Why Do Some People Hate Jews?

This was the question asked by Business Insider's Henry Blodget (here), and it seems that it caused quite a storm. Many people took offense to the question, but I was not one of them - similar to my non-offense to the same question about blacks. If it is true that Jews receive a disproportionate share of hatred, and I believe they do, it is very reasonable to ask why. Having said this, care must be taken that the question is not an invite to pile more hatred (as often happens on hate-sites) upon a group that has historically endured as much as any group. In the case of Hitler, the Nazi's, and WWII, that particular instance of genocide has properly come to define the worst that modern humankind has ever offered itself, in one sitting. I present the question for only one reason - to validate it as truth and contribute to stopping it.

To the question, very simply, Northern European Jews, otherwise known as Ashkenazi Jews, catch hell because they consistently and predictably overachieve in disproportion to their relative percent of the population, in areas that influence the concentration of wealth and power, beginning with education. Because of religion, more so than visible ethnicity, members of the group cluster and are readily identifiable, facilitating those whose level of jealousy, envy, and opportunity has them act out their hatred.

Finally, why do Jews overachieve, you ask? I will save this question for another post, but I will say that there is nothing sinister about it or it's origins, and humankind has benefited tremendously because of it.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Why Do Some People Hate Jews?, Anti-Semitism, Henry Blodget, Business Insider, Holocaust, Acting White

Obama's Gay Marriage Head Fake

When I first heard that President Obama was coming out in support of same-sex marriage, I thought for once that he was playing it 'straight', so to speak - but no such luck. I say this because the president added the caveat that laws granting this 'civil-right' of union, should be left up to the states. Say what?

As a constitutional scholar, Mr. Obama knows too well, after studying Brown v. Board of Education (desegregation), that state implementation of civil-rights protection is a dog that does not hunt. In other words, he knows that gay marriage left up to the states does not stand a chance in hell of becoming a right, by law. His Harvard legal education showed him, in no uncertain terms, that when the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, handed-off the implementation of their landmark rebuke of 'separate but equal' (Plessy v. Ferguson) in 1954, it took the states another twenty years to make it a reality. Even then, desegregation occurred amid street battles. To hear former NAACP lawyer and Justice Thurgood Marshall tell it at the time, the Warren Court was being purposefully "S-L-O-W" in handing their desegregation decision to the states, as I believe is Mr. Obama in his caveat-ed support of gay marriage.

Obama is denying what he knows - that it is the role of the federal government, as outlined in the constitution, to defend the civic-rights of every citizen (including equality under the law), particularly when individual state pursuits might abridge such rights. In true political slight-of-hand, Mr Obama is looking for voter credit, for gesture over real substance, while giving the politician's wink/nod to anti-gay factions that know history, especially those folks in the South.

Thurgood Marshall is certainly shaking his head, somewhere in the after-life, and maybe wishing Obama had attended Howard Law (Marshall's alma mater), rather than Harvard.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Obama's Gay Marriage Head Fake, Homosexual, Lesbian, Same-Sex, Civil-Rights, Acting White

Blue Eyed African Boy From Sierra Leone

I came across this picture of a boy from a remote village in Sierra Leone, West Africa. What really grabbed my attention, beyond his fantastic little smile, was the photographer, April Conway's, notation that the chief of the village said that the little boy was both deaf and mute. This combination is called deaf-mutism, where "profound or total deafness going back to early childhood, without special training, inevitably leads to the absence of oral language development". In deafness, dark pigment, and blue eyes, the lad is presenting strong symptoms of type II Waardenberg syndrome, along with the arguable broadness of his nasal bridge. If we could see under the hat, it might reveal evidence of a tuft of gray hair in the center of the forehead - also a symptom of Waardenberg's.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Blue Eyed African Boy From Sierra Leone, Waardenberg Syndrome, Genetics, Sembehun, Beautiful Boy Blue Eyes, Acting White

Donna Summer: 1948 - 2012

James C. Collier

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Blue Eyes Not Really Blue: The Tyndall Effect

I always wondered why the sky, the ocean, and eyes, that are suppose to be pigment-less, are blue. Also, blue eyes seemed to be bluer if there are any significantly blue items nearby, especially including blue apparel on or near the person. I made this diagram to help explain something called the Tyndall Effect, named after 19th century physicist, John Tyndall.

