The elasticity of his Russian splits belongs to ballet; his flexibility is less like rubber bands than ribbons. His spins are so beautiful that they look as if they might at any moment exit his body completely and go floating off like the flowers in “Fantasia.” And running alongside the joy is something grave, which seems to me to be respect for the gift.Notice the pairing of "Caucasity" with "overwhelming," reminiscent of the phrase "overwhelmingly white," which I feel I've seen many times, such as in "In Ferguson, Black Town, White Power" (NYT, August 17, 2014): "The North County Labor Club, whose overwhelmingly white constituent unions...."
The audience begins to clap as well as its overwhelming Caucasity will allow. “He’s got ’em,” the longtime commentator and Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton exclaims as the fiddle picks up. At other points, onlookers burst into the spontaneous laughter of babies. I love that laughter....
"Caucasity" has appeared in the NYT one other time, last July in a food article illustrated with a photograph of watermelon soup:
Can we acknowledge that Labrador retrievers are awesome? Also, that this dude doing recaps of the Phish shows this week at Madison Square Garden is awesome as well? (Here’s the start of the set he’s talking about, if you’d like to get a sense of what this noodly-noodly caucasity is all about.)I see that there's a Twitter hashtag, #caucasity. That's a mixed bag. I'll let you check it out. Some of it seems powerfully aggrieved ("Spawn of the devils who did THIS to #EmittTill are now actually trying to tell you that they 'care' about BLACK PEOPLE.. They still refer to you as childlike 'slaves' on some plantation. Just wow.. file under #caucasity" (with a photograph of the dead Emmett Till)), some of it seems sort of playful ("#caucasity RT @chungswag: Honestly it STILL blows my mind that people out here have NO LIPS. like I can't even wrap my mind around it" (with a photo of what seems to be Amy Schumer's lips)).
I see that Urban Dictionary defined the word back in 2015: "Mad wack things only white people would do. The term originates from the Bodega Boys podcast starring Desus Nice and the Kid Mero which chronicles all the caucacity in modern pop culture and society/Person 1: I saw some lady attach a leash to her toddler./Person 2: Damn that's some caucacity right there."
That makes it sound like what the old blog "Stuff White People Like" was about. And, indeed, I see "caucasity" in the Washington Post in 2015: "'[T]he first graduating class of Internet books... includes Stuff White People Like (a satirical, self-loathing look at caucasity)...."
A harsher definition is coming in second in the voting at Urban Dictionary: "Something done with the audacity of white privilege. An act showing little compassion towards people of color."
So... it's an interesting word. To my ear it conveys humor, but humor can be hateful, and white people are too numerous to be laughed off as some kind of joke, but that's why there seems to be a privilege to laugh at them (us). I'd call that "white privilege," but the term is already taken.
Posts
158 comments:
I am white. Currently.
If Islam is the religion that can’t get along with others, we are the race that can’t get along with others. Any dispassionate look at world history will show that
Caucasity in David Hume
As to past experience, it can be allowed to give direct and certain information of those precise objects only, and that precise period of time, which fell under its cognisance; but why this experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for aught we know, may be only in appearance similar-this is the main question on which I would insist. The bread, which I formerly ate, nourished me: that is, a body of such sensible qualities was, at that time, endued with such secret powers; but does it follow, that other bread must also nourish me at another time, and that like sensible qualities must always be attended with like secret powers? The consequence seems nowise necessary.
The audience begins to clap as well as its overwhelming Caucasity will allow.
Let's flip that to the a different audience, say at the NAACP or BET awards and see how that reads.
The audience begins to clap as well as its overwhelming Negrosity will allow.
Yep, racist either way.
In just 100 years the Dems establishment has gone from keeping darkie down to pushing whitey down.
That's all you really need to know about these people.
It is the usual virtue signal taught in all US high schools and colleges.
One must indulge in ritual self hatred in order to maintain social status.
So... it's an interesting word
It's a racist word designed to subordinate people based on the color of their skin.
Would you say that negrosity was an interesting word?
Barack Obama's newest book, as this time he explores the meaning of his mother's cultural heritage - "The Caucacity of Hope"
The audience begins to clap as well as its overwhelming Caucasity will allow.
Those poor white people! They can't clap or jump or sing or do much of anything very well except exploit and oppress their superiors.
The class of inner-city students begins to do math as well as their overwhelming Negritude will allow.
It is a sort of prayer that can be dropped in to anything.
I just want to see that Caucacious skater. Sounds like he's unbelievably beautiful. And what about our Caucacious civilization? Why does every uncaucacious person on earth seem to want to move here? And what's with Caucacious people inventing practically everything that makes the modern world? The Chinese are smarter. They are taking over Harvard practically, but who wants to move over there? Is ours the Goldilocks society? Not too smart, not too dumb?
I'm trying to imagine what a person who was not white but happened to be in that audience, or was just a fan of figure skating in general, would think reading that. It really sounds like "You have your place, we have ours, and your place is not here."
Does Asianisity work?
Hispanisity
Native Americanisity
Oceana-Pacific Islandisity
Break it down by region or state: Althouse revealed her overwhelming Wisconisity by blogging about cream cheese Kringle
The Chinese are smarter. They are taking over Harvard practically, but who wants to move over there? Is ours the Goldilocks society? Not too smart, not too dumb?
The Chinese are so smart they haven't quite mastered not shitting in the open on the street.
I think this 'white devil' business is at its high tide. My kids, for example, won't put up with it and certainly don't feel 'white guilt,' unlike slightly earlier generations who think that racial slurs are 'interesting.'
So is she saying black people are born with rhythm?
