0 comment Thursday, October 16, 2014 | admin
Here's a piece from American Thinker called Coloring History. As you might expect from the title, it has to do with 'black history', and specifically about the beginnings of the NAACP. And it's also quite politically correct in content and tone.
I was aware of the fact that the organization had a mostly White membership at the beginning. And as the American Thinker article says that some of these people were the stereotype WASPs, again lending credence to the image of WASPs as being at the forefront of egalitarian efforts and ultimately the progenitors of today's totalitarian PC regime.
The discussion following the article is a mixed bag, with some rather un-PC comments here and there, but ultimately it devolves into the usual cliches, such as the 'persecution of the Irish' stories.
The article and the rather ragged discussion both bring home the point that we do have to attend to our history. We have to read, and encourage others to read, some real history as a necessary antidote to the politically corrected version which is peddled at every turn in our day, and most especially during White Guilt month, every February.
Over the last week or so there have been discussions around the Internet and the blogosphere about the 'dialogue on race'. On one such discussion thread, a politically incorrect commenter mentioned that African slaves were actually captured and sold to Whites by other Africans. Following that statement, another (black) commenter expressed shock at such 'hateful' comments and demanded proof of such an outlandish claim, challenging whether it was even factual. Disappointingly, the commenter who said it did not reply, with or without the requested 'proof', so an opportunity was lost to present some politically incorrect truth to the people out there reading the thread. It's amazing how few people have ever heard that African slaves were actually enslaved by other Africans. I think the race industry has firmly established a cartoon version of history, with evil Whites chasing down African people in their homelands and trapping them to be shipped off to America as slaves. I think this version has been reinforced by bad 'history' in popular culture, such as Haley's ''Roots'', a work of literary plagiarism which passes, to this day, as factual history.
Whenever any kind of halting 'dialogue on race' is begun these days, there are certain things that are always brought up by our opponents, slavery and its attendant wrongs being one such subject. Of course nobody wants to defend slavery as such, but there are a great many falsehoods surrounding that topic that are being used to stir up resentments and hatreds. The image of the evil White slave-hunter, the depraved White slave-owner, or the heartless White overseer are common images that are taken for granted. Much of the imagery which people have in their minds is the product of pop culture, as I've said, going back at least to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Even in her time, the book was criticized as not being grounded in fact; she had little or no first-hand knowledge of her subjects, but nonetheless her works are revered even today, and accepted as truth, for all intents and purposes.
A frequently-heard canard is the statement often made by various spokesmen for blacks is that 35 million (or some other large number, in the millions) of slaves were 'thrown overboard' on the voyages across the Atlantic, and that to this day, large schools of sharks follow ships along the route of the slavers, hoping for more people to be tossed to them.
Never mind that the numbers cited are absurd, and that there is no corroboration; these stories live on.
The sheer number of such canards repeated by blacks or their advocates seem to render us speechless and resigned, and these stories are strengthened by going unchallenged for so many decades now.
Why do so few of us try to answer these wild exaggerations or fabrications with facts? Granted, we are up against a loud army of zealots, White liberals and blacks themselves, who have the stamina and the fanaticism to shout us down, and on the Internet, many of our comments are censored and expunged while the other side is allowed free rein to spout nonsense with no one to counter it.
There are so many historical misconceptions that have taken root because there have been too few who have spoken up in opposition. While it's true that on many forums or newspaper comment boxes we are censored and banned if we post politically incorrect facts or opinions, we do have the blogosphere where we can try to disseminate facts and counter-opinions, even if only on our own blogs. But I see too little of this being done. Why? Have we given up on the truth? Or are too few people informed as to the real history and the facts?
It seems we have great holes in our history, blank spots which are unnoticed by many people.
Our history is in large part either rewritten to serve somebody else's agenda, or simply lost, like missing pages from a book
Another area of 'lost' history in which we seem to be deficient in understanding is the Reconstruction era; few Americans seem to have any notion of what happened then, and of how that era presages our current situation. Again, most Americans know nothing of how self-defense organizations grew during that era, and the reasons why.
Some of the canards don't have to do with blacks, but with other ethnic groups, usually in connection with the Ellis Island era of immigration. If you read the American Thinker comments, you will see the old stories about how the ethnic immigrants of the mid-19th century were badly treated, 'hated', and 'not considered White'. We hear how the Irish were 'worked to death', literally, to build the railroads, or so the story goes. Or the Chinese. We read here and there how the Irish were given back-breaking jobs that 'were too hard for even the slaves to do.'
If I believe these stories as they are presented again and again, I have to conclude that my WASP ancestors were cold-hearted, inhuman, evil, sadistic monsters. But wait: they were the liberal bleeding-hearts, like those who joined the NAACP, who have caused this country to veer towards being over-welcoming and self-abasing. It gets very confusing. Either way, the WASP is in the wrong, and is the root of all evil: either he's a kind of 'supremacist' who considered the Irish as an inferior race, or he was a radical egalitarian who denied all human distinctions.
