The Hamilton family of two generations back is quite bigoted. I have a great-uncle who is unconcerned to say that he "hates d---ned Mexicans" to the face of a man whose Mexican wife is sitting right next to him. In their anecdotes, my grandparents and most of their siblings are quick to point out if someone is Asian or 'colored.' The truth is, racism isn't dead: anywhere. White supremacists still exist, men who predate the civil rights movement and lived in a day when buses were still segregated, and I doubt that many of them even condescend to think about the "white man's burden."
The problem, however, is not limited to Caucasians. Taking advantage of the mind-boggling contortions that politically-conscious whites perform to ensure that no prejudice is ever even hinted at, other races (proving that they are, in fact, human beings just the same), have begun to turn they tables. They prey on the new white man's burden: the burden of guilt that has grown beyond all due proportion.
What is racism, after all? It is the assumption that a class of people with common ancestry are fundamentally inferior to another. The truth is, however, that no race can be lumped under one umbrella of definition. Even in my short life, I have had ample proof that there are incalculable gulfs between William Jefferson Clinton and Mark Steyn, between Mel Gibson and King Arthur, between Jacques Chirac and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Just so there are wide differences between Thomas Sowell and the common street rapper, between Michael Jackson (does he count as black anymore?) and Jesse Jackson, between Morgan Freeman and Harriet Tubman. Or between Pancho Villa and Vincente Fox, or between Mao Tse-Tung and the Emperor Meiji.
All this is to say that racism is not a new phenomenon. Nor should Caucasians take the burden of all its evils upon themselves, as though the slave trade and 18th century imperialism were the only manifestations of racism since the days of the Spartans and the Helots. Certainly the antebellum South never had tests of manhood where a Southern boy hunted down and killed a slave. This is not to excuse American slavery or any form of white racism. It is to say, however, that treating Western civilization as the grandfather of bigotry is a gross misconception. Have we forgotten that even from the dawn of Greek civilization until now is less than half the world's history? Have we forgotten the Egyptians, the Persians, the Amorites, or the Indian Untouchables?
The problem that needs to be addressed is not so shallow as the American slave trade and Depression-era segregation and prejudice. Ours is but one chapter in a long history of human depravity. For racism really centers around pride and the desire to have someone to look down on, and contrast yourself favorably with, and this has been with us since Eve bit the forbidden fruit. We did it once, and now African-Americans are beginning to do much the same thing. Perhaps we ought to be widening our perspective just a little, and stop acting as though it all began with those few slaves sold in Jamestown back in the seventeenth century. But then, to attain such an historical perspective would entail a radical change in the way history is taught...and that might take a few more posts of its own.
~Connor
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Saturday, February 10, 2007
The Wisdom of Dorothy Sayers
From The Mind of the Maker:
"Has the fact that enthusiastic crowds cheer and scream around professional footballers, while offering no enthusiastic greetings to longshoremen, anything to do with the wages offered to footballers and longshoremen respectively?" (204).
-----------------------
"Consider how, in the last twenty years, we have endeavored to deal with the 'problem of peace and security,' and whether we do not still secretly hug the delusion that it is possible to deal with it as a 'problem.' We really persuaded ourselves that peace was something that could be achieved by a device, by a set of regulations, by a League of Nations or some other form of constitution, that would 'solve' the whole matter once and for all. We continue to delude ourselves that 'when the war is over' we shall 'this time' discover the trick, the magic formula, that will stop the sun in heaven, arrest the course of events, make further exertion unnecessary. Last time we failed to achieve this end--and why? Chiefly because we supposed it to be achievable. Because we looked at peace and security as a problem to be solved and not as a work to be made"(206).
"Has the fact that enthusiastic crowds cheer and scream around professional footballers, while offering no enthusiastic greetings to longshoremen, anything to do with the wages offered to footballers and longshoremen respectively?" (204).
-----------------------
"Consider how, in the last twenty years, we have endeavored to deal with the 'problem of peace and security,' and whether we do not still secretly hug the delusion that it is possible to deal with it as a 'problem.' We really persuaded ourselves that peace was something that could be achieved by a device, by a set of regulations, by a League of Nations or some other form of constitution, that would 'solve' the whole matter once and for all. We continue to delude ourselves that 'when the war is over' we shall 'this time' discover the trick, the magic formula, that will stop the sun in heaven, arrest the course of events, make further exertion unnecessary. Last time we failed to achieve this end--and why? Chiefly because we supposed it to be achievable. Because we looked at peace and security as a problem to be solved and not as a work to be made"(206).
Friday, February 02, 2007
Why Americans Hate War
More accurately, I shall try to sort through my thoughts and elucidate what I think is one reason why so many people protest the Iraqi War, and perhaps why so many people protested the Vietnam War.
