Hi everybody, I’ve been told you miss me. Do you? I thought my posts are boring and irrelevant. I have nothing much to say about the war or politics. I have one of the most humanitarian degrees possible: languages.
Yet, here I am back to talk about racial and economic issues. My post is inspired by Slava and Dust James who’ve recently spoke on Billy Bob’s YouTube channel. Billy Bob, if you are reading this, don’t be mad at Ian, all opinions are mine.
Here’s some background for those of you who’ve never met Dust and Slava. Dust James advocates open borders and rants against the white privilege. He sees a difference between systemic racism and [rare] cases of racial discrimination; he is also pro LGBTQ+. Slava came to the USA after Ukraine turned into a failed state. Slava considers herself a communist and speaks Ukrainian which according to her is closer to Polish than Russian, Dust only wants to organize people who agree on everything. Also Dust argued that there’s no such thing as the white American culture.
Correct? Fine.
Let’s talk about it. I’ll try to be a consistent person in the room.
First and foremost, there is a nasty trend to introduce unnecessary levels of argumentation and superfluous terms like gender vs. sex or discrimination vs systemic racism.
I’ve said on multiple occasions that the idea of some gender in your head is a scam. There’s sex and personality. Self can only identify as self, I have zero idea about how other women identify as women or whether they do it all, but trust me, “I’m a woman” isn’t a thought I wake up with every day. Versatile actors can play men and women alike not because of some gender issues in their heads, but because gender doesn’t exist and personality has no sex, the rest is make-up and art. Also there is your body’s biology with its options and limitations.
Now, let’s pass on to race. It’s racial discrimination that begot systemic racism not the other way round. Humans tend to be xenophobic and racist, all humans, not just white people. Systemic racism appeared in Europe when the economics wasn’t yet ready to give up on free labor (slavery), yet Christianity and Humanitarian ideas got strong enough to condemn it and make uncomfortable. Then fake science was used to legitimize, validate grassroots racism and allow more exploitation. That’s it. Without grassroots racism, systemic racism would have never happened. In a way it’s the same propaganda that was used to demonize eggs and butter. Heart diseases exist and they are somehow related to life-style. The rest was fake science, manipulation and someone’s vested interest. People are gullible when their basic fears are involved: death or the good old “them vs us” and uncanny valley. Go vegan, get vaxxed and support Ukraine.
Open borders and mass migration don’t help the working class and don’t help fight poverty. The opposite is actually true. Illegal migration and cheap foreign labor sustains the supply of the cheapest workforce the global economy still relies on. We still have slaves at the bottom, guys. The world could do without those exploitations now, but someone wants to be a billionaire. With secure borders and firm labor code local workers would be able to demand better conditions. Something you cannot do when there’s a continuous flow of people ready to work for $1 a day. Even migrants would be safer because safe borders mean less human trafficking, organized crime (there is something organized, yeah) and illegal exploitation.
People never agree on everything. That’s why divide and conquer works. That’s why polarization is so efficient. Everyone is 80% mainstream and 20% marginal. There is always something a person will never accept as it touches his personal beliefs, convictions, interests. For example, I find the so-called “Russian traditional values” cringy despite being a Russian patriot. Believing in some organized homogenous group is utopic.
There is such thing as the white American culture. Outsiders are probably best judges here. It’s represented by English-speaking writers from Twain and O’Henry to Dreiser and Shaw, by the Ivy League schools, by the Statue of Liberty, by classical Hollywood movies, icons like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner or Gregory Peck. By the way, Mr. Peck is a stereotypical handsome white American, Tucker Carlson, Bill Clinton and JFK fall into another stereotypical group (typical easy-going American guy, probably not very smart, yet clever and business-like). There is also such thing as Black American culture. For me it started with the Platters, a 1950s band popular in the USSR. And, finally, there is a mixture of the two (Elvis Presley for example). Yet, the white American culture is closer to what is generally seen as the US culture when no magnifying glass is applied: English-speaking protestants with an admixture of other, mostly European(!), flavors brilliantly described by authors like Jack London and Mario Puzo. For a Russian kid from my generation (and kids do make very fast and accurate judgements sometimes) an American kid is a Tom Sawyer who occasionally wears feathers in his hair, plays in a teepee and maybe goes to church on Sundays or a Nancy Drew. Does it make a Russian kid racist who supports white privilege? I don’t think so.
The US culture is very different from Latin American which in turn isn’t something homogenic. There is a huge difference between, say, Cuba (salsa, rumba, rum), Argentina (tango, wine) and Brazil (samba, сachaça), Mexico (Jarabe Tapatio, tequila). Languages are different (Spanish dialects vs. Portugues) and the degree of impact of slavery on the culture, economics and ethnic background is very different too.
