Swarthy Germans

Luis Rumbaut adds some valuable perspective to the immigration debate by citing some of Ben Franklin's thoughts on the horrors of the US being overrun by German immigrants:

[W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.

Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.

Seems like a good time to mention Noel Ignatiev's How The Irish Became White. Obviously, it's about Irish people rather than Germans, but the pattern throughout American history is striking.

Comments

Forget the Spanish or the Italians, I'd just like to know how he could think of your average German or Swede or Frenchman as "swarthy"?

Oh and Benjamin Frankin, if he is the author of this, sounds like a real douche nozzle, and not a very bright one either.

Posted by DRR | February 4, 2008 9:39 AM

Boy, Ben Franklin was an idiot. He probably thought that German immigrant communities in PA would still be insular, backward, speaking their old country's language today, and refusing to serve in the U.S. military. If he weren't such a foolish nativist, he would have known that those Pennsylvania "Dutch" (i.e., "Deutsch", German, Amish) would have fully assimilated by now.

Posted by Fred | February 4, 2008 9:42 AM

Didnt' this causes a huge 5th column in the run up to world war 1 which paralzied US fp? And didn't the ending of it invovle horrific persecution, banning German, demonzigin congressmen, throwing thousands of people in jail

Also Germans assilimated during decades of very tight immigration control/ low rates of German immigration. To say that after decades of immigraiotn , people assilimate in the decades of control afterwords does not mean unlimited immigriaon forever can work. See kosovo and what's happened to the Serbs there when demographic changes pass a certian point.

Germans are on average darker in skin colour than britihs people ( i know a lot of germans) - the differences just look insignifianct compared to black/ white differences

Posted by edmund | February 4, 2008 9:44 AM

Well, at least Franklin had nice things to say about Native Americans. Also, let's not forget the guy invented the lightning rod. And the Franklin stove. Plus, we wrote a very entertaining autobiography.

Posted by Traven | February 4, 2008 9:45 AM

Fred - The Amish today represent a minuscule proportion of the population of descendants of 18th century German immigrants to Pennsylvania.

DRR - word. Swedes are swarthy? Where on earth was that coming from?

Posted by John | February 4, 2008 9:48 AM

"Seems like a good time to mention Noel Ignatiev's How The Irish Became White. Obviously, it's about Irish people rather than Germans, but the pattern throughout American history is striking."

Either the Irish are a positive exception to the "pattern", or the blacks and Chicanos are the negative exceptions. Both blacks and Mexican-Americans have failed to assimilate to European-American norms of academic achievement, economic advancement, and law-abiding behavior. Mexican-Americans commit crimes at 3x the rate of whites, and blacks commit crimes at 7x the white rate. 40% of fourth generation Mexican Americans still don't graduate high school. Expecting the next wave of Mexican immigrants to "become white" is the triumph of hope over experience.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 9:49 AM

Boy, Ben Franklin was an idiot. He probably thought that German immigrant communities in PA would still be insular, backward, speaking their old country's language today, and refusing to serve in the U.S. military. If he weren't such a foolish nativist, he would have known that those Pennsylvania "Dutch" (i.e., "Deutsch", German, Amish) would have fully assimilated by now.

Ah the horrors of the Amish!

Posted by WillieStyle | February 4, 2008 9:52 AM

The idea that the "average Russian" is "Swarthy" makes me wonder if the writer (or thinker of such thought, since I assume they are not the same here) has seen any Russians or knows what "swarthy" means. (I assume that the confusion here party comes from the fact that it wasn't so much "average Russians" who mostly immigrated to the US but a sub-class, mostly Jewish Russians, who are not usually typically slavic in features. Even still, one can't help but think "non-swarthy" is merely an honorific here and nothing more.)

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | February 4, 2008 9:52 AM

Harry, you are an ignorant racist. If it weren't for racism and a lack of investment in public education, blacks and Mexican Americans would be doing just as well as whites. Anyway, you're probably going to have a black president next year, so you'll have to learn to deal.

Posted by Emily | February 4, 2008 9:56 AM

As DRR said, Ben Franklin must have had a very odd interpretation of 'swarthy' if it included Swedes and Russians. And I don't think he's got the Germans right either - Austrians and Bavarians may be a touch darker, living in slightly more summery climes, but northern Germans (including in the terminology of Ben's time Prussians, Palatinates, Hessians and Saxons) are all not less 'white' than Englishmen.

It's a very odd rant - the opinions may be excused by the way that people thought back then, but the complete obliviousness to the facts is just weird. It's a slightly chastening example of how opinions slant the view on reality of even very clever people.

Posted by Anon | February 4, 2008 9:58 AM

Harry, don't forget your hood on the way out.

Posted by brudy | February 4, 2008 10:02 AM

"Harry, don't forget your hood on the way out."

Shorter brudy: "I can't refute anything Harry wrote".

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 10:07 AM

I never read that book, but I read some reviews of it and in it's own weird way it's fascinating.

The book is right about the Irish not being white in say 1900. In NYC say in 1900 though nobody was white, there were wasps (though wasps didn't call themselves wasps), Italians, Germans, Jews ..., there weren't any 'white' people. By 1950 or so, when an Irish guy could marry an Italian girl without it being a huge deal, then there were 'white' people, at least in NYC then everybody who wasn't black or hispanic had become 'white', and this was a new thing, given that nobody was white in 1900.

People have been books like this forever, like Daniel P. Moynihan's 'The Melting Pot'. One can disagree with Moynihan's theses in the book, but one thing about it is that his analysis is grounded in reality.

This book, is an extremely unholy mess. What makes it interesting though, it suggests a research project into a bizarro tribe that is really crying out to be studies, early 21th century American academics. One might trace their widely held views and study how they came about believing them, just as one would study the creation stories of New Guinean hunter gatherer tribes, they are that interesting. I think a book about such people really needs to be written.

Posted by j mct | February 4, 2008 10:12 AM

shorter harry: I can't refute anything Emily wrote.

