Stop
0 comment Saturday, June 28, 2014 |
Please, make it stop.
The above is my reaction to the tiresome phrases and ideas offered up by many well-intended but ill-informed Americans when discussing immigration.
Example: "At least Hispanics are Christians like us, and share our European heritage."
Are these people blind? There is little or no European heritage, at least where genetics are concerned, among the Latin Americans who are now entering our country. As to their being Christians 'like us', well, speak for yourself; I don't believe in Saint Death or 'Santa Muerte' and I don't buy magic supplies for casting spells down in the barrio stores. I don't believe in 'curanderas' or in going to fortune-tellers. In other words, their form of Christianity bears scant resemblance to ours. To believe that their faith and ours are a source of commonality is to be deluded.
Another example: your interlocutor is a Republican but he feels compelled, for some reason, to defend Mexicans because they are 'social conservatives' or because they have 'good family values.'
Social conservatives ? Who have a higher illegitimacy rate than Whites and blacks? Who have a high rate of abortion? Social conservatives who commit far more crimes than our native-born citizens? Who drive drunk habitually? Who cheat, defraud, and exploit our system daily?
Another common cliche is that they ''work their [posteriors] off." The only thing I can say to that last defense is that it's irrelevant. Does ''working hard'' automatically give anyone the right to enter our country and to stay here? Since when does ''working hard'' become the magic open-sesame to our country and all its benefits? How many hard-working people are there in the world? Do they all get a pass if they enter this country illegally, or does our government issue visas and residency papers to everybody that ''works hard''?
These knee-jerk defenses of Latinos are especially common among the mainstream Republican types, and much as I hate to say it, among mainstream evangelicals who seem to think that being a good Christian involves sugar-coating everything and seeing only good, even when confronted with bad behavior.
Another thing I've decried before is the ''favorite minority'' syndrome. We see this in action a lot over on AmRen or also on Free Republic. Sometimes, when someone makes a comment that sounds especially hard-line regarding race, they quickly add that although they object to say, Moslem immigration or Somali or whatever, they have no problem with say, Hispanics -- because they ''work hard'' and they are ''humble''. I see this as another manifestation of the need to compensate for seeming ''racist''; they feel they might ward off the inevitable race card by expressing fondness or sympathy for some minority. Most often, however, the ''favorite minority'' is Asian. Many people on AmRen or on Steve Sailer's blog fawn over Asians. Please note the term 'NAM', non-Asian minority, which separates Asians who are termed desirable immigrants from all the other non-Asians who are a problem. First, the 'NAM' designation bothers me much as the 'non-Hispanic White' category bothers me. Why define someone by what they are not?
For the record I have a fairly high regard for Japanese people and their culture, although they too have their dark side. Still, I've found them to be mostly polite and courteous in my dealings with them. I've known many Japanese-Americans who are pleasant -- still, they too tend to be a liberal voting bloc and hence work against our interests as a group.
As to Asians generally -- I think it's a mistake to lump them together, especially for the purpose of casting them as ''model minorities.'' There is a lot of variation among Asians; some Asians are well-behaved, well-adapted to our country, while others (Southeast Asians, for example) have high degrees of social problems, heavy usage of social programs, etc. They are not all well-suited to our country, but almost all Asians benefit from the positive stereotypes that many Americans, even racially conscious Whites, have of them.
Above all, I just don't understand the need many Whites, especially those on the right, have, to idealize some minority group or other. How about putting our own group's interests first and foremost, and looking for praiseworthy qualities among our own? I see too few people doing that.
As regards our own group, there is a great deal of White-bashing that goes on even on sites like AmRen; Northerners who hate the South and still condemn the Confederacy for slavery and secession, and of course many White men bashing White women and praising Asian women. And my personal pet peeve: ethnic Whites who still cry victimhood because of those Anglo-Saxons who supposedly mistreated their ancestors back when they immigrated here 100 or more years ago. Here's my honest opinion on such complaining: it sounds like nothing else but blacks complaining about ''400 years of slavery'' and ''Jim Crow.'' It sounds like Latinos complaining about their land being stolen by the gringo 150+ years ago. It has the scent of loserdom about it. Stop it.
There is nothing attractive about losers whining about losing; they should take it like men (and women). It happened long ago to people who are long since dead. It does not affect anyone today unless they decide to let it. The mantle of victimhood is not attractive to see on anybody; it is repellent, or should be, for self-respecting people.
Besides which: how does anyone know that great-great grandpa was given dirty looks by Anglo-Saxons all those years ago when he came over on the boat from Europe? Is there any proof of it, or did it all come from a biased history book read years ago, or from a Hollywood movie?
Even worse is those people who dredge up something from distant eras: for example, they saw ''Braveheart'', which is apparently not historically accurate, and bear a grudge against the Saxons for persecuting their Scots ancestors a couple of dozen generations ago. There are two sides to every story, and right now, it is politically correct to exalt all the loser/victims, but again, it is not pretty to wallow in losing or to hold grudges against the opponent who bested you in a struggle for dominance. What ever happened to being a gracious loser? Why must we continue to exalt victimhood? Untold harm has been caused to our Western countries and our way of life by that very attitude. It needs to change.
Again, we come back to the divisions that beset our people so much today. This is a real problem and a real weakness, a vulnerability on our part. It plays no small role in our present dire situation. When will people stop all this ridiculous divisiveness, this need to praise and appease our enemies, and the need to fight old battles amongst ourselves?
Please, make it stop.

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