Humanities desk
< July 22	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 24 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 23

Thinking of Stranger Things, was it normal in the 80s for black and white kids to be best friends?

In the show it's never commented upon and seems the most normal thing in the world, is that how it was? 2.102.184.212 (talk) 00:05, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It would depend very much on local circumstances, but in the late 1970s / early 1980s there was actually less school segregation in the U.S. than there is today... AnonMoos (talk) 00:10, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I've read about white flight and the actually increased segregation caused by busing. I was thinking more smaller scale though rather than entire school districts. Generally today black kids hang with black kids and vice verser in schools with significant populations of both, but in schools with only a small number of black kids racial mixing seems to be not uncommon in many places. The school in the show is in this category but it's a mostly white rural town in Indiana in the early 80s and I'm wondering if that would've been the case. 2.102.184.212 (talk) 02:33, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

According to our article Desegregation busing#Re-segregation the peak year for desegregation in U.S. schools was actually 1988. I went to public school before that in a county considered "conservative" within a state considered "progressive", and I don't remember if there were even any blacks in my elementary school or high school (if there were one or two, they kept quiet and didn't make waves) -- though there were Asians and "Mexicans" (as we then called them). AnonMoos (talk) 05:47, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There was a period then where US TV seemed to go over-the-top to be politically correct, and they had shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Kelly's Kids/Together We Stand forming unlikely multi-racial families. So, showing black and white kids as friends might have been done to say "Look how progressive we are !" rather than to portray reality. StuRat (talk) 00:32, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The show in question is a modern one, currently between its first and second seasons. ApLundell (talk) 22:31, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking purely anecdotally, as a kid in the late 80s in Georgia I was white [still am, tbqh] and my best friend was black. --Golbez (talk) 01:25, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And it wasn't a curiosity? Or were you too young to notice that sort of thing? The show is set in rural Indiana which I'm assuming would've been more racially progressive than certain parts of Georgia and less so in other parts. 2.102.184.212 (talk) 02:33, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I grew up in suburban New England in the 1980s, and there were black and white kids in my circle of friends. We didn't think anything of it. --Jayron 32 03:37, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not a curiosity at all. And uh, I'm not sure rural Indiana is more progressive than anything, let alone urban Georgia. --Golbez (talk) 05:03, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indiana was notorious as the state where the KKK had the strongest political influence around 1924 (see Indiana Klan), though I'm not sure rural areas can be blamed for that more than cities... When I visited Indiana in the 1990s, some said Martinsville, Indiana had a reputation as being especially racist. AnonMoos (talk) 05:54, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Best Friends forever" in the 1920's

Yeah the "less so" would apply to urban Georgia. I might be wrong because I know little about rural Indiana now, let alone 35 years ago, but it seems like the kids would've perhaps not been racist but at least had a view of keep separate, and the parents more so. How could a show about inter-dimensional aliens be so ahistorical? 2.102.184.212 (talk) 22:07, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In 1967 I think at least one of my pals was of different albedo. (Couldn't tell you his name tho.) Pasadena, California. —Tamfang (talk) 08:39, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In memory of the well known Our Gang(Little Rascals)-series i would assume this was nothing odd even in the 1920's. --Kharon (talk) 06:17, 25 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One, two, three, four

