I guess I should have known it all along. I am a bigot. Certainly, the BNP guys have been trying to convince me of this fact, but it took a friend and compatriot, Thomas the Wraith, to drive home the point, and make me admit I do have a problem.
Thomas is, like myself, a white American married to an Asian immigrant. He and I are both the kinds of guys who like to think of themselves as being beyond bigotry. But, while Thomas may be beyond bigotry, he made it clear to me that I am not.
Now, Thomas is a friend, so he didn't hit me over the head with it. He did not sit me down and say, "Pastorius, you are a bigot." Instead, like a true friend, Thomas has gone about his life being a living example, and periodically dispensing pearls of wisdom when asked.
So, what was it that Thomas said that could have made Pastorius finally realize that he is a bigot?
Well, it was the following (from the Thomas the Wraith blog):
The US allows indigenous peoples to gather together separated from the rest of society. We call these Tribal Reservations and few seriously accuse these Indian tribes of being racists. The English are an ethnic group. They deserve to be recognized as such in their own homeland.
Thomas is right! The U.S. has been helping to enforce the integrity of the border of reservations for the Native Americans. Because, God knows, the Native Americans ought not have to live with white people. God knows, they ought not have to live with black Americans either. And, God knows, they wouldn't want to.
But, that's not the way I think, because I am a bigot.
The past few weeks have really opened the world up for me. A lot of new ideas are running around in my brain. Honestly, I am having trouble processing many of them. In fact, in most cases, I simply apply my old template and voila ...
The first thing that occurred to me when I read the above quote from Thomas the Wraith was,
Doesn't that make him a multiculturalist?
I mean, if he supports the idea that certain races and cultures ought to live separate - but still equal - from each other, then is he not supporting a multiculturalist agenda?
But, that's just my old template talking.
The truth is, this whole subject has made me realize that I am a bigot against indigenous people. Honestly, I'm getting tired of people who keep arguing for the integrity of their indigenous culture. I'm getting tired of people who want to live hermetically sealed off from racial mixing, and from the cross-pollination of cultures.
It occurs to me that, if we would always have listened to such people, we'd still be living in caves.
But, I shouldn't think like that. After all, indigenous people are good. Mixing of cultures is bad. In fact, it is racist to mix cultures, or so it seems. I'm not sure, but if I'm getting the message right, the only thing that comes from racial mixing is more caucasian hegemony. Or, is it Asian hegemony?
I'm not sure.
But, of one thing I am sure. I am a bigot, because I really do not like indigenous people, whatever their stupid race is.
46 comments:
Yes, this culture mixing will cause a mulatto-indio-rental-spanio-zulu-inuit conglom-ERATION of races, destroying ALL our indigenous wonderment. All the race and people will be destroyed in this god cursed mix.
Somebody get my sheet, I gotta cut some eyeholes. My grandchild is liable to marry an orangutan.
Dogs and cats, running wild in the streets ...
Heh, I don't believe in "Indians" living on reservations, or reserves as we call them here in the Great White North. To accept tribal ethics and property within a free market society is to assert that aboriginal peoples will not be free individuals, the equals of the rest of us. A free society must treat all its people as equal citizens, constitutionally, with the same rights, with some possible exceptions dictated by age or status in the family (since families, not individuals, are the ultimate constituents of the nations; families may be dependent on individuals for their formation, but individuals are ultimately a product of families... I'm just raising the question of whether the problem in Europe is really one, not of individuals or skin colours, but of the idea that a nation can be home, in sizeable numbers, to any two significantly different conceptions of family and its role in producing, or not, free individuals...)
But it does not follow that we want a world without borders. I think a global economy needs free self-ruling nations as its political regulators. That means allowing countries to be different from each other, with different kinds of populations, even as they all should make in common a commitment to building free and transparent political systems so that their neighbours don't have so much to fear. This means, among other things, demanding every nation recognize basic human rights internally. It need not mean a country choosing to have an open door immigration policy, or pretending that we can simply denounce the widespread fact of peoples' racial consciousness. We have to work with what is. We can't hide from real problems. To have different "races" in one country might be defined as having different family-cum-religious systems in the country. (I mean I know, for example, "Chinese" people who are very Western and it's hard to think of them as a different race, even as I can recognize other Chinese for whom family and a certain Beijing-led hierarchy go in hand, and think of them as a different race... leaving aside the question of what the new genetics is going to teach us about differences among historically separated populations...) And that can indeed be a real problem if self-ruling democratic freedom is your ideal.
Any thoughts on Haskell Indian Nations University? That question is for Thomas. Indians aren't really that segregated where I live, though there are some reservations in the country.
Honestly though, one of the scariest things I've ever experienced is being the only non-Kickapoo at a pow-wow out in the middle of nowhere at night. I mean, I was there with Kickapoo friends who wanted me to see a real drumming and dancing show not put on for whites, but those drums and singing are both beautiful and a little scary at times. Great memories though!
Hi Truepeers,
How did you Canadians get rid of your Injuns? Did you kill 'em too?
Anyway, if I must be serious, and I am contract-bound to be so, then I will pose this question to you, TruePeers:
If a country has
1) a certain percentage of existing Immigrants who breed at more than replacement rate,
and
2) an indigenous population which does NOT breed at replacement rate,
and
3) said country's populace decides, because of the increasing non-indigenous population, to vote for an Ethnic Nationalist party to lead them,
WHAT WOULD BE THE POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM?
I can only see four possible solutions,
1) grant tax-breaks to indigenous population as an incentive to have children, and HOPE that the indigenous population will eclipse the non-indigenous
2) Enforce a cessation in breeding for all non-indigenous peoples
3) round up non-indigenous people and ship them out of the country
4) kill the non-indigenous people
So, it is my opinion that, since the first method can not be guaranteed to work as it is based on hope, there are really only three choices, and
ALL OF THEM ARE FASCISTIC.
Therefore, I believe that Fascism is the
INEVITABLE OUTCOME OF ANY POLICY OF ETHNIC NATIONALISM.
Can you refute me?
I pose this question to you not because I think you are arguing the issue with me, but because I think you are an intellectually fair thinker.
This is something I've been pondering for a few weeks now, and this is my conclusion.
What's yours?
Lex,
Was it really a great time, or was it just the peyote?
;-)
There is another solution. The indigenous population can be granted free quaaludes, and that would basically wrap that up in a generation or two
Epa,
Good thinking, but not everyone likes ludes, dude.
Option 6 - EU to ban cousin marriage (as it still is in some US states) to disrupt the breeding cycle of the parasites.
Check.
5) Quaaludes
6) ban cousin-marriage.
7) ban sex with camels.
I got it.
But, to be serious, the problem with Ethnic Nationalsim as a solution is
1) Islam is not a race so Ethnic Nationalsim is not a solution
2) England doesn't have nearly the trouble with Chinese, Indian, or Hispanic people, that it has with those of the Muslim faith.
