June 1, 2012

Diversity before Diversity: Evonne Goolagong

A running theme at iSteve over the years has been to question the conventional wisdom that white racism long completely prevented the efflorescence of talent among the diverse and thus, under our more enlightened system of today, various diverse superstars in numerous fields will be arriving Real Soon Now. 

Yet, in quite a few fields, I can recall various non-whites of the past who accomplished more than their more numerous and more accepted co-ethnics today. For instance, Pancho Gonzales, a cholo from East L.A., was among the the top American tennis players from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, while there are no Mexican-American touring pros today.

With the French Open tennis tournament going on currently, I'm reminded that Australian Aboriginal-surnamed Evonne Goolagong won the French Open in 1971, 41 years ago, following up with a Wimbledon triumph later that year. You can't get much more diverse than Australian Aborigine. During this peak era in the popularity of tennis in general and women's tennis in particular, Goolagong (after her marriage, Goolagong-Cawley) won 7 Grand Slam individual titles from 1971-1980. She was well-liked by the public; not as pretty as Chris Evert, but cuter than Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. 

One question is how Aboriginal she is. There was never any doubt in the public's mind about her surname: Goolagong is an obviously Aboriginal sounding word, similar to "billabong," which is famous from the opening line of Australia's unofficial national anthem "Waltzing Matilda:" "Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong."

On the other hand, Aboriginal looks seem to be somewhat recessive. If she weren't named "Goolagong," it's not clear if non-Australians would have immediately guessed she was part-Aboriginal. This was an era of fashionable tanning and tennis players then tended to be well-tanned. Also, the most prominent Aboriginal facial feature, the heavy brow ridge, is less noticeable among female Aborigines.

Both her parents identified as mixed-race Aborigines who were assimilated into rural Australian working class culture. They were as beige-skinned as her, but some of her seven siblings ranged from brown to black. The Goolagongs were poor but not impoverished. They were the only Aboriginal family in a small town, and the Goolagong kids went to school with the white kids. Her father Kenny Goolagong was an itinerant sheep-shearer, but also the town's golf champion. In the British commonwealth, golf is a less elitist sport than in America. And, Australia is possibly the most sports-oriented culture on earth.

94 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I find most counter-conventional about the information in this post is that so many "diverse" individuals enjoyed such strong success and popularity in the atmosphere of oppressive white (or Anglo Saxon) racism of America's past.

In addition to the Sullivan guy Steve has written about, there is this aborigine, Pancho Gonzales, Arthur Ashe, Babe Ruth...

WMarkW said...

Goolagong had a daughter in 1977, and in 1980 became the only mother to win Wimbledon in the last almost century (1916).

Anonymous said...

Haven't thought about her in a long time. My boyfriend back then, an avid tennis player in the amateur ranks, had a crush on her, thought she was very sexy while Chris Evert was, on the court at least, the "ice princess."

Anonymous said...

Perhaps this was all the immediate result of the green revolution, that farm yields lead to better nutrition before population growth had a shot to catch up to it, so more people from the 3rd world were in a position to compete.

Anonymous said...

Another golden post by Steve. Evonne Goolagong! I had forgotten about this name until now. As a child I thought it sounded funny, but made no connection to the ethnicity of its bearer.

For another example of pre-diversity diversity, check out old Soul Train episodes - elegantly dressed black people grooving to funky tunes, without the thuggishness of today's black popular culture. Of course back in the prehistoric days when black people were purportedly barely allowed to exist, we had great black artists like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, etc. etc.

John Derbyshire said...

"Australia is possibly the most sports-oriented culture on earth."

Not while Kiwis have anything to say about it!

JD

Anonymous said...

Australia is possibly the most sports-oriented culture on earth.

Rivaled only perhaps by two other formerly pink bits of the planet, New Zealand and (white) South Africa. It's hard to overstate, for example, how traumatized people in both countries were for the 15 years or so in the 70s and 80 that the Springboks and the All-Blacks couldn't play each other...how tainted the careers of the players of those years are seen as a result. They're still bitter. It is funny, though, how the Dutch Afrikaners, despite HATING everything else about "Britishness", nevertheless adopted rugby as if they had invented it.

By the way, the Springboks are another illustration of the "Real Soon Now" hope. Years after black rule, as late as 2007 there were only two black Springboks on a team of 49. It is only in the past couple years that they now have imposed hard quotas to get that number up to double-digits. And predictably, the team is now slipping in international rankings.

And don't forget Rhodesia, at least in terms of physical conditioning if not organized sports. When I was in Iraq last decade, not a few of of the mercenaries, er, I mean, private security corporation personnel were middle-aged white Rhodesian vets of Selous Scouts, Rhodesian SAS, etc. It was impressive. There were several 47-year-old guys who were in several orders of magnitude better shape than 22-year-old GIs.

sunbeam said...

Anonymous wrote:

"Perhaps this was all the immediate result of the green revolution, that farm yields lead to better nutrition before population growth had a shot to catch up to it, so more people from the 3rd world were in a position to compete."

That's a very interesting theory.

It used to be that you got a lot of athletes out out of rural areas. It's just not as common anymore.

That is the subject of an in depth article in and of itself, but:

1) The system by which athletes is produced is very different now. A kid throwing at a mattress on the side of a barn has no chance to develop now, unless he is an utter freak.

2) Now I'd say the people who eat the healthiest diets live in cities. You find some holdouts, but rural people eat a poor diet in general.

You might actually find more vegetable gardens in some cities, and I'm not kidding about that.

I can also tell you that in general urban people are more physically active than rural people now, at least in the south.

3) The population has really shifted. We all know the demographics, even if we don't have the exact numbers. Pretty close to 90% of all American were rural as of about 1900. I guess anyway. Might have been 80% or something, but you know.

You could really turn that into an interesting article. A shame there doesn't seem to be many places interested in publishing it though.

Darwin's Sh*tlist said...

For instance, Pancho Gonzales, a cholo from East L.A., was among the the top American tennis players from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, while there are no Mexican-American touring pros today.

