The Nuer and the Dinka (ethnic groups), tell me if I've got this right:
Similarities: (1.) Both Nilotics (racially); (2.) Both speak similar languages (presumably with very-high mutual-intelligibility); (3.) both live in the same region.
Differences: (1.) Religion. The Dinka, Christians; the Nuer, old-tradition pagans with a developed religion of their own (not animist); (2.) Nuer are said to have a much-stronger, recent, and still-relevant "semi-nomadic" element to their ethnoculture. (3.) "Will to power"? The Nuer have it, the Dinka are followers of Herr Nietzsche's 'Sklavenmoral' (?); (4.) The Dinka are probably friendlier people, and who knows if an outsider ought to trust these Nuer.
.
But... which ethnic group plays better basketball? How many of these skilled Nilotic basketballers on the South Sudan team are of Dinka stock, Nuer stock, or something else?
Fast forward to 2024. What changed? I ask as a Student.
From my Brethren’s reports, it was not the Nuer’s belief system.
The Dinkas, as with Slave Religion groups before them, apparently did convert in some significant part to Christianity.
Perhaps an ethnographic study is in order? The Dinka continue to suffer (their real estate is not much sought after), I am a committed Christian and may rightly be accused of complete bias.
There may be parallels with whatever "helotization" process went on with the Dinkas of East Africa, and with the dispossessed core-White 'Middle America' component in North America.
In the third quarter of the 20th century, "White helotization, 'in their own society'," would have seemed like some sci-fi imagined alter-reality; by the first quarter of the 21st century, it was manifestly true to many observers, in many milieux.
But who are the "Nuers" in the USA's helotization historical-drama?
My take is that the deprivation was fairly non-tribal talking with Folks living in Appalachia. It became a 'flat-lander vs. mountaineer' divide. Again, anecdotal and thus high uncertainties.
What of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, even Ethiopia?
If Nilotics are such good natural talents at basketball, each of the above, at least, should field good teams. Rwanda: today, well-governed and with a has-its-act-together factor that we might expect a good try at elite sports.
OTOH, while Rwanda's population is now 14 million, the Bantu-Congoid "Hutus" are the large majority; the sharp, ruling-class Nitolic "Tutsis" look to be a lot more interested in business and other doings than sports.
U.S. Blacks with their love of sports have more in common with their closer genetic-kin, the Hutus. To borrow liberally from the Africans' own ethnic stereotypes, the Nilotics are probably more disciplined than West-African-stock Blacks, which may explain yesterday's near-win (USA 101-100 South Sudan).
---
See this site that summarizes physical-anthropology sources, on the various Nitolid types identified in the literature, and their approximate distribution:
Racial-types are not absolutes, of course, or at least seldom so. But there are stable blends of several types, and several sets of those stable blends together can easily be identified associated with cultures or nationalities. "Telling a Frenchman from a German," is actually implicitly identifying racial type (and it's not always foolproof, of course; "that Frenchman really looks German" is possible). Sometimes, an individual's phenotype will recombine to display a 'base type.' These the physical-anthropologists used as specimens or 'types.'
The Nilotid influence, anyway, goes beyond their core regions there in East Africa. In admixed form, there is Nilotic influence far beyond their core ethnic-groups like the famous Tutsis of Rwanda (President Paul Kagame, reelected yet again without opposition again last week, now in the 25th year of his presidency; the reelection so far without comment by Steve Sailer, afaik -- in the past, Sailer has expressed positive views on Kagame's efficient administration in the past).
In theory, all the adjacent countries to the core-Nilotic racial areas "should" also have reasonably good basketball teams, if the Sailer theory is right. Of course, that's if those countries had anything like Western GDP-per-capita to work with. The Central African Republic has "a long way to go."
South Sudan is getting better at basketball in part because it was such a mess for a long time (not all its own fault) that it has a sizable diaspora in the First World who have access to hard-surface basketball courts and sophisticated basketball coaches.
If I was running a sub-Saharan country of more normal proportions and was doing a good enough job that my people haven't been fleeing abroad, I'd probably tell my countrymen to play soccer, which is probably even cheaper. But, I dunno, what's the cost per player of a basketball court vs. a soccer field? It's not all that obvious.
East Africans have no talent for soccer. It requires too much explosive power. I’ve been watching the English Premier League for decades and I can think of two East Africans I’ve seen play in all that time. Meanwhile, probably half the league currently is men of west African ancestry.
I’m honestly surprised South Sudan are excelling at basketball because I thought it required the same explosive power, but I guess being tall and lithe mitigates any shortfall in fast twitch muscle.
I don't think many of these players had spent much time in South Sudan. The guy who made a bunch of threes went to Iowa St. It sounded like many of them got out as little kids. Also from the highlights I saw, team USA was playing the horrible defense NBA players have become known for.
"For example, in 1933, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History opened a magnificent exhibit of sculptress Malvina Hoffman’s 104 life-size bronzes of The Races of Mankind. Perhaps the most memorable is the 6’8” Nuer Warrior"
I visited that museum when I was twelve. I fell in love with anthropology after seeing such wondrous diversity of humanity.