Am I right?
England doesn't have quite the same hang-ups about race as the US for a variety of reasons.
1) Slavery was abolished early.
2) There was no residual freed slave population. The 'non-white' population are all voluntary immigrants or their descendents.
3) We once ran an empire. Not so much on consent of the governed but consent of the governers. You could be black or brown, but if Pater was a Maharaja or tribal chieftain, and you were educated at Eton or Harrow and could keep a straight bat, you were part of the Establishment.
There you go, Najistani. Then, it isn't about race or ethnicity, is it?
So, why do BNP members so commonly talk about a "white England"?
As far as I'm concerned, race ought to have nothing to do with any of this. It ought to be about ideology, or if you want to use a different term, culture.
"So, why do BNP members so commonly talk about a "white England"? "
Do they?
Check out the proceedings at the latest BNP conference: http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=1839
Pastorius
I found this Buddhist website - http://www.aboutulverston.co.uk/metaphysics/essentialism.htm .
On the whole not very complementary to Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but shines a penetrating light on racism and antisemitism, eg :
" Race and Rationality
From a rational point of view, the Darwinian explanation for people having different skin pigmentation is that the degree of pigmentation is an adaptation to the amount of ultraviolet light (UV) that a population receives. Large amounts of UV cause melanoma, inadequate amounts of UV cause rickets (in the absence of marine fish in the diet). Skin pigment filters out UV. Hence populations exposed to large amounts of UV were selected towards dark skin.
Populations living in inland forests in northern latitudes were selected towards light skin. So according to Darwinism, pigmentation has nothing to do with any other supposedly inherited qualities such as divine curses. The degree of pigmentation in a population is purely a reflection of the evolutionary tradeoff between rickets and melanoma [4] . Being black, white, brown, red, yellow, green or purple has no relevance to any other aspect of your personality, apart from your essentialist stereotype [1]. "
LOL...not a night when I wanted to be anything but sober, pal. Until we hit the casino, that is.
Pastorius, I might add to that that (and this is again, anecdotal, but the evidence bears this out) in speaking with Indians who were being schooled in the 1960s, they were jeeringly told by instructors that they would only be learning certain subjects, and only as a language French, because "that's all you'll need where you're headed". They were headed obviously for the Vietnam War.
This was not long after Indians were forced away from their families into schools where they were denied use of their own languages and traditions, which were thought best destroyed in the effort to "civilize" them. The remains of one such school is not far from where I live, which became in part Haskell Indian Nations University. OK, a little far, but these days I'm willing to make the drive.
As for England not having the hang-ups about race that the U.S. has, my friend Rajiv would beg to differ, which is why he now lives in the US.
Discussion of British practices makes me wish I'd ever even seen a quaalude. Honestly, as if this is not the very history of the Anglo-Saxons, whose history and language I am so obsessed with studying. Who the hell do you guys think the Welsh are? They're not really the "wealas", or "foreigners" as dubbed by the proto-English. Bad as the Greeks with the "xenos" on everyone's head.
But I guess I proved a bit of clannishness that would please that moron who called me a "Paki wog" the other night here. He was really funny, bring him back!
Mr. P.
I'm not sure if your first question was seroius, but I'll deal with it first because I'm a serious kind of guy.
We didn't exactly get rid of our aboriginals. There are populations in every province and territory but Newfoundland (where they fled inland, were sometimes hunted, and eventually died off). And guess what? Aboriginal are today the most fertile population in the country, I think. Only immigration keeps them down!
European-imported disease was the biggest killer of Canadian natives. There were wars, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where natives allied either with French or with English and consequently fought other tribes on the other side. That killed some and eventually led in the nineteenth-century to the birth of a pan-Indian identity. But Canada colonized the West with police and treaties, and only occasionally with soldiers or lynch mobs. Gunboats on the west coast proved their point with only a few violent skirmishes.
And then we separated the aboriginals from the rest, or maybe they had some role in it, and through various means the aboriginal cultures were corroded and the people demoralized and became dependent on governments and other bad things. Today there is a revival of aboriginal nationalism, but it is still premised on getting concessions from the Whites to allow aboriginals to live in tribal settings with tribal property. In BC we are negotiating land claims that will give significant wealth to aboriginals, but it won't be private property like you enjoy, with the right to do with it what you will. Aboriginal people will not own it, except through their tribe, and so they will become dependent on their local chiefs, some of whom are very paternalistic believing, if not for their leadership, the people would drink or drug the money away. Sometimes, maybe they're right. There doesn't seem to be any realistic vision of the future behind all the treaties right now. It is propelled by White Guilt and I expect it will end in a lot of resentment on both sides.
Have you ever wondered why Northern European immigrants to North America created the most powerful and stable nation the world has ever seen, while Spanish and Portuguese immigrants to Latin America created economic and social basket cases?
Why did the US become a superpower and everything south of the Rio Grande become permanently mired in centuries of poverty, oppressive dictators, and thuggery?
I really dont know what the answer is.....but I know our ancestors, our evil white ancestors that built this nation, were less likely to inter-breed with the natives than the Spanish / Portuguese did in Latin America.
Our ancestors established, by brutal force, a new cultural identity based primarily on the values they brought with them, and intentionally excluded the natives from positions of authority.....while the Spanish on the other hand tried to mold the natives, through the use of religion and other tools, into their cultural likeness.....and achieved only partial success. Current day Latin America retains many cultural values of the indigenous people, while in the US the values of the natives have been largely discarded.
Can you really argue with success?
Where would we be today if our, or at least my, ancestors had not conquered the continent with a racist and bigot zeal?
And if it was a good idea at the time.....when exactly did it become a bad one? When did it become the norm for us to accept the fact that a white dominated political class in America is an inherently evil idea? That while the native Americans fought to the death to prevent thier loss of control of the continent, we should be the first culture to voluntarily accept our dis-enfranchisement?
I dont really consider myself a white-supremest, although I'm sure most of yall will paint me with that brush...... but I have to admit, there is no way I would raise my children in Dallas, Bexar, and Harris County Texas..... where whites now garner less than 5% of the public school attendants. In the course of my lifetime my hometown has become like a 3rd world nation, where I cant read half the signs on the business storefront, and pray my wife's car does not break down in at night.
If failure to embrace these changes to the fabric of my community as a positive makes me a racist and a bigot...... then so be it. That makes me and about 5.5 billion others just like me.
So go ahead and take your moral high road......its your descendants that will have to drive down it.
TruePeers,
Yes, I was kidding with the first question.
Of course, the story of Canada and it's indigenous population is pretty much the same as America's story.
Redneck Texan,
You said; "Our ancestors established, by brutal force, a new cultural identity based primarily on the values they brought with them, and intentionally excluded the natives from positions of authority.....while the Spanish on the other hand tried to mold the natives, through the use of religion and other tools, into their cultural likeness.....and achieved only partial success. Current day Latin America retains many cultural values of the indigenous people, while in the US the values of the natives have been largely discarded."
