From
the Cape to Cairo, Puck, 1902. (Source:
Library of Congress, public domain). The White Man's burden has been turned against itself. If
the British adhere to a higher standard of civilization, their behavior must likewise
be judged by a higher standard. They must play fair with former colonial
peoples, but the latter are much less obliged to do the same.
Growing
up in rural Ontario, I would talk with older folks about politics. A favorite
topic was Quebec, and how those selfish French Canadians wouldn't fight in the
Boer War, the First World War, and the Second World War. Later, as a student in
Quebec City, I would hear the other side. French Canadians saw those wars as
foreign entanglements of no concern to them. They were willing to fight and die,
yes, but only for their own soil. That may seem selfish, but so were we with
our slavish loyalty to the British Empire.
The
folks back home would have disagreed. The Empire wasn't just for the British or
even for Europeans in general. It was for people of all races and religions. It
was an instrument for raising everyone up to British standards of fair play,
morality, and civilization. In short, for making the world a better place. Take up the White Man's burden ...
Such
talk puzzled me, even as a kid. The sun had long ago set on the British Empire.
There was the Commonwealth, but why would its leaders defend our imperial
heritage? Most of them had fought for independence from the Empire. They valued
the British connection only to the extent that it was useful to themselves and
their people.
Some
Commonwealth leaders wouldn't even be that generous. When Robert Mugabe
dispossessed the British farmers remaining in his country, we could only look
on helplessly. A century ago, people called the Ottoman Empire the "sick
man of Europe." Today, that title
surely applies to the remnants of the British Empire.
There
is a difference, though. The Ottomans were militarily helpless. We are ideologically helpless. Our universal
morality has been turned against us, and it is in the name of our notions of
fair play that we're giving everything up, often to people, like Robert Mugabe,
who make no pretence of believing in fair play. And we accept the logic of the
situation. We think it normal to judge ourselves by a harsher standard and
others by a more permissive one.
Double
standards normally work the other way. Normally, one judges people of another
kind by a harsher standard. They are less likely to share the same notions of
right and wrong. They are also less likely to feel the sort of kinship affinity
that makes people want to help each other and forgive minor wrongs, or even
major ones.
But
we’re doing the reverse. That kind of situation is inherently unstable, even
self-destructive. No other human society has ever attempted such a thing.
Rotherham
All
of this seems obvious to me. Why is it less so to other people? The question
crosses my mind when I see how thinking men and women respond—or rather fail to
respond—to the Rotherham sex-abuse scandal. In an English town of some 250,000
people, at least 1,400 school-age girls were "groomed" for
prostitution by gangs of Pakistani origin. Grooming begins with seduction and
ends in abduction, trafficking, and confinement. This final stage apparently
explains why some 500 girls were missing from the town's 15 to 19 age group at
the last census.
This
went on for years without anything being done and little being said. From time
to time, the parents of the girls would complain, and the police would
immediately investigate ... the parents. Finally, in August of this year, a
long report broke the logjam of silence by officials and the media (Jay, 2014).
There is still a pervasive bias against this news item, as seen in coverage by
three online magazines. Slate ran one
story about Rotherham and four about Jennifer Lawrence. Jezebel had one story about Rotherham and six about Jennifer
Lawrence. Feministing made a passing
reference to Rotherham and ran two stories about Jennifer Lawrence (Durant, 2014).
Who
is Jennifer Lawrence? She's an American actress, and last August someone leaked
nude photos of her online. That's why she matters so much more to thinking men
and women.
It
gets weirder. Social media have become overwhelmingly opposed to quarantining
of the Ebola outbreak (Alexander, 2014). At one time, quarantines were
considered a progressive measure, the sort of thing you would support as a
thinking man or woman. If you didn't, people would assume you were a fool who
knew nothing about modern science.
So
what makes the Ebola outbreak different? The difference is simple. Quarantining
means that light-skinned people will be detaining dark-skinned people. So we
just can't do it. Because? Because.
The
same applies to Rotherham, which was about dark-skinned men seducing, confining
and, ultimately, enslaving light-skinned women. That, too, triggers the same
mental lockdown—Don't go there!
