I love the "I believe in the evolution of people through time" chopping hand-gesture: I am going to be adopting it.
Miss Nevada is a creature from outer space.
"I think everyone should be able to have their opinion taught"
There's too much collagen and lip gloss for me to understand any words. It is pretty fun to watch their eyebrows and hand gestures though.
Also, the autocaptions are fun too. Maybe. I guess I can't really tell if they're accurate or not.
Holy sheet. I like how a lot of them are pretty sure this is a new idea that was just discovered and so we can't possibly know what the effect of it will be on children!!!!
I think I should have gone bowling.
"Every version of everything!"
I made it as far as "I just think we need to be culturally respective and sensitive to all points of view."
Nevada (captioned): "I think abolitionists hots and many different ways and I think captive heat about on uh.. people"
"only because it's a great subject to touch base on"
Second last and actually my favourite.
"evolution" -> "everything" a lot of the time, so that almost all of them are saying "I think everything should be taught in schools"
Me too. EVERYTHING.
I just watched Nevada...wow. Evolution should be taught, just not evolution of people. We should teach evolution of communities, like Nevada, because Nevada wasn't great when it started out, but look at it now.
So far I've made it to 3:43 and two different people butchered the word "creationism." Hawaii thinks it's called "creation-tism."
I'm not really a fan of ambush telly -- the few times I've been interviewed I didn't manage to say anything I was proud of afterwards -- but they're so chirpy and hopeful and utopian that I began to quite enjoy it. "Teach every version of everything so people can decide for themselves" is an inspiringly sunny lifeview.
And Idaho thinks you should be knowledged about evolution!
"It's all about what you believe in."
"I think they should teach everything, and let the children decide."
So: science is just a matter of opinion, except when it does cool things for us, in which case it's sort like magic, I guess?
It's easy to win this thread with the sound off. Also, Miss Alaska appears to be an Eskimo Inuit.
You know, it just strikes me that this competition is ridiculously unfair. Miss California has to compete against like 10,000,000 women and Miss goddamn Alaska has to compete against what, 47? To hell with federalism.
Someone should give me credit for answering this correctly
I get double credit for answering it correctly and incorrectly. And you get credit for deciding, America.
Miss Virginia has a masters degree in Nuclear Engineering. Hottttttttttttt.
I sure wish they'd have asked this question every year. I bet you anything that virtually all of the, say 1980, contestants would have affirmed their belief in evolution. Maybe not the ones from Mississippi, but, you know, Mississippi.
Also, Minnesota has the most legalistic, please-everybody answer. Except for Michele Bachmann, because she hates Catholics.
Miss goddamn Alaska has to compete against what, 47?
Sarah Palin is watching you carefully, Halford. I'd just watch my tongue.
Miss Nevada really does solve the Gordian Knot. "Instead of teaching evolution, let's teach fingerpainting, and call it evolution."
I should mention that I played the whole thing, but I could not watch it.
On the veldt, those who could endure the most social awkwardness without flinching had a serious reproductive advantage.
Miss Indiana is actually the most frightening, IMHO: "I don't know -- I think -- I think we should just leave that up to the government." Well then!
You should be knowledged about it.
Yes, and one year of now!
Miss Massachusetts (~6:40) also has some fantastic hand gestures, even if not quite up to the standard of Miss California's chopping-through-time.
I like Miss Massachusetts's hand gestures.
Such grudging admissions! Should children also be taught Maoism or perhaps the writings of Bin Laden? After all, "all ideas should be put out there" so that "kids can make their own decisions"...
To be fair, there's genuine wisdom in wishy-washy stuff like Miss New Hampshire ("we need to be culturally sensitive about some things"), too.
And let's give Miss New Mexico credit ("Yes, it's part of science").
Utah was great: "I say yes, but now somebody's mad"
Hand gestures are big, apparently. Miss Massachussetts and Miss California are the favorites to win it all. And, in case you were wondering, Miss USA is a hardcore real pageant, not like Miss America which is for loser "Pageant Pattys."
Arkansas, near the beginning, is still my favorite so far:
If that's something they think they need to teach their children, then I can't argue with that.
And South Dakota gets double points: yes, it's part of science, but one shouldn't step on the toes of religious folks' beliefs.
And Miss Vermont gives a nice, low-key, "well, it's true, so we might as well learn about it." Ayuh.
Oh, wait, this competition happened already. Miss California won. Apparently she is a "huge history geek" with a special interest in the Tudor period. R. Halford has a shot! Texas and Tennessee came in second.
From Halford's link in 39:
What I'm most impressed with is that she holds a Master's Degree in Nuclear Engineering. That is not an easy feat, but I'm very proud of her. It's a male-dominated career track and she's breaking barriers already! Though her nose bothers me in some angles, she's given us some very consistent photos, and a great performance in prelims.Straight from the Masters in Nuclear Engineering to how her nose photographs.
Sigh.
Miss California is a total hottie.
I'm sorry, Tennessee came in second. Texas and Alabama tied for third. Apologies.
