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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30974 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris, posted a photo on Twitter celebrating the Jewish American Heritage Month.

Met with Jewish White House staff in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. Our Administration is proud to recognize the Jewish staffers who help carry our nation forward each day and are helping create a more inclusive tomorrow.

I counted, give or take, 155 Jewish Staff Members. There are 474 White House Staff Members in total, meaning that Jews comprise 32% of all staff members. This is a radical over-representation of 1400%, or 14x what should be expected given the population of 2.2%. As everyone pictured is White, presumably this really is a photo with all the Jewish staff members who wanted to participate in the event (otherwise: why no black staffers present?). There may be some not pictured for various work-related or personal reasons, and perhaps some with Jewish spouses pictured. I had difficulty finding the figures on other demographics. According to an authoritative source, 14% of the staff are Black (this just happens to be the same number and is not a typo). I could find nothing on Asian members, but perusing the total list of White House Staff names I calculated give or take 50 with exclusively Asian names; this should be construed as a minimum because of high exogamy rates and names not always being obviously Asian. That puts Asians at 10.5%. Given that Black people sit at 14%, I would go out on a limb and say that the Latino constituents also comprise roughly their makeup in America; let’s peg it at a slightly lower 15% (if someone wants to check from the list of staffers’ names be my guest).

All of this puts the non-Jewish White percent at 28.5%, counting the Turkish and Arab names as White (and ignoring the probably ~2% Native American that Joe slipped in there). And so, among White House staffers, Whites are quite under-represented and Jews are enormously over-represented. This is problematic IMO, because the domestic founding population of a nation shouldn’t be so under-represented, and a single ethnic cluster with a strong activism network and their own influential nation state probably shouldn’t be 14x over-represented among White House staffers without anyone in established media criticizing or noticing. Alas, such topics have been posted frequently, but in previous cases the over-representation was among Cabinet Members and Supreme Court Justices and so on. This shows that even in a large sample size such as 474, the over-representation remains. If I could put my position into as few words as possible, I would steal from a random tweet on the subject: “Half of the White House staff is Jewish, but we get told that ‘White Supremacists’ run America lol.” What pains me is that while the default white Americans are so under-represented, they are the ones who face the most ruthless black propaganda against their demographic. It’s important to educate others on the problem of representation, I suppose.

I dislike the whole premise of this post. The phrase “default white Americans” is a categorization I’d wholeheartedly reject, as a supposedly positive variation of the Chinese robber fallacy hinted to be synonymous with “volk”. I assume most of the Jewish staffers are “default Jewish Americans” and the Black staffers are “default Black Americans,” absent any further info. “Americans who chose to be American by legal immigration” is a much more meaningful category.

“Jewish” and “white” also need some breakdown. Alexander Vindman, central to one impeachment of Trump, was a Soviet citizen at birth, to a Jewish family in Kiev (at the time). Without any of that knowledge, I’d think him one of your “default white Americans”.

I’m an American by birth and default choice in a land which accepts all comers. I care less about underrepresentation by bodies like mine and more about hearts and minds like mine. I want Allen West as President, David Mamet as White House speechwriter, Thomas Sowell as head of the Fed, and so-called Ultra-Orthodox Jews on the Supreme Court bench.

Default White is a regrettable term, but “non-Jewish” is even more regrettable, and saying the word gentile in this context seems off. Similarly, “plain” comes with negative baggage. I also don’t want to say European, because the majority of Jewish Americans very much have European heritage. There really aren’t too many options, and I think if I said Christian-ancestry I’d also find disagreement.

Bring back the word Aryan. Using "white gentile" is so incredibly cucked, it would be like if you made the word "Jew" taboo so Jews had to just all refer to themselves as non-Aryan whites. You could nitpick that term, but the nitpicks of that term would apply to "Jewish" as well.

The problem with using Aryan is that you end up including Indian Brahmins, which, though they are rapidly growing in influence within the American (and British) elite PMC, certainly wouldn’t count as white in the way you’re intending it.

That is far from the biggest problem with using the word Aryan. The biggest problem is that approximately everyone will instantly pattern-match you as an anti-Semite at least, and a Nazi at worst.