That's how thinking men and women unthinkingly respond—or almost anyone who has
gone to college and watches TV. The response seems almost Cartesian: I try not
to think, therefore I am a moral person.
Unfortunately,
we cannot make unpleasant truths go away by ignoring them. Sooner or later, we
will have to confront them. We will especially have to confront our universal
morality, including the assumption that only light-skinned folks have moral
agency and only they are to be held accountable for their actions.
Please
don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing for a new improved universal morality.
Morality can never be universal. It is a product of local conditions—to be
specific, it arises from a co-evolving system of cultural, historical, and
genetic factors. If forced to choose between saving one or the other, we should
first save this foundational system. Anyhow, that's all we can really save.
Morality has no existence above and beyond the humans who act it out in their
daily lives.
That's
a hard message to swallow, but we will have to. Eventually.
References
Alexander,
S. (2014). Five case studies on politicization, Slate Star Codex, October 16
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/five-case-studies-on-politicization/
Durant,
J. (2014). John Durant compares coverage of Rotherham abuse vs. Jennifer
Lawrence nudes, Twitchy Media, September
3
http://twitchy.com/2014/09/03/john-durant-compares-coverage-of-rotherham-abuse-vs-jennifer-lawrence-nudes/
Jay,
A. (2014). Independent Inquiry into Child
Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham 1997-2013
http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherham 
31 comments:
I think it's fair to say that the British values system played a role in restraining the military lengths to which the UK was willing to go to prevent its Empire from collapsing.
Still, it's important not to be overly deterministic about this.
First, one can't overlook the fact that Britain emerged from World War II in dire economic straits. It had a large working-class population that resented the prospect of continued military exertions aimed a preserving an imperial order that, in their judgment, benefited them little.
Second, it's not accurate to say that the British made no military effort to maintain control of territories where they had particularly vested interests, such as Kenya, Malaya, or the Suez Canal.
Third, there was the Cold War. The Soviets were aggressively canvasing for support in resource-rich parts of the Third World, and the United States was particularly anxious that the West not be perceived as hostile to the national aspirations of Asian and African peoples. Moreover, there was a real danger that British or French attempts to protect their own colonial interests would drag Washington into a direct confrontation with the Kremlin. Hence, the Eisenhower Administration made it quite clear to Anthony Eden at the time of the Suez Crisis that it wasn't about to risk nuclear war with Russia to preserve vestiges of the Victorian geopolitical order.
It's not too far-fetched to imagine various counter-factual scenarios in which the Commonwealth idea would have worked somewhat better. The challenge was that it depended upon the development of sufficiently large and stable indigenous middle classes in the former colonies who perceived their economic and political interests to be reconcilable with maintaining more than cosmetic ties with London. Obviously, this was a long shot in places like Zimbabwe/Rhodesia. But on a parallel Earth where neither the Bolshevik Revolution nor World War II occurred, the Brits might have bought sufficient time to cultivate a lasting reciprocal relationship with the Indian Subcontinent and Malaya.
As a final cautionary note against determinism, one must also remember that altruistic leaders who would rather lose empires than maintain them through endless bloody repression have cropped up in unlikely places. Consider Mikhail Gorbachev, who completely broke precedent with his predecessors (or, for that matter, successors) in the Kremlin by refusing to countenance massive military force to suppress independence movements. How a leader like him emerged from the same cultural sphere that produced Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, Brezhnev, and Vladimir Putin is remarkable. Had a more typically Russian potentate been at the helm in 1989, we'd probably be living in a very different world today - if we were living at all.
"... Morality can never be universal...."
Like hell it can't. The proper answer is not abandoning universal morality, but EQUALLY ENFORCING IT, even if you are called a "raciss" for doing so.
I think it's fair to say that the British values system played a role in restraining the military lengths to which the UK was willing to go to prevent its Empire from collapsing.
The military challengers to the British were the US, Germany, the Axis Powers, and the USSR. None of whom the British would have been able to militarily challenge successfully on its own.
As a final cautionary note against determinism, one must also remember that altruistic leaders who would rather lose empires than maintain them through endless bloody repression have cropped up in unlikely places. Consider Mikhail Gorbachev, who completely broke precedent with his predecessors (or, for that matter, successors) in the Kremlin by refusing to countenance massive military force to suppress independence movements.
