Stop Me Before I Vote Again

The "unearned" bit just points to the "privilege" as it were of others assuming the competence, intelligence, or general worthiness of a person based on skin color alone. That's really it in a nutshell.

The whiteness thing seems to be called being an "American "
to it's Chauvinist members

In certain extensions whiteness seems to lose it's edge

I prefer some more conventional national framing
That doesn't force racism on the labeled

My baseless intuitively obvious surmise
most self labeled " real Americans " not only don't see themselves as racists
U couldn't provoke an epiphany in em

That sort of epiphany is reserved for rosy fingered liberal dawns

http://crookedtimber.org/2012/09/10/the-white-working-class/

This attempts to put numbers on the income parts of white reaction

Aka Know nothing Americanism

Peel back the flesh and it's all pink. I'd imagine there are, and always have been, equal percentages of creeps and monsters, when sorted by race/nationality and gender.

Too bad you already used the pic from the last post, because there seems to be this presumption, particularly now, with our current (never done anything for the misery of Blacks in the UZ, just made it far worse) Trojan Horse running for re-elect, that whenever white people, particularly males, get angry about something, it's just race privileged bullshit, when the reality is otherwise, and far more complex.

more to consider of who is doing the depriving ,of what , and how , and why .. .

I don't understand the resistance here to whiteness studies. "Whiteness" is an identity which has been socially constructed and defined within particular historical circumstances; uncovering both the nature of whiteness as well as the reasons why millions came to identify themselves collectively as "white" has been the subject of academic analysis since at least the time of W.E.B. Du Bois, whose ideas have heavily influenced the scholarship of historians such as David Roediger. Why shouldn't "whiteness"--its historical origins, its unique attributes, and its enduring appeal--be the subject of intellectual inquiry?

resistance ?

I always considered the ability of my non-colored friends to do banal things in banal places without necessarily eliciting glances/ commentary/ a hail of bullets from mall cops... a kind a privilege. Sure, the privilege bar is lower than it once was (water fountains/ lunch counters/ swimming pools are not what they once were)... but, in a bottomless pit, it still means something!

steven, every one has a little colour.. .yeh woooo trip / on first reading michael's post above i found something of priv' y more fitting than deprivation ..

@ "anne": every one has an x-chromosome, too. does that mean you'll be a little more circumspect about throwing around the m-word? har. further: I wrote "colored", which has an historical meaning in the context of my winky comment, doll; nothing to do with optics in the strictest sense.

Is the average white Serf underprivileged compared to the average Lord or Vassal? It goes without saying. Still, there is a hierarchy, though not even all of the North American Coloreds find themselves at the bottom of it! But it's a bit much for White Yankee Fellers to think they can get too whiny just yet. Three or four more election cycles should do it! Then this "Race" nonsense will be over and we can focus on Class.

"Why shouldn't "whiteness"--its historical origins, its unique attributes, and its enduring appeal--be the subject of intellectual inquiry?"

Oh good, we've got a Eugenicist in the thread! "Whiteness" , as we're discussing it now, is not even 100 years old. In 1912, most leading WASPs considered Jews, the Irish, Italians, Catholics in general, South Americans... and so forth... most decidedly NOT "White". But you knew this. Come over to the Fatherland and discuss "Whiteness", chum. You're in for an eye-opener.

It's a social construct... a fad, too. It won't last long.

steven, i was just thinking of all the ways that we move around in our trying to find the wording with that .. , not humping on you on that , i was thinking of my own saying ..lovely man of colour ..in trying to tell about something ,out here in the real wor ld, a few days ago , i also say silly things like .. more native to this land scaping , said exacting gir' l / what's the m word , massive ?

"what's the m word "

I suppose you used up your jumbo supply of the word "misogynist" in that recent (shut-down) comment thread, "anne"!

PS Please note how many times I go to "racist" in this thread... even with a Eugenicist participating! Laugh. It's all about precision.