In Mexifornia, Victor Davis Hanson has a bit on ow there were prominent, public Hispanics during this time as well. If I recall, his point was that nobody made a big deal about them being minorities.

Maybe that was the traditional assimilationist window that the Irish, Jews, and Italians went through earlier. But it closed because of continually increasing numbers and Hispanics getting a piece of the new affirmative action pie.

Anonymous said...

Goolagong is one of my all-time favorite women tennis players. Unlike her main rival, Chris Evert, she played a very stylish brand of tennis.

spandrell said...

Are you serious?
http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/Images/Evonne%20Goolagong-Cawley1_11476320_tcm11-17755.jpg

That face doesn't pass as white. Not even in brazil.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you used to write a lot about the difference between the more analytical intelligence that well-measured by IQ tests and the improvisational talent that is less academic but very useful in life. You always wrote about them as though they were mutually exclusive, and very often they are. But why don't you write about people who have both of these mental advantages? Those are the people who are exceptionally successful. Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton come to mind. I'd love to read your analysis of how the IQ/improvisation combo works in real life.

Steve Sailer said...

Apparently, Jagger manages the Rolling Stones' tours. He's quite a guy.

stari_momak said...

Ah, for the days when big 'backy' could sponser a tennis tourney.

Henry Canaday said...

In the U.S there was Ely Parker, a full-blooded Seneca who served on Ulysses Grant's staff and wrote out the surrender terms for Robert E. Lee to sign at Appomattox, a century and a half ago.

A little more impressive than Chief Stolen Feathers at Harvard Law School.

Anonymous said...

Spandrell said:


Are you serious?
http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/Images/Evonne%20Goolagong-Cawley1_11476320_tcm11-17755.jpg

That face doesn't pass as white. Not even in brazil.


As someone who grew up in Australia and knew half-cast kids (including those of mixed Aboriginal and Chinese descent--seems Chinese men will screw anything, just like Caucasian men*), Goolagong does not have a prototypical Aboriginal face.

She looks like a strongly tanned Caucasian.

This contains a picture that is a close to Aboriginal face.

Most Australians I know would suggest that Spandrell is a Wanker.

* The Ah-mats of Darwin are descended from Chinese men and Aboriginal women.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget Goolagong's contemporary Kiri Te Kanawa, an opera superstar. She's of mixed Maori and European ancestry (which is obvious in her face) and was raised by adoptive Maori parents.

- A Solid Citizen

Anonymous said...

In addition to the Sullivan guy Steve has written about, there is this aborigine, Pancho Gonzales, Arthur Ashe, Babe Ruth.


Babe Ruth? Don't tell me that there's a rumor about his being part black, like Beethoven.

tellemand said...

Races of Man, by Carlton Coon, notes that persons who are half Australian aboriginal often look more Caucasian, as in European. The aboriginal characteristics breed out rather remarkably. Some of the halves could pass for white, something I have never, ever seen with full-blood sub-Saharan black/white mixes. It reminds me of those picture of half-Ethiopian, half-white people one can find on youtube (a whole feature devoted to the phenomenon) where the people look completely, or almost completely, white.
Australian aboriginals have one less gene for color -- I think that is also true of east Indians.

bjdubbs said...

Marcello Rios is a former no 1 tennis player and looks very Amerindian. Also widely considered a tennis genius. There are obviously plenty of South American tennis players, but he is the most Amerindian looking (nicknamed El Chino).

His wikipedia is definitely worth reading. He was widely despised. This is my favorite line:

In a confusing incident, he ran over his physical trainer, Manuel Astorga, with his jeep, leaving him gravely injured at the foot. Astorga was later fired as trainer.

Anonymous said...

Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton come to mind.

Bill Clinton's intelligence is greatly exaggerated.

JD said...

In addition to the Sullivan guy Steve has written about, there is this aborigine, Pancho Gonzales, Arthur Ashe, Babe Ruth...

Citing sports figures and entertainers is trivial. How about limiting this dicussion to individuals who have achieved POLITICAL POWER?

Podsnap said...

Spandrell is right.

I grew up in Australia in the 70s - Goolagong's heyday.

She was universally popular and universally understood to be aboriginal - in fact that was part of the reason for her popularity (the remainder due to the fact that she was a well spoken, pretty and a good sport). White people in Australia as well as America want to love 'the other' - and Goolagong was very easy to love.

Au contraire Anonymous at 6.11 pm - you are the wanker.

Dan said...

Good stuff Steve,

Tennis was seemingly much more popular then. Maybe it was the personalities or the points lasted longer.

My dad played and was pretty good but not a braggart. That's why I found it so strange when we we watching Wimbledon and he blurted out, "I know I could beat Virginia Wade".

He never got the chance to play her, sadly.....because she was a tennis pro and he was an unknown amateur

Dan in DC

Anonymous said...

JD said...

In addition to the Sullivan guy Steve has written about, there is this aborigine, Pancho Gonzales, Arthur Ashe, Babe Ruth...

Citing sports figures and entertainers is trivial. How about limiting this dicussion to individuals who have achieved POLITICAL POWER?


In gauging political power, does it really make sense to focus on individual positions? A far better measure must be whether the policies that actually get enacted--and enforced, mind you--favor one group at the expense of another. Here are a few to consider:

--War against the South
--Fourteenth Amendment
--Reconstruction/occupation
--Unfettered immigration
--Fratricidal wars
--Desegregation
--Expansion of the federal government; and arrogation of power to the federal level
--Civil Rights Act(s)
--Affirmative action (only when it favors non-Europeans)
--A military that serves the interests of a foreign country
--Taking billions of dollars from Americans and sending the money to Israel

Anonymous said...

The last shipment of white convicts arrived in Australia the year the first Aboriginal cricket team toured England. The year was 1868.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_cricket_team_in_England_in_1868

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Podsnap said...

Spandrell is right.

I grew up in Australia in the 70s - Goolagong's heyday.

