Heh, that is funny. I'm surprised, though -- I've heard of the calorie-restriction thing before, and I thought it wasn't even supposed to kick in until real famine levels.
"Starving" themselves on 1,800 to 2,000 calories per day? No wonder this country is so damn fat.
National Academy of Sciences recommendations:
* 1,600 calories is about right for many sedentary women and some older adults
* 2,200 calories is about right for most children, teenage girls, active women, and many sedentary men (Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding may need somewhat more.)
* 2,800 calories is about right for teenage boys, many active men, and some very active women
Yeah, starving. If you eat a Big Mac for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you'll fit in as long as you order the last one without cheese. You'll notice the percentages in each of those nutritional labels are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
"as long as you order the last one without cheese"
That's downright unAmerican. Might as well call it a Big Jacques.
A Big Mac without cheese? An unthinkable deprivation!
I've been reading a lot lately about monasticism in the Byzantine Empire. There was a pattern where most of the monks who become prominent theologians or mystics tended to have started out in the civil service, but then gave that up and went to the monastery. If their civil service was anything like admin type of work in our present context, I'd imagine that one of the first motivations for entering the monastery was weight loss.
Starvation my ass. 2000 calories is lean for an adult male who is in shape and athletc, sure. (#3 gets it right, but I think there's a tendency to say 'I'm active!' and eat more than you should.)
But you just look like a tool if you compare yourself to concentration camp victims.
Adam, that might have been true of the Byzantines, but it didn't apply to such as Thomas "two chairs" Aquinas.
I wonder if the tendency of people to overeat is partly due to the fact that we really do need to eat less than our parents, and we haven't really internalised that. 40 years ago, the recommended intake for even sedentary men was 3000+, but that assumed that you walked part of the way to and from work, that you carried a hundred pounds of coal through the house every morning, and that you were cold all winter in spite of it.
People were told these numbers when they were kids, and they've never adjusted.
Okay, an Egg McMuffin for breakfast, a small fries with one of your Big Macs, and you still have, like, fifty calories to go get anywhere you like.
9, 10: yeah, and since when does apo shill for Mickey D's? Sellout.
THERE WILL BE NO BEER IN THE McCONCENTRATION CAMPS!
10: According to this, you could drink 2/3 of a PBR Extra Light.
Did anyone know they made such a thing? Ugh.
13- You could also piss in a bottle and drink it, but I wouldn't suggest that either.
Hawkbadger thinks it is "Not too bad for an extra light beer".
Also availabe as wall decor.
(Or you can wear it on your sleeve.)
re: 8
I am on a diet at the moment and eating about 2000 - 2500 calories a day. On that level of food I am losing somewhere between 3-5lbs a week.
So 1800-2000 calories a day would be a starvation diet for me. I'd be eating somewhere in the region of 1000 calories a day less than the level required to maintain my bodyweight on a constant level.
Something like about 2800- 3000 calories a day would be my 'maintenance' food intake.
Oh and anyone recommending that ordinarily active adult women live on 1200 kcal a day is fucking nuts.
People around here tend to be obese, but the life expectancy is the highest in the US. There are a lot of factors in longevity (you heard it here first!)
I didn't know ttaM was a lumberjack.
It also depends on an individual's metabolism, regardless of their physical activity. Some people don't absorb calories they eat, some burn them faster while doing less.
Ha! That is ridiculous. Although, frankly, I'm inclined to say that it is a starvation diet, and what it shows is that women, even women who aren't anorexic, are starving themselves all the time. I think it's a common misconception that anorexic and bulimic women are the only ones physically hurt by crazy body image image issues inflicted by unreasonable beauty standards. But then you realize that yeah, a lot of women try to eat, like, 1200-1600 kcal a day even when they're not dieting, just 'cause they're terrified about gaining weight. That's starvation.
I am just what I would consider moderately active -- nothing like the level of a daily gym-goer or someone with a physical job.