"steven, i was just thinking of all the ways that we move around in our trying to find the wording with that..."

Because the taxonomy is fraught. It doesn't describe to any satisfying degree of resolution and it doesn't merely categorize... it *quarantines*; segregation begins in the language. Liberals will "move around" because the negative associations of just about every "euphemism"... "black", "Colored", "Afro-American"... is impossible to ignore. The history is too recent; the Past hasn't left the room yet. "Black" already sounds like a politically-charged statement... and a judgment. It should *feel* like saying "French" or "tall" or "ruddy" but it can't because we won't let it.

erratum: **Liberals will "move around" because the negative associations of just about every "euphemism"... "black", "Colored", "Afro-American"... ARE impossible to ignore.**

steven, i didn't .. . down the thread , said gentle , you'r lumping there , / annndd ,i have no issues with age differences , i was involved with much older men when i was young, in time .. others wed ,had children ,and in that my involvements just naturally became with younger men in that ,men in their twenties still regularly ask me out ,if SUITED i go , and so on of involved with , , my issue with you was your NEED to say in the setting of what you had written there ,

"my issue with you was your NEED to say in the setting of what you had written there"

anne, I won't be going into all that nonsense again. You were guilty of imprecision, like those misguided warriors of OWS who started double-barreling "racist/misogynist" at John Lennon's "Woman is the Nigger of the World"... the kind of highly-charged imprecision of word-choice that destroys the conversation.

On the other hand: MJS, isn't it pointless semantics to draw a categorical distinction between "less privileged" and "deprived"? It's not as though we can establish an objective baseline of "neither privileged nor deprived", since everyone is a walking tally of plusses and minuses in the light of a million metrics. But, all things being equal, you're better off, on day one, being born a White Yankee Male than, say, a Black Haitian Female... and *pretty much anywhere on the planet*.

A lot of my Colored chums complain that they have to be 5x better to earn the same rewards and it's fairly (empirically) verifiable. What's wrong-headed (and all too common) is someone thinking *you've* (MJS) got it made just because you aren't Bill Cosby. But that's two different discussions!

"Doesn't this imply, among other things, that an ''earned" privilege would be okay?"

But it is. Did Susan Sontag get better tables at Elaine's than Joe-the-faceless-day-trader? Does Susan Sarandon get her pick of Dudes? Did Arthur Miller... oops... better slow down there...

still reading ,/ steven , of your next comment , 1,20, ..has something to do with my own awk ward shading , i'm as fair, pale as they come , of an ancient migrating , but of nothing of the orient , an oval , ,my facing , i am norwegian, scot., ger. ,again nothing that suggests of the orient of my oval face, and a little of something of fr. ,as far back as the book keeping goes ,and of another more native to ont. here ,of my family connect being here for a long time , and my only connect to the states being of coming in in part as huguenot , in the 1700c on the east coast there , but moved north not long after / .. . more to come ,of my mention of dance , and of that lovely man of colour with tears in his eyes as he cried out she is not white on seeing me dance in the middling midst of a gathering gather .. .thousands , .. ./ ethiopia,

MJS, isn't it pointless semantics to draw a categorical distinction between "less privileged" and "deprived"?

What we seem to be doing is defining 'privilege' as a kind of inverse of 'deprived' or 'oppressed' -- to the extent that you're not the latter, you must be the former. Just a matter of multiplying by -1 (or dividing into 1, depending on whether you see the underlying process as additive or multiplicative).

But I think that does some violence to the ordinary commonsense meanings of those words, and also kinda smuggles in a sort of collective culpability for the supposedly 'privileged' groups, no matter how badly off and ill-used many or most of their members may actually be.

"X is less privileged than Y but still privileged? Compared to whom? Underprivileged X is privileged but not privileged enough?"