Stereotypes are unfair and hurtful and utterly simplistic and dehumanizing except when applied to whites or males, in which event, they're fine and dandy. (And in the event they're applied to male whites, pretty much obligatory.) Got it.
Well, having checked this skater out, I don't see what's so Caucatious. I was expecting Torvill and Dean rolled into one person: https://youtu.be/J61k2XjRryM
White people accept good people of every ethnicity and skin color shades of whiteness all the way to blackness. We do it because we refuse to hate other who want to live with us in peace as good neighbors.
But spend all day praising the Soros /Obama rioters wearing masks and threatening to kill the police and then kill the white people they protect from criminal gangs, then you are imitating the early 1800s Southeastern Indian tribes. And you may meet up with Old Hickory and his Volunteers militias.
Yep, "racist" either way. Not that it means squat.
"What Is the Zoo for What"
By Patricia Lockwood
The word “zoo” is a zoo for the zoo.
A fountain is a zoo for water, the song
is a zoo for sound, the harmonica
is a zoo for the hot breath of Neil Young,
vagina is a zoo for baby.
Baby, girl baby, is a zoo for vagina.
Well, there is just this one thing. Us caucacious folks, unlike my ancestors who built this country, have no place to go. And if you want to see what that means in living color check out some of the former industrial cities in California’s Central Valley.
I looked at Jason Brown’s record. At the 2014 Olympics he got a bronze as part of the team event. He was the 2015 US champion, but he only finished 6th at the latest US national championships. Looking at finishes in national and international competitions his trajectory since 2015 seems to be downward. Anyone follow figure skating closely enough to comment further?
I still like James Taranto's "Persons of pallor."
I watched Jason Brown's performance at the Four Continents Championship from Taipei. His performance was exquisite. It lacked quad jumps, which eliminated any chance of victory. The crowd, overwhelmingly Asian, loved it.
I have vague recollections of people at figure skating competitions clapping in time to the music back in the days of Katerina Witt, who won her golds in ‘84 and ‘88. I assume it depends on the specific piece of music and the energy of the skater, more than the ethnicity of the crowd.
It sounds toxic. NYT is losing control of the close associations they have formed over the trimesters. Perhaps due to the onset of dementia in the upper echelons of the fourth estate, that was forced by an unprincipled embrace of color diversity, in lieu of recognizing individual dignity and character.
Personally, I don’t believe in the “white devil” thing, but there is a basis in history. We were the most aggressive in exploiting every new military technology. Obviously, we have also provided boons to mankind pretty much un-equaled in world history. But pointing out the first thing is not racist, and pointing out the second thing is.
It’s almost like the term “racist” is just a weapon, not a tool to further understanding.
Big Mike, Jason Brown is easily the most elegant, stylish US skater of either gender but his technical marks will always be low because NO QUADS. Male figure skating is all about how many quad jumps can be jammed into a program.
You can say practically anything about white people and no one will freak out. That's why I love white people so much.
This is just one more thing that demonstrates one of the founding principles of the Democrat party is racial exploitation.
Personally, I don’t believe in the “white devil” thing, but there is a basis in history. We were the most aggressive in exploiting every new military technology
Cut the word military and I might agree with you.
"We were the most aggressive in exploiting every new military technology."
That's because lack rhythm, which leaves us with free time that would otherwise be spent dancing and clapping and so forth.
Please excuse the OT: but Fox News is reporting a train carrying GOP congressmen to a retreat in West Virginia has crashed. No deaths are being reported so far, but a few injuries.
GOP Congressmen sure have had some bad luck over the past year. Just missed being murdered by a Bernie Bro and now this. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, of course.
We were the most aggressive in exploiting every new military technology
Except for the Mongols and their freaking stirrups.
Anyway I’m not white. Sort of pink, with a few age spots. So there.
Mongols were pretty bad, maybe those genes got implanted in Europeans, but they didn’t really have an empire that spanned multiple continents and multitudes of islands in the eastern and western hemisphere.
The Caucasity of the figure skating audience did not stop them from embracing Debi Thomas or Michelle Kwan.
However I was saddened to read that Debi Thomas, who became a licensed orthopedic surgeon, attempted to set up a single doctor orthopedic practice in southwestern Virginia, part of Appalachia hammered by Obama’s War on Coal, and the practice went bankrupt. As of 2014 she no longer has a license to practice in my state.
White people are pretty bad.
We’re definitely going to need an expanded vocabulary to chronicle both past, and
Future oppression of all the not white peoples of the earth.
We’re definitely going to need an expanded vocabulary
That there is the truth. Not the rest of it so much, but our limited vocabulary limits our discussions, and of course our friends on the left are always trying to weaponize it.
buwaya upthread: "It is the usual virtue signal taught in all US high schools and colleges.
One must indulge in ritual self hatred in order to maintain social status."
Fair point and, ordinarily, I would be depressed by this fact. But ever since Rachel Dolezal told us how to escape our Caucasity whenever we want to self-identify as Current Victim Class, I have left my fears behind.
Tim in Vermont said...
“Mongols were pretty bad, maybe those genes got implanted in Europeans, but they didn’t really have an empire that spanned multiple continents and multitudes of islands in the eastern and western hemisphere.“
The mongols spent far more time implanting their genes in the Middle East.
As a family factual matter, Obama's mother was white, so we must not exclude the state of "Bicaucasity" from this discussion.
To my ear it conveys humor, but humor can be hateful, and white people are too numerous to be laughed off as some kind of joke, but that's why there seems to be a privilege to laugh at them (us).
In its defense, "caucasity" seems to refer to something real - it's a synonym for white people. White people exist, love 'em or hate 'em, you can make jokes about them. Like any group, they can be stereotyped, and the jokes based on the stereotypes make you laugh because they're true.