I'm not sure what "altruism" has to do with this, and you're ignoring the fact that the US lied to and tricked Gorbachev by telling him that NATO wouldn't expand, that Russia's near abroad would remain a de facto Russian dominated sphere, etc., all while backing and supporting the various "independence movements".
The folks back home would have disagreed. The Empire wasn't just for the British or even for Europeans in general. It was for people of all races and religions. It was an instrument for raising everyone up to British standards of fair play, morality, and civilization. In short, for making the world a better place. Take up the White Man's burden ...
Obviously the difference was that the French naturally didn't identify with the British Empire, while English Canadians naturally did.
This basic psychology seems common to proponents of universal, imperializing ideologies. Pious Muslims, for example, seem to think along the same lines.
Prof. Frost wildly misinterprets Kipling's poem. It is warning not a shibboleth. This "universal morality" is a meme, an extended phenotype that invades the host to the benefit of the parasite and/or the well-being of the meme itself.
Considering that all or nearly all the victims in Rotherham were White, it's astonishing that such a high percentage of white girls in the 12-17 were sex slaves (as we know some were younger than 12 and some older than 18).
If 92% of so of it's residents white & 46% white girls, and maybe 10% of all those white girls are in the 12-17 age range or 4.6% of the total Rotherham population. 4.6% X 250,000 = 11,500 white girls in the 12-17 age range (approx) or about 12% of white girls were abused. I think this is a low estimate.
Paki males make up about 1-1.5% of of the Rotherham population and considering the white sex slaves were raped by dozens or even hundreds of Paki males the percentage of Paki males involved was massive, and actually still is massive, since this is continuing throughout Rotherham and other parts of the U.K.
Morality has no existence above and beyond the humans who act it out in their daily lives.
Reminds me of the importance of "God fearers" in the middle-chapters of Genesis: of the strange tribes encounted by Abraham's little tribe, only those who "feared God" could be trusted and treated with. Thus the notion that man was created "in the image of God" can be interpreted two ways: the usual way (that "all men are created equal" in the words of the Declaration of Independence) or the way the early Hebrews seemed to have interpreted it, namely, that only those who "believed" in God (ie, feared his just judgments) were fully human.
See my The Torah and the West Bank for details. You can find it on the web, I think.
Anon,
The Empire would have collapsed sooner or later, since it was greatly overextended. In fact, it was a mistake for it to have grown as much as it had. I would have called a halt to its expansion in the mid-19th century. There should have been no "scramble for Africa" and no take-over of India from the East India Company in 1858. The Empire should have been limited to those territories where British settlers were in the majority or at least a significant minority.
"the Brits might have bought sufficient time to cultivate a lasting reciprocal relationship with the Indian Subcontinent and Malaya"
Perhaps, but why is it more important to have good relations with India than with China or Bolivia? Imperial nostalgia? This was the logic behind the creation of the Commonwealth. It was a security blanket for people who couldn't accept the loss of empire.
"Consider Mikhail Gorbachev, who completely broke precedent with his predecessors"
Yes, and look at how we responded to his good faith. We broke our solemn promise not to extend NATO eastward. Today, we're manoeuvring to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. And you wonder why the Russians no longer trust us?
"The proper answer is not abandoning universal morality, but EQUALLY ENFORCING IT"
Anon,
Morality is normally enforced from the bottom up and not from the top down. If a particular population becomes the majority, they will enforce their notions of morality regardless. How will you prevent them?
Shawn,
The figure of 1,400 victims is probably a gross underestimate, considering that 500 girls seem to have been "in confinement" at any one point of time.
Luke,
In the Ten Commandments, the qualifier "against your neighbor" actually means "against someone of your kind." It also applies to the three previous commandments.
Regarding the 500 missing girls, were they all white? Or it might have been sex-selective abortion on the part of the Pakistanis.By the way, while it was overwhelmingly multiculturalism , the Brits have become very lenient to all forms of crime and criminals, including whites.
"It was an instrument for raising everyone up to British standards of fair play, morality, and civilization. In short, for making the world a better place."
