The experience that blinds educated Americans to the immigration disaster
Konstantin writes:
In one of my last e-mails I wrote that I had been visiting a college in Wisconsin. Now the academic year is over, and it’s time to draw some conclusions about my social and political experiences there.
I have always been asking the question for myself why diversity and liberalism are promoted so excessively in colleges. After having studied in a U.S. college for almost one year, I can’t claim to have the definite answer, but I got an idea what could be behind this mindset.
So even though (or maybe because?) the college I have been going to is over 90 percent white, multiculturalism, diversity and liberalism are greatly promoted. So why does this happen? Because it seems to work so well and to open the social horizon for all students—WITHIN THE COLLEGE. But you can imagine that something that works well in college (which is comprised of people with some brains and money who tend to get along well with each other) doesn’t work so well for a much bigger part of population out of college.
To illustrate this more precisely, let me give a few examples: There were many students from Asia at my college. Many of them were friendly and seemed to behave well. This being the case, why should students come up against multiculturalism, since a particular group does so well (around the students)? Well, as far as I know, Asians (particularly north-east Asians) aren’t really a problem for America, because one indeed doesn’t see them misbehaving. Let’s take Mexicans. There is currently a huge problem with them in the southwestern part of the U.S. (colonization, crime, corruption). We had some Mexicans in our college as well. And what a surprise—they were behaving okay. I knew some Mexicans (one female looked even white), and they were just nice people. This is what other people thought who came in contact with them. So why being against Mexican immigration? They are nice people, so what’s the problem with white Americans being hostile to them? Let them come in, they don’t bother anyone, they do well (here in college).
Now a third group: Muslims. They weren’t many of them on campus, but some. I knew a guy from Somalia. Unlike what some other sources tell about Somalis behaving bad in Minnesota and other parts of the country, this guy was very nice, you could talk with him about everything, and he had always a smile on his face. A Somalian girl who applied for a higher position and who had an Arabic name did not wear a veil, and she made a civilized and good impression in front of the committee. There was a Muslim girl from my home country, Ukraine, who looked white (with her eyes looking a bit Asian) and who always behaved like a “Westerner,” wearing Western clothes, being interested in Western and Ukrainian culture, and having a Mexican (Christian) boyfriend. Her dad was a Muslim, that’s why she was. We got along perfectly, and I was always very pleased to see her and to talk to her. Of course, you can’t compare her to the extremist Muslims from Africa, Asia or the Mideast. But: as all students perceive different ethnic and religious groups behaving very well in college who indeed add to positive diversity, they confirm by themselves that diversity and multiculturalism are something GOOD. In case of the few Muslims I described, anyone on college dealing with them (but not with the hostile Somalis, Middle Easteners and Pakistanis on the “Dead-Isle,” however) will never get the idea of many of them being uncivilized and a threat to the West. As a result, students have no reason to be opposed to diversity and multiculturalism, which is working so well on campus.
Also, why should they be against the immigration of those people? Some students might think something like: “We had such a nice party with those Mexican guys, they are good people, so for my sake they can come in, I have nothing against more of those people being here.”
What these experiences do not reveal is the fact that this kind of multiculturalism and diversity works only so well because it is limited to a tiny fraction of more or less wealthy society which seeks higher education and who therefore knows how to behave. HOWEVER, it apparently seems not to work for a large-scale society, comprised of various classes, ages and education levels. But too many students and teachers forget this, and they think that the social conclusions they have drawn in college can be transferred to the whole society—more so because news about the negative side of multiculturalism are scarce.
For example, I once read news about a large-scale fight between Mexican and black school students in L.A. where hundreds of police officers had to calm down the fight. This and other kind of news about crime committed by immigrants NEVER reached the college, so they weren’t even discussed. Therefore, for someone to state that he is against immigration of certain groups because it rises up crime would make some other people laughing and accusing him of racism because there is no visible evidence for the statement and because he destroys the harmony—especially in such a white state as Wisconsin. Nobody talked about the ethnic cleansing of African Americans in the southwestern part of the USA (I think because people can’t imagine this being the case, and because this would contradict the idea of diversity being a strength). Any news posted on your page or American Renaissance even have a smaller chance to reach the college. And the ongoing Islamization of Western Europe is pretty much a completely unknown fact among students.
They seem to have no sources or time for reading news regarding the negative aspects of diversity and the danger to whites. Instead of being concerned about the cultural and ethnic future of their country, they are rather concerned about where to spend the next party on the weekend—and liberalism is embraced because it allows people to do whatever they want—being a gay for example (with impunity), so why be opposed to it? Being a college student means to have a great time because they experience academic success (without which it’s tough to survive today), because they learn great friends knowing, because they have lots of parties, travels and celebrations, because (in case of Wisconsin) they live in a safe environment, and because they don’t have to worry about having children or working as middle-class citizen yet. At the same time, this makes students uninterested and blind to the threat posed by excessive immigration and the loss of white culture worldwide. In their own problem or harmony, they never think that immigrants steal jobs that could be occupied by American middle-class workers, they never think that this creates poverty and scarce resources that have to be shared with a greater competition, they never think about immigration having a negative effect on education, and they never think that they (when they are white) are going to become a minority one day with less political rights.
All this is what I think why diversity has established herself so firmly in academic facilities. This is certainly not the definitive answer as I said, but having spent time in college gave me some insight into this issue, which I just wanted to share with you—who knows, maybe it could help you getting another piece of the “puzzle” which represents the death of the white world/culture.