Arizona also looks like a space alien. Like a pretty mask painted on The Alien's head.
20: I have a friend who venue shopped in order to win a statewide Mr Leatherman competition. Connecticut is apparently a cakewalk.
Mother of God, the thread didn't prepare me for the horror of the video. I'm spiriting away Misses Vermont, California, Connecticut and Delaware, and then calling in airstrikes on the entire country. Fucking Christ, what an utter wasteland.
Also: Miss South Dakota, what the fuck is with that dress? It's like you're not even trying.
16: How on Earth could this be "ambush telly"? It's not like the interview portion of the pageant is sprung on the contestants out of the blue.
I made it to about the 6:20 mark before I had to give up. Based on that footage, "go Miss California" is about all I can say.
It's not like having a position on evolution is a normal part of competing to be Miss Whatever.
I honestly didn't realize these competitions were still going on, I guess just because they're not on national network TV any more. Or are they?
51.1: Being asked interview questions about The Issues of the Day is a normal part of pageants.
In fact, most of the participants clearly weren't surprised by the question and had answers that look fairly well-rehearsed (I tried a bit more and am at the 9:40 mark now). What makes the video so depressing is the number of them that clearly rehearsed with coaches who gave them a standard creationist "let's have everything taught on an equal footing" propaganda line to trot out. There's very little in the video that's entertainingly bad. But it makes for a few odd spots that are entertainingly good. I liked the one contestant who correctly noted that the Catholic Church has accepted evolution as a fact.
(I'd be very surprised if they weren't on TV any more. Miss USA has always been a big deal. But I don't really watch American network TV that much, so I can't say for sure.)
Miss Connecticut got it in one.
52: I went to a Catholic school where the sister teaching religion was more explicit about that than the biology teacher was.
In two lines you have named two of my least favorite things in the universe! Baby corn and the recitative from "The Greatest Love of All" or whatever that miserable song is called!
Now I will watch the clip. But seriously, the thought of baby corn makes me feel a little sick.
The pageant was on one of the main free networks the other night when I was flipping around.
I've been wondering if the fall of beauty pageants and the rise of makeover reality shows represents some sort of victory for a work ethic over natural, hereditary aristocracy.
I think it represents who wants to look at what after free porn as pulled off that segment of the market.
57: Oh. Okay. I don't watch much TV, but I feel like I tend to see ads for upcoming extravaganzas, and I hadn't seen one for this.
I did watch the Tony Awards two Sundays ago and enjoyed it quite a bit, to my surprise. Neil Patrick Harris is pretty cool. His opening number -- song and dance routine -- was "Broadway: it's not just for gays any more!" La la la. And who knew Wolverine could dance? (He, Hugh Jackman, did a duet song-and-dance number with Harris that was great.)
I mean, I'm on season 4 of The Hills. This stuff is child's play.
And who knew Wolverine could dance?
Oh, Hugh Jackman has a sort of second career in musical theater. He was in a reasonably successful show on Broadway, The Boy from Oz and (I didn't remember this but just googled it up) won a Tony himself.
Here is a rather winning clip of him in Oklahoma, though said musical was determined by Dave and AWB and me this weekend to be the second worst musical in the standard rep.
It's easy to win this thread with the sound off.
Bizarrely, I am listening to the clip while reading this thread. Hashtag missing the point!
Gypsy!
I wrote something silly about why Cats is not the worst, but I'm not sure it made any sense so I deleted it.
63: Yeah, I was pleased and impressed. I then had to remind myself that a quite a few actors do have training in song, and dance, as part of the internship, as it were, as they work their way up; and it informs the grace of movement they're able to provide on the screen, should they go in that direction.
The Tony Awards surprised me: someone like John Larroquette (who was in that awful sitcom about a court, called Court something), returned to the stage -- though I never knew he'd been there -- and won Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Huh! Bravo.
(Seriously, though, Heidi Montag makes any one of these contestants look like Gayatri Spivak.)
I tried to watch it, but got an error message. It's probably for the best. These type of things usually make me feel excruciating embarassment and pity.
I am now extremely curious to know if anyone has done a study of college retention and success, though. These pagent things always make such a big deal about being SCHOLARSHIP competitions that I am sure they are ripe for some empirical data collection a la the dismal student-athlete graduation rate.
59 wasn't the clearest comment maybe? I'm saying that the rise of the internet took away much of the heterosexual male audience from pageants causing their decline.
I genuinely thought that 59 was making fun of the incoherence of the pageant contestants.
the second worst musical in the standard rep
Noooooo! But wow, couldn't watch much of that Hugh Jackman clip. What the hell is a medduh?
Ahhh. That's better.
I'm not coherent enough to mock other people's incoherence.
My fondness for that musical also might be rooted in having seen John Schneider play Curly on stage when I was a kid.
I'm with Blume.
Also, the answer is Starlight Express.
77 would have ended, "present company excluded" but I thought it wasn't needed.