I say: Yep, it sounds like you got that about right.
And, your question about why we would have reverted to the Spanish/Portuguese model is a very good one.
Thank you for posing the question.
Actually, I have thought about that before. It seems to me America is based upon an ideology which has allowed us to bring in Germans, Irish, Spaniards, Italians, Chinese, Viet Namese, Russians, etc., and they all assimilate.
When I say they assimilate, I mean they gradually adhere to our ideology, or culture, whichever word you want to use.
Hispanics have a harder time, perhaps, but I think that is because we abandoned what we are about, and we stopped guarding our border and we allowed a huge out-of-control influx of immigrants in; too many too assimilate at one time.
Now, we look at the result and wonder if, perhaps, the "MELTING POT" doesn't work with Hispanics.
I think it would.
However, the rules of the test have changed. So, we could never know for sure.
Certainly, I can not deny that our country is off track, just as the rest of Western Civilization is.
Let me know if you think I haven't answered this question, and your comments, fairly.
Pastorius,
As to your second question, I wouldn't support any of your four "solutions", at least not at this point in history (population transfers and separations may become necessary, as in the Balkans, if civil war breaks out).
First of all, let's remember that fascism may just as easily be seen as the "inevitable outcome" of the present EU-led European politics. I'd be willing to argue they're already there, practising a "velvet fascism", in many respects. If it comes to a war between fascists a and fascists b, are we just going to sit it out? Maybe, but then we may find some burning self-interest that compels us to take sides. So let's distinguish pragmatic truths from more fundamental ones and realize that it's rational to be committed to both.
But of course you're right, it's easy to imagine fascism coming from "ethnic nationalism." But isn't it all academic, because if the Europeans are not going to reproduce themselves, another population is going to take over. End of story. So everything I say is predicated on Europeans having a renewal of the spirit, which is not something that can be dictated or even encouraged by any government policy.
I don't really believe in ethnic "nationalism" (other than in the sense that tribalism is everywhere a reality I have to respect as such, even if I would prefer people got over it...), if it doesn't go in hand with a strong Christian consciousness to build a world of nation states as an alternative to multicultural empires. What's more, I tend to think that only a Christian revival will give Europeans the faith to carry on, to recognize their debt to those who have come before by continuing their national, linguistic, cultures in all their local, Judeo-Christian, and Greco-Roman aspects. In other words I don't think tribalism or paganism, alone, is at all a hopeful response. Except, perhaps, to the extent that a relearning the limits of the primitive sacred may be a first step for the re-Christianization of Europe.
As you know, Christianity is more interested in saving individuals than particular states or institutions. I think that's basically right and good. But on some level Christianity can be married to a liberating form of nationhood, as history has shown.
More to the point, perhaps, Christianity has an interest in a particular kind of family, and of society made from such families. This is what maybe Europeans can defend, and use the state to support, even if they won't become religiously Christian again, without making the present conflict into a war that breaks along colour lines, though it may well break along religious lines if defined as a war for a specific form of family-cum-national life. It is really a religious war going on right now, and it will be a new form of religion that transcends all this, whoever wins. (If "race" is a genetically distinguishable reality, as the latest DNA studies suggest it is to some degree, that doesn't mean race alone provides any kind of system of culture and order... so, strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as "racial" nationalism, nationalism being a complex cultural construct largely dependent on Judeo-Christian culture. This is why the idea or "racial" nationalism can quickly become fascist, because it is a fantasy ideology with a very thin grounding in cultural reality) I can't even seen "Islam" winning the present struggle because it really has no way, at present, of accepting and taking a lead in the global free market system without which nowhere near the present global population can be fed. So, I expect even Islam will bend or break when faced with choosing whether billions should die, and which among its own unproductive numbers should be sacrificed.
So, in other words, I would only consider sympathy for "ethnic" nationalism if it can go beyond mere genetic markers and reinvigorate an interest in ethnicity as culture, as a way of family life interacting with public life, mediated by a common language, history, and belief system. As such, it can maybe provide a road to the future. Of course, it can just as easily provide a road to fascism. The point being, ultimately, if "ethnic" nationalism is not a means for people to reinvigorate an interest in owning their nation to the end of maximizing the freedom of the owners, then it isn't a solution. And you can't maximize freedom by relying on scapegoating of minorities. So the qustion is where are the nationalists who, once freed from the present fascism of EU multiculturalism, will become confident enough to embrace freedom and won't want to develop their own alternative fascism?
It's a very tough question, because politics is a necessarily messy business where pragmatic players have to find votes, sometimes in dark places. It would be great if we had true national freedom parties to support. But instead we possibly only have, at present, two forms of more or less incipient fascism; and so the question become which of the two, once victorious, is more likely to further their incipient fascism and take Europe into a death spiral? I don't see anything to be hopeful about in the current Euro elites. I don't like white supremacists either. But I don't mind so much people who have a consciousness of their history as that of a free "race" of people. Race, to the extent that it is a product of a particular form of family structure, married to language and religion, is a reality howevermuch intermarriage is going on today. Intermarriage just means a certain race is becoming more genetically diverse. No child can belong equally to his parents' two races; he makes choices to go with one group more than another. For example, i believe in the existence of a Canadian race, with bloodstock from all over the world. It's a unifying idea. I just have to start convincing others and then you will all see that it is a reality, that marrying a Canadian will require you to fit into our ways, and that racial nationalism is a good thing.
I say, start with reality, showing some respect for what exists now, and work from there for freedom. Since the reality of Europe is now one of multiple races, start with that reality and push all sides to better understand the nature of their conflict as a precondition for people owning the problem and thus hopefully finding ways to transcend it. Pretending the racial problem does not exist is not a solution. It is a religious conflict, but it's not just that because religion is the expression of race. Overwhelmingly, most Muslims in Europe are not white, and that matters. What's more, however much it tries, or doesn't really, Islam cannot overcome its own racial divisions, and I don't think it ever will. Hence Muslims cannot forget who they are in a tribal or racial sense. And neither can the Europeans who resent Turks or Morrocans, say, and not simply Muslims.
Violent apocalyptic thinking can only lead to fascism. But is all "ethnic nationalism" necessarily violent apocalyptic thinking? If we raise such questions, maybe we do something for expanding the degrees of freedom in an ideological system, and that is generally a good thing. We don't have to take sides, in any fixed way, to usefully clarify the nature of the sides and the real choices we all face. Let's see how people respond to carrots and not just denounce.
