Tom Wolfe had some interesting observations on the ethnic, cultural, and religious roots of America’s revolution in computer and aerospace technology - How the innovators had deep roots not in the Ivy League, or MIT, but the “boondocks” of the heartland.
🧵
1/10
Wolfe finds roots for the tech revolution in Dissenting Protestant culture in the unlikely location of Grinnell, Iowa, where the of a son of a Congregational minister - Robert Noyce, inventor of the first practical microchip and co-founder of Intel - studied engineering.
2/10
In contrast to the heartland, engineering was out-of-fashion with the east coast establishment. At MIT for his graduate work, Noyce discovered that no one at this renowned institution seemed interested in the transistor.
3/10
Noyce was not atypical - Most of the major Silicon Valley figures “had grown up and gone to college in small towns in the Middle West and the West.” In the midst of 1960s anarchy, the real revolutionaries were squares from Iowa with Dissenting Protestant roots.
4/10
Silicon Valley - like the Apollo program moon landing - was “the triumph of the squares” – Engineers from the boondocks provided the innovation and passion. The one expert from back east who was called-in at Apollo - Jerome Wiesner of MIT – was ready to throw in the towel.
5/10
At the dawn of this California tech-boom with heartland roots, the tedious assembly line work was almost invariably being performed by women - *American women* – For the “Jobs Americans Won’t Do” lie had yet to enter the national discourse.
6/10
Some current year observers may be astonished that early Silicon Valley was able to innovate and succeed without H1B visas or DEI departments. But diversity-enthusiasts can take comfort that at least the space program relied heavily on a handful of highly skilled immigrants.
7/10
The other founding father of Silicon Valley profiled in Wolfe’s essay was William Shockley, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for research in semiconductors. Shockley, however would later make the “cancelled” lists because he held unauthorized views on intelligence and heritability.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The “De Mau Mau” gang terrorized the Chicago area in 1972: They murdered at least nine Whites - Including with home-invasions that drew comparisons to the Manson Family murders. 🧵/20
The origins of broader “Mau Mau” movement are somewhat murky. But it seems clear that several of the Chicago Mau Mau killers were disgruntled Vietnam veterans. This included Marines Ruben Taylor, Michael Clark, and Nathanial Burse.
2/20
Several of the Chicago Mau Maus met at Malcom X College. They managed to get expelled for intimidating and beating up teachers and fellow students.
3/20
Yankee-Irish conflict and the Boston Draft Riot of 1863: Refugees from the Great Famine caused Boston’s Irish population to explode - rising from a mere handful, to over a third of the city’s population.
One Yankee complained that Boston had become the “Dublin of America." 🧵/26
The city simply could not cope with the deluge. Poverty stricken and unskilled, the new arrivals were packed into crowded tenements. Disease and unsanitary conditions took a terrible toll. During a cholera epidemic, the life-expectancy of Irish males fell to fourteen years. 2/26
Not surprisingly, this tidal-wave of poverty-stricken Catholic immigrants did not receive a warm welcome from the Puritan-descended Yankees of Boston. The “shattering of Boston’s ethnic homogeneity” created an intense anti-Irish, anti-Catholic backlash. 3/26
White Flight from the Bronx – 1950 to 1980:
> The borough saw an explosive increase in crime, drug traffic, and arson during its demographic transformation.
🧵1/9 (h/t @Steve_Sailer )
The advent of NYC public transportation transformed the borough from farmland to a “streetcar suburb.” The population exploded with ethnic immigrants – Mainly Jews, but also Irish and Italians. Even during hard economic times The Bronx had been a safe place for families. 2/9
As late as 1950, The Bronx was still about 90 percent White, and the residents were enjoying life in their tranquil neighborhood. But The Bronx residents saw a rapid increase in crime and drugs as demographic change transformed life in the borough. 3/9
Historian William Henry Chamberlin discussing the post-WWII ethnic cleansing of ethnic-German civilians from Eastern Europe: “some fourteen million in all … driven from their homes … where their ancestors had lived for centuries …”
Short 🧵
"... perhaps as many as three million may have perished either as a result of outright massacre or from cold, hunger, and disease."
The horrific experience of an East Prussian woman was typical: Expelled from her home, and then robbed of food and clothing; traveling in train cars “littered with corpses.”
Years before the disaster of Forced Busing demolished Boston’s public school system, there were already warning signs of what was to come. The neighborhoods of Mattapan and Hyde Park got a preview of what “racial balance” integration would look like. It did not look promising. 🧵
In the mid-1960s Lewenberg Middle School in Boston's Mattapan neighborhood looked like an incredible success story. In addition to a stellar academic reputation, the school had also been one of the few in Boston to achieve some level of racial balance.
Attempting to appease civil rights complaints, Boston began allowing "open enrollment" transfers into Lewenberg in 1965, offering Black families a chance to attend the elite school. But as the racial balance tipped, alarmed parents saw standards declining, almost immediately.
Part II - Black-Jewish conflict in Boston as neighborhoods transitioned in the late 1960s. In April of 1968 Black radicals threatened to burn down the once-stately Mishkan Tefila temple complex unless it was turned over to the “Black community” free of charge.🧵
By the 1950s, most wealthy Jews had abandoned Boston for the suburbs, and the temple had been purchased by a Lubavitcher sect, who lacked funds to maintain it. They soon found themselves under siege in a neighborhood that was now overwhelmingly Black and increasingly hostile.
Some Jewish leaders hatched a plan to transfer the deteriorating temple complex to a Black community group led by Elma Lewis - hoping this might improve the increasingly strained relations between Boston’s Blacks and Jews.