"A blue iris in an eye is due to Tyndall scattering in a turbid layer in the iris. Brown and black irises have the same layer except with more melanin in it. The melanin absorbs light. In the absence of melanin, the layer is translucent (i.e., the light passing through is randomly and diffusely scattered) and a noticeable portion of the light that enters this turbid layer re-emerges via a scattered path. That is, there is backscatter, the redirection of the lightwaves back out to the open air. Scattering takes place to a greater extent at the shorter wavelengths. The longer wavelengths tend to pass straight through the turbid layer with unaltered paths, and then encounter the next layer further back in the iris, which is a light absorber. Thus, the longer wavelengths are not reflected (by scattering) back to the open air as much as the shorter wavelengths are. Since the shorter wavelengths are the blue wavelengths, this gives rise to a blue hue in the light that comes out of the eye.[2] The blue iris is an example of a structural color, in contradistinction to a pigment color." Wikipedia

Lastly, if there is anything blue in color near blue eyes, like a shirt, or the sky, or painted wall, the amount of visible blue light waves will be increased, and those blue waves will enter and 'scatter' out of blue eyes, making them appear even more blue to any watchful eye or camera lens.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Blue Eyes Not Really Blue: The Tyndall Effect, Eye Workings, Albinism, Blue Iris, Melanin, Acting White

Healthy African Boy With Rare Blue Eyes

This blog was just hit with a mad dash of Russians interested in black people and blue eyes. A quick trace of the flurry of hits revealed the picture before you. It is, perhaps, the best example of a black African, non-mulatto, non-albino, with blue eyes. Also, the boy in the picture does not appear to have Waardenberg Syndrome, also a source of blue eyes in blacks. This leaves the strong possibility of a rare mutation of a key eye color gene.

(Note: The stipple drawing of the boy is from a test version of my iPhone app.)

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Healthy African Boy With Rare Blue Eyes, Eye Color Mutation, Albinism, Waardenberg, Mixed Ancestry, Acting White

Why Are Black Women Fat?

I read Alice Randall's NYTimes opinion (here) entitled, "Black Women And Fat", with more than a passing interest. In it, Ms. Randall postulates that a significant contributor to black female obesity resides with pleasing the black male desire for 'ampleness'. She speaks of diet and sedentary behavior, as influences, as well, but I still think she has the magnitude of the influence out of order. Pleasing black men would seem more of a cop-out for women, than sound reasoning. Still, this does not explain the behavior of some black men, when it comes to black women and weight.

Studies (here) and simple observation show us that Black men are most greatly attracted to curvy, proportional women, with a preference for protruding butts over frontal-view hour-glass hips, but this preference does not run counter to the general male preference for a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7. Beyonce, and others before her, prove this out.

Now, I have my own 'opinion' on a lesser, but still significant, factor describing why some black women feel they are pleasing black men with all that fat. I postulate that black men are running (have run) a game (confidence game) on the women who believe this. In some cases the women are running the game on themselves - how crazy is that? Each incremental pound that a fat woman is encouraged to believe is simply 'thickness', or 'attractive' fat, provides the black man with 2X power in the relationship. The black male manipulates the black woman's body image to offset his assorted shortcomings, beginning and ending with his inabilities as provider/breadwinner. He tells her he loves her thickness, while sneaking behind her back with another 'skinny' woman, who he says (when busted) treats him 'better'. Give me a freakin' break!

So, while agreeing with Ms. Randall in part, I am postulating, rather than offering fact, that from the male vantage point, black men are running a game on black women to get more of what primeval man wants - sex from as many different women as possible, at the lowest possible cost to himself. In the case of obese women believing they are most desirable - it's just part of the game.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Why Are Black Women Fat?, Obesity, WTH Ratio, Alice Randall, Thick vs. Fat, Acting White

Obama vs. Biden On Gay Marriage, And Euphemisms

The other day, when Vice-Presiden Joe Biden usurped President Obama's yet-announced position on gay marriage with his own "I'm comfortable with it", I'm sure many things ran through Obama's head in response - before he hastily put out his own position of support. Here is my quick list of Obama's thoughts...

