Category Archives: Race and Ethnicity

Why Racists and SJWs Are Wrong 4

by • Race and Ethnicity

Recently, in the main N-AM group someone asked this question:

“Is race “real”, or a social construct? What does science and biology show? If real then are the White Nationalists correct in their views? If a social construct then are the Anti-racist SJW types correct?”

This was my response:

“In a social context, I’d say race is like religion. It’s a real as you want to make it. Definitely a social construct in that sense. From a purely scientific perspective, “race” is a continuum that contains many variables, not absolute or easily quantifed categories. The real question that makes race controverisal from a scientific perspective involves claimed differences in intelligence. That’s really what the argument is about. Do differences in intelligence exist, and if so are they genetic or environmental or both? Some IQ testing seems to indicate such differences, althought there is also evidence that IQ is elastic for both individuals and populations and impacted by social factors such as malnutrition. Also, high IQ does not equal high functioning. Therefore, racial/IQ determinism like many race realists promote misses the mark, I think (it’s like the Marxist view that all of history is economic categories fighting for power, or the vulgar economism of many neoliberal and libertarian economists). For instance, in the USA Nigerians have basically achieved the same model minority status as East Asians even though according to race realist theory they’re not supposed to. Also, I consider transracialism to be a legitimate personal identity. There is plenty of historical precedent for members of different tribes being adopted by other tribes and subsequently adopting the norms, appearance, and practices of their new tribe. In early American history, there were whites adopted by American Indian tribes, for example (and vice versa).”

Why I Stopped Being White (and You Should Too) 9

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Race is a touchy subject in the West. People across the aisle, especially white folk, tend to avoid it like a plague. A big part of the reason behind this reservation has to do with the fact that both the left and the right maintain an equally immature grasp on the subject. While the right seems to be convinced that race is some kind of scientific fact like a species of bird, the left seems to view it as an inescapable historical prison sentence with no hope for escape. Like usual, the left is wrong and the right is way fucking wrong. There is nothing scientific or permanent about race. It is a social construct as fluid in nature as gender or sexuality, and it is constantly evolving. Almost every known race was created by a collision of former races that have ceased to exist. About the only thing that the clueless class in the left-right paradigm gets right is that the white race is a very unique creature, and a dangerous one.

The white race is unique in that it is the first defining race of the imperial era and modern day imperialism defines its very existence. The Western Europeans designed the concept of whiteness to justify their expanse and enslavement of the New World and it’s dark skinned cousins across the Global South. As the insatiable nature of capitalism demanded endless expansion, it’s moneyed mandarins required the creation of a new super-class to rationalize the enslavement of the darker nations. This concept became even more necessary with American independence and the fall of monarchism.

This new white aristocracy replaced the royal bloodline and shaped the very nature of the planet’s economic ecosystem. The First World was created with the excess wealth pillaged from the Third World, and it’s subjects soon became victims of new races invented to further empower the white race. The colored races of black and Latino were constructed to both consolidate white supremacy’s ill-gotten gains and to rob the many tribes that made up these racial monoliths of color of their diverse indigenous cultures. The white race is unique, not simply by the Machiavellian nature of its design, but by the necessity of its supremacy over other similarly constructed mass races to justify its very existence. But like most imperial schemes, white supremacy backfired.

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A History of Decentralization 5

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Strategy

aragon.black
Jun 11, 2019
14 minute read (full)

First let’s decentralize history…

This month’s thematic has been a real challenge for us and raised many questions in our minds. Why? The history of decentralization is complex and non-linear. But most of all, it is difficult to be considered from an objective point of view, stripped of the predominance of the state.