It's only a head-scratcher until you define X, Y and Z in human (current) terms and move this chat out of the realm of abstraction. Though, even in an abstract sense, if X,Y,Z are on various steps of a given hierarchy, what's confusing about it?

Hypothetically: Steve Jobs' son is more privileged than your local KFC franchise-owner's daughter, who is more privileged than the son of the fellow who works as a janitor at the KFC. The semantics seem frivolous but real-world models make the comparison work to the degree that we can even sort of quantify the privilege intuitively in a way that most of us can agree on. "Privilege" isn't about quotients of happiness or mental health or anythings nebulous like those.

Give us a hypothetical socio-economic bell curve and we can situate you on it with little fuss! Laugh

**(or even worse, the ever-popular "underprivileged")+*

Well, *that*s* just a typical American euphemism, like "collateral damage" or "rest room". It's for people who feel too guilty to say "poor".

"Oh good, we've got a Eugenicist in the thread! "Whiteness" , as we're discussing it now, is not even 100 years old. In 1912, most leading WASPs considered Jews, the Irish, Italians, Catholics in general, South Americans... and so forth... most decidedly NOT "White". But you knew this. Come over to the Fatherland and discuss "Whiteness", chum. You're in for an eye-opener."

Steven, I have no idea where you get the notion that I'm a eugenicist, but I'm going to assume for the moment that your obvious misinterpretation of what I wrote is an innocent mistake and not simply the product of you being an asshole (even if I think the latter is more likely).

You're right that numerous groups (Jews, the Irish, immigrants from Southern and Eastern European countries) were initially regarded in the United States as something other than "white." The processes through which these groups came to be considered white by native born Anglo Protestants and through which they came to view themselves as white are the subject of the book Working Toward Whiteness by David Roediger, who is considered a pioneer in the field of whiteness studies (as well as a passionate critic of the virulent notion of "white supremacy").

In other words, what "whiteness" is, what it means to be "white" and what white people think it means for them to be "white," and why the boundaries of whiteness have expanded to include previously "non-white" groups are all intriguing questions, and unless I'm very much mistaken intriguing questions usually and justifiably lead to intellectual inquiry.

But surely whiteness is the unmarked category -- the default, so to speak? 'White' in the American context simply means anybody who's not one of the currently stigmatized or marginalized groups. Studying the construction of 'blackness' or other ethnic categories seems potentially useful and revealing ('Asian', for Heaven's sake, of all the granfalloons) but 'white' just means 'none of the above' -- the category of people who don't belong to a category. A kind of non-category, really.

The analogy in the gender world would be studying the construction of 'maleness' rather than 'femaleness', though it's the latter that creates the problem.

But then I'd be amazed if there weren't somewhere a Department Of Critical Maleness Studies, and no doubt the Unis will be crawling with them in no time.

oh, .. . i thought this site was a maleness study .. , a better name for this blog would be - white male privilege , io z liked my dogs don't blawg , that would be a good secondary for you here fellows

a better name for this blog would be - white male privilege

not sure what you are trying to say there michael, said of 'er own peel back, compared to start of diane's comment here , of my ending my telling with .. ethiopia, of a i'm not wht

Compare use of the term 'normal', which simply means a kid who doesn't pose any problems for his schoolmasters. I believe there was an LA police chief a while back who made the parallel beautifully explicit: he observed that black folks were more susceptible to chokeholds than 'normal people'. But we haven't yet gotten around to speaking of 'normal privilege', and I hope we never do, because among other things this would be to reify a purely negative category. This is also my objection to 'white privilege'.

You're drastically oversimplifying the issue, Michael. If whiteness in contemporary America is a kind of generic "default"--and this is certainly debatable--it didn't start out that way, and the process through which ethnic groups originally viewed in America as "non-white" have been brought under the fold of "whiteness" was historically a complicated and contentious one. As Du Bois and James Baldwin both seemed to realize, understanding the construction of "whiteness" complements an understanding of "blackness," just as understanding the construction of "maleness" complements an understanding of "femaleness" (since you mentioned it, there is a large and growing body of scholarship on maleness and the construction of masculinity, and I don't see why there wouldn't be--men have to grapple with certain societal expectations and assumptions related to their gender just as women do). The construction of identities is a complex dialectical process profoundly affected by changing historical circumstances; it isn't that one emerged fully formed and the other was shaped in opposition to it.