She was universally popular and universally understood to be aboriginal - in fact that was part of the reason for her popularity (the remainder due to the fact that she was a well spoken, pretty and a good sport). White people in Australia as well as America want to love 'the other' - and Goolagong was very easy to love.

Au contraire Anonymous at 6.11 pm - you are the wanker.


Well, I guess we have to disagree. I grew up in Australia in the 50s and 60s and went to university in Australia in the 70s.

Having grown up in Darwin I have a lot of experience with full-blood Aborigines and half-casts (both Caucasian and Chinese.) And being married to Chinese woman and speaking a couple of Chinese dialects, and working in Silicon Valley among Chinese, Indians, Caucasians, and a very small number of Africans, I suspect I have more experience with different racial groups than you do.

Tell me, where did you grow up? In Sydney where there were not many real Aborigines?

Thinks spandrell is a wanker said...

tellemand said...

Races of Man, by Carlton Coon, notes that persons who are half Australian aboriginal often look more Caucasian, as in European. The aboriginal characteristics breed out rather remarkably. Some of the halves could pass for white, something I have never, ever seen with full-blood sub-Saharan black/white mixes.


This is true, in my experience.

What is interesting is that Australian Aborigines seem to have Denisovan ancestry and also seem to be similar to Andaman Islanders etc.

Perhaps because they are closer to Eurasians and sub-Saharan Africans are derives and further away ...

The really interesting question, though, is: Are there any deleterious behavioral results?

Hacienda said...

I used to think Chris Evert was pretty, until I saw her play Martina Navratilova in person. Chris Evert was a well-honed athlete. More machine than person.

I thought that Navratilova was the tennis "beast". But over time, Martina's inner personality shined through. Evert never really broke through that ice barrier.

One more observation. If it weren't for women's tennis, the world would never have known about Anna Kournikova. When colored people saw Kournikova, they could forgive a lot of white trangressions, whatever they were in the tennis world. She was also far from being an ice princess. And just too good looking to become a great athlete. Far too distracting for everyone, including herself. And she probably did more for US/Russia relations than any other athlete.

Thinks spandrell is a wanker said...

Let me be clear.

Goolagong is a fine woman who made it on her own, as far as I can see.

She did not pull the race card.

As a real Australian, that is the measure of an Australian hero, in my mind.

Andrew Gilbert said...

Reminds me of my favorite Pancho Gonzales story, probably told to Johnny Carson. One morning he's gardening in front of his house and a woman pulls up in a Benz to admire his handiwork. "That lawn looks really nice," she says. "How much do you charge?" "Well, the woman in this house let's me sleep with her," he replies.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Assistant Village Idiot said...

Can't get any more diverse than Australian Aboriginal...

You are toying with us for effect. Diversity means American-born black, and many of them, preferably with some claim of poverty during at least one childhood year. Other categories are nice as trimmings, but not essential. (Exception: some uses of the term do require the success of women in previously male-dominated areas.)

I don't particularly mind that in one sense. I'd be happy to have that as the only qualifying affirmative-action category. But it just isn't diversity in any real sense.

Anonymous said...

"I used to think Chris Evert was pretty, until I saw her play Martina Navratilova in person. Chris Evert was a well-honed athlete. More machine than person."

Chris Evert was the Annika Sorenstam of tennis--both women cared about HOW to win, practiced it, stuck with it, and drove others crazy.

Martina was fun to watch until we saw here before our eyes morph into a male. She already had the natural advantage of a long stride and height, and then she went and took those steroids.

Anonymous said...

I was friends-with-benefits in college with a girl who was one quarter Australian aborigine. I had no idea until many years later.

She had one physical peculiarity: when she became aroused her-how should I put it-womanly parts had an overpowering odor. It wasn't hygiene, it was a secretion. It wasn't even a terrible smell but it was different and once you got used to it no big deal. We were pretty active until she went back to Australia, and she came back pregnant. (No one was very astonished.) Her mother flew over, helped her take care of the baby when it was born and she completed the school year. I never saw them again: I only found out the aboriginal origin when I got an email from a mutual friend who visited her in Australia. She got her degree back there and wound up married with six children, which in Australia today is practically like being the Duggars.

Anonymous said...

"Reminds me of my favorite Pancho Gonzales story, probably told to Johnny Carson. One morning he's gardening in front of his house and a woman pulls up in a Benz to admire his handiwork. "That lawn looks really nice," she says. "How much do you charge?" "Well, the woman in this house let's me sleep with her," he replies."

Hey, that's my Lee Trevino story.

Australian aborigines are athletic in a wiry, sinuous way. they are more effective in power sports (rugby) with an admixture of Pacific Islander; and in guile/discipline/technique sports with an admixture of White.
GP

Punch Drunk Pat said...

Don't forget Ozzie Abbo Boxing Champ Lionel Rose:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_gl-l7CcLg

Anonymous said...

She had one physical peculiarity: when she became aroused her-how should I put it-womanly parts had an overpowering odor. It wasn't hygiene, it was a secretion. It wasn't even a terrible smell but it was different and once you got used to it no big deal.

Like a wallaby, right? Not fish like most lasses.

Lugash said...

I an Lugash.

Although not as well known or as successful as Arthur Ashe, Yannick Noah was a pretty good tennis player. IIRC he was also a gentleman off and on the court.

Yannick's dad was a championship soccer player, and his son plays center for the Bulls.

I am Lugash.

Anonymous said...

"Australia's unofficial national anthem "Waltzing Matilda""

They recently removed the politically incorrect verse:
Let me Abos go loose, Lew
Let me Abos go loose
They're of no further use, Lew
So let me Abos go loose.

Podsnap said...

Anonymous at 7.40

You said "She looks like a strongly tanned Caucasian".

I don't know what to say to that - she looks like nothing of the sort. No-one in Australia thought she was anything but an aborigine girl with some white blood. Maybe you've been away in America too long chief.

