I had an experience a couple of weeks ago at the store (I work part-time in a Subway franchise, among other things) that I still haven't gotten over...

A family came in with such a collection of obvious genetic defects that Steven King could not have done a better casting job. The most articulate of them was a girl of about 10 with practically no pigmentation except freckles and a voice like the poseesed phase of Linda Blair's character in The Exorcist. If Dad had more than four working brain cells in a row, I'd have been surprised... The other three children, all boys, were worse off. I'd also have been surprised if Mom and Dad were less consanguinous than second cousins.

We'll ignore the 'racial purity' overtones of Lee's remarks (I think Tom mey be right with his "troll" characterizarion) and talk about the genetic health of the species - the key to which is exogamy. So-called 'primitive' peoples have known this for millennia - our remote ancestors were descended from them, and at least some of our immediate ancestors, too. What else can possibly be meant by "the Melting Pot"?

Funny thing is... I may be insufficiently informed but it's my strong impression that the European tribes have made endogamy more of a virtue, if not a sacred duty, than any others. And though I do not blame the institution of religion per se for the trend, my experience is that "marry your own kind" is imposed as much as a duty to one's faith as to one's ethnicity.

Even so, for the most part the available pool of genetic material is deep enough that generations of Ethno-Americans (and their European counterparts) have been able to indulge in a mild form of endogamy for quite a while. However, in the case of the family I served, as well as an alarmingly noticeable percentage of residents of this county, the gene pond suffers from self-imposed drought - the most cultural-, religio- and ethnocentric group in this part of the US: the Anabaptists, Amish and Mennonite. They know how to keep their aniimal's breeding stock strong...

Fox