I really would recommend reading some stuff by David Roediger. He's one of the few remaining "old school leftists" in modern academia. (Full disclosure: I've met the man and had coffee with him a few times.)

I just can't see it. I don't think there's any such thing as 'whiteness'; that's the whole point of the joke about Stuff White People Like. It isn't an 'identity' (which is a very dubious category in its own right). You ask somebody what his 'ethnic identity' is, he's very unlikely to say 'white'. He'll say Italian, or Irish, or Polish, or what have you.

The male/female thing is a little different, since biologically at least, there are only two genders; you pays your money and you takes your choice. Even there, though, I would say that 'masculinity' is negatively defined: it consists, basically, of not acting like a girl.

Fair enough. I'm more than willing to amicably agree to disagree and go back to nodding my head in vigorous approval at just about everything you write.

I just can't see it. I don't think there's any such thing as 'whiteness'; that's the whole point of the joke about Stuff White People Like. -MJS

For which, if it were physically possible, there exists an elegant solution: walk the earth for one week, particularly in America, in my skin---then you will see it, and, far more importantly, feel it.

Coldtype, I'm sure you're right that I would see and feel something quite important and illuminating during the thought experiment you propose. I'm just not sure 'whiteness' would be the right term for it. I suspect that what would be brought home to me is the significance of some other kind of 'ness'; since I don't know you personally, I can only surmise what 'ness' that might be, though some obvious guess nesses come to mind. I'm not disagreeing with you about the facts of the matter, but about the way we conceptualize it.

"You ask somebody what his 'ethnic identity' is, he's very unlikely to say 'white'. He'll say Italian, or Irish, or Polish, or what have you."

But you get one more question. And you ask "But are you white?"

Ha, ha, ha!

Well be waiting for your report, Mr. Smith.

Adam (aka Comrade Troville), since you’re harping on David Roediger, allow me to recommend "How the Irish Became White" by my excellent acquaintance, Noel Ignatieve. We’ve known each other for a long time although we haven’t kept in touch since the death of our mutual comrade over a decade ago.

On the subject of “whiteness”, I can only say that it’s a way to identify with people in power. For example, take the immigrants of non-white but Caucasian origin. They consider themselves as white folks even though the white man would never consider them to be white. Case in point would be my peeps, the Iranian Americans who for the most part maintain that they’re white and even go as far as declaring that they’re the original Arians! It’s laughable but not to them. Obviously, I’m generalizing but according to my anecdotal evidence, they consider themselves to be “white” despite the White America’s sentiments because they identify with the ruling class. To answer the question of why an ethnic minority would identify with the ruling class would require way more space than the comment section of this blog and hence, I’ll rest my case.

"Steven, I have no idea where you get the notion that I'm a eugenicist, but I'm going to assume for the moment that your obvious misinterpretation of what I wrote is an innocent mistake and not simply the product of you being an asshole (even if I think the latter is more likely)."

On one level, I was being tongue-in-cheek. On another level, not so much. I'll soften the judgment by calling you an Instinctual Eugenicist. Or an Unconscious Eugenicist. But this is the glaring problem with your apparent interest in/ valorization of
"whiteness": there is no real attribute common to all “whites” which is also *exclusive* to them. To argue otherwise is to waltz on the outskirts of Hitlerville.

@MJS: one final thing on Privilege. If a woman of Romani extraction said to me that I, as a North American of Color, enjoy a kind of privilege in Central Europe that she doesn't, I would say to her: "Yep."