I work on the 3rd floor of a building and take the stairs. I live 1/2 mile or so from the bus stop where I go to work in the morning and work 1/2 mile or so away from the bus stop when I get there. Most lunch times I'll walk for at least 20 minutes. So on any given day I'll be walking at least 40 - 45 minutes and some days, if I have errands to run, a fair bit more. On days when the weather is nice I'll cycle to work (roughly 3 miles each way) or I'll walk to work (roughly 4 miles each way as the route is different).
None of that is what I'd think of as deliberate exercise, none of it's even that strenuous but I probably burn more calories as part of my daily routine than someone who drives to work and sits on their arse all day.
If we define 'starvation diet', as 'too few calories to maintain body weight', then it's likely a starvation diet. Still nowhere near the range of (hand to the forehead) sub-Saharan Africa or concentration camps, which seems to be a different use of starvation.
And a different use of the use/mention distinction. Bleh.
Wouldn't the "starvation level diet" be determined by physiological facts, not by a set calorie number?
These 'starvation' diets are counter-productive in other ways (apart from making people miserable and fucked up).
They're inimical to the retention of decent levels of lean body mass -- the good stuff -- and (in women) are going to increase the probability of osteoporosis and the like in later life.
Maybe starvation diets help you live longer by making you too lethargic to go outside and get hit by a bus.
27: The set calorie number will differ from person to person, but it's not pulled out of the air.
From the article it seemed that the guy was sort of half-euphoric, half-obsessed by food. And all I could think was how most of human history we've been trying to get away from needing to be obsessed by food, and now rich New Yorkers calculate how best to be obsessed by it with swank laptops.
Also, it doesn't seem like you can play sports. So we can live quietly and contemplate the joys of our next bland meal. No thanks.
29: is right. It's the physical equivalent of Yossarian looking for ways to be bored.
I smoke and drink, so I've already signalled by attitude to life extension, but, seriously, why would someone spend their life in this way, in order to gain a few extra years of bland inactivity?
In terms of longevity, it is much better to eat nothing and sit on your ass vs. eat more and burn it by being very active, even if you end up at the same weight in both cases. Metabolism is bad for you- the more energy you consume and use, the more nasty side products you generate and eventually they'll kill you.
In terms of living, well, see 30.
29: There's an old, old gag about the guy who goes to the doctor and says, "Doctor, I want to live to be 100. What should I do?"
And the doctor says, "Well, first you must give up smoking and drinking. Totally. And then, no more rich food. Oh, and no sex. Ever."
So the guy asks, "And if I do all that, I'll live a hundred years?"
And the doctor says, "No, but it'll feel like it."
RE 3, 24, etc.
Most world food experts use the 2,200 level as the recommended intake for people in industrialized, urban societies and the 2,800 level for peasant farmers. The numbers are about 200 calories lower for women in each category.
As a rule of thumb, I think people who believe they need 2,600 or 2,800 calories a day should ask themselves if they work as much as a peasant farmer.
Of course, your milage may vary. Personal metabolism is a big factor. The quality of the calories you eat is also a big deal. For most people good health is mostly a matter of substituting empty calories for good ones.
re: 36
I take the fact that, if I eat 2200 calories a day, I start losing weight at the rate of 1/2lb a day or so as a good guide to the fact that I need to eat 2600 or 2800 calories a day.*
As you say, various people's mileages may vary. Lots of people lead lives that are shockingly sedentary.
* At the moment I am deliberately doing this to lose 30 lbs or so...
30: Don't knock a life of sitting quietly and eating simply. Buddhist monks do quite well on many measures of happiness. I think more Americans should learn to sit quietly and be satisfied with where they are. The main problem with my life right now is that I don't have time to sit quietly.
ttaM, I didn't mean the remark to target you specifically. I honestly meant that as a rule of thumb for random people reading on the internet.
"Most world food experts use the 2,200 level as the recommended intake for people in industrialized, urban societies and the 2,800 level for peasant farmers. The numbers are about 200 calories lower for women in each category."
Look out for that "people" = "men" phrasing there.
Yeah. It's noticeable when I go to Czech, for example, that the basic diet is geared towards people working as peasant farmers and is quite astonishingly rich in calories. That kind of diet kills if you don't lead that lifestyle.
