95%

[JohnFKennedy]

Yeah, sorry I didn't elaborate in my original post - it was just a quick one I made before I went to bed last night. It's the influence university is having on me. I have to use precise language - like the gender/sex division - or else I get called out on it and so I've started to become more aware and conscientious about it. Gender and questions of masculinity and femininity are really in vogue in academia at the moment, particularly in my subject (History), and so it is something I've had a lot of contact with recently.

What I find really interesting is the link between the language of race and the language of gender in colonial ideologies. For instance, the Ndebele people were admired by the British for their masculinity whereas others were regarded as effeminate and thus a threat to the racial purity of the British. You also get people like Freud linking the two - his Character and Anal Eroticism essay concludes that Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Aboriginals all lacked a period of sexual latency which moderated their desires, something which was then used to justify colonialism as a means of ensuring they 'do right' by their women. These issues became even more pronounced with the arrival of European women.

Anyway, sorry for the initial lack of clarity (and also this little digression). Questions of identity fascinate me, particularly when it comes to self-definition. My supervisor on twentieth-century African history commented on white South Africans self-identifying as 'African'; they may not look like what we would commonly term 'African' but who are we to tell them that they are not?

[??????????]

thanks JFK, excellent as usual.

[freedomburns]

Voting for Obama.  He will save us all from certain doom.  Feel the hope.

[War on Want]

They generally believe that Democrats give them more benefits than Republicans do.

And they do because their philosophy is now "slavery through economic measures". I'm not always sure if it's intentional but it certainly is a result.

What the hell, you really think the Democrats want to have blacks as their "slaves" by using affirmative action and welfare? That is pretty messed up....

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Voting for Obama.  He will save us all from certain doom.  Feel the hope.

Welcome back.

[King]

John McCain agrees with George Bush 95% of the time and Obama wants to cut taxes for 95% of working families.

Maybe 95% is a lucky number.

[minionofmidas]

That makes more sense.  Sorry for calling your initial post stupid, it was just short on info

I agree that race is often misused and doesn't "fit" with the actual science.  Pull a random guy out of Sub-Sahara Africa and another out of the Amazon and they'd both be "black" but they would be more genetically different from each other than I (german/english) would be from the Dali Lama.

A random guy out of the Amazon would be "Native American". And he'd be likely to be the one closest to the Dalai Lama in your sample.

But to get back to race as social construct... considering Obama "Black", as in "of one race with the descendants of West African slaves in the US", would be a prime example of that. The man's father was a Luo* for chrissakes. The bulk of genetic variation within mankind never left Africa (which is exactly why all those texts on human geography based on new genetic research are largely silent on Africa - the situation there is too complex for them to understand as of yet), and Obama's father is just as likely to be close genetically to the Dalai Lama as to 95% of those 95%.

*Yeah, I know. Linguistics and genetic traits are never a perfect match. But Luo is the most widely spoken of the Nilo-Saharanic languages, a sort-of catch-all group of all east and central African languages not related, however remotely, to either the Niger-Kongo languages (of which Bantu are a subgroup) to their south and west, nor to the Afro-Asiatic (ie, Semitic, Berber) languages to the North.

[??????????]

bump, important thread.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

[J. J.]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

We might have a "Bradley Effect" with black people in all seriousness.

[War on Want]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

We might have a "Bradley Effect" with black people in all seriousness.

lol

[Silent Hunter]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

IIRC, Johnson got that in 1964.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

IIRC, Johnson got that in 1964.

     Considering the circumstances of the time (Civil Rights Act of 1964), I'm almost surprised he didn't do better than that.

[Dr. Cynic]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

IIRC, Johnson got that in 1964.

     Considering the circumstances of the time (Civil Rights Act of 1964), I'm almost surprised he didn't do better than that.

I actually can agree with that... Considering both LBJ and HHH were very much into civil rights, it's surprising they didn't get 100%.

I'm not a huge LBJ fan, but it's one of the things I admire most of him.

[Хahar 🤔]

AFAIK, Grant got 100%.

[??????????]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

IIRC, Johnson got that in 1964.

     Considering the circumstances of the time (Civil Rights Act of 1964), I'm almost surprised he didn't do better than that.

I actually can agree with that... Considering both LBJ and HHH were very much into civil rights, it's surprising they didn't get 100%.

I'm not a huge LBJ fan, but it's one of the things I admire most of him.

LBJ was a virulent racist, the Civil Rights Act was a political stunt by him. The Republicans are the ones who really got the CRA started and completed.

[Хahar 🤔]

LBJ was a virulent racist, the Civil Rights Act was a political stunt by him.

I don't care how a guy feels, I care about how he governs. I'd take that kind of racist over an ineffective civil rights activist every time.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Now it's closer to 98%.

IIRC, Johnson got that in 1964.

     Considering the circumstances of the time (Civil Rights Act of 1964), I'm almost surprised he didn't do better than that.

I actually can agree with that... Considering both LBJ and HHH were very much into civil rights, it's surprising they didn't get 100%.

I'm not a huge LBJ fan, but it's one of the things I admire most of him.

LBJ was a virulent racist, the Civil Rights Act was a political stunt by him. The Republicans are the ones who really got the CRA started and completed.

     He was responsible for its success, even if it was a political stunt. If Obama were elected & eliminated all gun control as a political stunt, wouldn't you be happy about it anyway?