Race to the Fail - thoughts about racial issues and diversity
Typical to today's discussion about racism is that none of the participants know what racism means. They mix it with human tribalism and tendency to have mixed reactions on strange things, particularly strange cultures. When we talk about race, we usually talk about culture. When people think they are celebrating cultural diversity, they usually celebrate tribalism. Not that there's anything wrong with tribalism - never ending small-scale conflicts, vendettas, honor codes and the like can be very entertaining. Tribalism is obviously where we are heading towards anyway, because we have decided that any idea that could unite us would be oppressive. I rather like early Medieval fortresses and swords and take them any time over current bureaucracy and health and safety laws.
As I tend to see everything in few-thousand years perspective and global scale, I see patterns that transcend any petty theory about racism in the Western culture and power plays.
When a human encounters something different that doesn't fit into his worldview and experience he reacts in either of these two ways:
1. Fear
2. Religious awe.
During our history, we humans have done both. Sometimes we have worshiped invaders as gods. Sometimes we have treated strangers with hostility and fear. We made the fear science in 19th Century.
Civilized people of course are taught to tone down this reactions and as people get to know people of different ethnic backgrounds, meeting "The Other" (how I hate that term) with an axe in hand has changed to cautious stare. We are very aware of this and the staring bothers us, when we are the receiving end. I know everything about staring, because I traveled in Italy once, and I'm blonde in the eyes of Southern European.
Outside of truly racist practices that have existed in countries like South Africa, the examples people give of racism they have encountered always fall on to the category of reactions to different appearances and different cultures. Anything that makes you even slightly different makes your life difficult as any of us teetotalers can tell. If you look different from the majority, be in inherited things you cannot help, such as skin color, height or even bad eyesight, you will get sometimes looks and won't be presented in every tv show. If you look different by choice of fashion or manners, the same. There are no masters and slaves here, no power that automatically goes to someone and deserts the other. Being followed in a shop, someone being impolite, hard time finding a job - not really racism, as racism means an all together different idea.
People by nature are "culturist" and categorize cultures - even those who deny doing this. Cultures live in different stages of barbarism and development. (As a Spenglerian, Europe right now naturally doesn't rate very high for me, and same goes for many other places on this planet).
There is no evil dominant ideology that would favor us whites over everyone else intentionally. There is just human tribalism and fear, that will never be cured by throwing money to any campaigns. Making people -feel emotionally- about past evils, in museums, doesn't cure human race, and neither does emotional outpourings about past evils of fiction writers, or current ones, for that matter.
I will never write token minorities on my stories, just to make other people feel better. We as humans should be intelligent enough, even with all our shortcomings, to transcend our tribalism - in art and literature at least - and be able to relate on characters that we admire because of their qualities and deeds, not their color or ethnicity. Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" is probably the greatest book ever written, and all it's main characters are Russian. Still, if we share the same soul as the Russians, we can relate to this story, regardless of who we are. Similarly we can enjoy watching Chinese or Japanese movies, where every single character is Chinese or Japanese.
How shallow would it be to always look for your own tribe, your own kind, in any story? For a Finnish person this surely would make the list of readable foreign literature quite short as we only seem to appear as bouncers in shady clubs and henchmen of gangster in any foreign classic from Steinbeck to William Gibson.
While our everyday life tends to be tribal, art and stories are something that transcend the tribe and the way we look. We can enjoy Chinese poetry about joys of Tea or H.C Andersen's fairy tales. Stories are bigger than us. Race Fail 09 is just as small as we are at our most tribalist manner, taking everything as a personal insult.
If you cannot relate with stories that don't have characters that look like you, start writing and become the Tolkien of your tribe, be it Finnish, Han- Chinese or African-American. Write a whole mythology, create universes and gods. Stories are more important than your personal issues. Stories survive the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations.
As I tend to see everything in few-thousand years perspective and global scale, I see patterns that transcend any petty theory about racism in the Western culture and power plays.
When a human encounters something different that doesn't fit into his worldview and experience he reacts in either of these two ways:
1. Fear
2. Religious awe.
During our history, we humans have done both. Sometimes we have worshiped invaders as gods. Sometimes we have treated strangers with hostility and fear. We made the fear science in 19th Century.
Civilized people of course are taught to tone down this reactions and as people get to know people of different ethnic backgrounds, meeting "The Other" (how I hate that term) with an axe in hand has changed to cautious stare. We are very aware of this and the staring bothers us, when we are the receiving end. I know everything about staring, because I traveled in Italy once, and I'm blonde in the eyes of Southern European.
Outside of truly racist practices that have existed in countries like South Africa, the examples people give of racism they have encountered always fall on to the category of reactions to different appearances and different cultures. Anything that makes you even slightly different makes your life difficult as any of us teetotalers can tell. If you look different from the majority, be in inherited things you cannot help, such as skin color, height or even bad eyesight, you will get sometimes looks and won't be presented in every tv show. If you look different by choice of fashion or manners, the same. There are no masters and slaves here, no power that automatically goes to someone and deserts the other. Being followed in a shop, someone being impolite, hard time finding a job - not really racism, as racism means an all together different idea.
People by nature are "culturist" and categorize cultures - even those who deny doing this. Cultures live in different stages of barbarism and development. (As a Spenglerian, Europe right now naturally doesn't rate very high for me, and same goes for many other places on this planet).
There is no evil dominant ideology that would favor us whites over everyone else intentionally. There is just human tribalism and fear, that will never be cured by throwing money to any campaigns. Making people -feel emotionally- about past evils, in museums, doesn't cure human race, and neither does emotional outpourings about past evils of fiction writers, or current ones, for that matter.
I will never write token minorities on my stories, just to make other people feel better. We as humans should be intelligent enough, even with all our shortcomings, to transcend our tribalism - in art and literature at least - and be able to relate on characters that we admire because of their qualities and deeds, not their color or ethnicity. Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" is probably the greatest book ever written, and all it's main characters are Russian. Still, if we share the same soul as the Russians, we can relate to this story, regardless of who we are. Similarly we can enjoy watching Chinese or Japanese movies, where every single character is Chinese or Japanese.
How shallow would it be to always look for your own tribe, your own kind, in any story? For a Finnish person this surely would make the list of readable foreign literature quite short as we only seem to appear as bouncers in shady clubs and henchmen of gangster in any foreign classic from Steinbeck to William Gibson.
While our everyday life tends to be tribal, art and stories are something that transcend the tribe and the way we look. We can enjoy Chinese poetry about joys of Tea or H.C Andersen's fairy tales. Stories are bigger than us. Race Fail 09 is just as small as we are at our most tribalist manner, taking everything as a personal insult.
If you cannot relate with stories that don't have characters that look like you, start writing and become the Tolkien of your tribe, be it Finnish, Han- Chinese or African-American. Write a whole mythology, create universes and gods. Stories are more important than your personal issues. Stories survive the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations.