September 13, 2021
"On the continent, 'pro-Europeans' believe they have something in common with other Europeans that separates them from the rest of the world..."
"... they think of Europe as what the Germans call a Schicksalsgemeinschaft, or community of fate. Few remainers think in this way; many are genuine cosmopolitans.... It is particularly odd, when you think about it, that identifying with 'Europe' should be thought of as an expression of cosmopolitanism. Europe is not the world and supporting the EU, or thinking of yourself as European, does not make you a 'citizen of the world,' let alone a 'citizen of nowhere,' as Theresa May famously suggested in 2016. Rather, it makes you a citizen of a particular region – one that happens to be the whitest on earth... [W]hile the EU was based on learning the lessons of centuries of conflict within Europe that culminated in the Second World War, and gradually also came to incorporate the collective memory of the Holocaust into its narrative, 'pro-Europeans' did not even attempt to learn the lessons of what Europeans had done to the rest of the world and never had anything to say about the history of colonialism.... [T]he fragile civic identity that emerged during the postwar period seems to be giving way to a more cultural or even ethnic identity – defined, in particular, against Islam. In other words, whiteness may actually be becoming more, not less, central to the European project."
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Hello, Arabs are mostly Islamic and white. I'm getting so sick of trying to fit everything into a four legs good, two legs bad moral fable.
How OUTRAGEOUS!
That someone would think they are culturally linked to others with their culture!
That someone would think they are socially linked to others with their society!
That someone would think they are racially linked to others with their race!
Don't those Infidels realize? That ALL ARE ONE, IN THE EYES OF ALLAH?
Submit to the will of Allah, and his emirs! Do their bidding, and you might spared (maybe!)
what have the Romans ever done for us?
The aqueduct. What? ...they, they gave us the aqueduct...
Yes, they did give us that, that's true And sanitation Yes, that too
The aqueduct I'll grant is one thing the Romans may have done
And the roads, now they're all new. And the great wines too
Well, apart from the wines and fermentation,
And the canals for navigation, Public health for all the nation
Apart from those, which are a plus, what have the Romans ever done for us?
The baths. What?...the public baths... Oh, yes, yes...
The public baths are a great delight,
and it's safe to walk in the streets at night.
Cheese and medicine, irrigation, Roman law and education
the circus for our delectation and the gladiation
Well, apart from medicine, irrigation, health, roads, cheese and education,
baths and the Circus Maximus, what have the Romans ever done for us?
I'm just reading Muriel Spark. For some reason I've never read her before, even though I know she has been praised by impressive people. From her essay on Georges Simenon, whom she praises as "a truly wonderful writer":
"... his Germanic methodology and his racial prejudices are lurkingly present throughout everything he wrote. This impedes the longevity of his books. It gives them at times too old-fashioned and dated a flavour, far more than does the stove in the corner of Maigret's office on the Quai des Orfevres."
To over-simplify, an American is always likely to feel a bit guilty about racism. After all, it makes no sense in a context of a kind of universal belief that individuals can succeed on their own, regardless of their background. For many Europeans this is somehow entirely different, "us" vs. "them" is simply in the background where it doesn't have to be stated. One of the many things progressives are quite naive about.
Sounds as if Europe is getting ready for another Crusade!
Yet another fragmentary analysis with no value.
Europeans were not Christians until the power vacuum that arose with the fall of the Roman Empire in the early 400s. Then, until the 20th Century they spent their resources on Christian churches and cathedrals. Europe was in fact often ruled by the Catholic popes until the 1500s, whereby a pope could and did make and destroy kings.
Spain was conquered by Middle Eastern and North African people (i.e., the Moors), who then held Spain for several centuries. The pagan Vikings invaded Christian Europe to steal, kill, take land, and ultimately trade/integrate with the locals. The European colonial era was relatively recent and relatively brief -- following a long history of weakness and small local governments (e.g., Holy Roman Empire in Germany; the fragmented Italian peninsula; Britain was repeatedly invaded and fractured, etc.).
Regardless of past atrocities and brutalities, Europeans are indeed naturally and genetically white. They have 1,500 years of Christian history. These facts can't be changed except through genocide or invasion and displacement. They will therefore naturally cluster together per shared experiences and overlapping living cultures.
