Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Time, and Other Tools of The Man

(*re-edited @ 21:25, 5/30)

Update: The Seattle Public Schools links below have been vaporized sometime since yesterday (5/30).

White man clock on the wall,
tired of gettin' up and goin' to work,
for that,
white white white white man y'all

Ol' Dirty Bastard, All in Together Now


But society cannot be indiscriminate where the pacification of existence, where freedom and happiness themselves are at stake: here, certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed, certain behavior cannot be permitted without making tolerance an instrument for the continuation of servitude.
Herbert Marcuse, Repressive Tolerance, 1965

The essay quoted above was a radical claim to ownership of the truth on behalf of socialist revolution. The author declared that a capitalist society was inherently unfair, discriminatory, and violent; therefore any defense of capitalist democracy (quaintly, “the Establishment”) was not entitled to freedom of expression. The tenets laid out in this essay form the totalitarian underpinnings of current multiculturalist thought, and are codified in public education policy today. Notably absent from the tracts setting out this policy is the word “tolerance.”
One such example comes from the Seattle Public Schools' “Definitions of Racism” found on their website under “Equity and Race Relations”:
Racism: The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society.

(Yes, you read correctly: Latino/as. It takes a committee to come up with that. Book title: It Takes a Committee.)
Don't accuse the author of burying the lead. Entrusted with teaching your kids to read, educators have instead commandeered their moral education, and these overenthusiastic foot-solders of egalitarianism, following the orders of their intellectual higher-ups, are implicating American society from top to bottom; from the private thoughts of the individual to our most basic institutional foundations.

Just what they’re achieving is questionable. As a parent of a high-school age child, I know that kids are satirizing this stuff the moment they're out of Teacher’s earshot. You want to know how to render something, anything, an object of ridicule? Present it to children as sacrosanct, repeatedly. Recently my daughter’s high school imposed a day of silence for gay rights. The report I received was that the students were equal parts amused and annoyed. The kids are already, I suspect, distressingly tolerant in the eyes of their teachers, who are so eager to be in the vanguard of a new egalitarian order. Indeed, it must be quite a letdown to come strapped for battle with the forces of patriarchy and eurocentrism only to find the enemy is nowhere to be found. They are, however, undeterred; America must be a hotbed of oppression. Otherwise we're left teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Where's the fun in that? Anyone one who runs is a Vietcong. Anyone who stands still is a well disciplined Vietcong.
But we’re just getting started. It all begins at the subconscious level and where it stops nobody knows:
Individual Racism: The beliefs, attitudes, and actions of individuals that support or perpetuate racism. Individual racism can occur at both an unconscious and conscious level, and can be both active and passive. Examples include telling a racist joke, using a racial epithet, or believing in the inherent superiority of whites.
Active Racism: Actions which have as their stated or explicit goal the maintenance of the system of racism and the oppression of those in the targeted racial groups. People who participate in active racism advocate the continued subjugation of members of the targeted groups and protection of “the rights” of members of the agent group. These goals are often supported by a belief in the inferiority of people of color and the superiority of white people, culture, and values.
Passive Racism: Beliefs, attitudes, and actions that contribute to the maintenance of racism, without openly advocating violence or oppression. The conscious or unconscious maintenance of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that support the system of racism, racial prejudice and racial dominance.
Of course every second-rate educator worth his tenure knows that capitalism and Standard English are inherently racist, but I bet you didn't know that planning ahead and punctuality are racist strategies:
Cultural Racism: Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.
*Here is the fundamental problem of “multicultural” society; some cultures, and some aspects of some cultures, are better than others. Clearly, the innovations and values of more advanced cultures are both products of and reasons for their, excuse me, superiority.
A “future time orientation” is critical to enlightenment and progress. Individualism is inherent in liberalism and democracy. Individualism is an advancement beyond "collective ideology", which is another phrase for a primitive state wherein the individual is indistinguishable from his clan. Wherever collective ideology is the norm outside of the West (putting aside the question of socialism) it goes hand in hand with the subjugation of women and the hoarding of resources for dominant clans or families.
Individualism and "future time orientation", in the eyes of the author here, present greater challenges to underperforming minorities (an assumption not allowed the reader, as racist) and are seen as European values, therefore we must renounce them; in other words, we must renounce progress. This is the stink of it all; the irrational, reactionary flight from reason in the name of a religious devotion to an ideal that is seen as morally purifying.