Some years later I took some anthropology courses in college and got treated like shit by the mediocre ideologues who captured the discipline.
Only now that the assholes who ruined it are aging out is the full extent of the damage they've done becoming apparent.
Pretty sure I've never seen a photo of Bol in action before. I hope they paid him well for the amount of gawking he received. At least he didn't have to worry about hair-touching while standing.
Is a Mold-o-Vac the machine that produced those hollow, soft plastic Sinclair Oil dinosaurs at the NY World's Fair? I think I ran into another one in SoCal a few years later, or was that in So. Car.?
The lack of curiosity people show about stuff like this makes it much easier to believe that the world is full of NPCs walking around without any internal monologue.
Sorry for the confusion. I was replying to Steve’s final thought: “the outlets refuse to paint a picture in your mind’s eye by mentioning that the South Sudanese tend to be tall.”
Meanwhile the WNBA gals put on a good show in their all-star game. Jason Whitlock commended them.
Caitlin had 10 assists, showing what she could do if she had teammates who could catch her passes. Maybe she'll become the John Stockton of the WNBA (to Aliyah Boston's Karl Malone)?
She wore a cute black leather micro-miniskirt to one of the pressers and looked slinky.
Angel Reese, who would be pretty if she had a chin and a forehead, caught one of Caitlin's passes & had a swell night.
Why was there never a Sophie Cunningham effect? What is it about this Clark girl that is so appealing?
I spent a lot of time at the Field Museum when my mother volunteered there in the 1970s and distinctly remember imitating the Nuer Warrior's pose...caught up as I guess I was in the spirit of The Golden Age of Racism.
Numbers matter. They seem impersonal. Here's food for thought, IMHO.
So, one of my denomination's congregations is part of South Sudan (Dinka).
For years the Nuer tribe considered them to be the analog of the Helots during the times of the Spartans. No one would freely choose to be a Helot.
Somehow, this cultural (and deadly) differential produced the Dinka as we know them today.
Not pretending to know how this happened, but it did, through untold suffering.
There's something in the testing and trials of life. I'll leave this subject here.
The Nuer and the Dinka (ethnic groups), tell me if I've got this right:
Similarities: (1.) Both Nilotics (racially); (2.) Both speak similar languages (presumably with very-high mutual-intelligibility); (3.) both live in the same region.
Differences: (1.) Religion. The Dinka, Christians; the Nuer, old-tradition pagans with a developed religion of their own (not animist); (2.) Nuer are said to have a much-stronger, recent, and still-relevant "semi-nomadic" element to their ethnoculture. (3.) "Will to power"? The Nuer have it, the Dinka are followers of Herr Nietzsche's 'Sklavenmoral' (?); (4.) The Dinka are probably friendlier people, and who knows if an outsider ought to trust these Nuer.
.
But... which ethnic group plays better basketball? How many of these skilled Nilotic basketballers on the South Sudan team are of Dinka stock, Nuer stock, or something else?
Anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard wrote a famous book in 1940 contrasting the family & political structures of the Nuer and the Dinka:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nuer
The Nuer seemed to be better organized to push around the more divisive Dinka.
Agreed.
Fast forward to 2024. What changed? I ask as a Student.
From my Brethren’s reports, it was not the Nuer’s belief system.
The Dinkas, as with Slave Religion groups before them, apparently did convert in some significant part to Christianity.
Perhaps an ethnographic study is in order? The Dinka continue to suffer (their real estate is not much sought after), I am a committed Christian and may rightly be accused of complete bias.
Thus a third party review is in order.
Thank You for your interesting articles.
There may be parallels with whatever "helotization" process went on with the Dinkas of East Africa, and with the dispossessed core-White 'Middle America' component in North America.
In the third quarter of the 20th century, "White helotization, 'in their own society'," would have seemed like some sci-fi imagined alter-reality; by the first quarter of the 21st century, it was manifestly true to many observers, in many milieux.
But who are the "Nuers" in the USA's helotization historical-drama?
My take is that the deprivation was fairly non-tribal talking with Folks living in Appalachia. It became a 'flat-lander vs. mountaineer' divide. Again, anecdotal and thus high uncertainties.
Please see my comment below to Mr. Sailer.
To your point, competition tells the tale.
I have beaten overconfident teams and have been beaten by good teams who had a ‘good’ day.
This is where the Numbers play their role.
Thank you for your comment.
What of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, even Ethiopia?
If Nilotics are such good natural talents at basketball, each of the above, at least, should field good teams. Rwanda: today, well-governed and with a has-its-act-together factor that we might expect a good try at elite sports.
OTOH, while Rwanda's population is now 14 million, the Bantu-Congoid "Hutus" are the large majority; the sharp, ruling-class Nitolic "Tutsis" look to be a lot more interested in business and other doings than sports.
U.S. Blacks with their love of sports have more in common with their closer genetic-kin, the Hutus. To borrow liberally from the Africans' own ethnic stereotypes, the Nilotics are probably more disciplined than West-African-stock Blacks, which may explain yesterday's near-win (USA 101-100 South Sudan).