Posted by me | February 4, 2008 10:13 AM

Matt - there weren't many (any?) Eastern European Jews immigrating to the US in the 18th century - or, really, until the last couple of decades of the 19th century. What Jews there were in the US in the 18th century were largely Sephardic, with an influx of Jews from Germany in the mid-19th century, at the same time that German immigration greatly increased.

Furthermore, there were really hardly any Jews in Russia at all until 1793, after the second partition of Poland. So I don't think that's what's being referred to.

Also -

Didnt' this causes a huge 5th column in the run up to world war 1 which paralzied US fp? And didn't the ending of it invovle horrific persecution, banning German, demonzigin congressmen, throwing thousands of people in jail

No. I'm not sure about demonizing congressmen, and German was frowned upon (not banned), but I'm pretty sure thousands of people were not thrown in jail, that there was nothing resembling "horrific persecution", and that U.S. foreign policy was not paralyzed. Hell, Wilson relied on anti-war Irish and German voters to win re-election in 1916 with his "He kept us out of the war" pledge, and then turned around and got into the war a month after his second inaugural. But German-Americans offered no notable resistance.

Assimilation is obviously something that is gradual and takes a long time. But today one would be hard pressed to see any of the major European immigrant groups of the late 19th century as unassimilated. The Mexican case is somewhat different, in that large areas of the southwest have had large Spanish-speaking populations since we acquired them in 1848, but it really is difficult to see how the anti-immigrant hysteria today is somehow genuinely different in kind from the (I think generally agreed to be unwarranted) anti-immigrant hysteria of past centuries

Posted by John | February 4, 2008 10:16 AM

I kept on reading, thinking that surely there would be something to indicate that this rant was some kind of Swiftian satire. No such luck, though.

Posted by Glenn | February 4, 2008 10:23 AM

CONTEXT! Neither Rumbaut nor Yglesias deign to mention that this letter is from 1753.

Read the full letter: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.com/library/index.asp?document=472

It's quite funny (and racist, of course), but like a lot of Franklin's writings it hard to tell where the humour ends and the serious discourse starts (or vice versa).

Posted by s | February 4, 2008 10:26 AM

Well, of course Harry is an ignorant racist, but I guess I'll be the first point out, without having read that book, that what made the Irish so unusual was the extraordinarily long time that it took them to become assimilated - certainly not 2 or 3 generations. Mexicans, of course, are constantly adding fresh 1st generations.

Posted by godoggo | February 4, 2008 10:26 AM

Shorter Harry: deport the blacks, too!

Posted by shecky | February 4, 2008 10:26 AM

"shorter harry: I can't refute anything Emily wrote."

I didn't realize obviously false lefty fantasies warranted refutation, but if you insist, consider the obvious counter-examples. Chinese-Americans and Italian Americans both suffered racism and there was certainly less "investment in public education" 100 years ago, but both of those immigrant groups successfully assimilated to white middle class (or better) norms. Mexican-Americans haven't, even after an additional hundred years, and show no signs of doing so. Blacks, despite massive affirmative action, still under-perform on by nearly every socioeconomic measure.

It may just be a coincidence that white and Chinese IQs average significantly higher than black and Mexican-American IQs, but if lower IQ isn't the cause of Mexican-American and black failures, it is apparently something similarly intractable. There's no reason to expect this century's Mexican immigrants to do any better, particularly in a more advanced economy where there is a premium placed on cognitive abilities.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 10:27 AM

Matt - are you sure about the authenticity of that quote?

There are many fake Franklin quotes - Including an infamous anti-semitic rant. But they are invented.

That quote above sounds slightly off key for Frankin.

Scott Fitzgerald referred to Italians and French as non-white.

Posted by Comment | February 4, 2008 10:27 AM

"Shorter Harry: deport the blacks, too!"

That was the view of Abraham Lincoln and other 19th Century American leaders (google the American Colonization Society), but that's not my view. We brought the blacks here, so they are our responsibility as our fellow Americans. If we care about American blacks, we would stop importing poor Mexicans to drive down their wages and compete with them for government transfer payments and affirmative action programs. Importing poverty from Mexico benefits low-wage employers and Democrat electioneers, but hurts native blacks.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 10:35 AM

Matt: if your interested in the history of whiteness I wouldn’t start with Noel Ignatiev. His work is derivative and second rate. The scholar you want to read is David Roediger (The Wages of Whitness, etc.). Also López Ian F Haney’s White by Law.

Harry: there is so much wrong with what you wrote that it would take years to disentangle. But basically you seem to know nothing about American history. You should first start by learning about the history of black Americans (highlights: slavery, Jim Crow, denial of citizenship rights, de facto second class status till this day) and then look at the history of the Irish (arrived in poverty but possessing voting rights from day one, able to ingratiate themselves with white majority to win privileges of whiteness). Whiteness is not won by good behavior. It’s tied to the exclusion of non-whites from power. You can’t have whiteness without blackness, in the American context.

j mct: before you judge a book, try reading it first. Ignatiev has problems but there is a wealth of good writing coming out of whiteness studies.

Posted by Jeet Heer | February 4, 2008 10:38 AM

Next week, will Matt quote Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia wherein Mr. Jefferson declares that blacks are inferior to whites, and this is scientifically demonstratable based on smell?

Perhaps this post would have been more poignant if Matt had compared and contrasted it with a quote from Samuel Huntington or Pat Buchanan.

Posted by freddiemac | February 4, 2008 10:38 AM

"Becoming white" is about IQ and culture. If an entire subpopulation is of substantially different average IQ, then its culture and the mainstream, so-called "white" culture won't be that similar. They'll be two different local maxima. The two groups will remain distinct.

We know what world average IQs are, so we can predict which foreign populations are likely to "become white" when they come here.

Thus, prediction: East Asian immigrants will "become white". "Hispanics" generally, won't, although their upper classes will. (This is because "hispanic" in our context mostly means "aboriginal American", not "Spanish speaking", because the Spaniards didn't genocide their subject abos as totally as we did ours.) Blacks won't.

Posted by the Ugly Truth | February 4, 2008 10:39 AM

I am pretty sure I saw some NYNA signs on a few of the co-ops on the upper East Side as late as the early 90's.

