Racism: A Sorites Paradox

A Sorites Paradox. Race is a Sorites Paradox. Everyone knows what race is. We know that Laplanders are ... well, bad example. We all know that Armenians are Asians. No. OK, we all know Basques are Europeans. Uh, we know that Mexicans are Mongolians. We know that my folks from the north of Scotland are displaced Highlanders mixed with Danes, Swedes and Norwegians and Dutch, Flemish and French and my odd man out grandfather who was English; that my red-blond, blue-grey eyed, tall family, and then me looking like the milkman, are all Scottish, "cleared" from the Highlands to make room for sheep, exiled from Iceland and the Faroes and the Shetlands and the Orkneys to the eastern cities before fleeing to America where family members changed their names more often that they changed their socks, I'm Scottish. Clear? It is to me: I see my relatives in nearly every person I see in the north, mom here, dad there, uncle around the corner, gramma in the shop, aunt on the bus, and there staring me in the face is me, my own self looking right past me at others who look like me to the nose and brows. Race? Well, I know only what I'm not. Sort of. (There've been whispers and sometimes loud accusations of my great-grandmother being -- don't say this aloud, [German]). I don't have a UK passport, so I don't know how to make a good legal case for being Scottish, and I really haven't pursued it to make it legal because I really don't care. To me it ain't meaningful outside my own self. It's not an interesting way for me to divide up my reality in ways I can deal with. Protestant? Well, no, thought the family are, sort of but not really. Middle class? Well, yeah, within reason, if one splits my vagabondage and the high success of others with their bourgeois tendencies and economic class standing. So, in fact, it's all kind of very much unclear who I am and what anyone is if I look closely enough to see any of the details. One I do that I find myself looking at everyman as a Hooded Man. All I see is a Sorites paradox, reality dissolving into something I thought I understood but now certainly do not. No, I'm not African, I suspect. And I doubt I'm Asian, probably. It's a matter of a Sorites Paradox: to say that a man is bald because he has so little hair, but we don't know just which lost hair it is that makes him bald and which one we could replace to make him not bald; which grain of sand makes it a heap and which grain lost makes it not a heap. In fact, when I look at race,I am stumped and just don't know a thing anymore about it. I know what I'm not, and I suspect that's all most people can lay claim to. Thousands of years of Northerners? Yeah, that's about it. I'm not a southerner.

The far north of Scotland has claim to the barren wasteland of Sutherland. That's the Viking sense of humor at work. Norwegians? They're easterners. For me as a boy, North Dakota was as far east as I imagined anyone could ever go without falling off the Earth into the spoiled land of New York, somewhere adjacent to Hell. It's all a Sorites Paradox. To the average man none of the discussion of race makes any real sense once one looks at it. It all falls apart, built on nothing at all. But it is real in that one is not something else. One makes a choice, deciding that one is of ones own, and the collective definition counts, even if it's ephemeral. Language, location, ethnicity, religion. That makes me Scottish. Sort of.

So, being originally from the far North, I look at Milton worrying himself sick over his fear that the English in London, being so far north of Italy, were subject to stupidity because, as the Italians let everyone know, the climate and conditions of the north make people there stupid; and Milton suffered. To him and to many others, it was obvious that Italians were the most enlightened and brilliant people on Earth, those to the North degenerate and incapable of much, certainly not of greatness themselves. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton himself-- all stupid because they came from England. Obvious, and Milton believed it and suffered from it. That makes me particularly stupid, and Beowulf moreso.

Race? Yes. Ethnicity? Yes. Meaningful? Sort of. My Polish Jewish girlfriend from Texas? Uh, let me get back to you on that one.

