"Macaca" takes on "white nigger" and wins in a landslide.
A few years ago the newly-elected mayor of Washington, DC had to dismiss a member of his staff for using a racial slur in a policy-planning session. The white Caucasian of Anglo-Saxon descent was speaking to his colleagues when he dropped the N-bomb, shocking everyone in attendance. They immediately demanded that this individual be fired, despite his profuse apologies for using the offensive word. Under great pressure the man offered his resignation, which the mayor accepted, putting an end to the controversy.
With justice served and sensibilities restored, the government of Washington, DC returned to the people’s business, secure in the knowledge that racism would not be tolerated in any form, shape or manner. Only there was one small thing about the incident that didn’t quite fit the paradigm. You see, the offensive word that was used was “niggardly,” which is found in dictionaries everywhere, and means stingy or parsimonious. It was in use in the English language several centuries before the similar-sounding racial slur came into being.
But you see that didn’t matter, because the ignorant, uneducated employees of the Washington, DC government didn’t know that. And because they didn’t understand that niggardly was a perfectly acceptable word to use when discussing budgetary matters and public spending, it became a racial slur. To add insult to injury, the white Caucasian of Anglo-Saxon descent who dropped the non-N bomb apologized to everyone for offending them with the use of that term. He should have known they were too stupid to understand the English language, and used a more appropriate word to communicate the fact that the DC government was running out of money, and it was about time that someone started to implement sensible spending policies.
Now fast-forward a few years. A sitting U.S. Senator used an actual racial slur in a public setting. This isn’t a case of a similar-sounding word misinterpreted by a thirty-year-old bureaucrat with a fourth grade education. The guy actually said it! This makes him unfit for public office, and we ought to join the chorus of voices demanding his immediate resignation. To tolerate activity like this is completely unacceptable whether the man apologized or not, and whether he professed that it was only a slip of the tongue that does not represent his true feelings about people of color. If we opened his bedroom closet I’m sure we’d find white sheets and a hood, because once a man reveals his true character by his words and actions, no amount of “explaining away” can erase the stain of his past.
I’m speaking here, of course, of Senator Robert Byrd’s use of the phrase “white nigger” on Fox Television in 2001. You all remember the chorus of condemnation that followed Byrd’s racist utterings on national TV? Funny, neither do I. You see, this man who was the Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK Klavern, who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and who is the only US Senator to have opposed both black Supreme Court nominees, is a Democrat. So he gets a pass.
But Republican Senator George Allen referred to a young man of Indian descent as “Macaca,” and for this there is no forgiveness. Forget about the fact that until a couple of weeks ago not a single human being in the United States knew what a “Macaca” was, or even how to spell it. George Allen is a racist who routinely uses racist words to denigrate non-white Caucasians of Anglo-Saxon descent. And for this he must be defeated at the polls.
Those of you old enough to remember Mad Magazine’s non-smear political smear will appreciate the irony of where this phony outrage of political correctness has led us to today: “My opponent has a nephew who subscribes to a phonographic magazine. His wife is a thespian and has performed her acts in front of paying customers . . ..”
This is why the Left has no credibility when they manufacture charges of racism against conservatives and Republicans while ignoring obvious examples of actual practices by Liberal Democrats. It’s how Speaker-to-be Pelosi can denounce Republicans as the party of corruption while one of her own party’s members is caught stashing $90,000 in bribe money in his refrigerator. And it’s how the mainstream media can routinely talk about the failure of the Bush economic policy as unemployment falls, real wages rise, and the government collects more tax revenues than projected.
The root of all our problems, I contend, can be traced to the day that we collectively decided that “colored people” was an insult (even though the NAACP is still called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), but “people of color” is just fine. Try explaining that to a friend of mine from England who to this day still can’t understand why a preposition (or lack thereof) makes you a racist or not.
So when I hear someone describe me as a “neo-con” without having the slightest idea what that actually means (it just sounds “harsh”), or throw around words like Marxist or “Jeffersonian Republican” with absolutely no idea what they are talking about, I think back to the glory days of American history when sanitation engineers were garbage men, para-professionals were hired help, and racists were people who judged other people by the color of their skin. Today, those who don’t immediately separate human beings on the basis of skin color, sex and religion are called “racists,” while those who categorize every person by their race/sex/religion/gender preference are said to be the enlightened ones.
As a public service to those who feel the need to categorize and classify their fellow human beings, but who want to avoid being Borked or Macacaed by the guardians of political correctness, I offer you a substitute way of viewing the world. It’s one that has served me well, and has allowed me to develop genuine friendships with many people from a wide variety of divergent backgrounds.