As opposed to a stupid neologism like "people(person/woman) of color", which has no referent in reality beyond self-referentiality - can you make a stereotype about "people of color"? No, because "people of color" don't exist as a real human group. The only meaning it conveys is that the person using it has an animus against white people (or is, at best, a dingbat).
So we shouldn't be niggardly with our self-denigration ?
I think that a lot of the terrible stuff that other races have done is lost both in the “mists of time” and the fact that the histories were not written and preserved.
I seriously doubt that China, for example, arose by universal and spontaneous acclamation of all of the tribes and clans living in the area. I am thinking that there was some military persuasion involved. Probably true of every other great nation on this earth that has managed to dominate a large territory with a language and a culture.
Still, we have run with the ball in the past thousand years.
The mongols spent far more time implanting their genes in the Middle East.
They did some great work there!
http://lostislamichistory.com/mongols/
Sorry not on point but wow DOJ dismissing Menendez charges.
I always think of Armenians and Kardashians when I hear anything about the Caucasity or even Cockasity.
Maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong, maybe it's : kaka-city
Etienne is half-way to what I've been thinking as I read all the comments before posting mine:
Surely whoever devised the term 'caucasity' was thinking 'cock-ass-ity'. Whether he was thinking that consciously or just subconsciously is the only interesting question.
As for adjectives, I prefer to think of myself as Caucalicious. (Whether I'm thinking Cockalicious consciously or subconsciously, I'll leave it to the rest of you to decide.)
I think there is a caucasity filter in Photoshop that journalistic publications use to adjust mug shots depending on the narrative.
Tim in V: I think that a lot of the terrible stuff that other races have done is lost both in the “mists of time” and the fact that the histories were not written and preserved.
Really? I can think of a lot of terrible stuff non-white people have done, in recent history and the "mists of time", that got written down and preserved in books.
I seriously doubt that China, for example, arose by universal and spontaneous acclamation of all of the tribes and clans living in the area. I am thinking that there was some military persuasion involved.
If only it were possible to learn their inscrutable language for oneself, or rely on someone else to translate their historical documents for inquiring round-eyes. I guess we'll never know.
Literate cultures preserved records of the terrible stuff they did (mostly 'cause they didn't think it was terrible and bragged about it), and they all did terrible stuff. Based on that, and the terrible stuff we see non-whites get up to in our own time, I think we can assume that the people lost in the mists of time who didn't leave records were probably getting up to terrible stuff, too.
Just realized Obama wrote a book about the Odd-Ass-ity of Hope. Was he trying to tell us something with his choice of title?
Similar things have happened. Many years ago, I read Paul De Man's famous line "The resistance to theory is a resistance to reading" and said to a critical-theory-hostile friend "If we're the Resistance, what the Hell is he, an [expletive-deleted] Nazi?" If only the web had been around back then, I could have blogged or tweeted it, and won fame - or at least notoriety - many years later when my remark proved prescient as De Man was revealed as an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator. Was his guilty conscience trying to tell us something, at least subconsciously, when he wrote the line?
[We were the most aggressive in exploiting every new military technology]
Except for the Mongols and their freaking stirrups.
Europe had stirrups for 500 years before the Mongols expanded beyond warring with themselves and raiding the Chinese. Their advances were in tactics, logistics, and training rather than technology.
Tim in Vermont said...
If Islam is the religion that can’t get along with others, we are the race that can’t get along with others. Any dispassionate look at world history will show that
******************
OK, let's dispassionately look at Genghis Khan, the Mongols, the Japanese, Mao and the Chinese communists, the NORKS, the Mayas, the Algonquins and the Iroquois......
******************************
Tim in Vermont attempted to dodge criticism by entirely shifting his argument thusly:
"Mongols were pretty bad, maybe those genes got implanted in Europeans, but they didn’t really have an empire that spanned multiple continents and multitudes of islands in the eastern and western hemisphere."
********************
Uh huh.
That's some "empire" that doesn't enslave the inhabitants of those territories.
That's some "empire", one that doesn't include administrative and military control (aka RULE) over the politics and economies of most of those territories.
That's some "empire", one where the the US doesn't strip those territories of their natural resources.
Snort!
Trump, a racist dullard, is setting back racial progress by a hundred years at least. This has all sorts implications. I just got off the phone with the Chief Code Compliance Officer for the City of -----, Mr. Khalil -----. I was having trouble catching his name. I told him that his name was complicated and would he spell it. He became angry and said "My name is not common, but it's not complicated!" I had to apologize to extricate myself from his bad reaction to my innocent comment. My bad. My insensitivity, I guess. Thank you President for f-ing things up Making America a S-hole Again, and for making society a seething caldron of hate, intolerance, and emotion instead of a harmonious melting pot of the brotherhood of man. Many of Ann's commenters are retrograde barbaric acolytes of Trump's hatred of nonwhite, non-Wasps, and they troll the comments spewing their ignorance, arrogance, and hostility. They indeed belong squarely in a boiling witch's caldron along with Trump and his ilk.
Casual references to negative stereotypes about white people are funny.
Casual references to negative stereotypes about no white people are ugly and will result in your immediate during and social ostracism.
...that's what's called "white fragility," naturally.
Trumpit is an example of what will happen when the Democrats win power back. There will be no mercy on those they consider the enemy. They have made it clear they want us dead and I for one take that as a serious desire.
I had posted this in the wrong comments section, but people above have already made the point:
It is almost as if there never was a Michelle Kwan, a Debi Thomas, or even a Midori Ito- all of whom were beloved by the audiences that watched and applauded them during their times on the big stage of skating. History always starts anew every morning for our deeply knowledgeable journalists.