@Merkin: I can speak a few words to you in Persian! (sadly, I can't write it) I was with a Persian woman for five years (off and on), 20 years ago, and we're still friends... she lives a few blocks from me now and we chat often. Maybe it's "racist" to say so but I *knew* there was some extra, as-yet-undefined, reason I like you! Laugh

Comrade Augustine, likewise, I appreciate your presence and commentaries on this space. Now the enquiring minds want to know, does your ex Persian babe identify with being an Arian or a person of color!

steven, .. late eve,back in , was showing some.. ,a quick look at .., at a gathering this evening ..your " anne, I won't be going into all that non sense again. .., . and " . . You were guilty of imprecision.. . " back up there , they had a good what a dumb fuck quiet laugh about you , because they know.. in being brighter than you in so many ways ,that i am careful, exacting to an extreme like no other with my awkward wording , .. . honky

@Merkin:

Well, it's very complicated over here with the Persians-as-Aryans thing because many *Germans* think of Persians that way. As did Addy himself, it seems. So, it's hard to blame them for falling into it... with so much expert encouragement.

Having said that, her family is lovely... a dear image seared (sweetly) on my nostalgia-bank is me standing with three generations of elegant beauties in black, in front of the Aquarium, one fall day, her silver-haired, blade-straight grandmother just mind-bogglingly imposing. I only had mixed feelings about my ex's aunt...! laugh

(that was the "sublime" part... now for...)

@anne: Hey, it's quite obvious that you and your chums are the Algonquin Round Table all over again. There's nothing like a brainy "gathering" tittering ("quietly") at a comment thread displayed on a lonely computer screen to put me in my place! My only suggestion: openly declaring yourself to be "brighter" than me in "so many ways" sort of takes the delicious edge off their fun, no? Shouldn't you stay in character as a blithering idiot in order to... etc?

Approval of mixed marriages in national opinion polls has risen from 36% in 1978, to 48% in 1991, 65% in 2002, 77% in 2007.''

one of my brothers is married to a women from northern thailand; one of my daughters is married to a guy from Nepal - me? divorced twice from puro anglos. So, bit by bit we become more like Brasil.

good book - 'Neither Black Nor White...' by Carl Degler.

i'd say more about it but read it nearly 30 yrs ago -it analysed the differences in slavery and miscegenation between the US and Brasil.

class is of much greater import.

good morning men , / steven, where did i say this .. "openly declaring yourself to be "brighter" than me in "so many ways" ?, and those lovely men were at a table not round .. . , and the 'puting screen wasn't lonely

@anne:

I love the idea of your quietly-tittering Mensa-Kings, hovering, in a prime-directive kind of way, above and behind human affairs, adding their IQs to the human average and elevating us and all that... but I'm worried about the obvious misogyny of your *all* "lovely men [...] at a table" policy, imaginary or not. Can't you admit a few more characters, with a vulva each, in there...? For the sake of appearances, at least?

Re: Privilege: look at the Daniel Day Lewis wannabe in the picture at the head of this thread. As low as he is on the totem pole of his region and era, he knew very well that he was the social superior of any "nigger" and that his word trumped the word of any woman, in his family, in a court of law, no? So that's Privilege. It's Serfy Privilege, but it's privilege.

"On one level, I was being tongue-in-cheek. On another level, not so much. I'll soften the judgment by calling you an Instinctual Eugenicist. Or an Unconscious Eugenicist. But this is the glaring problem with your apparent interest in/ valorization of
"whiteness": there is no real attribute common to all “whites” which is also *exclusive* to them. To argue otherwise is to waltz on the outskirts of Hitlerville."

Suddenly I'm experiencing the sensation of having banged my head repeatedly against a brick wall until a bloody gash rips open in my forehead and I begin to lose consciousness. You clearly haven't understood a word I've said, so I see no reason to continue arguing. I'll end by pointing out that W.E.B. Du Bois also wrote critically about "whiteness" and the reasons why so many people felt drawn to identify themselves as "white." If being an Instinctual or Unconscious Eugenicist in your eyes puts me in the same company as somebody like Du Bois, then I'll take that as an unintended compliment.