We in America live extremely cushioned lives. This point has been driven home time and again, but it needs to be reiterated. The previous century left a bloody wake of genocide, starvation, political corruption, and moral degradation, the first two of which America missed almost entirely. Not for us were the mass executions in Communist Russia. Not for us were the racial exterminations in Hitlerian Germany or Milosevichian Bosnia. Moral degradation we received in plenty, but it was the soft kind of moral degradation, the kind that leads not to totalitarian regimes and brutal murders but to sexual promiscuity, materialism, and escapism. In short, rather than emphasizing what is violent and rapacious in man, America has chosen to do two things: either to channel violence and rapaciousness into neutralizing channels (e.g., organized sports, violent video games, movies depicting senseless violence and illicit or even aberrant sexuality, etc.) or done away with violence and rapaciousness altogether (e.g., New Age philosophy, environmentalism, pacifism, etc.). These are over-generalizations, but my purpose is not to explore all the exceptions to these rules, but rather to posit them as a key part of American culture today.
I ought not leave political corruption alone either. We have our share of that. The two primary political parties have, in most cases, set themselves in such furious opposition to each other that cooperation between them is difficult. This situation forces someone aligning himself with a particular party to subscribe to a whole host of issues in order to be truly considered "one of them." This is not so great an influence as (and is probably in great part a result of) America's moral state, but it does serve to exacerbate contention over the issue of the war, since we are so divided as to consider it a Republican enterprise, it being the Democrats' duty to oppose it without question.
Here is the point of all this. For good or ill, America is no longer used to war, and no longer wants it. America (in general) would rather continue with what Dorothy Sayers calls the "whirligig" of production, the materialistic, escapist, easy lifestyle to which most of us are used. Warfare does not fit into this scheme because war is proximate and frightening. War means taking a stand. War means being brave. War means doing your part and giving something up. Americans (again, in general) do not like to give things up. After all, how could we survive without cell phones, ipods, blackberries, soda pop and SUVs?
I find it a curious fact that this is the first war I have experienced as a cognizant person (I was about 1 during the Gulf War), and yet I have lived through it with astonishingly little recognition that any war is going on at all. There is no "home front." It is a war pursued solely by the military and the government. I am sure that the wives, parents, siblings and children of the soldiers at war are keenly conscious of what this nation is going through, but the rest of the nation, at least here in northwestern Oregon, seem to need a wake-up call to realize that we are AT WAR, and not only at war but simultaneously pursuing two wars in foreign countries for the purpose of eliminating terrorist insurgents and establishing a democratic government in the wake of a conquered regime. Maybe it's because I've never been involved in a war before, but I like to think that people back in World War I or II were more aware of what was going on.
Again, I think all this may simply stem from the fact that Americans don't want war. They don't like it. The logical consequence of fighting a war is privation. Fortunately, our country's economy is massive enough to absorb the cost of keeping tens of thousands of troops (not to mention aircraft carriers, helicopters, fighter jets, etc.) deployed in Middle Eastern countries. But I have often wondered what things in general would be like if we stopped spending so many billions on Halloween decorations and $99 inflatable lawn snowmen, $50,000 vehicles of questionable practicality, 4,000 square foot homes on 4,020 square foot lots, and so on, and started to wield our formidable collective purchasing-power on things that mattered. There are almost countless causes to which so enormous a cash flow could be directed, but perhaps the war effort could be one of them.
I know that many people say the war in Iraq was wrong. Is it maybe because some of them can't face a war? I doubt that many people who read this post will misinterpret me and assume that I want a war. I don't. The reality of the ugliness and aberrant, curse-inflicted misery of war has been brought home increasingly to me as my knowledge of human depravity, loss, deprivation, and even the nitty-gritty of combat has expanded. But maybe that is why I am also somewhat shocked (though not entirely surprised) at our reaction to our country's wars. The Federal army alone lost 110,100 men during the Civil War--in action. Factoring in disease, murder, suicide, accidents, drowning, death as prisoner's of war, etc., we arrive at 389,753 deaths for the Union army alone--and let us not forget the 289,000 deaths the Confederacy endured. Although the death of even one man is a tragedy, this staggering total of well over 700,000 deaths makes our losses in Afghanistan and Iraq look like a bloody nose.
I ask your forgiveness for a somewhat disjointed post, but do you see at least a glimmer of my point? 30% of Americans can't place the year of the September 11th attacks (Harper's Index, November 2006 issue). At least I remember it was 2001. How did we forget so fast? Iraq had a hideous government, one that tortured prisoners and slaughtered ethnic groups. Enormous numbers of Americans consider our war there not just a possible mistake, but a downright moral evil. Why? Am I missing something?
Do Americans just not want to face war?