Trumpit: "Trump, a racist dullard, is setting back racial progress by a hundred years at least."
Shut up White Person.
And don't even begin to try and deny it.
GUILTY!
Trumpit: " I just got off the phone with the Chief Code Compliance Officer for the City of -----, Mr. Khalil -----. I was having trouble catching his name. I told him that his name was complicated and would he spell it. He became angry and said "My name is not common, but it's not complicated!" I had to apologize to extricate myself from his bad reaction to my innocent comment. My bad. My insensitivity, I guess."
LOL
Hilarious.
Get it?
Trumpit is a dope who doesn't understand basic names from other cultures so, you know what that means, don't you?
Don't you?!!
Yes, it means YOU are the problem!
Trumpit doesn't mean to be such an idiot, "it's just Johnson and this damn war"!!
LOL
Trumpit is a moby trying to make leftists look bad. Always has been.
Notice the other leftists don’t do their double quote repeat song and dance with it.
Trumpit is "performance art" that deliberately tries to gin up outrage. Just ignore it.
I mean, do you know how common the name Khalil happens to be?
Sheesh Trumpit. Read a book or something.
See, that's what Trump was doing last night. He was proving that Caucasians CAN clap. Cultural outreach and diversity training.
There once was a man from Caucasity...
@Trumpit,
I just got off the phone with the Chief Code Compliance Officer for the City of -----, Mr. Khalil -----. I was having trouble catching his name. I told him that his name was complicated and would he spell it. He became angry and said "My name is not common, but it's not complicated!" I had to apologize to extricate myself from his bad reaction to my innocent comment. My bad. My insensitivity, I guess.
What? You had to deal with a pissy local bureaucrat, & it was in some way the fault of Trump? Do you live in a cave, or have you just never heard all the jokes & stories about the joys of the DMV? Such stories precede Trump by decades, not years.
My first name is unusual for an American man, but I spell it & explain it all the time, mostly because there are multiple possible spellings. I've learned to live with it. Besides, people mumble their names all the time. I mean, they know their names.
The bureaucrat has his own problems. That you think this has anything to do with Trump is yours.
Henry:
"There once was a man from Caucasity."
"Whose proboscis was the quite the monstrosity"
"Caucasity", said the NYT editor, caulk-assedly.
Explaining how to pronounce your name, and, if uncommon, describing its origin, is an opportunity to break the ice, so to speak. Learn to recognize and take advantage of opportunities with mutual benefit when they occur.
There once was a man from Caucasity...
Known for his foul mendacity.
There once was a man from Caucasity...
Known for his foul mendacity.
He spotted a tit
And started to twist
I have always been on the fence about whether or not Trumpit was an authentic progressive/Democrat. Still am and probably always will be unsure.
We were the most aggressive in exploiting every new military technology.
Because we developed them (i.e. had most of them first)? What race has developed a technology that gives them a clear military advantage then said, "Nah, let's wait until everyone has this"?
Actually the clearest example I can think of is the US having sole ownership of nukes. While we dropped two on Japan in the later stages of a true world war, we didn't drop them on North Korea of the nearer areas of China during the Korean "conflict".
Caucasity!
Ian Fleming used "negritude" in his novel, Live and Let Die, 1954.
So as usual, whitey beat ya to it.
Yancey, I'm not even sure Inga believes her own rhetoric. Trolls gotta troll, which means they merely want to elicit a response. Or, even better, a whole spate of responses. If they weren't fed, they'd disappear.
There once was a man from Caucasity
Known for his foul mendacity.
He tried and he tried
But continually lied,
As he lacked any perspicacity.
I love Trumpit. She has such a sublime touch for mockery of the Dims. It is really an art.
To me, Trumpit is the Jonathan Swift of these comment sections. She skewers the libs with every sentence. And the wit is so sharp that the left doesn't even recognize that their jugulars have been slashed.
Supremely ironic. Trumpit is a gift.
There once was a man from Caucasity...
Known for his foul mendacity.
He spotted a tit
And and gave it a twist
'Til her knee sent his balls to historicity
For he has no honest capacity.
There once was a man from Caucacity
Not known for his somber veracity
They ran a foul witch
but like an in-time stitch
He beat her because of her mendacity.
Numerous and diverse. Each with our own unique constellation of physical and mental traits.
Better Mock! Stealing it.
There once was a man from Caucacity
Not known for his somber veracity
They ran a foul witch
She encountered a hitch
She completely lacked self perspicacity!
He beat her because of her mendacity.
he beat her for her mendacity (helps the meter)
Nope, I was wrong.. yours is better.
setting back ... by a hundred years at leas
Progress... is monotonic.
That’s what form does for poetry, it forces you to stretch a little, and come upon stuff you never would have seen writing prose.
Buway wrote: "One must indulge in ritual self hatred in order to maintain social status."
Sadly true.
It's interesting to note that the "White Devil" theme was big with Elijah Muhammed and the Black Muslim movement in the 60's. Malcolm X was an apostate who did not buy into that thinking. Hence, he was publicly murdered.
It's offensive that the New York Times would use a word like that that is not even in the dictionary. All the news that's fit to print? Not.
If it weren’t for the zeitgeist of white hatred going on right now, the word would be funny. So I am going to say it was funny.
Caucacity
Monstrosity
fetchin'
Chechen
Pomposity
Limerick Winner on Democrat Underground with Special Guest Judge LLR Chuck:
"There once was a man from Caucacity
Russia
Russia
Russia
Collusion & Treason!"
Personally, I think it's missing something.
Yes, yes, it's so hateful, hurtful, and just so very *wrong* to perpetuate the false stereotype that white people have no rhythm.