In all of my comments the last few days, I am trying to think through the conditions of a politics that opens up new possibilities for expanding freedom. I'm not just thinking about what parties and politics now are, but what they could become. "Ethnic" nationalism seems to me to have more possiblities than EU multiculturalism. I admit either could turn fascist, but what's the point of dwelling on the apocalyptic? Fearing absolutely "ethnic nationalism" is like believing Islam can never be reformed or transcended. If you truly believe the other side is hopeless, then it is you, so-called freedom lover, who is denying the possibility that freedom could change them, and it is you, so-called freedom lover, who is consequently preparing for war. If fascism is evil that's not the end of the story, as far as we're concerned. How we engage that fascism remains a moral and ethical consideration of great import. A lot of the comments here seem to want an easy shrug off of that potential question - just f#%@ em all - but that's just as apocalyptic and dangerous as anything.
The truth tends to come out in a free market. So, take the side of freedom and decentralization. Freedom, something most people fear - even in so-called free societies - does change people when they really understand and respect it.
Well you have...... you're always open-minded and reasonable. Its Lex and Epaminonda that I fully expect to take issue with my POV.
I'm gonna need a wide berth here when / if they do.
Of course, the story of Canada and it's indigenous population is pretty much the same as America's story.
-well it depends whether you are more impressed by sameness or difference. There are differences. I think Canada's history demonstrates a greater respect for the state, treaties, and paternalism. American history is somewhat more violently chaotic on the frontiers as best as I can tell. Also, there has been a kind of nation-building zeal in America, since the puritanical New Englanders warred with a lot of the natives in order to build an idealized New England, that we just don't have to a comparable degree in Canada. In part, it has something to do with English Canada being founded on Loyalism to the crown and needing, in the early days, Indian allies against the Americans. Loyalism to the crown, without this being necessarily about assimilation, is something we have always wanted to encourage in natives as an alternative to war.
Redneck--I'm extremely open-minded, almost to a fault. Just not with people who fuck up their history and sociology so severely. Did you have any idea what the hell you were saying back there? You sounded like my cousin in Georgia talking about "all them dark lookin' people drivin the fancy cars" till I reminded him who he was talking to! Sheesh! Read a couple of books for a change.
OK, you're saying that it was white Euros who came roughly north of the Rio Grande, and that everything South is not as developed economically and technologically, but that this is due to race and breeding with the slaves, nativevs, etc.? This is your argument? Might I remind you as to a few factors as to why the Yankees kicked our asses in the War?
The US was NOT that dissimilar from what you are describing, and certainly not culturally contiguous. The "hacienda system" as it is known south of the border is barely different in basic structure than the Plantation system that the South rose to great wealth on, but WAS VASTLY different from the more industrialized Northeast. Had the South either won independence or simply managed to avoid war, the "CSA" would probably be in about the same shape as Mexico. As it is, the North in basically destroying us really saved us in the long run. The North was already running on the model that we have built upon. I'm sure I can find a good Brookhiser essay on Hamiltonian models for an industrial nation as opposed to Jefferson's. Quite a hot topic a few years back.
Or we could go with your racial model and look at the actual demographics as to who settled which parts of the U.S. Northeast: Dutch, English (mainly Southeast and North), German primarily; Southeast: larger % of Welsh, Scots, Irish, Cornish, French (coastal), and Spanish (Florida).
I can get the stats at Labov's or any major linguistics site, but I haven't spent so very much time studying the accent I grew up with (North Georgia) to not know which parts of Britain most regions of the U.S. were settled by.
So keep your view if you like, but all it really proves is that the Germans and their kindred Anglo-Saxons really are superior, Hitler was right, and us Southerners are from less superior Romano-Germano-Celtic stock. Take as wide of a berth as you want, but warning, I left quite a wake.
Redneck--I don't mean to be completely rude, I just have many relatives who wonder the same thing, but never bothered to really study on the situation. As you said above:
"Current day Latin America retains many cultural values of the indigenous people, while in the US the values of the natives have been largely discarded."
Keep in mind, Latin America is comprised of very, very different countries. Now apply what you said to Mexico, and the history bears out that the Hacienda system kept the rich (& frankly more European/Spanish) in control in a feudal system much like the Old South. The rest of the people were lorded over and are to this day of mostly indigenous blood, and that the class system in Mexico is still very strong, with the Mextizos at the bottom and the "more European" at the top. Look at Vicente Fox, he looked like the non-lounge-singer version of Robert Goulet (RIP), not like the guys getting caught swimming the Rio Grande! Life lesson # whatever: not all Mexicans are alike.
Interestingly, for Latin Americans, racism is much more accepted than here where it is completely taboo. That's one thing you learn fast around Latin Americans: they're just as snobby about which countries and people are better as are most Europeans, they just admit to it. Plus, they tend to look down on Mexicans, so you may have a few unlikely allies.
TruePeers,
You said: "I don't really believe in ethnic "nationalism" (other than in the sense that tribalism is everywhere a reality I have to respect as such, even if I would prefer people got over it...), if it doesn't go in hand with a strong Christian consciousness to build a world of nation states as an alternative to multicultural empires. What's more, I tend to think that only a Christian revival will give Europeans the faith to carry on, to recognize their debt to those who have come before by continuing their national, linguistic, cultures in all their local, Judeo-Christian, and Greco-Roman aspects. In other words I don't think tribalism or paganism, alone, is at all a hopeful response. Except, perhaps, to the extent that a relearning the limits of the primitive sacred may be a first step for the re-Christianization of Europe."
I say: Perhaps. Yes, it could be a necessary first step, though, I'm not sure if history bears out that Paganism is a necessary first step to a Judeo-Christian spawned Democratic Republic.
I'm not sure.
You say: " I would only consider sympathy for "ethnic" nationalism if it can go beyond mere genetic markers and reinvigorate an interest in ethnicity as culture, as a way of family life interacting with public life, mediated by a common language, history, and belief system."
I say: Yes, but then it wouldn't be ethnic nationalism.
You say: the qustion is where are the nationalists who, once freed from the present fascism of EU multiculturalism, will become confident enough to embrace freedom and won't want to develop their own alternative fascism?
I say: As in my solution #1, this is just a hopeful possibility. It is not a plan.
You said: "I say, start with reality, showing some respect for what exists now, and work from there for freedom. Since the reality of Europe is now one of multiple races, start with that reality and push all sides to better understand the nature of their conflict as a precondition for people owning the problem and thus hopefully finding ways to transcend it. "
I say: That sounds like a good plan to me, but do you think the Ethnic Nationalists would agree to it?
You said: ""Ethnic" nationalism seems to me to have more possiblities than EU multiculturalism. I admit either could turn fascist, but what's the point of dwelling on the apocalyptic? Fearing absolutely "ethnic nationalism" is like believing Islam can never be reformed or transcended. "
I say: Yes, that is true. On the other hand, you and I would both agree that history is shaped by ideas, and until Ethnic Nationalism is defined as Cultural Nationalsim the ideas it creates will only lead to destruction.
Why is it that so many people are quibbling over these ideas? Ethnic means racial. It does not mean cultural.
How is it that people keep conflating the two?
