# Why is incest associated with poor white people, particularly in the Southern U.S.? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 7, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603 "2011-04-07T23:36:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/21 "2011-04-08T03:42:49Z")
> [@Noel\_Prosequi](#): > > The meme is older than that. George Orwell in one of his books (I can’t remember where) tells the story of remote mountain villages in France, at a time when the genetic consequences of inbreeding were not well understood. In these villages, a significant number of children were consequently born with cognitive disabilities. The villagers loved these children very much (as they loved all their children), but did not know why this was happening or what to do about it. All they could do was baptise them and hope that God would look after his little ones. > > And so the kindly souls in the villages called their intellectually impaired children “Christians” because they had been baptised. > > In French, “chretiens”. > Now morphed in English into the cruel expression “cretins”. Jean Chretien was a recent Prime Minister of Canada… ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/22 "2011-04-08T03:51:54Z")
As a southerner who hasn’t porked any cousins (yet, our family reunion is in the summer), I’d like to point out that first cousin marriage is legal in [more](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cousin_marriage_map1.svg) northern states than southern ones. ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/23 "2011-04-08T07:50:05Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Cretinism is not due to inbreeding. Cretinism is caused by a dietary deficiency of the element iodine. Iodide is primarily found in the sea, so any population that lives a long way from the sea is prone to cretinism. > > So this story has absolutely no bearing on inbreeding. I don’t doubt that you are correct. The point of the story is that the origin of the name came about because of poorly understood, old ideas about “generic” cognitive impairment. Whether Orwell is right or wrong scientifically, the meme about incest in isolated communities is old. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/24 "2011-04-08T09:20:56Z")
> [@Noel\_Prosequi](#): > > I don’t doubt that you are correct. The point of the story is that the origin of the name came about because of poorly understood, old ideas about “generic” cognitive impairment. Whether Orwell is right or wrong scientifically, the meme about incest in isolated communities is old. But I’m not seeing any link at all between the story and incest. 😕 Orwell never ascribed the condition to inbreeding did he? It just doesn’t seem related in any way whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![willthekittensurvive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/25 "2011-04-08T09:56:30Z")
> [@Fubaya](#): > > As a southerner who hasn’t porked any cousins (yet, our family reunion is in the summer), I’d like to point out that first cousin marriage is legal in [more](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cousin_marriage_map1.svg) northern states than southern ones. Legal as in nobody thought it necessary to make laws prohibiting it? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/26 "2011-04-08T10:37:20Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > An irony is that most of these groups have extremely strong incest taboos when it’s closer than second cousin or so. Actual immediate family incest would probably result in total ostracism if not vigilantism. I can see that comparing the two cultures in the two sides of my family: Mom’s from Catalonia, a region where it has always been easy to inject “outside blood” into the family tree. One of her cousins, daughter of first-cousins, married a first-cousin. I found out because the whole family was terribly offended (if it had been the US I think they would have sued) because the younger couple had problems conceiving and the doctors dared suggest it might be due to “excessive consanguinity”. I’ve polled Catalans of widely-varying socioeconomic backgrounds and the general reaction is along the lines of: “first-cousin marriage, so what, why are you making a fuss about it; a second generation may be a bit too much but, seriously, why would it be a problem?” Only one of Mom’s grandparents was born in Catalonia, his father was Italian and his mother’s family had lived in a village near Barcelona for centuries: this gives me more “Catalan blood” than 95% of my Catalan classmates (not just a round number picked from my left elbow, it’s the actual value). Dad’s side of the family (including yours truly) views second-cousins as inelligible, third-cousins barely worth considering. The last time one of Dad’s ancestors was born outside of the triangle delimited by Bilbao, Olite and Bayonne was in the 14th century. My class was the first one taught by my 11th grade history teacher, who was an outside: she gave us an assignment to draw our family trees “as far back as possible” and had an utter nerdgasm seeing 32 trees which all went to the Probanzas de Sangre of the earliest 18th Century - Probanzas which may delve as far as the 10th in order to prove that our ancestors had the right to address the King. The only families which got those were from the areas now included in Navarra and Euskadi, any side of your family that has them has been in that area for half a milenium if not longer. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/27 "2011-04-08T10:45:01Z")
> [@willthekittensurvive](#): > > Legal as in nobody thought it necessary to make laws prohibiting it? What other definition of legal is there? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/28 "2011-04-08T10:58:38Z")
Legal as in someone thought it was good to make a law making it possible? I’m reasonably sure many laws do not forbid things, but make them possible (those creating social services, for example). Many countries have laws defining incest, some consider first-cousins too close (do not allow marriage between first cousins), others do not see a problem (they allow such a marriage). So the situation was actually considered and either allowed or forbidden. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/29 "2011-04-08T11:02:26Z")
> [@Fubaya](#): > > As a southerner who hasn’t porked any cousins (yet, our family reunion is in the summer), I’d like to point out that first cousin marriage is legal in [more](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cousin_marriage_map1.svg) northern states than southern ones. The map doesn’t make sense. Take Massachusetts for example. The map shows it as blue, which implies that it’s legal. Go to [the page on cousin marriages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States_by_state), scroll to Massachusetts and it says: > [@](#): > > Sec. 3. A man shall not marry his mother, sister, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, stepmother, grandfather’s wife, son’s wife, grandson’s wife, wife’s mother, wife’s grandmother, wife’s daughter, wife’s granddaughter, brother’s daughter, sister’s daughter, father’s sister, mother’s sister, or cousin of the first degree, or another man. Vermont, also blue > [@](#): > > § 26.04.020. Prohibited marriages > (1) Marriages in the following cases are prohibited: > (a) When either party thereto has a wife or husband living at the time of such marriage; > (b) When the husband and wife are nearer of kin to each other than second cousins, whether of the whole or half blood computing by the rules of the civil law; I don’t have time to look up the rest of the blue states in the north before work, but the map obviously doesn’t acurately reflect laws regarding the legality of first cousins marrying. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/30 "2011-04-08T11:05:37Z")