Give me a fucking break.
OK, I am going to write one from Inga’s point of view.
We can pretty much agree on the first couplet.
There once was a man from Caucacity
Not known for his humble veracity
His fingers are short
She said with a snort
And that proves his foul mendacity.
Too easy.
I wish I had put “humble” in the first one, instead of somber.
A little more polish:
A candidate ran from Caucacity
Not known for his humble veracity
Opposed by mainly the rich
But since karma’s a bitch
They tripped on her venal mendacity!
Maybe too internal....
The opinions of a Negro are not worth mention.
Short fingers, bad clapping. Goes together.
Tim,
You have talent. Nicely done.
Darrell, I'm taking liberties in finishing your work here:
There once was a man from Caucasity...
Known for his foul mendacity.
He spotted a tit
And started to twist
As Ms. Dumont cried, "The audacity!"
For people of color (POC) we can have pocosity.
"The Congressional Black Caucus listen to Trump's State of the Union speech with stonefaced
pocosity".
Figure skating summary: skate skate skate skate skate jump twirl skate skate skate skate skate jump twirl skate skate skate skate skate music ends
This is what victory looks like.
The next step will be people stop saying "I don't like Trump but..."
Most people will anyway.
Every time this country reaches nadir brought on by the left, someone or something has come along to save it.
FDR prolonged the depression as long as possible, but allowed business leaders to manufacture the US to victory in WWII. Fortunately he died before he could ruin the post war era.
Carter wasn't really trying to destroy the country, it was just sorta happening because he was terrible. Reagan really brought this country back.
Since Reagan we have had 2 Bushes, a Clinton and Obama. All did their level best to lead us to ruin.
Trump is going to be remembered in history for saving this country from the globalists that tried to bring us down to the historical aristocratic mean just like Reagan.
The ultimate expression of Caucasity is landing on the moon 6 times out of 7 attempts, with one failure that still saw our folks bring back a stricken ship and a live crew from 230,000 miles out in space.
What is the ultimate expression of Negrosity?
Just curious.
Desus and Mero can be very funny and they are always entertaining, not least to themselves. I'm not sure where they line up on the hip spectrum for those who are actually hip, but if I find them funny, which I do, I think they have to go on the list of Things White People Like.
They might find this disconcerting. If they noticed. Which they will not.
"What is the ultimate expression of Negrosity?"
Are you referring to that "shithole" continent Africa, Haiti, or Harlem, New York?
You are woefully ignorant of the accomplishments Afro-Americans have made to the exploration of space. I won't call you a racist because that's obvious from your offensive comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_astronauts
Dr. Weevil - my wifey thinks I'm Cockalicious, or so she says.
Tim in Vermont - I get your point, White Europeans sure did a lot of conquering. But I look at it this way. Asians mostly centered their worldview on themselves (Middle Kingdom in China, Sacred Island in Japan, etc) and the majority of their barbarism was directed at themselves or their fellow Asians. And there was quite a bit of it.
Africans were quite slow to develop technologies and domesticate animals for transportation. They were (and are) also quite bloodthirsty, but their limited global mobility left them little choice but to savage amongst their own little tribal conflict zones. And, even when they had the chance, their weapons were inferior to those of the Arabs and Europeans and thus any conflicts between them saw the Africans getting the shaft.
American Indians (N and S America) were also bloodthirsty, but were even less technologically advanced and mobile than the Africans were. Thus, they also directed their violence inwards.
Basically, every society and culture has either existed in or gone through periods of slaughter and violence. The only ones who could direct that malevolence outwards were the Europeans, Asians, and to some extent the Arab cultures. The Asians didn't do it so much except among other Asians, the Arabs did but it was guided by religion (the Crusades were a response to the Moorish invasions of Europe, after all), and the Europeans - well, we are generally physically stronger than the Asians and more advanced than everyone else, so we ended up as equal opportunity berserkers.
But make no mistake about this: if some African tribe took the time to develop steel weapons, gunpowder, and sailing ships, they would have done the same damn thing once they ran out of their local enemies to slaughter. But they didn't, so they couldn't. They're not less violent or less aggressive. Just less technologically able to direct that violence outwards.
"My first name is unusual for an American man, but I spell it & explain it all the time, mostly because there are multiple possible spellings."
My last name has 4 letters. Three are consonants. Two of the consonants are at the end of the name and are spoken as if one letter. I have to repeat the name to people who do not know me at least 75% of the time.
"You are woefully ignorant of the accomplishments Afro-Americans have made to the exploration of space. I won't call you a racist because that's obvious from your offensive comment."
LOL, so you cannot answer my question. That Wikipedia article is fantastic - I'm glad there have been accomplished astronauts of African descent - and I already knew most of that anyway. How about this question: are there any African-majority nations with a functioning space program? Any that have launched more than a satellite by themselves?
Funny that Negrosity is a racist term but Caucasity is not. I actually don't mind the Caucasity term, but I personally prefer Cauctastic. Much more fitting for the race that split the atom.
I also note that our "melting pot nation" needed quite a bit of help from German scientists (as did the Russkies, BTW) in order to get our space program off the ground. Any guesses as the African admixture of Wehrner Von Braun?
Negro space program: https://youtu.be/T6xJzAYYrX8
What about the Black Caucus appropriating our Caucasity? That's not appropriate.
"Any guesses as the African admixture of Wehrner Von Braun?" Well, Werner's last name isn't Von Weiss.
By now Althouse should know that offering her commenters a post on race is like handing a bunch of five-year-olds a can of gasoline and some matches.
Drago,
"Whose proboscis was the quite the monstrosity"
Long ago and far away, when I was doing linguistic research in an African country, I came across a word I had never seen before, used to describe a bird's beak.
