0 comment Monday, December 1, 2014 | admin
...the liberal world, at least.
Here is David Thompson on the Ron Rosenbaum Slate article praising white guilt. I've read a lot of commentary on the Slate piece, and this piece by Thompson is possibly the best. Read it all; it's to the point. But be warned of some annoying liberal posturing in the comments following.
David's piece is called Phantom Guilt, Revisited.
I like the phrase 'phantom guilt'. I like how Thompson seems to perceive the obvious falsity of the displays of guilt on the part of many of the liberal handwringers:
To publicly rend one�s garments over some vicarious, borrowed sin is not to affirm conscience or poignant human feeling, but to parody those things and to indulge in emotional pantomime and moral masturbation. Rather like this:
But was slavery not immoral? Was not the century of institutionalised racism and segregation that followed the end of slavery a perpetuation of "flawed values" that the nation should feel an enduring guilt over? Should we abolish the history and memory of slavery and racism just because they're no longer legally institutionalised?
Again, note the car crash of non sequitur. I�ll paraphrase for clarity:
Slavery was immoral. It was abolished. Therefore we must still feel guilt, or pretend to � all of us, indefinitely and forever. And those who don�t pretend to feel this way are abolishing history.
Assertions of this kind are, very often, for the benefit of a sympathetic audience and thus, ultimately, for the benefit of the performer. As I�ve argued before, saying, very loudly, "it�s all my fault" is only a notch and a half away from saying "it�s all about me."
I think there is a lot of truth in his observation that what liberals display is not real guilt, but a simulation thereof, a mimicry of guilt.
I've written a lot here about liberal guilt, but when we really think about it, liberals do not feel guilt because they presume that they are, by virtue of their superior liberal sensitivity, free of the guilt they try to induce among their less liberal racial brethren. They are, as I've said, like the Pharisee praying loudly to thank God that he is not like other men -- not a sinner. They are good at finding motes in others' eyes while ignoring the beam in their own eyes.
Guilt -- just as Leona Helmsley supposedly said about taxes -- is for the 'little people', one's inferiors.
Liberals see themselves as the moral aristocracy of the world; they pride themselves on their superior consciences, but somehow their consciences only find the sins of others.
As for that comment section, notice the liberal woman slapping down someone for saying that whites abolished slavery -- whites must not get credit for that; whites did NOT stop slavery, she says, only SOME whites did.
So unless all whites equally contributed to ending slavery, they deserve no credit. Yet oddly, all whites are made to carry the blame for what some did. And I don't mean slave-owners vs. virtuous abolitionists, or Southerners vs. saintly Northerners, or even rich, evil whites vs. poor, noble whites. I mean primarily today's whites being asked to pay, endlessly, for what whites (some, all, whoever) did hundreds of years ago.
At some point we will have to deal with the issue of slavery, over whether the slavery as practiced here in this country was the greatest ever human evil, comparable perhaps only to Hitler's crimes according to most people. This subject seems to be used as the ultimate weapon against us; we have no rejoinder except the rather liberal one of saying ''but...but we abolished it; don't we deserve praise for that?"
This guilt game will go on and on until we find some way to break this cycle, and that will not be easy.
Doing so will require a lot of re-thinking on our part, and a general determination to find some new way to look at the guilt-producing historic episodes that are being used against us so successfully. We can only say 'mea culpa' so many times.
Here is David Thompson on the Ron Rosenbaum Slate article praising white guilt. I've read a lot of commentary on the Slate piece, and this piece by Thompson is possibly the best. Read it all; it's to the point. But be warned of some annoying liberal posturing in the comments following.
David's piece is called Phantom Guilt, Revisited.
I like the phrase 'phantom guilt'. I like how Thompson seems to perceive the obvious falsity of the displays of guilt on the part of many of the liberal handwringers:
To publicly rend one�s garments over some vicarious, borrowed sin is not to affirm conscience or poignant human feeling, but to parody those things and to indulge in emotional pantomime and moral masturbation. Rather like this:
But was slavery not immoral? Was not the century of institutionalised racism and segregation that followed the end of slavery a perpetuation of "flawed values" that the nation should feel an enduring guilt over? Should we abolish the history and memory of slavery and racism just because they're no longer legally institutionalised?
Again, note the car crash of non sequitur. I�ll paraphrase for clarity:
Slavery was immoral. It was abolished. Therefore we must still feel guilt, or pretend to � all of us, indefinitely and forever. And those who don�t pretend to feel this way are abolishing history.
Assertions of this kind are, very often, for the benefit of a sympathetic audience and thus, ultimately, for the benefit of the performer. As I�ve argued before, saying, very loudly, "it�s all my fault" is only a notch and a half away from saying "it�s all about me."
I think there is a lot of truth in his observation that what liberals display is not real guilt, but a simulation thereof, a mimicry of guilt.
I've written a lot here about liberal guilt, but when we really think about it, liberals do not feel guilt because they presume that they are, by virtue of their superior liberal sensitivity, free of the guilt they try to induce among their less liberal racial brethren. They are, as I've said, like the Pharisee praying loudly to thank God that he is not like other men -- not a sinner. They are good at finding motes in others' eyes while ignoring the beam in their own eyes.
Guilt -- just as Leona Helmsley supposedly said about taxes -- is for the 'little people', one's inferiors.
Liberals see themselves as the moral aristocracy of the world; they pride themselves on their superior consciences, but somehow their consciences only find the sins of others.
As for that comment section, notice the liberal woman slapping down someone for saying that whites abolished slavery -- whites must not get credit for that; whites did NOT stop slavery, she says, only SOME whites did.
So unless all whites equally contributed to ending slavery, they deserve no credit. Yet oddly, all whites are made to carry the blame for what some did. And I don't mean slave-owners vs. virtuous abolitionists, or Southerners vs. saintly Northerners, or even rich, evil whites vs. poor, noble whites. I mean primarily today's whites being asked to pay, endlessly, for what whites (some, all, whoever) did hundreds of years ago.
At some point we will have to deal with the issue of slavery, over whether the slavery as practiced here in this country was the greatest ever human evil, comparable perhaps only to Hitler's crimes according to most people. This subject seems to be used as the ultimate weapon against us; we have no rejoinder except the rather liberal one of saying ''but...but we abolished it; don't we deserve praise for that?"
This guilt game will go on and on until we find some way to break this cycle, and that will not be easy.
Doing so will require a lot of re-thinking on our part, and a general determination to find some new way to look at the guilt-producing historic episodes that are being used against us so successfully. We can only say 'mea culpa' so many times.
Labels: American History, Hypocrisy, Liberalism, Political Correctness, Racial Guilt, White Guilt
0 comment Monday, October 20, 2014 | admin
Recently I linked to this piece, called Pride & Guilt, from the Cordelia for Lear blog.
If you haven't read it yet, please do. We are getting more forcible doses of guilt because of who we are, and who our ancestors were, so we need to compensate for that by focusing on what we have to be proud of, rather than continue to let others define us and heap guilt on us.