Talking about decentralization leads obviously to discuss about centralization; to find the ghosts of history, to cross-reference the victories and failures of social-political movements; to discover some contemporary alternatives to the generalized centralization of our lives. Unless we consider that a technology is neutral, in the end, we cannot talk about decentralization without talking about governance, suffrage, politics or apoliticism, autonomy, organization… and the dominant model of centralization: the nation-state. Still, if a very vast literature and documentation concerns rise of states, it must be stated that the one granted to the opposite, i. e. the absence of a state, is almost non-existent. More…

Why we disagree about human nature Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy

Elizabeth Hannon & Tim Lewens (Eds) Why we disagree about human nature.Oxford University Press, 2018. 206 pp. £30 hbk.

JULY 1, 2019

By Simon Jarrett

If one day a disturbingly precocious child were to ask what part you had played in the nature/ nurture war, what would you reply? Were you with the massed intellectual ranks who, since the philosopher David Hull’s ground-breaking 1986 classic ‘On Human Nature,’ have denied that there is any such thing as a common nature for all humans? Or did you join Stephen Pinker’s 2003 counter-revolution, when The Blank Slate sought to reclaim the ground for the Enlightenment, and the idea that there is something essentially the same about all humans across time, space and culture?

If you are not quite sure where you stand, or perhaps too sure where you stand, then this pleasingly eclectic collection of ten essays on human nature, and whether we can meaningfully talk about such a thing, will be of great help. Its contributors, who come from psychology, philosophy of science, social and biological anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the study of animal cognition, include human nature advocates, deniers, and sceptics. We could perhaps call the sceptics ‘so-whaters’ – they agree there may be something we can attach the label ‘human nature’ to, but query whether it really matters, or carries any explanatory weight. These people would take our (hopefully apocryphal) infant prodigy aside and say, ‘well there are some conceptual complexities here that make it quite difficult to give you a straightforward answer.’ More…

Freedom of Association-Yes, Ethnic Cleansing-No: Solidarity with All Enemies of the State Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity

In my perfect world, there would be nothing but voluntary communities, and particular communities could be as open or closed as their members wanted. I tend to think that for utilitarian reasons within the current state-capitalist system there needs to be at least some limitation on both immigration and discrimination. I don’t know that throwing open the borders and saying, “Come one, come all” would have a happy ending, just like I don’t think anyone’s freedom is being abridged when WalMart can’t put a sign out front saying, “No Coloreds Allowed.” Virtually the entire spectrum of the ruling class and the state benefits from mass immigration, i.e. more scab labor employers, more clients for social services bureaucrats, more constituents for ethnic lobbies, more voters for political parties, more students for the education bureaucracy, new parishioners for organized religion, etc. But immigration enforcement also benefits other state/ruling class interests, i.e. the federal police state, companies that get state contracts to build walls/detention centers, the prison-industrial complex, capitalist corporations that profit from prison labor, retrograde Republican politicians using immigration as political vehicle, etc. It’s a win-win situation for the power elite, and lose-lose for everyone else.

I don’t think it’s a Left/Right issue per se. Immigrant detention centers didn’t start with Trump. They’ve been around for quite a while spanning Democratic and Republican administrations. I’d argue immigrant detention centers are part of the wider apparatus of the police state/state legal racket/prison-industrial complex. So people in immigrant detention centers are in the same boat as people in jails, prisons, places of involuntary psychiatric incarceration, juvenile detention, etc, etc,etc Traditionally, the US prison system has overlapped with the older slave system as well as things like Jim Crow. I’d argue it’s also something that transcends boundaries of race, class, gender, politics, etc even if those categories aren’t irrelevant either. But the same traditional conservative vs traditional progressive dichotomy that defines US politics today has been in place for over a century with swings back and forth in different directions.

Progressives have exercised a great deal of influence over US society since around 1900 (Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were Progressives, for God’s sake). Progressives have long been involved in facilitating authoritarian state policies (eugenics, racism, and drug and alcohol prohibition among them). During the course of the 20th century progressives did an about face on race, immigration, homosexuality, the “sexual revolution,” etc. But they’ve still favored authoritarian state policies in many other areas. For example, the modern “war on drugs” has been supported just as zealously by liberal politicians and civil rights leaders as conservative Republicans and the religious right, and the war on drugs is to a large degree the foundation/cornerstone of the modern American police state (though there are obviously many other contributing factors).

