I'm certainly no expert but evidence has shown in other areas, which should be divorced from American considerations, there is often a huge marginal effect from foreign people having a bug up their ass about American politics. Obama winning the Nobel for outstanding achievements in the field of not being George W. Bush springs to mind. It's never the main reason but if you were comparing two otherwise equal candidates and one was a fuck you to an American president you did not dig....might push him over the top.
I agree mostly, but I think the smaller numbers of Italians and French makes being an English-speaker more important, which inevitably gives Americans a bigger role. Although it’s notable that this pope was never a diocesan bishop in America.
Pope Francis created cardinals from a variety of far-flung places some of which had never had cardinals before, like Mongolia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Mozambique and Madagascar (but not Milan). Making the Church less Eurocentric would seem to benefit English-speakers from a superpower with global reach.
It's more likely to be Maya Rudolph. Too many people know what the Pope looks like. Blacks will try to get away with pretending to play whites with small amounts of African ancestry, but such people are usually deceased and not well known to the general public.
All our "woke" comedians tell us that the black subculture is essentially that of the criminal underclass. The black middle class, however, loves to claim part-black whites (real or alleged) who are culturally no different from other whites.
Note here how the very woke and liberal "Saturday Night Live" is trying to tie the new pope to black "South Side" criminals and subculture. They have never heard of cultured, white-identified Creoles but they have heard of the black criminal subculture (the ONLY black culture according to SNL).
“links Leo XIV to the rich and sometimes overlooked Black Catholic experience in America.”
Exactly how rich is the American black Catholic experience, considering that blacks comprise ca. 4-5% of all US Catholics. So a relevant question would be: are Creoles in the US mainly Catholic? And if they are, are they lumped in among the stats for “black” Catholics in America?
“Culturally dominant African-Americans tend to be peeved at Creoles of Color for not subscribing to the One Drop Rule.”
Indeed.
“They tend to believe in a Color Continuum. They generally view themselves as superior to blacks.”
The Creoles of 19th Century Louisiana owned black slaves btw.
“He also comes from a family that reflects the many threads that make up the complicated and rich fabric of the American story.”
"Mattel’s Hot Wheels promoted the Snake vs. Tom McEwen’s Mongoose through-out the 1970s."
My cousin, who owns a small auto body shop, would be all over this post if he was online as much as me. As it is, he only occasionally posts once every six months or so on FB. Funny, because he is only a year and half younger than me, and he and his brothers are the closest thing I had to brothers growing up. His latest FB entry from a few months ago is a short video of him somewhere at an event honoring Don "Big Daddy" Garlits, who, I just checked to see, is chugging along at the ripe old age of 93.
I think most Catholic elementary schools had the same sort of uniforms in the 60s. Dark plaid skirts that reached the knees and white blouses for the girls. Navy blue slacks, white shirts, navy blue suit-jackets and navy blue ties for the boys. The nuns wore black habits with white trim. The rulers were 36" and could be used as weapons. Only the nuns could use them.
Interesting, as that was similar outfits for Catholic kids attending their schools as well in this area of the US.
People tend to forget that adult Catholics used to attend Mass in roughly the same type of outfits--or what could be called business casual, and not wearing sports jerseys and kardashian-esque outfits to Mass like so many adults do unfortunately nowadays.
I think it is sad that Tiffany Henyard, retired mayor of Dolton, can't take an all expenses junket to the Vatican to congratulate the pope.
More seriously, Dolton, IL reminds me so much of my own hometown of Seabrook, MD. Both suburbs experienced a rapid demographic revolution. But I wonder whether Dolton will have a second-stage demographic revolution. Over the past twenty years, Hispanics have been buying up houses in Seabrook. Hispanics were about 22 % of Seabrook's population in the 2020 census.
The photo Steve Sailer provides reminds me so much of the Catholic elementary school I attended in the mid-to-late 60s.
The Melungeon people of the Appalachians are also of mixed race. They are centered in southwestern Virginia, northeastern Tennessee, northwestern North Carolina and southeastern Kentucky. A century and more ago, the Melungeons used to claim that their heritage was Portuguese to get their children into the white schools rather than the black schools in the segregated South. In reality it seems, frontier Virginia and North Carolina in the 17th Century had a certain amount of interracial romantic liaisons, perhaps even an occasional English servant girl with a free-black man. It is now thought that the Melungeons were born from such liaisons.
Interesting how the NYT is suddenly enthusiastic about ancestry and genetics, when it suits their preferred narrative to elevate the "noble" "oppressed". Such rank hypocrisy is why I only read the NYT adjacently, through Steve Sailor. Confirms my long-held hypothesis the the obsession with "racism" and "anti-racism" is really just the new improved racism, but the elites will never cop to that.
More simply, when race can be used as a cudgel for moralizing, the left very much subscribes to it being real and measurable. When it results in unflattering comparisons to whites (and a lesser extent Asians) then it’s a social fiction.
I assumed he was Italian or Portuguese based on looks alone, as those seem to be backgrounds whose appearance can be malleable depending on the observer. Such is the case with my father, who has been mistaken by others for a few different ethnicities over the years in casual and business settings.
