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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   32531 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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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.

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.

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.

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?

It means it's a mixed population, at least in the present day:

To explore the impact of West Eurasians on contemporary Indian caste populations, we compared mtDNA and Y-chromosome ...variation in ∼265 males from eight castes of different rank to ∼750 Africans, Asians, Europeans, and other Indians. For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%–30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans. These findings are consistent with greater West Eurasian male admixture with castes of higher rank.

...

Our analysis of 40 autosomal markers indicates clearly that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians. The high affinity of caste Y chromosomes with those of Europeans suggests that the majority of immigrating West Eurasians may have been males. As might be expected if West Eurasian males appropriated the highest positions in the caste system, the upper caste group exhibits a lower genetic distance to Europeans than the middle or lower castes. This is underscored by the observation that the Kshatriya (an upper caste), whose members served as warriors, are closer to Europeans than any other caste (data not shown). Furthermore, the 32-bp deletion polymorphism in CC chemokine receptor 5, whose frequency peaks in populations of Eastern Europe, is found only in two Brahmin males (M. Bamshad and S.K. Ahuja, unpubl.). The stratification of Y-chromosome distances with Europeans could also be caused by male-specific gene flow among caste populations of different rank.

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