I asked my local assistant what the word meant. "Oh," he answered, "it means long and pointed, like a pencil... ... ... or a white person's nose."
I suppose it is a privilege to be white, and I should be more grateful. "Thank you, O Lord, that you did not make me one of Those."
>>That's because lack rhythm, which leaves us with free time that would otherwise be spent dancing and clapping and so forth.
Bob, thanks for the laugh!
Kirk Parker, your comment reminds me of something I read about my own tribe, the Irish. (Anglo-Irish, really.) "Long-nosed" was a term used by the pug-nosed peasant-class Irish to describe the aristocratic Norman- and Anglo-Irish and the English ruling class. Maybe that was the origin of "snooty." The Irish peasantry was depicted as simian, which their pug noses helped foster.
.
Earnest Prole said...
By now Althouse should know that offering her commenters a post on race is like handing a bunch of five-year-olds a can of gasoline and some matches.
Leftists are getting angry that the racist little proles don't know their place.
The only reason they don't start another civil war is because of the sure knowledge of the outcome.
This is why I self-identify as a light-skinned black woman, which is awesome to everybody of all types, and being a white guy is about as unappreciated as a human can be.
Achilles wrote:
"Earnest Prole said...
"By now Althouse should know that offering her commenters a post on race is like handing a bunch of five-year-olds a can of gasoline and some matches."
"Leftists are getting angry that the racist little proles don't know their place."
Indeed. Only those who have been inducted into the Hive and been programmed with the proper party lines and talking points are qualified to discuss race.
there once was a man with caucasity
so great, he had no capacity
to jump or to dance,
and in trying out pants
he failed, as had no ass did he.
A stretch, but I was having fun with it.
European superior technology was a very small factor in the initial stages of colonial expansion.
Arguably it was not a factor at all until the later 19th century, the tail end of colonialism, when even superior technology could not restore the deteriorating cost/benefit ratio.
It helps to do a deep dive into the tactical-operational details of the European conquests. This is not popular in academic circles.
Generally the Europeans were present in tiny numbers, and had only marginal technical superiority.
Victories in open warfare were due to superior morale and organization, but more than that it was diplomacy that proved decisive.
In truth the Europeans conquered through "soft power", almost always, not "hard", and almost always with the aquiesence of powerful interests among the colonized.
If being born caucasian makes one cis-caucasian, then what does being born in the Transcaucasus make one?
The only reason they don't start another civil war is because of the sure knowledge of the outcome.
But they are starting it, thinking that only their side will be allowed to apply violence. If you don't believe me, check which side had weapons in Charlottesville, VA, and check which side had weapons in Berkeley or Portland (pick any urban riot in either of the last two).
Didn't Daniel-Day Lewis make the movie back in the 1980's The Unbearable Whiteness of Boring
I was always shocked when Joe Friday went looking for Male Cauc
"If being born caucasian makes one cis-caucasian, then what does being born in the Transcaucasus make one?"
If it's not hacked off it's bigger than cis-Asian, but smaller than cis-folks re the focus of DJT's racism.
That also explains the motivation re our politics re DJT-types. They call that a twofer.
The audience begins to clap as well as its overwhelming Caucasity will allow.
So, back in Barack Obama's America, the 2014 U.S. Figure Skating Championships had a "no blacks allowed" policy for its crowds? That they turned away large numbers of black people to keep the stands pure?
It's interesting to note that the "White Devil" theme was big with Elijah Muhammed and the Black Muslim movement in the 60's. Malcolm X was an apostate who did not buy into that thinking. Hence, he was publicly murdered.
Malcolm X did buy into the White Devil thinking, that's what made him famous. He later realized this was limiting his influence and and stopped saying it openly.
http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/people/malcolm-x.html
"Malcolm X condemned whites, whom he referred to as the "white devil," for the historical oppression of blacks:"
"European superior technology was a very small factor in the initial stages of colonial expansion. "
I doubt that.
The Vikings had advantages over the Skraelings, but not nearly as much as Columbus, Balboa, et al, had over the their southern counterparts, or the British later had over Indians (especially feather, but also dot). The Vikings didn't have enough advantage to get a permanent foothold in America, but the Skraelings never set sail for Norway, or even Iceland, most likely because they couldn't, nor did they have steel weapons to match the Scandinavians of the time. Centuries of technological advantages of many kinds since Viking times made the Age of Exploration possible.
The technology of the Age of Steam made that of the Age of Sail seem paltry and primitive in comparison, but western sailing ships, and their accompanying guns and other technology, were enough to confer a great advantage on those who had them, and that came from years of accumulated advances that the conquered couldn't replicate.
Now we don't even call anything technology unless it involves advanced computers, and much of that is now done by Indians (dotcom, not feather) but the material advantages in the time of European colonialism, along with soft power, was enough to build empires.
Trumpit is definitely a parodic moby. He succeeds here because his spiel is so similar to TTR's insane rantings that many commenters uncritically assume they're ideological birds of a feather. Chuck fails as a moby because his comments bear no resemblance whatever to anything a conservative would write. He thinks merely claiming to be a Republican is enough, but as is so typical of the Left these days, his inability to control his hysteria makes any sort of artifice impossible to bring off.
"In just 100 years the Dems establishment has gone from keeping darkie down to pushing whitey down."
Pretending to push whitey down in order to firmly keep their foot on darkie's neck would be closer to the truth.
American Indians (N and S America) were also bloodthirsty, but were even less technologically advanced and mobile than the Africans were.
The horse cultures of the North American plains are considered by many military historians as some of the best light cavalry that's ever existed, ie, highly mobile.