Finally, something that may seem off-topic. I’m a linguist and I must say that Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian languages belong to the Eastern-Slavic group, Polish belongs to the group of Western Slavic languages. These groups started to divide around the fifth century, as Slavic tribes populated a large territory. Western Ukraine and Western Belarus did experience influence of the Polish language, there are many Polish borrowings there, yet, it cannot change the origin of those language and didn’t impact their grammar. The Ukrainian language has lately experienced a lot of deliberate adulteration and its western dialects were imposed on people in the Central Ukraine; older people have problems with it. For more details please refer to research papers on the subject. Saying “were aren’t Russians” isn’t an identity. It’s just another superfluous idea like gender or racial discrimination as opposed to biological sex and systemic racism.
I agree and disagree with you, but you’re basically sound.
Thanks for the article.
Interesting post. It is refreshing to read something rational these days.
“Humans tend to be xenophobic and racist, all humans, not just white people.”
Yes.
It sounds ironic, but it is something that all races share universally as human beings.
I am not white. I am a typical Yellow living in the Far East region.
However, when it comes to racism, it arises in exactly the same way.
It arises in conjunction with national conflicts and social unrest, neighbouring people of the most genetically similar race exchange vitriolic discrimination against each other.
“Open borders and mass migration don’t help the working class and don’t help fight poverty. The opposite is actually true.”
I find this a little hard to accept for those of us who have had a ‘democratic education’ in the West.
Freedom of movement has been praised in both political science and economics.
In economics, the more labour and goods can be moved quickly to the most efficient form, the more desirable it is, ‘efficient deployment’ of labour and resources were justice.
In this relation, a borderless world and freedom of migration were considered economically desirable.
In Political science, I seem to remember that the ability of peoples to move without being bound by borders or regimes was seen as a victory of modernity over feudalism.
Describing very simplistic though, ” In feudal times, freedom of occupation and freedom of regional mobility did not exist for many people around the world. But now, as time has moved on, we can move across states and borders without being bound to the land of our birth or the occupation of our ancestors, we now never a serf. This is a victory for humanity.”
Something like this.
This is why people who never consider themselves capitalist dogs, even those who think they are on the liberal left and against poverty and exploitation, vaguely believe that a world without borders is a good thing.
I’m totally fine with open borders as far as cultural exchange is concerned. Also, of course people have to be able to (e)migrate, but they should accept the necessary bureaucratic process. Then it’s not a large-scale thing.
Well written.
Excellent essay. However, I will post a minor correction that I hope is illuminating.
“There is such thing as the white American culture. Outsiders are probably best judges here. It’s represented by English-speaking writers from Twain and O’Henry to Dreiser and Shaw, by the Ivy League schools, by the Statue of Liberty, by classical Hollywood movies, icons like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner or Gregory Peck.”
The first sentence is correct, but the examples of off. The oddest is that “Shaw” was not an American. He was born in Ireland and lived his entire adult life in London and the Home Counties. I assume you mean George Bernard Shaw, because I can’t think of any well known or even semi-known American with that name.
There is a literary American culture, but Americans don’t pay much attention to it, and its interesting that the literary examples are off. Twain, yes, but no one now reads O’Henry and Dreiser. They were big in the first half of the twentieth century and are now forgotten. Maybe they are still read in Russia, in translation. I think “The Great Gatsby” is still read, and two movies were made from it, so you can still use Fitzgerald as an example, and people have at least hear of Hemingway. Come to think of it, all of your examples, except Twain and the Statue of Liberty, are from the mid twentieth century.
I also love reading your posts and look forward to them. Please continue often.
As to the topic of your post today, please allow me to venture into uncharted water.
Life has existed on Earth for about a billion years, and our species has existed for about 200,000 years, give or take. Like all living things, we have evolved many sub-cohorts which we differentiate via terms like race, ethnicity, and numerous cultural characteristics such as language and religion. Most of these differences are traceable to how each grouping adapted to a local environment and came to exist largely because it helped those inhabitants survive and thrive under the unique conditions of that locality. There is no right or wrong in these differences, just a manifestation of what “works” for that group in that place. All of this is routinely evident elsewhere in the animal kingdom, and biologist love making these discoveries and associations.
What does this mean for today’s topic? No one gets to pick their parents, nor the circumstances in which they are nurtured. You are born with a genetic heritage which we call race and ethnicity; it is what it is. You learn to speak the local language; how could it be otherwise? You are inculcated with local customs and traditions; which we call culture. Likely you adopt the religion of your parents. All of these things you acquire as a young child without any volition. Your only choice is to play the hand you’ve been dealt in life; whatever that may be.
Why do we argue or fight over differences among us? How can anyone hold a new born in their arms, look a baby in its eyes, and then judge them for things over which it has no choice?
Almost all evolutionary adaptation takes place slowly over many generations and eventually produces distinctions that are optimized for a particular local environment. When someone moves to another distinctly different environment, the legacy traits of their original environment may no longer be advantageous and they find themselves at a disadvantage in the new place. Civilization can mitigate this to some extent, but only if assimilation is achieved. And that is the public policy issue which cannot be ignored. Without assimilation, there can be no peace because differences dominate rather than commonalities.