Submitted by Brett Stevens on Fri, 05/02/2008 - 12:25.
I've often been accused of racism in the past few years because I'm against excessive immigration. I keep retorting that I'm not a racist, I'm a culturalist- I'm fine with immigrants who want to come here to join our American/Canadian culture and all the high lifestyle standards that provides, in return for being some of the hardest working people in the world. I'm against people who want to colonize our land, bring in their culture, and replace it with theirs. I'm also against bringing in more people to areas where the carrying capacity is already at it's limit.
I've been rightly or wrongly criticized for that in the past- but apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way: Illiad of UserFriendly Fame, who apparently lives near a casino I once did technical support at in the mid 1990s, wrote a very good essay on his blog about the difference between "immigrants willing to join the community" and "immigrants who cut themselves off". Just so happens most of the ones down here in the states who are of the later variety start their life in the United States with an overtly criminal act, but the attitude is the same. They're sending the message, by forcing Spanish on the rest of us (or Cantonese in the sake of Richmond, BC) and by breaking our laws to come here, that they don't want to become a part of our community, that they only want to colonize us.
I'd also point out that's exactly what we English and French speakers in North America did to the Native Americans- and we should learn from their failure what happens when you let too many immigrants in who don't want to be a part of your community.
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=637462
Is it "racism" to notice that only one culture can exist, and mixed culture is destructive to all original cultures?
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it is de facto racist to
So now that the bloviation over whether a question asks for confirmation of an unconscious precept -- yes, of course it does, so long as there is a TOPIC to the argument, which is what more sane people do with the odds and ends you bloviate about -- we can see the truth of it: some people want culture, others want mixed culture because they're bigots against culture.
I wonder why people want to mix things into a generic grey, especially since in the past it has contributed to the ruins of situation.
You who defend immigration are fixating on one tiny part of an issue -- how good you feel for being altruistic and "progressive" regarding ethnicity -- and missing the bigger point: if humanity is going to get its act together, we need localization and an end to external control, which means we must replace external control with internal motivation, e.g. a shared sense of values. You either have a culture, or you have a military, corporate bureaucracy which enforces pseudo-culture, but at least in the latter, you're free to be as grey as you want.
Unlike the racist fanatics, and the racist anti-racists, I see this issue as part of a bigger question which is "What sort of society do we desire?" -- my answer cannot be limited to the topics we have here, but when you start thinking my way, you see how simple the question is and how unnecessary and hypothetical your response is.
anti-globalism / post-modernism / heavy metal / organic spirituality
Re: Reverse Colonialism
You ask:
"Is it "racism" to notice that only one culture can exist, and mixed culture is destructive to all original cultures?"
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If, humorously, you break the word "iceberg" into two parts, for illustration's sake, think of the "ice" as the part of the iceberg you see above the water, and the "berg" as the greater part that is unseen below the water.
This picture of an iceberg illustrates what a paradigm is (a concept introduced by scientific historian Thomas Kuhn to mean "a collection of assumptions, concepts, practices, and values that constitutes a way of viewing reality, especially for an intellectual community that shares them.") Essentially, a paradigm refers to the world view through which the world around us is interpreted.
In other words, as the writer S. Faiz Khan once remarked, "A paradigm is what you think OF something before you start thinking ABOUT something. And like an iceberg, the "berg" is what you think OF something (and it's usually unconscious), even before you start thinking ABOUT something - the "ice". Which brings me back to your question: "Is it "racism" to notice that only one culture can exist, and mixed culture is destructive to all original cultures?"
Your so-called "question" is subtly framed as a request/challenge for confirmation of the following statements: - The request for confirmation: "Only one culture can exist and mixed culture is destructive to all original cultures."
- The challenge: "Is it "racism" to notice the preceding request for confirmation statement?"
Analytically, if your camouflaged point of: "Only one culture can exist and mixed culture is destructive to all original cultures" refers to a culture that is in whatever terms you define "race," mono-racial, then yes, it is de facto racist to either state or 'notice' (for statement) that "Only one culture can exist and mixed culture is destructive to all original cultures."
In all directions you're begging the question and your "berg" (unconscious? submerged point of view) is plain to see - you think this before you even start to think about it. Even if and as you try to disguise your technically racist point of view (whatever you emotionally or socially actually feel) as "culturalist". Seems to me self-honesty - even in print - would make your argument stronger even if less palatable or politically correct.
It's a shame you've apparently, presently got this view as being against excessive immigration, or desiring, or even insisting that people become assimilated into a culture rather than remain separate in it (and in enough numbers begin to 'colonize' it), because thinking so doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with discrimination and racism. Yet you've made the link.
Independent of any considerations of race or multiculturalism, I for one believe there's a right to a continuing cultural "identity" for all indigenous cultures (i.e. the ones immigrants come to) and that both formally and informally it ought to be and should be made incumbent on new arrivals to, minimally, be required to properly learn the written and spoken language of their new "home" in addition to its laws and (selected) customs. Try today to officially become a German or Dutch citizen without learning German or Dutch!
In most places, one of the biggest signatures of non-assimilation is not learning to speak the indigenous language fluently (in the U.S., English). Yet, at least in the United States it's long been evident from several generational studies that no immigrant grand-children - let alone children - grow up speaking other than the new language of the culture their parents/grandparents have immigrated to (much to the chagrin of the folks from the 'old country' - and because of almost irresistible factors like peer pressure, the school playground, video games, movies, and television).
