Re: OT Ethnotypes WAS Re: FWD [OT but interesting]....

Eamon Graham scripsit:

> So even here in Europe we have a pretty decent mix.  My best friend
> is 3/4 Swedish and 1/4 Russian.  I don't know anyone who considers
> their self "pure."
From Chapter 1 of _Thrones, Dominations_ by Dorothy L. Sayers (posthumously) and
Jill Paton Walsh.  A Frenchman (who begins it) and an Englishman are
talking:

'I beg your pardon; I had for the moment forgotten that you also
were English.  You have so much the outlook, as well as the accent of
a Frenchman.'

'Thank you,' replied Mr Delagardie.  'I am actually only one-eighth
French by blood.  The other seven-eighths is English, and the proof is
that I take what you have said as a compliment.  Unlike the Jews, the
Irish and the Germans, the English are pleased to be thought even more
mongrel and exotic than they are.  It appeals to the streak of romantic
sensibility in the English temperament.  Tell an Englishman that he is
pure-bred Anglo-Saxon or a hundred per cent Aryan, and he will laugh in
your face; tell him that his remote ancestry contains a blend of French,
Russian, Chinese or even Arab or Hindu, and he will listen with polite
gratification.  The remoter, of course, the better; it is more picturesque,
and less socially ambiguous.'

'Socially ambiguous? Ah! you admit, then, that the Englishman in fact
despises all other races but his own.'

'Until he has had time to assimilate them.  What he despises is not other
races but other civilisations.  He does not wish to be called a dago [Spaniard];
but if he is born with dark eyes and an olive complexion, he is pleased
to trace those features back to a Spanish hidalgo, cast away upon the
English coast in the wreck of the Great Armada.  Everything with us is
a matter of sentiment and association.'

--
There is / One art                      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
No more / No less                       http://www.reutershealth.com
To do / All things                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
With art- / Lessness                     -- Piet Hein

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