Peak Oil - An African American Perspective

btu2012 · Last edited by btu2012 on Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:50 pm; edited 2 times in total

For many of those generations they were enslaved and then segregated. Such groups always develop a different subculture, African-Americans are not unique in that regard. Think about the Jews and Gypsies in Europe etc. Yes, they have different preferences determined by their subculture.

African-Americans are culturally very different from Africans, but also quite different from Caucasian Americans. In fact the cultural difference between them and other Americans is smaller than that between them and most Africans.
_________________
only the paranoid survive

Ludi

I don't ski or windsurf, does that make me Black?

Shocked

<<< actually kind of pinkish and somewhat blotchy, turns red in the sun
_________________
No original ideas are contained in this post.

vision-master

vision-master

btu2012

Then you can probably agree that this history has left a mark, in that a ghetto culture was formed due to the history of segregation.

Thus you would expect some cultural differences, and culture takes a long time to change.

There is little reason to attribute that to race, given that race is such a nebulous concept especially when applied to Sub-Saharan Africans. There is more genetic difference among African-Americans than between their group median and the group median of Caucasian-Americans.

They might look the same to you because of skin color and curly hair, but they are in fact quite different from each other at a genetic level.
_________________
only the paranoid survive

vision-master

btu2012

I don't know, you might wish to ask an African-American ?

Africans themselves seem to have no problem swimming. Smile

_________________
only the paranoid survive

Ludi

"There have been widely held assumptions by whites that African-Americans cannot swim. Former Los Angeles Dodger vice president Al Campanis even used this stereotype in his infamous moment on "Nightline" in 1987, when he talked about blacks not having the necessities to be big league managers. Unfortunately, when one community accepts stereotypes about another, members of the community that's stereotyped often come to believe it as well. In this case, that might have kept some blacks from seeking out opportunities to swim competitively. Clearly, more pools are available in suburbs and in affluent communities where country club membership is possible. That is one reason why the YMCA is now involved with a push to teach swimming in its urban facilities."

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=lapchick_richard&id=3417453
_________________
No original ideas are contained in this post.

vision-master

btu2012 · Last edited by btu2012 on Wed Jun 11, 2008 6:25 pm; edited 1 time in total

What do you mean by big swimmers ? In the sense of winning sports competitions ?

Frankly it seems to be a rather silly question. Discussion of racial differences ought to start by defining what we mean by "Negroid", and that simply seems to mean "Sub-Saharan African". That's about all one can say genetically, given that this is the human group with the most intra-group variation. Lumping all of them together will teach us very little, except that their skin tends to be various shades of dark brown and their hair tends to be curly (none of which is unique to Sub-Saharan Africa, by the way). Both of these traits are easily explained adaptations to a climate which is mostly hot and involves increased UV radiation.

You might be aware that a similar (though less pronounced) difference exists between south and north Europeans, again easily explained by the different solar exposure between those regions.

It is funny that skin pigmentation plays such an important role in people's perception of each other, given that melanin content is one of the most variable traits. We all know that going to the beach has a certain effect on skin color.
_________________
only the paranoid survive

vision-master

greenworm · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 27, 2006 Posts: 1368

I love the african americans. I had a friend in college who was african-american and we had some fun times.