 generations back from me. There were 3 million people in Ireland then. 20 generations back from him, he had 4 million slots for ancestors, but at that time (year 1100) there were only 1 million in all the British Isles combined, so each ancestor is represented on average at least about 4 times, there’s really no way around it.
About 1 in 200 European and Asian men are direct male line descendants of Ghengis Kahns.
Or that the economic vector’s impact was delayed a generation by the inertia of culture, but over time the economic incentives in welfare policies contributed to the erosion of the social stigma of illegitimacy–as suggested, for example, by this research.
There were 12 million enrolled in AFDC in 1994. There are 2 million enrolled in TANF today. The population of the United States has increased by 26% in the intervening years. The ratio of illegitimate births to legitimate births was 0.475 in 1995. That ratio today is 0.66. I think there are some problems with your thesis. (Your ‘this research’ was completed in 1999).
Frederick:
Marriages between second and even first cousins are not unusual. Especially among smaller subsets of relatively isolated communities, or groups that tend to marry among themselves. I know of one in my family two generations back.
It’s even more extreme than you say, because a sizeable share of those lines die out from someone having no offspring, or none that have children. I read somewhere that the fraction of those 500 million people 1000 years ago that have direct descendants is pretty small.
From the research I linked:
This doesn’t exclude an independent role of cultural changes, but just points out that the facts don’t refute the argument that policies played a role, both in the culture and the resulting illegitimacy.
If you learn that your neighbor’s great grandfather murdered your great grandfather, does your neighbor owe you something?
Should a German, born in Germany in 1933 or later, be held responsible for what his/her parents / grandparents did during WWI or WWII?
What if the father of that 1933 born German was the commander of, say, Auschwitz or of an Einsatzgruppen detachment?
Should Jeffery Dahmer’s brother or cousins be compelled to pay reparations to the families of Jeff’s victims?
Are we supposed to believe that the life experiences of one’s great-grandparents (or great great grand parents) have any role or influence on how you live your life today and on the decisions you make in life?
Under what circumstances, if any, can an individual be held responsible for the actions of another individual – related or not – when the former had no role whatsoever in the decisions made by the latter?
As for reparations: it should be a free one-way airplane ticket – to any nation of their choice – to any black person who renounces their US citizenship, with the understanding that never again will they be allowed into the USA or it’s territories.
Something like this should appeal to Angela Davis who hates with a white-hot passion (is that a racist remark?) everything and anything about the USA.
Angela Davis is an unrepentant Stalinist and thus supported the most prominent slave state of the last century. The Gulag & all of the other atrocities and the invasion of Czechoslovakia & Hungary did not diminish her Marxist ardor.
Speaking of which here’s a fascinating tidbit:
“Democratic Party of Nevada in Chaos Two Years After Bernie Sanders Supporters Took Over”—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/democratic-party-of-nevada-in-chaos-two-years-after-bernie-sanders-supporters-took-over/
Key graf:
‘…Much of this current uproar is being fueled by a vote to condemn the horrors of socialism…
‘…Nevada progressives are furious with establishment Democrats in the state after they voted in favor of a House resolution to “condemn the horrors of socialism,” setting up a showdown between the party’s far-left flank and its more centrist officials….’
My father’s family came from southern England in the 17th century.
My mother’s family came from Ireland in the 19th century.
Therefore I owe myself reparations; but since all of my money already goes to me, I’ve already paid myself so that’s taken care of.
The logical extension of the reparations idea is that (since we’re all related at some point) everybody is responsible for anything that anybody ever did. Therefore, nobody in particular is WHOLLY responsible for anything that anybody ever did (including them). “It wasn’t me, it was society” (or my ancestors, or the system, or the culture).
Therefore you can be blamed for things you didn’t do, but not for the things you actually did.
That’s not what responsibility means.
It’s surprising someone could live as long as she and still be so ignorant on a subject she has such strong opinions on.
neo, your last paragraph is a perfect summation of the idiocy of the entire topic.
“The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” – a quote* from some dead, “white,” Jewish guy who’s not worthy of study.
*“The prophet Ezekiel is the author of the book of Ezekiel. Writing from a first-person perspective… Ezekiel was a priest who was among the Jewish CAPTIVES carried away to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar in approximately 597 B.C.“
It’s surprising someone could live as long as she and still be so ignorant on a subject she has such strong opinions on.
Rufus T.:
I file that under Sinclair, Upton.
_______________________
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
–Upton Sinclair
we all have so many ancestors
This can’t be overstated. It is a statistical certainty that everyone alive today has ancestors that did absolutely horrible things. It can be shown through simple math that if you go back 30 generations every single person could over a billion ancestors. Of course due to Pedigree collapse in reality this isn’t really the case. Essentially people inbreeding to a degree with first or second cousins which was a far more common practice back in the day so there’s quite a bit fewer common ancestors than a billion at 30 generations. But even taking that into account, as you go back in time people have such an enormous number of individual ancestors that it is impossible that you don’t have people in your family tree that did horrible things. It’s just reality.