But hey - love your attempt to appeal to authority. I'm really impressed with your ability to speak a few Chinese dialects mate. Looks like the mail order bride was good for something.

Wanker.

Anonymous said...

"Australia's unofficial national anthem "Waltzing Matilda"

-----------

No, it's this:

http://youtu.be/vGCiYDWGZv4

or this

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/67bO4-QndiM

Obama and Zionists use cyber-terrorism on Iran and then says Iran must prove it's clean.

Anonymous said...

"they recently removed the politically incorrect verse:
Let me Abos go loose, Lew
Let me Abos go loose
They're of no further use, Lew
So let me Abos go loose."

Not true. That's from " Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" a novelty song from the 1950's.

6/1/12 10:48 PM

Anonymous said...

In terms of her looks and how mixed she looks, I'm going to nerd out on y'all:

http://www1.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Evonne+Goolagong+Cawley+Ashleigh+Barty+Newcombe+wP5e2XQlO_kl.jpg

http://i2.listal.com/image/2905765/936full-evonne-goolagong-cawley.jpg

http://www.pieway.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Evonne-Goolagong.jpg

http://timekeepingscore.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/goolagong_cawley.jpg?w=240

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4079/4804816686_3c65304a3a_o.jpg

Brow ridge is within European ranges, but brow ridges aren't really the most Aborigine character anyway. They're as distinctive for their

- extremely short and fairly narrow (but absolutely broader than European and relatively broader than Europeans, Africans and Asians) midfaces between nose and teeth* (particularly in the nose)
- their projecting jaws
- having a bit more depth to the frontal (cheek and nose) area than Africans, but not so much as Europeans*

Other features:

She's got a pretty Aborigine shifted nose - the short and broad noses that Europeans and Asians, and to a lesser extent Africans, tend to have as babies but lose as grow up tend to get kept by Aborigines. That's part of what makes her look "cute" even though it isn't what we tend to think of as beautiful.

Prognathism looks higher than the European average, but not extremely higher - check out the last picture I've posted where she's collecting the award.

Also she's got a hair amount of curl to her hair, and Aborigines don't even have very curly hair to begin with (not African levels of kink).

* These are the features that make them look extremely opposite Asians, who have pretty tall and wide faces, but pretty shallow faces (although a lot of that is their much more projecting cheeks), compared to everyone else in the world, even relative to the size of their brain

....

One of the reasons why Aborigines blend well might be that, in physical anthropology, there's a finding whereby the post-Ice Age paleolithic Europeans had some Aborigine like characteristics - low faces, low broad noses - although they also had large, wide, long brains and a similar brain size to the incoming Neolithic West Asians (unlike Aborigines, who I think have somewhat smaller brains of a similar size to Africans - although I don't know how much this persists in the same environment. African brain size gets much closer to European and Asian when they are from the same culture).

Some of this element supposedly survives in Europe, particularly in Northern Europe, so Aborigines might have some similarities to this "mixed type" that help them look within normal ranges, where African and Asian mixes just don't look like any of the European types but something different.

dearieme said...

"Don't forget Goolagong's contemporary Kiri Te Kanawa, an opera superstar."

She's been Dame Kiri for thirty years. It's my impression that writers and actors get that sort of honour often, opera singers rarely.

Anonymous said...

In the strangest sort of way, this thread is degenerating into an iSteve classic.

DavidB said...

Don't forget that other fine part-aborigine athlete, Cathy Freeman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Freeman

DYork said...

spandrell said...

Are you serious?
http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/Images/Evonne%20Goolagong-Cawley1_11476320_tcm11-17755.jpg

That face doesn't pass as white. Not even in brazil.


I agree. Even if I didn't know she was part Aborigine I would have guessed she was.

No intelligent person would see her as a White woman.

Anonymous said...

She looks like a strongly tanned Caucasian.


To you she does, but that's due to your lack of intelligence.

She's not Cathy Freeman but her Aborigine ancestry is obvious.

K(yle) said...

"I don't know what to say to that - she looks like nothing of the sort. No-one in Australia thought she was anything but an aborigine girl with some white blood. Maybe you've been away in America too long chief."

That face doesn't pass for white in America either.

spandrell said...

Lol, I the wanker also happen to speak two chinese dialects.

Can't we all get along?
Of course not, you live in the most diverse place on earth. You are holier than me.

And blinder.

Anonymous said...

There's a fascinating picture show over at the Daily Mail:


Has any country ever changed so much in 60 years? Enchanting photos show what life was like when our Queen came to the throne


There are a bazillion comments, but this one's a classic:


THINGS WAS BETTER THEN , WE HAD PROPER EDUCATON THEN NOT FEREL COMPEREHENSIVE SCHOOLS LIKE TODAY , THERE WERENT NO CRIME OR DRUGS EVER , WOMEN KNEW THERE PLACE , WOMEN WASNT FAT AND UGLY , CHILDREN WAS QUIET LIKE THAY ALWAYS SHOULD BE ,CHILDREN WAS DISAPLINED ( AS THAY SHOULD BE , IF YOU WAS BEATEN YOU DESERVID IT , END OF ) , WASNT NO HEALTH AND SAFTY , IF YOU HAD NO MONEY TOUGH LUCK , THERE WERE MORE WHITE PEOPLE NOT LIKE TODAY . THEIRS NO WHITE PEOPLE LEFT IN BRITEIN TODAY , SAD . IF YOUR GOING TO CRITACISE MY SPELLING AND GRAMMER , I CAN SPELL HOW I LIKE COS IM OLD AND I KNOW MORE THAN YOU , IF YOU CRITIASE ME YOUR NOT BETTER THAN ME , END OF
- LIKE IT IS, ENGLAND WHAT WAS ONCE BUT ISNT ANYMORE

Peter said...

Yannick's dad was a championship soccer player, and his son plays center for the Bulls.

Joakim Noah is a living example of the quirky ways in which human genetics can work. Despite being 3/4 white he looks fully black.

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

RE : Pancho Gonzales/Lee Trevino mowing grass and sleeping with the lady of the house.....