We in America live extremely cushioned lives. This point has been driven home time and again, but it needs to be reiterated. The previous century left a bloody wake of genocide, starvation, political corruption, and moral degradation, the first two of which America missed almost entirely. Not for us were the mass executions in Communist Russia. Not for us were the racial exterminations in Hitlerian Germany or Milosevichian Bosnia. Moral degradation we received in plenty, but it was the soft kind of moral degradation, the kind that leads not to totalitarian regimes and brutal murders but to sexual promiscuity, materialism, and escapism. In short, rather than emphasizing what is violent and rapacious in man, America has chosen to do two things: either to channel violence and rapaciousness into neutralizing channels (e.g., organized sports, violent video games, movies depicting senseless violence and illicit or even aberrant sexuality, etc.) or done away with violence and rapaciousness altogether (e.g., New Age philosophy, environmentalism, pacifism, etc.). These are over-generalizations, but my purpose is not to explore all the exceptions to these rules, but rather to posit them as a key part of American culture today.
I ought not leave political corruption alone either. We have our share of that. The two primary political parties have, in most cases, set themselves in such furious opposition to each other that cooperation between them is difficult. This situation forces someone aligning himself with a particular party to subscribe to a whole host of issues in order to be truly considered "one of them." This is not so great an influence as (and is probably in great part a result of) America's moral state, but it does serve to exacerbate contention over the issue of the war, since we are so divided as to consider it a Republican enterprise, it being the Democrats' duty to oppose it without question.
Here is the point of all this. For good or ill, America is no longer used to war, and no longer wants it. America (in general) would rather continue with what Dorothy Sayers calls the "whirligig" of production, the materialistic, escapist, easy lifestyle to which most of us are used. Warfare does not fit into this scheme because war is proximate and frightening. War means taking a stand. War means being brave. War means doing your part and giving something up. Americans (again, in general) do not like to give things up. After all, how could we survive without cell phones, ipods, blackberries, soda pop and SUVs?
I find it a curious fact that this is the first war I have experienced as a cognizant person (I was about 1 during the Gulf War), and yet I have lived through it with astonishingly little recognition that any war is going on at all. There is no "home front." It is a war pursued solely by the military and the government. I am sure that the wives, parents, siblings and children of the soldiers at war are keenly conscious of what this nation is going through, but the rest of the nation, at least here in northwestern Oregon, seem to need a wake-up call to realize that we are AT WAR, and not only at war but simultaneously pursuing two wars in foreign countries for the purpose of eliminating terrorist insurgents and establishing a democratic government in the wake of a conquered regime. Maybe it's because I've never been involved in a war before, but I like to think that people back in World War I or II were more aware of what was going on.
Again, I think all this may simply stem from the fact that Americans don't want war. They don't like it. The logical consequence of fighting a war is privation. Fortunately, our country's economy is massive enough to absorb the cost of keeping tens of thousands of troops (not to mention aircraft carriers, helicopters, fighter jets, etc.) deployed in Middle Eastern countries. But I have often wondered what things in general would be like if we stopped spending so many billions on Halloween decorations and $99 inflatable lawn snowmen, $50,000 vehicles of questionable practicality, 4,000 square foot homes on 4,020 square foot lots, and so on, and started to wield our formidable collective purchasing-power on things that mattered. There are almost countless causes to which so enormous a cash flow could be directed, but perhaps the war effort could be one of them.
I know that many people say the war in Iraq was wrong. Is it maybe because some of them can't face a war? I doubt that many people who read this post will misinterpret me and assume that I want a war. I don't. The reality of the ugliness and aberrant, curse-inflicted misery of war has been brought home increasingly to me as my knowledge of human depravity, loss, deprivation, and even the nitty-gritty of combat has expanded. But maybe that is why I am also somewhat shocked (though not entirely surprised) at our reaction to our country's wars. The Federal army alone lost 110,100 men during the Civil War--in action. Factoring in disease, murder, suicide, accidents, drowning, death as prisoner's of war, etc., we arrive at 389,753 deaths for the Union army alone--and let us not forget the 289,000 deaths the Confederacy endured. Although the death of even one man is a tragedy, this staggering total of well over 700,000 deaths makes our losses in Afghanistan and Iraq look like a bloody nose.
I ask your forgiveness for a somewhat disjointed post, but do you see at least a glimmer of my point? 30% of Americans can't place the year of the September 11th attacks (Harper's Index, November 2006 issue). At least I remember it was 2001. How did we forget so fast? Iraq had a hideous government, one that tortured prisoners and slaughtered ethnic groups. Enormous numbers of Americans consider our war there not just a possible mistake, but a downright moral evil. Why? Am I missing something?
Do Americans just not want to face war?
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