[tied] Re: The indo european "race"

I didn't mean to bring this up again. This is an old post that
somehow got resent, I don't know how!

-- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "merbakos" <gigolojoe0@...> wrote:

> If the article was really written by that Roger Pearson then I

would

> have to conclude that his thinking is quite Nazi-like.
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Juha Savolainen <juhavs@...>

wrote:

> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Glen,
> >
> >
> >
> > You wrote that "my definition of racism which would include the
> act of irresponsibly bringing race or racial stereotyping into

very

> inappropriate situations or topics, if indeed it is ever
> appropriate.
> >
> > Racism to me is not just about hatred but about ignorance and
> irrationality."
> >
> >
> >
> > I appreciate your concern but I counsel great care here. I agree
> that bringing race or racial stereotypes irresponsibly and
> inappropriately into situations and topics often enough is tainted
> with racism. However, I think that whether such poor
> judgement "deserves" to be called racism or not depends very much

on

> whether this inappropriate emphasis of race is allied with
> sentiments of racial superiority. Hence my preference for my
> definition of racism, at least for discussions we are engaged

here.

> It may be narrower definition but it is also clear and
> unambiguous.
> >
> >
> >
> > To make my point, I cite here first what David W. Anthony wrote

in

> his review of Mallory´s and Mair´s "Tracking the Tarim Mummies"
> ("Archaeology", Volume 54 Number 2, March/April 2001):
> >
> >
> >
> > "In the end, their "working hypothesis" is that the earliest
> Bronze Age colonists of the Tarim Basin were people of Caucasoid
> physical type who entered probably from the north and west, and
> probably spoke languages that could be classified as Pre- or Proto-
> Tocharian, ancestral to the Indo-European Tocharian languages
> documented later in the Tarim Basin. These early settlers occupied
> the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin, where their
> graves have yielded mummies dated about 1800 B.C. They did not
> arrive from Europe, but probably had lived earlier near the Altai
> Mountains, where their ancestors had participated in a cultural
> world centered on the eastern steppes of central Eurasia,

including

> modern northeastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tadjikistan. At

the

> eastern end of the Tarim Basin, people of Mongoloid physical type
> began to be buried in cemeteries such as Yanbulaq some centuries
> later, during the later second or early first millennium B.C.

About

> the same time,
> > Iranian-speaking people moved into the Tarim Basin from the
> steppes to the west. Their linguistic heritage and perhaps their
> physical remains are found in the southern and western portions of
> the Tarim. These three populations interacted, as the linguistic

and

> archaeological evidence reviewed by Mallory and Mair makes clear,
> and then Turkic peoples arrived and were added to the mix."
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.archaeology.org/magazine.php?page=0103/abstracts/books
> >
> >
> >
> > Here both the racial characteristics of the Tarim

Basin "mummies"

> and their cultural features are relevant for tracking the

dispersion

> of the IE language family and hence we have no grounds to

criticize

> Mair, Mallory or Anthony for any alleged racism on that evidence.
> The reason is very simple. The association of genetics, culture

and

> language is a contingent feature, a historically variable feature,
> not an invariable condition as the "essentialist" views insinuate.
> And Mair, Mallory and Anthony are all, for all we know about their
> views on the Tarim "mummies", using the "race" in this innocent

and

> non-essentialist way.
> >
> >
> >
> > But things are quite different with John V. Day who ended his
> article (also including some discussion on the Tarim "mummies") as
> follows:
> >
> >
> >
> > "In a journal about the West and its future, it is fitting to

end

> this article by briefly recounting the fate of the Roman upper
> class. Among Indo-European peoples, the Romans offer an

especially

> useful example because they left masses of records, enabling later
> historians to determine what became of them. The evidence found

in

> ancient texts implies that this class descended largely from Indo-
> Europeans who had a decidedly northern European physical type,
> although that isn't something one reads in modern books about