I always heard it was SCOTUS's Thurgood Marshall.


Also, saying that Evonne Goolagong was more attractive than Martina N. or Billie Jean King is faint praise indeed.

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is that as soon as the diversity gravy train begins, whites jump in.

Fauxcahontas in MA is a good example, and Andrew Bolt in Australia has unearthed a bunch more.

Of course, in Australia, the whites who were riding the diversity gravy train got a legal judgment so people could not point out that they didn't look very black.

eah said...

Nice lady. Fun to watch play -- fluid, graceful. Never looked 'aboriginal' at all to me. Always regarded her as more or less white. It would never have occurred to me to put 'Evonne Goolagong' and 'diversity' together in the same sentence.

More interesting is a couple of facts about her career: her two titles at Wimbledon came nine years apart, the second after having a baby (already mentioned); if you believe the info on Wikipedia, she earned less than $1.5m in total prize money, despite having a fairly long and rather successful career. Of course that would be a very bad year for a top player today.

Anonymous said...

--War against the South
--Fourteenth Amendment
--Reconstruction/occupation
--Unfettered immigration
--Fratricidal wars
--Desegregation
--Expansion of the federal government; and arrogation of power to the federal level
--Civil Rights Act(s)
--Affirmative action (only when it favors non-Europeans)
--A military that serves the interests of a foreign country
--Taking billions of dollars from Americans and sending the money to Israel


If asked, do you think Mitt Romney would condemn any of the above actions? I don't think so. Why would he? Those policies haved worked for him.

Pat Boyle said...

Rushton's new paper on the pleiotropic effects of melanin synthesis has some relevance here. If he's right - and I strongly suspect that he is - it isn't race so much as it is color. How's that for mind blowing?

Black people he suggests are violent because of their color not some other characteristic of their race. He also suggests that their lower mental powers are also because of color.

Australian Aborigines are also usually dark and often violent. They also have low IQs.

Before this theory you might expect Aborigines to have characteristics that were different from Africans because their races have had such different histories. But the Pleiotrophic melanin biosynthetic pathway theory predicts that all dark people would have similar characteristics - principally crime and mental dullness.

This theory is interesting because it makes this prediction not just across human races or primates or even just mammals. Light colored birds and fish also exhibit more "domesticated" behavior.

It explains the commonly observed prejudice against black dogs seen at animal shelters. Indeed it explains why Charlie my Cavalier King Charles Blenheim is so damn lovable. The Blenheim coloration pattern is a piebald pattern. Foxes bred for docility turn piebald and behave like puppy dogs - sweet and cute.

On the dog sites most commenters think the black dog phenomenon is some sort of dastardly racial prejudice. But it seems that color alone influences a host of behavioral traits in dogs and people too.

Albertosaurus

Matt Strictland said...

I'm a White American and even I don't think she is a White girl.

I wouldn't recognize her as Abo but we don't have any here either.

That being said, someone who earns what they have on their own efforts deserves it and respect top go with.

I am a racist as get all but I respect honest competency in anyone of any background or ethnicity.

Anonymous said...

But the Pleiotrophic melanin biosynthetic pathway theory predicts that all dark people would have similar characteristics - principally crime and mental dullness.

Even if the case, doesn't seem like it worked out that way for Homo Sap vs Neanderthal. Or Southern vs Northern Indians.

It should be pretty easy to understand with a quick association study in any case, since the genetic understanding of pigmentation is completely understood.

Of course, the advantage here is that if the variation between Asians and Europeans vs Africans and Aborigines is due to skin colour genes, then race replacement just got a lot easier and more plausible - just bung the European skin colour genes into the Africans and hey presto - you've got a replacement for the Europeans and North East Asians (who needs increased brain size when you're a mighty whitey?), even if they do basically look like African Albinos.

Not sure most fan of Rushton's idea would like that conclusion though!

Anonymous said...

If asked, do you think Mitt Romney would condemn any of the above actions? I don't think so. Why would he? Those policies haved worked for him.

Strictly speaking, I don't see the causal connection between those policies and Mitt Romney's net worth. Might he be even wealthier had some of those policies not been put into place?

You asked why he wouldn't condemn the policies now. I think his not doing so would probably be most saliently related to how it would affect his chances to become president. To wit: his portrayal by the media, his access to campaign contributions (particularly from Zionist or pro-immigration Jews), as well as votes.

All of this only gives support to the point made in an earlier post that in taking a measure of the political power in the United States, it makes more sense to look at policies than the skin color of individuals in a handful of positions.

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is that as soon as the diversity gravy train begins, whites jump in.

Why shouldn't they?

Fauxcahontas in MA is a good example, and Andrew Bolt in Australia has unearthed a bunch more.

There's nothing false ("faux") about Elizabeth Warren's Amerindian ancestry. A lot of Americans have Indian ancestry.

Anonymous said...

Obama and Zionists use cyber-terrorism on Iran and then says Iran must prove it's clean.

Is this an Act of War?

Mr. Anon said...

"pat said...

On the dog sites most commenters think the black dog phenomenon is some sort of dastardly racial prejudice. But it seems that color alone influences a host of behavioral traits in dogs and people too."

Interesting that. I know a lady who runs a kennel and dog-grooming business. She also raises Rottweilers. And while she clearly likes the breed, she recognizes that they are inately more rowdy and violence-prone.

Anonymous said...

"Black people he suggests are violent because of their color not some other characteristic of their race. He also suggests that their lower mental powers are also because of color."

But what about Asian-Indians? Many are dark but no more aggressive than white folks.

Grover Prosling said...

