The real explanation for the anti-white double standard

Why are whites eagerly canceling themselves and their culture out of existence, while eagerly welcoming nonwhites and non-Westerners into America and inviting them to take over? In a VFR discussion back in May, Jim Kalb offered a fascinating angle on this problem:

My guess is that it’s a consequence of the nature of the liberal individual, which is the same as the Cartesian ego—a disembodied subject with no qualities at all other than the free-floating ability to have experiences and make choices…. The Cartesian ego isn’t really part of the world of experience. How, after all, could something with no qualities be embodied? So perhaps there’s a feeling that it’s more legitimate for Third World types, who don’t seem to be free floating Cartesian egos, to be embodied and thus part of the world of experience. The feeling then is that white people are Cartesian abstractions while nonwhites are vibrant concrete realities. [Emphasis added.]

The next day I saw a story from Investors Business Daily linked at Michelle Malkin’s site, about how a California school district, with the backing of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is requiring students to undergo role-playing in the Islamic religion. These classroom exercises, according to IBN, include:

• reciting aloud Muslim prayers that begin with “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful”;
  
• memorizing the Muslim profession of faith, “Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger”;
  
• chanting “Praise be to Allah” in response to teacher prompts;
  
• professing as “true” the Muslim belief that “The Holy Quran is God’s word”;
  
• giving up candy and TV to demonstrate the Muslim holy month of fasting;
  
• designing prayer rugs, taking an Arabic name and essentially “becoming a Muslim” for two full weeks.

And all this is being forced on children by school districts and federal courts against their parent’s desires, even as Americans must fight to have the slightest, most innocuous presence of the Bible or Christianity in the schools.

I sent the item to Mr. Kalb with this note: “Here is a perfect expression of what you were saying yesterday—they’re substantial and vital, we’re ghosts.” He replied:

It’s all so weird though. The reason we’re ghosts is that we’re identified with the ruling principle, which in a liberal society is supposed to be so rational, non-intrusive and a priori that it becomes transparent and even disappears… All those fascinating exotic richly vibrant brown people in contrast can become concrete existences because they are not identified with the ruling principle and thus are able to be concrete objects of experience. That’s why it’s so amazing and wonderful and such a mind-blowing cosmic revelation when they turn out to have human qualities. In fact, their miraculous ability to combine apparently full humanity with actual tangible existence makes them genuine Christ figures. They are the true Word made Flesh!

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Carl Simpson writes:

Interesting discussion between yourself and Mr. Kalb. So, what about the hapless white kids who attended the required Islamic indoctrination class at a Kalifornistan public school who (like John Walker Lindh) become Muslims themselves? Do they then become actual concrete beings? Or, do they remain disembodied beings—transformed into a kind of a guardian angel (which is how liberals often think of themselves)?

LA replies:

I don’t know, but maybe the Lindh types would be the way Kalb describes the nonwhites. That is, they are both experiencing human subjects (like regular whites and like nonwhites), AND they are vibrant concrete objects of experience (which regular whites cannot be), and therefore they are little Christs—the Word made flesh.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 06, 2006 10:41 PM | Send