1. Obama the Urban President... "Biden let his mouth overload his hips on that one!"

2. Obama the Gangsta' Prez... "Biden f_cked-up!"

3. Obama the Black Intellectual President... "Excuse me Joe, it's woodshed time!"

4. Obama the Post-Racial President... "Biden's timing could have been better!"

5. Obama the Two-Term President... "Joe got out a little bit over his skis...but out of a generosity of spirit!"

President Obama's challenge, as I see it, is to be as good a leader of a nation-in-decline, as he is a politician looking for re-election.

James C. Collier

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Can White Parents Make Black Children?

The other day I was asked if white parents can produce black children. I though it was possible, but could not say for sure, until I looked into it. The answer is yes, but like black parents producing 'white' children, it is rare, but further proof that even small amounts of a different ethnicity can produce offspring that appear very different than their parents.

Perhaps the most famous example, written as a book entitled "When I Was White", was of white South African/Afrikaner, apartheid-era, parents who bore a 'colored'/black child, Sandra Laing. The long-odds and geographic location created a tragic circumstance for Sandra and her family, with a legacy that continues to this day. (here)

The technical reasons on how this occurs is pretty simple. Each parent carries a combination of genes whose phenotype (expression) is dominant toward one ethnic group, while even a small number of genes are also resident, but without expression. At conception, the 'minority' expression of the genes may combine in such a way to have the minority ethnicity to 'poke through' and express itself in a one-in-a-million scenario. In the case of Sandra Laing, she is every bit the offspring of her parents, including her wrapping. She simply shows something that is unseen in her parent's outward appearance - that is a very small amount of recent generational black heritage.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Can White Parents Make Black Children?, Sandra Laing, When I Was White, Judith Stone, Black From White, Acting White

Tanorexic? Really?

Growing up in Colorado, I had a distant cousin who married a fair-skinned white woman, who had a habit of baking herself to a mile-high crisp every summer. The black side of his family always wondered what the hell was wrong with this, otherwise likable, woman - she was still going to be white, regardless of her imitation of rotisserie'd chicken. All that super-tanned skin under her blonde hair seemed unhealthy and a bit creepy, not unlike her famous departed antonym, the pigment-less 'gloved-one'. The picture in the post reminded me of my relative, so I looked up tanorexic as a real diagnosis, but it seems to be slang, for those addicted to tanning.

The more accurate clinical description is body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), "a mental disorder in which one is extremely critical of his or her physique or self-image to an obsessive and compulsive degree". While we are at it, I would add in my vote for "George Hamilton Syndrome" - the actor, and another serial tanner that induced the heebie-jeebies.

Now, the woman in the post, Patricia Krencil, was charged with taking her under-age daughter along on one of her tanning binges (here) - which is a legal no-no. However, in the poor woman's defense, the pictures of her daughter clearly show a healthy, pale-skinned, kid, who looks nothing like her easy-bake-oven'd momma. If guilty, she, with same kid in tow, should probably be sentenced to get some counseling - so the little one doesn't grow up disordered, too.

Shrinks are totally welcomed on this one.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Tanorexic? Really?, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, BDD, Blaceface, Compulsive Tanning, Acting White

Black vs. White Women And Eating Disorders

I asked a black female friend if her group suffers from eating disorders, similar to white females. She laughed and said, "yes, we eat too much!" I said no seriously? Again, she said yes, black women do all the crazy things white women do - anorexia, bulimia, binging and purging, but "we mostly binge, with no purge". She went on to say black women have the same body image hang-ups as white women.

After a bit of digging, I think my spokesperson may have been right on the money, even as she joked. It seems that there are some researchers who believe over-eating, or binge-eating, to be a disorder on par or greater than various earlier recognized eating disorders. Unreconciled anxieties can drive people to either starve themselves or over eat. But it also seems that over-eating may have a socio-economic/cultural influence tied to obese tendencies and negative childhood experiences related to weight, as well as poor dietary habits. (here)

So, as I see black women (and men) morbidly leading the obesity parade, I will think twice of the role mental health plays, and the need for improvement. America is literally eating itself to death.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Black vs. White Women And Eating Disorders, Obesity, Over-weight Black Women, Fat, Binge-eating, Acting White