Hmm, I started to say that Starlight Express is not in the standard rep of musical theater as it hasn't had a revival in like 25 years, but it looks like in London it ran for approximately seven million performances so that makes the picture less clear.
And yes, Hugh Jackman does sound like he is singing the song phonetically, but don't you think it's sort of charming?
I'm not a big fan of Oklahoma, but then I'm not really into The Phantom of the Opera, either. I can't really figure out what the pattern of likes and dislikes is: A Chorus Line, yes. Pippin, yes. West Side Story, yes. Cats? meh. Anything Goes (currently in revival)? No.
I haven't seen enough to be able to discern a pattern.
Oklahoma has to win out over South Pacific, "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair" notwithstanding.
84: Yeah.
How do we feel about Gilbert and Sullivan? Pirates of Penzance, e.g.
A Chorus Line, yes.
Which reminds me, for those of you who haven't seen Every Little Step it's fantastic. One of my favorite recent movies.
Also, I watched the Neil Patrick Harris opening number on youtube and I was glad that I did. I am very fond of Neil Patrick Harris.
86.last: Well, that sitcom he's in ("How I Met Your Mother") is a little weird, but otherwise, definitely hot.
(Seriously, though, Heidi Montag makes any one of these contestants look like Gayatri Spivak.)
Obligatory: Gayatri Spivak is, personally, an ethical monster.
Well, that sitcom he's in ("How I Met Your Mother") is a little weird, but otherwise, definitely hot.
I watched part of the first season and didn't care for it, but perhaps I should try a later season.
Details, please!
Her reputation among Columbia grad students is that, ironically, she's much nicer if you're a white man.
One woman I know worked as her RA for a couple of semesters running. She did everything from dry-cleaning runs to dictation over lunch. As she was preparing her orals, she decided it didn't make sense also to take Spivak's graduate seminar on Marx. During the first session, Spivak called her out by name, saying what a disgrace it was for "her" students not to be there. This woman was demoralized enough not to even let Spivak know that she wasn't going to show up to her orals.
(She later went to a top law school and is now working at a good NYC firm in preparation to returning to law school as a professor. I want her to run for some kind of office some day and have repeatedly threatened to work for whatever campaign I can convince her to run. She's that awesome.)
A couple other friends worked as her PA/RA while I was in grad school, and while none of them came out as scarred as the friend above, none of them would disagree with the idea that Gayatri Spivak looks best when speaking for subalterns very far away.
Also: A number of years ago, I was a frequent houseguest of a very lovely Indian professor at another university. He was a very good cook, a scholar, a gentleman, and gay as a summer's day. He had a very involved story that I wish I could do justice to about Spivak's stalking him and trying to convince him that he wasn't gay so much as he hadn't met her yet. He was also very snide about her poor Sanskrit, but whatever.
My own interactions with her were usually brief, and wholly unsatisfactory.
77 -
Moby Hick: Averroës to his own Algazel
(who was in that awful sitcom about a court, called Court something)
I loved that show.
I am vaguely remembering some horror story from someone who served as her research assistant, but my memory is too rattled from alcohol and weight lifting to remember the details or even who it was. Perhaps I met Mary Todd's friend.
THREAD CLEAN-UP REQUESTED
What's the worst?
Good Lord, have none of you people ever seen "The Sound of Music"?
Miss Louisiana! Too cute!
I'm guessing this was Penn Jillettte's question.
Messily - several of them have actually said that "everything" should be taught in school, it's not just the captioning.
92: I know people who could probably elaborate on these issues in depth, but they generally hate everyone else in their profession, to greater or lesser degrees. Get a few glasses of a decent white wine in them and you'd think Hitler and Mao distinguished themselves primarily by never falling to the level of cultural studies professor. One of the many reasons that it didn't seem worthwhile for me to pursue that career path.
Certainly everything should be taught in school. Students should not be permitted to graduate until they can demonstrate fluency in spoken diplomatic Sumerian, mount an exhibition of paintings in the style of Ito Jakuchu and estimate to within 5% of the true figure the number of habitable planets within 10m Lyr. This last will include a practical module to develop and operate a telescope several orders of magnitude more powerful and accurate than Hubble.
And that's not the half of it. The trouble is, these wretched people can't even begin to imagine what "everything" means.
98: several of them have actually said that "everything" should be taught in school, it's not just the captioning.
Of course by "everything" they probably meant "like, both things," but they didn't really specify.
Admittedly it'd be interesting to see a school curriculum try to cover literally every creation myth plus every scientific theory of human origins plus everything between, I figure the students could look forward to graduating at the age of about thirty-five.
99: Word. Up.
Admittedly it'd be interesting to see a school curriculum try to cover literally every creation myth plus every scientific theory of human origins plus everything between, I figure the students could look forward to graduating at the age of about thirty-five
Nah, not really - once you've grasped a few of them, the creation myths are pretty much all variations on "Big Magic Thing Did It" and the scientific ones on "It Just Kind Of Happened", and you can burn through the duplicates pretty quickly. I would guess. North Dakota had fantastic tits.