Posted by No Yglesias Need Apply | February 4, 2008 10:40 AM

Well, there was a certain amount of anti-German hysteria during WW1, and a little in WW2. But there's no evidence at all that there was a real problem.

I'm not aware of German immigration being controlled until the modern era, when there hasn't been much demand anyway. Of course, the Germans have always been pro-assimilation (and pro-Union too, which was the margin of victory in the Civil War). So whether you think the German experience is relevant to the current immigration debate depends on whether you think the Hispanic community is like the Germans, or fundamentally different.

Posted by AlanC9 | February 4, 2008 10:40 AM

Franklin was rather sympathetic to Native Americans (even if he did call them Savages) :o)

Ben Franklin had introduced the Albany Plan of Union at a meeting attended by both his pre-revolutionary compatriots and a delegation from the Iroquois Confederation. Franklin had earlier attended an Iroquois Condolence Ceremony in 1753, and used Iroquois symbols both in his language and his design for early American currency. In 1770, Franklin wrote, "Happiness is more generally and equally diffus’d among Savages than in civilized societies. No European who has tasted savage life can afterwards bear to live in our societies."

http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/01/har05001.html

Posted by beowulf | February 4, 2008 10:43 AM

You know, ol' Franklin had a strong tendency to plant his tongue in his cheek and say things that he thought were self-evidently ridiculous. Like, say, the entirety of Poor Richard's Almanac. Just sayin'.

Posted by Nick | February 4, 2008 10:47 AM

19th Century German immigrants have a good track record in the new world. They comprise the largest ethnic group in America today, at about 15% of the population, and even in Brazil the German-settled areas (e.g., much of the southern state of Santa Catarina) are like Switzerland compared to the rest of the country.

Posted by Fred | February 4, 2008 10:48 AM

On swarthy Swedes, my wife's late aunt, of Swedish-Norwegian immigrant background, was told in Texas ca. 1920 that there were only three white kids in her school class -- all the rest were Swedes. Interestingly enough, the person who told her that turned out to be a lifelong friend.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | February 4, 2008 10:49 AM

It's hilarious watching people snort, "How dare Franklin consider the Germans non-white, when any fool can see there's nothing swarthy about them!!" Whiteness, like blackness, is a social-construct and its borders are constantly in flux. NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS SAYING THEIR IS NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR THE IDEA OF RACE. But the notion that there is some absolute idea--forever frozen in time--about who is white and who isn't is bogus. The goal-posts are forever shifting. Except for black folks, who must never be allowed in, less the whole notion of whiteness explode.

Posted by SillyNegro | February 4, 2008 10:52 AM

BF was far from perfect but these two paragraphs from Observations have been variously interpreted: too nativistic and completely ironic. When I read it, I tend my interpretation towards the ironical because of the "scouring...mars and venus" clause which seemed way, way over the top, even for BF.

Posted by mike c | February 4, 2008 10:58 AM

"Except for black folks, who must never be allowed in, less the whole notion of whiteness explode."

Are you kidding? Whites would love to let you in, and have you start acting like whites. That's why so many whites are so enthusiastic about Obama's candidacy, in the hopes that he will by some alchemy turn all blacks into articulate, intelligent, law-abiding Americans who are no longer in need of welfare and affirmative action.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 11:00 AM

Re Ben Franklin's comment "W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements "
----------
In the debate of whether to allow Germans into Pennsylvania, it was the Yuengling beer that won us over.

Posted by Don Williams | February 4, 2008 11:07 AM

Right Harry. Because most African-Americans are either on welfare or have benefited from affirmative action...

Posted by SillyNegro | February 4, 2008 11:07 AM

People sure loved Capital Letters back then.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | February 4, 2008 11:08 AM

Harry - 100 years? Seriously? Those of Mexican extraction whose families actually came to the States 100 years ago have assimilated pretty damn well. Most of the "unassimilated" are at least about 80 years more recent than that.

Or were you under the impression that Mexican immigration has mostly stopped? Because if it has, I'm a bit perplexed about all this fretting Lou Dobbs has been doing.

And in what way have blacks not assimilated? Oh, you mean because they listen to all that hippity-hoppity music and wear their jeans all baggy and stuff? Or because they don't do as well financially or on IQ tests as the rest of us? Because the IQ thing has been smacked around by basically every critic of The Bell Curve ever, and the financial thing is very, very, very largely the results of longterm and continuing discrimination, both intentional and unintentional systemic. E.g.:

When the black population of a neighborhood reaches a certain critical mass, property values plummet. When the white population of a neighborhood reaches a certain critical mass, property values skyrocket. This is true even if the average income doesn't really change in the short term and the low-end-of-average blacks are replacing low-end-of-average whites or high-end-of-average whites are replacing high-end-of-average blacks. Perception that whites are wealthier than blacks (true on average) causes people to think property values are changing, which makes them actually change. The economic extrema among current residents start leaving, even if none of them are racist individually, because it fits their economic conditions to do so. Then the average residents leave. This, in turn, perpetuates the racial divide in where people live, and neighborhoods with whites replacing blacks see an upward spiral in tax and business bases while neighborhoods with blacks replacing whites see a downward spiral. Thus black neighborhoods move, but are almost always poorer, and white neighborhoods move but are almost always richer.

Again, even where racism proper is gone, such systemic racism has a powerful effect on perpetuating black poverty. It's not impossible to correct this, of course, but so long as the general income disparity exists it takes a lot of effort in the way of mixed income zoning laws, which can sometimes be hard to build political will for. But where such laws are enforced, assimilation -- by which I suppose I mean upward mobility -- increases. And when such mobility has stuck around a while, we've seen a real black middle class that has managed to develop majority black neighborhoods that are also in good economic shape.

But again, that's work. We can't just say, "Oh, no more Jim Crow laws. The fact that they haven't made up for 500 years of discrimination during the last 40 is proof that they are unable to do so." That would be kind of silly if it wasn't dangerous and mean-spirited instead.

Posted by jhupp | February 4, 2008 11:09 AM

The native Americans had an open-door immigration policy -- where did it get them ??