It all boils down to a simple formula. When we meet someone for the first time, we tend to put that person into a category (young/old, black/white, attractive/ugly, educated/uneducated, etc.) so we can have an initial frame of reference. We use that frame of reference to then begin a longer-term (and more precise) evaluation of them. The trick is to put each person in the proper fundamental category so that all of our subsequent evaluations are meaningful.
Now, most people divide up the world incorrectly. They want to hire someone "young," marry someone "beautiful," only listen to someone "from the right school," and so forth. Thus, for example, by focusing only on a young person for a new hire, they miss interviewing older, potentially better candidates. Not only do they limit the pool of people they could hire/marry/take advice from, etc., they maximize contact with someone who could potentially injure them or lead them astray.
I've avoided this by focusing on the proper fundamental question when I first meet a person. I still see the same young/old, pretty/ugly, etc. attributes as everyone else, but I base my initial judgment of their worth on another variable, the fundamental one. I ask myself the simple question: Is this person an a**hole?
A black jerk will screw you differently than a white one, a pretty one differently than an ugly one, and so on and so forth. But the net effect is that you will always get screwed. By dividing up the world properly, I limit the opportunity for people to do injury to me while, at the same time, broadening the possibility of having contact with positive, productive people.
It’s a formula that works every time it’s tried. I highly recommend it to liberals who feel a genetic need to categorize and classify, and to conservatives who are tired of getting Borked by people you thought were your friends.
It will also have the additional salutary benefit of removing any and all PC considerations from your daily life, because in the final analysis I don't really care about a person's color, sex or other qualities. What I really want to know is the answer to that single, simple question. Understanding it tells me everything I need to know.
Mr. Jackson,
Are you trying to be comical? If so, it is working.
“Rather than obfuscate the conversation with arcane references to the past that have no relevance to the way the world actually operates today…”
Uhm, Mr. Jackson, respecting the past and the received wisdom of our forefathers would be this little thing we call … err … I don’t know … maybe … perhaps … CONSERVATISM!
If “arcane” references to the past are for you an attempt to obfuscate and have no relevance then I would suggest that you are a modernist and not a conservative and perhaps you would feel more at home at a website called Intellectual Modernist.
The problem is that your “enlightened” attitude, and your obvious contempt for people who hold older, less “enlightened” beliefs is very typical of modern “conservatism.” That is why Dabney was right when he said that American conservatism has never conserved anything. It is just go slower progressivism. But I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in what Dabney said since any reference to him would be arcane in your mind I’m sure.
Given the hostility of the PC Gestapo to anyone who dares to transgress PC right think, it is perfectly understandable that people would not want to give their full name and e-mail address. It shows no bravery on your part that you are willing to do so since you are giving a pitch perfect rendition of the establishment party line.
Red Phillips
redphillipsmd@yahoo.com
Regular Ether Zone columnist
Jay –
Man, first I’m called a neocon, then I’m labeled a Marxist, now I find out I may actually be a moderate. I feel like I hit the political tri-fecta!
Unfortunately, we have our bozos on the Right just like you guys have them on the Left (although I still contend there are a lot more Michael Moores out there than genetically pure True Conservatives). Still, it’s embarrassing enough to know that my side can be as nutty as yours on any given day. It just goes to show how silly it is to label people instead of debate ideas as you were decent enough to do with me.
I am about to unleash a series of essays about the really outrageous beliefs of the Left, so don’t take too much comfort in what you see here. I think you’ll find, in general, that the political Right tends to let the facts lead their opinions instead of their opinions creating the facts, which is why this kind of discussion is ultimately very useful. It forces people to say what they actually mean, rather than hide behind platitudes and arcane citations.
By the way, kith and kin essentially means homeland and family, or friends and family, depending upon how exclusive you want it to be. Think of it like a Sprint ad – but for whites only.
Take care, Phil
Red:
I appreciate your decency in at least identifying yourself, so what I’m about to say doesn’t particularly apply to you unless you actually think this way.
Anyone who wants to state that “Real Conservatism” requires you to be a segregationist and recognize the genetic superiority of inbred white Europeans is an idiot.
As I explained in comment #41, if you want to deliberately distort what the Classical political theorists said about politics to suggest that everyone needs a DNA test to choose their political allies, you’re an idiot. I don’t know how to put it any more clearly than that.
Just because a couple of pseudo-intellectual bozos at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution decided that God wanted all True Conservatives to avoid “race-mixing” doesn’t mean that this is the definition of “True Conservatism”. It means that these people are idiots, and anyone who still thinks this way in the 21st century is an idiot too.
