Monday, January 16, 2023

On Racial Identities




I owe decency to individuals. As members of a hostile community I don't owe Blacks a damn thing. As a group they have been badly served by "Leaders" who have been corrupt tools of the racists who exploit them. Given that they are a shrinking and not very influential part of the larger society, with above average expressions of social pathologies, I see no reason to invest in promoting the affiliation of people with that identity group. If individuals in response to normal decent treatment affiliate with and identify with productive communities then that would merit support and encouragement.

The question then is what is meant by "Black" as a social group. If it means identifying with Racism Misogyny Antisemitism and violent and criminal behavior then that does not merit support encouragement or tolerance. If it means a group recently arrived in the United States from some backwards and repressive place, which can be applied I think to those grandchildren of slaves who left the former plantations and moved to America in the 20th century, then they deserve neither more nor less support than anyone else. The vast majority of Americans, Jews Germans Italians Greeks Slavs Asians etc are the children of people who migrated to the US from nasty places after the Civil War but before the children and grandchildren of the former slaves left the plantations. Subsequent arrivals by Hispanics, East Asians, East Europeans, South Asians and others add to the overwhelming majority who have their own legacies of oppression that they came to America to escape and who have no connection to any injustice that the ancestors of Blacks faced.

The only people that the Blacks may have had claim against were the minority of Whites in the Slavocracy of the South who used slaves to compete with free white labor. The great great great grandchildren of that group are often found among the Democratic Party elite that still exploits Blacks as an identity group. Indeed some of them are themselves Black, notably Barack Obama. Even the Wasps of the North should not be any logical target for claims advanced by advocates of collective guilt.

What the Left uses the nurtured sense of grievance and entitlement and alienation in the Black community to advance is a general criticism of Capitalism. The thoroughly irrational argument is that since the Jews Italians Russians Wasps etc all benefited from Capitalism in America and the slaves suffered then everyone owes the descendants of the slaves. That is ridiculous on many levels but first because the above mentioned Slavocracy was not a Capitalist society. Indeed that is why a Civil War at the cost of 600,000 dead, proportionately over 6 Million if fought in today's America, had to be fought and to free the slaves.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/antisemitism-worst-among-black-americans-democrats-despite-mlks-defense

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