Posted by Don Williams | February 4, 2008 11:13 AM

Times change. By today's standards, all the founding fathers (and all other whitey fathers of that age) were racist douchebags. David Duke would feel right at home.

However fully agree with MY’s point. All throughout American history, patriotic “native” sons have resisted mass immigration from a country/region with the same logic i.e., how the new immigrants would not assimilate and irrevocably change the country. The ironic thing is that quite possibly the very descendants of those earlier undesirable immigrants (can one say Tancredo) are parroting the same argument to try and block today’s (undesirable) immigrants.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | February 4, 2008 11:21 AM

That's why so many whites are so enthusiastic about Obama's candidacy, in the hopes that he will by some alchemy turn all blacks into articulate, intelligent, law-abiding Americans who are no longer in need of welfare and affirmative action.

Seems to me I've read Sailer saying something like this too. It's bizarre, since I know of zero evidence for it. But if you know of some, point us to it: actual evidence that large numbers of white people support Obama for the reason you name.

Posted by guyx | February 4, 2008 11:23 AM

"Those of Mexican extraction whose families actually came to the States 100 years ago have assimilated pretty damn well."

40% of 4th generation Mexican Americans can't graduate high school. That's not assimilating "pretty damn well". That's pathetic.

"Because the IQ thing has been smacked around by basically every critic of The Bell Curve ever"

What is this clause supposed to mean?

"Perception that whites are wealthier than blacks (true on average) causes people to think property values are changing, which makes them actually change."

No: the reality that blacks commit crimes at 7x the rate of whites, and that black children make bad students (and a majority of bad students = bad schools) is what causes real estate values to plummet in black areas. If these were just "perceptions" and not realities, "enlightened" whites would save a ton of money buying homes in black neighborhoods and sending their kids to black schools. But even liberal whites like Yglesias's father would rather pony up $20k per year to send their kids to safe, nearly-all-white schools.

"That would be kind of silly if it wasn't dangerous and mean-spirited instead."

The black track record where blacks have dominated the power structure is similarly pathetic. From black-run cities like Detroit, to black-run countries like Haiti, invariably misery abounds. Two hundred years after booting out the French, do they Haitians bear any responsibility for their hell hole in your eyes? Haiti once produced a third of the French Empire's GDP; today Haitians are literally eating dirt. Blacks have consistently failed to create prosperous modern societies on their own, so it's no surprise that they lag in societies created by whites.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 11:25 AM

Not to commenters: don't feed the big harry troll.

Judging by the passage, Franklin seems to have been something of a bigot. So what? I advise anyone personally offended to mail all their $100 bills to me, so they'll no longer have to look at the man's racist phiz.

Posted by James Gary | February 4, 2008 11:34 AM

I really shouldn't indulge a troll like Harry but I'm bored...

Harry,

You state that "blacks commit crimes at 7x the rate of whites, and that black children make bad students (and a majority of bad students = bad schools) is what causes real estate values to plummet in black areas". However, you have not proven cause and effect. Does the declining property values in black neighborhoods cause the increase in crime? Do you have any evidence at all that black neighborhoods decrease property values after they become violent or before?

You use Detroit as an example, but that contradicts your original thesis. Detroit is a perfect example of property values plummeting as black enter neighborhoods, and violent crime rates increasing only after property values decrease, which is why you can see an increase in crime rates in white communities like Stockton and Ontario California where property values are plummeting.

Really, it is a shame that ignorance causes such racist views to continue in the 21st century.

Posted by freddiemac | February 4, 2008 11:36 AM

Per Jeet:

Reading a book requires an investment, and from the stuff I read about it reading the book would be like reading a physics paper with a glaring math error in the first sentence, not worth the time.

Per becoming 'white' as in not black, the first thing that one must remember about 19th century Irishman is that even some other group had a true story about woe and oppression, Irishman considered their story about woe and oppression to be better than anyone else's. As far as say the draft riots in NYC in 1863 it was more 'Mr. Lincoln, you're going to draft me into the army to help out slaves in the South who's condition I had nothing to do with bringing about, and if I live through it, are going to come North and compete with me for jobs. Sorry Mr. Lincoln, my story of woe and oppression starts in 1169 and I've just got out from under the English boot and I'm going to be spending my time furthering the fortunes of an oppressed group, the Irish, and the slaves can take a number and get behind me. So Mr. Lincoln, I'm not joining your army and screwing up our shot we've been waiting 500+ years for." Then they did it, they took over the NYPD, the NYFD, the Church, Tammany Hall and the like. The Democratic party in NYC was so Irish dominated, the Italians all became Republicans, Fiorello Laguardia was a Republican.

If you know anything about the history of unions in NYC, they got started in about 1850 and were basically a bunch of Irishman going around telling employers that they had to hire union members, or something bad is going to happen to their nice factories or building sites, and all the union members happened to be Irish, funny how that worked out. There was no philosophical overlay to it. NYC trade unions are still somewhat like that at the present, though to a far lesser extent than they used to be.

As far as 'whiteness' studies with Freudian type explanations based on some sort of psychology of the 'Other' or something like that, as far as ascertaining what might be interesting about it, one must first consider that an explanation for their existence being grounded in a theory that 'the world and the people in it are/were really like that', being ruled out from the start, given that a well considered highly intellectual response to such a notion would be a howl of derisive laughter. Given that the ouptut of 'whiteness studies' academics cannot pass a laugh test, in order to explain their views, I think an cultural anthropological study to explain the views of such people would make a fine research project.

Posted by j mct | February 4, 2008 11:44 AM

Wow. I'll never understand why this site attracts so many racist trolls. It's pretty shocking. Oh well, when people start saying things like most black kids are bad students, there really is no point in arguing. A racist is gonna be a racist, no matter what logic you hurl at him.

Posted by SillyNegro | February 4, 2008 11:47 AM

"Does the declining property values in black neighborhoods cause the increase in crime?"

Let me help you out with cause and effect. Perceptions about the quality of schools and the safety of neighborhoods drive property values. Let's take the schools quality first. Black kids, on average, make bad students. They tend to not be very bright or disciplined. Bad students make bad schools. Everyone who is honest acknowledges this.