DS, I've never watched a show like this before, so I started off assuming that this segment, or anyway this question, had been slipped in as a somewhat mean-spirited banana-skin, in place of perhaps normally blander or less loaded questions -- which would have been ambush telly, at least if aimed to be viewed by People Like Us. But yes, it's not really: they're not unhappy to be asked, they're Cheerfully Proud to have their Citizenly Virtues Tested. I thought I was going to dislike it, but I didn't: I enjoyed their pep and their friends-of-all-the-world unrealism. They take their careful pseudo-pluralist coaching and transfigure it into something radically and shiningly unrealistic. Every version of everything!
I'm sure there is a lot of teaching about 'and whatnot'.
North Dakota had terrific tits.
Yeah, but Wyoming has grands tetons
Miss Iowa: "I took evolution in college."
What, they had a whole course on just evolution?
Miss North Carolina: "You can't push opinions or beliefs on children."
How about facts? Can you push facts on children? In a fucking school?
It occurs to me that most of these contestants have no idea what this "evolution" thing is.
Grrrr.....
It occurs to me that most of these contestants have no idea what this "evolution" thing is.
well of course they don't. There's ca huge industry dedicated to preventing them from finding out.
I believe the cockroaches are our future, unless somebody sorts this out soonish.
Unless they've found another one since I visited it in 1983 (and indeed, bought the t-shirt), Wyoming only has one Grand Teton. It is difficult to say anything in particular about Miss Wyoming's tetons because of the camera angle, but if they were big, they'd be grandes, surely?
Was Gayatri Spivak being held up as a contrasting example of insightful commentary or another example of incoherence?
Having watched the entire video, I now have a much deeper understanding of American Exceptionalism.
Quasi-relatedly (but not really,) I had a dream last night in which Newt Gingrich, in an attempt to revive his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, began touring the country doing stand-up comedy, and he turned out to be a much better comedian than a politician. The previous night, I dreamed I was held hostage and forced to participate in the filming of an infomercial. I blame NyQuil for both dreams.
OK. I've now watched that whole thing, helped by the fact that I have no sound card at work. But this enabled me to concentrate on their body language, on which basis Miss California wins hands down. She looked like somebody giving a serious answer to a serious question: no idiot grin or flirty eyebrows; no self-depreciating shrugs; no (literally) hand waving. 10 out of 10. Honourable mention to Miss Vermont, who only waved one hand, rather half-heartedly. I though W.Virginia was doing OK, but she went full on silly grin and hand wavy in the second half.
What is it with this palms up, arms extended gesture they've all been coached in? It looks like they're telling a racist joke about Italians.
Subsidiary question: fully 10% of them were named after a region in north western France. What's all that about?
Wyoming only has one Grand Teton
I bet the locker-room teasing from the other states was brutal.
What is it with this palms up, arms extended gesture they've all been coached in?
Isn't this the international body-language gesture for "I really haven't a clue here, throw me a bone..." ?
if they were big, they'd be grandes, surely
No, curiously enough. It's le téton. In any event, I think the word would be modified by gros in contemporary parlance, but I'm no authority on French.
fully 10% of them were named after a region in north western France. What's all that about?
Became a name in the USA after significant numbers of Americans came home from beaches in Northern France, then snowballed in popularity for no apparent reason. Not obvious why Normandie didn't catch on as well, but these things are subject to massive QWERTY effects.
Also "Devon" and "Tyrone", for black American men; lots of GIs had fond memories of being stationed there, because it was their first experience of non-segregation.
Though I look forward to seeing about 35% of them on Fox News.
then snowballed in popularity for no apparent reason
You know what name is experiencing an unsustainable bubble? "Jayden". Fourth most popular name for American boys born in 2010, according to the Social Security Administration.
WTF, people?
119. I assume there's a random name generator you can download which creates alphabetic strings which are more or less pronouceable in American English. Two syllables for boys, three for girls.
116: Fascinating. Now can you explain "Caitlyn."
Caitlin, pronounced approximately "Korchaleen/Karchaleen" with regional variations, is an Irish versiion of Katherine. Many Americans can't spell, but are entranced by the idea of green beer.
What's really amusing about this process is that the hardcore Hiberno-pedants, realizing it is impossible to name their daughter any traditional Irish-in-America name with the proper pronunciation (with the possible exception of 'Siobhann') now must name their children things like 'Saoirse' or 'Aoife', just to keep everyone on their toes.
Also "Devon" and "Tyrone", for black American men; lots of GIs had fond memories of being stationed there, because it was their first experience of non-segregation.
I had never heard this as an explanation for the origin of those names. Huh.
I'm really impressed by how chris y in 112 was able to pick out the most reasonable people just by watching them without knowing what they were saying.
The video really drives home two points: first, it's obvious that very few of these people actually were taught anything about evolution in school, so US biology teachers are mostly failures. Second, when asked "should evolution be taught in schools," almost all of them immediately come up with something like "I think both should be taught," as if it's just automatic for them that evolution is part of a pair of ideas that must always be discussed together.