Are you kidding me? What was honorable about the famines in India, the treatment of white Boers by the British, and the Algerians by the French? Why did they deny independence to Hong Kong and India when these two showed potential for reasonably effective self-governance if they cared so much about making the world a better place? Why did they stamp out the smallest signs of rebellion, even non-violent rebellion?
"We are ideologically helpless."
This isn't true. What is ideologically helpless about America's wars in the middle east or south america, or Israel's general aggressiveness?
"When Robert Mugabe dispossessed the British farmers remaining in his country, we could only look on helplessly" So what should we have done? Invaded and bombed Rhodesia? This is merely about respecting national sovereignty. We did what was possible, i.e. sanctions.
" We think it normal to judge ourselves by a harsher standard and others by a more permissive one."
We let people do what they want in their societies because imperialism is over. And lol, you think we bend over backwards because of feelings of guilt? We do it for money. That's why we let the Russians, Saudis, Chinese do what they want but impose sanctions on tiny Cuba and socially engineer Afghanistan. This isn't about race but wealth.
As regards what 'others' do in our societies, this is perhaps valid. But the rotherham incident was about religion as well as race. You suggest that the genetic profile of the criminals is the explanation. But religion or culture is the reason why Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist Asians did not participate. Why do you think people were afraid to speak out because of the criminals' race and not their religion? And why paint Sikh, buddhist Asians with the same brush by focusing on race?
Prof. Frost wildly misinterprets Kipling's poem. It is warning not a shibboleth. This "universal morality" is a meme, an extended phenotype that invades the host to the benefit of the parasite and/or the well-being of the meme itself.
These sorts of universal, imperializing ideologies appear to be a general extended phenotype of the Middle East. They're consistently expressed by Middle Eastern populations, from Christianity and Islam to modern incarnations such as Communism, Randian Objectivism, Political Correctness, Cultural Marxism, etc.
Like it or not, there are universal truths.
The fact that subjective morality is local and predominantly caused by interactions of different genetic combinations in different environments and have produced different environments anthropomorphized, does not justify denying the existence of universal and subjective morality.
What is wrong is the application of universal morality based on extremely sparse precepts of human biology, such as the fundamental dictates of the French Revolution.
does not justify denying the existence of universal and subjective morality.
iiiiiirrrrr
OBJECTIVE morality and not subjetive morality.
related: http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/racism-and-the-prisoners-dilemma/
Economists currently strain every fibre to prove the health of each nation state and global utility is served by immigration. Back in the early sixties, under the influence of economists like Walt Rostow, the West believed that all that was required for global development and worldwide security was the adoption by backward countries of a US-style economic system, primed with infrastructure development. To their surprise it was discovered that the Vietnamese and others wanted to run their own countries.
A paleface minority with their own super-powerful nation states have got a wholly disproportionate share of the good life; which is an injustice if all human beings have the same rights, whereby they ought to have equal desserts.
Appealing to science to explain why egalitarian principles do not reflect the way the world works is, like appealing to religion or the nation,seen as merely a cloak for the self-interest of the powerful (whites).
Whites are actually powerless in defense of their privilege, it is self evident that they must be judged guilty unless they can prove that neither they or their ancestors did nothing wrong, according to an abstract egalitarian standard of probity, to acquire what they have. So for whites collectively their success is moral failure. As an individual, the educated ambitious white only has espousal of ethnic masochism open to him.
We think it normal to judge ourselves by a harsher standard and others by a more permissive one.
This thought has occurred to me as well. One blatant example of this is Edward Snowden. Snowden uncovered some unflattering truths about the United States, which were accurate, but in doing so, his cause has been taken up by left-wing supporters and the country that gave him refuge, Russia, to the extent that Vladimir Putin feels he can now accuse of the US of being "undemocratic."
A grotesque levelling of the playing field has taken place. It's definitely true that the US is far from the ideal democracy it believes itself to be. But it's judged by a harsher standard than, say, Russia, whom Snowden's supporters praise for being a "liberal beacon." Never mind that Russia represses gays and downs commercial jets -- a metadata telephone-snooping program in the US now puts it on the same level, supposedly. This is a grotesque and ridiculous equivalence.
