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From The Guardian:
Some Californians have found a new drought scapegoat: immigration
Group called Californians for Population Stabilization says it’s a matter of simple mathematics, with 10 million more people living in the state than 25 years ago
Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Tuesday 26 May 2015 18.34Some people blame California’s enduring drought on the nut farmers. Others vent against those in Beverly Hills, who keep their estates green while neighbours in the flatlands turn off sprinklers under threat of heavy fines.
Now comes the latest, perhaps inevitable, scapegoat: immigration.
As somebody who lives in the the flatlands over the mountains from Beverly Hills, I’m struck by how many people, such as this Guardian reporter, assume unthinkingly that Beverly Hills residents and immigrants are antonyms.
But the Census Bureau reports that 37.4% of the residents of Beverly Hills are foreign born.
I guess we’re all supposed to have been programmed to believe that immigrants are necessarily “huddled masses,” which doesn’t fit well in our heads with living large in Beverly Hills.
Bijan of Beverly Hills
But if you grew up anywhere within 20 miles of Beverly Hills, you’d have started noticing the place filling up with immigrants right after OPEC raised oil prices in 1973. Persians and Arabs who had gotten rich back home — let’s not ask how — were appearing in large numbers by 40 years ago. Rodeo Drive leapt up into the stratosphere of what Herodotus might have called “Oriental luxury” with some of the impetus coming from crazy expensive shopkeepers like new immigrant Bijan of Beverly Hills who “opened” on Rodeo Drive in the mid-1970s a locked appointment-only boutique and put up countless billboards over the years of his beaming mug peddling stuff that even Beverly Hills natives thought tastelessly costly.
It’s really hard to be aware of patterns that your ideology doesn’t encourage you to regard.
The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles has eye-opening articles on the subject, such as:
Is Your School Too Persian? Is Beverly Hills Too Jewish?
by Dr. Afshine Emrani
May 14, 2014 | 7:09 amHere’s where the conversation starts, not ends.
There is an open wound that is infecting all Jews in Los Angeles. While across the street UCLA students are battling rampant anti-Semitism, at many of our temples and schools, we are facing anti-Persian bigotry. “This school is way too Persian. I wouldn’t send my kids there.” Chances are, if you are not Persian you have whispered this.
With the growing and dominant Persian culture in Los Angeles, this week, Sinai Akiba Academy ran a bold ad in the back of The Jewish Journal entitled “”Too Persian.” Looks awful in print? It sounds worse in a whisper.” This ad is a product of some six months of deliberation and committee meetings made up of both Persian and Ashkenazi members to combat a growing prejudice. However, some Persians are upset over this ad. I wonder if those angry have not read past the title.
… I often wonder if there were a Chinese revolution and all Chinese Jews came over to Nessah Israel (a prominent Persian Temple in Beverly Hills) would the Persians there be as gracious as the Ashkenazis have been to us? And what if the Chinese Jews dominated Sinai Temple?
These are important questions to address. They are not meant to be derogatory, nor humorous. Some believe that we should ignore the problem and it will go away. Others create major divides. But a wound is not cured by being ignored. An infection needs demarcation, treatment. Talking about an abstract concept of diversity and tolerance does very little. We need to bring to surface concrete issues. Here’s where the conversation starts, not ends. …
As a culture, we Persians can be overwhelming. Many of us feel that our status, jobs, finances entitle us to everything. We speak Farsi around those who don’t understand us. We, too, whisper about the “White” Americans. …
A large part of sending our kids to a private Jewish school is for the friends they keep. But what example do we set when Persian children don’t attend Ashkenazi birthday parties or vice versa? To be sure, there are many Persians that don’t want to go to schools that have too many Persians. There are Persians who are upset that their children cannot get into Pressman because “they only take Americans.” There are Persians and Ashkenazis that would prefer to go to non-Jewish private schools to avoid Persians.
And here’s one from The Forward by a Persian Jewish Beverly Hills lady about how Beverly Hills was a boring white bread (excuse me, “cream cheese”) Ashkenazi place until her vibrant relatives arrived:
How Iranian Jews Shaped Modern Los Angeles
Gina Nahai November 4, 2014
In no time at all, we went from being unknown to notorious.When I moved to Los Angeles in August 1977, perfectly intelligent, well-meaning Americans would ask me if we had roads and automobiles in Tehran, or if I had taken a camel to elementary school every day. The ones who did know Iran wanted to talk only about the ruins in Persepolis or Queen Farah’s jewels. Most people just couldn’t tell Iran from Iraq, Arab from Iranian, Shiite from Sunni. And they certainly couldn’t fathom such a thing as an Iranian Jew.
Oh, what a difference a year can make. By the summer of 1978, the high-rise condominium buildings in Westwood were filled to capacity with Iranians, and the kosher businesses in Pico-Robertson were tending to ever-increasing numbers of new customers. You would think this was a good thing.
Say what you will (and believe me, people do ) about the way Iranian Jews have changed the social and economic landscape of Los Angeles; the place is a hell of a lot more interesting because of it. I know because I was here for the “before” pictures. My parents had a house in Trousdale since 1976; they had family in Pasadena and Beverly Hills. That’s how I learned about cream cheese, broccoli and “All in the Family” — we spent summers here, watched a lot of TV, and ate McDonalds a few times a week.
Before the Iranians came, Beverly Hills was a sleepy little village populated by cranky Eastern European Jews and polyester-clad Episcopalians from the Midwest. Hollywood was an embarrassing slum. Santa Monica was a communist enclave, downtown one large skid row. The food was rich, heavy and unsophisticated, fancy department stores catered to 80-year-olds, and you couldn’t breathe the air without risking lung cancer on any day of the week.
We can’t take credit for cleaning up the air, but with everything else, the sudden rush of a largely educated, well-off, and worldly people was a spark that lit up the region with much needed verve and color. The Muslims, who far outnumbered other Iranian immigrants, scattered across the state, from San Diego to Irvine to Palo Alto, from JPL to Google. The Armenians rebuilt Glendale. But, as for the Jews…
Not that the Ashkenazim see it this way, but Iranian Jews just about saved Jewish LA from the slow, quiet decline into which it had been pushed by increasing assimilation and growing indifference on the part of younger generations. In the early and mid-1970s in LA, the major synagogues on the West Side and in the Valley were beset by shrinking memberships, their day schools half full
The mid-1970s was before busing of blacks into public schools in Jewish neighborhoods in Los Angeles (Beverly Hills was exempt, I believe.) Iranian Jews didn’t have all that much to do with the subsequent massive Jewish Flight from newly integrated schools other than, unlike their liberal Ashkenazi neighbors, the Persians didn’t feel any twinges of guilt whatsoever about yanking their kids out of public schools with bused-in blacks.
; Shabbat dinner was something you ate at Junior’s Deli on Pico or Nate ’n’ Al’s on Beverly Drive, and you had to be seriously observant to fast on Yom Kippur or eschew leavened bread on Passover. I exaggerate, of course, though not by much. And I generalize, but only to make a point.