In parts of Glasgow men die at an average age of 54 [which is lower than many 3rd world countries] and that is, in part, because of a diet formed in the days when most men in those parts city worked long hard days of intense physical labour ... and now don't.
40
I noticed that as I was about to post, and didn't bother to change it. Sorry.
It is nice eating like a peasant farmer, though. The only time in my life I've been a reasonably serious athlete was rowing in college, and I really miss that feeling of being starving all the time. Food tasted so good, and I ate so much of it. (Not that I don't like food now, it's one of my favorite things. But that feeling of devouring a three-egg omelette and really needing it, and then looking idly around for whatever else looked organic enough to be digestible, was a good one.)
One reason I don't exercise more is that I know my food expenses would go through the roof. I generally walk a mile or two a day, living in Chicago, but that's about the extent of it.
When I first started my low-carb diet, I used a spreadsheet to count up my total food for the day-- calories, carbs, and fat grams--for about four months. During that time, the highest # of calories I recorded for one day was around 1800. The lowest? 840 calories. I'm 5'4", female, and went from about 240 lbs to 201 lbs during that time. I was also working out about twice a week.
Conclusion: this guy seems like a wuss to me.
re: 43 On my not particularly harsh diet I am hungry all the time. I'm only running a 500-800 calorie a day defecit but it's enough to leave my feeling famished most days.
I used to have a flat mate who was a fairly serious triathlete. I couldn't believe his diet. He literally ate constantly all evening and he was so skinny.
people who believe they need 2,600 or 2,800 calories a day should ask themselves
People who think this should ask themselves if their weight stays constant when they take in this many calories. Amazingly, natural laws have provided us with a simple test.
I could really go for some sopapillas right now.
that feeling of devouring a three-egg omelette and really needing it, and then looking idly around for whatever else looked organic enough to be digestible, was a good one
You are insane. This feeling sucks. Don't be the person who goes on Safari and tells us how great Africans have it, LB.
47: Isn't that over-simplified? I have the strong impression that most people's weight is a lot more stable than it would be if every calorie above or below their actual caloric needs turned into fat or fat loss.
38: Somehow I'm going to stick by my assertion that obsessing over how much Quorn to put on a plate and measuring out your arugula in grams isn't exactly what the Buddhist monks are striving for.
46: The boys on the swim team in high school took in absurd amounts of calories a day just to keep from losing muscle mass.
What ogged said.
I really miss that feeling of being starving all the time.
You know what I miss? I miss the feeling of having someone beat the crap out of me. It makes me feel so alive.
I'm gonna get you at the APA, Labs.
47: I'm not sure what you're getting at. Obviously, every body is different, but that doesn't mean that there aren't average caloric intakes that are likely too high for the average sedentary adult male.
49: Well, there wasn't any shortage of food. I wasn't enjoying the hunger, so much, as I was enjoying having an insane amount of hunger to satisfy, and then satisfying it. I was also having weird vegetable cravings -- I'd come home from class and steam myself a pound of broccoli with grated cheese on top to eat while I thought about what to have for dinner. Everything just tasted so good.
50: sure, but if your body fat is where you want it, and your weight is constant, you're pretty close to burning what you take in. My point is that there are easy ways of telling whether you're eating enough, too much, and so on.
I look forward to our ROYAL RUMBLE, Ben. The only question is whether one of those annoying round tables at the smoker will collapse when I body-slam you on it.
I don't think the calculation is that simple, as your body adapts to taking in fewer calories by dialing down the metabolism.
Back when I was on swim team, I very much enjoyed the hunger-satisfaction dynamic that LB describes. A part of it, I think, was the feeling of "I am TOTALLY LICENSED to eat all this stuff," and the way that it made food seem so wholesome, nourishing, and delicious -- like it is in Farmer Boy.
We're arguing about nothing, I think, Cala. I understand that metabolism responds to diet. What set me off was 36, which seemed to ignore the really simple idea that watching changes in weight is a good indication of caloric requirement. The background here is that I get annoyed when people comment on how much I eat (shock! horror!) even though my weight has stayed within ten pounds over the last five years or so-- a pretty good indication that I'm not eating much more than I need.
