[BretLudwig]

The dynastic appeal of Barack Obama


"In my new VDARE.com column, I respond to Kenan Malik's criticism in
Prospect of my definition of race. His assumption that it's absurd to call
the British royal family a racial group got me thinking about dynasticism
again, and I finally figured out something about the essence of Barack
Obama's appeal that should have been obvious to me a year ago.

It's absurd that in a huge country like America that a Bush or a Clinton
has been on every national ticket since 1980. I viewed Obama's victory
over the Clinton dynasty as a defeat for the forces of dynasticism, but
now I realize I was being naive, that has brilliantly tapped into the
public's dynastic logic, just on a larger and subtler scale.

Here's an excerpt, but you'll have to read the whole article to see how.

How to Think About Race €” and Barack Obama

By Steve Sailer

A new but characteristically confused debate over whether race is a
biological reality reminds me of the value of having a simple definition
of "race" in mind.

Left-leaning British-Indian science journalist Kenan Malik's latest
book, Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate, has so
far only gone on sale in the U.K. But he argues online: "Race is not a
real biological entity."

In a hostile review of Malik's book in Prospect, the fine British
intellectual magazine, Mark Pagel, a British evolutionary biologist, lands
a flurry of blows:

"Malik knows these facts about our genetics, but wants to insist that,
unless 'race' corresponds to absolute boundaries, it is a useless and
damaging concept. But to deny what everybody knows and to swap the word
race for something less politically charged like €˜group is just an
act of self-denial and certainly no more accurate than the dreaded €˜r
word. It is also patronising€”I would like to think we are all grown up
enough to accept the facts and ready ourselves for the deluge to come. I
say deluge because the more we measure, the more genetic differences we
find among populations €¦"

Unfortunately, Pagel doesn't deliver a knockout punch because he lacks
a definition of race. Like Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart wrote in
his famous opinion in a pornography case, Pagel can't define race, but he
knows it when he sees it.

Malik responded in Prospect by noting, with some justice, "The debate
over race has moved on. To judge from his review of my book, Mark Pagel
hasn't noticed."

To illustrate the state of the art thinking among the race realists he
opposes, Malik writes:

"In the 19th and early 20th centuries, races were viewed as fixed
groups, each with its own distinct behaviour patterns and physical
characteristics. They could be ranked on an evolutionary hierarchy, with
whites at the top and blacks at the bottom. Today, with a few exceptions,
race realists reject the idea that there are essential, unbridgeable
differences between human populations, or that differences signify
inferiority or superiority. So how do they define a race? Usually as 'an
extended family that is inbred to some degree' in the words of Steve
Sailer of the Human Biodiversity Institute. ... But once everything from
the British royal family to the entire human population can be considered
a race (because each is an "extended family inbred to some degree"), then
the category has little value."

[More]

Along these lines, here's an update of an update of Richmond's speech
concluding Shakespeare's Richard III about the dynastic marriage to end
the War of the Roses between the Yorks and Lancasters:

We will unite the white rose and the black:
Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction,
That long have frown'd upon their enmity!
What extremist hears me, and says not amen?
America hath long been mad, and scarr'd herself;
The rev'rend shouted his congregation's ire,
The consultant plotteth Will Horton ads
The undiverse fleeeth to the exurbs
All this divided White and Black
Divided in their dire division,

But then Barack Sr. and Stanley Ann
The true succeeders of each racial house,
By God's fair ordinance conjoin together!
And let their heir, God, if thy will be so.
Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace,
With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days!
Abate the edge of racists, gracious Lord,
That would demand both parties make borders secure,
And make America less inclusive
Let them not live to taste this land's increase
That would with insensitivity wound this fair land's peace!
Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again:
That she may long live here, God say amen!"



http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/d...ack-obama.html

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