How the liberal advance of minorities and women makes society more and more guilty in its own eyes

Congratulations to the seemingly terminably wimpy British for actually trying and convicting one of the Muhammad cartoon protesters who stood in central London last year, completely uninterrupted by the police, and threatened death and beheadings to anyone who “insulted” Islam.

Of course, what “we” see as a positive step, is seen in very different terms by some Muslims. The BBC story ends on this note:

Anjem Choudary, a former spokesman for the now banned Al-Muhajiroun organisation, said Muslims were treated as “second class citizens” and could not get a “fair trial”.

He said: “Muslims are demonised and vilified.

“This is a failure of capitalism, of democracy and the freedom of speech.”

This is a classic illustration of the diversity problem: A Western society or institution admits large numbers of non-Westerners or some other minority, on the basis that all people are basically the same. But it turns out that the newcomers are not the same, and disproportionate numbers of them proceed to misbehave or fail or simply not to succeed at the highest level or to fit in very well. And when they receive the ordinary consequences of such failure or incomplete success or mishehavior, they cast their gaze on the institution or society that had admitted them, and blame it for discriminating against them. As I said in 1994

[T]he result of admitting large numbers of unqualified minorities into a university is that whites start to be demonized as racist and are systematically silenced, while their civilizational heritage is attacked as unrepresentative and illegitimate and begins to be systematically dismantled.

[The same thing happens] when you admit massive numbers of nonwhite immigrants into a predominantly white society…. The failure of the nonwhite population to fit into the society is blamed on the society itself, rather than on the fact that they were admitted in the first place. The white majority starts to be demonized as racist and is systematically silenced, while its civilization is attacked as unrepresentative and begins to be systematically dismantled. The great irony is that the admission of nonwhites is supposed to prove that the society is nonracist and egalitarian, yet the more nonwhites are admitted, the more racist and unequal the society seems.

This takes us back to what I said last night about the newly installed female House Speaker. Under liberalism, every advance of a minority, instead of making the society seem better in its own eyes, makes it seem worse in its own eyes.

For example, if women start to enter the professions in significant numbers, then the entire history of the country prior to that event, when women were not in the professions, is made to seem bad.

Ok, but at least we’ve “arrived” now, right? We’ve overcome our past, and now we’re cool and equal?

No. Because 30 years later, when the first female become House Speaker and, wearing an outfit witn a collar open to the middle of her chest, and sporting a face lift that makes her 67-year-old face look like that of a kewpie doll, stands before the House and flings her arms about and talks about how this day has been denied to women for so long, but now the marble ceiling that has kept women down has finally been broken through, and only now can our daughters reach their full potential, at that moment the entire previous history of the country, in which there had never been a female House speaker, is suddenly cast as an era of irrational and causeless prejudice against women. Suddenly the 35 or so years between 1970 and 2007, which we thought had been a great period of unprecedented liberation and equality for women, gets consigned to the age of darkness, because during those 35 years, there had not been a female Speaker.

Ok, but now we have a female Speaker, we’re cool now, aren’t we, even though the whole country up until last week really sucked?

No, you’re only temporarily cool, because in another 20 years, when the first woman is elected vice president of the United States, at her oath-taking in the U.S. Senate, wearing a Versaci blouse open to her navel, she speaks of what a glorious day this is for our daughters who only now can realize their full potential, because now the marble ceiling that had been holding women down has finally been broken through. So now the whole country up to that moment, including the 20 supposedly glorious years which had followed the installation of the first female House Speaker, is cast as an era of vicious male privilege, which has only ended now with the election of the first female vice president.

Under liberalism, the more progress for women and minorities there is, the more nasty and sexist and racist the society becomes in its own eyes—and the less worthy of pride and affection and gratitude. This is the inevitable result of the liberal ideology of anti-discrimination, which strips all value from that which is not itself—which makes everything that is not itself seem ugly and evil.

- end of initial entry -

Here is another recent example of the phenomenon I discuss above: once universalism becomes the ideal, anything merely national is despised.

Charles G. writes:

Excellent observations in this post—somehow they are never grasped by anyone in the media. Bill O’Reilly, of all people, did come close, I remember, when he had a segment on the Muslim rioters in France back about a year ago. One of his guests was going on and on about how France was to blame for sequestering the Muslims in ghettoes, for failing to offer them jobs, etc. Finally, tiring of this, O’Reilly asked him why, if France was so racist and intolerant, it let five million Muslims into the country in the first place? The guest (I don’t remember who) had some feeble answer about the government being inattentive, but the point had been made.

The bizarre consequence of this is that a country like France, which is really one of the least racist societies in the world (and has been since the days of the French revolution), gets more criticism for the consequences of its generosity and tolerance than a racially arrogant nation like Japan gets for not allowing immigrants into the country at all.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 05, 2007 01:29 PM | Send