Most progressives are not anarchists or libertarians (left or right) and don’t claim to be. They accept the supposed legitimacy of the state, state law, state penal institutions, etc. They just don’t like it when these things are used against people they like (illegal immigrants, environmental protestors, etc) as opposed to people they don’t like (the Bundy clan, corporate executives, gun nuts, racists, etc). But given their acceptance of these things, they don’t really have a principled argument against the statist argument that says, “If you don’t want to go to jail, don’t break the law” or “The law is the law. If you don’t like the law, you can work to change it not break it” or “These people chose to break the law and choices have consequences.” Once the legitimacy of the state, state law, police, prisons, etc. is conceded, I don’t know that there is a principled counterargument that can be raised that doesn’t amount to special pleading.

Of course, my view is that anarchists and libertarians who wish to be consistent should stand in solidarity will ALL persons being held by the police state and prison-industrial complex (and, yes, that includes serial killers on death row, racist hate criminals, scumbag corporate executives, pedos, and every other kind of creep imaginable as well illegal immigrants, drug users/sellers, sex workers, “consensual criminals,” self-defenders, “survival criminals,” vagrants, etc). The struggle against the state/ruling class/power elite/globalism/imperialism/capitalism/Zionism is not a “Nice People Only” club.

Pledging Allegiance to the Divided States of America 4

by • American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will-Antonio Gramsci

When the individual’s behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to “drop out”, “turn on”, and “tune in.”-Timothy Leary

America, the indispensable nation. That old jingoistic canard gets tossed around like confetti in this country, while the rest of the world rolls their collective eyes and crack their collective knuckles. According to patriotic lore, America is some beige, color-blind, miracle designed by the greatest white philosophers since Socrates to free the world from its backwards indigenous ways with the magic of global capitalism. Naturally, this is all bullshit. The kind of sad pep-talk a date-rapist gives himself in the mirror before showering his glamour muscles in Axe body spray. There is absolutely nothing miraculous about America but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t exceptional.

America is an exceptionally cruel experiment in the outer reaches of colonial social engineering. We are a nation defined by the two greatest holocausts in recorded history, spanning three continents and an entire hemisphere. America as we know it was founded by an ambitious collection of European super-colonialists who found themselves and their nations increasingly depleted of the wealth they accumulated from the Crusades. So they traveled the seas in search of greener pastures to irrigate with more dark-skinned blood. They found their sainted killing fields of Shangri-La in the New World and with the superiority of their steel, they decided to take the Americas by force and slaughter anyone who stood in their way. But with an entire hemisphere half empty of its indigenous inhabitants, these European overlords found themselves with too much work for their feeble bourgeois fingers to handle, so they filled their new colonies with shiploads of slaves pilfered from the jungles of Africa to build a nation on their scarred shoulders, murdering millions more in the process and permanently hobbling another entire continent.

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Thomas Sowell on the Myths of Economic Inequality Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity

Thomas Sowell is much, much further to the Right on most issues than I am, e.g. endorsing neocon foreign policy views, uncritical of the police state, practically ignoring “crony capitalism,” etc. But he’s pretty good at debunking reductionist theories coming from the Left on the causes of a range of disparities, which is his area of specialization.

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Anti-White Politics is anti-Revolutionary Nonsense Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity

An interesting M-L-M critique of the critical theory oriented “Left.” I don’t agree with his general ideology but I agree with his assessment of “identity politics” as having no real value other than to create divisiveness that will have the effect of undermining the system (“destabilizing the imperialist core”), thereby making anti-imperialist victory more likely. That’s why I have spent so much time promoting all kinds of fringe, freakazoid movements and ideologies, and favor the most extreme, ridiculous or insane political candidates. Weaken the system at its core. Another thing I like about Jason is that he recognizes that the “revolutionary potential” of the First World is minimal to non-existent. I agree with his assessment of the Third World at the focus of anti-imperialist revolution, even if I don’t share his Marxism.

