“And in Europe the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion”

I have just returned from a two- month visit to Sweden. Swedes swarthy? They have more yellowish skin than the average Brit but I wouldn’t say swarthy. Then again, I was staying near Svarte which my wife told me means ‘darkie’.

Haha, Svarte and “swarthy” are the same word, obviously. But Ben Franklin, I believe, said the same thing about continental Europeans, even Swedes, so it would seem that British Islanders are the palest people in the world, even if we don’t have the highest incidence of blond hair. (We do have the highest rate of red hair, though.) Perhaps it’s because the British Isles are cloudy, getting the first rains off the Atlantic, while the continentals have a somewhat drier, sunnier climate, and thereby haven’t lost their ability to tan.

I have just returned from a two- month visit to Sweden. Swedes swarthy? They have more yellowish skin than the average Brit but I wouldn’t say swarthy. Then again, I was staying near Svarte which my wife told me means ‘darkie’.

Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil
Anthony Marx

http://books.google.com.br/books?id=ad7QVJN70AIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Making+Race+and+Nation:+A+Comparison+of+the+United+States,+South+Africa&hl=pt-BR&ei=wXKBTKXsN4SClAexxIGsDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Antonio
Eu trabalho muito com genética e história política
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Abraço

Yep, it’s very common, especially in Scotland and Ireland. Also, because of traditional patterns of immigration, you see more brown hair + blue eyes in Canada than you do in the states.

There’s a long history in England of people who claim that they are of Anglo-Saxon decent scurrying around with concern about black haired Celts.

From the Highwayman by Alfred Noyes:

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Ian, your comments on Trinidad cracked me up. You’d need a flow chart to keep up with it all.

It reminded me of an article I came across a while back about the experiences of an African American women, Adia Whitaker, in Ghana (West Africa). It was so funny, I saved it.

Here’s some of what she had to say:

“I found their constructs of “black” and “white” completely different than the ones in the US. In Ghana, because my skin was not dark brown, I was considered white. Well, not white-white, but a version of it. One man at an internet cafe said to me, “Well we are confused because we can’t tell sometimes the difference between a black American and a white American. It seems as though you all have the ability to turn yourselves white if you want to. Beyonce?”"

“My gender was also questioned frequently, because I don’t wear earrings. At first, my hair was cut into a fade and then I shaved it bald because it was causing me too much trouble. In my mind, I thought Africa would be the perfect place to grow it out. No pressure to look like a rock star and all that. Big mistake. Big, big mistake.”

“Nowhere in that did I anticipate the level to which my physical appearance would cause such disruption in the daily lives of Ghanaians. They really, absolutely needed to know whether I was a boy or a girl to continue any interaction with me. At home, I’m this exotic, bald headed, queen honey bee. In Ghana, I was this sick, skinny dog walking down the road that would confuse people and cause hysteria.”

btw, the person who asked me if I was “mixed race” was from Singapore. She asked me out of curiosity, not in a mean way. It was kind of a revelation to me that blue eyes and brown hair look “mixed race” to some people. In a way she was right, as it is likely a product of an R1b/R1a mix up in people from the British Isles.

Have a nice evening.

When I was living in Minnesota, a little boy at the church I attended once asked me, “why is your hair so dark?” and it hit me that just about everybody there was blond, and just about the only time they would have seen dark-brown hair would be on a non-European person. I’m of mainly British Isles ancestry (I identify as Irish American but I’m only about half that) and I’ve heard that having nearly-black hair with light eyes is associated with this ancestry, and Minnesota seems to be among the least British states in the country.

That’s interesting. I think that must be very uncommon in Western Europe, but I’ve often run into it in people from Greece and Turkey.

No, in Northern Europe, at least, it’s the rule: the majority of children have blond hair, while the majority of adults have brown hair. To a lesser extent, that must be the case in Europe in general.

I also found it interesting the way my cousins were perceived in Trinidad versus Jamaica. Their mother is Indian, their father Chinese-African-Carib-French-English (iirc). In Trinidad, as children, one was likely to be taken for Indian (straight hair, darker skin, relatively straight features) while the other ‘dougla’ (mixed Indian and black) on account of her curlier hair. In Jamaica it was reversed – she was Indian (because Jamaican Indians are often a little mixed while he was Chinese, on account of his very straight hair).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sight_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine)

Captain Sisko has a love interest; I was certain the whole episode she was Indian (picture in the link).

Turned out half African American and half Italian American. Usually I find in mixed-race union children tend to look more like the race of their father (even accounting for obvious genetic dominance).

Anyway my point being in Hollywood its very rare to see a black/white romantic relationship (Will Smith’s famous statements in Hitch that the female lead Eva Mendes was the only acceptable counterbalance for a black lead) but other “people of color” can do.

Its really very strange. One thing about the West is that it is the first society to consciously delve into color consciousness; most “people of colour” back home are extraordinarily sensitive to gradations of skin tone. Malcolm Gladwell in his last book Outliers has a moving paragraph about Jamaican society’s attitude to Creoles. It was only discrimination in England which made his Creole mother she was and would remain black.

Anyway I was reading through the thread about Razib’s comments on Hispanic identity. I remember a Doministani girl was telling her Dominican mom that her friend wasn’t black but Dominican.

I had heard it in passing but I found it hilarious at the time. After that the girl, who was black for all intent and purposes, was “Dominican”.

I really find Hispanics somewhat similar to South Asian; in the concept of browness or Desiness. Forgive the vast generalisation everyone aspires to be fair and lovely (as white as they can be really) to emulate ancient or medieval conquerors. At the same time there is this intangible concept of desiness or “Hispanicness”, which means whatever your colour or culture you belong, even if the subcultural differences are huge and vast.

Could it do with the linguistic area; South Asia is pretty much Hinglish dominated whereas Latin America is Spanish/Portuguese (my Columbian colleague speaks to Portuguese clients according to him its something you can pick up).

Just my thoughts; race is a funny concept, very few hard and fast rules in it.

1. You heard wrong. Israel’s economy has some problems but is close to the EU average for GDP per capita. In fact in the last decade it had been growing steadily and was one of the countries less affected by the economic crisis. In the same decade, the fertility of Jews has risen from 2.6 to 2.9 (and is 3.2 for Jews born in Israel so it will continue to rise).
2. Yes. Ultra-Orthodox have the highest fertility rate and secular the lowest. But in the last decade the ultra-orthodox rate decreased and the secular one increased. And this does not explain why the secular fertility rate is around 2.3-2.4 when the average in Europe is 1.5 (and probably slightly lower if we take only the secular Europeans) and the average of US Jews is also around 1.5.

I am curious about how these stereotypes are formed.

Sorry for snooping on your conversation.

Have a nice evening.