… It saved us once and for all from an existence that had been precarious from the start and remained so, even during the best of times — the reign of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — because even then, we were dependent for our safety on the good graces of one man. The Iranian Jewish migration came at an exorbitant cost — emotional and otherwise — to the first generation, and though that’s not to be taken lightly, in the long run we are all better off for it.
For us it was a blessing in disguise. We would hear many Ashkenazim say:
There’s too many of them, they have too many relatives, their kids are spoiled, their wives too entitled, the men are too competitive in business, they’re all looking for a bargain and when they get one, they ask for even bigger discounts and concessions.
There’s too many of them and they’ve taken over Beverly Hills and Brentwood and Encino and Sherman Oaks and all the schools and synagogues, they turn up in the hundreds every time one of them dies and clog up the parking lot at the mortuary then they sit shiva for a week and receive hundreds more every day and clog up the street with their Bentleys and Maybachs.
There’s too many of them and they know they’re not liked so they pretend they’re anything but Iranian, they started out telling us they were Greek or Italian and some still do but the rest have moved on to claiming they’re Persian as if that’s different, but it’s like saying you served sausage for dinner instead of hotdog.
Note, please, that I said “many,” not “all” Ashkenazim feel this way. I know because they’ve told me, more than once, that this is how they feel. They usually start it with, “Don’t take this the wrong way but…”
The fact is, few people like having their backyards suddenly occupied by throngs of strangers, and all the more so if these newcomers look and act like nothing the locals have seen before. In the case of LA’s Iranian Jews, the culture shock to the natives was greater because the newcomers were unlike any previous group of immigrants: They weren’t poor, uneducated, lost and ashamed. If anything, they were too assertive, too proud of their cultural heritage, too determined to remain distinct and separate from the rest.
… And there were more serious grumblings: that Iranian Jews are cunning, sneaky, materialistic, vain, rude, intolerant and unwilling to assimilate.
I will say right now that some of us are those things.
… So Iranians don’t talk about themselves in public unless the news is good, and Americans shy away from going on record with their feelings about Iranians for fear of appearing intolerant. …
“All the trouble in this town started,” an American Jewish woman said to me one night before a packed crowd, “when the Iranians came and started to build those big houses.”
The person who said this was hosting a literary event at which I was the speaker. We were at her house in Brentwood Park, one of those neighborhoods where zoning laws require that every lot be at least an acre in size. The house itself was easily 10,000 square feet. I asked her if it was built by an Iranian. It wasn’t. I asked if Brentwood Park was developed by Iranians. It wasn’t. I asked if it wouldn’t be fair to say that the natives like big houses as much as the newcomers.
“But they’re buying everything up and down the street,” the lady said.
… The truth is, the Ashkenazim and Sephardim who dislike the Iranians do so not because of our differences, but because of our commonalities. We, Jews of all backgrounds, are not the easiest people in the world to live with.
OT –
http://www.norwalkreflector.com/article/7053511
This story has no photos. The original is from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but that’s behind a paywall. But the names in the article give you a pretty good idea what kind of kids we are dealing with.
>>While across the street UCLA students are battling rampant anti-Semitism.
Wow. Speechless.
silllycon valley should get to work on ag robots to put mexicans out of work. robots certainly would use less water. for the children of beverly hills!Replies: @Reg Cæsar
So that explains it.
I really wouldn’t mind Persians and the like as much if they weren’t so irrevocably tacky.
My personal experience is with more Arab / South Asian entrepeneurs (read: gas station owners) that smell like incense and rip me off and I realize there’s a cultural difference but they all have the same, god-awful sense of style and decoration.
Oy! Persian AND jewish?! One obnoxious combo. Vast plains of goy sheep to be sheared…
This is a joke, right?
So . . . whenever we hear about gaudy Persian this or criminal Russian that in the US–is it safe to assume most of the time we’re talking about Jews and not ethnic Persians or Russians?
As for immigrants not liking the natives, it's not like those immigrants fell from the skies, is it?
Smart people who implement their agendas helped them come here. What they were doing and what they're doing now could have been and could be stopped, but it's going to take people doing real work and finally doing things the right way.
If people can't do simple things like sending a focused tweet - a 30 second job at most - then don't be surprised when smart, active people are able to implement their bad agendas. I mean, seriously, what keeps people from doing something as simple as sending a tweet?
The rule seems to be: if you are going to rule Turkey without actually being a Turk, you have to put Turk in your name, like Young Turks or Ataturk. Like requiring all black US presidents to have the surname White.
“when the Iranians came and started to build those big houses” On the radio in Chicago, one of Steve Dahl’s pet peeves is all of the teardowns happening in the upscale Southwest Suburbs where he lives. Many of these involve immigrants who rebuild in the architectural style of the lands whence they came. As Dahl says “this is the Midwest not the Mideast!”
Calling Luke Ford. Calling Luke Ford. Please come to the comment desk in the lobby of Chez Steve.
FWIW 500 miles up the highway from Beverly Hills it was Iranian student riots in San Francisco ( and in Paris ) that set in motion the toppling of the Shah and the exodus of Jews and other rich Iranians out of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic. These Iranian students were numerous and they staged full on riots in downtown San Francisco, smashing storefronts and filling the streets with tear gas and riot police. The Savak was worse than the Gestapo and KGB and the Shah, some sort of Caligula. Of course the left bought into it and Carter pulled the rug out from under the Shah and the situation in the Persian Gulf has deteriorated ever since. From a secular, staunch American ally Iran became an Islamic theocracy where homosexuals are executed and Iranians in the US almost overnight became “Persians”.
“but with everything else, the sudden rush of a largely educated, well-off, and worldly people was a spark that lit up the region with much needed verve and color.”
Turn those words around and put them in the mouth of a “polyester-clad Episcopalian.” Change it from ‘your country sucked before we got here’ (a sentiment felt by millions of American Jews, Persian or otherwise) and put them into the minds and mouths of the Episcopalians – ‘this place is worse because you came here’ – and it would be considered a hate crime.
Polyester is for Baptists.Replies: @Grumpy
Put "saved from assimilation" into the mind and words of a white man and there's your hate crime, Wilkey.Replies: @Anonymous
Hey - you guys hate us - message recieved. And filed for future reference.
Some ideologies value “pattern awareness” more than others.
Turn those words around and put them in the mouth of a "polyester-clad Episcopalian." Change it from 'your country sucked before we got here' (a sentiment felt by millions of American Jews, Persian or otherwise) and put them into the minds and mouths of the Episcopalians - 'this place is worse because you came here' - and it would be considered a hate crime.Replies: @Desiderius, @Ozymandias, @Mr. Anon, @Gato de la Biblioteca, @WowJustWow
My God, man; the average Episcopalian would consider that very phrase alone a hate crime.
Polyester is for Baptists.