116: very interesting. Is that sourced, or assumption?
not obvious why Normandie didn't catch on as well
Possibly because Brittany was "the nice bit we motored through against scattered and disorganised resistance, being greeted in every village by welcoming crowds" and Normandy was "the horrible bit where we came ashore at a beach covered in dead people and then spent two months crawling from hedge to hedge getting mortared". Similarly, there are probably very few American kids named "Bastogne", "Kasserine" or "Hurtgenwald".
And it is slightly depressing to think of a black GI arriving in County Tyrone and thinking "this is great! Everyone's so tolerant and inclusive!"
127: Maybe less depressing than Paul Robeson thinking that when he visited the Soviet Union under Stalin?
121: Originally Irish per #122, but popularised because it was the name of Dylan Thomas's wife, and thereby fashionable with 60s proto-hipsters - it then made the sort of sociodemographic journey which girls' names usually do. Properly pronounced "Kate-Lin", because that's how Mrs Thomas pronounced it and so did everyone else in England, where she lived.
128. Only slightly less. It's difficult to overstate the level of communal hatred in the 6 counties in the middle of the 20th century.
#126: sourced to my wife's cousin, who is not called Devon, but who lives in Devon and is the son of a black GI.
I think that in the right sociodemographic group, "PassionDale" might have a decent chance of catching on.
This Tyrone origin story fails -- fails! -- to account for Tyrone Powers, who predates WWII.
-s, fist bump into the sky for Read.
Tyrone Powers, who predates WWII
But who, crucially, was not black. The Tyrone boom, like the Brittany and Devon booms, kicks off in the 1970s, so it's actually the second generation, recalling Dad's war stories.
And further to #134, the cousin in #131 is obviously the grandson, not the son, of a GI. I am now interested in the question of how many nonwhite blood-relatives-of-the-same-generation the (white) Unfogged commenters have? I have three, and I think one or two is typical (if not modal) for non-Scottish Britons.
If the trend didn't start until the 1970s, the origin story is even more implausible. I'm going to call bullshit until I see some more evidence.
135. Zero, but I am probably two standard deviations above the mean age of Unfogged commenters.
Miss Vermont wins, as she was the only one who gave a reason why teaching evolution was relevant to daily life as opposed to nearly every other person who basically took it as an viewpoint competing with a religious worldview. Runner-up is Miss California for simply going with a positive answer and providing at least some sort of reason.
All the rest should be banned from ever speaking again.
re: 135
None, for me. Which, I guess, would be fairly typical for my generation of Scots. You'd have had to try pretty hard to have formed an inter-racial relationship in central Scotland in the early 70s even if you weren't a racist.* There was one Pakistani family in our village, one black family, and two Chinese families that I was aware of, in a village of 10,000 or so. Plus some transitory people who worked in the oil industry but didn't stay at our school for more than a term or two. Very very homogeneously white. Not quite so much now, but still much whiter than most of England, or the bigger Scottish cities.
* which, obviously, an awful lot of people were.
None for me if you don't count adoptees, but we're not a tight-knit family; I think there are second cousins out there I've never met and don't know anything about.
None here, though from a relatively small family. And I'm skeptical about Dsquared's claim w/r/t English people born in the 1960s-1970s, unless you're counting "Welsh" and "Cockney" as different races or something.
I did have a friend, though, whose Mum had remarried a Jamaican guy when he was a baby. They'd moved to Brixton [from Falkirk] where he'd been brought up with his black step-siblings, and mixed-race siblings, and then he'd moved back to Scotland aged about 15 or 16. He had the _oddest_ accent, and used incongruous Jamaican slang without actually being a trustafarian dreadlocked twat.
None for me either, as far as I know. My mum has a lot of cousins that she's lost touch with though. C doesn't either.
Similarly, there are probably very few American kids named "Bastogne", "Kasserine" or "Hurtgenwald".
Per Orlando Fige's recent book, there were surprisingly many British Almas, Inkermans, Sevastopols, etc.
how many nonwhite blood-relatives-of-the-same-generation the (white) Unfogged commenters have?
None for me. One by adoption.
141. I'm a little sceptical of this too. I'd certainly believe it for people born after 1980, in fact I'd be very surprised if it wasn't true, but it strikes me that D^2 either knows an untypical bunch of people, or he thinks they're older than they are.
re: 141
I don't know how true it is of the 70s generation, but I'd guess it's pretty true of people younger than that. Certainly in the SE of England, Wales, Liverpool, and bits of the West Midlands.
My dad's brother married a Cuban-American and they have three biological children. Not sure if that counts as "non-white" at all.
how many nonwhite blood-relatives-of-the-same-generation the (white) Unfogged commenters have?
two cousins.
144: and a lot of Gordons after General Gordon got killed. In some bits of Scotland, girls as well as boys ended up with "Gordon" as a middle name; cf. "Lee" in the southern US.