It is because they think racially. Races create cultures, true, but they do so out of the collision of various factors including the ideas floating around, the environment and weather, the wars during their time of history, their neighbors, etc.
All of those things go together to make up culture. It is not merely a race thing.
Najistani,
So then, are you the guy who used to go by the name Religion of Pieces?
Ethnic means racial. It does not mean cultural.
How is it that people keep conflating the two?
I remember once reading a book on ethnicity by some anthropologist who, after looking at many possible definitions, eventually came to the conclusion that ethnicity can mean many things, that is has no essence.
Is the same true of "ethnic"?
Anyway, I have always thought of "ethnicity" as a form of culture, usually in distinction to national culture. So, in France, say, the Bretons are an ethnic culture. If they ever get their own state that can promote a national literature, high culture, etc., they would be something more: an ethnic group with a national culture that is not entirely equivalent with their older ethnic culture. In other words, ethnicity is a way of representing a local place and customs to other people who live with you and is not designed to make sense to outsiders, since it depends on all kinds of inside knowledge, references, unspoken assumptions. National culture, on the other hand, consciously speaks on a world stage and is designed to constitute one particular way of speaking about universal concerns. I can understand French culture without ever going to France, if I study the relevant literature. But I cannot seriously understand a regional ethnic culture unless I go and live with it for a significant amount of time.
As for race, that's something harder to pin down, because it is part genetic and part cultural. But more to the point, the two interact and sustain each other. Is Judaism the reason a small group of tribes has survived millennia when most all the other tribes of Biblical times are long forgotten? Or, does Judaism survive because the Jews survive? I think Judaism survives because it attempts to define a particular people, racially, and it works to ensure its people's survival culturally. This is true even if the Jewish nation today is multi-ethnic or racial, as it is to some degree.
I believe we do have a biological predisposition to favor our own. The fact that I feel close to by nieces and nephews, even if I see other children more often, isn't just because of a cultural loyalty to family: i believe there is something about favoring one's own genes that is involved in your feelings for relatives. But all this is also wrapped up in cultural affinities in ways that make the whole package a mystery.
It seems to me identifiable races survive both because of geographic isolation but also because each race has its own family, marriage, economic, and political structure that favors certain kinds of personality traits in selecting sex partners. In other words, ethical and esthetic choices can influence what kinds of people are most likely to reproduce in a given culture. If this is correct, then we can see how, over time, and especially with geographic isolation, culture and race (genetics) are not entirely separable by any analysis.
Pastorious: I say: That sounds like a good plan to me, but do you think the Ethnic Nationalists would agree to it?
-What people will agree to depends on how the stage has been set.... We can't really know today, and our involvement might make a difference... Just like polling people today on who they will vote for next year doesn't necessarily mean much because they haven't gone through the process of engaging debates as they will in the year before they vote....
-I think most people would rather live in somewhat racially mixed, if free, nations, than in nations that have a big nightmare event of racial violence in their past. Who wants a nation that has to deal with historical guilt or that has become totalitarian in a surely self-defeating attempt to survive? Ask the Germans how fun that is. When people seriously have to think about how they are going to define their nation by the means they use to defend it, they will start moving away from the more obviously Utopian ideologies of racial purity. But when they are simply reacting to the EU Utopianism that is setting the stage for some nasty civil wars, they are not calm and sane enough, or they are still EUtopians, to get to this question. If we can get people to share in the recognition of the need to limit the EU to a common economic market, and forget much of the rest of the imperial EUrabian fantasy ideology, it will, I hope, allow minds to focus on the national questions in a productive way.
Pastorius,
Yup. In a previous incarnation I was Religion of Pieces. But there was another RoP commenting on counterjihad sites so I changed to a monniker which as a non-existent word was more likely to be unique.
And the picture completes.
I wonder if any ethnic european nationalist movement is advocating simply withdrawing citizenship from all the Turks, Moroccans, and various others, so that THEY can be guest workers limited to a specific amount of time driving cabs and fixing sewers?
;)
TruePeers,
You said: I remember once reading a book on ethnicity by some anthropologist who, after looking at many possible definitions, eventually came to the conclusion that ethnicity can mean many things, that is has no essence.
Is the same true of "ethnic"?
I say: Yes, that is clearly true.
However, I believe it is imperative that we tighten up the definition of ethnicity so that we do not find ourselves allied with those who adhere to its racial connotations only.
Do you understand?
The idea that a word like ethnicity does not have a tight definition in our moder world is pathetic. Frankly, I think it betrays the sloppy thinking of Anthropologists, and of our modern PC world in general.
I'm guessing that you would agree with me on that point.
TruePeers,
I am going to give my responses to each of your points separately because they are so packed full of ideas.
You say:Anyway, I have always thought of "ethnicity" as a form of culture, usually in distinction to national culture. So, in France, say, the Bretons are an ethnic culture. If they ever get their own state that can promote a national literature, high culture, etc., they would be something more: an ethnic group with a national culture that is not entirely equivalent with their older ethnic culture. In other words, ethnicity is a way of representing a local place and customs to other people who live with you and is not designed to make sense to outsiders, since it depends on all kinds of inside knowledge, references, unspoken assumptions. National culture, on the other hand, consciously speaks on a world stage and is designed to constitute one particular way of speaking about universal concerns. I can understand French culture without ever going to France, if I study the relevant literature. But I cannot seriously understand a regional ethnic culture unless I go and live with it for a significant amount of time.
I say: Now, you are making a distinction between
1) Ethnicity
and
2) Ethnic culture
It is clear to me that ethnicities do create their own culture. It is clear to me that the resultant ethnic cultures often contain ideas (customs and traditions) which are worth handing down. However, it is not clear to me that there needs to be a racial component involved in handing down any ideas (curstoms or traditions.
In fact, the idea that we need a racial component involved in the handing down of an idea is
A RACIST IDEA
in itself.
Does that make sense?
TruePeers,
You say:I believe we do have a biological predisposition to favor our own. The fact that I feel close to by nieces and nephews, even if I see other children more often, isn't just because of a cultural loyalty to family: i believe there is something about favoring one's own genes that is involved in your feelings for relatives. But all this is also wrapped up in cultural affinities in ways that make the whole package a mystery.
I say: Yes, that all seems true to me.
On the other hand, I am adopted and so is my sister. We are not related to each other biologically. My sister is Italian and German, and I am English. My kids are English and Asian, and my sisters kids are black, Chinese, German and Italian.
I have close to the same feeling for my sister's kids that you describe having for your nieces and nephews.
However, being that I am adopted and you are not, we could never be sure if our experience is the same.
And, I doubt it is completely the same. It is probably only similar.
