On the acceptance of nonwhites in pre-liberal Western society

KPA, a Canadian who came originally from Ethiopia, writes:

This email is in part a reaction to your P. Hitchens post, and also to Steve Sailer’s recent blog at VDare. Please excuse the length of this email. I’m trying to make a point about foreign individual and group acceptance in pre-20th century Western societies.

Sailer seems to be returning to one of his favorite themes of happily commenting on black physique (athletes used to be his favorite theme, now it looks like blacks who pass off as whites and live in white societies). I see nothing wrong with those observations, but when things become serious, Sailer starts subtly undermining his subjects. Obama, for example, is in my books a pretty much together man, and being a liberal and a Democrat may be his only faults. But in Sailer’s eyes, Obama seems to be “obsessively” focused on his blackness, which makes him psychologically suspect. Well, Obama identifies as black, spent his formative adult years as a black man, and married a black woman. Maybe Sailer just doesn’t like powerful non-whites. Only those on whom he can continue his curious, anthropological examinations. [LA replies: I’ve previous criticized Sailer’s comments, in his article on Obama’s biography, on Obama’s supposed obsession with blackness. I pointed out that Sailer presented no evidence for the charge—which was pretty surprising for someone for whom empirical data is supposedly the most important thing.]

This brings me to his posts about “Famous people who were significantly black.” He fails to realize, but then it is difficult to do so without knowledge of the region, that Pushkin’s black grandfather came from the Semitic north of Ethiopia, and was probably much more able to fit in with Russian society than if he had come from further south in Africa. The fact that he was able to reach such a high position in Russian society only shows that other factors besides his “personality” contributed to his social success. I would say his appearance had a large part to do with it.

Still, if a group of Pushkin’s grandfather’s look-alikes had swarmed into Moscow, I’m sure they would have been dealt with accordingly in those not so PC times.

So, in older very traditional societies which accepted one (or two) different people in their midst, they did so because they fit in physically. Even individuals were up to similar scrutiny as groups.

I would also say the same about Alexandre Dumas’ father, who was after all the grandson of a black slave (all other antecedents were white).

Another famous man with a non-white ancestry is Peter Ustinov. His Swiss missionary grandfather married an Ethiopian princess, whose father was a British counselor to Emperor Tewodros. Again, her coming from the northern more Semitic part of the country would have made the marriage much more acceptable.

There is a tragic story about the orphaned son of the slightly mad Emperor Tewodros of Ethiopia. Tewodros had the temerity to provoke the British by taking some of their men prisoners. He was duly defeated, and committed suicide. Queen Victoria took in his son, had him schooled and enter the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. I am sure his entrance into British society was a combination of his physical appearance and his cultural background, which included a nation with a monarchy of Christian tradition. The young man died young of pleurisy (or homesickness?).

So, in conclusion, foreign individuals in traditional, non-20th and 21st century societies, were carefully screened, and if their appearance (which seems the most important factor) and their cultural background fit, then they may be accepted into that society as fellow citizens, and even as leaders. This traditional and conservative behavior is thoroughly lost in modern Western countries (but is alive and well in many non-Western ones).

LA replies:

I agree with your overall theme, that individuals of different racial background can be accepted in a society if they are seen as fitting in and if their numbers are not large. The criterion for the host society is: can this person join us without changing our collective identity? If so, the person may be accepted. But with modern liberalism and the mass immigration of conspicuously different races with conspicuously different cultures, that common sense, pre-liberal approach to things breaks down.

This is a key point and must be made over and over. The problem with liberals is their stunning simple-mindedness and lack of moral imagination: EITHER we admit into our society basically everyone in the world, OR we are as evil as Hitler. They can conceive no other possibilities. For a different possibility to exist, the society must be outside liberalism. Meaning that the ultimate guide comes not from a ruling idea of equality, which in principle can accept no exceptions to total non-discrimination, but from a non-liberal, experiential “feel” for what “our” culture is and what it can and cannot comfortably accommodate, as in the examples you gave.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 18, 2007 10:50 AM | Send