Ethnicity and Racism

Journal of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism ^ | October 28, 2010 | Curtis Edward Clark

[Misterioso]

For the sake of "diversity" we allowed the concept of "ethnicity" to enter our cultures. While we have always valued differences here in the US--for example in Holland, Michigan, the Dutch are so old fashioned that people from The Netherlands often travel here during the Tulip Festival to see the old traditions long forgotten in Holland--there is a difference between celebrating such things, and trading it up for racism, which we have done.

Thirty years ago, the author Ayn Rand saw this form of racism coming and described it:

"'Ethnicity' is an anti-concept, used as a disguise for the word “racism”—and it has no clearly definable meaning. . . . The term “ethnicity” stresses the traditional, rather than the physiological characteristics of a group, such as language—but physiology, i.e., race, is involved . . . . So the advocacy of “ethnicity,” means racism plus tradition—i.e., racism plus conformity—i.e., racism plus staleness." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ethnic…

For the sake of ethnicity, the left "celebrates" the dialect called Ebonics and once advocated teaching it in schools! But by institutionalizing it as they did they made it a target for educators who saw it not as a valid dialect but as a horrible lack of education, a failure by the educational system. Those educators didn't despise the uneducated, but despised the left for institutionalizing a failed system. However, those less educated than the educators looked at what the left advocated and began hating the messenger--those who used Ebonics. Those who use Ebonics are now the targets of racists who say that the blacks and other poor who use Ebonics are inferior. This began when the left "celebrated" the diversity of the ethnic classes too poor to learn proper (or at least good) English.

Because of our "celebration" of ethnicity it has become taboo to question the many large and small Muslim communities in the US who refuse to learn English; communities we now find are organizing to send their youth to the Middle East for training in terrorist camps. This doesn't mean that even the majority of people living in those communities agree with terrorism--they do live in the US for other reasons, after all--but politically correct celebrations of ethnicity have not allowed us to properly question the motives of people who appear to be questionable citizens in those communities.

The same can be said for "ethnics" all over the globe. One reason for the Balkan War of the 1990s was "ethnic cleansing". That is what Hitler was doing, also.

"The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people....It was the culmination, largely influenced by the Belgian colonization which favored the Tutsi minority group because of their more 'European' appearance, of longstanding ethnic competition and tensions between the minority Tutsi and the majority Hutu peoples." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Gen…

"Ethnic Cleansing: The elimination of an unwanted group from a society, as by genocide or forced migration." http://www.munfw.org/archive/50th/4th1.h…

It is not what the Israelis want to do to the Muslims; after all half of Jerusalem is controlled by Muslims, and Yasser Arafat had the chance to create a Palestinian nation during his life time but, at the last minute, after all the years of wars and negotiations, "the Old Warrior" changed his mind and said no because the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Palestine was more important to him.

So long as we celebrate "ethnicity" and not simply the cultural differences and traditions, racism will continue to escalate.