Leave some for the starving children, Abu Glutton.
Sure. But you're freakishly tall and active, right? (I suspected something like that was in the background.)
36 I saw more directed to the sort of person who wants to lose weight, seems to be gaining weight, but insists that they're doing everything right because 2600-2800 calories today is for 'active' people, and, they walk to the bus stop. It's very easy to read the national health guidelines and convince yourself that you're an 'active' person.
61: But you're freakishly huge. Don't people expect you to be devouring entire turkeys at a sitting? That's just weird if people are giving you a hard time about how much you eat.
Hmm. Freakishly appears to be the adjective of choice.
ben's going to the Eastern?
No. Unless, of course, someone wants to pay my way.
65 -- Such an adverb would have a hard time filling that role.
Then how are you going to beat up FL?
So you're saying that no one wants to pay my way?
I'd use the method of "not actually having meant what I said" if it came to it, though.
(But "freakish" seems like a pretty natural adjective when speaking of FL.)
69: Fasting?
70: Get your grad program to do it. Make up an excuse.
Ben, do you actually want to go to the APA? Maybe we could have a fundraiser.
One hilarious thing about the APA/departmental policies: sometimes being a session chair-- completely useless non-job-- changes whether you can get funding.
Ben, I went a couple years ago when it was in Chicago. Not as fun as you may have been led to believe.
Yup. But which APA? The Eastern is mostly stressed out job market applicants. He could probably hitchhike to the Pacific. (Does anyone go to the Central division meeting?)
How could I beat up Labs at the Pacific? It's not actually important.
I'll be at the central, actually. The APAs are not satisfying meetings. The Eastern is just a mess of unhappiness and fear, but even at the other ones, the papers are so short, half the questions are from people who don't work in the area, and the discussions are often unhelpful.
I, however, will be at the Eastern, if anyone wants to beat me up. Or just have a beer.
Is it being held in Philly? I'd like to buy ringside tickets.
Labs, being a big gay, is probably a hair puller, but w-lfs-n's got that 'fro, and hair pulling could be a very effective technique. Plus, Labs has about 75 pounds on b-dub.
Why not try a total paradigm shift and hold your battle royale at the American Academy of Religion? It's the weekend before Thanksgiving -- and it's in DC, so it'd be convenient for Armsmasher, et al. to attend.
Farmer Boy--is that the Laura Ingalls Wilder book? About Almanzo's childhood? Where they're constantly having giant breakfasts that start with pancakes, move on to eggs and ham, pause for donuts, and finish with applesauce and bacon and cheese and oatmeal and stuff? Damn.
The Eastern is in DC this year. Ben, I suggest we feign fisticuffs, then rush Weiner.
then rush Weiner
And that's not a euphemism.
And, since Weiner has found better things to do than read unfogged, he'll never know about our fiendish plot!
So APA Eastern is going to be in DC the weekend before Thanksgiving? How many of you all are going? Are you going to be crazy busy or would people want to get together for drinks or something?
The APA Eastern is always right after Christmas, Dec. 27-30. This is part of why everyone is unhappy there.
I'll also be in DC for Thanksgiving, though. I'll email you later today about it.
AAR and APA, all in one weekend? I suppose that DC would be the best city in terms of accomodating a wide range of acronyms.
Ah, sorry, Kotsko's thing is the weekend before Thanksgiving and the APA is after Christmas. I thought people had been talking December before. That makes more sense now.
Sorry, Rob. I'll be in the Midwest (depending on one's definition, at least) for Thanksgiving.
55- Are you sure you weren't pregnant or something?
I've found there's a large range in how much I can eat and still stay at the same weight. To lose weight I have to really cut back on what I eat, but to gain weight I really have to eat badly for a fairly long period. If I do either, however, it takes very little over/under eating to bring me back to my equillibrium weight.
Yep. It's the kind of thing that brings itself to your attention.
Pregnancy, actually, didn't have a huge effect on my appetite. I must have been eating more; the babies came from someplace, and I certainly put on weight beyond the minimum actual baby-poundage, but I didn't notice either being hungrier or eating more.