Why is this news to anyone with even a high school education?
okay, i've had my breakfast tea, and i'm ready to ask a Serious Question
Are we considering Italians to be white, now?
What about the Irish?
We're not seriously pretending, that the Poles and all the other Slavs are white; are we?
Spaniards? Seriously?!?!
So, Basically, white now means non-lower class citizens?
Those goldurned Nazis, always trying to keep Europe European. They never stop without a liberal application of force. Let's all drink a toast to the Muslims as they carry on the glorious tradition of the Sixth of June -- invading Europe and blowing shit up.
If history was allowed to traverse Europe would be Muslim majority in 50 years. Maybe less.
But within the next 10 years history will diverge in a way nobody can predict so that doesn't really matter much.
Europeans - European men - were the first people to discover, explore and describe the rest of the world, and also invented the modern world's science, engineering, medicine, and to a lesser extend its legal and political systems, clothing and language. Deal with it.
I watched quite a few US Open tennis matches for the first time in years and was struck by how many of the European players and their spouses in the stands wore crosses around their necks. Both women’s finalists did (though Fernandez is Canadian) and both men’s finalists did as well. Many of the Americans did as well.
Christianity is experiencing a hidden, cultural revival among European people. It is being led by Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans, and is the unwritten story of the day.
"One that's white and Christian"
Well, if you are comparing racial/religious groupings, that demographic has been, by far, the most dynamic over the last 1000 (?) years. Although it does seem to be in the process of surrendering that title.
What other pan-European identity could there be? Your two options boil down to "White people" and "Christendom."
Kind of like the States used to feel like we were one...but now we are divided by ideologies. We are no longer the UNITED STATES. We are the DIVIDED STATES of America.
Christian? The churches are empty except for camera-wielding tourists, while mosques proliferate.
White? Pull the other one...
The runaway explosion of the African population was from European medicine, and white mathematics.
Funny, I've never viewed Europe or Europeans as cosmopolitan, no more than I do New Yorkers, in this sense: I think of the word 'provincial' when considering Europeans, only because I don't know of the proper word for people who see their land as the beginning and end. It's not so much provincial, as it is insular. While the great cities of Europe have historically given us the sophisticated things that make up Western Civilization, they have, until recent times- say the last 20 years or so-looked down their noses at the rest of the world, as if to say if only they were Europeans, they would get it. In recent times they've acted like white liberals from the American suburbs, feeling extra guilty for past history, for seen and unseen slights, for known and unknown bad acts, trying to make amends by exaggerated actions to the world they formerly held at arms length. Like opening up the borders of Europe to millions of Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa who come to Europe not even considering assimilation as Europeans, but to convert the continent. That should assuage the guilt of some Cosmopolitans, but probably not the provincials who get to watch their culture evaporate.
The truth is, Europe has been throughout history, White and Christian. Much like Africa has been throughout history, Black and non-Christian, until the Euros moved in and tried to convert as many as possible- or kill those who would not convert. Japan was always a very insular country, always Japanese and Shintoist or Buddhist. The Americas is where the world came to mix. But even that, as we know has been a struggle from the start and may always be that way as cultures collide and humans act as humans do.
But the Culture is the thing. Europe is on the cusp of losing it's culture because of it's White Guilt. And the dirty little secret is that the world is better off with a Europe as it has been historically. Culturally rich, historically deep, and unfortunately, dangerous when left to their own devices. But, don't we love the French being the French? The English as the stoics? The Austrians, Czechs, Poles, Italians, Greeks- giving the world their unique cultures? Aren't these things something worth saving, something to treasure for all the world?
Would we approve of dismantling Japanese culture, or do we approve of what has been done in various African countries for centuries? And is the answer to Africa to make Europe pay by decrying it's historic "Whiteness"? What is that?
I'm not sure today's Europe has to 'learn the lessons' of colonialism by flogging itself and dismantling it's historic cultures. The history of the world is full of colonialism- both large and small. Countries or tribes within each continent have, over centuries, attacked and incorporated other countries or tribes for their materials, land, women, men. Should the entire globe be subject to a mournful self-flogging for a few years before we can move on? I'm not saying forget history. Just the opposite. Remember it. Learn by it. But don't destroy yourself because of it. Get better. Be better. Europe was White and Christian for centuries. That in and of itself is not evil. To say it is, is racist. That attitude has to change. And White Europe is changing anyway. But the cultures of those great countries are worth keeping. For all of us. And that is the key. What's the point of importing people who hate you or your culture?