 

 

The Trouble With White Guilt 5

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

White Guilt is a very serious affliction in this country. Its symptoms include cultural appropriation, political correctness, and obsessive NPR consumption. Fall is peak White Guilt season, wedged between our country’s most cherished celebrations of genocide, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. A common misconception is that White Guilt is a mental illness. While it can cause delusions in more severe cases, White Guilt is actually a completely natural response to conspicuous consumption, particularly when this addiction to material garbage is built on an ancient Indian burial ground.

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On Antisemitism, Critical Thinking, And Conspiracy Theories Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized

A timely article from Caitlin.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Today a gunman attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania while shouting the words “All Jews must die”. The suspect, Robert Bowers, reportedly had a history of making antisemitic posts on social media, and was taken into custody alive with multiple gunshot wounds. As of this writing, eleven people were killed in the attack.

I don’t have anything interesting or insightful to say about America’s mass shootings, other than to repeat the point I always make that the effects of modern war propaganda on American psychology are wildly under-appreciated and ignored by scientific research. I believe the subject of US gun control is a bit outside my sovereign boundaries as an Australian writer as it only affects Americans, so I don’t really have anything to contribute in the primary debate surrounding the attack. It’s a debate for Americans to have with one another, so I tend to avoid it.

What I do have to offer is a brief description of my experience with conspiracy theories about Judaism and Jewish people as a fringe blogger who writes a lot about conspiracies, and the impression those encounters have left me with. To be clear, when I talk about antisemites I mean the actual bigots who promote hatred of Jewish people, paranoia about Jewishness, or any type of violence against or mistreatment of Jews as a race. I do not mean people who voice legitimate criticisms of Israel and its government, I do not mean people who criticize the way Zionism is used as a tool of manipulation to advance geopolitical agendas, I do not mean people who question the justification for the creation of Israel in the first place, I do not mean people who defend Palestinians, and I do not mean people who voice valid, factual criticisms of George Soros or any other billionaire who happens to be Jewish.

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The Democrats’ Left Turn Is Not an Illusion Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity

The research that is cited in this article, along with the “Hidden Tribes” report that came out recently, seems to confirm what I have long suspected, i.e. that “political correctness” is the ideology of the mostly white, educated, affluent, left-wing of the upper middle class. This is probably one of the more interesting parts of this article:

“In fact, white liberals are well to the left of the black electorate on some racial issues.

Take the issue of discrimination as a factor holding back African-American advancement. White liberals are to the left of black Democrats, placing a much stronger emphasis than African-Americans on the role of discrimination and much less emphasis on the importance of individual effort.

Among white liberals, according to Pew survey data collected in 2017, 79.2 percent agreed that “racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.” 18.8 percent agreed that “blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition,” a 60.4 point difference, according to a detailed analysis of the Pew data provided the Times by Zach Goldberg, a doctoral candidate in political science at Georgia State University.

Among blacks, 59.9 percent identified discrimination as the main deterrent to upward mobility for African-Americans, and 32.0 percent said blacks were responsible for their condition — in other words, blacks are more conservative than white liberals on this issue.?”

By Thomas B. Edsall

New York Times

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Robert Stark talks about The YIMBY Movement & The Alt-Center 1

by • Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity, Science and Technology • Tags: ,

The Stark Truth. Listen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark joined with Cartrell Payne(aka The Adventure Kid) to discuss the YIMBY movement, the Alt-Center, and how those issues relate.