"Why shouldn't "whiteness"--its historical origins, its unique attributes, and its enduring appeal--be the subject of intellectual inquiry?"

Troville, get a tourniquet on yer haid and do tell us about the "unique attributes" of "whiteness". All ears.

SA: please define "music" for us. I'm getting it confused with "whiteness".

@Boink:

"Music" is that activity which Negroes excel at, of course!

s.a. , the lovely means good . and like i said .. the puter wasn't lonely, shut the fuck up .. with your mis quoting, and your other behaving that is clearly wrong .. directed at me

white and black don't exist

spoken like a suthun cracker

Black do exist. White be figment of somebody imagination.

My issue with the "white privilege" thing is that the same (white) people who crow about it the loudest are often supporters of the Democratic Party, which itself is a part of the white-privilege system/power structure. A certain Mr. Wise comes to mind (who has also become a complete joke since Obama got elected).

The whole 'privilege' discourse seems a bit academic, in both senses. As a practical matter, nonwhites and nonmales seem to be more interested in knocking down the obstacles in their own paths than in depriving whites or males of any supposed privileges they may enjoy.

Way back D

I think propmted this comment

Why might non joe college boomer white males be angry about the Demo party?

Gibber about racism obscures this far more decisive question

The joe collegers simply extend the convenient templates they built in the late
60's

templates that occluded the class stripes of the boomer cohorts

This may be perceived as irritating pedantry by anyone still reading, but I have to say it.

"Arian" refers to a set of "heretical" Christian beliefs (subordinating the Son as a creation of the Father) common in the mid–first millenium CE among, e.g., the Visigoths, IIRC. "Aryan" is the ethnic-mythological you are looking for.

As far as that goes, your Iranian friends had an etymological point: the word does come from the ancient Persians, who referred to themselves as Aryans, or some ancestral word; the word "Iran" is actually related. Darius identifies himself as Aryan in the Behistun Inscription, I believe. Later on, the word was used for the Iranic languages, so that e.g. Tolkien considered the idea of an Aryan race ridiculous, the misuse of a linguistic term for an ethnic concept. The Nazis' idea of themselves as Aryans, in terms of either of these earlier uses, is, of course, complete ahistorical nonsense.

@Save the Oocytes

Re: Arian vs Aryan: It's very interesting and appreciated information.

But you know, of course, that the Nazties only needed a pseudo-classical chassis to hang their cobbled-together mythology on; the facts were never the point. From Tristan and Iseult and Norse Mythology to Horebiger to Tibetan Astrology, et al, it was probably just a mish mash of Belle Epoque enthusiasms Hitler picked up in Vienna, plus Himmler's un-scholarly efforts to come up with a Unified Field Theory of Whiteness. How the Nazties got the modern reputation for "intellectual" evil, I'll never know. The greatest harmless joke of the post-Nazty era was how enduringly popular the Nazties were as props in The National Enquirer stories... because Hitler would have been its greatest reader, too!

Comrade STO, thanks for correcting my spelling. Although, I believe Comrade Augustine already did that a few comments ago. Your background information about the root of the word is correct. However, I assure you that my limited population sample who refer to themselves as Aryans use the term for proof of “whiteness” that they so covet.

Not to hijack the topic of this thread, but here’s an excellent essay about the Iranians’ use of the word Aryan:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/08/post-2.html

Here are a few noteworthy excerpts of this essay:

Two strategies are served by this adherence. I call the first one self-Orientalization. This is a commitment to all European prejudices that regard Muslims, or generally the people of the East, as backward. The Iranian Aryan espouses these prejudices (which, in fact, also target him) and simply considers himself to be the Aryan exception. Self-Orientalization always involves an element of shame over traditional Iranian customs and features. This is patent in the justification that Reza Shah Pahlavi provided when he rendered the European chapeau (bowler hat) compulsory in 1935: "All I am trying to do is for us to look like [the Europeans], so they would not laugh at us."