Imagine the cradle of western civilization for 2+ millennia reduced to mere white and Christian for it’s identity: strip away everything interesting about the varied cultures of the continent, and yeah, I guess that’s what they’ve had in common for a good while, although they’ve fought wars civil and less civil over what kind of white Christian would reign supreme. This flavor of critical thinking, a sort of Americanization of continental epistemology, is value-add re-import they should never have allowed back.
The sourest of sour grapes…can they even grow grapes on Great Britain?
One may take "against" Islam as an active concept. Things are done to disadvantage Islam.
Or is it a passive concept? Just don't do Islam.
It's laughable if you are a believing Christian to hear that the EU is developing an identity centered on being Christian. Its past was Christian and cannot be explained without that fact. But its present - godless, purposeless, faddish, not creating babies or art, aborting, euthanizing - can only be explained as weak socialism. The EU has been socialist long enough for its citizens to know what a godless socialism is and does. But they're third generation immigrants to Non-belief, who can't just go back to the Old Country and they dominate the EU. There's still people in Italy or Greece or Poland or wherever who still think of themselves as Italians, Poles or Greeks and from them something might come but they are a minority and the ones among them who are believing Christians are a small sub-minority. A vital belief continuous with the past is a strength but not of the same kind as being a majority in a democracy.
White? Maybe. Christian? Yeah - not hardly. Most serious religiously-minded Europeans headed for the Americas a longtime ago.
Hans Kundnani (The Guardian)
Hans: traditional German name
Kundnani: Indian name from the Maharashtra region
So Hans' parents, Indians who gave their child a German name, embraced the idea of Europeanness. But then, they probably had more experience of the world and what really goes on outside those white Western enclaves than Hans does. Thanks to them, he is privileged to take for granted those advantages his parents were grateful for.
Much like the last 50 years in the US, where nobody gets credit for ending racism but everyone is accused of being more and more racist, European post-colonialists must bear the burden of their ancestors' behavior, despite being several generations past the European people who ended European colonialsim.
One might think the purpose of such eternal sin is eternal damnation, without the possibility of redemption. In which case, why not be hung for a whole herd of sheep, rather than for a single lamb?
what a riduculous word salad. And I sincerly doubt many Euros have "incorporated the Holocaust into the narrative". Whatever that means. And any European identify is far 2nd to their national identities. These countries - really peoples - have been around for a very long time.
A culture that is not ashamed of itself for the color of their skin. Sounds as non-racist as you can get. Sign me up.
Damn temujin where is your blog, wonderful comment.
Looked Mr. Kundnani up. He has a Dutch mother and an Indian father--hence one might call him Eurasian--if one is permitted to use that word these days. And he's written a lot of books and articles, many of them focused on Germany's role in the world past and present.
"So, Basically, white now means non-lower class citizens?"
When did white people start talking about "Brown people" — and why? They were excluding some people from the "white" category, and I would begin with the assumption that what anyone does they do for their own advantage. If you don't believe that, you don't believe in systemic racism. Did they do it out of the goodness of their heart?
Systemic racism is phlogiston, the cause of fire. There are fires, therefore there is phlogiston.
Systemic racism likewise causes blacks not to do as well as whites on the average.
Our Professor asks...
When did white people start talking about "Brown people" — and why?
What a coincidence! THIS TIME, i've done the reading!
How the Census Misleads on Race
A new ‘diversity index’ and a subtle change in a question have resulted in an undercount of whites.
“Races” are defined not by biology but by cultural convention. As late as the early 20th century, many Anglo-Americans didn’t identify Southern or Eastern Europeans as “white.”
Something similar seems to be happening to many Americans of Hispanic and Asian origin. About 3 in 10 Hispanics and Asians intermarry, usually to a white spouse. According to a 2016 study by economists Brian Duncan and Stephen J. Trejo, 35% of third-generation Hispanics of mixed parentage no longer identify as Hispanic; and 55% of third-generation Asian-Americans of mixed parentage no longer identify as Asian. A 2017 Pew report found that among Americans of Hispanic origin who don’t identify themselves as Hispanic, 59% said that they were seen by others as white.
