Anyone who was born between roughly 1975-1985 probably remembers the characters from Saved by the Bell, especially the All-American sweet sixteen Kelly Kapowski, played by Tiffani-Amber Thiessen. These northwestern Slavic and Germanic surnames belie her meridional appearance, however -- in fact, only her father's side is German, while her mother's is Greek, Turkish, and Welsh. America's wholesome girl-next-door is actually a smoldering Mediterranean siren! Her apple pie co-star Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zack Morris, is a mongrel himself (Dutch and Indonesian). And did you know that the two overachievers on the show -- Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley) and Screech Powers (Dustin Diamond) -- are both Jewish? With African-American Lisa Turtle (Lark Voorhies) and non-white Hispanic A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) rounding out the cast, there's nary a noticeable Northerner to be found in Everytown, USA, save the principal Mr. Belding (Dennis Haskins).
Quoth the latter: "Hey hey hey hey, what is going on here?!"
Query: would that small amount of Turkish ancestry allow Ms. Thiessen to qualify for affirmative-action programs? Traditionally the one-drop rule applied only with respect to black ancestry, but there seems to be a trend toward extending it to all nonwhite ancestries.
ReplyDeletePeter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights
I doubt it: most Turks are Western Eurasian, and some may have some Central Asian admixture, but AA only benefits "protected" minorities, not mere "statistical" minorities.
ReplyDeleteThe only Turks who show up among undergrads in the US are the children of the uber-elite in Turkey, so they may get preference due to the amount of money they & their families are expected to donate over time.
Elite Turkish girls are some of the hottest girls you'll ever see, btw. (I've never been to Turkey, and non-elites don't come here, so I don't know about the latter.) And that's not just me and my exotic tastes talking: most red-blooded guys at college agreed about how extraordinarily attractive they were.