Well yes, that’s obviously true, but I’m pointing out why @SecureSignals specifically, who demonstrably is not concerned with being pattern-matched as an anti-Semite, would still be better off eschewing the term for his own purposes.

Why would the word Aryan include Indian Brahmins? We don't call Mexicans Spaniards. Just because there was an Aryan invasion of India doesn't mean the caste with the most admixture remaining from that extinct ruling class are the same race as the invaders.

My understanding is that the Brahmin caste in India is directly descended from the Aryan overclass who ruled the Indus Valley civilization, although they have obviously taken on substantial admixture from the indigenous Dravidian populations in the intervening millennia. Certainly their religion, their cultural outlook - including their caste system - and their enduring position of prestige in India are directly continuous with their Aryan past.

As a follow-up, I came across a source I was looking for earlier:

David Reich described the Aryan invading population in 2019:

the population that contributed genetic material to South Asia was (roughly) 60% Yamnaya [my note: European steppe ancestry], ~30% European farmer-like ancestry"

And the remaining 10% was of West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer origin, a population which is similar to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers.

That ethnic composition is nearly identical to modern Northern Europeans (note "Earthly Neolitic" == European farmers). Certainly Europeans have far greater genetic similarity to the Aryans than the Brahmin.

Even among the Brahmin, >70% admixture from the Indus Valley and the indigenous Andamanese.

That's not to understate the tremendous Aryan influence on Indian civilization. But the admixture profile of modern-day Northern Europeans is nearly identical to the Aryans- and even throughout other regions of Europe with relatively lower Yamnaya ancestry and higher European farmer ancestry, the ancestrial profile looks the same as the Aryans in comparison to the Brahmin.

cc: @BurdensomeCount

Interesting, thanks for this.

My understanding is that the Brahmin caste in India is directly descended from the Aryan overclass who ruled the Indus Valley civilization, although they have obviously taken on substantial admixture from the indigenous Dravidian populations in the intervening millennia.

The castes correlate with indo-european admixture, but it's still too low to resemble anything you would call a direct descendant, in the way you wouldn't call a mestizo a direct descendant of Europeans. It's a case of ethnogenesis. I haven't seen PCA/clustering with the caste systems compared to European groups but I imagine that would demonstrate this point as well.

It's also likely the caste system was created in response to racial changes among the ruling class, so substantial changes likely happened before the formalization of the caste system. Where are the conquistadores today? Even if a caste system were created in Latin America today, the upper castes would still have a substantial amount of indigenous admixture.

It's interesting to consider how the Spanish intermixed with the natives which the Anglos did not.

Where are the conquistadores today? Even if a caste system were created in Latin America today, the upper castes would still have a substantial amount of indigenous admixture.

Actually, from what I understand the political/cultural/financial elite in Mexico, Brazil, and the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) has very little non-European admixture at all. In Mexico they’re descended largely from conquistadors (hence Steve Sailer’s epithet “Conquistador-American” for people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), but in other parts of Latin America they’re just as likely to be of Italian and German ancestry. I can’t speak to the more undeveloped parts of Latin America.

but it's still too low to resemble anything you would call a direct descendant, in the way you wouldn't call a mestizo a direct descendant of Europeans

What does “it’s still too low” mean in this context?

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Except lots of American default whites are not aryan- even granting that aryan in racial use is kind of a fuzzy term, italian Americans and white hispanics are fairly large ethnic groups that most people would agree the term aryan excludes.

All racial terms are fuzzy, Israel manages to define an ethnic Jew in a way that works in practice. There should be some category to refer to "non-Jewish European-descended" and Aryan was used to denote that group historically. Italians were regarded as Aryan even by Nazi racial laws FWIW, the term wasn't nearly as exclusive as the post-war lore has made it out to be. White hispanics are more complicated because there are some with entirely European ancestry and some with much less.

All racial terms are fuzzy, Israel manages to define an ethnic Jew in a way that works in practice.

Except it does not, there is no more contentious issue in Israel than "who is a Jew", and it is getting hotter every day.

On one side are people who want to expand already expansive Law of Return(for various reasons), and on the other side are ... people who feel about Gentiles as you feel about Jews.

Ask them.

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