But in 2020 the census asked respondents who checked off “white” to specify their nationality: “Print, for example, German, Irish, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.” No Spanish-speaking nationality was listed. That likely created the impression that Hispanic was another race, notwithstanding the previous question’s disclaimer that “Hispanic origins are not races.”
And, NO; i Don't believe in "systemic racism".
I don't even believe that racism = prejudice Plus power
This Tweet and its first reply were interesting in light of Althouse's 10:01 comment.
https://twitter.com/roderickgraham/status/1437183919347077123
"...this function of dispossession does not depend on the ethnic features everyone is obsessed with today."
Possibly white does mean "non-lower-class" people and always has.
Niall Ferguson writes brilliantly about the effects of European Imperialism, the most significant of which were the public health measures forced on (some) European colonies, which resulted in population explosions.
Instead of healthy, stable populations continuing traditional life, they got barely-healthy exploding populations, which the Brits and French in particular exploited to the max for military manpower in the two World Wars started by Germany.
Having some notion of obligation and gratitude to their colonial soldiers, both Britain and
France instituted policies encouraging in-migration to the metropolis.
Lacking populous ex-colonies and being no more far-sighted than the victors, the Germans turned to the Turks for cheap labor. I wonder how the somewhat established, semi-civilized German Turks view the primitives who are flooding in now? Is there a parallel to the German Jewish disdain for "Ostjuden" that was a feature of German life in the 19th and early 20th C ?
I've loved and studied European history and culture all my life, and modern Europe and its offspring are unquestionably the most creatively dynamic areas of the world, still.
On the basis of my two German-born paternal grandparents, I am (or was, I haven't looked recently) eligible for German citizenship with minimal other requirements. Things would have to get a lot worse here and a lot better there, but for the first time in my life I am taking the idea seriously.
"When did white people start talking about 'Brown people'"?
7:04 A.M. on May 11, 1253 (o.s.)
People have been making distinctions based on skin color since they had skin, of course. It is sometimes claimed that the ancient Egyptians were B/black--but Egyptian art shows clearly that skin color was noticed, and had some significance in the culture. They did not think of themselves as either W/white, B/black or "African" but they clearly distinguished Us from Them.
Europe is fucked, and they probably know it, too. The third world is invading Europe year by year. It will become a shithole continent-wide by the end of this century.
Our useless fat fuck of a D mayor (Catholic, I will add) has been proudly announcing that the Bluff City is fully on board with the national plan to resettle our "allies" from Afghanistan.
We'll see.
When did white people start talking about "Brown people"
Probably the first time an African and a European met. By the way how do you suppose the Brown people referred to the White people?
— and why?
Probably because they had brown skin.
They were excluding some people from the "white" category,
Because they weren't White.
and I would begin with the assumption that what anyone does they do for their own advantage.
Why?
If you don't believe that, you don't believe in systemic racism.
True
Did they do it out of the goodness of their heart?
Again, what do you suppose the Brown people called the White people and why?
I'm old enough to remember when blacks blaming the man for their inability to get ahead was a bad thing. Blacks used to make films denouncing it. It was considered lazy and a cop out.
If you don't believe that, you don't believe in systemic racism.
Excepting the systemic anti-White/Asian racism known as affirmative action, it's a baseless idea.
okay, i've had my breakfast tea, and i'm ready to ask a Serious Question
Are we considering Italians to be white, now?
What about the Irish?
Here's a serious answer from Volokh/Bernstein: Sorry, but the Irish were always ‘white’ (and so were Italians, Jews and so on) (in the U.S.)
This seems to be a particularly British problem. By embracing Europe, well-off Britons thought that they were become cosmopolitans, citizens of the world. They were so used to seeing Europe as "abroad," and European culture as something their country was lacking and needed to embrace, that they forgot about the rest of the world.