I was thinking Mediterranean French based on looks and the surname. "Prevost" sounds French to me.
I didn't know he had roots in Louisiana. I've met plenty of Cajuns that are swarthier than he is. An old foreman from Mississippi once told me, "A coonass ain't nothin' but a HARD R turned inside out."
Its essentially another of the many threads in the heavily male preoccupation with going really fast (on horses, in chariots, in cars, in planes, rockets, etc.).
You often go after the race-is-a-social-construct people, but the one-drop rule is a clear example of race being a social construct. A person with one great grandparent of wholly African ancestry and seven great grandparents of wholly European ancestry is 87.5% European and 12.5% African. To say that such a person is “passing” if they identify socially as “White” is to put a social category over the genetic and ancestral category. The decision to have a color line rather than a continuum is an example of a contingent social order that could easily be different.
Of course, in 1955 it would almost certainly benefit the 87.5% European to “pass” as White, while in 2025 the 12.5% African is socially advantaged by passing as Black.
Steve, you of all people should know that the so-called "One Drop Rule" didn't come into play until the early 1900s when some states, including my native Tennessee, decreed that people with any Negro ancestry would be considered colored for statistical purposes. Black activists seized on the idea and more or less owned it. It is well known that in the antebellum period. states in the South followed the Virginia decree that anyone with less than 1/8th Negro ancestry was white. (Read Mark Twain.) At the same time, slavery was based on the status of the mother. If a slave woman had a child with a free man, it was considered a slave regardless of color.
Yeah, globalism is part of the Catholic brand.
I'm certainly no expert but evidence has shown in other areas, which should be divorced from American considerations, there is often a huge marginal effect from foreign people having a bug up their ass about American politics. Obama winning the Nobel for outstanding achievements in the field of not being George W. Bush springs to mind. It's never the main reason but if you were comparing two otherwise equal candidates and one was a fuck you to an American president you did not dig....might push him over the top.
I agree mostly, but I think the smaller numbers of Italians and French makes being an English-speaker more important, which inevitably gives Americans a bigger role. Although it’s notable that this pope was never a diocesan bishop in America.
Pope Francis created cardinals from a variety of far-flung places some of which had never had cardinals before, like Mongolia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Mozambique and Madagascar (but not Milan). Making the Church less Eurocentric would seem to benefit English-speakers from a superpower with global reach.
Well now we know who’ll be playing the Pope in the next NetFlix biopic, Wesley Snipes.
It's more likely to be Maya Rudolph. Too many people know what the Pope looks like. Blacks will try to get away with pretending to play whites with small amounts of African ancestry, but such people are usually deceased and not well known to the general public.
Very interesting essay, Steve. The new Pope earned a degree in Mathematics at Villanova, which doesn’t seem very typically black.
Good luck and God bless him, whatever the case.
As some wag said, this means the Pope doesn't just understand sin, he also understands cos.
All our "woke" comedians tell us that the black subculture is essentially that of the criminal underclass. The black middle class, however, loves to claim part-black whites (real or alleged) who are culturally no different from other whites.
Note here how the very woke and liberal "Saturday Night Live" is trying to tie the new pope to black "South Side" criminals and subculture. They have never heard of cultured, white-identified Creoles but they have heard of the black criminal subculture (the ONLY black culture according to SNL).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP0mKoMFcow
“links Leo XIV to the rich and sometimes overlooked Black Catholic experience in America.”
Exactly how rich is the American black Catholic experience, considering that blacks comprise ca. 4-5% of all US Catholics. So a relevant question would be: are Creoles in the US mainly Catholic? And if they are, are they lumped in among the stats for “black” Catholics in America?
“Culturally dominant African-Americans tend to be peeved at Creoles of Color for not subscribing to the One Drop Rule.”
Indeed.
“They tend to believe in a Color Continuum. They generally view themselves as superior to blacks.”
The Creoles of 19th Century Louisiana owned black slaves btw.
“He also comes from a family that reflects the many threads that make up the complicated and rich fabric of the American story.”
It’s complicated, Steve!
"Mattel’s Hot Wheels promoted the Snake vs. Tom McEwen’s Mongoose through-out the 1970s."
My cousin, who owns a small auto body shop, would be all over this post if he was online as much as me. As it is, he only occasionally posts once every six months or so on FB. Funny, because he is only a year and half younger than me, and he and his brothers are the closest thing I had to brothers growing up. His latest FB entry from a few months ago is a short video of him somewhere at an event honoring Don "Big Daddy" Garlits, who, I just checked to see, is chugging along at the ripe old age of 93.
Big Daddy Garlits was the first drag racer, top fuel, to reach 240.000 mph in 1968.
I don't think we can say 'drag' anymore.
My mom went to elementary school in Oak Park and has a class picture exactly like this one. Must be a Chicago thing.
