From Darwin's Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex:

The following case, though relating to savages, is well worth giving from its curiosity. Mr. Winwood Reade informs me that the Jollofs, a tribe of negroes on the west coast of Africa, “are remarkable for their uniformly Fine appearance.” A friend of his asked one of these men, “How is it that every one whom I meet is so fine looking, not only your men, but your women?" The Jollof answered, “It is very easily explained: it has always been our custom to pick out our worse-looking slaves and to sell them.”

It need hardly be added that, with all savages, female slaves serve as concubines. That this negro should have attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, the fine appearance of his tribe to the long-continued elimination of the ugly women is not so surprising as it may at first appear; for I have elsewhere shown that negroes fully appreciate the importance of selection in the breeding of their domestic animals, and I could give from Mr. Reade additional evidence on this head.

Two things: It's not that we are all immigrants in America, with the distinction only being between those who were forced here and those who came here of their own free will. Fleeing poverty or war or persecution is not leaving a country of your own free will. The bad situation, what ever it may be, is forcing you to depart. Mexicans do not come to the US because it's such a cool place; it's because they have to, are forced to, and risk lives and dignity to. The Irish of the 19th century were in much the same situation. The ancestors of many Americans were forced to come here, one way or another. So, it is a question of what forced you to this country.

Secondly, I hate it when immigrants, in reference to black Americans, go on about how their parents or grandparents were not lazy, how they came to this country and broke their backs to make ends meet. True, those noble people worked hard for very little pay, but a little pay is still infinitely more (financially and spiritually) than getting paid nothing for hard work. And slavery did not happen a very long, long, so long time ago. This isn't deep history. It happened fairly recently. Even I was born in a segregated hospital; born in the section for black Africans only. Before that, my great-grandmother saw the first white person on Christmas Pass. 40 years before that, black Americans were picking cotton for nothing.

Myrtle Beach, the location of the last GOP debate, is the only place I've been called a nigger in my face by a white person. Well, to be honest, it wasn't exactly in my face. Let me explain: I went down there in 91 for spring break. I went with a group of students from my small and dreary Pennsylvania college. I shared a room with this group. At the end of our first day there, I walked to a quiet spot near the crowded motel, lit a cigarette, and stared at the unbeautiful sea. A moment into the smoke, a white woman approached me and asked for a cigarette. I gave her one and hoped she would continue on her way for two good reasons: one, I really wanted be alone; two, she was ugly. But she stayed put and smoked and talked.

Suddenly from a passing car: "Hey, what are you doing with that nigger." On hearing this, what upset me most was the hicks actually thought I was romantically tied with this ugly woman. That was a deep insult. I wanted to yell: "I have nothing to do with this woman, I'm from the city, she is not my type, please feel free to save her from the nigger."

The car was gone before any word formed on my lips. I turned and saw the woman's face was the picture of mortification. She profusely apologized for her race—we're not all like that, times were changing, people would learn to live together. The more she apologized, the worse I felt for thinking bad things about her appearance. Life is so complicated.

You can see how this developed into "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

"There was shock in Harlem tonight when word of Dr. King's murder reached the nation's largest negro community. Men, women, and children poured into the streets. They appeared dazed."

William Rufus de Vane King! And who the fuck was he? HistoryLink has the story:

William Rufus de Vane King was a plantation owner in Alabama who was elected to the U.S. Senate and served there for 34 years. In 1844 he became ambassador to France, and his diplomacy enabled the United States to annex Texas. He was a key advocate of the Compromise of 1850, a series of laws that forged a compromise between slave states and free states concerning the extension of slavery into new states and territories. The compromise kept the Union together for a few more years before the Civil War, but included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a harsh law requiring the return of alleged fugitive slaves from the North back into bondage in the South.

This post has to give much love to Radjaw of Mad Rad for making it happen.

From 1951, back when Republican Governor Arthur B. Langlie liked to remind Washingtonians that they better express thanks for not living under "godless tyranny."

• Washington Secretary of State's Office
• Happy Thanksgiving! Click to enlarge!

• Melvin F. Aaron

The veteran that holds the largest space in my brain is my maternal grandfather, Melvin Aaron, a farmer turned soldier turned World War II vet, who came back from the war a changed man. The exact reasons for this change were a mystery. All we ever knew was “he saw some bad things in the war,” and these things changed him from someone who did things besides sitting in a chair reading Louis Lamour paperbacks to someone who didn’t. Eventually even the books went—whatever my grandfather saw in the war made him unwilling to see a doctor for any reason, and in his last years he lost his vision from easily operable cataracts.

“That’s grandpa!” went the story—the whole story, until a few years ago, when my Uncle Mike was going through some old boxes and found my grandfather's written account of exactly what he'd seen in the war. Along with being passed among family members, my grandpa's journal entry was published in the Clarion County Register, my grandpa and uncle's hometown paper, and it was a truly horrifying thing to read.

But it was also something we never thought we'd get: an actual answer to the question, "What broke Grandpa's brain?" I think this information was particularly valuable to my mother's younger sisters, who were born too late to know their pre-war dad. My mom was the eldest child and has memories of a dad who'd pick her up and swing her around and was a different person than the frozen man who came back from the war. My aunts and all us grandkids only knew the post-war version, and reading this account is the closest we'll ever get to knowing the earlier man.

You can read my grandfather's account of being a medic accompanying the first wave of U.S. Marines as they stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima after the jump. It's brutal, and involves historically understandable racial insensitivity ('Japs' throughout), but I am so glad it exists.

Continue reading »

"You're in high school again."

Did you go to punk rock shows? Click here.

What the fuck?

Historians rarely have much to say about the role of charm in public affairs. But it matters, and sometimes it matters a lot. William F. Buckley Jr. founded and spent thirty-five years editing National Review, published some fifty-odd books, hosted 1,429 episodes of Firing Line, and wrote a syndicated newspaper column from 1962 until the day of his death in 2008. Yet anyone who seeks to explain the nature of his contribution to American political life must start by pointing out something else that those who knew Buckley took for granted, which is that he was an irresistibly charming man. Whatever your political beliefs, you couldn't spend five minutes in his company without liking him, or feeling that he liked you...

Sure, it was 73 years ago, when the place was called the Night Hawk Tavern, but still, fascinating! From the August 22, 1938 edition of The Seattle Daily Times.

Thank you, Slog Tipper Ryan. (You may read about the ghosts of Re-bar and other Seattle bars here.)