An appeal to the white West to open its doors

A reader who identifies herself as “African Lady living in the West” (but who I suspect is a white man having some satirical fun) writes:

I’ve been reading your writings about IQ, race immigration and culture and I would like to add some comments:

In all your writings you passionately argue that it is important to keep Black and Brown (with our supposed lower IQs) immigrants out so that White civilization with all it’s successes can be maintained. Could you please explain why White civilization should be maintained while leaving us Browns and Blacks hanging out there in our countries in poverty, ignorance and despair? There is no way Brown and Black people (Africans, Mestizos, Arabs, Berbers, South Asians) can ever accept living on this planet poor, stressed out and sick forever. Why should we? It is too painful for us to accept that we cannot provide for our children in the same way you Westerners can even if it is due to our limitations (IQ, or culture or politics). That is why hundreds of thousands of non-Westerners are trying to make it to the West by any means possible. Sympathetic Whites, i.e. your liberals see and understand our painful situation and that is why they are trying to help us.

Furthermore, the needs of the Human race as a whole are more important than Western people and civilization. It does not matter how Whites attained a higher IQ or a more successful culture, the point is that this should not lead to disparity in wealth and happiness among peoples. Whether anyone likes it or not, we are emotionally attached to each other and one part of the human family cannot advance alone leaving others behind. The reason the West has tolerated non-Western immigration to the extent that it has is because many Westerners, even non-liberals, emotionally sympathize with the rest of humanity. They can’t help it. They see themselves in us.

What liberals are trying to do for non-Whites makes a lot of sense, -such as affirmative action, immigration of more Blacks and Browns to the West (so we can share in the wealth and happiness) and aid to the undeveloped Third world. Also their tactical approval and promotion of racial intermarriages to give birth to interracial children also makes sense as it will make all more genetically equal in case we are not equal already. Obviously, liberals stand for the Human race, not the White race.

I suggest, Lawrence that people like you accept that White people and White civilizations should share their wealth, their knowledge and themselves with the rest of humankind. That does not mean you as a people will disappear, it just means we will all be part of a global multicultural and multiracial civilization. The civilization might not be as advanced as White civilization had it stayed White, but it will still be a civilization accessible to all and better able to meet the needs of the human race as a whole.

The hope for human kind is White liberals and their ideas, but they have their work cut out because. In the end I think they will drag all of us screaming and kicking to a better world order.

African Lady (living in the West).

Tom A. writes:

Two things.

First I’d like to nominate as liberal of the year, this person:

Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet.

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to ‘protect the planet.’

‘Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,’ says Toni, 35.

‘Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.’

She is a boon to Western civilization—our race, our culture, our future.

Secondly, to address the “African lady living in the West.” Even though this “African lady” may be a troll (the Internet term for an imposter), her post is representative of Liberalism 101. She writes,

“Furthermore, the needs of the Human race as a whole are more important than Western people and civilization.”

Why does a non-contributing portion of the human race need to be considered “more important” than a civilization? [LA replies: It’s not that one portion of humanity is considered more important than another part, but that the equality of the whole of humanity is more important than the well-being, freedom, existence, of any one part of humanity.]

She also writes,

“It does not matter how Whites attained a higher IQ or a more successful culture, the point is that this should not lead to disparity in wealth and happiness among peoples.”

But of course it does matter how Whites attained a higher IQ because that shows the way it is done and how it is to be done. The attainment of a higher IQ did not “lead to a disparity in wealth and happiness” such that other races had this “disparity” imposed on them. They form their own disparity.

She goes on,

“White people and White civilizations should share their wealth, their knowledge and themselves with the rest of humankind.”

What obliges the White race to share anything with anyone?

LA replies:

That’s easy: the principle of the equality of the whole human race. That principle arises from a rebellion against what we might call the cosmic facts of life. What are these cosmic facts of life ?

1 Biological: Human beings are biologically different from each other in their qualities, dispositions, abilities, and outcomes. That is rejected and replaced by the idea that all human beings naturally have or must be made to have the same qualities, dispositions, abilities, and outcomes.