It should be absolutely absurd to attempt to punish people for the sins of their ancestors. We’re all the decendents of conquereors and the conquered, slave owners and slaves, rapists and rape victims. Everyone should be aware of this. And therefore everyone should intrinsically understand that it’s insane to attempt to somehow quantify ancestral sin in some vain attempt to redress it in modern times.
Several years back when my Irish-ancestered daughter married a Brit, I suggested that considering his tribe had done its level best to wipe her tribe from the face of the earth, the least she could do was refuse to cook for him. Her response was to ignore me, thus weakening another link in the world’s perennial chain of tribal grudges. Infuriating!
No man is guilty of the sins of his father. This is a crucial part of Real Justice. To claim otherwise is unjust. The SJW claim otherwise is because “social justice” is actually unjust.
Barack Obama’s Kenya father’s ancestors were never American slaves, but were slaves, slave-owners, AND slavers in Africa. Virtually all Negros in America had similar African slave-owners and slavers and slaves as ancestors.
On cousin marriage, we WEIRD* folk were pushed by the Christian Church to stop marrying cousins – and this is claimed to be a key reason for the ascendancy of Euro/ Christian civilization by Joseph Henrich.
(*The WEIRDest People in the World; before 600 AD, see https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/joseph-henrich-weird-people/615496/ “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic”)
I think ending the idea of the son being guilty of his ancestor’s sins is actually more important – and anti-feud.
Today, Black poverty in the USA is mostly because of two bad behaviors of too many Blacks: 1) crime by young males; & 2) unmarried promiscuity & child-bearing.
Until Blacks behave better, they will continue to have relatively worse outcomes.
Le Mot Juste–
You think the Brits and the Irish still have tribal issues? Try the Swedes and the Norwegians. (Historical note: Norway did not become fully independent of Sweden until 1905).
Swedes like to joke about the supposed backwardness of Norwegians. Two jokes I heard from a librarian friend some years back: 1) Did you hear that they had to close the library at the University of Oslo? It happened because somebody stole the book. 2) A Scandinavian Airlines flight from Stockholm is just about to land in Trondheim. The flight attendant tells the passengers that they will be landing in the Norwegian city in about 10 minutes, and that they should turn back their watches by 10 years.
Norwegians joke about the Swedes as having lost all the traditional Viking fierceness. There’s a poem by E.C. Stangland, an American of Norwegian ancestry who has published several books of Norwegian humor, that runs as follows (snoose, more commonly spelled snus, is a tobacco product used by holding it between the upper lip and gum for some period of time):
Ten t’ousand Svedes ran tru da veeds
Chased by vun Norvegian
Ten t’ousand more ran to da shore
In da battle of Copenhagen.
Vay, vay back in history
Back ven da vorld vas new
Norvegians searched all over
To find some snoose to chew.
Dey fished for Lutefisk and Torsk
It helped to make dem strong
And you and me, ve know a Norsk
Cannot do nutting wrong.
But Svedes and Danes were envious
Of Viking trips and raids
Da Viking shields and helmet horns
Made all dose folks afraid.
T’roughout da world da Vikings sailed
To Ireland and France
Dey even found America
One afternoon by chance.
My grandpa says, and he should know,
Da Svedes made up their minds
To beat da Norsky Vikings
And kick a few behinds.
But history, so Grandpa says,
Shows dat da Norskies von
Dey clobbered all da Svedes and Danes
And made it lots of fun.
Ten t’ousand Svedes ran tru da veeds
Chased by vun Norvegian
Da dust from da veeds made snoose for da Svedes
And dey called it COPENHAGEN!
Another tribal joke, from my dad’s Italian-American Army buddy: Q: How do you know when an Italian has Alzheimer’s? A: He stops holding grudges.
My father used to know the first two lines in the original. Made interesting listening. As if he was having lung spasms or something.
PA+Cat:
That’s a riot.
We’ve watched a couple decent Swedish and Norwegian TV series in which the Swedes’ supercilious posture toward their neighbor is laid right out. Shades of how several southern states are still treated here.
}}} The larger point is that we are not responsible for what our ancestors did.
Unfortunately, this is not countenanced by the traditional concept of Original Sin.
I personally don’t hold by this, it seems unjust in the extreme, and I tend to trust my own sense of Justice**. I do not presume to claim God Is Wrong, here, only that how WE have interpreted and understood His will in the past is incorrect.
I am possibly, of course, wholly wrong on this, but trust in Him to teach me better at some point, if so.
.
.
.
.
.
=====
** And now, to lighten the mood on such a serious comment:
Q: Why is Justice best served cold?