From the above-linked piece:
'We have larger loyalties that are analogous to our feelings for our children. Whether it is our nation, our ethnicity, or our race, there are broader groups for which we feel a familial loyalty. Our nation or race is, in effect, our extended family in the largest sense, and our feelings for our extended family are a dilute, but broader version of what we feel for close kin. We have these feelings because this group is biologically and culturally part of us in a way no other group can be.
Who will sing your songs, pray your prayers, celebrate your heroes, honor your traditions, venerate your ancestors, love the things you love? Only your family, your extended family. Only your extended family will carry your civilization forward in a meaningful way. Only the biological heirs to the people who created a civilization have ever maintained, cherished, and advanced that civilization.''
[Emphasis mine]
I was party to a discussion in which some were lamenting that most Americans are content to let themselves be defined negatively and to be laden with guilt because they lack a real sense of who they are, where they came from, and they are bereft of any sense of pride in their supposedly non-existent culture.
Remember the quotes from Christian Lander (''Stuff White People Like") in that odious article on 'The End of White America'?
For Lander, whiteness has become a vacuum. The "white identity" he limns on his blog is predicated on the quest for authenticity�usually other people�s authenticity. "As a white person, you�re just desperate to find something else to grab onto. You�re jealous! Pretty much every white person I grew up with wished they�d grown up in, you know, an ethnic home that gave them a second language. White culture is Family Ties and Led Zeppelin and Guns N� Roses�like, this is white culture. This is all we have."
For people who don't know who they are individually, or who their people are in a historical context, sadly, all they have is mass popular culture, which is above all, ephemeral, having no lasting value, nothing that will endure for the ages.
We constantly read articles in the increasingly hostile 'mainstream media' describing every immigrant culture as ''rich'' and ''vibrant'', as if to imply that our own cultures are dead (or moribund) and impoverished. And remember, this is in contrast to some Third-World culture which may be very primitive and crude. How does this come to be, that our Western culture which produced so many really great, truly sublime artists and thinkers and writers, is considered inferior to some ''culture'' which is one step away from the Stone Age? It may be rude to describe these 'vibrant' cultures in this way, but this constant vilification of our people and culture tends to produce the desire to respond with blunt truth, no matter how 'insensitive' it might sound to ears accustomed to politically correct lies and flatteries.
We have a culture and a heritage which is truly impressive, and which has produced great beauty as well as having devised many practical inventions which have improved everyday life for people the world over. And yet we are discouraged from taking any pride in it -- why is it, exactly? Because it may ''offend'' someone -- someone who could only be offended by his own sense of inferiority, probably.
We are not responsible for anyone's inferiority complex or their tendency to take offense; that's their problem.
It does seem as though we need to turn our attention more toward reviving interest in our cultural heritage, and to openly prefer it over the dross that is forced on us by political correctness -- inferior writers and ''artists'' whose careers are based on their representing the cult of victimhood.
And since I am a believer in the idea that culture and race go hand in hand, we need to look back at the history of our ancestors collectively, but also individually. How many Americans even know who their ancestors were beyond their grandparents? There is a growing interest in genealogy, without a doubt, but there are still far too many Americans who don't know anything of their family beyond their grandparents' generation. Some don't even know, for example, their grandmothers' maiden names. Many people have only the vaguest idea of what their ethnic origin(s) are. More depressingly, they don't care. They deem it irrelevant to their lives. They have no curiosity about where their ancestors came from or what their individual stories were.
I've alluded to genealogy occasionally on this blog; one of the fascinating things about knowing one's ancestry is that it gives an idea of just how many other Americans are potentially one's cousins. It makes one feel a real sense of kinship with many people. Because our family's collateral lines have also been traced out for some generations, I know that many of our kin settled in faraway states, and that I have cousins there whose names are known to me, but with whom I've never communicated. But I know that I have kin in many states, as well as in some foreign countries.
Reading about the lives of ancestors in old documents and putting the pieces together is also very fascinating, and it gives us a feeling of having a part in historical events, when we know that our ancestors, individually, were part of a given historical drama.
In some cases, my ancestors left writings which I have been able to read, and it's enthralling to read their own words, as if they are talking to me.
Many Americans have this odd idea that their ancestors were 'nobodies' or 'mutts' and that there is nothing of interest in the family line. How this idea became so widespread, I have no idea. But it stifles people's curiosity.
Some people are actually afraid that they will find that their ancestors were somehow bad people -- slaveowners, perhaps -- since we've all been pilloried for being the descendants of evil slaveholders. And it is true that even people in the supposedly more 'benign' Northern states owned slaves in the past; some of my New England ancestors did, I know. And more of my Southron ancestors did. Oddly I feel no guilt about that. We have to get over the tendency to try to distance ourselves from that. The past is the past; we cannot judge it by today's rather warped standards.
I think that knowing who we are, individually and as a people, can only give us more confidence and more of a sense of our place in history, and in the larger picture of us as Americans.
I suspect that if most Americans only knew their particular ancestry, they might very easily find that they have more English/British descent than they realize. There have been a number of genealogical 'urban legends' propagated, one of the most enduring being the ubiquitous ''Cherokee princess''. I've had to debunk this one more than once.
There is also an odd denial of Anglo-Saxon roots in favor of 'Celtic' roots in the South, which I have alluded to before. Where do Southron people think all those descendants of Jamestown colonists (who were overwhelmingly of English origin) went? The idea that the South was populated by Scots-Irish almost exclusively is strangely enduring, despite the lack of proof. I still cite the predominance of English surnames in the traditional South as evidence that there is a great deal of English blood there. But for some reason, it's politically unpopular to consider oneself Anglo-Saxon or British or English by descent. Why? Because somehow being of Anglo-Saxon blood is considered so bland, so ''white-bread'', to use the derogatory term which is so popular these days.
I think it would be a great thing if more of us knew exactly who our ancestors were, as far as possible.. I believe there would be a great deal of surprise on the part of those who discovered their ancestry; I think we would find a good deal more British heritage than popularly supposed -- and I also believe that many people who think their origins are much more recent would find they have some colonial stock in their family tree. Many people, having a couple of grandparents or great-grandparents who immigrated mistakenly think that ALL their ancestors arrived later, when in fact they have founding stock in their line. However, again, it's more 'hip' and cool to have ethnic ancestry than 'whitebread' old-stock blood.
And in that connection, it would be good if we reversed our priorities and began to value old-stock origins more than recent immigrant origins. Once upon a time, it was highly desirable to claim 'Mayflower ancestry', to the extent that there were spurious family trees made up by unscrupulous genealogists, creating 'Mayflower origins' for a lot of nouveau riche social climbers. Nowadays, of course, the desirable thing is to have ''ethnic'' roots or recent immigrants in the family -- so much more ''diverse'' and ''vibrant.''