2. Social: Cultures are distinct from and often mutually incompatible each other. That is rejected and replaced by the idea that all cultures are or must be made to be one and equal.

3. Spiritual: God and truth are higher than us. That is rejected and replaced by the idea that there is nothing higher than the individual human self and its desires, and therefore all human selves are equal in goodness and worth.

In rejecting as evil the fundamental realities of biological difference, cultural identity, and moral hierarchy, liberalism prohibits human beings from seeing and dealing with existence as it really is. The common sense of the human race is outlawed. Everything normal, real, and true must be suppressed. The only thing that prevents these suicidal principles from destroying society outright is that liberals decline to practice them consistently.

Mark J. writes:

It’s helpful to have the liberal viewpoint stated so clearly: that the highest value is equality of material circumstances. Not excellence, beauty, truth, or freedom. Not the dignity gained by standing on one’s own two feet and working towards the fullest use of whatever talents or gifts you were blessed with, and thus earning respect for your discipline and integrity. No, for liberals the most important thing in the world is that no one have to feel envy towards someone who is doing better than they are. If blacks and browns feel envy, then the white world must do anything necessary—even unto annihilating itself—to remedy that.

Does this person really understand the implications of such an ordering of values? If the most important thing is that no one need ever feel envy for someone else who has greater natural gifts, it means, for example, that one must oppose inegalitarian activities such as the Olympics. Why should some of us be denied the thrill of winning a gold medal simply because we were born without superior athletic talent? Or, why should some people be allowed to excel as composers or artists or entrepreneurs or writers or in any other human endeavor? Why should there be any excellence at all in the world, since excellence can only be known by comparison to that which is not excellent? The liberal pursues a grey, flat, Soviet-style world of mediocrity where small, bitter people constantly eye one another to make sure that no one gets ahead of anyone else.

I imagine the writer would argue that she isn’t opposed to excellence, only to some races of people having greater talents for excellence than others. But the same can be said of inequality between any groups or individuals, not only of whole races. Logically, the writer is advocating a world where no one has any more ability than anyone else. The existence of someone more excellent than others would be evidence that something—genetics, upbringing, something—was not equal, and thus the excellent would need to be hobbled so that the mediocre wouldn’t feel the pain of their mediocrity by comparison. First the liberals would eliminate racial diversity, then they would need to eliminate any other sort of variety as well—including gender-related diversity. I suppose their vision would not be fully realized until the entire world was populated with asexual clones having exactly the same genetic makeup, raised in institutions providing exactly the same upbringing.

Horrible. Horrible that people can think in such a way.

LA replies:

I still think the original poster has written a parody of leftist thinking. But even if it is a parody, it accurately reflects leftist assumptions.

However, the world has gotten so wacky that my parody detector is no longer what it was. A few months ago someone identifying himself as Jared Taylor posted a comment at The Inverted World that I said had to be a send-up. To my shock and dismay, it turned out to be genuine.

Mark J. writes:

On re-reading it, maybe it is a parody—which makes it embarrassing that I took it seriously. But if its a parody I think he needed to have exaggerated a little more…there’s really nothing in it that is beyond what liberals actually think.

LA replies

You shouldn’t be embarrassed, for the reasons you just gave.

An Indian living in the West writes:

Even the Communists were sane by comparison.

LA replies:

Consistent liberalism is, in certain key respects, a more radical attack on reality than Communism.

Mark J. writes:

Regarding the woman who had herself sterilized (after aborting her baby) because babies aren’t “eco-friendly”: doesn’t it seem she’s being a bit of hypocrite by continuing to live and breathe herself? I mean, sure, it’s easy to murder a defenseless unborn baby in the name of the environment, but if she really believed in what she’s saying, why shouldn’t she commit suicide? After all, all the reasons she felt her baby didn’t deserve to live apply as well to her.

African Lady living in the West replies:

No, I am not a White guy.

