I have often wondered at the white teenage habit of imitating black urban styles of dress, music, language, etc. I think there is a pretty simple reason that this happens.

If you are a white suburban teenager from anything like a decent family, you have a lot of rules to live by. The struggle of adolescence is that you want to be independent of your parents and self-determining in your life before you are really ready for it. Recognizing your lack of readiness, your parents are always keeping a little tighter rein on you than you want, which is a source of frustration.

Into your consciousness comes a group of people who seem to have no rules. They do whatever they want and don’t care what anyone thinks about it. They dress to defy convention. If people don’t like their boom boxes and car stereos blasting so that everyone must endure their noise, tough luck for them. They speak with no civil restraints. Everything forbidden by adults is done openly. “Bad” is a complimentary adjective in this nihilistic world.

For a kid straining under the frustration of lots of rules, manners, etiquette, restraints, you have to stay inside and do your homework, Johnny — this looks like pretty cool stuff. (Of course, for a white kid from a crummy modern family with no discipline, this is just a natural way to be, and he can imitate it without it even being something all that new or rebellious, which is also sadly the case for some, but I digress…) Being young and immature, the white middle-class teen does not realize that what he is witnessing is actually the outward appearance of a totally dysfunctional culture.

Perhaps the most important thing to happen is the revolution in the concept of culture itself. Following the diktats of Marxism, virtually all our intellectual and cultural institutions now accept the primacy of the masses in driving cultural norms. Part of the Marxist “superstructure”, culture, along with politics, art, religion, etc. is driven by the economy of man. Hence, being the obedient Marxists that our professoriat and mediabureua has made us, we now look for direction from those at the lowest rungs of intellectual and cultural evolution, instead of those at the top.

Not too long ago, it was the exact opposite, of course. You only need to take a look at Jacob Riis’ landmark profile, in words and photographs, of immigrant groups entering New York at the turn of the last century. (This is supposed to be the hyperlink version of How the Other Half Lives: http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/title.html )While I’m the last person to romanticize anything associated with immigration, you can’t help but being struck with that generation of immigrants’ desperate desire to emulate the dignity of the middle and upper classes in America. Proper attitudes towards dress, sexual behavior and work prevailed. What a change from today, when only coprophilia and cannibalism still seem frowned upon and we race towards the bottom.

But today our upper classes are if anything even more degenerate than those at the bottom. One cannot see anything to emulate, except in the past.

A week ago, the day after the Grammy’s, on the front page of the Variety section of my local newspaper, I saw an interesting picture of the group “Outkast” (which I believe is a rap group). The group had performed at the Grammy’s. The lead singer of the group, a black man, in the foregroud, was barechested, wearing only a covering made of strips of green cloth, which looked like a grass skirt. The black women singers pr dancers in the background also wore garments constructed out of green strips of cloth to look like a mini grass skirts and grass bras. My thought was that these people are reverting to the jungle.

There is a lot of truth to what Mr. Coleman says, and it has been true for a long time. When I was in boarding school in the early 1970s (a nastily confused time generally, of course) I had some white, well-off schoolmates who did everything short of paint themselves with shoe polish to adapt to the dress and behavior of ghetto black and Puerto Rican scholarship students. Of course the greater inherent virtue of these putatively oppressed non-whites was assumed by everyone from the headmaster to the lowliest freshman. Even I bought that (although not to the point of trying to act and dress black) until my junior year, when the scales started to slip from my eyes.

Steve Sailer has written about a corollary to Mr. Auster’s original observation: to the extent Latin American invaders of the United States assimilate to any culture other than what they bring with them, it is likely to be to the rap-crap culture of black ghettos. I suspect the same is true of Southeast Asians and many Chinese.

The media barons (most of them not black) who inject the filth of the rap “culture” into the American mainstream - and thence to the world at large - have a lot to answer for. We can only pray that their over-reaching at the Stupor Bowl half-time show will draw a reaction. That televised farrago was a fine example of what Mr. Auster means: those “entertainers” who were not themselves black (probably a minority of them) were tying themselves in knots to try to out-black the real blacks. HRS

I think much of this is due to the fact that the white majority has lost any semblance of their own culture. We are not only forbidden from asserting our culture anymore, we are forbidden from believing we even HAVE, or ever had, a distinctive culture that defined the societal norms — especially as having any basis in ethnicity. To the extent that it must be begrudgingly acknowledged, it is attacked as oppressive and ‘racist.’

Something has to fill the void that’s left. People need something larger than themselves to identify with. Black culture is filling that role. Mr. Coleman offers a good explanation, but I would add points of comparison.

Asian culture tends to be more passive, less assertive. Mesitizos are concerned with filling their numbers here and replicating their own culture, uninvited, in our midst. But black culture goes beyond this, being naturally assertive — aggressive — and is continuously at active enmity with the larger culture, (perhaps driven by pride issues relating to their mean on the Bell Curve.) And the racial component is very ‘in your face.’

Whites cannot assert their culture, or even identify ethnically. It is no wonder that so many young, faceless whites are drawn to a culture that can, and does, with the greatest impunity.

One of the day by day wonders of living in a State that is 97% white, and a county that is 99% white, is you see solid reminders of what it was once like in America 40 years ago on a cultural level. It is far from perfect, and of course MTV reaches here with its disfunction; but overall, the overwhelming white demographics rule the day. There never was, and there is not now, any real, or lasting trace of any culture but the one that has always been in place here.