We put too much value on newness and on the exotic, and too little on the traditional, the ancient. And in our aggressively demotic society, we denigrate 'high-class' origins as being undesirable. This is an inversion of what should be, and it shows how we've gone too far in our 'democratic' egalitarianism.
Some of my own family members are indifferent to their origins; the usual rationalization is ''that has nothing to do with me. I'm my own person, an individual.'' That's yet another symptom of our liberal, atomized society in which we all flatter ourselves that we 'created ourselves' and that we owe nothing to those who preceded us. There is a kind of perverse pride there, and an egocentricity which is all too characteristic of our age.
Knowing our familial origins is a way of giving ourselves a little perspective on who we are, and of seeing how we are links in a chain going back through the centuries. If we learn about our ancestors, it becomes evident that many of our tastes, habits, talents, and yes, weaknesses too, can be found in our ancestors, from whom we inherit many of our personality traits.
And we can say this on a larger scale of the peoples from whom we descend. We are all part of something larger than our immediate family; our co-ethnics are part of an extended family, the particular people or kindred of which they were part, and beyond that, of European or Western civilization. As part of that greater whole, we can stake our claim as heirs of a great civilization, and that status should give us a vested interest in honoring it, preserving it for posterity, and simply in enjoying it on its considerable merits.
For Christians, I think all this falls under the heading of the commandment to "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."
And if we are in danger of losing the lands which the Lord has given us, via our ancestors, is it not in great part because we no longer honor our fathers and mothers? We have in a sense orphaned and disinherited ourselves by our disconnection from our past.
Our fathers and mothers are not just the two people who directly gave us life, but all our fathers and mothers back in time.
Let's give them the honor to which they are entitled, by learning who they were, and by honoring their gifts to us.
If you haven't read it yet, please do. We are getting more forcible doses of guilt because of who we are, and who our ancestors were, so we need to compensate for that by focusing on what we have to be proud of, rather than continue to let others define us and heap guilt on us.
From the above-linked piece:
'We have larger loyalties that are analogous to our feelings for our children. Whether it is our nation, our ethnicity, or our race, there are broader groups for which we feel a familial loyalty. Our nation or race is, in effect, our extended family in the largest sense, and our feelings for our extended family are a dilute, but broader version of what we feel for close kin. We have these feelings because this group is biologically and culturally part of us in a way no other group can be.
Who will sing your songs, pray your prayers, celebrate your heroes, honor your traditions, venerate your ancestors, love the things you love? Only your family, your extended family. Only your extended family will carry your civilization forward in a meaningful way. Only the biological heirs to the people who created a civilization have ever maintained, cherished, and advanced that civilization.''
[Emphasis mine]
I was party to a discussion in which some were lamenting that most Americans are content to let themselves be defined negatively and to be laden with guilt because they lack a real sense of who they are, where they came from, and they are bereft of any sense of pride in their supposedly non-existent culture.
Remember the quotes from Christian Lander (''Stuff White People Like") in that odious article on 'The End of White America'?
For Lander, whiteness has become a vacuum. The "white identity" he limns on his blog is predicated on the quest for authenticity�usually other people�s authenticity. "As a white person, you�re just desperate to find something else to grab onto. You�re jealous! Pretty much every white person I grew up with wished they�d grown up in, you know, an ethnic home that gave them a second language. White culture is Family Ties and Led Zeppelin and Guns N� Roses�like, this is white culture. This is all we have."
For people who don't know who they are individually, or who their people are in a historical context, sadly, all they have is mass popular culture, which is above all, ephemeral, having no lasting value, nothing that will endure for the ages.
We constantly read articles in the increasingly hostile 'mainstream media' describing every immigrant culture as ''rich'' and ''vibrant'', as if to imply that our own cultures are dead (or moribund) and impoverished. And remember, this is in contrast to some Third-World culture which may be very primitive and crude. How does this come to be, that our Western culture which produced so many really great, truly sublime artists and thinkers and writers, is considered inferior to some ''culture'' which is one step away from the Stone Age? It may be rude to describe these 'vibrant' cultures in this way, but this constant vilification of our people and culture tends to produce the desire to respond with blunt truth, no matter how 'insensitive' it might sound to ears accustomed to politically correct lies and flatteries.
We have a culture and a heritage which is truly impressive, and which has produced great beauty as well as having devised many practical inventions which have improved everyday life for people the world over. And yet we are discouraged from taking any pride in it -- why is it, exactly? Because it may ''offend'' someone -- someone who could only be offended by his own sense of inferiority, probably.
We are not responsible for anyone's inferiority complex or their tendency to take offense; that's their problem.
It does seem as though we need to turn our attention more toward reviving interest in our cultural heritage, and to openly prefer it over the dross that is forced on us by political correctness -- inferior writers and ''artists'' whose careers are based on their representing the cult of victimhood.
And since I am a believer in the idea that culture and race go hand in hand, we need to look back at the history of our ancestors collectively, but also individually. How many Americans even know who their ancestors were beyond their grandparents? There is a growing interest in genealogy, without a doubt, but there are still far too many Americans who don't know anything of their family beyond their grandparents' generation. Some don't even know, for example, their grandmothers' maiden names. Many people have only the vaguest idea of what their ethnic origin(s) are. More depressingly, they don't care. They deem it irrelevant to their lives. They have no curiosity about where their ancestors came from or what their individual stories were.
I've alluded to genealogy occasionally on this blog; one of the fascinating things about knowing one's ancestry is that it gives an idea of just how many other Americans are potentially one's cousins. It makes one feel a real sense of kinship with many people. Because our family's collateral lines have also been traced out for some generations, I know that many of our kin settled in faraway states, and that I have cousins there whose names are known to me, but with whom I've never communicated. But I know that I have kin in many states, as well as in some foreign countries.
Reading about the lives of ancestors in old documents and putting the pieces together is also very fascinating, and it gives us a feeling of having a part in historical events, when we know that our ancestors, individually, were part of a given historical drama.
In some cases, my ancestors left writings which I have been able to read, and it's enthralling to read their own words, as if they are talking to me.
Many Americans have this odd idea that their ancestors were 'nobodies' or 'mutts' and that there is nothing of interest in the family line. How this idea became so widespread, I have no idea. But it stifles people's curiosity.
Some people are actually afraid that they will find that their ancestors were somehow bad people -- slaveowners, perhaps -- since we've all been pilloried for being the descendants of evil slaveholders. And it is true that even people in the supposedly more 'benign' Northern states owned slaves in the past; some of my New England ancestors did, I know. And more of my Southron ancestors did. Oddly I feel no guilt about that. We have to get over the tendency to try to distance ourselves from that. The past is the past; we cannot judge it by today's rather warped standards.
I think that knowing who we are, individually and as a people, can only give us more confidence and more of a sense of our place in history, and in the larger picture of us as Americans.
I suspect that if most Americans only knew their particular ancestry, they might very easily find that they have more English/British descent than they realize. There have been a number of genealogical 'urban legends' propagated, one of the most enduring being the ubiquitous ''Cherokee princess''. I've had to debunk this one more than once.
There is also an odd denial of Anglo-Saxon roots in favor of 'Celtic' roots in the South, which I have alluded to before. Where do Southron people think all those descendants of Jamestown colonists (who were overwhelmingly of English origin) went? The idea that the South was populated by Scots-Irish almost exclusively is strangely enduring, despite the lack of proof. I still cite the predominance of English surnames in the traditional South as evidence that there is a great deal of English blood there. But for some reason, it's politically unpopular to consider oneself Anglo-Saxon or British or English by descent. Why? Because somehow being of Anglo-Saxon blood is considered so bland, so ''white-bread'', to use the derogatory term which is so popular these days.
I think it would be a great thing if more of us knew exactly who our ancestors were, as far as possible.. I believe there would be a great deal of surprise on the part of those who discovered their ancestry; I think we would find a good deal more British heritage than popularly supposed -- and I also believe that many people who think their origins are much more recent would find they have some colonial stock in their family tree. Many people, having a couple of grandparents or great-grandparents who immigrated mistakenly think that ALL their ancestors arrived later, when in fact they have founding stock in their line. However, again, it's more 'hip' and cool to have ethnic ancestry than 'whitebread' old-stock blood.
And in that connection, it would be good if we reversed our priorities and began to value old-stock origins more than recent immigrant origins. Once upon a time, it was highly desirable to claim 'Mayflower ancestry', to the extent that there were spurious family trees made up by unscrupulous genealogists, creating 'Mayflower origins' for a lot of nouveau riche social climbers. Nowadays, of course, the desirable thing is to have ''ethnic'' roots or recent immigrants in the family -- so much more ''diverse'' and ''vibrant.''
We put too much value on newness and on the exotic, and too little on the traditional, the ancient. And in our aggressively demotic society, we denigrate 'high-class' origins as being undesirable. This is an inversion of what should be, and it shows how we've gone too far in our 'democratic' egalitarianism.
Some of my own family members are indifferent to their origins; the usual rationalization is ''that has nothing to do with me. I'm my own person, an individual.'' That's yet another symptom of our liberal, atomized society in which we all flatter ourselves that we 'created ourselves' and that we owe nothing to those who preceded us. There is a kind of perverse pride there, and an egocentricity which is all too characteristic of our age.
Knowing our familial origins is a way of giving ourselves a little perspective on who we are, and of seeing how we are links in a chain going back through the centuries. If we learn about our ancestors, it becomes evident that many of our tastes, habits, talents, and yes, weaknesses too, can be found in our ancestors, from whom we inherit many of our personality traits.
And we can say this on a larger scale of the peoples from whom we descend. We are all part of something larger than our immediate family; our co-ethnics are part of an extended family, the particular people or kindred of which they were part, and beyond that, of European or Western civilization. As part of that greater whole, we can stake our claim as heirs of a great civilization, and that status should give us a vested interest in honoring it, preserving it for posterity, and simply in enjoying it on its considerable merits.
For Christians, I think all this falls under the heading of the commandment to "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."
And if we are in danger of losing the lands which the Lord has given us, via our ancestors, is it not in great part because we no longer honor our fathers and mothers? We have in a sense orphaned and disinherited ourselves by our disconnection from our past.
Our fathers and mothers are not just the two people who directly gave us life, but all our fathers and mothers back in time.
Let's give them the honor to which they are entitled, by learning who they were, and by honoring their gifts to us.
Labels: Alienation, American Culture, Anomie, Genealogy, Heredity, History, White Guilt
0 comment Saturday, June 28, 2014 | admin
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.
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.
Labels: Ethnic Solidarity, Immigration, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Victimolatry, White Guilt
0 comment Friday, June 13, 2014 | admin
Over at American Renaissance, there is a discussion of the Condi Rice story -- the one I blogged about yesterday, in which she says that America has a 'birth defect'.
Among the comments on the article, there is this one:
"She is definitely a product of our culture of over-simplification.
As if ALL Whites are the same. As if all Whites are one big extended family. When Jared Taylor says we�re an extended family he is using it as a construct. We do not stick together like a Family. Actually, not even White families stick together. An obvious fact with equally obvious and devastating consequences that Whites and everyone else STILL don�t want to talk about. Even he would admit that. Of course, to anyone who has been paying attention, Whites are hands down the MOST diverse Race there is.
But that aside; we have a BIG obvious problem here. There are practically NO surviving direct descendants of Slave Owners. Nearly ALL White people today are from the big wave of immigration from the Potato famine to the turn of the century and the few million Whites who came over after that.
NONE OF US ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR SLAVERY - AT ALL! It is a LIE!
The ONLY things they have to control us are the old - OLD - standbys of Guilt and Duty. In this case, Guilt for the Past, and Duty to right the wrong.
I feel ZERO guilt. I am the descendant of Potato farmers and Factory workers. The Irish were tyrannized by the English twice as long as Blacks were slaves. I have NO resentment because resentment is unhealthy. Nothing burns one up faster than the effects of resentment. That aside, I have a right to my own life. Life for everyone is short and you only get one. I will NOT waste it playing the scapegoat.
JUST SAY NO!"
This comment encapsulates a lot of things that I find annoying in any discussion of race relations and history, including slavery. I find that the 'arguments' in the comment, frequently made as they are, leave much to be desired. In fact, the arguments only provide further fuel to the other side.
The commenter, though probably well-intentioned and 'on our side' seems to be implying, when he disclaims personal responsibility for slavery, that although he and others like him are not responsible for slavery, other whites are. This is a kind of ''everybody for himself" argument. It's facile to disclaim responsibility for oneself and maybe one's family by claiming as many do that ''my family wasn't here until after the Civil War, so I'm innocent." What does that say? That all white Americans whose families were here before the War Between the States are guilty, or potentially so? All the argument does is point the finger at other whites. Would it not be better, while also displaying solidarity with one's own brethren, to say none of us are guilty, simply because none of us were alive then? No American alive today has ever bought, sold, or owned a slave. No American alive today has ever been sold or bought as a slave. Therefore nobody owes anybody, even if we assume wrongly that we can retroactively make slavery a crime.
The commenter is making some very dubious statements when he says that
''There are practically NO surviving direct descendants of Slave Owners. Nearly ALL White people today are from the big wave of immigration from the Potato famine to the turn of the century and the few million Whites who came over after that.''
Really? Can the commenter prove these very broad assertions? I think a lot of people tend to believe these things, simply for self-serving reasons. People are so afraid of being called racist, and are so eager to disassociate themselves with slavery, that they often claim that none of their ancestors were in America during the slavery era. Now, maybe I underestimate the number of 'Ellis Island', later-wave immigrants and their progeny in America, but unless, say, all eight of your great-grandparents truly arrived after the slavery era, which I think relatively few people can say, then chances are you have some ancestors who were here during that time.