Once commentator said:

“If blacks and browns feel envy, then the white world must do anything necessary—even unto annihilating itself—to remedy that”.

Why do you use such negative terms such as “envy” and “self-elimination?” It is not envy to “long” for the economic and civilization success that Westerners have achieved. Envy suggests an element of resentment and hatred, and I guess it might be hard for you to believe, but Blacks and Browns do not hate or resent Whites as much as long for what Whites have achieved. Also sharing and sacrifice is not the same thing as self-annihilation.

I am advocating an order where values are reorganized so that higher abilities and better cultural practices does not lead to the type of huge ECONOMIC disparities as presently exists between the high achieving West and the poverty stricken Brown and Black South. Why is this such an alien and horrible idea, especially when we practice similar notion in little ways in our daily lives? For example, I have a gifted and talented daughter who overshadows her younger sister academically and socially.. I love both of them, but it hurts me to see my younger daughter feel that she can not measure up to her older sister (both girls love each other). I put my younger daughter in a a private school where she gets more attention and help, but left my older daughter in the public school because I can only afford one private school tuition. I feel guilty that I kept my older daughter in the public school where the education is of less quality. I know she would have excelled even more had she gone to the privates school. But I had to do what I had to do because I feel I need to help my less achieving daughter more.I hope in the end they will put succeed equally, and if not, well at least I have tried my best to do more more my needier child.

The human race is like a family, and the stronger and more successful should sacrifice for the less successful members of the family. Perfect equality will never be achieved, but a serious attempt to bring out almost equal economic outcomes ought to be made. Racial diversity does not have to be eliminated, nor do we all have to have the same genetic make-up, nor do we have to be asexual clones in order to achieve egalitarianism. We just need to be less cut-throat competitive, more nurturing and more sympathetic. By the way, this holds true for everyone including Blacks and Browns and how they treat their own less achieving sub-groups.

Also, Blacks and Browns need to give up harmful cultural practices and attitudes that are hindering their growth even if they cherish them. I am stating this in response to one commentator who said that the disparities are our fault. I assume he means disparities due to our cultural practices. Detrimental cultural practices can be done with by the action [of?] native liberals in the Black and Brown societies of the world.

LA replies:

With African Lady’s comments, we see the essential sameness of moderate left-liberalism and extreme radicalism. (Perhaps it is this overlap of the liberal and the extreme that accounts for our inability to determine whether her first comment was a parody). As African lady sees it, she is just a humane liberal. She presents her ideas as non-radical, non-utopian, non-resentful, non-destructive. She doesn’t expect to make all mankind exactly equal, she doesn’t intend to meld all races. All she wants is that we do what we can to make people more equal, including allowing the peoples of the non-Western world to flood the West. To do what we can: that is the voice of liberalism speaking. In reality, this supposedly well-meaning, non-radical liberalism would require the inauguration of an egalitarian global government and the destruction of the sovereignty, culture, national borders, national identity, social order, legal order, political liberty, and wealth of all the Western countries.

Modern liberals see themselves as reasonable, humane people who are merely asking for humane values; this self-image is crucial to their identity and their moral conscience. In reality they are the promoters of the most extreme and destructive ideology imaginable. The only way conservatives can stop modern liberalism is to stop taking it at its own word, and to identify what it really is and what it really seeks.

N. writes:

Assuming for the sake of argument that the “African Lady living in the West” is for real, she is a hypocrite because she wants others to do for her what she herself will not do for others. This is easily demonstrated from her own words. She states that she has a child in private school and another in public school. Yet surely there is a brown or black (or even a poor white!) neighbor with a child that would benefit even more from private schooling than her own. Yet she does not sacrifice her own child’s schooling to help someone further down on the economic ladder, even though that is exactly what she is demanding the West do for her home country, whatever it may be.