The second strategy is that of dislocation, the attempt to dislodge Iran from its Eastern and Islamic reality and force it into a European one, under the claim that Iranians are members of the European family gone astray in the backward Middle East. The dislocation mentality has very deep roots in the Iranian psyche, as it was incessantly promoted by the Pahlavi state through every vehicle of education and propaganda. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi himself was a militant of "dislocationism." He once told a journalist, for instance, "We are an Asian Aryan power whose mentality and philosophy are close to those of the European states, above all France." He confided to British Ambassador Anthony Parson that it was "an accident of history" that Iran found itself in the Middle East, a startling negation of the country's empirical reality.

Not only is Aryanism a relic of nineteenth-century European thought with an ignominious legacy, but its Iranian variety is a symptom of an entrenched complex of inferiority, a desperate attempt to be something other than a "mere Iranian." This complex is rooted in a traumatic encounter with Europe that took place two centuries ago. It thus alarms me that to this very day, serious Iranian intellectuals tell a wide audience that "Iranians are Aryans."

1) erratum: Hoerbiger!
2) Merkin: we really must talk about your limited population sample in greater detail sometime! (as in: do you remember what was funny about Iranian coverage of the 1996 Presidential campaign? And: does your limited population sample refer to California as "Ralifornia", ever?)

All but one of the Iranians I've known fell into the 'self-Orientilization' category, preferred to be called Persian, etc - the one though was 'hard core' Leninist living in Detroit and was not concerned with ethnicity even though this can play a part in organizing.

'Persian' is certainly the more historical term; calling the country 'Iran' rather than 'Persia' only dates back to the odious Pahlevis, no?

Everybody calls the language 'Persian'; nobody calls it Iranian. There are no Iranian carpets or Iranian cats or Iranian miniatures. I'm a little skeptical about the de-orientalizing explanation; both terms have been in use for a long time. 'Iran' has etymological connections with 'Aryan'; I wonder whether that fact played a role in the thinking of the Pahlevis, back in the 30s?

On the other hand the current government has retained the name 'Iran', right?

Any Persian speakers in the audience?

Nursing a hangover all day, I hadn’t had a chance to check out the thread until now. Thankfully, due to the unbelievably high prices of booze in Canada, this doesn’t happen often!

Comrade Augustine, I must admit, you know more about my peeps than I do. No, I never saw the Iranian coverage of the 1996 campaign and I’ve never heard anyone referring to Cali as Ralifornia but I’m now intrigued and you must indulge us.

Comrade Smith, you are half right. Yes, before the Pahlavi regime and up until 1935, the “west” used to refer to Iran as Persia but I’m not sure if the inhabitants of Persia equally referred to their country as Parse in their native tongue of Farsi. Your examples of Persian cats, rugs, etc. are valid but remember, these words are in English and not in Farsi. In Farsi, the only translation for the word Persian other than the obvious (Iranie) is Parssie and I assure you that no one refers to their cat or rug as Parssie cat or Parssie rug!

Perhaps a good way to settle this argument might be to investigate what the old poets such as Hafez, Molana, or Saadi referred to the land in their writings. I’ll do a mini research and let you know the results later.

Regarding how most Iranians like to be called Persians, here’s my observation: during the Sausage Crisis, all of a sudden, all Iranians became Persians for the obvious reasons!

Language is so fascinating the farsi language ...which letters are similar to the arabic language (even far more than greek is to russian ..I think?), though the Farsi contains a “P” and maybe a “V?”, which the Arabic doesn’t, though the Farsi doesn’t seem to contain the deepest from the diaphragm/gut: “ع,” “غ,”... or “hamsa” (and certainly the english doesn’t either, though the Hebrew may have some Semitic equivalents (kind of interesting that are more courses of Arabic offered in UZ school systems (generally for some MIC jawb (as the russian once was)) than Hebrew, to my mind (and no, I do not, blame that on semites (which also encompass those who speak arabic),.... in ‘general,’ I look to the $$$Zionists$$$ (not as in “jewish”) as to that reality and rarity of ‘transparency’))).

(yep, I did fancy algebra ...shoot me!)

"Comrade Augustine, I must admit, you know more about my peeps than I do. No, I never saw the Iranian coverage of the 1996 campaign and I’ve never heard anyone referring to Cali as Ralifornia but I’m now intrigued and you must indulge us."

Comrade Merkin! A) Candidate Dole's last name is perilously close to being a word for the male protrusion, giving the news readers a very hard time, and B) I guess "Rali"(sp?) is a slang term (maybe only for Berlin Persians) for Persian carpet!

Aha, now I get it! That is pretty funny and unless you see candidate Dole’s name in Farsi, you wouldn’t think of such creative yet appropriate way of twisting his name. Regarding Ralifornia, the word carpet in Farsi is Ghali and I could make sense of the word Ghalifornia but I can’t see much connection to Rali and Ralifornia. Maybe it’s like the natives in Absurdistan who refer to Halliburton as Golly Burton!

Merkin: yes, I suspected "Rali" was a Berlin variation!

I am out of my linguistic depth on this topic, but following it with great interest. Minor notes, one etymological, one analogical:

1) The Greek word Περσικός, from which all the various European words for Persia/Persian descend, is supposed to derive from a place name *in* the Persian language itself -- in fact, I thought it was the same name that gives us 'Farsi'.

2) The governments of countries do sometimes decide they want the country (or places within it) referred to by a different name. The most recent is Myanmar, formerly Burma, though one might also cite Mumbai and Beijing.

There's usually a political point being made, and whether one goes along with the change or not probably depends on whether one agrees with the politics.

Does it affect the adjectival form? Do people really say 'Myanmarian' now to refer to a native of that troubled land?

Wanted to mention that this piece was quoted here: http://frustratedhypocrite.com/?p=669

Comrade Smith, here are my responses to the points you raised earlier.

Regarding 1)
Yes, it seems like the root of the word Perse, Persia, or Persian is Greek and it was adopted by the West and was being used exclusively until 1935. There is still a province in Iran that is called Farse, where supposedly, the rulers of the ancient Persian dynasties came from. In fact, Persepolis is in the province of Farse whose name has long been Arabized from Parse to Farse due to a lack of the letter ‘p’ in the Arabic language. What’s Arabic got to do with it? It was the language of the rulers after the Arab conquest sometime around the 7th century.

Regarding 2)
Keep in mind that Persia was what the “foreigners” referred to the country all along. That doesn’t mean that the natives used the same term. I couldn’t find any definitive references by the old poets and writers prior to 1935 but then again, I don’t have any of their books handy and in the absence of that, I made a call to my father in Cali who was born in 1928 and his long term memory is not that far gone. He attested that even in his childhood they always referred to the country as Iran. Furthermore, my mother who was born in 1922 and is no longer with us never indicated to me if she knew her birth place under any other name than Iran. She was meticulous and relentless in covering every detail of the history as she lived it and I’m sure I would have heard about it if there were such a thing as a name change as it pertained to the natives. So while Reza Shah did change the name of the country, it was only a change vis-à-vis the foreign reference to the country and not the natives.

The way I see it is that it’s not necessarily some fabrication if a government insists on changing the name of a country or location to something more resembling of what the natives call it (regardless of the politics and the motives behind it). Case in point is Beijing, which you pointed out yourself. I don’t know about the Myanmarians but it seems to me that the Persians always referred to themselves as Iranians so long as they were inside Persia!