Horseshit. History is chock full of examples of minorities with elevated economic and social status governing less fortunate majorities. That is (unfairly) going to remain the condition of white people in America for a very long time.
The “decline” of the unjust excess of privilege that white Americans used to possess (and still do possess to a lesser extent) is primarily due not to demographic shifts, but to the success of hard-won struggles for equal rights and rejection of racist injustice.
It’s not our impending (but still pretty distant) demographic minority status that has deprived white Americans of, e.g., being able to call adult black Americans “boy” and requiring them to step into the street when we pass them on the sidewalk. It was American principled egalitarianism making a (very belated) appearance in our civic life.
You’re comparing apples and oranges. Steve King is not calling for white supremacy in the sense that he wants subjugation of minorities. He’s a white supremacist in the sense that he believes whites should remain a majority, not in the sense that he believes the government should actually subjugate other races. There is a HUGE moral gulf between advocating for immigration policies that keep the ethnic nature of a country stable and active subjugation of minorities.
This is true. It is also true that a minority group that governs a country causes a shitload of resentment and that such a situation often ends violently. The governing minority can only keep control through force and direct, state-supporedt racial discrimination.
That is definitely a big part of it, but including immigration restrictions under “racist injustice” has made the problem worse in a way that was unnecessary and unjustified.
To be clear, immigration restrictions based on race were an injustice. But caps on total immigration are not.
At least in 2017, that’s not why white people are voting Republican. It’s about immigration and free trade, and most importantly, Democrats’ history of deception on those two issues.
I shall no longer be shocked when shit like Camp of Saints hits best-seller lists. Was it a good nighty-night read for you, adaher? A certainly hope you pray for a whiter America before you go to sleep though.
Nice Trump-like subject-judo, though. Here I thought I was generating a conversation about how much Steves Bannon and King are douche-bags because of the racist novels they read. Instead, we’re discussing the horrors of there being more of them then us! … aaaaahhh Condition Orange!
Never heard of the book, but it certainly sounds like a pretty awful racist tome.
My defense of King’s statement, as well as similar statements all over Europe by right-wing politicians who are gaining support more and more every election, is based on two things which are undeniable:
There are legitimate white grievances, as well as just plain haters.
The sacredness of the democratic process trumps concerns about racism, where racial equality is not covered under constitutional or statutory law. If a country wants to keep foreigners out, that is a fundamental right even if it’s racist. You can appeal to a voting populace to put aside their xenophobia and allow themselves to become a minority, but if that doesn’t work, then you have to respect the will of the citizenry. Attempting to defy that will through non-enforcement of immigration laws will radicalize the majority and increase resentment against foreigners.
One thing that liberals get wrong a lot, we can call it a stupid liberal idea, is to believe that racism trumps pretty much everything else on the scale of moral depravity, and that in a competition between concerns about racism and well, anything else, the non-racist policy should be favored, by all means necessary, even extralegal means. This is understandable, because that’s how Jim Crow was defeated. It’s part of the liberal DNA now. See injustice, fight injustice, and if that means an underground railroad for illegal immigrants just like slaves, so be it.
But the concept breaks down on immigration. Liberals have never argued that all foreigners have the right to come here, live here, and work here if they so desire. They havent argued it because it’s impossible and not justified by any accepted concept of morality in the 21st century. Nations have a right to determine their ethnic, religious, and linguistic makeup, full stop, as long as they don’t use oppressive means to do so, such as outlawing other faiths or languages or sterilizing minorities.
Racism is a social ill like any other. It is not exceptional. It’s in the same category as mental illness, addiction, and poverty. Liberals make the mistake of treating it as a criminal act, even when it’s actually not a criminal act. It’s a type of “higher power” philosophy that smacks of religion.
Okay, so just so we’re clear, you do not regard lack of enforcement of immigration laws, resulting in declining white demographics, to be a legitimate grievance? What type of government acts in defiance of democracy should be regarded as legitimate to complain about then?
Seems like we’d better implement a strong legal culture of respect for minority rights so adaher doesn’t have to get services out the back door in the future.