> [@Noel\_Prosequi](#): > > And so the kindly souls in the villages called their intellectually impaired children “Christians” because they had been baptised. > > In French, “chretiens”. > Now morphed in English into the cruel expression “cretins”. Wouldn’t they have called ALL people who have been baptized Christians, whether or not they were impaired? ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/31 "2011-04-08T11:06:50Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > What other definition of legal is there? I suspect he means legal as in its perfectly legal for me to eat my own crap, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever want to do it? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/32 "2011-04-08T11:39:52Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Legal as in someone thought it was good to make a law making it possible? I’m reasonably sure many laws do not forbid things, but make them possible (those creating social services, for example). But such things were always legal, because there was no law prohibiting it being done. The laws allowing for social services make it illegal not to provide funding etc., They don’t make social services legal because they were never illegal. It was always \*possible \*to have those social services. the only exception are bills that specifically override older laws, making previously illegal acts legal. But once again, this is just removing laws making it illegal. In western societies something is considered legal unless it breaches some law, that is what legal means: within the law. Everything legal because somebody considered it worth making a law against it. > [@](#): > > Many countries have laws defining incest, some consider first-cousins too close (do not allow marriage between first cousins), others do not see a problem (they allow such a marriage). So the situation was actually considered and either allowed or forbidden. No, it was considered and either forbidden or not forbidden. There was never a law needed to make it legal. In some places people passed laws making first cousin marriage illegal. In other places they did not. More places in the North neglected to pass laws making first cousin marriage illegal than in the South. I’m still struggling to understand what point you are trying to make here. I’m beginning to think that you are implying that lawmakers in the North found that people having sex with animals and with their children was so common that it required a law to make those acts illegal, but people having sex with their cousins was much so uncommon that it wasn’t worth outlawing. Meanwhile in the South acts of bestiality and pedofilia were no more common than marrying cousins, so all were outlawed. Is that a correct interpretation of your views? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/33 "2011-04-08T11:44:30Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > In western societies something is considered legal unless it breaches some law, that is what legal means: within the law. Ah, see, my own first-thought definition is “related to the law”, not “the opposite of illegal”. [M-W](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legal) places my definition in position 1, yours in 3: while that doesn’t make my definition better than yours, I’d think it means it isn’t exactly obscure. And things which have not been regulated are neither legal nor illegal: they’re alegal. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/34 "2011-04-08T11:45:56Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > I suspect he means legal as in its perfectly legal for me to eat my own crap, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever want to do it? Yet those states have laws against fucking corpses. So the implication is that people in those states wanted to fuck corpses more often then they wanted to fuck their cousins. Hence corpse fucking had to be outlawed to stop people doing it, whereas cousin fucking was something that far fewer people wanted to do and so did not require a law to stop people. Is that about right? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/35 "2011-04-08T11:54:45Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Ah, see, my own first-thought definition is “related to the law”, not “the opposite of illegal”. [M-W](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legal) places my definition in position 1, yours in 3: while that doesn’t make my definition better than yours, I’d think it means it isn’t exactly obscure. :rolleyes: Oh come one. You did not think that **Skald the Rhymer** meant that if marriages are “related to the law”, then by definition it isn’t incest. You could not possibly have believed that a marriage isn’t incestuous so long as it has a law pertaining to it. By this bizarre usage, marrying your own sibling must not be incest because their is a law relating to it and hence it is legal. Or maybe you did think that, in which case I can only suggest that you work on your reading-for-comprehension. ---
**Author:** ![willthekittensurvive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/36 "2011-04-08T11:58:03Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Yet those states have laws against fucking corpses. > > So the implication is that people in those states wanted to fuck corpses more often then they wanted to fuck their cousins. Hence corpse fucking had to be outlawed to stop people doing it, whereas cousin fucking was something that far fewer people wanted to do and so did not require a law to stop people. > > Is that about right? sounds about right, I think… but maybe it has something to do with it being a victimless crime/act ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/37 "2011-04-08T12:06:41Z")
> [@willthekittensurvive](#): > > sounds about right, I think… > but maybe it has something to do with it being a victimless crime/act Which one is victimless? 😉 But more seriously, how is it victimless if somebody wants to marry their cousin, yet not victimless if they want to marry their parent? ---
**Author:** ![willthekittensurvive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/38 "2011-04-08T12:19:35Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Which one is victimless? 😉 > > But more seriously, how is it victimless if somebody wants to marry their cousin, yet not victimless if they want to marry their parent? Oh! Oh! I know that one… the state is the victim: If you mary your mom, you don’t have to pay estate tax… ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/39 "2011-04-08T12:34:25Z")
Just a note- Leviticus 18 does NOT prohibit sex between first cousins. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603/40 "2011-04-08T12:44:56Z")
[![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=intS5jKmwTs) FF to about the 5 minute mark. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-incest-associated-with-poor-white-people-particularly-in-the-southern-u-s/577603.md?page=3)