Now, let's consider neighborhood safety. It's also common knowledge that blacks commit crimes at 7 times the white rate. Again, everyone who is honest acknowledges this.

Ergo, the greater the percentage of blacks in a neighborhood, the more likely, all things being equal, that the schools in that neighborhood will be crappy and the neighborhood won't be safe. So whites, Asians, and even affluent blacks tend to avoid these neighborhoods. Absent the demand from these whites, Asians, and affluent blacks, property values in mostly black neighborhoods decline. Property damage and neglect by poor blacks in those neighborhoods exacerbates the decline further.

All this leads to a great idea for black people to make a lot of money. The NAACP (or some similar organization) should start Real Estate Investment Trusts to buy up large black neighborhoods in places like D.C. or Newark. Then it should convince all the blacks to leave, promising them a cut of the proceeds from the sale of the land. Absent the blacks, the neighborhoods could be redeveloped and would surge in value. The profits could be distributed to the former black residents to live comfortably elsewhere. Since many blacks in these neighborhoods live off of public assistance anyway, they wouldn't be worse off living in less-urban areas, and the addition of newly gentrified center-cities would be a boon to Yuppies like Yglesias.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 11:54 AM

Re SillyNegro's comment "Wow. I'll never understand why this site attracts so many racist trolls "
------------
Well, you know how it is. You let one of them in and the whole neighborhood goes to hell.

Posted by Don Williams | February 4, 2008 11:54 AM

"Harry, don't forget your hood on the way out."

Shorter brudy: "I can't refute anything Harry wrote".

Come on, that's only one syllable shorter!

Posted by JB | February 4, 2008 11:55 AM

I'll never understand why this site attracts so many racist trolls.

The explanation is simple: because it's on the Internet.

Posted by James Gary | February 4, 2008 11:55 AM

@Aaron,

Ironically, Germans use a lot of capitals (all nouns are capitalized). The prevalence of capitals in 18th century English may be a result of the germanic roots of the English language.

@Matt,

It always surprises me when all the filthy racists show up on your comments section. I guess it makes sense, given that you write about topics of race and immigration and you have a de facto annonymous comment system, but it is jarring nonetheless.

Posted by Ben | February 4, 2008 12:02 PM

"Oh well, when people start saying things like most black kids are bad students, there really is no point in arguing."

Of course not, because you can't refute a fact.

"A racist is gonna be a racist, no matter what logic you hurl at him."

Prove me wrong with facts and I'll gladly change my views. All the evidence I have seen shows that most black kids are bad students. That's the Occam's Razor explanation for why they do so poorly in public school districts like D.C.'s despite enormous amounts of money spent per pupil.

"Come on, that's only one syllable shorter!"

Hey, shorter is shorter.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 12:02 PM

Oprah just telephoned. She said to tell that piece of white trash Harry to shut up and finish cleaning her pool.

Posted by Don Williams | February 4, 2008 12:05 PM

Oprah says Harry can debate politics on his own time -- but at $10 per hour, she expects to see that damm sweep move at least once every 30 minutes.

She muttered something else about "lazy, shiftless, mother$#@& " but I didn't catch the rest of it.

Posted by Don Williams | February 4, 2008 12:09 PM

Yo Harry:
Since you have ignored my request (at 11:23) to provide evidence for the following claim you made:

"That's why so many whites are so enthusiastic about Obama's candidacy, in the hopes that he will by some alchemy turn all blacks into articulate, intelligent, law-abiding Americans who are no longer in need of welfare and affirmative action."

-- I am concluding that you pulled it out of your ass.

There's no shortage, on and off the Internet, of white people talking about why they support Obama. None of them say anything like this. Are they sending you secret emails saying "psst, here's what I really think!"?

Harry, as is evident from his statements above ("everyone who is honest acknowledges this," etc.), just can't conceive of anyone not having racist beliefs about blacks. So he imputes them, by projection and on no evidence, to all the white people who say they support Obama. That doesn't tell us anything about why people like Obama, but it tells us a lot about the sad, pathetic inner life of people like Harry.

Posted by guyx | February 4, 2008 12:10 PM

That's clever, Don Williams, but really, if what I have written here weren't true, you would actually be trying to refute it instead of calling me a racist. Maybe you can gin up a conspiracy theory to blame Haim Saban for black academic failure? Maybe the Power Rangers have a negative effect on black cognition?

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 12:11 PM

The comment threads here are generally pretty decent, except when racist (and sometimes sexist) trollery starts to run wild. I'm not sure I understand this. There may be racist trollery at Kevin Drum's site and Atrios's, but those are essentially unreadable, so I have no idea. Perhaps the issue, then, is that Matt attracts no more than the usual number of racist trolls, but that we notice them here because we actually read the comments section.

Posted by John | February 4, 2008 12:14 PM

Has anyone noticed that MattY has gotten even worse lately? He just throws out the braindead red meat without even spending his usual 10 seconds thinking things through. He's completely oblivious to the differences between then and now.

It's almost like following the Party line is more important to him than his reputation.

Posted by TLB | February 4, 2008 12:15 PM

guyx,

You know how to work a search engine, right? So do your own homework. I'm sure you'll find sentiments from white Obama supporters about how they feel his election would transform race relations and obviate the need for affirmative action.

My comments about black academic performance and crime rates aren't racist slurs, just common facts, which, like everyone else here, you haven't bothered to refute. Calling me a racist won't make inconvenient truths disappear. Deal with the world as it is.

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 12:16 PM

40% of 4th generation Mexican Americans can't graduate high school.

I've heard the racist trolls quote this stat several times now, and I'd be interested to know where it comes from and what it means. How is a "4th generation Mexican American" defined? Self-identified? Purebred? Who still considers themselves Mexican-American after four generations here? Anyone who does is probably not well assimilated, by definition.

Posted by fp | February 4, 2008 12:18 PM

Shorter Harry:

"You're right, I pulled it out of my ass."

Thanks for confirming.