*One wonders why they would stop at planning ahead, as it is in fact practiced in every culture. Why not go after things that are more clearly products of Western thought? Why not the written word? Why not place astrology on a par with astronomy? How about mathematics (in fact cultural mathematics has been introduced in some places as a fairer, "non-racist" way to teach math to black and hispanic children; curious how Asian kids thrive on math, and no one needs to shove an abacus in their hands to get them started).
I doubt if those who propagate this believe it. They merely seek to subvert; they think they have found an unassailable position from which to do that, anti-racism.

“Community” is no longer possible. “Collective ideology” is allowed. “Individualism” is suspect. Where to go from here? On to the socialist paradise I suppose, or we’ll all start wearing grass skirts and living off the land.
Attributing anything to differences in talents and abilities among races is forbidden, so with nowhere to go to explain the persistence of inequality, the very foundations of liberal democracy must be assaulted. Should we acknowledge nature's limitations, accept them and preserve liberalism and the law? Not if you're committed above all else to egalitarianism.
We once sought equal rights. Now we seek something else. A permanent state of racial-moral redress. A vigilantly enforced moral superiority of the "oppressed" above the "oppressor." Nietzsche’s "slave morality” is the order of the day. It’s only a matter of time before democratic, liberal values themselves are brought into the dock:
Institutional Racism: The network of institutional structures, policies, and practices that create advantages and benefits for Whites, and discrimination, oppression, and disadvantages for people from targeted racial groups. The advantages created for Whites are often invisible to them, or are considered “rights” available to everyone as opposed to “privileges” awarded to only some individuals and groups.
More from the father of this strain of thought, Herbert Marcuse, who laid the groundwork for today’s institutionalized radicalism in education:
Part of this struggle is the fight against an ideology of tolerance which, in reality, favors and fortifies the conservation of the status quo of inequality and discrimination. For this struggle, I proposed the practice of discriminating tolerance.

There is nothing new in the language of today’s anti-racists. It is at least forty years old. This dogma is in midlife crisis; it’s getting a little flabby, it’s past its prime, it’s been very successful, but it isn’t satisfied because while it has amassed a fortune it hasn't really changed a thing. Is that all there is? The sixties movement's version of company men, young so-called radicals who went on to become professors, now sit at the helm of the educational establishment; still the idyll never materialized. The old order is still firmly in place. What to do now? Ignore reality and drive on. This is not a quest for truth, after all, but an insurrection. There is plenty of evidence that capitalist democracy, whatever its shortcomings, has accommodated racial minorities like no other system before. Capitalism undermines racism along with morality, community, and tradition.

Black Americans wield a cultural influence which is remarkably disproportionate to their share of the population and belies the fiction that they are oppressed by a great, mysterious web of White collective unconscious. Asians (who one might expect to be most disadvantaged of all) accumulate wealth in greater proportion than the white majority, just as their reputation for intelligence, thrift, and hard work would predict.

But other inequities persist, regardless of a generation-old raft of codified privileges awarded to underperforming minorities seeking to increase their stubbornly intransigent low representation in elite professions and assuming that this lack of achievement can only be the result of “racism.” This assumption is disproven, and most people privately acknowledge this. Yet they can’t speak this aloud, and educators are attempting to indoctrinate their children in the quaint assumptions of the sixties. Even the language is the same. The only solace a parent has is in the knowledge that our teachers are notoriously inept at teaching. Small consolation.

Of course, race is such an insubstantial concept you wonder what all the fuss is about:
Race: A pseudobiological category that distinguishes people based on physical characteristics (e.g., skin color, body shape/size, facial features, hair texture). People of one race can vary in terms of ethnicity and culture.
As behavioral genetics advances from here, it will be interesting to watch what becomes of this mythology. It is something of a cliché to call this sort of thing religious, and a little unfair to the religious, but the comparison is apt.
If one disallows ideas and contradiction, no matter how certain of the justice of his goal, he becomes totalitarian. In the case of multiculturalism, a sort of ideological speciation has occurred, the liberal roots of the movement are severed and it is no longer compatible with liberal Western tradition, but is now hostile to it. This is why assimilation is denounced in language like this:
The process of giving up connections to and aspects of one’s culture of origin and blending in with the host/dominant culture. Also, the wholesale adoption of the dominant culture at the expense of the original culture.