And just because some idiot on the Left hijacked the term “equal rights” and turned it into a weapon against conservative values doesn’t mean that whites are superior to blacks, and the races should be kept apart. It means that these people on the Left are as big an idiot as the people on the Right who think their 600 year old alleged bloodline makes them a superior human being.
Now unless you want to boldly proclaim your adherence to any of these idiotic principles, no one is going to attack you. If you actually read the article I originally wrote, you’ll understand that stupidity on the Right deserves the same response as stupidity on the Left. This is about as un-PC as you can get.
So before you chastise me for not immediately embracing the “enlightened views” of closet racists who want to justify their idiotic conclusions by bastardizing Plato and Locke, you might want to step back and actually think about the “enlightened views” that were presented by the people you are defending. I spent a lot of time in a different essay talking about the philosophical underpinnings of the Declaration of Independence and how it has impacted issues from slavery to abortion. Not once did I require anyone to prove their genetically pure bloodline to take advantage of the inalienable rights bestowed by our Creator.
As for asking all racists to proudly identify themselves instead of hiding behind their anonymity, it has absolutely nothing to do with “PC Hostility”. But it has everything to do with not wanting anyone to know you’re an absolute raging Clymer who still believes that only whites can talk to God, and that only the genetically pure deserve the right to call themselves Conservatives.
Comical? Hardly. It’s embarrassing to have people who think this way profess to hold the values of Locke, Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan.
Well. Whatever happened to “Lewis”? He seems to have disappeared.
That means that I cannot respond to him; you can’t respond to someone who isn’t there.
And since Phil resides on such a higher moral plane than the likes of me, he could never look down far enough from Mt. Olympus to see me on this earthly street.
But for the sake of anyone reading this, I will say of Lewis’ statement, that it is impossible to have a good faith discussion with someone who uses lies as his point of departure, and who demands that I slavishly follow his lies.
I was born in 1958 in the state of New York. During my childhood, the word “colored” was never a racial insult. Period. Not only that, but it was the most widely used term among both races, to refer to blacks. As a young child, I never heard the word “negro” or the “n”-word.
(The term “negro” was always written lower-case until ca. 1903, when W.E.B. DuBois undertook a letter-writing campaign to the editor of every daily newspaper in America, to harass them into capitalizing it.)
“Negro” was used by the wealthy, the press, and public figures in public discourse. I never heard the “n”-word until I was at least eight years old. When I was a teenager, although I spent as much time around blacks as whites, I heard it almost exclusively from whites. Over the past twenty years, I have heard the term much more than I did in my childhood, app. 95 percent of the time from blacks, app. 5 percent of the time form Puerto Ricans, and less than .01 percent of the time from whites.
I don’t know what race “Lewis” is, but he strongly insinuates that he is black, and assumes based on that insinuation that he is racially privileged to lie about history and define the terms being used, in order to rig the discussion. To him and his ilk, I say, Slavery was abolished 141 years ago. You don’t get to rig the race debate, or any other debate, for that matter.
To Phil: I am in awe of you, Sir.
I was raised a devout, fundamentalist integrationist. But I ran into a problem: Blacks are not integrationists; the vast majority of them are segregationists. (I also once believed Stephen Jay Gould, until I found out that he was, shall we say, a fibber.) Unless a white is wealthy (since there are some blacks willing to integrate with “green” people) or a saint, like Phil, trying to integrate with segregationist blacks leads to absurdities … and boo-boos. After all, not even Martin Luther King Jr. believed his own line about “the content of their character,” which he, after all, uttered in a speech in which he elsewhere demanded race-based affirmative action and reparations. And so, Phil is even more of a saint, if that is possible, than MLK was.
Some more reasons for my awe of Phil follow:
He manages, so he tells us (and who am I to doubt him? I don’t want to be called a racist!) to be color-blind in relation to people for whom everything is reducible to race.
He manages to remain color-blind, in spite of having been singled out for brutal beatings and robberies; and having been arrested on false charges, and gang-raped in prison, based on the color of his skin; the women in his life having been singled out and raped, robbed, and murdered; and his young children having been cursed, threatened, their bones broken, and robbed; all based solely on the color of their skin.
After all, a saint like Phil would never talk the way he does, based on having lived in a racial cocoon. His beliefs must be based on his having experienced the full range of racial reality. He and his must have scars. (I am not speaking figuratively here.)