We can see America as a racist empire if we choose to. We can see the extermination of Indians and the slavery of Africans as the greatest crimes in Human history if we choose to. We can see America as a racist nation, built on racism, imbued with racism, nothing but a racist entity from beginning to end. We can look at taking space from Indians and enslaving Negroes as racism. We can say Indians and we can say Negroes so long as they are not us, so long as we can say we are not those though we can't say exactly what we are. And we can call this racism, if we choose to. Is it? Obviously, Negroes and Indians are not Europeans. Sort of. Let's pass over the occasional Greenlander who was caught up in a current in his kayak who then drifted to the north Islands of Scotland, and let's forget those who came with Columbus and others as curiosities from the Caribbean. Let's not speak then of Moors like Othello. Let's forget Napoleon's wife, let's forget de Gobineau's mother. Let's not talk ever of Dumas and so many others. Because if we do, then our idea of who we are not is so ephemeral that we are really left with not much. We won't be able to talk of race. Let's not talk about America at all because we would have to talk then about New Orleans' population of people who we can't say anything racially and ethnically sensible. New York City? This is impossible. And Israel? Falashas? Ashkenazim? Arabs? Suddenly, when we try to discuss ethnicity we find there is nothing to discuss in real terms, only there is remaining the idea of "Well, not this, not that, maybe." It's a Sorites Paradox.

There is something obvious about race and ethnicity, but to claim we can define it easily by looking at someone,by pointing in the dark, by guessing, by wishing, by being happy or angry, that is to give in to stupidity, to bigotry, to worthless discrimination for no purpose other than to satisfy some lack in ourselves that has nothing to do with others. To look for, as Truepeers writes, for the one final scapegoat who will free us of our resentments and usher in utopia, that is the failure of the person. It says nothing about race or ethnicity. It speaks only of a deluded epistemology and a small personality. But there is something to speak of, if only we can get it right.

If we can begin to clear up this Sorites Paradox of race we might begin to address the issue of Nativism in Europe. That's our problem of the time.

Muslims in the West are making themselves so deeply hated by the majority of people, non-Muslims of all sorts, that only the most hate-filled Leftists and most hate-filled Rightists can stomach them. Most Westerners don't hate anyone they don't actually know, restricting their hatreds to husbands, wives, children, neighbors, bosses, co-workers,and so on. Most Westerners have other things on their minds that abstract hates of people from other racial or ethnic groups. We live mostly in cities where our privacy is our own and our publicities are shared by millions of anonymous strangers we don't even look at if we see them. Race and religion mean mostly nothing to most of us. But Islam, but Muslims generally, they make themselves an issue of concern to the majority, and we are beginning to openly hate them, more and more private people who have no concern or regard for those outside their small circles of acquaintances, they begin to hate Muslims.

Why do the majority populations of the West hate Muslims? I can't count so high as that. The reasons are daily expanded and compounded. Muslims seem to have a suicidal urge they can't fulfill without the West acting for them by exterminating them. And our hatred? Is it "racist." Not hardly. It's common sense and common Humanness to get fed up with bullshit, to lash out at hostility, and to kill the outrageously dangerous. 'Hello Muslims.' Yes, 'Hello Left dhimmi fascists and Right wing racists/anti-Semites.' Provocation? You bet. So, what do we do with the accusation of "racism?"

It's disingenuous to claim that Islam is not a race. No, Islam is not a race, it's a poligion. But to claim it's not a race is to claim it's not racial. Obviously most Muslims are not European ethnically. It matters. It matters when Muslims provoke a hatred of themselves in the West if not everywhere on Earth, which they do. In Europe we see Muslims enraging the locals more and more daily,and the Muslims are not European ethnically, ethnically even though all we might be able to say of that is that we don't know exactly what we mean but we know we mean not them. No, theoretically,Islam is not ethnic. In practice, very much so and obviously so. Most Arabs are Muslims, and few Swedes so far are Muslim. But many blond Albanians are living in Sweden, and one might find it difficult to tell them apart from any short distance. It's not obvious and it's not simple. Often we know that a Muslim is likely to be an ethnic type not like us if we are European and not something else. But who can tell a Sikh from a Muslim in a dark tunnel? Or a Swede? We go with what we see, and the Sorites Paradox tells us we don't know what we see. We might well be homicidally enraged by Muslims, and we might not know who they are and we might not see who we see. Seeing race and ethnicity isn't going to help us much in determining who is who and who we are pissed off at. When it comes to telling whose bald and who isn't where do we draw the line? We don't have a clue. There is no answer unless there in an answer, and then we still won't know if it's real or imagined. What if a bald man wears a wig? What if a hirsute man shaves his head? What is a Muslim is a woman bound? A boy? A slave? Mentally incompetent. A convert? A liar?