But of course, no country or continent can be the whole world. To do so, it ceases to be much of anything and loses coherence. Faded Mosaic by Christopher Clausen is worth a look. Kundnani's books The Paradox of German Power and Utopia or Auschwitz also sound interesting. There's a response to Kundnani here, but it's disappointing, arguing that Europe is doing its best to deculture itself and become a purely post-national, post-cultural entity:
But to the founders of the EU – and people like myself – Europe’s primary “Other” is its own past. The entire European project is an elaborate attempt to transcend a history of nationalism in Europe and imperialism in the wider world. Thus the EU has in its DNA a rejection of the violent ethno-nationalism that led to the death camps. Like many across the Continent, I am a member of the first generation in my family not to face war and exile, let alone extermination. The EU deserves at least some of the credit for this.
Well, yes, the founders of the EU wanted to prevent wars and genocides from happening again, but I'm pretty sure they thought of themselves as French, German, Italian, etc. In politics the "primary Other" is those in the other party, but that doesn't have much to say about one's cultural or national identity which is assumed to be deeper than that.
I'm confused. So a Pope advocating open European borders is white and Christian and thus really effectively bringing about the return of a white hegemonic Europe? This Systemic Racism is so God-like in its mysterious moves.
The beauty of the German language, you can stick any two or more words together & make up something new. Schicksalsgemeinschaft" "Fahrvergnugen" Twain wrote a humorous essay about German early on.
Temujin, another masterpiece of a comment; I have almost nothing to add, except to reinforce the idea that what's "European" -- or, anyway, what used to be European -- is precisely that "Europe" wasn't one big place but a lot of little ones.
Yes, I want the French to be French. I want the Poles to be Polish. I want the Slovenes to be Slovenian. I want the Dutch to be Dutch; I want the Danes to be Danes; I want the Germans (to the extent compatible with everyone else's liberty) to be German. I want (if such a thing is still possible) the Luxembourgians to be Luxembourgean. I even want the Belgians to be Belgian, always assuming that it means conducting themselves like Belgians, and not conducting everyone else as though Europe were a Belgian fiefdom.
The same goes, btw, for the US. We have fifty states; why not just let them be fifty states? Why the frenzy to Federalize everything into uniformity? Because there is a vast rumple in the middle of the blanket that is America, and until someone can tamp it down to conform to the neat regularities of the coasts, certain people are going to remain royally pissed.
1. President Obama once noted that as the African continent becomes less arable and habitable due to climate change, Europe must open its doors.
2. Europe's 'resistance' to welcoming any more migrants, as illustrated by Hungary, will undoubtedly incur the full wrath and ire of the UN. I shudder.
This is all a bit strange and foolish, though. Two of the top four in the British cabinet are of Indian descent. So was the Irish Prime Minister. So is the Portuguese Prime Minister. Opportunities are there -- more in the ex-colonial powers on the fringe of Europe than in the center. Complaining about belonging and self-identification is likely to produce the sort of situation that we have the media and the universities in the US today, where everybody has a grievance and is free to indulge in it.
By the way how do you suppose the Brown people referred to the White people?
The Japanese said the Portuguese "smelled of butter". A Chinese immigrant said that when he first arrived as a boy he noticed that American women "smelled like milk". Europe, like Wisconsin, is the land of dairy.
Genetic Ancestry and General Cognitive Ability in a Sample of [> 10,000] American Youths
"Black and Hispanic children in the United States have lower mean cognitive test scores than White children. The reasons for this are contested. The test score gap may be caused by sociocultural factors, but the high heritability of g suggests that genetic variance might play a role. Differences between self-identified race or ethnicity (SIRE) groups could be the product of ancestral genetic differences. This genetic hypothesis predicts that genetic ancestry will predict g within these admixed groups. To investigate this hypothesis, we performed admixture-regression analyses with data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Cohort. Consistent with predictions from the genetic hypothesis, African and Amerindian ancestry were both found to be negatively associated with g. The association was robust to controls for multiple cultural, socioeconomic, and phenotypic factors."
From the PDF:
"Figure 5. Regression plot of European ancestry and g in the full sample (N = 10370)."
...shows that IQ in non-Asian US populations is proportional to the fraction of their European ancestry.
When did white people start talking about "Brown people"?
First, the capitalization of "Brown" dates back to about last summer, so that is one thing to consider.
White people started talking about brown people about the time that grape boycotts made migrant farm workers into a cause on college campuses. This was a way of taking the Civil Rights self-congratulations of the late 60's and extending the high while sucking up the 70's.
