Walk Like an American

A really interesting post from James Fallows on the apparently idiosyncratic American gait. I remember experiencing something similar in Ireland where I several times was pegged as an American the second I walked in the door despite being of 100% English and Irish stock, wearing only clothes from Irish department stores and having yet to utter a single word.

What really strikes me about the article is not that it pegs the American gait as unique but that it pegs it as black. Note this bit from one of the quotes:

Carl Jung said that white Americans walk like Negroes, talk like Negroes and laugh like Negroes. Now Carl Jung was from Switzerland, where they make the real white people.

Not sure what to say about that. I like the thought, though.