Editor: Another encore exploring the topics of race, culture and ethnic nationalism, this time from Adam Piggott.
This article by was originally published on 14/11/16 at www.pushingrubberdownhill.com, where Adam blogs regularly and brilliantly.
My piece on culture that I wrote the other day was cross-posted on XYZ online magazine. One of the comments caught my eye:
“Excellent insight on the left-right issue, though if you are referring to ‘race’ when you mention the ‘color of people’s faces’, then you lost me. Culture has nothing to do with a person’s race.”
I have pondered this at length as it did not sit well with me. If culture does not have anything to do with race then what is it bound by? Race means many things. As The Z Man states, it is made up of biology, ancestry, and heritage. Although he is referring to tribalism and national identity, I believe that this is concomitant with race.
After forty years of multiculturalism, we have been taught to believe that all cultures are equal. And yet, if you suggest that a Western culture is superior to some backwater tribe living in a third-world hellhole, you will immediately be accused of being a racist.
How curious.
Likewise, a great deal of propaganda is given over to the glories of Australian aboriginal culture. One only has to lay claim to a one-sixteenth genealogy and have that ratified by an aboriginal tribe, and then the culture is open to that person. Failure to possess that genealogy negates any claim at being aboriginal.
Curiouser and curiouser. Sounds like biology, ancestry, and heritage to me. Sounds like race. Of course, the common theme here is that it is only racist when whites seek to do the same.
With Trump’s victory, a lot of people are talking about culture and how it has absolutely nothing to do with race. Over at Catallaxy Files a guest poster has a piece that states that culture is language. To whit, learn the English language and hey presto – you’re part of the culture.
“The language itself contains within it the memory of 1066 and the lessons thereof, and is the progenitor of all worthwhile you see in our civilisation: Liberty. A drive to explore new frontiers. An anti-authoritarian streak. A desire for property and property rights. Freedom of worship.”
I would counter with the idea that the English language is merely the vehicle that holds the seeds of our common history, ancestry, and heritage. The idea that anyone who learns English can then lay claim to that common bond is simply ludicrous. I speak Italian fluently and lived there for a very long time but I would never consider myself to be an Italian, and neither would my Italian friends.
“We have nothing to fear from immigration, because English is not a race, and the English-speaking people can absorb anyone.”
There are towns in areas of England that would seriously disagree with the two premises in that statement.
John C. Wright is adamant that it is religion and not race that determines culture. Apparently the explanation for the number of minorities who voted for Trump is due to them being Christian, although he gives no evidence to support this claim. While I certainly agree that Leftism as it is practised is the new religion of the 20th century, I do not see how Christianity in its current troubled form can lay claim to Trump’s success.
Did the Amish who came out and voted in all their numbers for Trump do so because of their religion or because of their race?
According to the 2002 census, over 84% of the population of Uganda was Christian. I lived there for almost two years and I have never experienced such an alien environment as that one. It is a completely different culture to that of Australia or England, and even though it shares not just the same language and religion but the same political and judicial systems, one cannot in any good faith make the argument that Uganda has the same culture as those two other countries. Their culture is bound up in their biology, their shared history, and their ancestry and customs. In their race.
And as a white man living there, I felt not just alienation but a degree of loneliness. It was not my place. I was a stranger in a strange land. I felt that to a much lesser extent in Italy but it was still there. In Canada it was practically non-existent, and even less so in England. I empathise with immigrants from alien cultures and I understand why they seek to retain the cultures and trappings of their former home. It stems from a desperate attempt to feel in place. But that does not make it appropriate, for it is always at the expense of the host culture.
Those forty years of multiculturalism have also left ordinary people terrified of the racist card. Perhaps that is why so many writers are now jumping through hoops to demonstrate that culture and race have nothing to do with each other. Perhaps this desperation stems from the fact that people are extremely uncomfortable with the potential consequences of waking up to this fact. The truth is that we have forty years of grave errors to deal with. The longer the accounting is put off, then, the worse will be the bill.
I do not think that there is any possibility of the USA or Australia reverting to white nations, and nor would I condone this direction. Those extremists on the alt-right who scream for a land for whites only are just as deluded as SJWs in their own stupid way. But we need to be able to discuss these topics without fear of being labelled with one of the usual monikers. Culture is inextricably bound up with race, and the sooner we acknowledge and face up to that fact, the better off we all will be.