Goolagong is a fine woman who made it on her own, as far as I can see. She did not pull the race card.
GOolagong's race was never an issue in her native land, as it would have been if she had grown up in the US, particularly in the Jim Crow south where she would have had much less opportunity to fully develop her talents, and reap the rewards. Most non-white Americans who achieved this sort of long-term sports success prior to the mid 1950s/early 1960s, got it from venues mostly OUTSIDE the white south. Speed merchant Jesse Owens got out of Alabama and went on to fame. HE could represent the US because Olympic Rules allowed all to complete regardless of race. The US was bound by Olympic rules. Were it not, and left to places like Alabama, Jesse Owens might never have achieved his fame. Owens could compete fair and square in Berlin, but not in his native south. Hard hitting Alabama born boxer Joe Louis achieved most of his world-beating success OUTSIDE Alabama. Hard-hitting Joe Frazier had to get out of South Carolina before he developed success. Indeed his biography shows that the main reason he left is that he stood up for himself against the bullying of local whites. This pattern was to change as America desegregated in the mid1950s/early 1960s.

And people like Googlagong and Althea Gibson achieved "pre-diversity diversity" because they operated in venues or under rules that did not automatically block them because of race like America's racist customs or laws. Goolagong and Gibson could step out on the court at Wimbledon in England (OR under the rules of the sport) and play the game without having to worry about being harassed or blocked by race hounds. That was a key factor in their early "pre-diversity" success.


What I find most counter-conventional about the information in this post is that so many "diverse" individuals enjoyed such strong success and popularity in the atmosphere of oppressive white (or Anglo Saxon) racism of America's past.
There were many more "diverse" individuals DENIED success due to the oppressive racism of America's past as history well documents.


Maybe that was the traditional assimilationist window that the Irish, Jews, and Italians went through earlier. But it closed because of continually increasing numbers and Hispanics getting a piece of the new affirmative action pie.

The assimilationsist "window" has never closed. Immigrants are free to enter it. And the presence of people like Pancho has noting to do with that window closing, but more to do with the fact that Hispanics have historically, on the average, faced less discrimination in the US than blacks. They could go where blacks could not in some cases. More importantly, Pancho developed as a player and achieved success in venues where racial discrimination was less (relatively speaking) compared to other parts of the US- namely the "liberal" West Coast. And the biggest beneficiaries of "affirmative action" are white women by the way.
New data finds white women primary gainers from Affirmative Action

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

PMBP theory.....

Rotwiellers.....um.... OK....

Labrador Retrievers.

Thank you for your theory. Next.

Alan D said...

As an Australian I remember how well-liked Goolagong was (and still is), because of her personality as well as her tennis-playing ability.

To me she certainly does not look white, but I often find it difficult to distinguish part-Aboriginals from other brown people. I knew that she was part- Aboriginal because that fact was always mentioned. Also, to an Australian, "Goolagong" just has to be an Aboriginal name.

Although she is racially part-Aboriginal, she is always described as "Aboriginal", in the way that Barack Obama is always decsribed as "black", not "partially black".

Nathan Bedford Forrest said...

GOolagong's race was never an issue in her native land, as it would have been if she had grown up in the US, particularly in the Jim Crow south where she would have had much less opportunity to fully develop her talents, and reap the rewards. Most non-white Americans who achieved this sort of long-term sports success prior to the mid 1950s/early 1960s, got it from venues mostly OUTSIDE the white south. Speed merchant Jesse Owens got out of Alabama and went on to fame. HE could represent the US because Olympic Rules allowed all to complete regardless of race. The US was bound by Olympic rules. Were it not, and left to places like Alabama, Jesse Owens might never have achieved his fame. Owens could compete fair and square in Berlin, but not in his native south. Hard hitting Alabama born boxer Joe Louis achieved most of his world-beating success OUTSIDE Alabama. Hard-hitting Joe Frazier had to get out of South Carolina before he developed success. Indeed his biography shows that the main reason he left is that he stood up for himself against the bullying of local whites. This pattern was to change as America desegregated in the mid1950s/early 1960s.

A whole bunch of blacks moved out of the South during the Great Migration to more enlightened parts of the country, like Detroit, Los Angeles, and Newark. How did that work out?

Anonymous said...

Re that Daily Mail comment.

I hope Im not being too crass to point out that its obviously written by some anti-racist troll. Y'all did realize that?

Grover Prosling said...

A whole bunch of blacks moved out of the South during the Great Migration to more enlightened parts of the country, like Detroit, Los Angeles, and Newark. How did that work out?
Actually it worked out well in several respects. Black income and education levels rose considerably for example. And blacks are no different fundamentally from other white ethnic groups like the Irish as moving from rural settings to urban economies. Both groups faced similar problems, as Thomas Sowell notes in many of his works. Now tell me- millions of white Irish moved from their rural setting to large urban US cities like Boston and New York. How did that "work out"? :)

Anonymous said...

Greatest Hispanic swimmers Jess Vassalo that swam for Mission Viejo in its golden era, a PR Kid whose father could mad at PR and had his son swam for the US, maybe a bronze medal in 1984. And Pablo Morales, Cubian of the bay area that finally won a gold medal in 1992. No latin swimemr in the US has done it since and the fact that Calif is known more for the swimming programs than some of the eastern states is interesting that no hispanic or asian has made the US swimming team at the olympics except for the Kirk sisters from Washington that are half white and half asian in 2004.

NOTA said...

Anon 2:15:

We've been committing acts of war or something close to them against Iran for the last several years, in the sense that we've been doing stuff that, if another country did it to us, would be pretty much univerally acknowledged as a legitimate cause to go to war. What would our response look like, if we knew Iran had assassinated a bunch of American scientists working on weapns systems?

ben tillman said...