I am reminded of the sad observation of an old general in late Rome. He lamented, “In my youth, the barbarians gave their children Roman names. Now we Romans give our children barbarian names.”

Wish I remembered who the old general was. It seems lot not much has changed about the process of cultural decline in a couple of thousand years.

What country is Mr. Hagan talking about, and how is it managing to avoid the infection of radical leftism?

That is county, not country Mr. Murgos. In New England every State breaks up its regions into geographical locations that they call counties. My county in Central NH is 99% white, where as some of the downstate counties are less so. I believe the State’s largest county is 93 or 94% white.

To follow on Mr. Cox citing a Roman general. In late seventies and eighties most non-american born Chinese I met had English names. I was told in many cases they used English equivalents of their Chinese names. It all changed in the ninties. Now one can hardly meet a resent Chinese immigrant who is using an English name. In some cases names are difficult to pronounce for an English speaker.

Of course Indians, Pakis and Moslems in general have never made any attempt to accomodate English speakers.

To me it is arrogance. When in Rome they would not even attempt to do as Romans do.

Their arrogance is simply a function of our emptiness, our will to non-existence. We have made ourselves a void. They are moving into that void.

A comment on Outkast:
As I understood it, they were dressed up as American Indians. I don’t know if Blacks acting like Amerindians is generally considered racist or not.

Notwithstanding my general agreement with Mr. Auster and others above, I would say that Chinese immigrants show no sign of assimilating any part of black culture. Rather the reverse: the hostility between blacks and Asians in general, at least in New York, is palpable. I do not understand Mik’s particular beef with Indian immigrants. In my experience, the vast majority of them understand English, although they often speak it with a heavy accent, and they are quite well-behaved. I oppose immigration in general, but it is absurd to suppose that all immigrant groups behave alike or are equally unassimilable or hostile.

As obnoxious as it is, my own impression is that “reverse assimilation” (though an apt phrase) is not a serious problem. The coddling of a vicious, anti-social subculture is bad enough without imagining that it is taking over the nation. Nor do all blacks belong to that subculture. I always keep in mind the distinction between black Americans and what I call “American Africans” — i.e. between civilized people who happen to be black, and savages who happen to live in America.

The problem is that the capitalist class is sick, corrupt, decrepit. Our country is disssolving into an amorphous anarchic blob because it is losing its character, its essence. One thing is clear: the capitalist class is on the decline. The only question is what will replace it. Already many groups have begun working to assume power. The homosexualist movement wants homosexuals to become the new dominant class, for example. The feminists want the feminist elite to dominate. The list is long already.

Let us quickly recount the historical revolutions in America. First, the English took dominance in North America away from the Indians. Second, the American farmer-planter class took dominance away from the English. Third, the American capitalists took dominance away from the farmer-planter class.

Now the capitalists have become little more than purveyors of smut and filth. Their “entertainment” is little more than a ribald collection of etchings in a magic lantern gallery. Those capitalists who are not part of the “rap, crap and other smut” industry are engaged in monopolistic practices. The perfect example is Microsoft. Having a monopoly is the ideal because you can keep your focus on moral values and political power without worrying excessively about competition. There are a few non-monopolistic capitalist businesses left that still have standards. These include Disney, Wal-Mart and others. They are falling prey however to the sick culture and will soon be assimilated into the darkness.

What we need in this country is a new group of powerful elites who will have political power, money, and social influence. This new elite must be virtuous and determined. Members must be either Christian or Jewish, and must believe their own creed.

The new class must be exclusively male. They must not apologize for being elite. They must expect to dominate and have the will and ability to dominate. The new elite must be self-aware and culturally homogeneous. This new aristocracy-like class is needed to take the leadership of our country and get it back on the right course. Everyone in this elite will help each other above and beyond they will other people. Their goals will be to lead a virtuous country. Having accomplished leadership, benevolence will extend to all Americans.

To start with, we need some statement of principles that will guide this new elite.

Secondly, this new class must form. It can start small. Then it must acquire some great source of power. Start off with industries. Automobiles, retail, aerospace, and other industries would be a suitable starting base.

Third, by helping one other, this new aristocracy will slowly de-fund the Left, ultimately destroying it. At this point, the aristocracy will have members in control of all the branches of government and the military.

This may be the only way to save America.

Who is that masked rogueleader? :-)

Seriously, I’m impressed by his attempt to formulate a new elite. But he hasn’t said what would be the power basis of this elite. The previous historical elites he describes all had substantial political and economic roles that gave them their legitimate power in society.

As to Mr. Jahn’s point, I agree that the coddling of an anti-civilizational minority is a greater threat to our society than the reverse assimilation of some majority members into that minority. Still, the latter is a real problem and worth discussing.

Offer military officers more status in society. Treat veterans better. Coupled with the new aristocracy’s dedication to morality and virtue, this promise will win over the critical loyalty of the military class. Should push come to shove, and anarchy break out, we will need them to restore order, and they will need the us to reestablish the rule of law.

Approach disaffected capitalists. These might include the Rockefellers, the Waltons, the Gateses, and other families with significant wealth. Note that they are getting edged out by the hypercompetitive environment of unlimited foreign competition, government regulation, high taxes. Now the slow withering away of the moral fiber of the country makes their wealth more vulnerable and less permanent. If they elect to join the new aristocracy, they will be required to help one another and others in the new class, and help to take strategic action to displace the old class.

Make a list of young up and coming individuals, approach them, and offer them entry into the brotherhood.

Ideas are welcome.