134: lots and lots for me, I should think, but for all of them the common ancestor is pretty far back - either the distant granduncle who turned Turk, or (I am ashamed to say) the distant granduncle who had a plantation in Jamaica. Or possibly there may be some via the even more distant granduncle who was a no-kidding pirate on the Spanish Main, though not a very good one.
Ones with a common great-grandfather: none of my generation, three of the generation after mine.
135: None that I can think of off hand, which means nobody closer than 2nd cousin, once removed. My relatives in Maine have finally started intermarrying with French Canadians though, which almost sorta counts, there. I would be very surprised if I finished this decade in the same position though. As I've mentioned before, at the stock brokerage, a picture of a biracial grandchild on the desk was practically ubiquitous among the older white office ladies by 2009, whereas I can't remember a single one from 1999.
I was going to guess that rates of interracial marriage might be higher in the UK, even with a smaller total percentage of the population nonwhite, but according to Wikipedia that's not the case -- around 2% of UK marriages are interracial as opposed to between 9 and 14% in the USA.
None (though I think I have a stepcousin married to a French woman). It's not (just) that they're racists, more that most of my family lives on the Cumbrian coast, which is just incredibly white (to the extent that in the mid 90s, the Cumbrian police force needed to employ two(2) non-white officers to add to the existing one to reflect the ethnic make-up of the local population).
Several. Who's counting? And why?
ITS IMPORTANT. CANT HAVE OUR LABOR RACIAL STATISTICS COMPILED BY A CABAL.
155. Yes, but around 10% of black Brits have white (or more rarely, Asian) partners and this is likely to be higher among the generation not yet settled down. Also, the taboo against interracial marriages among the South Asian and Chinese communities is beginning to break down in the present generation. I suspect that 2% includes those over 50 where the number is close to zero.
155: once you adjust for the lack of nonwhite population, though, it's quite a large rate:
"As of 2005, it is estimated that nearly half of British-born African-Caribbean males, a third of British-born African-Caribbean females, and a fifth of Indian and African males, have white partners."
155: nah, was never going to get over a) much higher nonwhite population and b) counting "Hispanic" as a race which frankly seems like cheating to me.
158: no, as far as I can see, 2% refers to the flow of new marriages, not the stock. 3.5% of babies are mixed-race in the UK though which probably gives the truer picture. But the UK just basically doesn't have many nonwhite people in it.
None in my family, except possibly the child one uncle had in college whom I know nothing about except that she exists. Lee's family has interracial relationships, some producing kids, starting in the mid-'60s, plus unknown white relatives via slavery.
Either there are a lot of African-Caribbean lesbians, or many, many women seem to be shit out of luck there.
most of my family lives on the Cumbrian coast, which is just incredibly white
I remember a black standup comedian at the Fringe about 10 years ago: "Great to be in Edinburgh! I arrived a couple of days ago and went out to check out the black cultural scene; the three of us had a great time.
"The Edinburgh black community is one guy. Buddy. And if you don't like Buddy, you're a racist."
160. "Hispanic" is code for "Injuns who don't even speak English".
163. Was this Felix Dexter? Used to have a routine about the traditional Scottish greeting for black people. Silence. Eyes pop. Jaw drops.
I have gay relatives. Can I get liberal credit for that instead?
165: can't remember I am afraid.
It's not that Edinburgh is particularly white: there are a fair number of Chinese people and desi. Just an almost-complete absence of black people.
Oh, and I really liked that Miss West Virginia's initials were WV. I'll bet that got her some extra points in the local competition. My state's rep was one of the worst, surprising no one.
My one first cousin is white. I've had a couple different sets of Middle Eastern step-brothers, though.
We've got a lot of communists. Does that count?
We've got a lot of communists. Does that count?
Only if they're Chinese.
re: 170
Yeah. Communists ten-a-penny in Glasgow.
My only white relatives in my generation are a half-sister and two cousins whose mother was adopted by some other type of cousin - huge age differences in my grandmother's/dad's generations make the whole "generation" concept complicated and these cousins are the closest to my age. Actually there may be some more distant cousins; I don't know that side of the family very well.
I've got ten Chinese cousins, born in two countries, to three aunts and two uncles. Way to uphold the stereotypes of large-familied immigrants, people.
I have a bunch of Native American first cousins. They all have stereotypically Irish-American names (along the lines, say, of John Joseph Fitzpatrick III, etc.) and would routinely get checked on when they ticked forms indicating their Ojibway ancestry.
I am now interested in the question of how many nonwhite blood-relatives-of-the-same-generation the (white) Unfogged commenters have?
Two half black first cousins in the Bay area.
I am now interested in the question of how many nonwhite blood-relatives-of-the-same-generation the (white) Unfogged commenters have? I have three, and I think one or two is typical (if not modal) for non-Scottish Britons
None for me, that I know of. Which is mildly surprising given that at one point my father's four siblings were living on four different continents. But I do keep discovering new relatives so it's possible.
He had the _oddest_ accent, and used incongruous Jamaican slang without actually being a trustafarian dreadlocked twat.