Posted by guyx | February 4, 2008 12:18 PM

Harry,

Let me help you with cause and effect:

You have not proved or submitted even one shred of evidence to suggest that violent crime rate in black neighborhoods contributed to white flight. Rather, you base your argument about demographic trends of yesterday based on statistics of today. You are putting the cart before the horse. If you had one shred of intellectual honesty you would perhaps tackle the question of declining property values in black neighborhoods that occured in the 50s-70s which resulted in black inner city areas of today. Of course your responses of "everyone acknowleges this" is rather dishonest. What is acknowleged is that as blacks moved into northern cities, whites moved out and caused property values to plummet. The "block busters" of the 60s in Detroit destroyed property values and rolled up neighborhoods and ruined equity for the blacks that moved in, despite there being no correlary about educational performance or crime rate. As I've pointed out, crime rate is rising in white communities with declining equity like Stockton and Ontario. Why don't you address this point? It is obviously due to intellectual dishonest.

Posted by freddiemac | February 4, 2008 12:32 PM

I've heard the racist trolls quote this stat several times now, and I'd be interested to know where it comes from and what it means. How is a "4th generation Mexican American" defined? Self-identified? Purebred? Who still considers themselves Mexican-American after four generations here? Anyone who does is probably not well assimilated, by definition.

My Dad is a fourth-generation Irish-American, and he certainly considers himself to be such. I think this is fairly common. Why should Mexican-Americans be any different? Beyond that, the proper question to ask is if this 40% figure is just pulled out of Harry's ass. I'm very, very dubious.

Posted by John | February 4, 2008 12:32 PM

Troll Harry:

Are you kidding? Whites would love to let you in, and have you start acting like whites. That's why so many whites are so enthusiastic about Obama's candidacy, in the hopes that he will by some alchemy turn all blacks into articulate, intelligent, law-abiding Americans who are no longer in need of welfare and affirmative action.

I love how trolls assert facts which have no basis in reality. Whites are voting for Obama b/c they think he'll make the best President of the Most Powerful Nation in the World.

He won in Iowa which is almost all white. Think Iowans care much about the blacks?

Back in the 18th century, everyone thought like Franklin, women had no rights and were basically property of their husbands. People all thought like Troll Harry, it's pretty funny.

Even back in the 1950s, racism was mind-blowingly prevalent, but then you had the civil rights movement and that negro rock and roll music, etc. Even a year ago I wouldn't have thought it possible that a black would be elected President, but it's funny how things change through the years.

Anyone see the movie Undercover Brother? In France, the left is calling their President, President Bling Bling, b/c they think he's too American, i.e. gangsta culture goes global.

Posted by Peter K. | February 4, 2008 12:44 PM

John,

"Beyond that, the proper question to ask is if this 40% figure is just pulled out of Harry's ass. I'm very, very dubious."

I was wrong in quoting that 40% figure. The actual figure is 41%. See page 13 of this PDF by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington. If you'd like to check his primary sources, here they are:

Rodolfo O. De la Garza, Angelo Falcón, P.
Chris García's "Mexican Immigrants, Mexican
Americans, and American Political Culture," in
Barry Edmonston and Jeffrey S. Passell's (eds.)
Immigration and Ethnicity: The Integration of
America's Newest Arrivals (Washington: Urban
Institute Press, 1994); and "Census of Population:
Persons of Hispanic Origin in the United States,"
Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, 1990)

Posted by Harry | February 4, 2008 12:58 PM

Harry, you are an ignorant racist. If it weren't for racism and a lack of investment in public education, blacks and Mexican Americans would be doing just as well as whites. Anyway, you're probably going to have a black president next year, so you'll have to learn to deal.
Posted by Emily

Harry is obviously more well-informed than you. As for Obama, he is a biracial child abandoned by a black father who was little better than a fast-talking con artist that died a penniless failure. Obama has spent a good part of his life "dealing" with the truth of the feckless black father, the responsible white mother and grandparents, and the kindly Indonesian man that was his real childhood father.

As for your assertion that the only impediment to black and low-rung Mexican Americans being equal in every way to whites (and Asians) being "good schools and ending racism" -Not True. We see "white" hispanics from all of Latin America, Chinese, Arabs, Filipinos, East Europeans, Indians, Vietnamese, etc. having to go through the unfortunate gauntlet of having to be educated in inner city schools and despite lots of racism and intimidation directed against them ( mainly from black thugs), succeeding. Then moving out in 2nd Generation to better jobs, businesses - and whose kids now show up to dominate elite colleges (within limits against their numbers in the student body imposed by affirmative action). A Chinese MD in my city commented the schools here were light years better than what he grew up with, and the only racism he found in the USA was of two sorts the mild one of some whites ignoring he existed, the harsh one of black racists in inner cities where he started out his practice. Ridiculing his language, belittling his skills and accusing him of taking a "good" job from a more deserving black person, targeting he and his Asian comrades with shakedowns, robberies, beating up his kids at school for being Asian.

Whereas blacks and the 2nd, 3rd Gen Hispanic-Americans mainly from lower classes of Mexico - given the same opportunities with schools a motivated student can easily learn at, who encounter less overall "racism" than new immigrants get, and without the language barrier? It appears they do not have the same upward mobility.

Educational and professional attainment lag and prediliction for crime and familial dysfunction are markedly higher.

Moreover, Emily's trite diagnosis could come straight out of the mouth of a young, naive white female do-gooder with a touch of jungle fever in the mid-50s. "All races are equal in culture and ability!! Once decolonialism is complete and the US has civil rights and desegregation you'll see the Noble Negro's civilization rise!"

Except it didn't happen. Anywhere where there is black majority rule, 40-50 years after civil rights, you find a shithole. Decolonialization led to marginal to outright failed black nations from the Caribbean to Somalia. Where black majority rule is more recent, you find cities(Brixton, Paris suburbs, Savannah) and nations (S Africa)trending to become true shitholes are fast-tracked there in record time (Rhodesia-Zimbabwe).