I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody has told the tales of Irish immigrants' persecution at the hands of the dread Anglo-Saxons. So many people have somehow heard these stories by word of mouth, and will not be convinced that they are often myths or canards.
Did the Anglo-Saxon old-stock population resist mass immigration of Irish, Italians, and others? In many cases, yes. There were 'nativist' organizations and parties, about which I've blogged. They wanted to preserve the rather successful country their ancestors had created at considerable cost in toil and blood. They did not want their way of life to be swept away by large numbers of people with a very different culture and religion. These are the sentiments of normal human beings, not monsters or hateful bigots. Surely 'realists' of today can relate to those sentiments -- but often, the fact of having Irish ancestry, however remote, results in bitterness and grudges against WASPs for slights toward immigrants.
We have work to do to try to tear down some of the old myths, particularly the politically correct ones, which are so often being used to silence and discredit us. And the politically correct myths include those tales of persecution of the Ellis Island immigrants. Those stories serve only to divide White Americans, and to perpetuate resentments and grudges that should long since have been put to rest, if they were in fact justified in the first place.
Whenever I witness one of these discussions where everybody is claiming victimhood because of the sufferings of their immigrant ancestors, I can't help thinking of an old Monty Python sketch, in which a group of seemingly wealthy old men sit around a table, trading stories of how hard they had it as children. They try to one-up each other, taking turns with wildly exaggerated stories of poverty and privation from their respective childhoods.
What does it matter who had it the worst? How does it help our present predicament to recite stories of how bad one's immigrant ancestors had it? Is that not just a variation on the perpetual victimhood claims of blacks and other minorities? To me, it's all the same.
And I think it's unbecoming of us as a people to revel in claims of victimhood. Surely we ought to be taking pride in real accomplishment, not jockeying to see whose ancestors were mistreated and abused more. It's a sad commentary on our society that we make sob stories a basis for status.
There are already too many divisions among us for various reasons; we need to find ways to unite and put aside our differences, and to that end, to leave aside all the grievances against generations long since dead. Isn't it time -- especially now that we cannot afford division among us?
While some of our lost history needs to be found and used to press our case, there is some of the 'history' that might better be put aside, and truly lost. The grievances and grudges have to go.
I was aware of the fact that the organization had a mostly White membership at the beginning. And as the American Thinker article says that some of these people were the stereotype WASPs, again lending credence to the image of WASPs as being at the forefront of egalitarian efforts and ultimately the progenitors of today's totalitarian PC regime.
The discussion following the article is a mixed bag, with some rather un-PC comments here and there, but ultimately it devolves into the usual cliches, such as the 'persecution of the Irish' stories.
The article and the rather ragged discussion both bring home the point that we do have to attend to our history. We have to read, and encourage others to read, some real history as a necessary antidote to the politically corrected version which is peddled at every turn in our day, and most especially during White Guilt month, every February.
Over the last week or so there have been discussions around the Internet and the blogosphere about the 'dialogue on race'. On one such discussion thread, a politically incorrect commenter mentioned that African slaves were actually captured and sold to Whites by other Africans. Following that statement, another (black) commenter expressed shock at such 'hateful' comments and demanded proof of such an outlandish claim, challenging whether it was even factual. Disappointingly, the commenter who said it did not reply, with or without the requested 'proof', so an opportunity was lost to present some politically incorrect truth to the people out there reading the thread. It's amazing how few people have ever heard that African slaves were actually enslaved by other Africans. I think the race industry has firmly established a cartoon version of history, with evil Whites chasing down African people in their homelands and trapping them to be shipped off to America as slaves. I think this version has been reinforced by bad 'history' in popular culture, such as Haley's ''Roots'', a work of literary plagiarism which passes, to this day, as factual history.
Whenever any kind of halting 'dialogue on race' is begun these days, there are certain things that are always brought up by our opponents, slavery and its attendant wrongs being one such subject. Of course nobody wants to defend slavery as such, but there are a great many falsehoods surrounding that topic that are being used to stir up resentments and hatreds. The image of the evil White slave-hunter, the depraved White slave-owner, or the heartless White overseer are common images that are taken for granted. Much of the imagery which people have in their minds is the product of pop culture, as I've said, going back at least to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Even in her time, the book was criticized as not being grounded in fact; she had little or no first-hand knowledge of her subjects, but nonetheless her works are revered even today, and accepted as truth, for all intents and purposes.