By inventing a class that had no reality out of disparate groups from warmer climes, white students could find new ways to self-flagellate, while shifting any issues of cultural conflict into a skin-tone framework where all decisions were easy.
"Balfegor said...
What other pan-European identity could there be? Your two options boil down to "White people" and "Christendom.""
You left out racist.
I have been reading Caesar's account of his Gallic Wars and it's kind of like he was the first anthropologist, what with his descriptions of the many tribes of Gaul, Britain, and Germany, and their customs and their political structure. Europe too was a continent of aboriginals overrun by superior military organization and the superior technology of an industrial society.
Bill M., number four in my class at law school, whose mother was of Mexican heritage - or as he said, “Mexican-American” - spoke up during a discussion of a commentary that seemed to distinguish Mexicans from whites. He made it clear that he and his mother considered themselves white.
On the other hand, 20 years later, my secretary whose parents were Mexicans from Mexico frequently jokingly(?) referred to Anglos as “you whites.”
Who knows when the transition took place, but she and her sons are “whiter” than most Anglos. It seems to be a political distinction created by - guess who?
Ann Althouse said...
When did white people start talking about "Brown people" — and why?
Which "white people"? Where?
By dividing people up into "white people" and "non-white people", you're being a racist. Especially when you carry the assumption that "all white peopler the same", which is necessary for your question to make any sense at all.
They were excluding some people from the "white" category, and I would begin with the assumption that what anyone does they do for their own advantage.
Every human society that has ever existed, and had contact with people who were not part of that society, has divided people into "us" and "not us".
Any society that has been large enough to have classes, has had signifiers dividing people into "our class" and "not our class".
In 1800s US, Irish, Italians and other Southern Europeans (who all tanned better than the Northern Europeans who were the initial "whites"), and Poles and other Eastern Europeans (who were just as white . non-tanning as the Northern Europeans) weren't "really white". Which is to say "they're not our class, dear"
If you don't believe that, you don't believe in systemic racism.
The US had "no dogs or Irish" signs on businesses in the 1800s. heck, we had slavery based on skin color. Of course the US used to be systematically racist.
And we still are. Of course, now the racists call it "diversity, Equity, and Inclusion", but they're just as bigoted, hate filled, exclusionary, and skin color focused as the previous groups of systematic racists.
And, as with the 1800s and early 1900s, it's the worst among the Democrats and the Left.
The sad problem is that the 1960s Civil Rights movement offered a chance to get past that sort of racism. but the Left and Democrats just weren't, and aren't, wiling to give it up
This sounds like sour grapes from this "Hans Kundnani" fellow. While his first name is Germanic, his last name certainly isn't. He might be living in Europe, he might have been born in Europe, but his heritage is certainly from somewhere else. He know this, and resents those people whose heritage IS European. Those who are resentful always want to tear down the status quo. It's the same way here in America, where the resentful ones want to tear down everything that has made America successful. Haters gonna hate.
President Obama once noted that as the African continent becomes less arable and habitable due to climate change, Europe must open its doors.
It's actually going the other way. Even the Sahara is turning green.
https://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mueller-sahel.pdf
Like many across the Continent, I am a member of the first generation in my family not to face war and exile, let alone extermination. The EU deserves at least some of the credit for this.
Wrong. The EU does not deserve the slightest shred of any credit for that.
The vast majority of the credit goes to the US. The rest goes to Nato. None goes to the EU
Well the old world may be dead
Our parents can't understand
But I still love my parents
And I still love the old world
Oh, I had a New York girlfriend
And she couldn't understand how I could
Still love my parents and still love the old world
So I told her:
I want to keep my place in the old world
Keep my place in the arcane
'Cause I still love my parents and I still love the old world
Alright
I say old world
I say old world
I say…
-Jonathan Richman, Old World
Here's a serious answer from Volokh/Bernstein: Sorry, but the Irish were always ‘white’ (and so were Italians, Jews and so on) (in the U.S.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/
Not a free read. And given that it's coming from the open borders extremists at Volokh, I'm not impressed enough to put any effort into trying to read it.