I think most Catholic elementary schools had the same sort of uniforms in the 60s. Dark plaid skirts that reached the knees and white blouses for the girls. Navy blue slacks, white shirts, navy blue suit-jackets and navy blue ties for the boys. The nuns wore black habits with white trim. The rulers were 36" and could be used as weapons. Only the nuns could use them.
Interesting, as that was similar outfits for Catholic kids attending their schools as well in this area of the US.
People tend to forget that adult Catholics used to attend Mass in roughly the same type of outfits--or what could be called business casual, and not wearing sports jerseys and kardashian-esque outfits to Mass like so many adults do unfortunately nowadays.
I think it is sad that Tiffany Henyard, retired mayor of Dolton, can't take an all expenses junket to the Vatican to congratulate the pope.
More seriously, Dolton, IL reminds me so much of my own hometown of Seabrook, MD. Both suburbs experienced a rapid demographic revolution. But I wonder whether Dolton will have a second-stage demographic revolution. Over the past twenty years, Hispanics have been buying up houses in Seabrook. Hispanics were about 22 % of Seabrook's population in the 2020 census.
The photo Steve Sailer provides reminds me so much of the Catholic elementary school I attended in the mid-to-late 60s.
Dolton, Illinois, the home of Tiffany Henyard.
I'm waiting for her to be hired at MSNBC.
The Melungeon people of the Appalachians are also of mixed race. They are centered in southwestern Virginia, northeastern Tennessee, northwestern North Carolina and southeastern Kentucky. A century and more ago, the Melungeons used to claim that their heritage was Portuguese to get their children into the white schools rather than the black schools in the segregated South. In reality it seems, frontier Virginia and North Carolina in the 17th Century had a certain amount of interracial romantic liaisons, perhaps even an occasional English servant girl with a free-black man. It is now thought that the Melungeons were born from such liaisons.
I attended two Melungeon conventions in Kingsport, Tennessee. The great majority of Melungeon descendants are regular, middle-class white Southerners.
I would guess that Melungeons are at least 98 % white by DNA. But I'm no scientist.
Interesting how the NYT is suddenly enthusiastic about ancestry and genetics, when it suits their preferred narrative to elevate the "noble" "oppressed". Such rank hypocrisy is why I only read the NYT adjacently, through Steve Sailor. Confirms my long-held hypothesis the the obsession with "racism" and "anti-racism" is really just the new improved racism, but the elites will never cop to that.
More simply, when race can be used as a cudgel for moralizing, the left very much subscribes to it being real and measurable. When it results in unflattering comparisons to whites (and a lesser extent Asians) then it’s a social fiction.
Rather the way IQ is completely without foundation until it can be used to spare murderers from execution.
I assumed he was Italian or Portuguese based on looks alone, as those seem to be backgrounds whose appearance can be malleable depending on the observer. Such is the case with my father, who has been mistaken by others for a few different ethnicities over the years in casual and business settings.
I was thinking Mediterranean French based on looks and the surname. "Prevost" sounds French to me.
I didn't know he had roots in Louisiana. I've met plenty of Cajuns that are swarthier than he is. An old foreman from Mississippi once told me, "A coonass ain't nothin' but a HARD R turned inside out."
My former Sister-in-Law, surname of L'Etoile, was darker than Pope Leo XIV and she was from Rhode Island and was of French-Canadian ancestry.
The new pope looks to be one of the few people that get better looking with advanced age. I would have guessed North African from those photos.
Oh right, the car is funny, not the driver. I vaguely remember blaring TV ads for funny car races. No idea what they are.
Primer for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funny_Car
Its essentially another of the many threads in the heavily male preoccupation with going really fast (on horses, in chariots, in cars, in planes, rockets, etc.).
Every Funny Car has ballistic blankets covering the supercharger because this part of the engine is prone to explosion.
well, duh
Part of the thrill, lol
Grok estimates his sub-Saharan ancestry at 6.25%
You often go after the race-is-a-social-construct people, but the one-drop rule is a clear example of race being a social construct. A person with one great grandparent of wholly African ancestry and seven great grandparents of wholly European ancestry is 87.5% European and 12.5% African. To say that such a person is “passing” if they identify socially as “White” is to put a social category over the genetic and ancestral category. The decision to have a color line rather than a continuum is an example of a contingent social order that could easily be different.
Of course, in 1955 it would almost certainly benefit the 87.5% European to “pass” as White, while in 2025 the 12.5% African is socially advantaged by passing as Black.
People who would try that are a tiny minority and would get into trouble if they tried to pull it off. A good book to read on how the bureaucracy deals with racial classification issues is "Classified" by David Bernstein. https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/law-professor-david-bernstein-on-racial-classifications/
Steve, you of all people should know that the so-called "One Drop Rule" didn't come into play until the early 1900s when some states, including my native Tennessee, decreed that people with any Negro ancestry would be considered colored for statistical purposes. Black activists seized on the idea and more or less owned it. It is well known that in the antebellum period. states in the South followed the Virginia decree that anyone with less than 1/8th Negro ancestry was white. (Read Mark Twain.) At the same time, slavery was based on the status of the mother. If a slave woman had a child with a free man, it was considered a slave regardless of color.