Turn those words around and put them in the mouth of a "polyester-clad Episcopalian." Change it from 'your country sucked before we got here' (a sentiment felt by millions of American Jews, Persian or otherwise) and put them into the minds and mouths of the Episcopalians - 'this place is worse because you came here' - and it would be considered a hate crime.Replies: @Desiderius, @Ozymandias, @Mr. Anon, @Gato de la Biblioteca, @WowJustWow
“…Iranian Jews just about saved Jewish LA from the slow, quiet decline into which it had been pushed by increasing assimilation…”
Put “saved from assimilation” into the mind and words of a white man and there’s your hate crime, Wilkey.
It seems like rapid, raucous decline is the way thing are playing out
Turn those words around and put them in the mouth of a "polyester-clad Episcopalian." Change it from 'your country sucked before we got here' (a sentiment felt by millions of American Jews, Persian or otherwise) and put them into the minds and mouths of the Episcopalians - 'this place is worse because you came here' - and it would be considered a hate crime.Replies: @Desiderius, @Ozymandias, @Mr. Anon, @Gato de la Biblioteca, @WowJustWow
The naked contempt with which many immigrant groups now view founding-stock Americans is pretty striking.
Hey – you guys hate us – message recieved. And filed for future reference.
This is like the Seinfeld version of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. Is it for real? Do white bread Americans not read these things? Or at least have someone to read it for them and report on what the minorities think?
At least there’s one thing you can say in the Persians’ favour – they’re not Ethiopians.
Having lived on the Westside since 1964, I can tell you that the Persian invasion was detested by all locals of every group and, over time, that detestation was proven correct.
Persian diversity is plain bullshit. None of my Jewish friends ever liked or trusted them.
The men stank of cologne while they clinked from gold neck chains. As for the women, most of their own men disliked them.
Frankly, we whites never needed no stinkin’ diversity. Still don’t.
I can’t imagine why anyone would dislike Gina Nahai. She sounds like an agreeable, pleasant person, and highly grateful to the country that took her family in when they were unceremoniously kicked out of Iran.
I’m also sure that she didn’t write her own Wikipedia page, especially the line about how she arrived in L.A. the night Elvis Presley died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_B._Nahai
I also accept her thesis that Southern California was a sleep-inducing backwater in the mid-70s when she and her Persian relatives arrived. It’s not as though it enjoyed a worldwide reputation for being the most exciting place in the world or anything. That’s polyester history.
Finally, I appreciate her dig at the overrated Charles Dickens, who was, as we all know, “paid by the word.” At the above-linked Wiki page you can find some novels that are actually good, like how 2015 Los Angeles is good.
As someone who has never even been to LosAngeles, I was really surprised to hear that it was actually a sleepy backwater pre 1975.
What would an updated version of the Beverley Hillbillies look like? An unsophisticated family who struck it rich and then relocated from elsewhere who has to deal with the local elites. Perhaps a family from Baltimore (however improbable) or Mexico who won the Power Ball. To keep it current, Mr. Driesdale would have to be a Jewish Investment Banker and Jane Hathaway some sort of SJW. The possibilities are endless.
I have to wonder what British, Dutch and German Protestants thought about French Huguenots when Huguenot refugees started showing up in Protestant-friendly countries after the French King Louis XIV revoked religious toleration. The Huguenots, like other Protestants, lived frugally and developed high-value human capital in themselves, so their prosperity in their new homes might have drawn some invidious attention to themselves.
Of course, French names are a very high percentage of Afrikaans names (at least a quarter) and the Huguenots were always recognized for their contributions to the country's wine industry.
They are not in the exalted halls of the Out of Sight.Replies: @slumber_j
‘Now enters the ‘Hairy man’, (Steve’s all purpose pantomime villain), stage right’.
Disparaging their adopted homeland helps some immigrants assuage the guilt of leaving home.
In San Francisco the hippie/Puritan assimilated Ashkenazi, with their tasteful historically preserved houses and conspicuously old but perfectly maintained cars, feel the same way about the new BMW driving Russian and Israeli immigrants.
Did he just say assimilation was bad?
Turn those words around and put them in the mouth of a "polyester-clad Episcopalian." Change it from 'your country sucked before we got here' (a sentiment felt by millions of American Jews, Persian or otherwise) and put them into the minds and mouths of the Episcopalians - 'this place is worse because you came here' - and it would be considered a hate crime.Replies: @Desiderius, @Ozymandias, @Mr. Anon, @Gato de la Biblioteca, @WowJustWow
Wilkey, a better formulation for the Episcopalians would be, “All those Third World countries were shitholes before we showed up, and they turned back into shitholes when we left. Who’s done more for the advancement of civilization?”
Don’t Jews always view assimilation as bad? If they assimilate, they’ll cease to be Jews in a couple of generations. Can’t have that.
WASPs are a minority within a minority in Los Angeles because the Non Hispanic White population there also consists of large numbers of Armenians and Persians. And than of course there are the Italians, Ashkenazis, and the Irish. And than there are the Germans who could go either way as some people consider them to be WASPs and some people do not. Either way Americans of either predominantly or entirely English ancestry are still a minority within a minority in Los Angeles just like in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, etc.
If you want overwhelmingly English stock White Americans, you have to go to fly over country.
“A Night at the Roxbury” was pretty realistic.
Those of us at the more religiously observant side of the spectrum get along with the Iranian Jews a lot better. Maybe because we have more in common with them…
It’s petty stories like these that reminds me of Socrates’ saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, in this case, maybe it is. In other words, if a group or people are constantly, obsessively examining every single tiny little thing that has happened to them personally as well as on a larger scale (to their group) whether perceived or real, then….is it really all that worth it? Is that how humans really were intended to live their lives, examining every single petty thing that happens?
Really? Seriously?
From this vantage point, todays WASPS must really be the saps since they don’t spend most of their lives examining, delving into, obsessing over until compulsions develop into neuroses, etc. They just go about their lives and live, hopefully their request, to live as far away from as many of these obsessive weirdos as possible, is honored. But of course it seldom is honored.
Maybe on some things Socrates was wrong. Maybe constantly examining things and finding new things of which to examine doesn’t make for healthy and stable living on a day to day basis.
@there is widespread recognition that without immigrant labour the state’s crops would not get picked
silllycon valley should get to work on ag robots to put mexicans out of work. robots certainly would use less water. for the children of beverly hills!
“that Iranian Jews are cunning, sneaky, materialistic, vain, rude, intolerant and unwilling to assimilate. I will say right now that some of us are those things.”
And the rest of you just have to take it.
On the subject of immigration and water, it’s not just the immigration into California directly. It’s the population increase overall. How much more water is being used to grow the food to feed the extra, oh, 100 million people or so that wouldn’t be in America right now if we had a sensible immigration policy all these years?
That was the bit that was most striking for me…
As someone who has never even been to LosAngeles, I was really surprised to hear that it was actually a sleepy backwater pre 1975.