In grad school in Canada, my BF knew a Chinese guy who had been raised in Jamaica. He had a thick Jamaican accent and was always saying "Yah man." This seems to be like it would either be disconcerting, hilarious or both.
"seems to be" s/b "seems to me."
It's not exactly race-transcending, but I think I've mentioned my love of Peter Schmeichel's accent before. And on the subject of amusing Danish-English accents, I've recently been watching some Youtube videos by a Danish guy with an exceedingly posh English accent. It makes me smile.
119, 120: This essay talks a bit about the popularity of "Jayden" (as well as a bunch of other names that rhyme with Aidan).
Two non-white brothers (and a non-white sister-in-law married to my white brother), but all my cousins are white (though one is married to a hispanic woman).
I'd never even heard the name until Britney Spears named one of her sons Jayden.
177: There's been a Chinese-Jamaican community since the mid 1800s. There's a quarter Chinese-Jamaican (three-quarters African-Jamaican) current NFL player (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Chung).
180: I love the website that Josh linked. So much knowledge and devotion.
It's pretty embarrassing, but the closest non-white relative I have is one cousin's husband (Latino). That is from among about 30 first cousins.
I was doing my best to diversify the gene pool, but then broke up with him.
I am naming my next cat Guernica.
Bob Marley's first break came via Chinese-Jamaican label owner and producer Leslie Kong
Yeah. I'm totally used to non-white people with Scottish accents. To the extent that I always assumed 'Indian' and 'Chinese' accents were some sort of racist stereotype perpetrated by dubious English comedians. I didn't meet anyone from the Indian sub-continent or from a Chinese background who didn't basically sound exactly like me until I went to Oxford.
For some reason, however, a white person with what we/I'd normally think of as a non-white accent was somewhat hilarious, and also disconcerting.
184. The site doesn't mention that Hayden/Haydn has been a common Welsh given name since forever.
Even earlier: mento/ska pioneer Byron Lee and the Dragonaires -- I have several records by them and never made the connection (which means I never looked at a picture).
Somehow seems much rarer to meet Chinese Londoners with London accents, for some reason. Round mine it's mainly Vietnamese, who arrived pretty recently, so you wouldn't expect them to be cockneys sparrers quite yet, but there's been a Chinese community in London for hundreds of years.
George Melly told a vaguely racist but hilarious anecdote about Chinese people talking broad Scouse in the 1950s.
Somehow seems much rarer to meet Chinese Londoners with London accents, for some reason. Round mine it's mainly Vietnamese, who arrived pretty recently, so you wouldn't expect them to be cockneys sparrers quite yet, but there's been a Chinese community in London for hundreds of years.
Not in my personal experience. I think I know what you mean, and I'm definitely not saying my acquaintances are representative, but my Korean, Chinese and Singaporean friends all have, for want of a better word, totally assimilated accents. Only two sound like proper Londoners, to be fair, rather than generic southern middle class.
Maybe the answer to this puzzle is here: "Liverpool's Chinatown was never a truly Chinese community. This was a 'Chinatown' that in reality had a minority of Chinese." Maybe, London's Chinatown, being quite a lot bigger, and not quite so old, meant that the accent didn't merge quite so fast?
Yes, I did mean "proper cockney-type" londonspeak.
Also I've now managed to confuse myself which the oldest British Chinese community is: Liverpool or London?
I'm pretty sure there were Chinese in London from the 18th century at least, courtesy of the HEIC, but how far they made themselves at home I've no idea. Don't know when the Liverpool community started.
1834 for Liverpool, according to wiki.
What, they had a whole course on just evolution?
The thread has moved on, but yeah - of course they do! There were at least two at my undergrad institution. I'm pretty sure one was required to graduate with a biology degree. /pedantic response to a joke.
It's pretty interesting how much of the history of California prior to about 1945 is basically "We hate the Chinese."
I'm totally used to non-white people with Scottish accents. To the extent that I always assumed 'Indian' and 'Chinese' accents were some sort of racist stereotype perpetrated by dubious English comedians. I didn't meet anyone from the Indian sub-continent or from a Chinese background who didn't basically sound exactly like me until I went to Oxford.
Hmm, similar - though there were a fair number of Chinese-accented Chinese people as well in Embra.
Very unnerved, though, to run into a couple of Pakistanis (or rather Scots of Pakistani descent) in Glasgow happily talking Gaelic to each other.
Note to self:
You need to copy page 237
I just looked at this for the first time, and I don't think these beauty pageant contestants are particularly stupid or ill-informed at all compared to an average U.S. citizen. The answers sound like the answers I get for the decision scenarios in my online bioethics course. A lot of the same wishy-washy clichés are deployed to avoid having to take a stand in a forced-decision scenario.
If you spend a lot of time on the internet, or move in politically active circles, you forget that most people aren't particularly interested in having opinions at all, let alone coherent, consistent opinions on political issues. For the most part, the goal in answering this sort of question is to avoid offending anyone, and people are startled, or even offended, if you ask them to back up what they say or stick to their stance in a different context.