The commenter wildly claims that slave-owners have "practically NO" direct descendants in America today. I say that's just flat-out wrong. Even if we wrongly believe that only people in the South owned slaves, there are plenty of descendants of slave-owners around today, including yours truly. The fact is, even some of my New England ancestors were slave-owners, and no, it is not true that only the very wealthy could afford or keep slaves. Many people of quite modest means had maybe one or two slaves as household help. It was not just wealthy plantation-owners in the South who had slaves.
And how do I know that my Yankee ancestors owned slaves? For one thing, I have seen many of their wills, in which their possessions were listed. In many cases, slaves were mentioned specifically, by name and age.
But somehow people have assumed that because the North outlawed slavery first, and because the North went to war against the South in part because of slavery, that they never practiced slavery themselves. Obviously they did.
So, having only Yankee ancestors, or less-than-wealthy ancestors, is no guarantee of 'innocence' in the PC kangaroo court. It's been said by the reparations crowd that all whites are guilty by association anyway, even if they could produce a family history showing a lack of connection to slavery. And a further point: most white people cannot do that because many of us don't even know our family history past our grandparents. I meet a staggering number of people who have no idea of their ancestry except in very vague and general terms. Most could not tell you their great-grandparents' names.
But trying to evade culpability for slavery by claiming to be the product only of recent immigrants, or post-Civil War immigrants, is dodging the larger question: is there such a thing as generational guilt, or inherited guilt? Since when do we punish people for their ancestors' supposed sins and crimes?
Another question which occurs to me is: where is the solidarity that we should be showing among ourselves? One of the reasons why we are in the precarious situation we find ourselves in now is that white European-descended peoples tend to be too individualistic, and too lacking in group cohesion and loyalty. This is something I've blogged about before. We are too focused these days on vertical loyalty, on following 'leaders' who often lead us right up the garden path, rather than on horizontal loyalty, loyalty to our fellows, our own, our kin. We are too ready to look out for Number 1 and let the devil take the hindmost. I just don't think it's right for us to throw our kin to the wolves and let them bear the brunt of the blame for slavery; instead of simply trying to wriggle out of personal responsibility, surely we should be arguing against anybody being held accountable for what was done 150 or more years ago by other people.
It's truly a shame to us that more of us don't know our history, both our personal or family history, and our history as a people and a country. Ignorance is not bliss in this case; ignorance, on the contrary, is leaving us prey for the race hucksters and guilt merchants. It would strengthen us so much if we, first of all, stuck together, instead of trying to find some group among our own to bear the blame, hoping that throwing one of our own to the wolves will spare us. The groups that are usually chosen to take the heat are Southrons, and of course anybody who admits to being a slaveowners' descendant. But I promise you that even sacrificing some people to the gods of Guilt will not appease those hungry gods, just as all these demeaning 'apologies' for slavery are not helping, but only fueling the demands for more. We all surmise that every apology brings us closer to paying reparations.
Playing the grievance-mongers' game is another example of feeding the crocodile, which will not guarantee that he will spare you, but only that he will devour you last.
Among the comments on the article, there is this one:
"She is definitely a product of our culture of over-simplification.
As if ALL Whites are the same. As if all Whites are one big extended family. When Jared Taylor says we�re an extended family he is using it as a construct. We do not stick together like a Family. Actually, not even White families stick together. An obvious fact with equally obvious and devastating consequences that Whites and everyone else STILL don�t want to talk about. Even he would admit that. Of course, to anyone who has been paying attention, Whites are hands down the MOST diverse Race there is.
But that aside; we have a BIG obvious problem here. There are practically NO surviving direct descendants of Slave Owners. Nearly ALL White people today are from the big wave of immigration from the Potato famine to the turn of the century and the few million Whites who came over after that.
NONE OF US ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR SLAVERY - AT ALL! It is a LIE!
The ONLY things they have to control us are the old - OLD - standbys of Guilt and Duty. In this case, Guilt for the Past, and Duty to right the wrong.
I feel ZERO guilt. I am the descendant of Potato farmers and Factory workers. The Irish were tyrannized by the English twice as long as Blacks were slaves. I have NO resentment because resentment is unhealthy. Nothing burns one up faster than the effects of resentment. That aside, I have a right to my own life. Life for everyone is short and you only get one. I will NOT waste it playing the scapegoat.
JUST SAY NO!"
This comment encapsulates a lot of things that I find annoying in any discussion of race relations and history, including slavery. I find that the 'arguments' in the comment, frequently made as they are, leave much to be desired. In fact, the arguments only provide further fuel to the other side.
The commenter, though probably well-intentioned and 'on our side' seems to be implying, when he disclaims personal responsibility for slavery, that although he and others like him are not responsible for slavery, other whites are. This is a kind of ''everybody for himself" argument. It's facile to disclaim responsibility for oneself and maybe one's family by claiming as many do that ''my family wasn't here until after the Civil War, so I'm innocent." What does that say? That all white Americans whose families were here before the War Between the States are guilty, or potentially so? All the argument does is point the finger at other whites. Would it not be better, while also displaying solidarity with one's own brethren, to say none of us are guilty, simply because none of us were alive then? No American alive today has ever bought, sold, or owned a slave. No American alive today has ever been sold or bought as a slave. Therefore nobody owes anybody, even if we assume wrongly that we can retroactively make slavery a crime.
The commenter is making some very dubious statements when he says that
''There are practically NO surviving direct descendants of Slave Owners. Nearly ALL White people today are from the big wave of immigration from the Potato famine to the turn of the century and the few million Whites who came over after that.''
Really? Can the commenter prove these very broad assertions? I think a lot of people tend to believe these things, simply for self-serving reasons. People are so afraid of being called racist, and are so eager to disassociate themselves with slavery, that they often claim that none of their ancestors were in America during the slavery era. Now, maybe I underestimate the number of 'Ellis Island', later-wave immigrants and their progeny in America, but unless, say, all eight of your great-grandparents truly arrived after the slavery era, which I think relatively few people can say, then chances are you have some ancestors who were here during that time.
The commenter wildly claims that slave-owners have "practically NO" direct descendants in America today. I say that's just flat-out wrong. Even if we wrongly believe that only people in the South owned slaves, there are plenty of descendants of slave-owners around today, including yours truly. The fact is, even some of my New England ancestors were slave-owners, and no, it is not true that only the very wealthy could afford or keep slaves. Many people of quite modest means had maybe one or two slaves as household help. It was not just wealthy plantation-owners in the South who had slaves.
And how do I know that my Yankee ancestors owned slaves? For one thing, I have seen many of their wills, in which their possessions were listed. In many cases, slaves were mentioned specifically, by name and age.
But somehow people have assumed that because the North outlawed slavery first, and because the North went to war against the South in part because of slavery, that they never practiced slavery themselves. Obviously they did.