You don’t need to post apologies, there’s a shirt for that. He keeps getting reelected because, well, he’s THEIR Representative, just like Assley and Branstache. The problems are with everyone else’s Representatives, Senators, and Governors. Hell, many of my conservative friends are shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, with the recent legislative actions, especially in regards to public service unions. I just respond with my reports of Walker et al., in Wisconsin and ask if reading comprehension or critical thinking is their issue.
Reelection in Iowa is just about the easiest thing to accomplish in politics, and that inertia is one of my biggest problems with my home state.
To further clarify, my point is that you can reduce racism by reducing legitimate beefs with government policies, such as non-enforcement of immigration laws. Immigration in defiance of the democratic consensus causes resentment. Eliminate that source of resentment and racism stops spreading. Racism has been in decline my whole life. Now it’s experiencing a resurgence. That doesn’t just happen for no reason. and no, it didn’t happen just because we elected a black President. If you think that badly about white people then we truly are irredeemable and there’s no point in even trying to reform us.
While there may be grievances to be had regarding immigration laws, being white has fuck-all to do with them. Considering that, your second question is moot. It’s also completely incomprehensible, so there’s that too.
“Don’t be an asshole” is a pretty fundamental tenet of most major religions. Treating someone differently because of the color of their skin kind of reeks of being an asshole. So I guess that idea is right. Racism as a social ill, equal to brain chemistry, income, or educational attainment? I can smell the bullshit from here.
Here we have a textbook example of the depraved philosophy of “moral equivalence”, often attributed to “liberals” but in fact more common amongst conservatives (e.g. the current President’s equation of US military killings with Russian killing of political opponents). “Moral equivalence” is easily recognized by the alert reader by noting the abuse of logic and semantics to equate moral evil (e.g. racism) with morally neutral circumstances (e.g. mental illness, addiciton, and poverty)*.
*While mental illness may result in evil behavior, and addiction and poverty may result from evil behavior, neither is a form of moral evil in itself.
But they aren’t becoming a minority they are just becoming less of a majority and that is what bothers them. There is a fundamental difference between a minority group fighting for equality and a declining majority group fighting to maintain superiority.
Yet being an asshole is not treated as near criminal in most cases when it is not based on racism. Assholes are all around us, and many of them have good paying jobs. Racism is rarer, and primarily the province of the poor and disaffected. Because if you’re racist and actually express racist views in public, expect to stay poor.
An interesting aspect of that steaming pile of racist dreck, and a mark of its historical period, is its identification of the global “enemy” as quintessentially Hindu rather than Muslim. There are plenty of derogatory references to “Arabs”, but those include Eastern Christians as well as Muslims, and are lumped together with Africans and other dark-skinned people generally. The author appears to have had no anticipation of the modern conservative demonization of Islamic “ideology” in particular as a threat to “the West”.
What he did evidently have was a conservative horror of Hindu “sexual licentiousness” as feverishly perceived through the lens of 1970s Euro-American hippie culture. He has clearly spent a lot of time imagining the endless orgies indulged in by the “invaders”, which of course bear no relation to the social customs of actual Indian societies.
And which, paradoxically, may end up producing a bright spot in all this white-supremacist wankery: namely, the distancing of the Islamophobic “Hindu nationalist” Indian hard right from the Islamophobic “white nationalist” American hard right. These two groups have been enthusiastically bedfellowing in recent years, but seeing how eagerly American Islamophobes embrace anti-Indian propaganda like The Camp of the Saints may give the Hindutva right-wingers second thoughts. About time they woke up to the fact that white supremacists don’t really like any brown people.
One last observation about that POS book: its ridiculous/disgusting (ridiculusting?) indiscriminate conflation of concepts of immigration and race. Namely, at the end of the book the mayor of New York is forced to share his mansion with “three families from Harlem”. That’s right, black American citizens whose ancestors were forcibly kidnapped to North America by white Europeans, whose families have been in this country for hundreds of years (longer than those of many white Americans), whose only language is English and whose only homeland is the US, are nothing but a part of the overall nonwhite “invasion” as far as the author’s concerned.