Anon,
The reason cannot be sex-selective abortion, since the census data deviate from the expected sex ratio only in the 15-19 age group. If we look at younger and older age groups, the sex ratio is what one would expect.
"You suggest that the genetic profile of the criminals is the explanation. But religion or culture is the reason why Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist Asians did not participate."
There has been a co-evolution between genes and culture. Human populations have had to adapt to cultural environments just as they have had to adapt to natural environments, more so in fact. Religion is part of our cultural environment, and different religions have selected for different "packages" of behavioral predispositions. I've discussed this point at length in a previous post:
http://evoandproud.blogspot.ca/2014/09/rotherham-search-for-answers.html
"Why do you think people were afraid to speak out because of the criminals' race and not their religion?"
Because race is more taboo than religion. When people want to speak out against immigration, they tend to turn to anti-Islamism because that kind of argument does get some traction in the mainstream media.
"And why paint Sikh, buddhist Asians with the same brush by focusing on race?"
I don't. Religion is a factor in the phenomenon of sex gangs but it isn't the only one. "Groomers" are not only disproportionately of Muslim origin but also disproportionately of African origin. The common factor seems to be descent from a population where polygyny and/or high female mortality have excluded large numbers of young men from the marriage market. There has thus been selection for men who can gain sexual access to women through a different toolkit of personality traits, i.e., the "lover boy" behavioral package.
Reader,
"Never mind that Russia represses gays and downs commercial jets"
I've lived in Russia. The situation of gays in Russia is comparable to that of North American gays in the 1970s. Don't believe what the neocons tell you. They have their own agenda, which is as immune to reality as their agenda for the Middle East.
I know of one incident where a commercial jet was shot down in east Ukraine, apparently by a local militia group. There is no evidence of Russian involvement. Since you use the plural, i.e., "jets", you must be aware of other incidents that I am not aware of. Please enlighten me.
I've enjoyed the last few articles. But I don't feel optimistic. I don't see nEuropeans surviving as a majority And I don't see universal morality surviving without majority nEuropeans.
The demise of nEuropeans is ironic, like potting all the billiard balls quickly and ending up snookered by the opponent's balls left on the table.
Someone commented previously that the whole empathy thing was imaginary. But it's more like having a condition, you know you've got it and you know when you meet someone else who has too.
hey ho....nEuropeans look set to be a branch on the evolutionary tree that went nowhere, just like neanderthals.
"All of this seems obvious to me. Why is it less so to other people?"
One aspect of this is it's a particular layer of the upper middle class who are most susceptible to this way of thinking. They are holding down a majority who are half way between the upper middle class segment of universalists and the mostly particularist morality that is dominant in most of the world.
"Paki males make up about 1-1.5% of of the Rotherham population"
The full truth is still being suppressed.
The Pakistani numbers don't include illegal immigrants/workers and that is one of the root causes of the scale.
Pakistani employers started buying up cheap houses and filling them with illegal workers to work in their stores, restaurants, construction etc - nationally we're talking maybe a million or more.
It's these very poorly paid workers that made up the bulk of the demand for ultra cheap prostitution and ultra cheap prostitution can't be supplied voluntarily.
The grooming gangs existed before as a kind of cottage industry to get a sex slave for a particular extended family and also to service the originally small number of illegal workers but from 1997 on when the borders were opened the number of illegal workers sky rocketed and so did the demand for girls.
It was from that point that the cottage industry grooming turned into a factory production line with Pakistani employers funding the gangs to provide prostitutes.
So - don't believe the stats for the number of males as it doesn't include illegals and that is one of the key elements.
This aspect is being suppressed because of the obvious corollary if people knew: mass immigration of cheap male workers means forced prostitution on a massive scale.
"The figure of 1,400 victims is probably a gross underestimate"
It's an underestimate for Rotherham but a gross underestimate of the total.
There are c. 20 towns where it's as bad as Rotherham and maybe c. 40 more where it's somewhere between 10% and 40% as bad (so averaging 25% so c. another 10 Rotherhams in total from that) for a grand total of somewhere around 30 Rotherhams or c. 42,000 victims.
Do you think a world where people acknowledged openly that the problem lies with races as opposed to culture would be a better place?(Yes I know that race and culture are really two sides of the same coin)
Culture has become a code word for race and is quite effective, so you see some token PoC taking a stand against members of his or her own culture/race.