One cannot help but wonder if she is completely oblivious of the foreign aid programs that have been going on for over two generations? Has she never heard of C.A.R.E., of Medicin san Frontieres, of UNESCO and all the other alphabet-block agencies that are entirely funded by the West, and indeed primarily funded by the U.S.? Is she ignorant of the billions upon billions that have been showered onto Africa alone since the end of WW II, all too often to no effect whatsoever? Or is she aware, and just demanding more? This is not to say that the African lady does not care for her children, love them, nor is it to say that she is a bad person per se. But the attitude displayed, “You Westerners should sacrifice to me and mine, and we will keep what is ours” is much too familiar. How different is the African lady from too many African heads of state who took care of themselves and their own tribal group while ignoring all others? I say, not much different at all.

This is the same mindset that produced Mugabe, Idi Amin, Nkrumah and a whole long list of African kleptocrats. It is too much of the 20th century in a microcosm.

Mark P. writes:

Your last comment is a good generalization, but it does not address African Lady’s response.

African Lady wrote:

“For example, I have a gifted and talented daughter who overshadows her younger sister academically and socially.. I love both of them, but it hurts me to see my younger daughter feel that she can not measure up to her older sister (both girls love each other). I put my younger daughter in a a private school where she gets more attention and help, but left my older daughter in the public school because I can only afford one private school tuition. I feel guilty that I kept my older daughter in the public school where the education is of less quality.”

If this is the way she feels, then, to alleviate her guilt, African Lady should pull her younger daughter out of private school and have both daughters attend public school. That would achieve the economic equality she wants. Isn’t that what she is suggesting white people do? Yet, she does not do it herself, within the familial structure that not only makes such an arrangement possible, but within which she insists such practices are common.

So, if African Lady doesn’t equalize her own children’s outcomes, why should whites sacrfice their children to equalize outcomes for black and brown children?

African Lady replies:

Actually, hopefully what will happen is for national and cultural boundaries to blur so that Western cultural practices, ideas and knowledge, capital and people can diffuse to the poverty stricken South while at the same time Blacks and Browns can move North so we can end up with one (or several-it does not matter) multicultural, multiracial egalitarian civilization(s) in which economic differences between racial and national groups are minimized by the equitable distributing of talents, knowledge and wealth. [LA replies: After AL assured me in her last message that she was who she claimed, I took her word for it. But I confess that on reading her current message I am in doubt again and have trouble believing it’s for real. I suspect AL is really a white racialist with a talent for satire and pulling people’s legs—but I’m not sure.]

That is the only way to go Lawrence, and deep inside I think you know it. [Yeah, right! You’re seeing right through me.] Actually what I described above is already happening. It would be much more productive and helpful if people like you can participate in this process and and make it work for you TOO rather than torture yourselves with nationalist ideas that very few people believe in anymore.

Come down from your ivory tower Lawrence and join the teaming dark masses of humanity even if you find our lower IQ and our backward cultural ideas practices so offensive. We are not so bad, and you are not so special.

Hannon writes:

African Lady writes, “Could you please explain why White civilization should be maintained while leaving us Browns and Blacks hanging out there in our countries in poverty, ignorance and despair?”

You and other commenters have roundly attacked this wrong idea but you have not addressed the underlying premise that these people live some sort of thoroughly awful existence in the first place. It is true that by many standards people in the countries of the South suffer more pernicious ills and difficulties than we do. But for some reason this generalization is commonly presumed to mean that everyone living between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn is to a man living in abject poverty, ignorance and despair. This notion is false. If African Lady is restricting her concept to those in the mushrooming urbanized Third World, then she has more of a case as far as people living in squalor. Still, the agrarian lifestyle is predominant in most areas and in spite of a radical difference in the annual income of these farmers versus anyone in the West, I do not believe they are miserable or destitute people for the most part. Those qualities are more frequent among the pauperized urban masses—those most likely to emigrate northward.

Wherever I have traveled in rural, very poor areas in Asia and the Americas, the folks I’ve met have often demonstrated unassuming and exceptional kindness. More kindness in fact than I would expect from total strangers in most Western cities. To me that says a lot about the fact that they are living outside of frenetic (and prosperous!) humanity and how their competitive prowess and neurotic fears are blissfully minimal. This allows for more basic human traits such as family nurturing and empathy to thrive, uninhibited, as it were, by modern social progress.