Noted that Paris Hilton's buddy is seeking weight help.
When I intensify my Atkins, I pay no attention to calories. I know you are supposed to count carbs, but I don't do that either. I have very much noticed a loss of appetite when I eliminate most carbs from my diet, to an almost dangerous degree, and have presumed that this loss of appetite is what gets many women in trouble, turns dieting into anorexia.
In my youth I was down around 90 pounds, or thirty pounds underweight for a while. I associate hunger with weakness and loss of functionality and other symptoms, so barely notice normal hunger anymore. I am famous in my family for my pain threshhold. I eat because I want to, am supposed to, or enjoy it.
Had a blood sugar test of 73 this week. Had to be wrong.
I should note that Seth Roberts' Shangri La diet (previously discussed here on unfogged) works on the principle of manipulating one's "set point"--what SP in 92 describes as being the weight at which your body tries to stay at by adjusting its metabolism in response to your calorie intake. By consuming certain things, you can get your body to adjust your appetite and metabolism in a way that brings you without other effort to a lower weight.
I read once that when dieting you shouldn't take in fewer than 10 calories per pound of body weight (if you're using metric, I have no earthly idea what the conversion comes to) because below that level your body starts looking for some nice healthy tissue (like muscle) to break down into fuel.
My experience more or less bears that out; I weigh between 180 and 190; sticking to 2000-2200 calories a day causes me to slowly lose weight. Cutting it below 1800 or so causes either delirious rage or debilitating stupor. Hard to know which is better, but I've generally tried to avoid both.
"Cutting it below 1800 or so causes either delirious rage or debilitating stupor"
Wooooh! Since I've quit drugs and alcohol, I have so very few vices available anymore.
You needed this thread, B? I don't know if ironic is the right word, but it is amusing to me that food is so plentiful and cheap in this country that we must constantly be on the lookout about consuming too much. Our brains and bodies are hardwired the other way, and so we get discussions on caloric intake.
I looked up the Shangri-La diet, the inventor claims to live on 1200 calories a day for weight maintance since he "modified" his metabolism. Take that you pigs.
It might help to note that the author's article ends up observing that a lot of the statements among the Calorie Restriction Dieters are in his view effectively cult-like, and that a lot of his description early in the article is meant (as I read it) as a parodistic repetition of cult-like statements.
These people should try the Rice Diet program, based in Durham, NC. From their website:
The Rice Diet achieves weight loss by restricting calories. Patients attending the residential Rice Diet Program eat between 800-1000 calories/day; after returning home, we recommend 1000-1500 calories/day for continued weight loss.
Sorry, Rob. I'll be in the Midwest (depending on one's definition, at least) for Thanksgiving.
I, however, will be in DC for Thanksgiving.
It's like an O Henry tale, dear Teo.
You still gonna be in DC in December?
99: Not on the grounds that we have "too much food and have to be careful not to get fat." We're lucky as shit, and if anything, that's a reason to love America.
What gets to me is the way we've learned to talk about food in terms of numbers and ratios and obligation and measurement. Food should be an art and a pleasure.
You still gonna be in DC in December?
Yep. January too.
Clearly, there needs to be a 12/9 DC Chopper/teo meetup.
Clearly there need to be three DC meetups, synchronized to the three times in the next three months that I will be in DC.
105. I completely agree with that, and before I had kids I was a "foodie", a term I loathe. Of course, America's prosperity is more than just luck, but we are all lucky to be Americans, by choice or birth. A big part of the reason I served in the military was out of gratitude. But there are a lot of others ways to do that.
I loathe the term "foodie", too, because it sounds like it's a hobby to enjoy non-processed food.
America's prosperity is more than just luck, but we are all lucky to be Americans, by choice or birth
America, yes. Americans as individuals, no. It's pure luck, and it's a bit of a stretch to say that "all" Americans are lucky in that sense; there are a lot of people who would be a lot better off if they'd been born in another country with, say, national health care.
I will take back "all". Certainly most. And I cop to bias on this point, but I still think I'd rather be poor in the US rather than anywhere else, but poor and sick is definately an issue.