Topics:

California Senator Scott Wiener’s housing-transit measure Derailed
Factions of the YIMBY movement including left leaning housing advocates, real estate developers, and the Market Urbanist
Left Wing anti-gentrification activists and their alliance with NIMBY’s
Cartrell’s observations on gentrification in Memphis, Tennessee
The hypocrisy of pro-immigration Limousine Liberal NIMBY’s, and how that combination exacerbates the housing crisis
How the YIMBY movement is also very pro immigration
Income Inequality in California and the mass exodus of the middle class
The film Falling Down which is set in LA in the early 90’s and a warning of a dystopian future
What makes California great and can it be saved?
The New Great Migration of Black Americans back to The South
White Middle Class Conservative NIMBY’s, their motivations, and how they are sabotaging their own self interest
Why YIMBYism and immigration restriction are compatible, and why the Alt-Center should take up those causes
Why YIMBYs need to address aesthetic concerns
Why YIMBYism is compatible with environmental and historic preservation
Citylab and City Journal; their writings on urbanism and political agendas
Why mass transit is inefficient in LA and other Sun Belt cities
The political and cultural flaws of both Blue and Red States
A vision of an Alt Center which include alternative economics, pro middle class policies, New Urbanism, environmentalism, SWPL culture, and socially centrist
Cartrell’s political orientation as an Old School Southern Democrat minus the racism
Cartrell’s critique of both the Black Liberal Establishment and Black Conservatives
Conservative views on the poor and police issues and Conservative Class Cucks
The early 20th Century Populist movement
Norman Mailer’s plan for breaking up New York City which addressed both the concerns of the Left and the Right

Trans Mountain pipeline opponents vow to keep fighting Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized • Tags:

Apparently, this is what “progressive” government looks like under Justin Trudeau’s totalitarian humanist regime.

By Justine Calma

Grist.Org

Canada is coughing up $3.5 billion to buy the floundering Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project from Kinder Morgan. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had vowed “to get that pipeline built,” but pipeline resistance groups aren’t backing down, either.

“This is a declaration of war against indigenous people because they’re not recognizing our own sovereignty,” says Kanahus Manuel, a Secwepemc midwife and mother of four. “So we are putting on our war paint and we are putting on our battle gear and we’re going to fight.”

The Houston-based company had stopped all non-essential spending on the project last month after facing broad opposition from environmental groups, indigenous communities, and the province of British Columbia. Canada says it plans to fund construction of the project until it can find another buyer to take over. If completed, it would nearly triple the pipeline’s capacity to transport crude and refined oil from Alberta to B.C.

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The Last Slave 1

by • Race and Ethnicity • Tags:

An very interesting undiscovered work by Zora Neale Hurston has now come to light.

Vulture.Com

In 1931, Zora Neale Hurston sought to publish the story of Cudjo Lewis, the final slave-ship survivor. Instead it languished in a vault. Until now.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is required reading in high schools and colleges and cited as a formative influence by Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. It’s been canonized by Harold Bloom — even credited for inspiring the tableau in Lemonade where Beyoncé and a clutch of other women regally occupy a wooden porch — but Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel was eviscerated by critics when it was published in 1937. The hater-in-chief was no less than Richard Wright, who recoiled as much at the book’s depiction of lush female sexuality and (supposedly) apolitical themes as its use of black dialect, “the minstrel technique that makes the ‘white folks’ laugh.”

Six years earlier, Hurston had tried to publish another book in dialect, this one a work of nonfiction called Barracoon. Before she turned to writing novels, she’d trained as a cultural anthropologist at Barnard under the famed father of the field, Franz Boas. He sent his student back south to interview people of African descent. (Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Florida, which wasn’t the “black backside” of a white town, she once observed, but a place wholly inhabited and run by black people — her father was a three-term mayor.) She proved adept at the task, but, as she noted in her collection of folklore, Mules and Men, the job wasn’t always straightforward: “The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, usually underprivileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open-faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive … The Negro offers a feather-bed resistance, that is, we let the probe enter, but it never comes out.”

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The Bankruptcy of the American Left 2

by • Activism, American Decline, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Strategy

Kudos to Chris Hedges. This is as good an analysis as I would ever expect from someone on the Left. This is a fairly straightforward Marxist analysis within a social democratic ideological framework. But he knows who the real enemy is.

By Chris Hedges

Truthdig

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