Put "saved from assimilation" into the mind and words of a white man and there's your hate crime, Wilkey.Replies: @Anonymous
A ‘slow, quite decline’ actually sounds damn appealing at this point.
It seems like rapid, raucous decline is the way thing are playing out
Most of the visible Iranians in SoCal in the second half of the 1970’s were pro-Khomeini. Thousands of them went to Westwood to shout “Death to dee Shah! Death to dee Shah!” and “KHo-KHo-KHomeini!” in front of the Federal Building. Americans wished they would go demonstrate in Teheran instead of jamming up traffic in Los Angeles. By the late 1980’s the Khomeinites had left town in (vicarious) triumph and pro-Shah Iranians had taken on the perennial chore of demonstrating in Westwood. Americans still wished they would go demonstrate in Teheran instead of jamming up traffic in Los Angeles.
Gina Nahai claims that “If anything, [Iranian Jews like herself] were too assertive, too proud of their cultural heritage, too determined to remain distinct and separate from the rest,” and proves her case by insulting and deprecating everyone else in L.A.. There you have it. Iranian Jews are obnoxious and proud of it. Don’t you forget that, you elderly cranky Ashkenazim and dimwit badly-dressed ex-midwesterners.
In the late 1970s, there would have been few if any Maybachs on American roads because they hadn’t been made since 1940 and only a handful or less had been exported to the USA.
In 2002, Mercedes-Benz relaunched Maybach as an ultra-luxury competitor to Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Sales were mostly in places like China and the former Soviet Union and were disappointing overall. The brand took another hiatus in 2013, but Persian-Americans shouldn’t be too bummed because M-B promises to bring it back again for 2016.
Gina Nahai is obviously plastering over the gaps in her memory with anachronistic details from much more recently. If she makes little mistakes like this, I wonder what else she’s wrong about?
They are also arguably the most inconsiderate/aggressive drivers in LA. And they seem to be big on fraudulent handicap placards. Just about everyday, I see Persians in their 30’s and 40’s driving $100k cars parking in handicap spots.
SNL did a sketch like that in the early seasons called “The Bel Air Arabs”, which is obviously 40 yrs out of date now, but at least they used to try.
The Shahs of Sunset
http://www.bravotv.com/shahs-of-sunset
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaisoN8QD1c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRnfgKao4Sc
A very popular WC graffito in 1978 was “Here I sit, gruntin’ and strainin’, giving birth to another Iranian!”
There is a subtext of propriety in many discussions about cultural direction and influence. That includes a consideration of how to deal with opportunism versus responsibility.
The US was founded on values such as the importance of ethical behavior. Those continue to be acknowledged, if more these days in the breach, by so many of its perceived leaders (e.g., politicians, businessmen). Nonetheless, the deeply-held beliefs of so many Americans continue to reflect that sense of propriety. Yankee ingenuity, for example, is not on the same spectrum as opportunism.
The instant case of Iranian Jews in Beverly Hills provides yet another example of how opportunism versus responsibility plays out in the public sphere. Here are a few driving anecdotes to illustrate the clash.
A shopper awaits a mall parking space, stopped with turn signal on. Another shopper swoops in quickly to seize the spot. The first shopper says “you took my spot”. The swooper says “no, you took my spot”, while getting out of her car in that newly-claimed spot. The patient shopper moves on. The mall parking lot security guard witnesses the interchange, and says that he now referees numerous such incidents daily.
A driver on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is stopped at a light behind another car. The car ahead somehow backs up into the stopped car. The stopped driver says “you ran into me”. The reverser says “no, you ran into me”, and eventually files a police report. The matter is resolved against the reverser based on witness testimony.
The swooper and the reverser are examples of personal opportunism in action. The lack of a sense of propriety evidenced in the flagrant lying is indicative of a type of decline in responsibility.
When people are guided more by a sense of what they can get away with (e.g., Wall Street) than what is right (e.g., common courtesy and self respect), then the social fabric gets frayed. A good question for Americans is whether they have stopped to consider the implications of allowing their society and that of their descendents to degrade further by being unduly influenced by uncivilized behavior.
Once in the Bay Area, my father was sitting in his truck, reading about how to use one of his new portable power tools (the engine wasn't even running), and some clown rear-ended him, while engaged in parallel parking. The guy claimed my father backed up into him, but there were friendly eye witnesses on site who were willing to testify otherwise, and the guy actually wound up being arrested for DUI.
It seems like everybody has their own city. What’s a good White Protestant city if one were looking? (preferably British derived)
As me sainted mum used to say, "They'll never rest until every nice place is ruined."
Japanese account for 0.1%, yet the city had a Japanese mayor for several terms in the lily-white days.Replies: @Dave
I noticed this when that guy painted the nude statues on the perimeter of his property in lifelike colors. That was back in the 70s I think.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-17888/?no-ist
Thanks for provoking ban old and barely suppressed memory. It still raises laughs even to this day. It was the subject of a whole 'Whicker's World' episode in which Alan Whicker had a lot of fun displaying mock prurience and indignation.
After watching that my childhood was never the same again.Replies: @Anonymous
At this point the only hope I have is that when my city is forty percent foreign I will attain Steve’s good humor and simply enjoy the zoo.
Iranians Jewish or not never ever refrain from boasting about just how awesome Iran and Iranians are; a few exceptions nothwithstanding.
Santa Monica is however still a Communist Enclave. That has not changed.
I HATE the Grove and miss the old Farmer’s Market and funky shops.
Old, pre-diversity LA was awesome.
Maybe it’s me, but that wouldn’t be my definition of perfectly intelligent, well-meaning Americans–even in 1977. But stereotypes must be put in service to the cause.
I never encountered any of these Israeli and Russian immigrants in SF until I finally went to a non-hipster (i.e. Mission area, more or less) club. They’re definitely part of the silk shirt crowd.
This was a crack-up. Satire, of course.
Huguenots who emigrated to South Africa in the late 1600s and early 1700s assimilated so quickly into the otherwise Dutch/German population that the Afrikaans language has almost no French influence.
Of course, French names are a very high percentage of Afrikaans names (at least a quarter) and the Huguenots were always recognized for their contributions to the country’s wine industry.
Come to think of it, Buffett ( as in Warren) is a Huguenot name.
“Carter pulled the rug out from under the Shah”
A Persian rug?
A dozen years ago, I purchased a software program designed to help English speakers learn Portuguese. It turned out this was an old piece of software, written in 1979. The technique it used was to show you the Portuguese word, and then give you an English sentence that would help you remember its meaning. For example, to remember that Limpo means “Clean”, the sentence was something like, “The man with the clean face is limping toward you”.
Anyway, I forget the Portuguese word it was connected with, but one of the sentences was, “Imagine the Shah is already dead”.
Polyester is for Baptists.Replies: @Grumpy
It’s a bit comical, really. This person doesn’t understand the society that she lives in.