TruePeers,
You said: -I think most people would rather live in somewhat racially mixed, if free, nations, than in nations that have a big nightmare event of racial violence in their past. Who wants a nation that has to deal with historical guilt or that has become totalitarian in a surely self-defeating attempt to survive? Ask the Germans how fun that is. When people seriously have to think about how they are going to define their nation by the means they use to defend it, they will start moving away from the more obviously Utopian ideologies of racial purity. But when they are simply reacting to the EU Utopianism that is setting the stage for some nasty civil wars, they are not calm and sane enough, or they are still EUtopians, to get to this question. If we can get people to share in the recognition of the need to limit the EU to a common economic market, and forget much of the rest of the imperial EUrabian fantasy ideology, it will, I hope, allow minds to focus on the national questions in a productive way.
I say: Once again, I think you are back to defining Ethnicity in two separate ways.
1) Racial
2) Cultural
And, I am back to the idea that the two ideas need to be separated or else we will find ourselves allying with those who only defining it by its racial component.
Najistani,
You said: Pastorius,
Yup. In a previous incarnation I was Religion of Pieces. But there was another RoP commenting on counterjihad sites so I changed to a monniker which as a non-existent word was more likely to be unique.
I say: Well, I'm glad that you are still helping out. And, I think you will be glad to know that people keep reading your article and keep commenting on it (although, most of the comments are stupid and angry).
:)
The terminology keeps morphing.
The first step in any debate is to define the terms.
Had the South either won independence or simply managed to avoid war, the "CSA" would probably be in about the same shape as Mexico. As it is, the North in basically destroying us really saved us in the long run.
Really? So if we had not had a civil war, the South would be a poverty stricken 3rd world nation today? We would have embraced socialistic economic model? We would have narco gangs controlling the police forces? Thats not very likely Lex.
Or we could go with your racial model and look at the actual demographics as to who settled which parts of the U.S. Northeast: Dutch, English (mainly Southeast and North), German primarily; Southeast: larger % of Welsh, Scots, Irish, Cornish, French (coastal), and Spanish (Florida).
Ever hear of the Dutch side of town being crime ridden? Are those descendants of German immigrants the ones dragging our education and health care systems into the ground? Boy, I hear those Scottish street and prison gangs are some sadistic mothers.
Keep in mind, Latin America is comprised of very, very different countries.
Excatly.....so why have all of them, despite an abundance of natural resources, been total failures relative to the nation our racist white European founders carved out of the wilderness?
Out of 21 Latin American countries, why have all 21 experienced repeated military coups, remained mired in abject poverty, had dismal illiteracy rates, during the same period of time the US became the world's mightiest superpower?
How many excuses are you going to pull out of your ass before you place any blame on the people that comprise that culture? Do they not bear any responsibly for their failures? Was it always the evil white man's fault? The same white man that pumped billions of dollars into their infrastructure, and developed their resources only to have them nationalized and soon after in a state of disrepair.......after which point they will coming begging for "foreign investment"....only to nationalize it again.
My point being here, there's damn good reasons why other cultures are failures relative to the ours. Its the people. And its really arrogant of us to think that once those people who have brought that cultural / genetic baggage to the US, and bred themselves into an electoral majority, that its not going to negatively effect the future prospects of this nation founded on European cultural values.
Would the US be a superpower today if it had been founded by any culture other than European? If the Mayflower had set of from West Africa or Persia would we be the prosperous, free society we are today? I seriously doubt it.
Our forefathers encouraged EUROPEAN immigration to America, not for some noble cause, but to stock the empty spaces in the western wilderness....they wanted not only to take control over the lands of the indigenous people's, they wanted to have enough settlers to maintain that control. What would they have done if someone from a non-European culture landed a few miles south of Plymouth Rock and build a colony? Would they have embraced that? If Georgia had been founded by a group of Muslims.....would our founders have included them in our early nation.....or would they have waged war on them.....and maybe either have exterminated them or put them on reservations, and taken Georgia away from them?
Let me make this as plain as I can for you.....the United States owes its success today on the fact that our ancestors were not only racist....but also willing to kill large numbers of humans to assure that the continent came under their control. And we are pissing away the fruits of their efforts.
My State has recently became a minority majority, if yours has not yet, it will as some point in the future.....our political system says those folks, who think of our ancestors as oppressors of their ancestors, who have brought with them and instilled in their children the cultural baggage from their failed homeland..... are going to be able to utilize the electoral process here to install leaders who reflect their values...... they are going to forever alter the fabric and direction of our Republic. Once they achieve electoral control but are still on the lower end of the economic scale they are going to demand a redistribution of wealth.
Mark my words.....I've seen whats happened to my hometown, its bears a striking resemblance to Guatemala and Somalia...... your not going to like it either when it happens to yours.
OK Redneck, take everything I said wrong. I had no confidence that you were up to the task in the first place. The Plantation and Hacienda systems were more similar than the Northern industrialized system, just the truth. Why wouldn't the South be in bad shape if independent? Maybe not, but I was referring to the origins of the problems. As for much of South America, there are geographical problems you aren't taking into account.
Actually, the only thing you're taking into account is your own thesis and bashing anything else that comes down the pipe. I realize now that I need to keep things very narrowed down for you.
Yes, our forbears did drive the ideals of the country they created all the way to the Pacific and into lands won by other countries. The concept of "race" at that time was quite different than now, but that's a bit advanced for you. OK, good for our ancestors. Let's welcome the immigrants we have now and help them assimilate. How about that option? Because, frankly, your other options scare me. After a while advocates of getting rid of one ethnic group get riled up about another, and at this point you're dealing with a country with a population of people of mixed heritage in large part. So who's next for you?
Regardless of race, yes, the poorer parts of town are generally where you find crime. Wichita Kansas, of all places, has a huge gang problem, built around drug trafficking. Many of the less desirable cities with less industry left to them than in the past are falling to gang activity, much of it comprised of white gangs.
You claim that this is because of Northern European descent of our Founders. I say it is because of their position at the time of our founding. After all, the Persians controlled an Empire which spanned more time than our nation has yet endured. I applaud you for not wanting this country to go to the dogs (which I blame on lack of interest in education and self-hatred), but I think you're basing a lot on your hometown without checking other statistics, whether current or in history.
You claim that this is because of Northern European descent of our Founders. I say it is because of their position at the time of our founding.
What position is that?
That they were not taking cattle dung and urine and covering themselves with it to repel mosquitoes, like some other cultures were....and still are?
That they were not sacrificing humans on the altar in order to maintain order in their universe?
Let's welcome the immigrants we have now and help them assimilate. How about that option? Because, frankly, your other options scare me. After a while advocates of getting rid of one ethnic group get riled up about another, and at this point you're dealing with a country with a population of people of mixed heritage in large part. So who's next for you?
And when they dont assimilate....then what?
How many generations to we give them to drop the hyphen in front of American?
Do you think through the assimilation process they are going to eventually adopt a fondness for our ancestors that either enslaved their ancestors or pushed them off their lands? Or are they always going to be wanting revenge?
Look, despite your wishes, I'm not saying we should ethnically cleanse the American electorate and gene pool...... I'm saying at some point they are probably going to turn the tables on us, and either through legislation in a government they will control....or through violence....they are going to force us to defend ourselves.