A: Because if you serve it warm it becomes Justwater.
😀
}}} If you learn that your neighbor’s great grandfather murdered your great grandfather, does your neighbor owe you something?
This is the basis for long-term Family Feuds, such as the classic Hatfields-McCoy. It’s also a strong reason for Islamic hatred of Jews, the Turkish massacre of Armenians, and all manner of the crap that has gone on in “the former” Yugoslavia.
I have heard third hand of a young woman who was visiting Lebanon, and was out with a friend, and, while they were having coffee in an outdoor cafe, someone walked up to a man sitting at the next table and shot him dead, apparently because of that man’s father killing the shooter’s father.
Hence the comment by Gandhi, “An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind”.
I think the compunction is better held in the Christian variant of the concept in “Tit for Tat, with forgiveness”. Tit for tat, to some extent, but sometimes, you forgive just because it breaks those endless chains based off a classic (generally irrelevant) wrong.
This is also demonstrated in the “best general functional rules” for the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, as proven by Game Theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma
It’s also a strong reason for Islamic hatred of Jews
That’s not the reason for their hatred. I suspect over the course of history Muslims have killed a lot more Jews than vice-versa.
Here are just a couple of examples:
https://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/Arlandson/qurayza_jews.htm
https://www.camera.org/article/anti-jewish-violence-in-pre-state-palestine-1929-massacres/
or take the example of Jordan king abdullah, the grand father of the current one,
was killed by a Bedouin, some 20 years later the Jordanians under wasfi tal, crushed the Palestinian uprising, and consequently Arafat ordered that wasfi tal be assasinated by the black september group, that’s shorthand, much happened inbetween,
Today, Black poverty in the USA is mostly because of two bad behaviors of too many Blacks: 1) crime by young males; & 2) unmarried promiscuity & child-bearing.
There’s a great deal of insecurity in the least affluent 1/3d of the population. There is little material poverty as the term would have been understood the year my father was born. Among vagrants, perhaps, who account for perhaps 0.25% of the population.
==
Having illegitimate children does not improve your economic prospects. That having been said, the economic prospects of those in the lower third of the income distribution are injured by a menu of factors (not all present at the same time, to be sure): low skill sets, low capacity to absorb skills, impetuous behavior at work, deficient work habits, domestic issues generative of absenteeism, &c.
==
The young men committing crimes not only have skill deficiencies, but a deficit of time in paid employment and a sour history with the employers they’ve had.
This doesn’t exclude an independent role of cultural changes, but just points out that the facts don’t refute the argument that policies played a role, both in the culture and the resulting illegitimacy.
==
The paper you linked to does not assess the experience of the last 25 years. That aside, illegitimacy grew vastly more frequent in every segment of the population, not just welfare prospects.
Ditto, Miss Neo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBHVElYZ1ZY
For the religious, we are all descended from Noah’s wife (‘Mommy’s baby, Daddy’s maybe’ qualification).
While we have an exponentially increasing number of slots for ancestors going back, we all have a decreasing pool of people to fill them. Even adding immigrants, by choice or not, that pretty quickly exhausts the options in fewer generations than most people would think. Especially with large families, as was more common a few generations back.
I blame the parents.
Growing up black in segregation days was probably enough to radicalize anybody, but I can’t help wondering if being light-skinned and half-white didn’t drive Davis to even further extremes in an effort to prove that she was authentically black. Since we’re talking about her, I also wonder how her current lesbianism fits into the picture.
Neither of Davis’s white grandfathers was married to her black grandmothers, but the circumstances were different. Her mother grew up in foster care not knowing her White father, a prominent lawyer, editor and politician. Her father’s father was a neighboring white farmer. There was something of a relationship there, after Davis’s grandmother’s black husband deserted her, though it couldn’t be acknowledged publicly.
I wasn’t aware of the Swedish-Norwegian hostility, but a big part of the original Bridge series involved Danes believing that Swedes consider themselves more sophisticated and worldly than the Danes and the Danes resenting it. I would have thought that Sweden being a much larger country it would be less urbanized and more rustic than Denmark, but apparently not. Being the largest of Scandinavian countries, Sweden does get more attention than the others and that breeds resentment in the other countries. American critics wondered just how different Swedes and Danes really are, but the original series worked better than the US-Mexican and British-French versions of the story.
Abraxas: “Growing up black in segregation days was probably enough to radicalize anybody, but I can’t help wondering if being light-skinned and half-white didn’t drive Davis to even further extremes in an effort to prove that she was authentically black.” I think this may be what’s wrong with Nicole Hannah-Jones of “1619 Project” disrepute, although she attended integrated schools in Iowa.
Jimmy on February 26, 2023 at 8:44 pm said:
That’s not the reason for their hatred. I suspect over the course of history Muslims have killed a lot more Jews than vice-versa.