There's a reason for the term WASPs, and it's not because the Irish, Italians, and other Catholics weren't "racially" discriminated against in the US
As a blonde Gentile, Althouse would presumably belong to the Shiksasgemeinschaft.
"She got the Schicksalsgemein, I got the Schaft." --Jerry Reed
In other words, whiteness may actually be becoming more, not less, central to the European project."
When Western elites decided to make race central to the narrative of modern societies, the above was a foregone conclusion.
The modern Left is the greatest recruitment tool for "white supremacists" since the KKK.
One of the Berlin wits used to ask, "What are Europeans proud of?"
Being British, or French, or German.
"What are Europeans proud of not being?"
British, French, or German.
Like many across the Continent, I am a member of the first generation in my family not to face war and exile, let alone extermination. The EU deserves at least some of the credit for this.
No it doesn't. The Americans are the only reason you don't speak Russian. American power and the invented-in-America atomic bomb, not the interminable mutterings of the bureaucrats of Brussels, put an end to inter-European wars.
The EU itself is just a belated recognition of the reality created by overwhelming American power. The individual nations of Europe are no longer powerful enough to matter on the world stage. The EU is a mostly-futile attempt to matter collectively since they can't individually.
'When did white people start talking about "Brown people" — and why?'
White liberals talk about 'brown people' in order to fold them into the aggrieved class...to gain power naturally.
Rich, white, East Coast, elite, country club liberals don't give a fuck about brown people other than as a means to gain or retain power.
Europe's 'resistance' ... will undoubtedly incur the full wrath and ire of the UN.
Yes, there may even be a strongly-worded letter in the offing!
whatever happened to the term >>> INOD-EUROPEAN?
what did it signify?
Tim Maguire puts his finger right on the problem, but this is the default reflex of The Guardian (which can be explained to US readers as a sort of poor man's Washington Post).
The reference to "remainers" shows this is another howl of anguish about the British referendum decision to leave the EU, (a Guardian perennial) but with a Woke twist to let the EU know that it is not thereby immune from criticism. It is true that, as the origins of the EU lie in the determination of Christian Democrat politicians to rebuild and unite after the horrors of WWII, it was inevitably a Eurocentric project - there was quite enough to be done without worrying about the rest of the world. War guilt did not leave much room for White guilt. Anyway, it was naively thought that decolonisation was taking care of that problem.
It was however the failures of decolonisation that led to the arrival of massive numbers from the old colonies, especially in the case of France, which now has a Muslim population of over 10% and over 30% in some cities. That is why the "fragile civic identity that emerged during the postwar period seems to be giving way to a more cultural or even ethnic identity – defined, in particular, against Islam". The civic identity the writer thinks Europe is losing was always white and Christian; the difference now is that in many places in Europe it is having to fight for its survival.
Indo-European is still used (last I looked) in its original linguistic sense--a group of languages that had a common ancestor, from which the majority of later languages from Western Europe to India evolved; as distinct from Semitic- or other-descended languages.
Some people like to pretend that Indo-European and Aryan describe the same things, but the first is empirically a thing, and the second a tendentious ethnic fantasy for the most part.
When did white people start talking about “Brown people “ - and why?
Well, Ann, that would be all your liberal colleagues. Not a term in common use except in academia. But then, when I donate blood I check the box “non-Hispanic White”. Why does the Red Cross even need to know? My whole blood donations are labeled “B+”, not “B+ non-Hispanic White”.
I’ve driven to this one blood donation center many times. City population according to city data com 8.2% black, 7.2% Asian, 4.3% Hispanic. Have yet to see a blank or Asian donor. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Hispanic one. Because they’re pretty much white. But your liberal colleagues insist we all be subdivided as much as possible.
In Great Britain, there’s little intermarriage between English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. In Europe, except among the elite, there’s little intermarriage between different nationalities. Rules for the ruling class are different. Money and power Trump national or religious identity in Europe among the elite.
I’m a mix of every subgroup in Britain, and at least a half dozen European nations. And my kids a mix of more. Some of them would be “brown “ to academics.
Michelle Dulak Thomson, you made a critical error. There are no Belgians in Belgium. There are Flemish and Walloons, but no Belgians. And no, I have no idea how one tells the difference, but they know. There’s even a joke about it, a Belgian army joke.