Roman

> history. In Rome, though, the upper class was always a tiny
> minority. Instead of protecting its interests, it allowed itself

to

> wither away. Consider a bleak statistic. We know of about fifty
> patrician clans in the fifth century B.C., but by the time of
> Caesar, in the later first century B.C., only fourteen of these

had

> survived.43 The decay continued in imperial times. We know of

the

> families of nearly four hundred Roman senators in A.D. sixty five,
> but,
> > just one generation later, all trace of half of these families
> had vanished.44
> >
> > If we in the West want to avoid a similar fate, we must learn

from

> Indo-European history."
> >
> >
> >
> > Why do I feel a déjà-vu here? – Ah, yes, as Day has a role model
> here. This is what this role model wrote years ago:
> >
> >
> >
> > "The old Republican nobility were replaced by a new moneyed
> nobility, the equites, who thrived on financial speculation and
> lived in great personal luxury. Their example was the beginning of
> moral decay, and while their financial power ground down the
> freeman, the officials were corrupted by their bribes. So Caesar
> commented (Gallic Wars i. 39, 40), and Vergil protested that a new
> race must come down from heaven if the situation were to be
> rectified. As the old Italic blood died out, the administration
> began to fear for the recruitment of the legions. Censor Mettellus
> had in 131 B.C. demanded legal sanction to oblige citizens to

marry.

> Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Trajan and Hadrian provided for rewards to
> parents of numerous families. But without success, the effects of
> war were not made good; and to fill the empty spaces foreign blood
> flowed into Italy. As in modem days, the inferior appeared to have
> the higher birth-rate, and as a result the last days of Rome are
> repulsive. Pliny
> > noticed this, and pointed out that in the early days of Rome,
> there had been little need for physicians. There came also a
> proverb, "A crooked countenance is followed by crooked morals"
> (distortum vultum sequitur distortio morum). The blood of hundreds
> of thousands of slaves, mostly from Africa and Asia, turned

Imperial

> Rome into a racial morass, and finally citizenship was extended to
> all freemen living within the limits of the empire. This last low
> was published under the infamous Caracalla (A.D. 212), the son of

an

> African slave and a Syrian woman, a notorious criminal degenerate."
> >
> >
> >
> > And so on, ad nauseam…Who is this role model? Yes, you guessed

it,

> it is somebody who keeps turning up like a false penny…
> >
> > Those who want to read the whole diatribe can judge it

themselves

> at
> >
> > http://www.faem.com/western/fallrome.htm
> >
> > My two pennies for the issue? Well, as I see it, we are dealing
> here with a vulgar Nazi who cannot be taken as a good Indo-
> Europeanist by any stretch of imagination.
> > Best regards, Juha
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> > Juha:
> > >Indeed, I think that the key criteria for identifying racism is
> to ask (a)
> > >whether
> > >"Linguistics, genetics and anthropology are happily mixed up"

and

> (b)
> > >whether there is an intended (either explicit or implicit)

claim

> for the
> > >superiority of some ethnic
> > >group, "defined" in the confused sense just given. If both
> criteria are
> > >satisfied, then it is racism pure and simple.
> >
> > This definition is narrower than my definition of racism which
> would include
> > the
> > act of irresponsibly bringing race or racial stereotyping into
> very
> > inappropriate
> > situations or topics, if indeed it is ever appropriate. Racism

to

> me is not
> > just about
> > hatred but about ignorance and irrationality. In this case, this
> topic is
> > inappropriate
> > for the application of race or genetics. Immediately, the

premise

> of an
> > "Indo-
> > European race" is illogical, as too is obsessing over general
> genetic traits
> > of its
> > speakers. This is because, as it is quite obvious to most,

anyone

> of any
> > genetic
> > stock can adopt any language, and we cannot _possibly_ know what
> the average
> > Indo-European speaker looked like! We can only make vague,
> subjective
> > guesses.
> > So this unscientific talk makes for a fruitless discussion here.
> >
> >
> > = gLeN
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
> > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search