Comments by "craxd1" (@craxd1) on "Cousin marriages among Bradford's Pakistani community and also between Ashkenazi Jews" video.

“Keeping it all in the family” was never a good idea, and, really, that's what this is all about.
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Keeping money and power within a family is the main reason. It's as silly as that.
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@tomwinterbourne Well, a few of the very wealthy families did marry outside every so many generations to bring in “new blood,” when certain signs and symptoms started appearing. To think about going to that extent to keep wealth within a family, a business, or to keep political power is ridiculous. Even in the early days of the US, cousin marriage generally only occurred with third cousins, and that was because of the long distances between the different settling families. Even they knew better to take it any closer, where some even traveled off to a different area to find them a wife.
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@tomwinterbourne I thought the same, myself. I was interested in that since she is distantly related to me through the Binghams, via my grandmother.
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@stevefowler3398 I thought it hilarious when J. K. Rowling poked fun at it in the Harry Potter books about the Gaunt family. I had a right laugh about it. Plus, she alluded to it with the “pure bloods” all being kin, though there were 28 families, which, I suppose, diluted the cousin marriage enough, if done carefully, to stop the worst results. Sirius' mother and father, though, were close cousins.
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