Genealogy / Do you think all Slavs are white? [178]

The opposite of “White” is not “Black” when racial categories are being discussed. Although not being “White” is clearly to be identified as part of some other race. When someone says a “Polack can do work that would kill a white man” there is definitely ascription of some distinct “racial” characteristics. E.O. Ross, one of America’s leading sociologists who was a contemporary of the African American who thought “Polacks ain’t white” described Polish and Slavic coalminers (perhaps including my grandfather who was there at the time) as “hirsute, low browed men” of “obviously low intelligence”. . . “Beaten men of beaten breeds”. Sounds like an inferior race to me.

Benjamin Franklin who parsed racial categories as deftly many of our fellow posters, concluded that “Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion as are Germans also, the Saxons only accepted (sic) who with the English make the principal body of White People on the Face of the Earth.” The Germans, he concluded, “will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion.”

It was in Franklin’s time thanks to effort to create human taxonomies people by like Linnaeus, that skin color – one of the most mutable and insignificant human characteristics - acquired its role a key marker of human difference. People like Franklin, Madison Grant, William Z. Ripley then established human hierarchies based on it

The greatest diversity among people is among Africans themselves since Africa is the source of our human species and we developed there the longest. Given the small and select stream of Africans who immigrated out of the continent to become the ancestors of all of the rest of the populations of the world, it is very likely that any Chinese, Malay, Iranian or Swede is genetically closer to any given African than that African is to any of his fellow Africans.

Since our primate cousins – the great apes – have lightly pigmented or unpigmented skin beneath their heavy coat of hair scientists have suggested that our original human ancestors were probably “White” and had to become darker as they became less hirsute (“The Naked Ape”) to adapt to the environment of equatorial Africa.

See: Nina Jablonski, Ph.D., Skin A Natural History

Genealogy / Do you think all Slavs are white? [178]

Some of the posts in this thread make me feel as though I had just go caught in a time warp and walked into a room of full of people arguing about 19th century versions of the 18th Century idea of race. I am sorry but there just isn't such a thing, except over in the U.S. Census Bureau which is stuck because of the History of Slavery and its evils into keeping track of people by "Race" to deal with redress. In the

U.S. 'white" used to simply mean the guys in charge. A hundred years ago an elderly African American was asked by a reporter if any "white" people lived in his neighborhood. He answered "No. There's some Polacks but they ain't white, you know".The distinction of "Polacks" and white men was commonly used well into living memory . We became "White" sometime between 1935 and 1965.(By the way the U. S. Census [ACS 2006-2009] shows that there 120,000 people who self identify as Polish who also claim to be of more than one race. That is a group larger than all but the largest local Polonias and constitutes about 2% of all who self identify as "Polish" in the U.S. (approximately 10 million)

In any case we are all more closely related than we think. If each of us goes back 1000 years we would have a trillion direct ancestors- far more than have ever lived on earth. This is obviously impossible since populations 1000 years ago were very small. Statistically, the most recent ancestor of everyone living today of European ancestry lived only 600 years ago. (Poland had 1.2 million people in 1000 A.D.Probably all who had descendants-est. about 80%- are the direct ancestors of every Pole alive now.) Since mating wasn't random we probably need to back to about 1000 A. D. to safely say that everyone in Europe living then who had descendants is the direct ancestor of everyone of European ancestry living today. So we all are not just directly descended from everyone in Poland in 1000 AD but everyone in Europe in 1000 AD whose line lived on. Since many of Mohammed's descendants married Europeans in Eastern Europe, Italy, the Balkans and Spain and converted, we are all also direct descendants of Mohammed (died 632 A. D.). If it makes people feel better we can all also claim Charlemagne. Given the fact that Poland was one of Europe's great melting pots of peoples there is no doubt that we fit very well into that historical pattern

History / Poland Lithuania - current relations [124]

One of the problems with this discussion is it confuses modern national identities with earlier identities. By the 17th and 18th Centuries there was a "Polish Nation" but it didn't include peasants speaking Polish dialects. It included mainly gentry of Polish, Lithuanian, East Slavic, German, Armenian, Tatar, Scottish, South Slavic etc. origins who shared a common Polish Language and culture and a membership in the elite of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. (Czesław Miłosz's family originated in west Slavic Sorbian Areas. Father Kollontai's family was of Slovenian Ancestry) The peasants: Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belorussian speaking were only "Ludzie Tutejsze" (local people). They did not belong to any "nation"

It is only when the Polish speaking peasants started to be included in the Polish nation that local elites sought out ties to their own local folk. See Tim Snyder's incomparable book :"The Transformation of Nations" for a clear exposition of the issue.

TCR

Love / Do African or Afro- American women find Polish men attractive? [179]

Just a brief footnote to the discussion: According to the U.S. Census about 100,000 people who say they are Polish American also identify as bi-racial. That is about 1% of the Polish American Population. I know of a number of young people of Polish-African or African American Ancestry who are part of Polish cultural and dance groups and/or attend Saturday School. But this is not a recent phenomenon. I continually meet middle aged African Americans with a Polish grandparent or grandparents who have achieved a significant status or educational levels. A senior aide to the governor of Michigan proudly claims her Polish babcia. Most include perogi and gołąbki among their soul food choices. During the earliest period of immigration (I write on Polish immigration and have written more on relations between African Americans and Polish immigrants than anyone else) is was primarily Polish males who married or had long term liaisons often with children than not. One of the towering figures of Polish American Catholicism who performed a wedding between an African American man and his Polish immigrant fiancée in 1929 in a sermon that became legendary in his parish, admonished the mean spirited parish gossips that these are both children of God who has brought them together and that their life together will be difficult enough with the added poison of their hurtful words.

If you are interested in Polonia issues and demography check out the Piast institute. It is a research and policy center which contains an official Census Information Center with the special mission to study Polonia. Piast's newly published study Polish Americans Today is based on a national survey of 1400 Polish American Activists. It also contains a through demographic

picture of Polonia today. Its response to Bill O'Reilly's dismissive remark on the Polish Army in 1939 has gotten wide publicity in the last week. It's older international symposium on J.T.

Gross' book FEAR (analysisoffear.org) is still getting hits. On the facebook search bar enter "friends of piast" and "piast institute" to check it out