The solution to helping the “disenfranchised” of the developing world is to help them overcome the endemic corruption that destroys every inch of progress they manage to eke out. Corruption is the culture in many countries. How does massive immigration solve this dilemma? Are all of them supposed to move in? African Lady seems dispassionate at best when it comes to hope for the countries of the South themselves, as if nothing can be done except to move their peoples to the countries of the North.

James W. writes:

Yes, African Lady is not a parody. We parody things we know, things close and familiar to us. This is not satirical, or with an edge; but sad, and true.

I know a West African woman who may as well be African Lady. She is a French speaker, with a Catholic school education. She believes to a certainty America is successful and wealthy because God made it so. There is no other reason. People are interchangable in this equation, so if we left America and others took our place nothing would change. That is why African Lady really thinks we should share our wealth, and our luck.

But we have already shared things more important by far than wealth, the wealth of knowledge. The knowledge that fate has not ordained you accept your station. Th knowledge of how to cultivate a superior crop, animal, government, or widget; things unknown at any price to civilization until recently. But that is not what African Lady wants.

How we think when we fail is directly related to how long it will take us to succeed. That would be forever in her case.

African Lady wishes to come here and keep her customs. Our multi-cultural masters agree with her, because they wish to end our customs as fast as possible. Over-civilization and barbarism are as close as polished steel is to rust. What a match.

Karen in England writes:

I think African Lady is not real.

Probably a parody as you thought. Africans do not write in that style, it’s a bit too cool. And they wouldn’t accept the low IQ bit because although they know they are less intelligent, they prefer to blame it on whites and colonialism. And they think they are coming to the West to get back what was taken from them.

LA replies:

I think Karen is right. The skill of what AL is doing is that it hovers right on the border line between truth and parody. Here I boil her argument down to its essentials:

“Yes, we Third-Worlders are behind you Westerners and are less skilled and less intelligent and we have no ability to improve our societies up to the level of yours, but you and we are all one human family and therefore you have to take care of us and let us into your countries and share your nice life with us. The opening of borders and the merging of peoples that I call for will mean the end of the distinct Western cultures, and the worldwide equitable distribution of talents, knowledge and wealth that I call for will result in a lowering of the Western standard of life, but the gain to human solidarity and fairness will be worth it.”

Now, on one hand, what AL is saying is so bald and extreme that I conclude it is a parody. On the other hand, what AL is doing is simply spelling out explicitly what the actual leftist/Third World bottom line has been all along. Which, combined with her sincere tone and her lack of resentment, makes it sound not like a parody but like an unusually honest message.

However, it’s not completely honest and explicit, because her plan of merging and equitable sharing would mean the literal destruction of the societies whose wealth she wants to be shared, and so, no more wealth to be shared with the Third World since the whole world will have become the Third World.

Insofar as AL is making it up we should thank her for her excellent performance and stop replying to her. But insofar as AL, though engaging in parody, is spelling out the true bottom line of the leftist and Third World claim on the West, it may be worthwhile replying to her despite the fact that she doesn’t exist. I leave it up to readers.

Karen continues:

I just read the new entries and AL is definitely a hoaxer.

His entries are the products of a Western man’s mind. The language reveals it. Africans don’t look at things in a generalist way. They see every situation in personal terms and their aim is not the creation of equality of humanity and a global culture but simply the preservation of their own culture while they grab as much as they can from the West. They also don’t give a damn about Asians whom they generally dislike.

Terry Morris writes:

I agree with Karen that she is likely a hoaxer. Another item of evidence would be that they generally dislike Hispanics and vice versa. On the other hand I can imagine someone like Condoleezza Rice or maybe even Oprah making similar statements. So it’s not entirely impossible that African Woman living in the West is legit. If it’s a parody it is very skillfully done, as LA has noted.

Mostly European Male living in the heart of Bible-belt anti-immigrant America :-)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 23, 2007 02:15 PM | Send