So, having only Yankee ancestors, or less-than-wealthy ancestors, is no guarantee of 'innocence' in the PC kangaroo court. It's been said by the reparations crowd that all whites are guilty by association anyway, even if they could produce a family history showing a lack of connection to slavery. And a further point: most white people cannot do that because many of us don't even know our family history past our grandparents. I meet a staggering number of people who have no idea of their ancestry except in very vague and general terms. Most could not tell you their great-grandparents' names.
But trying to evade culpability for slavery by claiming to be the product only of recent immigrants, or post-Civil War immigrants, is dodging the larger question: is there such a thing as generational guilt, or inherited guilt? Since when do we punish people for their ancestors' supposed sins and crimes?
Another question which occurs to me is: where is the solidarity that we should be showing among ourselves? One of the reasons why we are in the precarious situation we find ourselves in now is that white European-descended peoples tend to be too individualistic, and too lacking in group cohesion and loyalty. This is something I've blogged about before. We are too focused these days on vertical loyalty, on following 'leaders' who often lead us right up the garden path, rather than on horizontal loyalty, loyalty to our fellows, our own, our kin. We are too ready to look out for Number 1 and let the devil take the hindmost. I just don't think it's right for us to throw our kin to the wolves and let them bear the brunt of the blame for slavery; instead of simply trying to wriggle out of personal responsibility, surely we should be arguing against anybody being held accountable for what was done 150 or more years ago by other people.
It's truly a shame to us that more of us don't know our history, both our personal or family history, and our history as a people and a country. Ignorance is not bliss in this case; ignorance, on the contrary, is leaving us prey for the race hucksters and guilt merchants. It would strengthen us so much if we, first of all, stuck together, instead of trying to find some group among our own to bear the blame, hoping that throwing one of our own to the wolves will spare us. The groups that are usually chosen to take the heat are Southrons, and of course anybody who admits to being a slaveowners' descendant. But I promise you that even sacrificing some people to the gods of Guilt will not appease those hungry gods, just as all these demeaning 'apologies' for slavery are not helping, but only fueling the demands for more. We all surmise that every apology brings us closer to paying reparations.
Playing the grievance-mongers' game is another example of feeding the crocodile, which will not guarantee that he will spare you, but only that he will devour you last.
Labels: American History, Cultural Marxism, Political Correctness, Revisionist History, White Guilt
0 comment Tuesday, June 10, 2014 | admin
But who's being taught, and who's doing the teaching? Is anybody learning anything?
Does anyone else get the impression that this Gates incident is being used opportunistically to hammer us some more with guilt and to further instill political correctness in the population?
I was disgusted to see that it was all over the news channels today. Early in the day there was coverage of the Cambridge police press conference in which the White House was requested to apologize. Later on in the day we heard that the president had summoned Sgt. Crowley, the latest victim of this race-baiting scam, to a private conversation in which things were smoothed over.
Lou Dobbs, who is one of the more reliable news personalities (though not free of political correctness) said that the president was turning this into a ''teachable moment'', and I thought: uh-oh. That means more lectures, more guilt, about 'racism', 'Jim Crow', 'the legacy of slavery' and Dixie Peach pomade. Please, spare us from such ''teaching.''
So in this typically witty piece from Mark Steyn, we learn that yes, some of that all-too-familiar 'teaching' is part of the script that's now being written for our edification:
Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sgt. Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to "educate him about the history of racism in America." Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents remortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.''
Maybe Steyn is kidding, but I would not bet on that; it sounds too plausible, and nothing is too silly to be believed these last seven months. More from Steyn's piece:
For everyone other than the president, what happened at professor Gates' house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, "jimmied his way into the house." A neighbor, witnessing the "break-in," called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there.
[...]
As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.
As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.
[...]
In the Sixties, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice." Professor Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11: When Sgt. Crowley announced through the glass-paneled front door that he was here to investigate a break-in, Gates opened it up and roared back: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?"
Note: If there is no ''prejudometer'' in real life, I am sure there are even now some deranged liberals somewhere trying to develop one. Actually, I suppose it would be superfluous for White liberals and race-baiting minorities -- they already have a foolproof way of detecting 'prejudice': look for White folks, and there you have prejudice.
A side note: I wish 'Peter Simple's' columns might be published in book form; most of us have not had the opportunity to read them in the UK Telegraph over the years. Those of us who enjoy that kind of British whimsy combined with satire would enjoy his writings in book form.
Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen." But what of our post-racial president? After noting that "'Skip' Gates is a friend" of his, President Obama said that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." But, if they're being "disproportionately" stopped by African American and Latino cops, does that really fall under the category of systemic racism? Short of dispatching one of those Uighur Muslims from China recently liberated from Gitmo by Obama to frolic and gambol on the beaches of Bermuda, the assembled officers were a veritable rainbow coalition. The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop � Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe � standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull
Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.''
Does a grown, senior-citizen, college-educated, Harvard professor make comments like the 'yo mama' remark? I thought that was middle-school stuff. And yes, the policemen who responded to this call did look like one of those multicult TV commercials, with 'one of each' distributed among the group. It's absurd that we run our society on such a basis.
This incident might have, if handled rightly, represented a possible turning point, an opportunity for someone in a nationally-publicized case to refuse to cave in and apologize, to admit wrong where no wrong was done. What the ultimate resolution (if any) will be, isn't clear yet, but it appears that the White House and the race-grievance industry are manipulating this incident to their advantage. If we have to see more 'news' coverage, including the pompous, pretentious 'academic' holding forth on 'racism in America', while Whites once again sit meekly listening and offering mea culpas, I hope that it will perhaps be the cause of a few more people becoming fed up and finally proclaiming the PC emperor has no clothes.
Instead of feeble and futile protests of ''I'm not a racist!" I wish someone of note, someone with the world's attention, might break the ice and reject the whole rigged concept of 'racism' and all the cant and lies it has fostered over the last half century or so.
Does anyone else get the impression that this Gates incident is being used opportunistically to hammer us some more with guilt and to further instill political correctness in the population?
I was disgusted to see that it was all over the news channels today. Early in the day there was coverage of the Cambridge police press conference in which the White House was requested to apologize. Later on in the day we heard that the president had summoned Sgt. Crowley, the latest victim of this race-baiting scam, to a private conversation in which things were smoothed over.
Lou Dobbs, who is one of the more reliable news personalities (though not free of political correctness) said that the president was turning this into a ''teachable moment'', and I thought: uh-oh. That means more lectures, more guilt, about 'racism', 'Jim Crow', 'the legacy of slavery' and Dixie Peach pomade. Please, spare us from such ''teaching.''
So in this typically witty piece from Mark Steyn, we learn that yes, some of that all-too-familiar 'teaching' is part of the script that's now being written for our edification:
Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sgt. Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to "educate him about the history of racism in America." Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents remortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.''