But I do have one question for St. Phil. Given that whites who publicly make statements (e.g., that race matters or even much milder ones, such as “we should teach all black children Standard English”) using their real names that show less saintly enlightenment than he does risk being fired from their jobs and whitelisted from their professions, while blacks who make the same sort of statements are rewarded with prestigious, high-paying jobs and book deals, why does he reserve his ire for whites? After all, I know that given his own moral purity, he would never call on whites to sign their real names to a defense of segregation, while hoping – and helping – that their lives will be destroyed. Right?
Generally conservatives are pro-segregation while neo-conservatives are anti-segregation.
I’m a conservative, and I definitely support segregation. It is a part of human nature. Only a utopianist tries to undo human nature with Big Brother projects (racial integration, busing, etc.).
John:
Okay, maybe my original instincts were right after all.
I didn’t “refuse” to answer your question. You just stopped reading. I figured that anybody who advocates national policy based on the conversations they overhear from other people, and then assumes that the entire world is like that, might benefit from an explanation about the difference between logical and illogical conclusions from a given assumption.
Here’s what I said:
“I guess we have two basic choices to deal with the idiocy of this when non-white races want to claim special status or distinction based on the color of their skin. We can either join them and become as big a Clymer as they are, or we can block their stupidity the same way we damp down the pseudo-intellectuals of our own ‘race’.”
We can’t stop people from saying stupid things, since this is America and you have a right to be a fool. But we can educate against ignorance in whatever form it appears, and organize ourselves to block the passage of racist legislation (whatever its source) within the context of the American political system. Since we live in a pluralist democracy the results will not be instantaneous. This is one reason why we have elections.
Or, we can just be as stupid as the other people who spout racist tripe and join that club.
I write at length in my essay “What Kind of Car would Jesus drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion clinic?” about how we battled the ignorance that justified human slavery in the 19th century, and how we can overturn the abortion culture today. I’d apply that same prescription to this issue.
Now tell me how being a white racist fool is going to help you “defeat” all the other non-white racist fools?
Mr. Stix
It’s a little hard to tell where reality drifts off and allegory takes over in your comments. It might be time to check those meds, or at least have a neighbor look in on you from time to time.
Sir Anthony
Why am I not surprised that anyone who calls himself “Sir Anthony” is a segregationist.
To everyone else
Notice how a simple proposition that the fundamental way to look at another person is to ask the question “are they a ‘jerk’?”, rather than “what color/age/sex., etc are they?”, becomes a polemic by genetically-pure True Conservatives who need to tell you how innately inferior everyone else in the world is, and then launch into discussions of forced busing, overheard conversations, and prison gang-rape to justify their positions?
This is obviously what Plato and Aristotle had in mind, not to mention Locke and St. Augustine, when they laid down their ten point plan for REAL Conservatism.
All you have to do is let people talk and the truth will reveal itself in many different ways.
NEW ESSAY
I see they just posted my Racial Purity Quiz. Many thanks to those of you who provided the material for this essay.
I won’t be responding to any more genetically-superior commentary on this essay now that the Quiz is up. So for those of you who feel the need to tell us about your centuries-old DNA trail, or have any other forced busing or prison-rape fantasies you need to explore, go at it with all the gusto you you can manage. It will be a lot of fun just watching you define yourselves even further without the need for additional commentary from me.
Last one out of the gene pool is a neo-Marxist, or whatever other big word you can remember to illustrate your innate superiority.
Mr. Jackson,
Your reply to me deserves a book in response, but I will post a “brief” reply under your new essay since that is where I suspect the action will be transferring.
But would you please answer me one question? What exactly is a “Clymer?”
Red
Adam Clymer was a national correspondent for The New York Times. During a campaign event, then candidate Bush saw him and said into an open microphone “There’s Adam Clymer, that major league a**hole from the New York Times.”
And so, his name has become synonymous with the exit point of a human being’s alimentary canal.
How Race Matters: Ideas
“Traditional conservatives have never felt this way. Race does matter. So does loyalty to one’s family, ancestors, region, blood and soil, kin and kith.”
(No. 9)
Thank you John
“…I support segregation. And there is not a damn thing wrong with this.”
(No. 27)
Thank you Chris
“…The Frankfurt School came up with this idea to undermine European / White solidarity. Traditionally, blood and soil / kin and kith have been central to conservatism.
Aristotle supported such a concept, borrowing the very phrase “blood and soil” from Plato. St. Augustine supported this as well.”
(No. 13)
“If you look at traditional philosophical conservatism (e.g. Weaver, Kirk, et al), there is much allowance for distinctions made on race, etc. Weaver, Kirk and Eliot all supported segregation – a very wise concept.