I'm mean its already that way in our prison systems and in our urban education systems. The black on white murder rate is already something like 20 times higher than the white on black rate..... is that another gift from our defeat in the civil war we should be thankful for?
They already have electoral control of most of our major cities. The whites have moved further and further away, but the ring of minority control is ever expanding..... and they tend to vote almost exclusively for the party that promotes socialism.... the party that champions white disenfranchment....Hows does it end Lex?
What does America look like this time next century? Anything like what our Founders intended?
I dont think you can argue that we, as a culture, are not being displaced. Some immigrants are assimilating.....most are either reproducing the culture of their homelands here, or at the very least altering our culture to be more accommodating to theirs.
Who else would allow that but us? If boatloads of Whites migrated to Angola, Peru, or Pakistan..... and took over political control, and altered their culture in a way that made it more accommodating to ours....... would they embrace it or would they resist? Would there be violence?
Of course they would resist it. Racism is an integral part of human nature. Its been around since the first time two races / cultures came into contact with each other. You cant educate or legislate it away. We haven't abolished it, we are just forced to pretend we dont all harbor normal racist feelings. You can make actions illegal but you cant alter normal brain functions. All you can do is attempt to insulate yourself until the inevitable violent conflict starts.....then just hope you didn't give them as much leeway to consolidate their ethnic warriors on your soil as the Native Americans allowed us.
You know Founding Fathers did a remarkable job of putting enough check & balances in our political system to protect us from a dictator legally coming to power.......what type of legal mechanism do we have to deal with hordes of migrants that refuse to assimilate? What are our legal options?
Another lucky break for us for losing the Civil War was the 14th Amendment. Designed, imposed, and illegally ratified to keep us from deporting the descendants of slaves. Was it intended to be a vehicle for 3rd worlders to illegally migrate here and have anchor babies?
That last blast of Northern vengeance is why Texas has come under Hispanic electoral control. What would you say the odds are of getting it repealed or modified so illegals cant use it as a back door to citizenship? I'd say Zero.... because the legal citizens it produced will never allow it that loophole to be closed. And the legal children of illegal aliens have become the single most powerful electoral block in our nation. Right now they must be pandered to for those few electoral points that determine which political party rules.....in a couple more generations they will have full control of all legislation.
What exactly are you supposed to do when control of your nation is being taken away from you through illegally produced demographics shift, and there's no legal mechanism to stop it?
Redneck--I do agree with you that there needs to be a near cut-off at this point, since we truly are undergoing a huge demographics-shifting experiment. Long periods of immigration have historically needed a break for us to catch up. I don't disagree with that, it's basic to the infrastructure.
But people did just stand by and get pissed off when the influx of Southern Europeans (and continued Irish) came in long ago, and you don't see too many problems still stemming from that, do you? I mean, your basic beef with immigration seems to stem from anger at Mexicans in Texas, and you are applying this nationally. I lived in Miami for 3 years, and talk about not assimilated, half the metro refers to itself as an "exile community". It can be very annoying when people refuse to even bother to learn basic traditions, such as Halloween, a night on which we terrified many immigrants with no idea of that tradition. Think about the humor in THAT situation...LOL.
I don't know, stay pissed if you want. As for my hometown, It has been gobbled up by land developers, whom I hate with a maniacal passion. Turner's thesis turned inward on ourselves. The county once owned by my family is now SUBURBS, another thing I hate. Success is the best revenge. Eventually I'll buy up enough land that no one can touch me and I'll continue to laugh over the eco-terrorists in Carl Hiassen novels.
I guess we all have the things that bug us the most, yours is just a little too racially motivated for my taste, Texan. It reads like white supremacist rhetoric I've heard spewed from people so uneducated that, well, where I come from, we called them "white trash". I don't expect you to agree with me or become a rabid hater of land development that is excessive, but I'm frankly sick of it here, so if you want we can just trade. I'm REALLY sick of my street, and spending half my time in FLorida is not as practical as it sounds. So please, come rent this house until the housing market bounces back, and you'll be surrounded yet again by whitey.
and you'll be surrounded yet again by whitey.
I hate whitey too. ;-)
I'm in the construction business..... I wont hire anyone who is not a falsely documented illegal alien...... hypocrisy is thy name. ;-)
I just hate that I've prospered at the expense of my great grand-children. But so did my great grand-parents from Alabama. I guess thats just the way it works.... why no empires are eternal.
But I do think armed struggle on the streets of America is the inevitable conclusion of our noble ideas...... and if you think they last civil war was about race.....just wait till the next one. It will be bloodier on day one than the last one was in its duration.
Pastorius:
The idea that a word like ethnicity does not have a tight definition in our moder world is pathetic. Frankly, I think it betrays the sloppy thinking of Anthropologists, and of our modern PC world in general.
I'm guessing that you would agree with me on that point.
-no, I'm afraid not really. Of course all words need to have more or less common meanings or they'd be useless, they'd be noises not words; but if some words are more ambiguous as to their proper referent than are others (e.g. "god", "jazz", "race") it probably points to some real conceptual problems, some fundamental human paradoxes, that we can't just wish away. If we try to define terms and exact models of society or humanity to guarantee our definitions, so that everyone will be on the same page when they then try to act on or extend those models, I think we will be more, not less, prone to totalitarian tendencies. PC could be defined (!) as the tendency to want to define everything so that no one steps out of bounds and offends someone.... So that, even if PC says its ends are freedom, it doesn't have any way of making its means commensurate with its stated ends.
But this is true of any idealized model of society if it is meant to inform action, free actions which will always compromise the model. So, I'm interested, intellectually, in ways of thinking about society that do not require us to begin with complex models of how things are or should be. I tried to define ethnicity above, in contrast to nationality, as being largely to do with culture, but with ideas and genetic realities of race mixed in, an "ethnic" mix as it exists or existed in certain places historically, while I was trying to leave the future use of the word in modern nations open-ended... because I don't see any hope that the meaning of "ethnicity" can be narrowed down once it has taken on many roles. Part of the problem is that Americans have a different conception of "ethnic" as do Europeans. Lots of immigrants a hundred odd years ago left Europe from places like Calabria or Friuli, never knowing they were "Italians" until they arrived in the New World where they were grouped by their relative similarity and by the recent development of an Italian nation-state. But in their old country, their identies were strictly regional, ethnic I would say. And it was that regional ethnicity that, when observed, was eventually labelled "Italian" in America. Americans weren't, on the whole, reading the classics of Italian national literature or looking at high art films, or following the latest fashions in Rome, to define "Italian". They were looking at Calabrians, Sicilians, etc. But in Europe, it is more the reverse. "Italian" refers to the high culture, while an ethnic is Sicilian, etc.
