Racists and Culturists

Not so long ago it was acceptable to attribute variations in human ability and achievement to variations in ethnicity. The nineteenth century’s eminent thinkers were content to attribute specific mental traits to specific ethnic groups. Some races, it seemed, were not equal to others. Some were brighter or dimmer, kinder or slyer or more indolent, more violent or less capable of sexual restraint.

Consequently, Europeans (who by good fortune discovered themselves to be the brightest race) used these beliefs to justify their conquest and subjugation of other races. Some races needed saving from themselves. Some races were too feeble-minded to drag themselves out of their primitive state. They were certainly too backward to exploit the riches of the lands God was benevolent enough (yet oddly naïve enough) to have bestowed upon them. The technological superiority of Europe could be explained as a product of biological superiority.

After the racially motivated atrocities of the Second World War such views fell from polite conversation. They are still with us of course, but they are far less likely to be voiced. Now if one has a hunch about the inferiority of a particular ethnic group it is safer to blame the culture of that group, rather than its genes.

This is not say that all who decry Islam are just closet haters of Arabs and Pakistanis, or that all those who criticise Israel are just closet haters of Jews. Some are and some aren’t. Some people genuinely do fear other peoples for their culture alone, rather than their biology. For all his delusions, I doubt Tony Blair is a racist in the biological sense. He is pro-capitalist, pro-western and pro Judeo-Christian – to the extent that he is desensitised to the killing of anyone who challenges the influence of these cultures. People of other worldviews can go to hell, and he spent his time in office sending them there. But I doubt biology plays a part. You can be any colour you like with Tony, as long as you subscribe to his mind-set.

This is clearly not the case with the BNP or the EDL, regardless of their protestations. Theirs is old-style biological racism with the thinnest coat of culturist whitewash. Five minutes in the pub would be long enough to discover that you were in the presence of the master race (as so often with master-races, appearances can be deceiving.)

Between these two poles lies a mass of confusion and inconsistency. Many racists and culturists swap clothes freely, as the argument swings. Most people who attribute social evils to race never quite spit out what they mean at root. One moment it sounds like a criticism of biology, the next a criticism of culture. For the sake of clarity then, it might help to spell out the differences. To take a fictional example, one might imagine the rantings of an Eastasian racist:

The people of Eurasia are born lazy.
The people of Oceania are born violent.

Clearly these are biological traits - genetic, fixed, and irredeemable. While not a recipe for genocide, this it is certainly a key ingredient. These are the first steps in the relegation of a section of humanity to a subspecies, the transformation of humans into animals, and, if history is the judge, the same treatment as animals. They may end up feared and isolated, or patted on the head and an attempt made to train them. Breeding with them might be frowned upon, and any offspring born of such a union find themselves spurned. They might not be accorded the same property rights as full humans, and their land considered ripe for exploitation by the more ‘advanced’ races. At the extreme end they may be rounded-up and enslaved, or rounded-up and exterminated.

Alternatively, the more sophisticated Eastasian xenophobe might take the modern ‘cultural’ line:

The people of Eurasia are merely victims of a worldview that causes them to be lazy.

The people of Oceania are merely victims of a worldview that causes them to act violently.

This certainly is less damning. The implication is that if babies from Eurasia and Oceania were brought to the safety and civilization of Eastasia they would develop and prosper as well as any Eastasian child. For all the cultural loathing, at least everybody remains human. One might hope that this key difference would suggest better treatment, and in some respects it might. Presumably this culturist stance would rule out slavery and mass extermination, at least on racial grounds. It implies that everyone should receive equal treatment before the law, and that no-one should be considered less-than-human on grounds of race.

It seems odd to conclude that hating people for their beliefs is any better than hating them for their skin colour, but that could be just because hating people is always wrong. So we could wind it back to ‘mistrusting people'. Is it better to mistrust someone for their beliefs than mistrust them for their skin colour? Here I suppose the answer has to be yes, at least in some cases. A person’s skin colour doesn't govern their actions. It is our thoughts that determine what we do - how nice or nasty we are to others. We can justify mistrust of someone if we believe they harbour harmful thoughts. If we don’t like someone’s ideology we can strive to keep them out of positions of power and influence. This is the heart of political struggle.

But of course if your judgement of another person’s culture is based on ignorance, then your views can be every bit as dumb as a prejudice based on skin colour. You can be every bit as bigoted in selecting cultural traits as you can be in picking racial traits. Furthermore you can be just as fascist in your treatment of those harbouring ‘enemy culture’ as you can of those harbouring ‘enemy skin colour’.

In contrast to the nineteenth century, the invasions and occupations of the early twenty-first century were not justified on racial grounds. This was a ‘clash of civilisations’ not races, or so we were told. Aside from the lies about hidden weaponry, these were wars against regressive culture, toxic politics, the ‘mediaeval mind-set’. Yet when you look at the consequences the differences are trivial. A country is invaded and its civilian population is slaughtered. Anyone resisting is imprisoned and tortured. A regime is installed conducive to the wishes of the invaders, and the country’s riches are syphoned away. An everyday story of nineteenth century racism, just without the racism.

If your possessions are stolen, is it of any comfort to be told it was done because of your ideology rather than your biology? Would a grieving parent care that their children were killed in a dispute over culture rather than race? While it is possible to criticise culture in a way that is never permissible with race, it is the thin end of a wedge. ‘Culturism’ can be every bit as bigoted as racism, and its consequences can be just as awful.