Turn those words around and put them in the mouth of a "polyester-clad Episcopalian." Change it from 'your country sucked before we got here' (a sentiment felt by millions of American Jews, Persian or otherwise) and put them into the minds and mouths of the Episcopalians - 'this place is worse because you came here' - and it would be considered a hate crime.Replies: @Desiderius, @Ozymandias, @Mr. Anon, @Gato de la Biblioteca, @WowJustWow
Don’t dwell on the negative. The author just taught us a valuable lesson in code words. We’ve just learned that “verve” is the wealthy, sophisticated version of “vibrancy”. Now you’ll know what kind of immigrants live in an area based on which V-word people use!
The only mark the Huguenots made was the Du Pont company.
They are not in the exalted halls of the Out of Sight.
That was around 1979 on a big estate on Sunset Blvd.
It will be very useful to know this so we can target it for “enrichment.”
As me sainted mum used to say, “They’ll never rest until every nice place is ruined.”
The Huguenots always integrated quickly into the countries or colonies they showed up in rather than engaging in in-group ethnic chauvinism or remaining loyal to a foreign entity. No doubt already existing anti-Catholic sentiment and sympathy for their plight helped too.
Is it too late for a new “300” to fight them off at Mulholland Drive and keep the Persians from Hidden Hills?
“Reality” TV has noticed the Persian influx:
The Shahs of Sunset
http://www.bravotv.com/shahs-of-sunset
This reflects what the Greeks and Romans actually did with their statues:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-17888/?no-ist
Some Japanese were worried about American Multiculturism back around 95/96:
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0602/article_532.shtml
Wow. Speechless.Replies: @Father O'Hara
Oh God those poor jews!!!
Certainly what’s been tendentiously labelled ‘the Russian Mafia’ is mainly Jews who fled the Motherland with their loot.
” Iranian Jews are cunning, sneaky, materialistic, vain, rude, intolerant and unwilling to assimilate.”
Wow, imagine that!
The Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia is referred to as the Chinese American Beverly Hills.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-arcadia-immigration-architecture-20140511-story.html#page=1
That says that Los Angeles is a lot more segregated by race than it is by class, because rich Chinese people in Los Angeles do not want to live next door to rich White people.
In fairness to the Persians, that guy was an Arab–a Saudi IIRC.
“From a secular, staunch American ally Iran became an Islamic theocracy where homosexuals are executed”
I’m not surprised that the USA = taking it up the ass equation is popular in most of the world. I’m surprised that it’s popular among patriotic Americans. I know a Mormon who traces some of his descent to 17th century Massachusetts who also bought into this idea that the dislike of buggery, anywhere in the world, is anti-American, and that the level of acceptance of buggery is an entirely proper measure of how pro- or anti-American a person or a country is.
Too late, they stormed Encino 20 years ago and have infected the western San Fernando Valley.
AFAIK, the leaders are from the Caucasus.
As for immigrants not liking the natives, it’s not like those immigrants fell from the skies, is it?
Smart people who implement their agendas helped them come here. What they were doing and what they’re doing now could have been and could be stopped, but it’s going to take people doing real work and finally doing things the right way.
If people can’t do simple things like sending a focused tweet – a 30 second job at most – then don’t be surprised when smart, active people are able to implement their bad agendas. I mean, seriously, what keeps people from doing something as simple as sending a tweet?
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-arcadia-immigration-architecture-20140511-story.html#page=1
That says that Los Angeles is a lot more segregated by race than it is by class, because rich Chinese people in Los Angeles do not want to live next door to rich White people.Replies: @Hare Krishna
More like L.A. is running out of rich white people and doesn’t have enough to go around outside of certain areas, while its population of wealthy Asians is growing. Beverly Hills is becoming more Chinese. Most of the affluent areas not in the Valley are. Even Santa Monica and the Palisades which are both still overwhelmingly white have more Asians now.
The Northern Yankee Hillary Rodham put on her fake Southern accent again to pander to a Southern Dixie crowd in South Carolina.
Hillary Rodham’s Southern accent is absolutely horrid. I have heard British actors do a better Southern accent than her.
No. High trust people think everyone is the same.
Y’all miss the crucial last sentence (confession) or what?
It’s like the author is daring non-Jews to dislike them. “Come one, you can say it, Jews are difficult people, I’ll say it for you. Try it and see what happens.”
It kinda reminds me of my days as an undergrad at an Ivy League university when I worked part-time at the admissions office. One of the assistant deans there pretty much came out and admitted that he wanted more liberal, secular Jews and fewer “math nerds” (=Asians) and “Jesus-freaks” (= rural, non-Jewish whites). It was as if he wanted those of us near him who fit the category to hear him and do something about it if we could.
It struck me as both a confession and a public proclamation of power.
silllycon valley should get to work on ag robots to put mexicans out of work. robots certainly would use less water. for the children of beverly hills!Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Robots don’t urinate on the crops, either. Of course, I’m just repeating the prejudices of my Episcopalian stepdad, who doesn’t wear polyester, but denim.
Hillary Rodham's Southern accent is absolutely horrid. I have heard British actors do a better Southern accent than her.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Hillary’s no Yankee. She, like Derb, is from English coal-mining stock, but leavened with some Canadian frog. Kind of a limey Madonna.
Hillary Rodham is a Yankee because she was born in Chicago. Chicago is geographically closer to Canada than it is to Louisiana.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Cardiff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff-by-the-Sea,_Encinitas,_California
You guys do realize that most of the early Persians who came to Los Angeles, where Jews, right?
That was the infamous ‘dirty Disneyland’, if I’m not mistaken.
Thanks for provoking ban old and barely suppressed memory. It still raises laughs even to this day. It was the subject of a whole ‘Whicker’s World’ episode in which Alan Whicker had a lot of fun displaying mock prurience and indignation.
After watching that my childhood was never the same again.
As mentioned, the 'statues' - or more accurately anthropoidal mannikins were painted in shocking pink 'flesh tones' and were basically nude waxworks carved in stone. Befitting the 1970s the male figures were all long haired and bearded - they looked just like young Charles Mansons- rather horrifically, and the female figures all looked like that icon of the late 70s, Farah.
Of particular interest, all of the statues sported what Alan Whicker, who waxed lyrical over the whole report, described rather tastelessly as 'pubic wigs' yes really.
As I recall, and Alan Whicker really lingered long over this 'news item', the figures were posed in a wooded part of the estate and were supposed to represent 'satyrs meeting nymphs' and were posed to imply the 'jollity' bound to ensue.
All a tad tasteless methinks, and queasily reminiscent of the tales of 'wickedness' described in the Bible attributed to such characters as Herod or the Philistines, as my Sunday school prudery reminded me.
Quite what a Muslim was thinking of with that rather tacky display of garden ornamentation, I do not know, but I doubt that at home in Saudi, such jolly japes would be approved of.
Yes.
Young Turks is another one. Its kind of a double euphemism. People first tend not to mention that Turkey was being run by the Young Turks during the Armenian Genocide. You sometimes get weird, indirect text which sort of makes it sound like the Ottomans did it without coming out and saying so. Then they tend not to mention who the Young Turks actually were.