But you're right that there is much sloppy thinking among Anthropologists today. That's a reflection of a desire for PC models of reality and a fear of real theoretical thinking that comes to terms with human freedom to discover ever greater truths and meanings that compromise neat academic models. Freedom and truth clashes with the ethical relativism and mindless empiricism that is the official religion of the Anthropology profession.
AOW adds: The first step in any debate is to define the terms.
-I don't really agree with this, at least not totally (especially if the idea is to move beyond debate and have our carefully defined terms shape actions), as I try to suggst above. Yes, we have to try to convey understandable meanings by the way we use words. There has to be some conformity in rules of meaning. But I think this idea about first steps is the methodological foundation of modern liberalism and modern liberalism keeps showing us its limits as to the usefulness of an approach that invests so much energy in "defining terms" (like "international law") while never getting the world to live up to them. But I am going to have to write a post, and it may take me a while to figure it out, to clarify why I think a deeper understanding of freedom will require us to go beyond trying to make carefully defined terms and models of society commensurate with our means for acting in and changing society according to changing imperatives. The problem is we can never make these two sides of the equation commensurate. For example, the power we would use to make society conform to liberal models of the ideal society is not commensurate with those models. Similarly, you can't model the stock market and then use that model to repeatedly win in the stock market without changing the market from the one you have modeled.
Pastorius,
it is not clear to me that there needs to be a racial component involved in handing down any ideas (curstoms or traditions.
-it's really a pragmatic issue more than anything; if a relatively few people immigrate from one culture to another, they will have lots of need and encouragement to assimilate to the new culture. We all know *individuals* are capable of that. If the migration, on the other hand, involves millions of people, then there will be much less need or even chance to assimilate and the handing down of ideas in the traditional local culture will be threatened by the newcomers taking over places and spaces. What we are really debating is a numbers game. Whether "white" means race or culture, or both, it's still a white Europe when immigration is modest in size at any point in time, even if this immigration lasts centuries, but it's no longer "white" when the ties to the Christian-national past are simply overrun and Islam takes over, even if it happens that all the leading imams turn out to be "white".
These [Ethiopian] people do not cease being Jews because they have mixed their racially. They are Jews because of Jewish culture, which I am defining as a group of ideas (traditions and customs and morals, etc.).
-sure, but my point is that however many tribes from wherever declare themselves Jews, their embrace of Judaism cannot be seen simply as a strategy to preserve Jewish ideas; it is also an attempt to give a particular tribe or race of people a culture that will serve them well and help their particular bloodline survive, even if it is now going to mix with other Jewish bloodlines. And, on the other side, Judaism, however many tribes it accomodates, is still the religion of a people who think of themselves racially, as descended from the lost tribes of old... However many races in Judaism, it is still a way of privileging some races and not others.
-look, race may be in large part a construction of the human imagination, primarily denoting a cultural division in how two human groups understand what is sacred, a division that can only be given slight correlation to observable differences in DNA after many thousands of years of living apart. But just because it is a construction of the imagination does not mean it is not a fundamental and unforgettable part of human consciousness, or a strategy for preserving one kind of DNA over another only very slightly different. We think racially because politically there is no non-Utopian way to imagine the world united in a single human society/religion and politics is about competing for scarce resources and hence survival. Conflict (and temporary agreements) over the sacred is what we humans do. We were surely united at the very beginning - I imagine there is only one origin for all human language and religion/culture - but we have been creating ever more differences among ourselves since. We have no choice but to contest for our own particular amalgam of racial and cultural existence, in alliances with and against others, or to give up. And the cultural contest inevitably has consequences for one kind of DNA at the relative expense of others. And people, like it or not, rationally or not, are aware of this. Most people will even distinguish between their genetic attachment to their family at the expense of neighbors who are "racially" very much like them. And the further away the neighbors get, the more people are aware of the difference... it may seem irrational but much that is fundamental to humanity is irrational.
However, being that I am adopted and you are not, we could never be sure if our experience is the same.
-true. What your experience reminds me is the importance of family to human beings, an importance that transcends race. But by the very same token - since these issues are rooted in fundamental paradoxes - that importance of family can and does become a basis for seeing and thinking racially. To take our own example, I too have something of a mongrel family - less than yours - but the very fact that we can think of ourselves as mongrels lets us differentiate ourselves from those who are not so inclined. One might say, we are the real Americans, or Canadians. Or, for another example, I think we can come in time to imagine a Canadian race as distinct from an American race, even though both will have been constituted by a history of global migrations....
There was an American professor who wanted his students to cast away what he thought were simple-minded assumptions about their race. So he got them all to do genetic tests to find out how mongrel they really were. But, to his surprise, students who found out they were one-tenth African, or whatever, all of a sudden started identifying more, not less, with their newly-discovered racial identities. As I say, these things are not rational but they are still fundamentally human. We may have some biological impulse to "think" "racially" an impulse that we apply even in a world as mixed up as our own.
And, I am back to the idea that the two ideas [race and culture] need to be separated or else we will find ourselves allying with those who only defining it by its racial component.
-we can separate them, but not completely I am suggesting. And if i'm right - though maybe I'm not - then we should come to terms with reality as a better way of mediating racial tensions, rather than pretending like these tensions can't or shouldn't exist because they are not really "racial" but caused by poverty or whatever. We are still free to ally with whomever we want, for whatever reasons; and we can always come up with a reason for anything we want. "Race" whatever it is does not determine anything. We are fundamentally free, as human beings. In any case, a deeper understanding of reality will give us more options for encouraging those with whom we interact to go in directions that maximize, not lessen, freedom. The art of the compromise that expands freedom for all of society means recognizing and respecting all that needs to go into the compromise...
TruePeers,
When an organization has you fill out a form and the form asks your ethnicity, how do you reply?
Questions about ethnicity are the same as questions about race, as far as I can tell.
Now that you have explained yourself I find that I am in disagreement with you.
I think you are overcomplicating the issue.
I know you think you are allowing for gray areas. However, I believe those gray areas exist because of sloppy thinking.
We can't agree on everything.
To tell you the truth, I don't comply with those questions about race or ethnicity. Or I might sometimes just fill in "Canadian". I might believe race is some kind of reality, but that doesn't mean I want just anyone playing politics with a quick and easy way of trying to identify what it is for me. Ethnicity? I'm not sure I have any, or maybe I have a little from several streams. Culturally, I am Canadian and I think I will start insisting that racially I am Canadian too, just to make the point that "race" is not just about the past, from where our ancestors came, and that I believe that when we are a highly mongrelized nation, by today's standards, the people will still be thinking of their own, family and fellow citizens, especially those with long family histories in this country, as somehow closer "racially" than foreigners from wherever. Canada will be where many of our closest genetic cousins now are, and that will mean something, I think. I could be very wrong about this, but it's what my instincts suggest. Anyway, since I'm opposed to official multiculturalism, I don't play by its rules but actively try to undermine them. Hence the importance of believing in a Canadian race and nation.
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