Maybe Steyn is kidding, but I would not bet on that; it sounds too plausible, and nothing is too silly to be believed these last seven months. More from Steyn's piece:
For everyone other than the president, what happened at professor Gates' house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, "jimmied his way into the house." A neighbor, witnessing the "break-in," called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there.
[...]
As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.
As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.
[...]
In the Sixties, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice." Professor Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11: When Sgt. Crowley announced through the glass-paneled front door that he was here to investigate a break-in, Gates opened it up and roared back: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?"
Note: If there is no ''prejudometer'' in real life, I am sure there are even now some deranged liberals somewhere trying to develop one. Actually, I suppose it would be superfluous for White liberals and race-baiting minorities -- they already have a foolproof way of detecting 'prejudice': look for White folks, and there you have prejudice.
A side note: I wish 'Peter Simple's' columns might be published in book form; most of us have not had the opportunity to read them in the UK Telegraph over the years. Those of us who enjoy that kind of British whimsy combined with satire would enjoy his writings in book form.
Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen." But what of our post-racial president? After noting that "'Skip' Gates is a friend" of his, President Obama said that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." But, if they're being "disproportionately" stopped by African American and Latino cops, does that really fall under the category of systemic racism? Short of dispatching one of those Uighur Muslims from China recently liberated from Gitmo by Obama to frolic and gambol on the beaches of Bermuda, the assembled officers were a veritable rainbow coalition. The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop � Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe � standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull
Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.''
Does a grown, senior-citizen, college-educated, Harvard professor make comments like the 'yo mama' remark? I thought that was middle-school stuff. And yes, the policemen who responded to this call did look like one of those multicult TV commercials, with 'one of each' distributed among the group. It's absurd that we run our society on such a basis.
This incident might have, if handled rightly, represented a possible turning point, an opportunity for someone in a nationally-publicized case to refuse to cave in and apologize, to admit wrong where no wrong was done. What the ultimate resolution (if any) will be, isn't clear yet, but it appears that the White House and the race-grievance industry are manipulating this incident to their advantage. If we have to see more 'news' coverage, including the pompous, pretentious 'academic' holding forth on 'racism in America', while Whites once again sit meekly listening and offering mea culpas, I hope that it will perhaps be the cause of a few more people becoming fed up and finally proclaiming the PC emperor has no clothes.
Instead of feeble and futile protests of ''I'm not a racist!" I wish someone of note, someone with the world's attention, might break the ice and reject the whole rigged concept of 'racism' and all the cant and lies it has fostered over the last half century or so.
Labels: Ethnic Division, Grievance-Mongering, Liberalism, Media Bias, Media Manipulation, Political Correctness, Race Card, Race-Baiting, White Guilt
0 comment Wednesday, June 4, 2014 | admin
The usual suspects complain:
James Kelly, CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, called for action Friday after reading remarks from state Supreme Court Justices Richard Sanders and Jim Johnson regarding African-American populations in prison.
The justices said African Americans are overrepresented because they commit a disproportionate amount of crime.
"What are these two guys doing on the State Supreme Court?" Kelly asked.
He is calling for Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Madsen to "establish a special commission on racial disproportions in the criminal-justice system and to make recommendations on how to modernize the system and ensure equal justice before the law," according to an Urban League news release.'
Kelly goes on to say that if the justices believe that blacks commit more crimes, then 'there's a problem that goes to the top.' Meaning, I presume, that the problem CANNOT be a problem of black crime.
Chief Justice Madsen has, as this source notes, upheld the state's ban on gay ''marriage'', which does hint that she might not be the typical politically correct leftist judge. Whether or not the 'special commission' willl be established is not yet known but the usual course of things is for everybody to bow down to the demands of ''the African-American community.'' Their wish is our command, apparently.
Judge Richard Sanders, who is one of the judges who made the controversial statements (note: these days, ''controversial statement" usually means ''truth") is also not your typically PC judge, although his opponent in the current election accuses him of siding with criminal defendants too frequently -- so he hardly appears to be a tough law-and-order judge, if indeed there is such a thing these days.
It's about time that somebody started defying the race-hucksters and the PC commissars. Will the judges stand their ground? Or will they be reduced to the usual groveling and apologizing? Let's hope not.
Does the judicial system discriminate against blacks or other minorities? The obvious, and simplest, reply to that often-repeated charge is that blacks and some other minorities commit more crimes -- to which the politically correct response is that police ''target'' minorities and let Whites get away with crime. How long will people let these charges go unchallenged?
There are also disparities in male-female differences in rates of incarceration and sentencing. Does this mean that the justice system is biased? It surely goes against the grain of political correctness, as according to the PC belief system, men (specifically White men) are privileged, and women of all races are victims of discrimination. So where is the bias here? While it's apparently true that women commit less crime, or less violent crime, they are nonetheless capable of heinous acts, and are not ''better people'' than men. However women do receive lesser sentences when they murder, for instance, and are less likely to be executed in states where the death penalty exists.
See the statistics here.
Bizarrely, most liberals argue that women are still discriminated against in the justice system, and of course if they had their way nobody would be executed, except thought-criminals perhaps.
When we compare women and men in the justice system, few people question the obvious disparities; but when it comes to minorities, especially blacks, it is taboo to even consider the obvious fact that differing rates of crime among the races might be the main reason for the disparities in arrest, conviction, and sentencing.
So we go on with this absurd charade of pretending that blacks are blameless victims of racism, always sinned against and never sinning, not even capable of sin. How can any sane adult pretend to believe such foolishness? How can any judge, whose business is to administer justice, pretend that one group of people is above scrutiny?
Judges, ideally, are to be impartial, and yet what is ''political correctness'' but an all-encompassing system of partiality, of putting minority groups in a special privileged category, off-limits to criticism?
James Kelly, CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, called for action Friday after reading remarks from state Supreme Court Justices Richard Sanders and Jim Johnson regarding African-American populations in prison.
The justices said African Americans are overrepresented because they commit a disproportionate amount of crime.
"What are these two guys doing on the State Supreme Court?" Kelly asked.
He is calling for Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Madsen to "establish a special commission on racial disproportions in the criminal-justice system and to make recommendations on how to modernize the system and ensure equal justice before the law," according to an Urban League news release.'
Kelly goes on to say that if the justices believe that blacks commit more crimes, then 'there's a problem that goes to the top.' Meaning, I presume, that the problem CANNOT be a problem of black crime.
Chief Justice Madsen has, as this source notes, upheld the state's ban on gay ''marriage'', which does hint that she might not be the typical politically correct leftist judge. Whether or not the 'special commission' willl be established is not yet known but the usual course of things is for everybody to bow down to the demands of ''the African-American community.'' Their wish is our command, apparently.
Judge Richard Sanders, who is one of the judges who made the controversial statements (note: these days, ''controversial statement" usually means ''truth") is also not your typically PC judge, although his opponent in the current election accuses him of siding with criminal defendants too frequently -- so he hardly appears to be a tough law-and-order judge, if indeed there is such a thing these days.