Basically, every society and culture has either existed in or gone through periods of slaughter and violence. The only ones who could direct that malevolence outwards were the Europeans, Asians, and to some extent the Arab cultures. The Asians didn't do it so much except among other Asians
The cities of middle and Eastern Europe would ravaged by the Mongols. Pretty sure they were Asian.
S McG:
"The horse cultures of the North American plains" didn't exist until Europeans brought horses to the Americas - also firearms.
Chuck fails as a moby because his comments bear no resemblance whatever to anything a conservative would write. He thinks merely claiming to be a Republican is enough, but as is so typical of the Left these days, his inability to control his hysteria makes any sort of artifice impossible to bring off.
Perhaps, but you also need to take into account that anyone from SE Michigan has been subjected on a daily basis to the toxic poison of (1) the most irrational lunacy of the radical progressive left in and around Ann Arbor, (2) a decades-long atmosphere of rage and antagonism left over from unionism and racial tensions, (3) a thoroughly undeserved hubris in Ann Arbor of thinking that they are the center of the universe and reflective of all that good and excellent.
Being in that environment can nevertheless produce Republicans, but they are likely to be squishy types that have bought into the idea of the left around them that what the rest of us know as reasonable conservatives are on the extreme hateful stupid right. Being in the center of all that, they don't know any better.
""European superior technology was a very small factor in the initial stages of colonial expansion."
Not sure what you mean by "initial stages." A few years ago I had the wonderful opportunity to tour the replica that has been built of the Dutch ship Batavia. When it set said to the East Indies in 1628 the Dutch had already been exploiting that area for nearly 50 years. Their ships were marvels. The Batavia, which met an unhappy end in a gruesome mutiny, had nearly 30 iron cannon, numerous smaller brass guns and a large company of soldiers with effective muskets. Their ships were sound and they were outstanding sailors and navigators, both technological tasks and advantages. The impact of these ships and weapons on the inhabitants of the Indies was overwhelming.
I took an online word test one time and scored poetic genius. I wish I could make stuff like that up.
"The horse cultures of the North American plains" didn't exist until Europeans brought horses to the Americas - also firearms.
Which doesn't change my point at all. They were far more mobile than the Africans he's talking about (which I took to mean sub-Saharan).
What is with this "Caucasian" thing.
Being a Mick, my relatives were never withing throwing distance of the Caucasus Mountains.
You have to dig into details to understand just what advantages tech brought to the game. Or did not.
Spain took its paying colonies in the Americas, Mexico and Peru (the rest were marginal for hundreds of years) with almost no tech advantages over the Indians, certainly nothing that could overcome the enormous numerical advantage of the natives. Both Cortez and Pizzarros expeditions were extremely poorly equipped as European military units went. The vast majority were unarmored, their firepower was marginal - only @10% of Cortez' men had firearms OR crossbows, and no more than a couple dozen horses at any time. Few were even trained soldiers (though Pizarro himself was). They won by fighting man-to-man, hand-to-hand, with ordinary swords being the main weapon, equipped with Indian cotton armor.
In Asia the Europeans had no tech advantages at all.
The Indians the British fought through the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth, had as much (potential) firepower as they did, besides vastly greater numbers. The Sikhs of Ranjit Singhs army, from whom the British took the Punjab, were drilled in European tactics, carried British standard muskets and had several times as much artillery.
Martin de Goiti took Manila by assault, outnumbered, against natives armed with steel weapons and brass cannon. Later on their lack of firearms was so great they had to import them from China and Japan.
Albuquerque's Portuguese, less than 1000 men, captured over 4000 cannon when they took Malacca. But the decisive weapons of that battle were the ancient Portuguese pikes.
In Algeria in the 1830's the Arab muskets outranged the French.
It goes on and on.
Steamships and repeating rifles came later, when the Europeans were conquering the more marginal bits.
But the natives were picking up tech, and organization and tactics too. The British took Egypt in the 1880s from an Egyptian army equipped with then-modern weapons, breech-loading rifles and cannon, in no way inferior to the British.
“By now Althouse should know that offering her commenters a post on race is like handing a bunch of five-year-olds a can of gasoline and some matches.”
You making mg fun of our cangasity?
I don’t get this ‘caucasity’ thing. Honestly I had a hard time seeing how this word was related to race, initially.
Why is it that non-whites and self hating whites (typically, those on the left) try and come up with names designed to offend, but are adopted by the people who are supposed to be offended as a badge, and carry it through to the point that the creators start to hate the word, themselves.
There is a general understanding that the indigenous peoples in various regions were united, living in peace and harmony with each other, but nothing could be further from the truth. Often there were groups that were literally mortal enemies of each other. And the colonists/invaders/adventurers/rapists/white devils took advantage of that, pitting one indigenous group against another.
There is a general understanding that the indigenous peoples in various regions were united, living in peace and harmony with each other, but nothing could be further from the truth. Often there were groups that were literally mortal enemies of each other. And the colonists/invaders/adventurers/rapists/white devils took advantage of that, pitting one indigenous group against another.
That's the main reason it was [and still is] difficult to bring tribal nations in the Middle East into nationhood.
I think that one of the major advantages that Europeans had in these conflicts was millenia of written history. Anybody familiar with the writings of the Greeks and the Romans, and the Bible were playing eleven dimensional chess compared to some warlord steeped only in their local ideological version of divine right.
Chinese didn’t roll over so easily as the rest.
Widespread literacy, too. That’s a real kind of power we take for granted.
"Spain took its paying colonies in the Americas... with almost no tech advantages over the Indians"
A laughably absurd statement, unworthy of response.
"In Asia the Europeans had no tech advantages at all."