---
See this site that summarizes physical-anthropology sources, on the various Nitolid types identified in the literature, and their approximate distribution:
http://humanphenotypes.net/basic/Nilotid.html
http://humanphenotypes.net/Dinkaid.html
http://humanphenotypes.net/Shillukid.html
http://humanphenotypes.net/SouthNilotid.html
http://humanphenotypes.net/PreNilotid.html
Racial-types are not absolutes, of course, or at least seldom so. But there are stable blends of several types, and several sets of those stable blends together can easily be identified associated with cultures or nationalities. "Telling a Frenchman from a German," is actually implicitly identifying racial type (and it's not always foolproof, of course; "that Frenchman really looks German" is possible). Sometimes, an individual's phenotype will recombine to display a 'base type.' These the physical-anthropologists used as specimens or 'types.'
The Nilotid influence, anyway, goes beyond their core regions there in East Africa. In admixed form, there is Nilotic influence far beyond their core ethnic-groups like the famous Tutsis of Rwanda (President Paul Kagame, reelected yet again without opposition again last week, now in the 25th year of his presidency; the reelection so far without comment by Steve Sailer, afaik -- in the past, Sailer has expressed positive views on Kagame's efficient administration in the past).
In theory, all the adjacent countries to the core-Nilotic racial areas "should" also have reasonably good basketball teams, if the Sailer theory is right. Of course, that's if those countries had anything like Western GDP-per-capita to work with. The Central African Republic has "a long way to go."
http://humanphenotypes.net/Shari.html
South Sudan is getting better at basketball in part because it was such a mess for a long time (not all its own fault) that it has a sizable diaspora in the First World who have access to hard-surface basketball courts and sophisticated basketball coaches.
If I was running a sub-Saharan country of more normal proportions and was doing a good enough job that my people haven't been fleeing abroad, I'd probably tell my countrymen to play soccer, which is probably even cheaper. But, I dunno, what's the cost per player of a basketball court vs. a soccer field? It's not all that obvious.
East Africans have no talent for soccer. It requires too much explosive power. I’ve been watching the English Premier League for decades and I can think of two East Africans I’ve seen play in all that time. Meanwhile, probably half the league currently is men of west African ancestry.
I’m honestly surprised South Sudan are excelling at basketball because I thought it required the same explosive power, but I guess being tall and lithe mitigates any shortfall in fast twitch muscle.
I don't think many of these players had spent much time in South Sudan. The guy who made a bunch of threes went to Iowa St. It sounded like many of them got out as little kids. Also from the highlights I saw, team USA was playing the horrible defense NBA players have become known for.
"For example, in 1933, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History opened a magnificent exhibit of sculptress Malvina Hoffman’s 104 life-size bronzes of The Races of Mankind. Perhaps the most memorable is the 6’8” Nuer Warrior"
I visited that museum when I was twelve. I fell in love with anthropology after seeing such wondrous diversity of humanity.
Some years later I took some anthropology courses in college and got treated like shit by the mediocre ideologues who captured the discipline.
Only now that the assholes who ruined it are aging out is the full extent of the damage they've done becoming apparent.
I hope Chris Rufo takes an axe to all of them.
Pretty sure I've never seen a photo of Bol in action before. I hope they paid him well for the amount of gawking he received. At least he didn't have to worry about hair-touching while standing.
Is a Mold-o-Vac the machine that produced those hollow, soft plastic Sinclair Oil dinosaurs at the NY World's Fair? I think I ran into another one in SoCal a few years later, or was that in So. Car.?
How can we both “celebrate” diversity and either not notice or deny differences? What is it that can’t be seen that inspires the party?
The lack of curiosity people show about stuff like this makes it much easier to believe that the world is full of NPCs walking around without any internal monologue.
What exactly are you referring to when you say "stuff like this"? Racial differences in adeptness to certain kinds of sports?
Sorry for the confusion. I was replying to Steve’s final thought: “the outlets refuse to paint a picture in your mind’s eye by mentioning that the South Sudanese tend to be tall.”
Meanwhile the WNBA gals put on a good show in their all-star game. Jason Whitlock commended them.
Caitlin had 10 assists, showing what she could do if she had teammates who could catch her passes. Maybe she'll become the John Stockton of the WNBA (to Aliyah Boston's Karl Malone)?
She wore a cute black leather micro-miniskirt to one of the pressers and looked slinky.
Angel Reese, who would be pretty if she had a chin and a forehead, caught one of Caitlin's passes & had a swell night.
Why was there never a Sophie Cunningham effect? What is it about this Clark girl that is so appealing?
I spent a lot of time at the Field Museum when my mother volunteered there in the 1970s and distinctly remember imitating the Nuer Warrior's pose...caught up as I guess I was in the spirit of The Golden Age of Racism.
"What is it about this Clark girl that is so appealing?"
Oh that's an easy one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eUDcTLaWJuo
OFF TOPIC
Hi Steve,
A compound question, comment, question.
Are you able to moderate comments on Substack and is Ron's comment system superior for authors?
A fun thought experiment: What if Gemini LLM trained also on your comments sections and articles.
Any plans to come back to Texas?