There are a bazillion comments, but this one's a classic:

It's a false flag. "Thay"? Really? You think that's possible?

jody said...

pablo was one of the last world class guys to swim without googles or a cap. he's a throwback, like craig mactavish skating around the ice with no helmet.

anyway, to the point. nathan adrian's mom is chinese. he looks almost completely european though, like olivia munn. he's the fastest american sprinter ever. ryan lochte's mom is cuban, probably european though as some cubans are. has the world record in the 200 IM.

i'm not gonna bother looking up everybody who was on the US world championship or olympic team over the last 20 years, but i did know about a few of the main guys.

with the americans, it's win or you're a nobody if you're not playing a ball sport. nathan adrian is a good amount faster than gary hall and matt biondi, in exactly the same way tyson gay is a good amount faster than carl lewis and maurice greene. but the international field is so big now, the fastest american doesn't automatically win anymore.

and this is the same principle in operation when people say stuff like "Tennis doesn't seem as popular anymore." in reality it's more popular than ever, we can tell by things like the high school participation rate which NFHS measures every year. but that international field is getting BIG. getting bigger faster than the US field. some american isn't just gonna walk in and clobber everybody easily anymore. the world has changed in boxing, track & field, and tennis.

the woman who wins the french open gets 1250000 euros. that's about 1550000 US dollars, or around 15 times as much as the highest paid player in the WNBA, lauren jackson of australia, makes for a full season. and the french open is the lowest paying grand slam. victoria azarenka was paid 2.3 million australian dollars when she won the australian open this year. so the financial incentive is vastly higher here than in any other sport women play. who's taken advantage of this? as the affirmative action studies say, it's mostly been european women. although there are a few others, like li na of china, who won the french open in 2011.

jody said...

how does the rushton data work, when there are hundreds of millions of very dark skin people in india, bangladesh, and indonesia, who are not particularly muscular, athletic, or violent.

samoans, tongans, and various islanders are far worse, and they aren't even as dark as american indians in mexico.

Anonymous said...

Re that Daily Mail comment. I hope Im not being too crass to point out that its obviously written by some anti-racist troll. Y'all did realize that?

Are you sure?

It felt mighty authentic to me.

Well, if that's "trolling", then I don't think it's doing their side any good.

Anonymous said...

Actually it worked out well in several respects. Black income and education levels rose considerably for example. And blacks are no different fundamentally from other white ethnic groups like the Irish as moving from rural settings to urban economies. Both groups faced similar problems, as Thomas Sowell notes in many of his works. Now tell me- millions of white Irish moved from their rural setting to large urban US cities like Boston and New York. How did that "work out"? :)

The Irish never rioted in in Boston and New York. I take that back; they did riot in 1863 because they didn't want to be drafted into the Union army. Also, Irish-Americans aren't moving back to Ireland, unlike blacks who are moving to the South in large numbers. The Irish have assimilated. Blacks still have not because blacks ARE fundamentally different than whites.

International Jew said...

In recent pictures, the middle-aged Evonne Goolagong looks more Australian-aboriginal.

Hey Steve, Ellen Pao + Buddy Fletcher (today's NY Times) is a story made for you!

DYork said...

Steve, articles like this deserve a post of their own.

That killer is considered White by the state of Utah and the US government.

I went through a Florida state prisoner website once, I know I don't have a life, and saw endless examples of clearly black, not simply George Zimmerman mestizo, but sub Saharan Africa type black Latinos classified as White.

It's insane.

It makes you wonder about US demographics, crime rates, mixed race marriage rates etc when guys like that are classified as White.

Grover Prosling said...

The Irish never rioted in in Boston and New York. I take that back; they did riot in 1863 because they didn't want to be drafted into the Union army. Also, Irish-Americans aren't moving back to Ireland, unlike blacks who are moving to the South in large numbers. The Irish have assimilated. Blacks still have not because blacks ARE fundamentally different than whites.


Your chain of "logic" and "fact" is a bit lacking. Let's start with your facts. It is a fact that the Irish did riot numerous times not "only" during 1863. Such Irish violence is well documented. Books such as the New York Irish document several riots- Astor Place 1849, Dead Rabbits 1857, Orange Riots 1870 and 1871 to name just a few, and that's just New York. As one history notes:

"Many Irish immigrants communicated in their own profanity-filled street slang called, "flash talk": a multi-day drinking spree was "going on a bender,"
"cracking a can" was robbing a house. Literate English practically disappeared from ordinary conversation. An estimated 50,000 Irish prostitutes, know in
flash talk as "nymphs of the pave," worked the city in 1850 and Five Points alone had as many as 17 brothels. Illegitimacy reached stratospheric heights--
and tens of thousands of abandoned Irish kids roamed, or prowled, the city's streets. Violent Irish gangs, with names like the Forty Thieves, the B'boys,
the Roach Guards, and Chichesters, brought havoc to their neighborhoods. The gangs fought one another and the nativists but primarily they robbed houses
and small businesses, and trafficked in stolen property. Over half the people arrested in New York in the 1840s and 1850s were Irish, so that police vans
were dubbed, "paddy wagons" and episodes of mob violence in the streets were called "donnybrooks," after a town in Ireland. Death was everywhere. In 1854
one out of every 17 people in the sixth ward died. In Sweeney's Shambles the rate was one out of five in a 22 month period. The death rate among Irish
families in New York in the 1850s was 21 percent, while among non-Irish it was 3 percent. Life expectancy for New York's Irish averaged under 40 years.
Tuberculosis, which Bishop Hughes called the "natural death of the Irish immigrants," was the leading cause of death, along with drink and violence."

ENDQUOTE
-- William Stern- bio on Archbishop John Hughes,


Now for your "logic". You say blacks "haven't assimilated". Think Hoss, think... Even after the decades of residence by the Irish in urban economies, these "role models" were STILL marked by high levels of violence, substance abuse (alcohol primarily), political corruption and other things. SO tell us, at what point do they or blacks become "assimilated"? What's your magic criteria for "assimilation"? DO tell..

Pat Boyle said...

Here's a reference for Rushton's melanin theory.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886912000840

Maybe it isn't really a theory but just an intriguing suggestion.

I have enough touble defending my own T. Gondii theory of homosexulaity to take on Rushton's. However I think he's on to something. All of the "nice" dogs I saw on TV this morning on the Animal Channel were piebald. The Rottweilers come with serious warnings.

I don't know enough about dogs. Are Golden Retrievers "nicer" than the very similar looking black Labs?

Albertosaurus

Steve Sailer said...