The rule seems to be: if you are going to rule Turkey without actually being a Turk, you have to put Turk in your name, like Young Turks or Ataturk. Like requiring all black US presidents to have the surname White.
The Shah was a staunch ally of some country the Neocons care about. And his fall was a tragedy for Ken Mehlman, Larry Craig, and the rest of the wide stance patrol. That’s why it was bad when that oh so good man fell.
If you want overwhelmingly English stock White Americans, you have to go to fly over country.Replies: @Bill
Overwhelmingly English you are not going to find easily very many places in flyover country either. Where there are no Scots there tend to be Germans.
My late coming English ancestors stopped briefly in NYC in the 1890s before making their way to Seattle.Replies: @Twinkie
Really? Seriously?
From this vantage point, todays WASPS must really be the saps since they don't spend most of their lives examining, delving into, obsessing over until compulsions develop into neuroses, etc. They just go about their lives and live, hopefully their request, to live as far away from as many of these obsessive weirdos as possible, is honored. But of course it seldom is honored.
Maybe on some things Socrates was wrong. Maybe constantly examining things and finding new things of which to examine doesn't make for healthy and stable living on a day to day basis.Replies: @Bill
Another thought: maybe Socrates was not talking about narcissism.
OT: “Poland outperforms UK in education and health, report finds” (SEDA scores by country by Boston Consulting Group)
theguardian.com 28 May 2015
Russia, Ukraine, Israel, China, and India – low SEDA scores
People from that part of the world have the mentality of the near-Orient and think differently. Their psychology is really not compatible with that of people in the west. People who get to know their way of thinking often come away with negative impressions of them and their culture. Words used to describe them often are variations of ‘dishonest’ or of being ‘oily’ in some way.
They are not in the exalted halls of the Out of Sight.Replies: @slumber_j
Well, there are a ton of Du Ponts–some 3,500 cousins according to Wikipedia. And the ones I’ve met seem pretty fancy.
Mayo Clinic’s home of six figures is still pretty white, if no longer the 98% it used to be. The 18% of the population that is nonwhite is highly fragmented, which is a great help.
Japanese account for 0.1%, yet the city had a Japanese mayor for several terms in the lily-white days.
I had the misfortune of living next door to a Persian Jew when I was in high school. A garish monstrosity of a house filled with eight (or was is nine?) loud kids always hanging out outside, but they mostly kept to themselves.
One day, we come home and find half of the branches from our massive, beautiful tree in the backyard sawed off!! We look over at the Persian’s yard, and see a few stumps and naked trunks where there used to be trees. THIS MOTHERF**ER HAD THE GALL TO COME ONTO OUR PROPERTY AND TAKE DOWN A CENTURY OLD TREE, THE CENTERPIECE OF OUR YARD, WITHOUT ASKING. Why you may ask? Because the pine needles and leaves blew into his pool!! When confronted, he acted like he was doing us a favor, since we can now spend less time sweeping outside. Teenager me was fuming, pushing my parents to sue and wanting to deface his property. Adult me would do what my parents did — sell the house and move.
I’m European Jewish and I don’t know a single one of us who wants to interact with the Persians beyond buying the occasional rug and jewelry.
They do however fit in LA better than any other city…
Thanks for provoking ban old and barely suppressed memory. It still raises laughs even to this day. It was the subject of a whole 'Whicker's World' episode in which Alan Whicker had a lot of fun displaying mock prurience and indignation.
After watching that my childhood was never the same again.Replies: @Anonymous
The memories of that particular den of horror and obscenity are flooding back.
As mentioned, the ‘statues’ – or more accurately anthropoidal mannikins were painted in shocking pink ‘flesh tones’ and were basically nude waxworks carved in stone. Befitting the 1970s the male figures were all long haired and bearded – they looked just like young Charles Mansons- rather horrifically, and the female figures all looked like that icon of the late 70s, Farah.
Of particular interest, all of the statues sported what Alan Whicker, who waxed lyrical over the whole report, described rather tastelessly as ‘pubic wigs’ yes really.
As I recall, and Alan Whicker really lingered long over this ‘news item’, the figures were posed in a wooded part of the estate and were supposed to represent ‘satyrs meeting nymphs’ and were posed to imply the ‘jollity’ bound to ensue.
All a tad tasteless methinks, and queasily reminiscent of the tales of ‘wickedness’ described in the Bible attributed to such characters as Herod or the Philistines, as my Sunday school prudery reminded me.
Quite what a Muslim was thinking of with that rather tacky display of garden ornamentation, I do not know, but I doubt that at home in Saudi, such jolly japes would be approved of.
The more one considers it, the more one realizes that when the big one hits and California slides into the ocean, it’s all just upside for the rest of us.
And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill
“Hillary’s no Yankee. She, like Derb, is from English coal-mining stock, but leavened with some Canadian frog. Kind of a limey Madonna.”
Hillary Rodham is a Yankee because she was born in Chicago. Chicago is geographically closer to Canada than it is to Louisiana.
Chicago may as well be Novosibirsk.
People to the south use the term indiscriminately. As do people to the south of the south. To them, you, Jefferson, are a Yankee. Or, in their spelling, yanqui.
The US was founded on values such as the importance of ethical behavior. Those continue to be acknowledged, if more these days in the breach, by so many of its perceived leaders (e.g., politicians, businessmen). Nonetheless, the deeply-held beliefs of so many Americans continue to reflect that sense of propriety. Yankee ingenuity, for example, is not on the same spectrum as opportunism.
The instant case of Iranian Jews in Beverly Hills provides yet another example of how opportunism versus responsibility plays out in the public sphere. Here are a few driving anecdotes to illustrate the clash.
A shopper awaits a mall parking space, stopped with turn signal on. Another shopper swoops in quickly to seize the spot. The first shopper says "you took my spot". The swooper says "no, you took my spot", while getting out of her car in that newly-claimed spot. The patient shopper moves on. The mall parking lot security guard witnesses the interchange, and says that he now referees numerous such incidents daily.
A driver on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is stopped at a light behind another car. The car ahead somehow backs up into the stopped car. The stopped driver says "you ran into me". The reverser says "no, you ran into me", and eventually files a police report. The matter is resolved against the reverser based on witness testimony.
The swooper and the reverser are examples of personal opportunism in action. The lack of a sense of propriety evidenced in the flagrant lying is indicative of a type of decline in responsibility.
When people are guided more by a sense of what they can get away with (e.g., Wall Street) than what is right (e.g., common courtesy and self respect), then the social fabric gets frayed. A good question for Americans is whether they have stopped to consider the implications of allowing their society and that of their descendents to degrade further by being unduly influenced by uncivilized behavior.Replies: @Kevin O'Keeffe
“A driver on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is stopped at a light behind another car. The car ahead somehow backs up into the stopped car. The stopped driver says ‘you ran into me’. The reverser says ‘no, you ran into me’, and eventually files a police report. The matter is resolved against the reverser based on witness testimony.”