Using culture as a proxy for race is not a bad idea as it avoids fatalistic biological determinism, sweeping generalizations and doesn't alienate the 'others' who are more like 'us.'
"Because race is more taboo than religion."
"The common factor seems to be descent from a population where polygyny and/or high female mortality have excluded large numbers of young men from the marriage market."
Ok, but these men all had the same culture ( as well as genetic package). It is still possible to talk about this in ideological and cultural terms as opposed to biological, more so because of gene culture coevolution.
Mergen
The issue is cultural clearly - culture determines behaviour patterns (average behaviours); it dictates what is learned, what is acceptable and how unacceptable behaviour is punished and crucially how money is managed.
The interesting academic question is how different populations arrive at their culture. And the pertinent application of that is understanding what hybrid and residual cultures multiculturalism produces and how they behave at the interfaces between them.
The crime itself is ethnicist by definition because it relies on the availability of prey in an ethnic group other than the perpetrators'. But there were a few Sikh victims. Indians and Pakistanis are different ethnically but not racially?
The perpetrators may or may not be racist. Some of them may simply have gone along for the money. But I suspect that they would not have targeted women from their own culture so in effect they are sectarian if anything.
Luke - how is Allegheny pronounced? Alagenny, Alajenny, Alljeany, Alainy ?
"The figure of 1,400 victims is probably a gross underestimate, considering that 500 girls seem to have been "in confinement" at any one point of time."
I missed a bit of the explanation. That 500 figure is from the end of the period covered in the report. It started a lot smaller and then exploded from 1997 onwards after the borders were opened so it was maybe c. 50 at the beginning and c. 500 at the end. The total over the *next* 16 years might be 16*500 but the total of the *previous* 16 years is 16*(some increasing function).
Just an FYI.
(Also most people can't process in one go the scale of the crime that is being committed in broad daylight so I've found it's better to drip-feed the numbers to what they can handle.)
"But there were a few Sikh victims. "Indians and Pakistanis are different ethnically but not racially? The perpetrators may or may not be racist."
I think this NW Euro definition of racism is an example of what PF is talking about.
Counter-intuitively "racism" at the level of continental races is a universalist thing.
clan
->region
->nation
->race
->save the whales
It's a product of and a stage in not seeing the world at the clan level.
The people behind the grooming gangs are *supremely* racist but at a lower level.
Their level of hostility regarding "us" vs "them" and their total disregard for the well-being for whoever isn't "us" is far greater than it is among the native population but the "scale" at which this hostility is applied is different.
So yes, Sikhs and Hindus (and Muslims from far away) *are* a different race to them at the level they apply the "race" (aka us vs them) distinction.
"so it was maybe c. 50 at the beginning and c. 500 at the end"
c. 50 *at a time* -> c. 500 *at a time*
"Sooner or later, we will have to confront them”
Not true, we may ignore them until our state, our people, and our civilization are destroyed.
So gays in Russia are screwing their brains out in bathhouses? Sorry but I wasnt alive in the 1970s and have no idea what this comparison means.
"Ok, but these men all had the same culture ( as well as genetic package)"
Anon,
"Groomers" of Pakistani descent and "groomers" of West African descent are different culturally and genetically.
"That 500 figure is from the end of the period covered in the report"
Yes, but most of the girls had not yet reached the confinement stage, and a certain proportion would never make it that far. If only one out of three girls were in confinement, we're already beyond the official count of 1,400. And that's just for one point in time.
Monty,
Most Western countries decriminalized homosexuality in the late 1960s. In the West, the 1970s were a time when gay sex was legal but still openly stigmatized by most of the population. This is where Russia is today.
I could say more, but I don't see the point. The gay issue is being used opportunistically by people who have a completely different agenda.
@Peter Fros
"we're already beyond the official count of 1,400"
Yes I'm not disagreeing with you i'm just saying it's been increasing exponentially so the area under the curve fits that model - still much higher but not as much as it would be if it had reached a maximum in 1998 and plateaued at that level.
(Plus there's at least 20 other towns just as bad as Rotherham.)
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