A company commander got tired of the infighting in his command. Ordered the company into formation, then ordered “All the Flemish line up to the left, all the Walloons to the right!” When the movement was complete there was one line private in the center. The captain says, “Well, we have one line Belgian in the company. What’s your name son?” “Private Goldstein, sir!”
When you die and go to heaven, you'll be greeted by an Englishman, your food will be prepared by a Frenchman, a German will manage your itinerary, and you'll be entertained by an Italian.
If you should go to hell, you'll be greeted by a Frenchman, your food will be prepared by an Englishman, an Italian will manage your itinerary, and you'll be entertained by a German.
That old joke has no Africans in it, so it must be racist.
The sad things @Bunkypotatohead, is that I'd far rather have British food than French :-)
My wife and I took a luxury barge trip on the Elbe in 2019. The onboard entertainment featured a huge number of jokes about different European nationalities, the sort of things that leftoid Americans freak out over (when others are watching), and would get an American company sued into bankruptcy.
Everyone laughed, nobody got huffy.
That's more cultural sophistication than is commonly found in our New World Neopuritanville.
Enigma writes, "Europeans were not Christians until the power vacuum that arose with the fall of the Roman Empire in the early 400s."
Far too generalized and potentially misleading.
Many so-called barbarian peoples first came into the Roman sphere of influence as foederati (non-citizen client kingdoms) of the empire during the late Fourth/early Fifth centuries, most importantly the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. Simultaneously, Christain missionaries, many of them representing heterodox theologies at odds with ruling dioceses in Italy and Asia Minor, began to win converts among those barbaric pagans. This process of Christianization was so powerful that the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476 by Flavius Odoacer, an Arian Christian, who led a multi-ethnic barbarian army into Italy that was also generally Christian. (These were Chalcedonian, Arian, and some Nicean believers as well. No single confession at this point was powerful enough among the barbarians to impose an orthodoxy or effectively eradicate a heresy.)
When the legions were withdrawn from Britannia in 410, they left behind a largely Christian population that, having been cut off from Rome, eventually adopted a decentralized church guided by a hierarchy of abbots rather than bishops, i.e Celtic or Insular Christianity, which retained numerous points of distinctiveness of traditions and liturgy well into the 12th Century. The first Anglo-Saxon Christians were converted by Celtic priests and abbots. In 597 Pope Gregory I, commissioned Augustine of Canterbury as Rome's official Missionary to the Anglo-Saxons, and it was during Augustine's mission that many Celtic abbeys reunited with Roman orthodoxy.
By 476 much of Europe's population had been practicing Christians of one form or another -- Roman, Celtic, Chalcedonian, or Arian -- for many generations. There were some extremely violent and aggressive pagan peoples to be sure -- the Alans, the Vandals, the Alamanni, the Franks, the Gepids, the Lombards, the Saxons, the Slavs, and many -- but they were opposed and eventually incorporated by the more numerous and more civilized Christain populations of the former Western Roman Empire -- Gauls, Iberians, Lusitanians, Goths, Dalmatians, Britains, and Irish. Consequently, it is a mistake to assume that Europe at the close of the Roman period in the West was fundamentally pagan and that Christianity was confined to Italy, Greece, and Asia. After all, it is not a coincidence that the Germanic languages of the Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, and the Vandals faded quite rapidly only to be replaced by the ancestral forms of Italian, French, Spanish, and Romanian.
Gospace said...
... There are no Belgians in Belgium. There are Flemish and Walloons, but no Belgians. And no, I have no idea how one tells the difference, but they know.
Flemings speak Dutch. Walloons speak French. The reason that the Flemings are part of Belgium goes back to the religious wars of the 16th Century: Belgium was/is a Catholic country, while the Netherlands was Protestant. The Flemings preferred to be part of Belgium rather than the Netherlands due to religious rather than linguistic and cultural affinities.
@Gospace - "Michelle Dulak Thomson, you made a critical error. There are no Belgians in Belgium. There are Flemish and Walloons, but no Belgians."
I'm afraid the error is yours; the King is not styled "the King of Belgium", but "le Roi des Belges" Lots of, in particular, Flemish, do not want to identify with Belgium so self-identify as Flemish, but their passport says they are Belgians.
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