LA replies:
Thanks to Konstantin for this. I agree with his main point. I first ran into the same attitude once at a conference of immigration reform writers and activists in Washington, D.C. in the early 1990s. One of the people present, who was a professional musician from New York City and a member of the board of advisors of a leading immigration control organization, said that his experience playing with other musicians had showed him that people of all kinds of racial background can get along, and therefore increasing racial and cultural diversity was not a problem for society. I said that his experience was atypical and not relevant to the immigration problem. Of course people in specialized fields such as music can get along with people of other races on the basis of their work together in that field, because they have that particular thing in common, but that’s not the way it is in ordinary life, with whole populations jostling against each other in a society. Most people are not musicians.
What I’ve just said is similar to Konstantin’s point. But in the larger sense, the point goes beyond the phenomenon of knowing diverse people in a college or in a specialized professional setting. It has to do with faulty reasoning from personal experience. It takes this form:
A. I know Juan from Mexico.
B. Juan is a fine fellow.
C. Therefore [and this is the actual leap people make, though they don’t put it in these terms] we should have open borders with Mexico, and anyone who disagrees is a bigot.
The basic fallacy involves thinking of immigration solely through the filter of individual immigrants whom one knows. “I know this person who is my neighbor—are you saying that this fine person doesn’t belong in America?” A mass invasion and transformation of society is happening, but the ordinary American (i.e., the ordinary liberal) literally cannot see it, because he only sees the phenomenon in terms of a couple of individuals whom he personally knows, not in terms of entire populations and their impact.
And by the way, the same fallacy helped push through the Immigration Reform Act of 1965. The Congress said over and over, that they wanted to let people into America on the basis of “individual worth.” That was the ideological filter through which they viewed the problem. In reality, as I showed in The Path to National Suicide, they were opening America’s doors to entire peoples and cultures, and “individual worth” had absolutely nothing to do with it.
- end of initial entry -
Adela G. writes:
The individuals Mr. Auster and Konstantin mention who approve immigration and multiculturalism based on their own personal, limited (to the point of being hermetic) experience are using inductive reasoning and, not surprisingly, reaching faulty conclusions.
I usually dismiss this mode of “thought” with two words: anecdotal evidence.
In 2001, I visited my girlfriend, who has a successful career and a solidly middle-class life-style. I mentioned my negative experiences with lower-class blacks in my former neighborhood. She replied, “But my coworker, Debbie, is not like that at all and she’s black!” I said, “How much money does your coworker make?” She said, “Over seventy thousand dollars a years.” I said, “Do you realize how atypical she is?” Not just as a black person or as a woman but simply as an American? She makes more than average white Americans, who are in the majority. The black people I told you about are far more typical of black Americans than Debbie is.” I could see the light go on in her eyes. As a middle-class, bright but insulated white person, my girlfriend had simply concluded based on her own, extremely limited experience with Debbie and a couple of other black coworkers that they are average black people. Of course, she therefore concluded that any white person who spoke negatively of black people was doing so not based on far more extensive experience with them but on bigotry and ignorance.
It’s even worse on college campuses. First, despite the egalitarianism academia inflicts on society, it still retains vestiges of its exclusivity and prestige, under which umbrella the already sheltered middle-class young enjoy an extremely insulated life, open to the freedoms of adulthood but relieved of most of its responsibilities. Second, it is populated with so-called and self-proclaimed experts who, particularly in the social sciences, are seldom expert at anything other than chasing degrees. They have little hard knowledge to pass on to their students and in any case, are often more concerned with promoting “social justice.” Third, as Konstantin so ably demonstrated, only the cream of the crop from non-Western countries come to study in American colleges and universities. Since they often have to work their way through school in their homelands, they are usually not only brighter but older and more mature. They also tend to be more sophisticated and more acculturated to Western ways than their countrymen back home. They are therefore no more representative of their fellow countrymen than Barack Obama is of his fellow citizens. Yet white liberal Americans, particularly in academia, persist in drawing clearly faulty conclusions from limited, atypical data.
Whenever I encounter this dumdum white liberal attitude resulting from faulty reasoning, I start out by chanting, “Anecdotal evidence!” and proceed from there. It’s never less than effective but the necessity of repetition is very annoying. A mandatory course in basic logic and argumentation for all college students might go far to dispel some of this smug ignorance, though a non-glamorous study of the search for truth through logical reasoning is unlikely to appeal to today’s young people or their instructors.
LA replies:
I find logical reasoning exciting and glamorous.
(Or rather I find it so, so long as it relates back to concretes.)
Adela G. replies:
You write: “I find logical reasoning exciting and glamorous.”
But not, I hope, to the point of casting decorum to the winds and removing your jacket or, even worse, loosening your tie.
Mike Berman writes (posted July 2):
Academia is the most obvious example of a contrived environment engineered for the express purpose of indoctrinating its clients to the benefits of diversity. The military is a more insidious situation in that it presents itself from an intuitively opposite political base.
Academics are generally regarded as liberal, and members of the military are thought to be more conservative. How aware, though, are the members of our military institutions that they are recruited to an artificial condition? Our military is the only body which can legally administer a version of an IQ test to its prospective members. We are left with an outfit which tends to skim much of the cream of the black populace and settles for a mediocre segment of the white. Those in the military are just as susceptible to Adela G.’s “anecdotal evidence” argument as college students. John McCain, anyone?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 28, 2008 11:28 AM | Send