It's about time that somebody started defying the race-hucksters and the PC commissars. Will the judges stand their ground? Or will they be reduced to the usual groveling and apologizing? Let's hope not.
Does the judicial system discriminate against blacks or other minorities? The obvious, and simplest, reply to that often-repeated charge is that blacks and some other minorities commit more crimes -- to which the politically correct response is that police ''target'' minorities and let Whites get away with crime. How long will people let these charges go unchallenged?
There are also disparities in male-female differences in rates of incarceration and sentencing. Does this mean that the justice system is biased? It surely goes against the grain of political correctness, as according to the PC belief system, men (specifically White men) are privileged, and women of all races are victims of discrimination. So where is the bias here? While it's apparently true that women commit less crime, or less violent crime, they are nonetheless capable of heinous acts, and are not ''better people'' than men. However women do receive lesser sentences when they murder, for instance, and are less likely to be executed in states where the death penalty exists.
See the statistics here.
Bizarrely, most liberals argue that women are still discriminated against in the justice system, and of course if they had their way nobody would be executed, except thought-criminals perhaps.
When we compare women and men in the justice system, few people question the obvious disparities; but when it comes to minorities, especially blacks, it is taboo to even consider the obvious fact that differing rates of crime among the races might be the main reason for the disparities in arrest, conviction, and sentencing.
So we go on with this absurd charade of pretending that blacks are blameless victims of racism, always sinned against and never sinning, not even capable of sin. How can any sane adult pretend to believe such foolishness? How can any judge, whose business is to administer justice, pretend that one group of people is above scrutiny?
Judges, ideally, are to be impartial, and yet what is ''political correctness'' but an all-encompassing system of partiality, of putting minority groups in a special privileged category, off-limits to criticism?
Labels: Criminal Justice System, Discrimination, Free Speech, Judicial System, Political Correctness, Racial Division, White Guilt
0 comment Monday, May 26, 2014 | admin
I could find surprisingly little about the rally on the blogs I read. Free Republic, predictably, was a cheering section for Beck, 'colorblind conservatism' (did you know MLK was really a Republican, and his 'dream' speech was Republican? I learn something new every day at FR) and all thing PC.
However, Countenance Blog has a piece about the rally.
* Does Glenn Beck not realize that real freedom and Martin Luther King�s vision on that very soil of 47 years ago are diametric opposites? We lost a whole lot of freedom pursuing MLK�s Dream. Ironically, one of the major bloggers associated with this event today advised people to go nowhere near D.C. neighborhoods and public transit stops that are associated with the people who we just had to extend civil rights to in the last generation. Oh yeah, pander to blacks, but just don�t travel anywhere near them.
* Beck implied that MLK/CRM were entirely on the side of the angels, while the opponents were nothing more than moronic knuckle-dragging bigots. I regret to inform you, Mr. Beck, but there was a lot of resistance to the CRM in the 1950s and 60s on the intellectual and cerebral level. As loath as this publication would be to admit it today, half the anti-CRA intellectuals of those years worked for National Review. At least two states in the South declared a certain day on the calendar to be "Race and Reason Day," titled after Carleton Putnam�s book.''
Also, please see Old Atlantic's piece, if you haven't yet read it.
Everytime Diversity is honored at White events its a moment of shame for Whites. This is its meaning even to those who organize it and experience it. The Diversity is not honored for anything other than as a symbol of White Guilt and White Shame. The Diversity Token is not there for themselves, they are therefore to symbolize White Guilt, White Shame and White dispossession.
The Diversity Tokens symbolize that Whites give up their right to be a nation and a people. Diversity Tokens symbolize that Whites give up their own Whiteness as having meaning and identity. Diversity Tokens are a funeral decoration not a life affirming celebration.'' If I understand OA's words correctly, I agree that the presence of 'diversity, especially when it is put front and center, as at these events, seems to symbolize guilt and 'repentance'; yes, we know we are congenitally guilty because of things our forefathers did or did not do, and we renounce our former evil ways. So please, please, don't call us the r-word. As long as we feel the need to act out this apparent 'cleansing' ritual or symbolic confession of guilt, then the idea of 'colorblindness' is nothing but a bitter joke.
Old Atlantic's piece quotes many comments posted on MSM sites. The comments are as vitriolic and ugly as we've grown to expect from leftists. It is still somewhat wryly funny that the name-calling from the usual suspects is not the least bit mitigated by Beck and company pandering themselves silly, and bowing at the diversity altar. When will people learn it does not pay?
However, Countenance Blog has a piece about the rally.
* Does Glenn Beck not realize that real freedom and Martin Luther King�s vision on that very soil of 47 years ago are diametric opposites? We lost a whole lot of freedom pursuing MLK�s Dream. Ironically, one of the major bloggers associated with this event today advised people to go nowhere near D.C. neighborhoods and public transit stops that are associated with the people who we just had to extend civil rights to in the last generation. Oh yeah, pander to blacks, but just don�t travel anywhere near them.
* Beck implied that MLK/CRM were entirely on the side of the angels, while the opponents were nothing more than moronic knuckle-dragging bigots. I regret to inform you, Mr. Beck, but there was a lot of resistance to the CRM in the 1950s and 60s on the intellectual and cerebral level. As loath as this publication would be to admit it today, half the anti-CRA intellectuals of those years worked for National Review. At least two states in the South declared a certain day on the calendar to be "Race and Reason Day," titled after Carleton Putnam�s book.''
Also, please see Old Atlantic's piece, if you haven't yet read it.
Everytime Diversity is honored at White events its a moment of shame for Whites. This is its meaning even to those who organize it and experience it. The Diversity is not honored for anything other than as a symbol of White Guilt and White Shame. The Diversity Token is not there for themselves, they are therefore to symbolize White Guilt, White Shame and White dispossession.
The Diversity Tokens symbolize that Whites give up their right to be a nation and a people. Diversity Tokens symbolize that Whites give up their own Whiteness as having meaning and identity. Diversity Tokens are a funeral decoration not a life affirming celebration.'' If I understand OA's words correctly, I agree that the presence of 'diversity, especially when it is put front and center, as at these events, seems to symbolize guilt and 'repentance'; yes, we know we are congenitally guilty because of things our forefathers did or did not do, and we renounce our former evil ways. So please, please, don't call us the r-word. As long as we feel the need to act out this apparent 'cleansing' ritual or symbolic confession of guilt, then the idea of 'colorblindness' is nothing but a bitter joke.
Old Atlantic's piece quotes many comments posted on MSM sites. The comments are as vitriolic and ugly as we've grown to expect from leftists. It is still somewhat wryly funny that the name-calling from the usual suspects is not the least bit mitigated by Beck and company pandering themselves silly, and bowing at the diversity altar. When will people learn it does not pay?
Labels: Pandering, Pc Conservatives, Political Parties, Respectable Right, White Guilt