experiences, immensely varied. Cf. John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (New York: Signet, 1996 [1960]), p. 87: “All showed morbid curiosity about the sexual life of the Negro, and all had, at base, the same stereotyped image of the Negro as an inexhaustible sex-machine with oversized genitals and a vast store of experiences, immensely varied.”
“parental uncertainty.” Jared Diamond, “Ethnic differences: Variation in Human Testis Size,” in Nature, 320(6062):488-489: “In [man and apes] large testis size correlates with, and was probably selected [via natural selection in evolution] by, two factors: high copulatory frequency; and high probability that a female will mate with several males during one ovulatory cycle.”
See also David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p. 166: “Large testes typically evolve as a consequence of intense sperm competition—when the sperm from two or more males occupy the reproductive tract of one female at the same time because she has copulated with two or more males.... Sperm competition exerts a selection pressure on males to produce large ejaculates containing numerous sperm. In the race to the valuable egg, the large, sperm-laden ejaculate has an advantage in displacing the ejaculate of other men inside the woman’s reproductive tract.... [H]uman male testes account for ... 60 percent more [weight] than that of orangutans and more than four times that of gorillas, corrected for body size.... This size of testes would have been unlikely to have evolved unless there was sperm competition. And it suggests that both sexes pursued short-term mating some of the time.”
male sex partners per birth. Buss, loc. cit.
See also Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 158, 168: “The uniquely human blend of sociality ... evolved [in Homo sapiens] over many years. The most fundamental [element], a major shift from the ape brand of sociality, was the human nuclear family, which gave all males a chance at procreating along with incentives to cooperate with others in foraging and defense.... Much of human nature consists of the behaviors necessary to support the male-female bond and a man’s willingness to protect his family in return for a woman’s willingness to bear only his children.”
never die easily, do they. Cf. J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, 2nd spec. ab. ed. (Port Huron, MI: Charles Darwin Research Institute, 2000) (link), p. 9.
father-knows-best sitcoms. Cf. Karen Ritchie, Marketing to Generation X (New York: Free Press, 2002 [1995]), p. 59: “Julianne Malveaux points out that, because of the civil rights movement, Boomers of African-American descent bonded more closely with their own parents. ‘...there is not as sharp a generational divide between black boomers and our brothers and sisters from the so-called silent generation.’ As a result, black Boomers continue to share power, more or less comfortably, with older black leaders. Black Boomers rebelled less against their own parents and family traditions (as white Boomers did) and more against the repressive [white majority] system.” If the rest of the world is against you, you need your parents on your side. Conversely, if while growing up the world is your oyster, you can afford to dis Mum and Dad (as opposed to “whitey” in general) for all of their faults and misuses of power. Either way, you need to find something to rebel against, as a rite of passage from youth into adulthood. As a generalization, then, white Baby Boomers rebelled against the idea that “father knows best,” while blacks embraced it, and rebelled instead against whitey.
younger than his wife.” Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2007), p. 176. See also Samuel Francis, “The King Holiday and Its Meaning: The origins of our national celebration of multiracialism and political correctness,” in American Renaissance, February,1998 (link): “In the course of the Senate debate on the King holiday, the East office received a letter from a retired FBI official, Charles D. Brennan. Mr. Brennan, who had served as Assistant Director of the FBI, stated that he had personally been involved in the FBI surveillance of King and knew from first-hand observation the truth about King’s sexual conduct—conduct that Mr. Brennan characterized as ‘orgiastic and adulterous escapades, some of which indicated that King could be bestial in his sexual abuse of women.’ He also stated that ‘King frequently drank to excess and at times exhibited extreme emotional instability as when he once threatened to jump from his hotel room window.’”