Such distinctions (based upon a Burkean ‘prejudice’) have been central to conservative thought. Conservatives should rail against the meaningless abstractions of the Enlightenment (such as “we are all equal”), and harbour a more traditionalist outlook: kith and kin / blood and soil. As Cicero said of natural law in De Legibus, it is based upon traditions of the “ancestors.”
In short, blood lines are important and so are their proximity…”
(No. 30)
“According to recent DNA studies (see U. Penn Genetics Survey), about 95% of “white Americans” are of pure European blood. Probably about 5% would have one African ancestor out of about 256 ancestors. True, many blacks and whites had babies together, but there was the “one drop rule” and these kids would have been considered black, and never would have “crossed the racial line,” which is why you only have about 5% of whites with African blood. About 45% of blacks have white blood.
Without kith and kin / blood and soil, without any recognition of the importance of ethnicity, you are left with the left-wing “proposition nation,” given to us by Enlightenment radicals and later Marxists.
Like Kirk and Weaver (the “fathers of American Conservatism”), …race does matter.”
(No. 33)
“Regarding national identity, if you think what a person believes is more important than his ethnicity, then you are a proponent of the “proposition nation,” a radical concept put forward by revolutionaries and Marxists. Prior to the Leftists introducing the “proposition nation,” a more traditional mode of life reigned supreme.
…the essentials (e.g. Aristotle’s communitarian ethics, Cicero, Eliot, Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, etc.).”
(No.35)
Thank you Cato
“Maybe in a perfect world people wouldn’t recognize race. But this isn’t a perfect world.
No one can deny that AMONG ALL OTHER RACES/ groups (except whites) racial identity is very strong.
Asians-
[Blacks]
[Mexicans/ 'Chicanos']
[Persians]
[Arabs]
…so should whites. …promote white interests [!]…”
(No. 38)
“…other races (except whites) do have a strong ‘racial [ethnic] identity’…they always [most GENERALLY at least] promote it.
(No. 44)
Thank you John
“…your ‘enlightened’ attitude, and contempt for people who hold older, ‘less enlightened’ beliefs is very typical of modern ‘conservatism.’ …Dabney was right when he said that American conservatism has never conserved anything. It is just go slower progressivism… Dabney…arcane [?]
Given the hostility of the PC Gestapo to anyone who dares to transgress PC Right Think, it is perfectly understandable that people would not want to give their full name and e-mail address. It shows no bravery on your part that you are willing to do so since you are giving a pitch-perfect rendition of the establishment [more Politically Correct] party line.”
(No. 51)
Thank you Red
“Blacks are not integrationists; the vast majority of them are segregationists.”
(No. 54)
Thank you Nicholas
And, THANIKS AGAIN to those intelligent and thoughtful commentators listed above for their posts. How refreshing.
Is it not sad that being PROUD TO BE WHITE nearly always earns one a title of ‘racist’ or ‘bigot’?
Lunacy.
ASIDE FROM scientific, political, governmental contributions made by certain races/ethnicities over the last roughly 6000 years since life ‘as we know it’ began OR THE ABUNDANTLY CLEAR LACK THEREOF by certain others… (Would I be more correct to describe it as LAVISHLY NON-existent?)…
IF one considers EVEN SOME of the copious data in articles such as the one titled
“The Color of Crime: Ground-Breaking New Study Released” by Nicholas Stix, October 2005 (Thank you YET ONCE MORE Nicholas), then attention to and respect for, DIFFERENCES IN RACE MUST be recognized.
Being ‘created equally’ and ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’ DID NOT MEAN, and SHOULD NOT MEAN that patterns of speech, behavior, family interaction; appetites and inclinations to conduct one’s self in a respectful/ respectable, law-abiding, civilized, and dare I say patriotic (?) COULD NOT or WOULD NOT correlate generally to race or that there WOULD NOT or MIGHT NOT be ‘interference’ to behaving in such a manner because of one’s ethnicity…
Political Correctness = Animal Farm
Burn the farm.
THIS CONVERSATION HAS MOVED TO A NEW THREAD.
MAKE COMMENTS AT:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/the-“true-conservative”-racial-purity-quiz/
Dear Paul (#61),
Thank you for your kind words.
Dear Nicholas-
You’re welcome.
Because of your skill and abiltiy to research for , then write such compelling articles… I wonder what your thoughts are about writing one similar to that which was referenced in #61, but related more specifically to Criminal Aliens in the United States (fromMexico & Central America in particlur, but from everywhere else too…)…?
Keep up the good work.