A lot of poor people are mentally or physically ill, which makes it damn hard to get out of being poor. Not all, but I wouldn't be surprised if chronic poverty is highly correlated with chronic untreated depression or other mental problems.
rather be poor in the US rather than anywhere else
Man, I'd be splitting for Sweden as soon as my income dropped below 80% of median here. I love the US, but I have family who are poor, and it really doesn't look like fun.
I don't disagree, which makes me wonder where is the "right" level of support for people in the situation described. Truly unable to better themselves because of mental and physical ailments, we as a society must obviously do something, but what level of comfort/ support is to be provided is beyond my feeble capacity.
Four person median incomes by state. Higher than I thought.
LB, Bitch's statement makes me ask why these people are poor. There can be alot of reasons, some of which would not necessarily be alevieted by relocating to a state with a larger safety net. Because if it were, by all means let's ship the poor to Scandinavia!
Well, if there were a safety net that covered mental health care, that would help a lot, actually. I think one of the biggest problems we have with social services in this country is that we're reluctant to "give" people anything but the bare minimum needed to feed themselves, so we spend a lot overseeing and managing people in order to keep them alive at what's pretty much a bare subsistience level.
Being poor and sick or mentally ill in Sweden would probably be much nicer than it would here. But being poor, sick or mentally ill, and black or latino or otherwise non-Nordic in Sweden might not be so nice.
118- And if we expanded our safety net to include mental health, I believe that we would still have ongoing problems because one of the issues with all people who have to take medication for chronic issues is that when they feel better, they stop taking the meds. Very hard to follow up.
118: That's true, but also true that if you're mentally ill or just very short on life/coping skills, money alone may not do a lot. Some of that oversight and management stuff really is needed. OTOH, it sometimes (often?) seems to end up empowering the worst sorts of petty authoritarians, and I don't know what could realistically be done about that.
120: Depends. I'm taking mine.
121: Oh sure, some of the oversight/management stuff is vital. I was thinking more the gatekeeping kind of programs: food stamps vs. cash allowances, WIC (which is heavy on dairy, which a lot of women and kids are allergic to), that sort of stuff.
There's a lot of poverty in my corner of Minnesota, but the Minnesota welfare state seems to keep the worst effects from appearing. In my home town the median per capita income is 15,200 compared to the national median of 21,500 (or the Alabama per capita of 18,000).
There are a lot of factors too, but the truism that you "can't solve the poverty problem by throwing money at it" is a misrepresentation. Most of the welfare-state programs since 1960 have had some beneficial effect, often quite a large one, but they aroused political resentment for reasons unrelated to success or failure.
There is a point of view according to which some people are just no damn good and attempts to help them will be a waste of time, but this is not an established fact, and often is just an expression of meanness, bigotry, and thoughtlessness.
122(1): You're higher-functioning in a whole lot of ways than the vast majority of people who need psychiatric meds. I've seen a couple of people pretty close to me not make despite lots of family support, and I have no idea how mentally ill people who come from families with less coping skills are supposed to do it. (Also a success story, albeit with kidney damage from 30+ years of lithium.)
(2) True, and maybe also worth noting that those programs are as much farm support as poor people support.
You're higher-functioning in a whole lot of ways than the vast majority of people who need psychiatric meds.
B. can face reality. No need to sugar-coat the pill.
116: I wouldn't have guessed that NJ had the highest median income in the US.
I am higher functioning than a lot of other crazy people, thank god. And certainly some illnesses, people are less likely to comply with meds. But depressives like me tend to be pretty good at it, b/c being depressed feels incredibly crappy and a lot of anti-ds make you feel like shit if you stop taking them. And depression is pretty common. I'm just pointing out that it's a bit facile to assume that people won't comply with effective medications.
I really hope that comment didn't come across wrong. To clarify where I'm coming from, the three people I was referring to were a paternal uncle (bipolar), a sister-in-law (schizophrenia), and my mom (bipolar), and I could probably do worse than to look into whether I ought to be on psychiatric meds my own self. If there's any us-them stuff going on, I'm in the crazy folks' camp.