I remember an explanation about development of the numeric symbols in various cultures. Basically, it is about I, II, III (Roman) are based on the number of lines. Arabic numerals has 1, 2, and 3. Again, based on the number of lines. Chinese logograms for one, two, and three are based on the number of lines. And in all three cultures, the representation for four always appears different. My memory is so vague that I'm not really sure if I've observed this or seen it somewhere, perhaps in one of those random SAT/ACT excerpts. But anyway, if this is indeed real, then where can I find the source? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 20:58, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The book "From One to Zero" by Georges Ifrah has a lot on number symbols in various cultures... AnonMoos (talk) 22:30, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I also found what the OP describes in Stanislas Dehaene's The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics (chapter 3, "The Adult Number Line", pages 53ff). He does refer to Georges Ifrah (the book AnonMoos mentioned as well as The Universal History of Numbers (1998)) and Karl Menninger (~~Numbers, Words~~Number Words and Number Symbols (1969)). The 1-2-3-beyond characteristics are displayed for Cuneiform, Etruscan, Roman, Mayan, Chinese, Ancient Indian, handwritten Arabic, and modern Arabic notation. Dehaene's chapter is an interesting read touching on subitization and cognitive science etc. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:41, 23 July 2017 (UTC) (Added some bits later, after TPFKA87 had posted below). ---Sluzzelin talk 23:55, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Menninger's book is Number Words and Number Symbols (Zahlwort und Ziffer). —Tamfang (talk) 08:40, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry 'bout that and thanks! Corrected. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:23, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[Edit conflict] In Roman numerals, IIII for four is also used, and may be older, with IV being part of a later process of clarification: see the material on their possible origin as tally marks or hand gestures in that article.

The 'Arabic numerals' are so called because Western civilisation learned of (one version of) them from the Arab civilization, who had in turn adopted one (Brahmi numerals) of the several systems used in India; they underwent considerable transformations during that process, although their oldest known forms do feature the pattern noted by the OP. An alternative suggestion once extant, that they were based on the number of angles in the symbols, does not seem tenable.

Several systems are used in China, unsurprisingly given its long history and diverse ethnicities. The oldest appears to derive from the Shang dynasty Oracle bone script, and features reduplicated lines up to and including 4, so does not correspond to the OP's pattern, but rather to other systems based on the shapes of the 4 fingers plus the whole hand for 5. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.9.11.138 (talk) 23:15, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This reminds me, how did each of the digits 5-9 originate?? We know that 1, 2, 3, and 4 came from the number of straight lines, only inconsistent in that 1 is vertical; 2 and 3 are horizontal lines with other lines connecting them; and 4 is a cross looking like a 4-way intersection. But how did each of 5-9 originate?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:09, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's not how I remember it. Even though I don't have the source, I am certain that one, two, and three are based on straight lines, while four is not. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:30, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If we are still talking about Chinese, the Oracle script for "four" was four horizontal bars, which evolved into four vertical bars, then a top and bottom horizontal bar was added (apparently to emphasise the relationship with "two"). There was an intermediate form which truncated the two middle bars and inserted an extra two short bars within the box (again, apparently to emphasise the relationship with "two"), but the extra "two" was later omitted. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:55, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I remember seeing a chart in which 8 is explained as two squares, and 9 as formerly 8 with a tail. Dunno if this chart was based on any evidence. —Tamfang (talk) 08:42, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The runes followed the original Roman numerals with changes in presentation at "5" and "10" (see [1]. On "clog almanacs" the information which after the invention of printing would be displayed as in the second link at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 July 14#Julian lunar calendar was carved on wooden sticks as seen here:[2]. "10" was a line with a cross halfway down it, "5" was a line with a hook at the end of it, and "15" was a combination of the two. The numbers from 6 - 9, 11 - 14 and 16 - 19 were made up by adding from one to four dots above the line. For numbers below five only the dots were written. 2A00:23C0:7F02:C01:311A:34E5:2E94:A54E (talk) 10:11, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have aforementioned Ifrah's book at home, as far as i remember 5 is usually a symbol of its own -- e.g. roman V, that Ifrah's says is not a V-letter but a V-notch; AFAIK most (all?) scholars agree that numeral are prehistoric, ideograms and letters came latter than digits --, while 6-9 are usually 5+(1-4), except that 8 may be sometime 4+4 instead of 5+3. 10 is also usually a sign of its own, and sometime, 9 may be 10-1. 20 sometimes is, too. So, you end up with plenty variations.

just check Prehistoric numerals, Numerical digit and History of writing ancient numbers Gem fr (talk) 08:54, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This thread did me a bit of good: having previously started Ifrah's book without getting far, I found a damning review and moved it from my "read someday" shelf to my "unload" shelf. —Tamfang (talk) 20:22, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]