Irony, make yourself known:
Prejudice: An attitude or opinion that is held in the absence of (or despite) full information. Typically it is negative in nature and based on faulty, distorted or unsubstantiated information that is over generalized and relatively in-flexible. Prejudices can be conscious or relatively unconscious.
That's like the pot calling the kettle black. Did I say black? I may have just overtly attributed normality to whiteness. I'm not sure, was that overt or covert? In no doubt unrelated news, Seattle Public Schools (whose motto is “education for every student in every school”) will close down several schools, disproportionately affecting minority students. They aren't educated, they’ve been spared assimilation, and they haven’t been discriminated against by learning a future time orientation. Yet they’re acutely aware of the inherent evil of whiteness. And they're coming to your white child's school soon, Seattle. Is that concern on your face I see, or are you engaged in covert, passive, unconscious racism?

We’re more than two full generations past any legal or codified discrimination in favor of the white majority. Desegregation efforts began fifty years ago. Affirmative action is over thirty years old, and now vigorously defended as a necessary group right in perpetuity. Combined with a system of “civil rights” litigation it has ensured just the sort of racial spoils system that is the apparent goal of the morbid, funeral march of postmodern theory above.
Yet still, the clamor for more separation, more concession, and more guilt instilled at ever younger ages in Whites and more resentment and paranoia in minorities grows more shrill and insistent from increasingly hidebound and insulated academics.

True conservatives, not neocons or theocons or corporatists but traditionalists skeptical of revolutionaries and utopians who are forever seeking to turn the prevailing order inside out whether it's necessary or not, are the only ones left to defend classical liberalism.
Liberals must make the break with racial demagoguery to reclaim their place alongside conservatives in defense of liberty. Conservatives, for their part, must make the break with militarism and the unrestrained globalist approach. If these highly unlikely things happen we might be able to save the nation from bankruptcy and cultural suicide.

6 comments:

Rick Darby said...

In its entire history going back to the original Marxism, the Left has never for a second accepted the notion of an imperfect society that nevertheless works reasonably well for anyone willing to be part of it. Such a concept has always been a heresy. Leftism is married to the "struggle"; there must always be an exploited group and an exploiting group.

For almost a century the "workers" fulfilled the role of the exploited, the capitalists the exploiter role. Then, from the Left's standpoint, a terrible thing happened: the working class became largely prosperous and unrevolutionary, even as the ownership class stayed well off.

But the Left owes its existence to a belief in victimization. It can't tolerate amelioration of problems; its blood circulation depends on conflict. So when it adopted a new victim group, nonwhites, it automatically adopted a policy of polarization.

I used to argue for the old-fashioned ideal of a color blind society, and still think that's how it should be. But it's become clear that the Left doesn't want any such thing; it treats "persons of color" as children who have to be protected against the big bad white race, regardless of the realities in any particular situation. Therefore I have come to the reluctant conclusion that to protect themselves, whites had better develop their own group consciousness and start defending it.

Anonymous said...

Desegregation is actually pushing 60. Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948 and restrictive racial covenants in real estate were outlawed by the Supreme Court the next year.

Anonymous said...

Just rechecked. They were both in 1948.

Anonymous said...

I remember a Cramps' song with the lyric, "you better as my momma how to make a monster." It would seem that govt. has replaced momma. I'm sure that most kids ignore this stuff. But lord have mercy if it's you that comes across the one that doesn't.
I went to several poetry, open mike type events a few years ago, and jimminy cricket, you should have heard those white kids apologizing for their very existence -- with no understanding of what they were doing.
The best guy there was the Indian gentlemen who OWNED the restaurant -- at which some of the poetry nights occured -- on a prime piece of American real estate telling us how screwed over he was by the "white man." Thank god, i never ate there. What he spit out on the stage was poison enough without going behind the closed kitchen doors.
Of course, the media/entertainment complex tells us what we have to fear is the jack-booted evil racist white men like it is some WWII Nazi repeat.
Meanwhile real evil is here in your educators, in your bureaucrats and the rest of the racial left and the many platforms they control.
Steve N.

Anonymous said...

"Meanwhile real evil is here in your educators, in your bureaucrats and the rest of the racial left and the many platforms they control."
We are at the sorry point where many "conservatives"-like GWB and the crazed McCain- have internalized the gestalt of
racial leftism. Their respective performances in the current immigration debate illustrate this.

Anonymous said...

You are right I failed to mention that white poeple have almost no significant defenders in this racial game.
Conservatives put up a modest resistance to affirmative action, which surprisingly was a wee bit sucessful. The left changed the name to "diversity," and our leaders got onboard with that fraud. While we're reduced to saying, "I don't think Martin Luther King Jr. would have been in favor of blah blah blah. Good gawd I hate that sort of lameness.
What we need are people to stand up for fairness and our rights which unlike the left's "rights' don't come at the expense of other folks.
Steve N.

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