Let me admit that I see that Northern Europeans are not the same as Arabs, though i might be hard-pressed at times to say why they are different, and sometimes I might mistake them for the other. I might assume a Swede is a northern Protestant and an Arab is a Muslim, and I might well be totally wring, finding out later that the Swede is a Muslim convert and the Arab is a Chaldean. How would I know just by looking? I wouldn't. And I might be fouled up by assuming that a Swede is a European and an Arab is a primitive only to find the Swede is a Communist and the Arab is an American Republican exchange student. Again and again, we face a Sorties Paradox. Any time we assume we know we will very likely find out we don't in fact know a damned thing about what we're on about. And so it is with "racism."

Let's look for now at "nativism." Let's unravel a bit of the idea of racism as it's directed at those of us who wish for and work for an Islam free Western world, if not for a world free of Islam. Is a "Nativist" a "racist"?

The following excerpt from No Dhimmitude is on Nativism, "Nativism and Power,is an essential point of our discussion here.

In politics "nativist" refers to the socio-political positions taken up by those who identify themselves as "native-born".

Nativism is a hostile and defensive reaction to the flux of immigration. Though it surfaced first, gained a name and affected politics in mid-19th century United States, recognizably nativist movements have since arisen among the Boers of South Africa, and in the 20th century in Australia and Britain. In American history, nativism was always associated with fears that certain new immigrants might inject political and cultural values at odds with the American way of life.

The term "nativism" is normally applied only to nativists of European stock, and accused by some of being a nationalist element of racism. Similar ideologies espoused by non-Europeans are given other labels and are rarely connected to nativism in public discourse. For instance, while Mexican President Vicente Fox faults the US for not opening its borders, Mexico simultaneously cracks down harshly on "undocumented migrants" who breach her southern borders from other Central American countries. Yet no public discussion accuses Mexico of being nativist in immigration policies. Modern contention over ancient ethnic occupation of areas in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus, sometimes based on tenuous linguistic and place-name hints, is given added urgency by assumptions that an urrecht of the earliest local population can justify nativist stances towards more recent arrivals. These issues are rarely assessed in terms of "nativism".

One such example that has succeeded in asserting their nativist rights, is Zionism. They have based their claim on the territory of Palestine on the Bible and created the state of Israel.

U.S. nativism appeared in the late 1790s in reaction to the political refugees from France and Ireland. After passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 it receded. Nativist outbursts occurred in the Northeast from the 1830s to the 1850s, primarily in response to a surge of Irish Catholic immigration. In 1836, Samuel F. B. Morse ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York on a Nativist ticket, receiving 1,496 votes. In New York City, an Order of United Americans (OUA) was founded as a nativist fraternity, following the Philadelphia Nativist Riots of the preceding spring and summer, in December, 1844.

In 1849–50 Charles B. Allen founded a secret nativist society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner in New York as a result of the fear of immigrants. In order to join the Order a man had to be twenty-one, a Protestant, a believer in God, and willing to obey without question the dictates of the order. Members of the Order became known as the Know-Nothings (a label applied to them by newspaper editor Horace Greeley, because no one would admit to knowing anything about the secret society). The Nativists went public in 1854 when they formed the 'American Party', which was anti-Irish Catholic and campaigned for laws to require longer wait time between immigration and naturalization. It is at this time that the term "nativist" first appears, opponents of Americanists denounced them as "biggoted nativists." Former President Millard Fillmore would run on the American Party ticket for the Presidency in 1856. The American Party included many ex-Whigs who rejected nativism, and included (in the South) some Catholics. Conversely, much of the opposition to Catholic and Chinese immigrants came from other immigrants, who can hardly be called "nativists."