Fur color and the underlying skin color aren't always the same. The autistic lady animal sciences professor, what's her name, had some theories on melanin and personality from her experiences with various species.

Pat Boyle said...

Another personal anecdote. Sorry.

At one point I was a government Affirmative Action Officer for my agency. I found myself in the Sacramento Delta harassing our contractor the "Coalition of Spanish Speaking Agencies" as to why he hadn't served any black people. He said there weren't any. I showed him the census data. There were supossedly about 1 percent - somewhere.

He responded, "Give me their names".

Shut me right up.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

>It explains the commonly observed prejudice against black dogs seen at animal shelters.<

Only recently heard about this one. Good creeping jeezus.

Anonymous said...

The autistic lady animal sciences professor, what's her name"

Temple Grandin

Podsnap said...

Grover Prosling

I suppose the point Anonymous was trying to make was that the Irish did finally assimilate, whereas (in his opinion) black people have not.

I'm not sure you are going to defeat that argument by googling crime stats from 150 years ago.

You are quite literally a fucking idiot, hoss.

DanJ said...

"Fur color and the underlying skin color aren't always the same"

Polar bears have black skin, their fur has no pigment but reflect sunlight, and appears white. Polar bears are as aggressive as they come, but blaming this on the melanin might be overreaching, as any fully carnivorous animal need to be aggressive to survive.

Kylie said...

"All of the 'nice' dogs I saw on TV this morning on the Animal Channel were piebald."

My OEB is piebald and a real handful. I won't go into her extensive criminal history. Suffice to say if she weren't so darned cute, she would never have made it to the ripe old age of 3. She is also extremely intelligent. Her ability to teach herself things and to analyze situations accurately is amazing. If only she used her gifts as a force for good and not evil....

"I don't know enough about dogs."

I don't, either but I'll take a stab at answering your question.

"Are Golden Retrievers 'nicer' than the very similar looking black Labs?"

People more knowledgeable than I tell me that Goldens tend to be kind of dumb in a "nice" way. My own experience has been that Golden Labs are more docile (dumb in a nice way) than Black Labs.

Otis McWrong said...

Somewhat (ok, almost totally) off topic, but one of the more entertaining tennis players in the 70's and 80's was Vitas Gerulaitis who, despite the Lithuanian name was raised in Queens. He was a top-tier player (won the Australian Open in 1977, speaking of Evonne Goolagong) but couldn't consistently overcome the McEnroe's and Borg's. He was a good sport about it though.

At one point he lost something like 14 straight matches to Bjorn Borg. When he finally beat Borg he opened his press conference with "this goes to show you that nobody, I mean NOBODY beats Vitas Gerulaitis 15 times in a row"

Silver said...

As someone who grew up in Australia and knew half-cast kids (including those of mixed Aboriginal and Chinese descent--seems Chinese men will screw anything, just like Caucasian men*), Goolagong does not have a prototypical Aboriginal face.

She looks like a strongly tanned Caucasian.


And yet somehow I never once heard of a case of a strongly tanned caucasian being mistaken for an abo, and I knew plen-tee of them (strongly tanned caucasians) and indeed am one myself.

She looks like a slightly darker version of this quarter abo girl I went to primary school with. I felt uncomfortable asking her straight out what her background was, but I strongly suspected it was aborigine. There just seemed to be this giveaway look they have. But it was simpler to tell these things back then, it seems to me. Nowadays, there are so many different types around I struggle to distinguish even between whites. It's only when I visit a small country town that I'm reminded of what the real aussies look like. (Highly un-PC to put it that way, but that's how people of my generation and older see it and probably always will.)

wmd said...

"Your chain of "logic" and "fact" is a bit lacking. Let's start with your facts. It is a fact that the Irish did riot numerous times not "only" during 1863. Such Irish violence is well documented. Books such as the New York Irish document several riots- Astor Place 1849, Dead Rabbits 1857, Orange Riots 1870 and 1871 to name just a few, and that's just New York. As one history notes:"

This has been much discussed here. The "violence" among the Irish was mostly brawling, drinking and unruly behavior. The levels of psychopathic murder and rape, perpetrated by blacks (see FBI crime stats for 2005) were NEVER even approached by the Irish. Stranger rape (don't know about the other kind) was extremely rare.
Yes, they were poor and diseased, but despite all that, and considerable prejudice, they were far past that nadir by the late 1900s. You think the Irish compare with the blacks? Just try walking through their respective neighborhoods. At night.
What a fool.
Nobody here is saying that white society is crime free. After countless wars, that would be silly, wouldn't it? The legal codes developed because there were wrong doers. But even after the worst wars they restored civility and rebuilt. They never ate their own schools and neighborhoods.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that everything those racists said would happen if wide-spread integration occurred, has indeed happened. Don't even get me started on my neighborhood, schools and libraries. What I remember most poignantly was that, as a child, the shopping mall up the way was lit up like fairy-land at Christmas. Then blacks moved in and they broke all the lights. That ended that. That sort of thing happens everywhere they become even a large minority much less a majority. I don't like to admit it, because there are very good blacks. But no matter how many very good I count, if they move into any area in any numbers, it makes a nose dive into bleakness. They are like biological weapons of mass destruction. Put a few hundred thousand of them in any enemy city, and it is totally undermined.

tellemand said...

Don't know about dogs, but the most affectionate, people oriented cat (he sometimes appeared disconcertingly attracted to human women) was a black cat. This cat was so loving, he would go to someone feeling down (he always knew) and put his front legs up on their shoulders and try to kiss them.
He only lived to be six.

Anonymous said...

A running theme at iSteve over the years has been to question the conventional wisdom that white racism long completely prevented the efflorescence of talent among the diverse...

Steve - I just stumbled upon this for completely unrelated reasons - but Wikipedia says that Will Rogers was 9/32nds Cherokee Indian.

Also, if you read the stuff closely - particularly about his father - it sounds as if Rogers came out of a WHITE RULING CLASS within the Cherokee Nation!!!