Once in the Bay Area, my father was sitting in his truck, reading about how to use one of his new portable power tools (the engine wasn’t even running), and some clown rear-ended him, while engaged in parallel parking. The guy claimed my father backed up into him, but there were friendly eye witnesses on site who were willing to testify otherwise, and the guy actually wound up being arrested for DUI.
theguardian.com 28 May 2015Russia, Ukraine, Israel, China, and India - low SEDA scoresReplies: @Anon 2
To clarify, SEDA (Sustainable Economic Development Assessment) evaluates how effectively countries convert wealth into well-being relative to other countries. It’s designed to be an improvement over the usual ranking of countries by GDP per capita
Cardiff California is pretty nice too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff-by-the-Sea,_Encinitas,_California
Maybe Utah and rural central Indiana as very English parts of the USA. Utah got many Morman immigrants right from England, including some Romney ancestors, and I think the no alcohol/move to the desert thing would be a tough sell for German Americans.
My late coming English ancestors stopped briefly in NYC in the 1890s before making their way to Seattle.
Japanese account for 0.1%, yet the city had a Japanese mayor for several terms in the lily-white days.Replies: @Dave
I’m looking for British derived. They’re more individualistic. Their would be more camaraderie. I can’t move to a German derived town and expect camaraderie when I’m not German derived myself.
British derived, not British. lol
I grew up far from Los Angeles and was a kid in the seventies.
My impression of LA in the 60s and early 70s :
Great movies coming out of Hollywood- The Graduate, Burch Cassidy…, 2001, Planet of the Apes
My favourite TV shows as a kid Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island , Star Trek, Brady Bunch, Dragnet ., were made there
Musically, the Doors , the Whiskey- a-Gogo , Beach Boys Eagles…
Sports – Alcindor , Walton Koufax .
Great weather, beautiful starlets and a place for creative free-spirits.
I finally visited LA ten years ago. I liked all the art deco and Spanish- themed architecture, loved the ocean and palm trees, but it seemed like I was just getting a glimpse of the past.
There were no beautiful blonde beach babes around. It seemed very much like a Mexican city and most of the white people around were tourists . People were telling me that the suburbs are all Chinese. Rodeo Drive was all Middle Eastern. Not a place I would like to go back to.
Hollywood will decamp from LA soon . It will only get worse.
LA a cultural wasteland? Hardly. Southern California has for decades had the world's largest concentration of Ph.D's, and in the 1960s-1980s, the days of Feynman, etc., probably also the largest number of Nobel laureates. How about Caltech (ranked 1st or 2nd in the world), UCLA (ranked 11th in the world), UCI, JPL, RAND, Raytheon, and all the other aerospace companies, and if you include San Diego (America's Gibraltar) and La Jolla, then there is no other place in the world that can even begin to compare with SoCal in sheer brainpower. The Internet originated at UCLA in late '69 in their Math building, for heaven's sake.
There was a dark side, definitely. The shadow of the Vietnam war, esp. if you were eligible for the draft, weighed heavy on your psyche. There were War Surplus stores everywhere. Much of Hollywood, and LA toward downtown had a Bukowskian tinge to it, i.e., kind of run down like it never recovered from the Depression. In the downtown skid row district as late as the '60s you could still hire a taxi girl to dance with, and massage parlors, mud wrestling places, and Pussycat theaters were everywhereReplies: @Anon 2
Go to Canada or the UK.
My impression of LA in the 60s and early 70s :
Great movies coming out of Hollywood- The Graduate, Burch Cassidy..., 2001, Planet of the Apes
My favourite TV shows as a kid Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island , Star Trek, Brady Bunch, Dragnet ., were made there
Musically, the Doors , the Whiskey- a-Gogo , Beach Boys Eagles...
Sports - Alcindor , Walton Koufax .
Great weather, beautiful starlets and a place for creative free-spirits.
I finally visited LA ten years ago. I liked all the art deco and Spanish- themed architecture, loved the ocean and palm trees, but it seemed like I was just getting a glimpse of the past.
There were no beautiful blonde beach babes around. It seemed very much like a Mexican city and most of the white people around were tourists . People were telling me that the suburbs are all Chinese. Rodeo Drive was all Middle Eastern. Not a place I would like to go back to.
Hollywood will decamp from LA soon . It will only get worse.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Anon 2
My wife’s young nephew from downstate Illinois, 6’1″ blond and blue-eyed, stayed with us one summer. He played on two soccer teams at the neighborhood park. The friendly Mexican team called him “Hollywood” because nobody else in North Hollywood looks like a Hollywood movie star anymore. (The surly Russian team just called him “You.”)
“Oleaginous” rolls off the tongue.
“Dried lake bed, called playa, is lighter and flies farther than ordinary soil. Choking clouds of particulate matter driven by powerful desert winds could seed health problems for 650,000 people as far away as Los Angeles.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/californias-largest-lake-is-slipping-away-amid-an-epic-drought/2015/05/28/e83dd136-fe51-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html
The whole thing is shaping up into a dust bowl, no roses with a share economy spin. Nobody has much interest in sharing water. Property values are going to drop and they’ll raise the taxes to keep the city hall bureaucracy funded. The pipeline bureaucracy lost funding and the ocean is full of oil. It’s in better shape than Iraq though. Share the pain.
My impression of LA in the 60s and early 70s :
Great movies coming out of Hollywood- The Graduate, Burch Cassidy..., 2001, Planet of the Apes
My favourite TV shows as a kid Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island , Star Trek, Brady Bunch, Dragnet ., were made there
Musically, the Doors , the Whiskey- a-Gogo , Beach Boys Eagles...
Sports - Alcindor , Walton Koufax .
Great weather, beautiful starlets and a place for creative free-spirits.
I finally visited LA ten years ago. I liked all the art deco and Spanish- themed architecture, loved the ocean and palm trees, but it seemed like I was just getting a glimpse of the past.
There were no beautiful blonde beach babes around. It seemed very much like a Mexican city and most of the white people around were tourists . People were telling me that the suburbs are all Chinese. Rodeo Drive was all Middle Eastern. Not a place I would like to go back to.
Hollywood will decamp from LA soon . It will only get worse.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Anon 2
I lived in Southern California, mostly Santa Monica, West LA, and Orange County in the ’60s and ’70s, and it was a paradise on earth in so many ways, and not just if you had a keen appreciation of beautiful women (esp. blondes). Unlike SF, which was settled from the ocean, SoCal was mostly populated by the midwesterners during and after WW II. If you drove through a Jack-in-the-Box, or a Carl’s Jr. or McDonald’s, you’d be greeted by a pretty teenage girl (of course, white) since in those days work at fast food places was deemed appropriate only for teenagers. UCLA (95% white) had a lot of blond surfer dudes, and at noon the coeds on the steps of the Powell Library looked like they were taking a break between modeling assignments.