126: What trips me out is that the NY median is almost 20K less than CT or NJ. If LB made 80% of NJ money, she'd be median in NY. Weird.
A lot of people don't realize that upstate NY is really quite poor.
Also, FF 2.0 note: the google field shows the result of a proposed calculation as a (the) suggestion. Pretty cool.
re: 119
I'm not sure I understand that sentence. Most European countries, including the Nordic ones, have a non-negligible number of inhabitants who are non-white or (in the case of Scandinavia) non-Nordic. I'd rather be poor and black in many of those countries than in many other places including the US.*
Or do you have some specific claims to make about Scandinavia?
I do wonder about US perspectives on Europe sometimes. I'm not accusing anyone in particular but I sometimes get the impression that *some* people from the US think it's all homogenous white folks over here (except where we're in 'danger of being swamped by teh Islamic hordes').
* I would be a damn sight less keen on living in Eastern Europe, however.
I think it's more that we think that the de-homogenization is fairly recent, and that we hear a fair amount about troubled race relations in, for example, France or Denmark.
re: 134
Yeah, except for most European countries significant non-white immigration dates back 50 years or more with smaller numbers going back much further than that. And significant white immigration from other European nations is widespread and has been for centuries. And, to be honest, the US isn't in a position to point fingers when it comes to race relations [and, I hasten to add, neither are most European countries in a particularly strong position to point fingers the other way either]. There just isn't much of an argument to be had about, say, social welfare provision in Europe that hinges on perceived differences in race relations.
'We treat poor people like shit, but at least we treat our white poor folks as badly as our black poor folks' is both a non-argument and has little real factual basis.
133: I understand that most of Europe is not very homogenous. More so that California, for sure, but not as much as Japan. On the other hand, my understanding is that Sweden, is indeed fairly homogenous, albeit becoming less so, and that there are what are becoming serious racial integration problems.
And yes, Sweden is vastly preferable to Eastern Europe, on racial treatment grounds as well as a great many others.
I agree -- finger pointing in either direction seems ill-advised. Just trying to give a little more nuance to the question of prevailing US perspectives on race in Europe. Of course, I'm sure that there are indeed plenty of Americans who do think it's just a sea of whiteness over there, too.
I agree -- finger pointing in either direction seems ill-advised.
Fuck that. USA! USA! USA!
To follow up on 134, basically the only time Americans are reminded of the existance of non-white Europeans* is when there is an outbreak of trouble of some kind and during the World Cup. They're not a presence in American representations of Europe or even in the vast majority of European representations of Europe that middlebrow folks like me see here. I was even familiar with the colonial history of East Timor, but prior to the van Gogh shooting the only reason I knew that there was a significant Muslim population in the Netherlands itself was an old Bruce Sterling essay.
* I'll distinguish between Great Britain and the rest of Europe here.
To follow up on 134, basically the only time Americans are reminded of the existance of non-white Europeans* is when there is an outbreak of trouble of some kind and during the World Cup.
Agree wholeheartedly. And we get a skewed perspective then, too. I'm not going to go look at the specifics, but to me it seemed like the French team was 80% black, the English team was about 25% black, and no other European team had more than one or two dark-skinned players. This presumably does not reflect the actual makeup of the countries, or even the makeup of their professional-athlete-age population.
I would bet that a large number of Americans think France has a big problem with their dark-skinned underclass because unlike other European countries, they have unwisely let in lots of illegal immigrants.
What does the Portuguese colonization of East Timor have to do with the Muslim population of the Netherlands?
My perception is also that the US talks about its race problems much more than Europe, which leads one to believe that the US has worse problems, when this might not be (or is not) the case.
Daniel Davies, on the other hand, said something like "the riots in Paris were a social subgroup deciding they weren't getting enough respect from the government and lighting stuff on fire to get attention, and what could be more French than that?", which gave me pause.
141 -- Very little, but I knew about the Dutch possession of West Timor (and by extension other chunks of Indonesia) because of it. Isn't the Dutch Muslim population largely Indonesian or Surinamese of Indonesian decent? Or is my blinkered American view wrong-o on this too?