Really? All of Asia? Forest/desert/mountain-dwelling people with only ancient tech, if that, the same as Persians/Chinese/Indians?
"The Sikhs of Ranjit Singhs army, from whom the British took the Punjab, were drilled in European tactics, carried British standard muskets...".
You're proving my point for me.
Martin de Goiti had to import firearms from China and Japan, but the Chinese, despite inventing gunpowder and guns, abandoned their use for centuries, and later had to import Europeans to build and operate them, because nobody in China knew how.
"But the natives were picking up tech, and organization and tactics too."
Picking it up from where?
I'm half way through reading Daniel Boorstin's "The Discoverers", and it details how incremental advances in tech led to many of these explorations and conquests, and how the accumulation of small advantages led to bigger things. The explorers and conquerors didn't wait until they had complete advantage; that would have outlasted their own lives, so they were constantly pushing the envelope, and using both old and new tactics and tech.
I certainly don't think non-Europeans were incapable of doing these things but it's a fact that for centuries it was almost exclusively Europeans who did them, and later Americans. Now, of course, Asians, and some others, are in many ways surpassing us, and American schools are focused on football and churning out Intersectional-Studies majors and SJWs, so the tide is already turning.
Read Bernal Diaz. He was in the ranks with Cortez, in dozens of skirmishes and many great battles. His fighting was just as I have described it. There is a fantasy idea around, about how the Spanish had some magical effect on the Indians on the battlefield. But it was not physically so.
Bernal Diaz ascribes Spanish success to "soft" factors, not technical superiority - courage born of desperation, excellent leadership, diplomacy, and Gods will. We could probably add a significant difference in group dynamics and poor capacity on the Indian part to innovate. Note that the Indians did indeed start innovating rapidly during the siege of Tenochtitlan - also in Bernal Diaz.
More interesting, perhaps, is the second half or Bernal Diaz' account, that of the endless marches to town after town, of skirmish after skirmish and assault after assault, the tedious detail work of conquest.
Asia, yes, all of it. From the sixteenth century, when the Europeans started to conquer significant places like Goa and Malacca, and into the 18th century, or even much of the nineteenth, the natives certainly had steel weapons, armor as appropriate, firearms including heavy cannon, sturdy ocean-going vessels. They are certainly encountered often enough.
As above, the idea that Europeans had a decisive technical superiority does not survive a deep dive into the details. It was entirely soft factors.
Consider a thought experiment - at the battle of Otumba, say, when the retreating conquistadors and their allies, ravaged by the noche triste, with no ammunition and shorn of equipment, were caught by the pursuing Mexica. What if, on that day, the Mexica had the state of mind of Cetshwayo's Zulus, who were unafraid of cavalry and determined to close with the enemy with a sacrificial zeal? Give the Zulus obsidian weapons instead of their steel assegais and it would make next to no difference.
Tim in Vermont said...
Chinese didn’t roll over so easily as the rest.
2/1/18, 8:51 AM
You want to qualify that, because I seem to remember a China getting cut up like a pie by the European powers. It was a famous cartoon to that effect. Also Japan was in the picture. Opium Wars? How did the British get Hong Kong? Every so often the Chinese would annoy them and they would sail up the Pei Ho and bombard Peking. Total pwnage.
The Hmong, the Mongols,and the Chukchi all had advanced tech, got it.
I don't doubt that much of what you say is true, but the fact that the Spanish and Portuguese were in America, and not then Indigians in Europe, was because the Iberians had ocean-going tech, and the Indigians' canoes were not even as advanced in that capacity as Viking ships. The natives battled hard, but when Balboa fought on the Isthmus of Panama, he was aided by having steel swords against wooden swords.
Even the Chinese and Japanese didn't have their own ocean-going tech of the European sort. They sailed far, but they hugged coasts and island hopped, or otherwise followed know routes.
"they would sail up the Pei Ho and bombard Peking. "
Canton, not Peking.
"The Hmong, the Mongols,and the Chukchi all had advanced tech, got it."
The Mongols certainly did, back in the 13th century. By the sixteenth not so much.
But their descendants cavalry was still extremely dangerous on Eastern European battlefields. As for the rest, very likely advanced enough to make it not worthwhile for most Europeans to mess with them, or for that matter most Asians.
" but the fact that the Spanish and Portuguese were in America, and not then Indigians in Europe" - I'm not claiming that. Just that the actual conquest was conducted by defeating the Indians (American and Asian, and those other Asians that were likewise conquered) on land, in their own countries, where the actual technical superiority was marginally relevant to the outcome.
There would have been no conquest if Cortez or some successor had been able to drop five hundred or a thousand Europeans on the coast, if they were then overwhelmed by a superior Indian force. They did not have the technology to make a sufficient force multiplier to overcome the numbers the natives could mobilize. Other peoples facing an even greater technological deficit were able to use their numbers effectively. But the Mexica were not Zulus.
As for the Asian abilities at sea - the Chinese (for instance) certainly had the technology to sail to Europe using the same routes as the Portuguese, had they wished to. What they didn't have they could have had merely through trying and solving problems as the Portuguese did from the 1450's. In many other ways they had superior naval technology.
It was not that they couldn't, but that they didn't.
Blogger buwaya said...
"they would sail up the Pei Ho and bombard Peking. "
Canton, not Peking.
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=griffis&book=china&story=taipings&PHPSESSID=551d49fb6378054adaed68ab9fd30e68
I beg your pardon. You are quite correct. It was not necessary to actually attack Peking, merely to hold the Imperial City at risk.
So I suppose there weren’t the squees the author was feeling, so it must be some squaresville Caucasity. Like when the teeny boppers were so restrained around Frank, and Elvis, and the Beatles... All models of restrained Caucasciousness.
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