Phrases like "to each his own" or "it's all relative" or "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" are really just another way of saying "enough about this, how about that local sports team?" "Teach the controversy" gets taken up by people because it seems like it should work the same way.
I didn't mean to past in the "note to self" part.
If you spend a lot of time on the internet, or move in politically active circles, you forget that most people aren't particularly interested in having opinions at all, let alone coherent, consistent opinions on political issues.
Baloney. Everyone has opinions on the things that interest them.
The rest of your comment is interesting though.
205: If you read it charitably and insert a comma after 'consistent opinions', then 'on political issues' modifies both instances of 'opinions'.
Actually, I really did mean that people aren't interested in having opinions at all. Whatever topic you venture into, you will find opinionated blowhards, but that doesn't imply that that everyone interested in that thing has an opinion on it. They have preferences, to be sure. Anyone will say "I like this part of the movie" but fewer people will say "this is the best movie this actor did and I will argue with you about it if you disagree."
I dunno, maybe its just that as an analytic philosopher, it seems to me that the world is full of people weirdly unwilling to get into arguments.
it seems to me that the world is full of people weirdly unwilling to get into arguments.
They're brought up to believe it's rude. Really.
Ireland has been fairly homogenously pasty as well. Only non-white relative of my generation is a U.S. cousin, an adoptee. A couple of cousins have biracial children. None of the above are first cousins though I have a first cousin now living in Texas married to a Mexican-American (that doesn't seem interracial to me though).
Oddly enough, my only non-white relative of my generation, even in-law, is Irish, but I'd better shut up as the person might be identifiable.
210: chris, I think we're supposed to count the Irish as officially white these days. Even the Catholic ones.
I'll tell the person in question. They'll be quite surprised.
It should be said that there was an occasion at Dublin airport where this person started talking in a powerful Dublin accent to an official who wasn't looking at him, and when said official turned his head, he was searching for the Irishman - person in front of him, even though still talking, was clearly disqualified.
Very unnerved, though, to run into a couple of Pakistanis (or rather Scots of Pakistani descent) in Glasgow happily talking Gaelic to each other.
Especially, as Ttam would point, as Gaelic would never historically have been spoken there.
Anyway, a couple of things - visiting a relative in hospital a couple of days ago, he pointed out a fellow patient as a Sicilian immigrant who arrived 50 years ago and still doesn't (or possibly won't) speak English. A neat little man with a neater haircut, sitting ramrod straight in bed, with an even neater wife, dark with a pure white wave of hair, and his (also snappy) son. Who arrived and brought him a crisp copy of the Corriere della Sera.
Quite a contrast from the huge fat guy on the other side of the cardiac ward from my admittedly hugely fat relative, whose hugely fat family came to visit bringing a couple of enormous sacks of KFC and two-litre bottles of fizzy pop. The only one of them who wasn't a porker was the daughter's rail-skinny mod/hipster boyfriend...obviously having the "oh shit, what have I got myself into? I'm going to be doing this for the next twenty years until it's my turn" sinking feeling. Medicine must teach you a serious poker face.
Also, family news - I can officially claim at least a point off D^2 above for one black relative. However, the guy whose nickname was "Nigger" isn't the relative. You see why my dad left for the big city.
re: 214
Nah, Glasgow would just about have been Gaelic speaking at one time, I think.* The line ran across the country somewhat diagonally, and I think there was a transitional period between Welsh/Briton and Inglis/Scots when that bit of the west coast was Gaelic speaking. There's also a few pubs in Glasgow that are heavily Gaelic speaking [people down from the isles].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Languages_of_Scotland_1400_AD.svg
I'm not sure that accurate historical maps of language use really exist, but I think earlier in the process of language migration around the country Gaelic would have covered more of the west coast including Glasgow.
214. Interesting. I'd have made a small bet that that area would have gone straight from Bryttonic (Strathclyde) to Scots. Live and learn.
two-litre bottles of fizzy pop
Is there non-fizzy pop?
Especially, as Ttam would point, as Gaelic would never historically have been spoken there.
They were, it turned out, Pakistani-descended Highlanders (teuchterstanis?) from the Western Isles, in Glasgow visiting relatives.
Whatever topic you venture into, you will find opinionated blowhards, but that doesn't imply that that everyone interested in that thing has an opinion on it.
But that's the wrong approach. Take any person, and ask them questions, and find out what they enjoy spending time on, whether it's hanging out with their grandchildren or watching The Bachelorette. If they choose to spend their free time doing it, they've formed opinions about it.
Or take events from their personal history, and ask how it occurred, especially if there's disagreement. You'll find a very well-formed opinion about why they are right, and why all the evidence supports their interpretation, and why everything contradicts the other person's interpretation.
220.last:
"Have empathy will travel, reads the card of the nosy,
A therapist without license in a savage land."
re: 216
I think it had a Gaelic period, but I might be wrong.
Gaelic was fairly short-lived in that area though. 'Cumbric' didn't die out until the 12th century, and by the 14th that area was Scots speaking.