I would bet that a large number of Americans think France has a big problem with their dark-skinned underclass because unlike other European countries, they have unwisely let in lots of illegal immigrants.
I suspect that to the extent that France has a problem with their dark-skinned underclass, it's not due to illegal immigration but due to the difficulty in constructing a stable multi-ethnic society with a large welfare state. If you are unemployed, that's bad, but if your entire social network is unemployed, I think that's much more socially problematic.
The Western Europe of My Mind:
I think of England (and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the UK) as massively racially diverse, and somewhat less weird about it than the U.S. I think of France as fairly white outside of cities but quite non-homogenous in cities, particularly Paris. My idea of the state of race relations there is very much of the "finger pointing in either direction is a bad idea" genre. Spain and Italy are of course not all white, but they feel a lot whiter to me than France or the UK.
I haven't spent any time in either the Netherlands or anywhere in Scandinavia, so I have a vague idea -- predicated in part, no doubt, on my lamentable inclination to think that the former is somehow likelier than other places to be similar to the latter -- that both are dealing uneasily integrating relatively new populations of immigrants into previously homogenous societies. Then I think a little more about the Netherlands and think that it is probably not really that much like Sweden in this regard.
I think of Germany as chock full of döner kebab. I don't think very much about Belgium, Austria, Portugal, or Switzerland at all, and even less do I contemplate Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, or Monaco.
143: The guy who killed Van Gogh was Moroccan. Beyond that I don't know.
and somewhat less weird about it than the U.S
My sense is that we are, in our own strange way, better about race than Europe--if Obama gets the Democratic nomination, I'm sure someone will try to kill him, but he'll have received the nomination from a party that could ostensibly win--but I'd be interested in hearing from ttaM M. and other Europeans.
The explanation I've always heard is that Europe has spent much of the past 200 years struggling with class issues, while the US has instead spent that time dealing with race, which has only (relatively) recently become a major issue in Europe and has not yet received the kind of attention there that it's gotten here. I don't know enough about the history to know if this is true, but it makes sense.
148: Yeah, that's roughly my sense as well.
146: I actually looked up facts! "The most recent estimates (1999) indicate that 83% of the total population are [ethnically] Dutch; Moroccans, Turks, Antilleans, Surinamese, Indonesians, and other groups comprise the remaining 17%." Stupid clog-wearers, messing with my preconceptions.
Dammit, I forgot to use html entities. That should be <aol>Me Too!</aol>
The point is that when we say that ogged "has a European sensibility," we mean that he hates black people.
The explanation I've always heard is that Europe has spent much of the past 200 years struggling with class issues, while the US has instead spent that time dealing with race, which has only (relatively) recently become a major issue in Europe and has not yet received the kind of attention there that it's gotten here.
This certainly depends of what one means by 'race' -- you know, like whether the reconquest of Spain, the Holocaust, the Crusades, Drogheda, are about "race" as perceived by the people engaging the specific acts. I guess only one of those was in the last 200 years -- otherwise, Europeans were busy taking possession of various parts of Africa, carving up Asia between themselves, etc.
Obviously that's a difficult question, but I mean "race" as we in twenty-first century America and Western Europe interpret it (leaving aside the issue of whether it's interpreted the same way in both places).
141 -- One of the early terrorism episodes I remember live was a hostage taking, in the Netherlands, by South Moluccans.
All of Indonesia was a Dutch colony not that long ago. 1949.
154: I took teo to be saying that Europe spent 200 year trying to address and ameliorate the problems associated with class rather than race.
I think the part CC's reacting to is where I said race "has only (relatively) recently become a major issue in Europe," which I think holds for the definition of "race" I'm using, as specified in 155.
They're not a presence in American representations of Europe
There was a great episode of The Sopranos where Carmela and her friend go to Paris. They talk about how romantic and historically interesting, etc. etc. it is. Then the next scene is them in a cab; the driver is blasting Algerian rap music and has a copy of Al-Hayat newspaper on the dash.
It stood out because one rarely sees acknowledgement of Europe's multiculturalism in US pop culture.