LA a cultural wasteland? Hardly. Southern California has for decades had the world’s largest concentration of Ph.D’s, and in the 1960s-1980s, the days of Feynman, etc., probably also the largest number of Nobel laureates. How about Caltech (ranked 1st or 2nd in the world), UCLA (ranked 11th in the world), UCI, JPL, RAND, Raytheon, and all the other aerospace companies, and if you include San Diego (America’s Gibraltar) and La Jolla, then there is no other place in the world that can even begin to compare with SoCal in sheer brainpower. The Internet originated at UCLA in late ’69 in their Math building, for heaven’s sake.
There was a dark side, definitely. The shadow of the Vietnam war, esp. if you were eligible for the draft, weighed heavy on your psyche. There were War Surplus stores everywhere. Much of Hollywood, and LA toward downtown had a Bukowskian tinge to it, i.e., kind of run down like it never recovered from the Depression. In the downtown skid row district as late as the ’60s you could still hire a taxi girl to dance with, and massage parlors, mud wrestling places, and Pussycat theaters were everywhere
My late coming English ancestors stopped briefly in NYC in the 1890s before making their way to Seattle.Replies: @Twinkie
Here you go:
Upper New England (sandwiched between the French and the Irish) and Utah (and some surrounding areas).
The Southwest is heavily Mexican, the Southeast is heavily African, and Appalachia is heavily “American” (i.e. Scots-Irish). The rest, with a few exceptions, is a vast sea of Germans.
I suspect that the explanation for the "sea of Germans" is not actual genetic descent but poor recall of ancestry.
NeilReplies: @Twinkie, @Nico
Hillary Rodham is a Yankee because she was born in Chicago. Chicago is geographically closer to Canada than it is to Louisiana.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
A true Yankee lives in New England, grew up there, his ancestors and ancestors’ ancestors grew up there, he lives on a boat or in a cabin, and eats pie for breakfast.
Chicago may as well be Novosibirsk.
People to the south use the term indiscriminately. As do people to the south of the south. To them, you, Jefferson, are a Yankee. Or, in their spelling, yanqui.
Utah, South Idaho, and a few counties in Oregon are the Mormon diaspora, primarily settled by a fecund combination of post-Puritan true believers, mid-19th Century Deadheads, polygamist opportunists, and assorted ne’er do wells.
I suspect that the explanation for the “sea of Germans” is not actual genetic descent but poor recall of ancestry.
Neil
I love how they vote. I love how they live. Simply, good people. Great political allies and great, patriotic Americans.
I hate their wacky religion and their robotic obedience to it.*
*I am a Roman Catholic - we like our religion with some booze, disobedient and at times heretical or corrupt priests, and an occasional scoundrel or two. It's a Church for sinners and incorrigible romantics ("But there is redemption at the end, right?"). And we wear regular underwear, and open our churches to all kinds of weirdoes including homosexuals who show up and demand to be given Communion. We are the opposite of robotic.
That said, I can assure you that we Huns are definitely present in large numbers. :)
Southern California is still an amazing place to live if you have money. Amazing weather, surfing, hiking, attractive women, nightlife, restaurants. Perhaps the best place in the world. There are still lots of attractive blondes, though mostly in the wealthier enclaves.
The main change is that non-affluent white families can’t afford to live there anymore. It’s no longer the middle class utopia of the past. Unless you’ve got a family income of at least 150K/yr, you’re priced out of a middle class lifestyle.
Another change is that the sense of solidarity and togetherness has eroded. People are very isolated from one another. Most of the socializing seems to within extended family circles or cliquish groups of friends. There’s very little sense of community among the people.
It’s a nice playground for handsome playboys, party girls, trust fund babies, and Hollywood glitterati. For everyone else, it’s a nice place to visit (or even temporarily reside if you’re below 30), but I wouldn’t live there. Too expensive, too atomized, and too competitive.
I suspect that the explanation for the "sea of Germans" is not actual genetic descent but poor recall of ancestry.
NeilReplies: @Twinkie, @Nico
Mormons, the last WASPs.
I love how they vote. I love how they live. Simply, good people. Great political allies and great, patriotic Americans.
I hate their wacky religion and their robotic obedience to it.*
*I am a Roman Catholic – we like our religion with some booze, disobedient and at times heretical or corrupt priests, and an occasional scoundrel or two. It’s a Church for sinners and incorrigible romantics (“But there is redemption at the end, right?”). And we wear regular underwear, and open our churches to all kinds of weirdoes including homosexuals who show up and demand to be given Communion. We are the opposite of robotic.
LA a cultural wasteland? Hardly. Southern California has for decades had the world's largest concentration of Ph.D's, and in the 1960s-1980s, the days of Feynman, etc., probably also the largest number of Nobel laureates. How about Caltech (ranked 1st or 2nd in the world), UCLA (ranked 11th in the world), UCI, JPL, RAND, Raytheon, and all the other aerospace companies, and if you include San Diego (America's Gibraltar) and La Jolla, then there is no other place in the world that can even begin to compare with SoCal in sheer brainpower. The Internet originated at UCLA in late '69 in their Math building, for heaven's sake.
There was a dark side, definitely. The shadow of the Vietnam war, esp. if you were eligible for the draft, weighed heavy on your psyche. There were War Surplus stores everywhere. Much of Hollywood, and LA toward downtown had a Bukowskian tinge to it, i.e., kind of run down like it never recovered from the Depression. In the downtown skid row district as late as the '60s you could still hire a taxi girl to dance with, and massage parlors, mud wrestling places, and Pussycat theaters were everywhereReplies: @Anon 2
I’ve known a (white) woman in Southern California, typical of her generation, born in the ’60s, who had some college but basically partied her way through life in the ’80s and ’90s. In those two decades she could walk into an office, and get a reasonably well-paid low level job practically on the spot. Her good looks undoubtedly helped. That was the old laid-back California that so many of us loved in the ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s although to a lesser extent. Then the Asian onslaught (in the ’60s there were very few Asians at SoCal colleges, except for foreign students from Asia), Hispanic immigration, and the IT revolution made life much more competitive for everyone, and now she’s back in college desperately trying to upgrade her skills to become employable again
I suspect that the explanation for the "sea of Germans" is not actual genetic descent but poor recall of ancestry.
NeilReplies: @Twinkie, @Nico
My family is extracted from that “vast sea of Germans” in the North Dakota pool. You are correct only up to a point: a lot of people with English ancestry call themselves “American” and so this divides those numbers in favor of other groups. Also, in America, although we don’t mention it much the “one-drop” rule often applies subtly to white ethnics, as well, so that a respondent is likely to emphasize the most “exotic” strain relative to England. Thus a respondent of part-English and part-German ancestry is on average somewhat more likely to answer “German”; part-German and part Irish, “Irish,” and part-French and part-Italian “Italian.”
That said, I can assure you that we Huns are definitely present in large numbers. 🙂