This form of nationalism often identified with xenophobia, anti-Catholic sentiment (anti-papism). In the 1840s, small scale riots between Catholics and nativists took place in several American cities. In California, Irish immigrants vented their resentment against the Chinese. Nativist sentiment experienced a revival in the 1880s, led by Protestant Irish immigrants hostile to Catholic immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first of many nativist acts of congress to limit the flow of immigrants into the U.S. The Orange Order was the center of nativism in Canada from the 1860s to 1950s. The second Ku Klux Klan, which flourished in the U.S. and Canada in the 1920s, used strong nativist rhetoric. In 1928, nativist bias was an important feature of the defeat of Presidential candidate, Alfred E. Smith, a Catholic. During World War II, 'nativist' undercurrents fueled the Japanese American Internment.

American nativist sentiment experienced a resurgence in the late 20th century, this time directed at 'illegal aliens,' largely Mexican resulting in the passage of new penalties against illegal immigration in 1996. After terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2001, nativist feeling and islamophobia were amplified and directed increasingly toward individuals perceived to be either Arab and/or Muslim; these found themselves the target of rhetoric and a request by nativists to tighten border controls. The early 21st-century American movement that is self-characterized as "Immigration reduction" attempts to distance itself from any suggestion of Nativist motivations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism/
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It likely strikes many as obvious that there is a conflation of nativism and racism. I beg to spit on such a thought. Such reductionism is typical of the stupidity of many on our so-called intellectuals. The KKK is not America; the BNP is not Britain; the FN is not France. The IRA is not Muslim. Should the Irish, as one example, make concessions to Muslims in Ireland by way of sharia in Ireland? Are the Irish, if they do not concede sharia privilege to the Muslim community in Ireland, nativist and racist? And if one argues such, does it really make any difference?

The only argument for or against sharia privilege in Ireland is who has power. Any other argument is naive and sentimental. There is one rule: "All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

The Islamic umma is at war against the world at large. It is between the natives and the Muslims. No, Islam is not monolithic, and no, not every Muslim is violent; but yes, it only takes a small number of dedicated people to rule. We are for ourselves in opposition to Islam or we are on our way to Islam and dhimmitude. It's not fair. We should all just get along and live in peace and harmony. In the real world there are real people who are our enemies. They might win. It is a matter of power.
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The above excerpt is from a long piece on practical power and nativist privilege. The short version is that those who came first and made things as they are have a great say in how things should be therefore, those new-comers not liking it having the option of leaving. It's perhaps bigoted but not "racist" to fight for ones privileged state in the order of things. In the final analysis, guns rule the day. So it will always be. Our question is who will have the guns and who will they aim them at and why. Is it a question of "racism"? Is it a question of natural right? What can we support? We won't likely support "racism" which isn't a real thing in the minds of many if even few. It does have to do with "race." But mostly it has to do with "what is to be done?" in a practical sense of not knowing exactly what we face and how we live within our moral means. We can't rightly over-spend our alloted fund of morality. We have to be careful about what we do and why. If we accept nativism to an extent,and if we don't accept "racism" because we just don't know what the Hell we're discussing if we discuss it, then where do we go? Can we even accept Nativism? If not, then how much cultural relativism and multiculturalism will we put up with in the face of Islamic jihad and demographic catastrophe? Should we even care in a world of such impersonal cites and alienation so long as we can live our lives in some quiet for the course of our own lives and to Hell with the future?

But even after all this length we still haven't gotten to "racism." It ain't what you might think it is. It's a paradox of a whole nother kind. It's important that we understand things as they are so we can think them through and deal with our problem effectively and sanely if it comes to hard bargaining with "others."

Racism? If we don't kow what we mean by it, let's not say we do just yet.