Working 'multiculturalism' absolutely requires language assimilation - and waiting one or two generations to achieve language assimilation means nothing but trouble BECAUSE of the dynamics of extended rejection/assimilation which can be and are aggravated by poor indigenous language skills, and visible differences associated with that such as skin color, physical features, religion, marital rites, etc.
For example (marital rites resisting assimilation), Jews who did and have emigrated to a nation founded on Judaeo-Christian values (and not the Talmud or rabbinic laws and values) i.e. America and Britain - remain, to the degree they do so in America and Britain, Jews, by, in part, very actively and effectively blocking, discouraging, etc. marriage INTO their faith by non-Jews. Ironically, one of the biggest challenges in both American and British Jewry are Jews marrying OUT. Ditto in a more savage sense (kill the girls who dare) in a significant percentage of Indian, Pakistani, and Arabic households in the U.K., and, from recent news stories, in the U.S.
I'm not a language or culture "nazi"; it is however important to remain dynamically adaptable, and what works as laissez-faire policy when only a comparative few people are immigrant, doesn't work when they begin to arrive in comparatively significant numbers. And policies should alter in adapting to that (by becoming more formal and insisting, in this case, on formally demonstrated language skills as a condition of entry (it's too late afterwards, especially in America).
As well as the obvious - don't ask the host country to change its laws to what you had back home (e.g. Muslims in the UK have begun a movement to introduce Sharia law in parts of the UK legal code). Personally, I think that's a step too far --- UNLESS --- equally, for example, Brits in the countries the immigrants have come from can similarly work to change Sharia law in those countries into a British legal code. Quid pro quo - and of course, were it so, I predict, an immediate die off of interest in immigrants attempting any such, to my mind, ridiculous transformations.
Taking this stance has nothing to do with racism or, even, multiculturalism in the broad sense. Rather, it underwrites the obvious - the dynamics of a culture require a common medium of transmission for that culture's longevity, vigor, and integrated identity. A thousand channels babbling different languages, classes (like in the L.A. Unified School district) that provide some kind of support for some 80 different languages, etc. - when taken together and extended to the point where, as in Miami, English is less and less a viable working language, is taking multi-language culture too far.
I am for peoples and cultures from anywhere immigrating, but in number that enrich the host, not rewrite its basic cultural identity and cultural (values, laws, et al) DNA, unless the indigenous people so desired and expressed that. We didn't do that in America. Instead we practiced genocide twice over, and proudly called it "Manifest Destiny" and "Slavery." And today America remains - though, strangely, invisible to most Anglo-Americans, one of the most racist cultures in the world.
I didn't say xenophobic. I didn't say foreign. I did say "racist" - even though there is no scientific definition of 'race' as continuing DNA revelations make clear ("race" is a sociopolitical and socioeconomic construct as in "how and where do we draw a line between "them" and "us'?). Enough said.
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"The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." — Alvin Toffler
mckinley strikes again
I am for peoples and cultures from anywhere immigrating, but in number that enrich the host,
What form of immigration enriches the host, exactly?
not rewrite its basic cultural identity and cultural (values, laws, et al) DNA
Yet, this is what has happened
And today America remains - though, strangely, invisible to most Anglo-Americans, one of the most racist cultures in the world. "
Agreed. Whites are a second class racial group who will soon become the minority.
even though there is no scientific definition of 'race' as continuing DNA revelations make clear
Right. The genetic clustering of people identified as "Asian", "White", or "Black" are just imaginary and coincidental. Nothing to see here folks, move right on along!
Its amazing how people create bogus arguments derived from their Marxist moral philosophy that have no actual basis in science and then go on claiming that science agrees with what they say.
numbers that enrich the host?
"I am for peoples and cultures from anywhere immigrating, but in number that enrich the host".
This assumes there's some magic number that "enriches the host" nation, and after that number, we need to shut off immigration entirely or risk losing our cultural identity. How does one arrive at that magic number, or ratio, of a certain immigrant population to a "native" population? Usually, populations realize a bit too late that they have allowed far too much in the way of immigration (legal or illegal) and there's little left of cultural identity among the masses, because they're too busy enjoying their new cosmopolitan lifestyle that population growth temporarily affords. You point out how racist and backward the history of the US has been, and I agree - The US is a good example of the fact that people are best suited to smaller groups, and those groups should remain free of immigration if that group doesn't want immigrants in their society, so they can preserve their own cultural identity.
Whether you agree that race, culture, etc. can be scientifically defined doesn't matter. What matters is that we've observed multicultural societies slip into decay once culture is replaced with a dollar sign (material aspirations). Immigration isn't the only cause of that, but it certainly doesn't help. A healthier culture which figures it has more to live for than money wouldn't allow that to happen.
"In most places, one of the
"In most places, one of the biggest signatures of non-assimilation is not learning to speak the indigenous language fluently (in the U.S., English). Yet, at least in the United States it's long been evident from several generational studies that no immigrant grand-children - let alone children - grow up speaking other than the new language of the culture their parents/grandparents have immigrated to. "
How current are these studies? Can we see some of them please?