A frequently-heard canard is the statement often made by various spokesmen for blacks is that 35 million (or some other large number, in the millions) of slaves were 'thrown overboard' on the voyages across the Atlantic, and that to this day, large schools of sharks follow ships along the route of the slavers, hoping for more people to be tossed to them.
Never mind that the numbers cited are absurd, and that there is no corroboration; these stories live on.
The sheer number of such canards repeated by blacks or their advocates seem to render us speechless and resigned, and these stories are strengthened by going unchallenged for so many decades now.
Why do so few of us try to answer these wild exaggerations or fabrications with facts? Granted, we are up against a loud army of zealots, White liberals and blacks themselves, who have the stamina and the fanaticism to shout us down, and on the Internet, many of our comments are censored and expunged while the other side is allowed free rein to spout nonsense with no one to counter it.
There are so many historical misconceptions that have taken root because there have been too few who have spoken up in opposition. While it's true that on many forums or newspaper comment boxes we are censored and banned if we post politically incorrect facts or opinions, we do have the blogosphere where we can try to disseminate facts and counter-opinions, even if only on our own blogs. But I see too little of this being done. Why? Have we given up on the truth? Or are too few people informed as to the real history and the facts?
It seems we have great holes in our history, blank spots which are unnoticed by many people.
Our history is in large part either rewritten to serve somebody else's agenda, or simply lost, like missing pages from a book
Another area of 'lost' history in which we seem to be deficient in understanding is the Reconstruction era; few Americans seem to have any notion of what happened then, and of how that era presages our current situation. Again, most Americans know nothing of how self-defense organizations grew during that era, and the reasons why.
Some of the canards don't have to do with blacks, but with other ethnic groups, usually in connection with the Ellis Island era of immigration. If you read the American Thinker comments, you will see the old stories about how the ethnic immigrants of the mid-19th century were badly treated, 'hated', and 'not considered White'. We hear how the Irish were 'worked to death', literally, to build the railroads, or so the story goes. Or the Chinese. We read here and there how the Irish were given back-breaking jobs that 'were too hard for even the slaves to do.'
If I believe these stories as they are presented again and again, I have to conclude that my WASP ancestors were cold-hearted, inhuman, evil, sadistic monsters. But wait: they were the liberal bleeding-hearts, like those who joined the NAACP, who have caused this country to veer towards being over-welcoming and self-abasing. It gets very confusing. Either way, the WASP is in the wrong, and is the root of all evil: either he's a kind of 'supremacist' who considered the Irish as an inferior race, or he was a radical egalitarian who denied all human distinctions.
I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody has told the tales of Irish immigrants' persecution at the hands of the dread Anglo-Saxons. So many people have somehow heard these stories by word of mouth, and will not be convinced that they are often myths or canards.
Did the Anglo-Saxon old-stock population resist mass immigration of Irish, Italians, and others? In many cases, yes. There were 'nativist' organizations and parties, about which I've blogged. They wanted to preserve the rather successful country their ancestors had created at considerable cost in toil and blood. They did not want their way of life to be swept away by large numbers of people with a very different culture and religion. These are the sentiments of normal human beings, not monsters or hateful bigots. Surely 'realists' of today can relate to those sentiments -- but often, the fact of having Irish ancestry, however remote, results in bitterness and grudges against WASPs for slights toward immigrants.
We have work to do to try to tear down some of the old myths, particularly the politically correct ones, which are so often being used to silence and discredit us. And the politically correct myths include those tales of persecution of the Ellis Island immigrants. Those stories serve only to divide White Americans, and to perpetuate resentments and grudges that should long since have been put to rest, if they were in fact justified in the first place.
Whenever I witness one of these discussions where everybody is claiming victimhood because of the sufferings of their immigrant ancestors, I can't help thinking of an old Monty Python sketch, in which a group of seemingly wealthy old men sit around a table, trading stories of how hard they had it as children. They try to one-up each other, taking turns with wildly exaggerated stories of poverty and privation from their respective childhoods.
What does it matter who had it the worst? How does it help our present predicament to recite stories of how bad one's immigrant ancestors had it? Is that not just a variation on the perpetual victimhood claims of blacks and other minorities? To me, it's all the same.
And I think it's unbecoming of us as a people to revel in claims of victimhood. Surely we ought to be taking pride in real accomplishment, not jockeying to see whose ancestors were mistreated and abused more. It's a sad commentary on our society that we make sob stories a basis for status.
There are already too many divisions among us for various reasons; we need to find ways to unite and put aside our differences, and to that end, to leave aside all the grievances against generations long since dead. Isn't it time -- especially now that we cannot afford division among us?
While some of our lost history needs to be found and used to press our case, there is some of the 'history' that might better be put aside, and truly lost. The grievances and grudges have to go.
Labels: American History, Cultural Marxism, Ethnic Division, Ethnocentrism, Historical Bias, History