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The real double standard
In the Jim Crow South, blacks were allowed to live (when they weren’t being lynched), but only as second class people, under the thumb of the whites, subject to humiliating restrictions on their rights and conduct, and denied equal dignity as human beings. Contemporary America looks back at this period of history with feelings of unappeasable guilt and horror and endless condemnation of America itself as a wicked country. In the Muslim lands such as medieval Spain, Christians were allowed to live (when they weren’t being killed), but only as second class people, under the thumb of the Muslims, subject to humiliating restrictions on their rights and conduct, and denied equal dignity as human beings. Yet the contemporary West looks back at Muslim Spain as a glorious Golden Age of tolerance, pluralism, and the flowering of a diverse culture, indeed as the model for less diverse and tolerant Europeans to follow. The way these two societies, the Jim Crow South and Muslim Spain, each with its own double standard, are treated so radically differently, is the real double standard. And what is the source of that double standard? It is the respective role played in each by the non-white or non-European Other. In the American South, the non-white Other was being kept down by whites, so whites (even those born decades after that system ended) must feel forever guilty about that. In Muslim Spain, the non-European Other was putting down the Europeans, so that tyrannical behavior must be approved and celebrated. Whites ruling non-whites is the worst thing in the world, and proves the unworthiness of America to continue as a distinct, white-majority society. Non-European Muslims ruling white Christians is the greatest thing in the world, and shows the superiority of Muslim civilization to our own.
How long will the West go on indulging this suicidal double standard? Email entry |