And this is not just easily blamed on the US. Black neighborhood high-crime, low-achievement shitholes formed right and left in the most advanced socially progressive nations that decided to admit blacks and school them with their kids and give massive social welfare largess to - from the slums of black communist refugees on the Soviet Union, to the new slums of Sweden, to the failed planned banieuls of Marseilles.

A portion of blacks - 30%-40%, may be capable of living in a modern civilization and adding to it, but it's a little past the era of the idealistic liberal white woman of the 50s dreaming that "things will be so different for blacks" in 50 years - to the reality that "American racism" "lack of opportunity" have little to do with blacks and unfortunately the descendents of Mexican peasants - not succeeding.

*************************

The Ben Franklin quote was accurate. He did everything in his power to quash Multiculti, discourage largescale immigration to Pennsylvania fearing creation of another Quebec and drawing of the Germanic powers into the New World to protect their interests.
Franklin not only thought slavery was a mistake, he thought the existance of blacks in the New World was an overall negative that would diminish any civilization arising there. He was also very negative on Muslims (Mohammadeans) ever being allowed in America because they were not capable of peaceful coexistence with Christians.

Thomas Jefferson had similar views on blacks and Muslims in his Notes on the State of Virginia and his diplomatic correspondence on the Barbary Pirates and establishing diplomatic ties with the Turks and "Spice Island Sultans".

Posted by chris ford | February 4, 2008 1:11 PM

She is staking out policy ground slightly to the left of Obama on domestic issues, and noticeably won the votes of those on lower incomes and without college degrees. In the words of that Clinton adviser: "If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."

The Clinton Campaign appears to agree with Harry on this issue, at least.

Posted by Una Known | February 4, 2008 1:29 PM

The unstated assumption, whenever these silly old nativist rants are resurrected for us enlightened folk to scoff at, is that on the whole Irish or Italian or German immigration to the US turned out to be a Good Thing, and that the silly nativists were wrong. But from the point of view of a Ben Franklin or a 19th century New England WASP, the immigration of these groups on the whole did indeed turn out to be a bad thing, or at least not wholly good. A lot what the nativists predicted - corruption of public morals, corrupt government, deterioration of civic culture, the loss of English folk traditions, corruption of the English language, loss of WASP political power - has come to pass. It's just that most of us now are descended from, or have absorbed, the culture of the immigrants, so we don't care about the culture of those we dispossessed. Anyone who lives in Massachusetts has to have had some second thoughts about how beneficial Irish immigration has really been for the US.

Posted by vanya_6724 | February 4, 2008 1:53 PM

"A portion of blacks - 30%-40%, may be capable of living in a modern civilization and adding to it"

Yeesh.

@John, Ben

Dunno. I read other blogs, and other comment sections. But something here, something about this site really brings Stormfronters out. And what's amazing is they're always couched among otherwise smart debates.

Posted by SillyNegro | February 4, 2008 2:14 PM

something here, something about this site really brings Stormfronters out

Part of it is that Matt was making the mistake of linking to Steve Sailer posts for a while there.

Posted by er | February 4, 2008 2:49 PM

Yes, vanya_6724 raises a very good point, which should be much more widely recognized.

On the other hand, I'd suspect that most of our Founding Fathers would regard many other aspects of our modern America---such as industrialization, a mammoth government, and universal voting rights---as such gigantic horrors, that the "dreadful" impacts of immigration wouldn't be remotely near the top of the list...

Posted by RKU | February 4, 2008 2:50 PM

Franklin's motives were political. The German immigrants tended to side with the Quakers rather than the wealthy Philadelphia-area elite (the Penn Family abandoned Quakerism fairly soon after William died). The Germans and Quakers tended toward pacifism (and populism, such as it was), and wanted nothing to do with the wars between England and France. Franklin considered himself an Englishman at this point, and was very ambitious. He saw significant personal prestige could be gained in securing an enthusiatic Pennsylvanian support for England in its wars with France.

His first writings on German immigration were favorable, translated to German and distributed widely. This was an attempt to win over the immigrants from the Quaker camp. It failed, so he changed course. His writings, like those of most politicians on immigration, should be seen for what they are - calculated pragmatism geared toward achieving other political aims.

Posted by Njorl | February 4, 2008 2:54 PM

Anyone who lives in Massachusetts has to have had some second thoughts about how beneficial Irish immigration has really been for the US.

Huh? I'm a non-Irish person who lived in MA for many years, and I can't say I ever thought this. Mostly because the Irish were "in charge" and it just seemed "normal." However, the established blue blood gentry was still there and strong, so it's really not clear that they "lost" anything due to Irish immigration. The WASP blue-bloods of MA were still rich and owned the pricey real estate and had kids who went to Harvard, just like they did before the Irish took over.

I should note that mass immigration was a stated policy of the USA government for the specific purpose of solidifying the nation's hold on the western territories. It was, however, inevitable that many of those immigrants were going to stay on the east coast or move back to the east coast rather than settling in the west.

To a large degree, nothing like the USA had been attempted at the time of the founding fathers, so the idea that a nation could admit a large number of foreign immigrants to settle the land yet still maintain itself as a recognizable entity was a foreign one to most everyone. Two centuries later, we know better, of course, given the benefit of experience showing that it works in practice.

Posted by Tyro | February 4, 2008 3:03 PM

Per Jeet, but this notion needs to be pounded on some more. Per Jeet:

You should first start by learning about the history of black Americans (highlights: slavery, Jim Crow, denial of citizenship rights, de facto second class status till this day) and then look at the history of the Irish (arrived in poverty but possessing voting rights from day one, able to ingratiate themselves with white majority to win privileges of whiteness). Whiteness is not won by good behavior. It’s tied to the exclusion of non-whites from power. You can’t have whiteness without blackness, in the American context.

In NYC, and I am sorry to be so NYC centric but it's the town I know the best, this is just utter hogwash. The Democratic party in NYC was taken over by the Irish after the Civil War, they didn't ingratiate themselves with the wasps that ran it. The Irish tossed them out! The wasps all became Republicans soon after and spent their political energy on keeping the Irish out of office, and didn't have all that much success. In addition, the Irish did not try to become Episcopalians, they built their own big cathedral right on Fifth Avenue. Through the Church, they founded lots of hospitals and had their own parallel school system. They didn't care what the wasps thought.