The hate for Israel is in large part because Muslims were humiliated by being defeated by Jews in 1948 and then subsequently.
They saw Jews as people who had historically groveled at their feet. Prior to 1948 Jews had to accept Islamic domination.
Growing up black in segregation days was probably enough to radicalize anybody, but I can’t help wondering if being light-skinned and half-white didn’t drive Davis to even further extremes in an effort to prove that she was authentically black.
No clue why you think so.
For 50 years after the Civil War, the migration of blacks from the former slave states to the north was minimal. As late as 1910, 93% of all blacks in the U.S. lived in the former slave states. What triggered northward migration was a cotton crop failure in 1915. After that, you had chain migration. Even so, the majority of blacks remains in the former slave states to this day and net migration northward came to a halt around 1970.
Note also, the party preferences of voting blacks in the 1950s were closer to the national median than they’ve been at any time since 1963. (In fact, they were closer to the national median for three generations). The political stance of black politicians (parliamentary and extra-parliamentary) did not grow notably antagonistic to mainstream opinion until around 1965. (If you can find an antique copy of Jody Powell’s memoir of his years working in the White House, turn to the pages where he describes Jimmy Carter’s relations with the Congressional Black Caucus; in a word, the Caucus was impossible).
As for Davis, she’s a freak, quite unrepresentative of black politicians (much less rank-and-file blacks), but a manifestation of the Id of our red haze chatterati, among them the professors who hired her.
but I can’t help wondering if being light-skinned and half-white didn’t drive Davis to even further extremes in an effort to prove that she was authentically black.” I think this may be what’s wrong with Nicole Hannah-Jones of “1619 Project” disrepute, although she attended integrated schools in Iowa.
I’d suggest you look at the intramural dynamics of the Hannah and Novotny families as well as Nikole Hannah’s adolescent life to draw a bead on what makes her tick. For one thing, she’s very unattractive. Her mother is as well (and I’ll wager always was). So was her late younger sister. So are her older sister’s children. For another, it’s a reasonable wager the admissions office at Notre Dame gave her a large mulligan, so her life at Notre Dame was regulated by the reality that she was noticeably less well-prepared than her classmates. The 1619 Project is the work of someone with a cartoon version of American history playing in her head. (It’s playing in the head of AG Sulzberger as well. That’ll tell you what sort of liberal education is available at Notre Dame and Brown).
I have a cousin I’m fond of personally whose politics and cultural preferences I do not care for. He has some agreeable features as well and most of the women in his family adore him. Two or three vectors I’ll wager have regulated his character and personality development over 30-odd years, accounting for a great deal of his dissatisfaction in life and I think his worldview as well. The most salient, I’m convinced, was that he got beat up in school during his pre-adolescent years and was bereft of friends.
And even if we were, many of us come from post-1900 European penniless immigrants who were escaping pogroms and religious persecution. And we’re supposed to pay reparations for slavery that ended in 1863 to the likes of Angela Davis?
I think the pogroms and religious persecution were limited to the Pale of Settlement in Tsarist Russia. There was a strong anti-semitic strain in public discussion in the Hapsburg dominions, but I don’t think you had pogroms and harassment of Jews by state policy was not all that notable until the interwar period in Hungary. In the United States, Jews have never accounted for more than 3.6% of the population and a modest minority of the Ellis Island immigrant stream. Not sure if Ellis Island migrants could be called ‘penniless’ when compared to their neighbors who stayed behind in the old country.
Abraxas said, “Being the largest of Scandinavian countries, Sweden does get more attention than the others and that breeds resentment in the other countries.”
There’s also the twisted history between Sweden and Denmark in the 17th century, specifically the Scanian War (1675-1679) between the dual monarchy of Denmark-Norway and the Swedish Empire. Sweden was a major European power for about a century, from the reign of Gustavus Adolphus (became king in 1611) to Sweden’s loss of territories at the end of the Great Northern War in 1721. This period is known in Swedish history as the Stormaktstiden or Era of Great Power. At its maximum extent in 1658, the Swedish Empire was about twice the size of contemporary Sweden; it included most of present-day Finland, a chunk of Norway, parts of the Baltic States, and small bits of territory in northern Germany on either side of Denmark.
So . . . the Swedes were the bullies of Scandinavia back in the day, and the Danes and Norwegians have long memories. If you have time for a 9-minute video (the last minute or so is an ad), the following is an outline of the Stormaktstiden; it includes a useful explanation of the role of Gustavus’ military innovations in securing Sweden’s emergence as a great power during the Thirty Years’ War:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTbbTMb5HVA&ab_channel=TheArmchairHistorian
junior
Not all that surprising, considering strom thurmond’s black daughter.
In addition: STROM THURMOND HIRED BLACKS FOR STAFF