Same with the Jews. There was anti semitism in NYC before the Civil War, but it was a lot less virulent compared to Europe, there were Jewish members of the Union Club during the Civil War. After Jews started arriving in large numbers from Poland, the previous Jews were mostly from Germany, anti semitism became much more virulent and actually some club members sons couldn't get into the Union Club they started up their own club, no ingratiating brown nosing. When Harvard wouldn't let them in there was no brown nosing, it was more like "OK don't let us in and then City College will be the wave of the future and Harvard will be a 19th century relic. Do you want that?".

Take Wall Street. Merrill Lynch, the Irish firm, Saloman, Goldman and Lehman, Jewish firms, no Irish and or Jews were trying all that hard to get a job at Morgan Stanley or Brown Brothers by brown nosing the wasps that ran these places.

No ethnic group in NYC ever got ahead by 'ingratiating themselves with the white majority', they kicked in the door in a most uningratiating manner.

I'd also agree with vanya above in a way. 'White' doesn't mean 'waspish' it's an amalgamation of all the groups that made it, it's a little Irish, a little wasp, a little Jewish and so on, the usual metaphor being the melting pot, though I think a stew works better as a metaphor than the melting pot. In addition to Massachussets politics, I think the chicanery you describe has far more to do with democracy itself, Elbridge Gerry was not an Irishman, the Irish were just good at little d democratic politics.

Posted by j mct | February 4, 2008 3:14 PM

j mct: What your giving here is the standard Ellis Island mythological version of American history (WASP elites versus spunky upstart immigrants).

It's not a a view that really stands up to scrutiny if you read the best contemporary historians of immigration and ethnicity (notably David Roediger). But as you mentioned earlier in this thread, you're unwilling to read scholars like Roediger (or Ignatiev, who makes an inferior version of the same arugment) because they challenge your pre-conceived notions.

All I can say is that Roediger does show historical examples of Irish immigrants gaining a foothold in American society by claiming white status, a prcocess that often involves heaping scorn on African Americans. He documents these claims rather well, so I think you have to read what he says before you dismiss it out of hand. You can't argue with scholarship by reciting hoary self-congratulatory ethnic myths.

Posted by Jeet Heer | February 4, 2008 3:29 PM

If mexicans are assimilating through the generations then why do their incarceration rates increase 8X from the first immigrant generation to the second native born generation, going from moderately lower than the non-hispanic white rate to many times higher?
source: "Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality" http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=403
see heading near middle of page: "Second Generation".

Posted by pjgoober | February 4, 2008 4:12 PM

It's said that one can justify anything with a Bible quote. That's not really true about the New Testament in isolation, but one can do it because with the Old Testament, the Bible is a really big book, and by selectively quoting it, one can justifiy anything.

Big country, the USA and with 200+ years of history to quote from, one can justify any thesis one might want, as long as one is selective. I'm quite sure the scholars aren't quoting anything demonstrably false, but one must be tremendously ignorant if one finds such citations to be representative of historical reality.

Back to my main point, I suppose I differ with such scholars about what's 'myth' and what's reality, and as to whose 'story' is a 'myth'. You attribute psychological pleasure as the reason for my 'story' per 'self congratulatory'. Nice theory, except my story happens to be true and 'the best contemporary history' happens to be hogwash, though a bright eyed student whose mind is a blank slate and who always believes his perfesser no matter how silly his pronouncements are might foolishly believe otherwise.

As to the research project I envisioned, or why 'the best contemporary history' happens to be hogwash, given that it is hogwash, well you tell me why 'the best contemporary history' happens to be hogwash? I'm sure they are all very serious and tendentious and sincere as they spout their hogwash also. Studying history will give one no insight as to the contents of 'the best contemporary history', so I suggested some sort of anthropological study on 'the best contemporary historians'. Do you have a better way to go?

Posted by j mct | February 4, 2008 4:25 PM

emily writes: "If it weren't for racism and a lack of investment in public education, blacks and Mexican Americans would be doing just as well as whites."

Blacks and Hispanics don't do so hot in affluent districts with lots of money either:

"Study finds minority students fall behind at both poor and affluent schools"
http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/site/c.kjJXJ5MPIwE/b.2286393/k.7F2C/Study_finds_minority_students_fall_behind_at_both_poor_and_affluent_schools.htm

Also, here is Cambridge's Professor Pedro A. Noguera:
"Racial Politics and The Elusive Quest
for Excellence and Equity in Education",
excerpt:
"Despite their relative privilege, middle class Black students typically lag behind White and Asian students of similar and even lower socio economic status (Jencks and Phillips 1998; Spencer 2000). Similar patterns can be seen among Black and Latino students who attend well financed, integrated schools in affluent communities (Jencks and Phillips 1998). For such students, arguments related to inequities in funding and access to educational opportunities which are relevant to poor students, do not seem pertinent."
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/er/pnrp1.html

So your funding explanation doesn't seem to cut it. All we are left with is your racism explanation, something that must be applied to black and hispanic teachers of blacks and hispanics through "internalization" of stereotypes as well. Disproving that is like trying to prove a negative. There is always another way to pass non-asian minority under-achievement onto the larger society. But, whether that explanation is true or not, how about we figure out how to fix this before we allow more immigration of low-acheivers?

Posted by pjgoober | February 4, 2008 4:37 PM

Vanya,

I'm from Massachusetts and I don't think that Irish immigration has been a bad thing. Corruption isn't particularly an Irish thing (how corrupt is the Republic of Ireland?) and anyway this is a rich enough country that we can afford a bit of corruption in our politicians. I think that the Irish immigration- and later the immigrants from all over the world- have done a lot to enrich the Boston area culture. I would suspect that the decline in public morals, corrupt government, loss of civic culture, etc. has more to do with modernity and late-capitalist values than with immigration. The Salvadorans and Dominicans aren't the ones in control of the political establishment, so it seems a bit illogical to blame political corruption on the malign influence of Hispanic culture, or whatever.