The Race
Most discussions about race or ethnicity tend to quickly descend into arguments about racism and colonialism. At least at an academic or political level, they do. Average folk may avoid this pitfall because they've been taught to be polite. They also, probably, lack an agenda. They don't publish books. They're not seeking tenure, which translates into security, and they don't carry a lot of personal baggage—no deep rooted resentments. But, given just a little incentive, they can be stoked into a heated passion. With that, neighbor will rise against neighbor, and people who've never had a problem, suddenly, find resentments so deeply buried, they didn't know they had them—and in all probability, they didn't.
This makes it difficult to find a solution. It may be, that a solution isn't really what some folks want to find anyway. But, I'm going to try, by laying out a few facts, at least as I understand them. Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think so.
Here is a simple question; how can a nation that is suffering the worst recession since the great depression and is seventeen trillion dollars in debt, invite tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of poor, nominally educated immigrants to our shores without adding to our already staggering financial burden? It costs twice as much to educate a student that doesn't already speak English, for starters. And, as we socialize our healthcare system the additional costs will create a need for even more taxes, in fact, it already has. That says nothing about the fifteen to twenty million illegal immigrants that already live here.
The simple answer for some, will be the familiar “The rich need to pay their fair share!” But the rich already pay far more than their fair share. The top 1% of wage earners pays almost 40% of all income tax, while 47% of the nation pays no income tax at all. Since most of those coming will probably earn a lower than average wage, at least initially, it will only add to the growing number of Americans who live at the expense of the other half.
When those same folks want to point to the lack of fairness in terms of taxes, they usually look to someone like Warren Buffet, who earns his living through capital gains. Do I expect that most skeptics will take the time to learn about capital gains? Or, why they're taxed at a lower rate? Of course not! It's easier to complain, pull a few statistics out of the air and then act like they've gotcha. If that doesn't work, the usual “We are a nation of immigrants” is offered as a substitute. In the real world, however, everything has a cost.
There is a general belief by some that if the many illegal aliens residing in our country become law abiding tax payers, the additional tax revenue will make up the difference. Here's the problem, if you have an over abundance of low skilled workers, competing for a limited number of jobs, wages at the low end of the spectrum will remain low. But, the demand for goods and services created by so many flooding into our country will place a strain on the demand for essential things like; food stamps, healthcare, housing, welfare and education, meaning costs on these basic necessities will rise. There simply won't be enough wealth created to offset the demand. In the end, low skill, low wage wage workers will keep wages low, which means lower tax revenues, as well. In other words, this isn’t problem solving, it's circular reasoning.
That's where the colonialist narrative as a guilt inducing weapon is introduced, and the white man's theft of this land of milk and honey from Native Americans becomes the prime story arc. The dark history of American slavery is another potent weapon used to silence critics.
There is a problem with both narratives, though, there never was a group of people called Native Americans. Nor was there a people called Africans, for that matter. There were diverse tribes with their own origin stories, religions, languages and traditions who competed with one another for resources and land. They fought wars and frequently enslaved the losers, just as Europeans and Asians had on their own continents. In fact, many of the ancestors of Native Americans migrated across a land bridge from Asia, more specifically Western-Eurasia and displaced (possibly through integration and warfare) the indigenous people that lived here in that ancient time. Meaning; Native Americans are descended primarily from Middle Eastern and Western European people. This inevitably leads us to the the question: "Who really, then, is “Native American?”
No one, no group, at anytime, until the last three hundred years identified themselves as a people based on race. Even then, the broader idea of race was only known and debated in select parts of Europe by a very small number of scientists.
If slavery and colonialism were universal, then, all people, on every continent, and of every race, are accountable. There would have been no European slave trade without an African slave trade. With Africans supplying the slaves through tribal warfare and kidnapping, to European buyers. The Japanese, likewise, enslaved the Chinese.
The single greatest conflict in human history was fought between “Caucasians” namely; Russia and the U.S.. A protracted Cold War was carried out by proxies around the world, which threatened global civilization unlike any other. The term “Caucasian” was originally used as name for people from the Russian Caucuses, but has come to simply mean "White people." The Cold War, however was fought by people of every race and every creed, Christian and Jew, mystics and atheists.
This makes it difficult to find a solution. It may be, that a solution isn't really what some folks want to find anyway. But, I'm going to try, by laying out a few facts, at least as I understand them. Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think so.
Here is a simple question; how can a nation that is suffering the worst recession since the great depression and is seventeen trillion dollars in debt, invite tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of poor, nominally educated immigrants to our shores without adding to our already staggering financial burden? It costs twice as much to educate a student that doesn't already speak English, for starters. And, as we socialize our healthcare system the additional costs will create a need for even more taxes, in fact, it already has. That says nothing about the fifteen to twenty million illegal immigrants that already live here.
The simple answer for some, will be the familiar “The rich need to pay their fair share!” But the rich already pay far more than their fair share. The top 1% of wage earners pays almost 40% of all income tax, while 47% of the nation pays no income tax at all. Since most of those coming will probably earn a lower than average wage, at least initially, it will only add to the growing number of Americans who live at the expense of the other half.
When those same folks want to point to the lack of fairness in terms of taxes, they usually look to someone like Warren Buffet, who earns his living through capital gains. Do I expect that most skeptics will take the time to learn about capital gains? Or, why they're taxed at a lower rate? Of course not! It's easier to complain, pull a few statistics out of the air and then act like they've gotcha. If that doesn't work, the usual “We are a nation of immigrants” is offered as a substitute. In the real world, however, everything has a cost.
There is a general belief by some that if the many illegal aliens residing in our country become law abiding tax payers, the additional tax revenue will make up the difference. Here's the problem, if you have an over abundance of low skilled workers, competing for a limited number of jobs, wages at the low end of the spectrum will remain low. But, the demand for goods and services created by so many flooding into our country will place a strain on the demand for essential things like; food stamps, healthcare, housing, welfare and education, meaning costs on these basic necessities will rise. There simply won't be enough wealth created to offset the demand. In the end, low skill, low wage wage workers will keep wages low, which means lower tax revenues, as well. In other words, this isn’t problem solving, it's circular reasoning.
That's where the colonialist narrative as a guilt inducing weapon is introduced, and the white man's theft of this land of milk and honey from Native Americans becomes the prime story arc. The dark history of American slavery is another potent weapon used to silence critics.
There is a problem with both narratives, though, there never was a group of people called Native Americans. Nor was there a people called Africans, for that matter. There were diverse tribes with their own origin stories, religions, languages and traditions who competed with one another for resources and land. They fought wars and frequently enslaved the losers, just as Europeans and Asians had on their own continents. In fact, many of the ancestors of Native Americans migrated across a land bridge from Asia, more specifically Western-Eurasia and displaced (possibly through integration and warfare) the indigenous people that lived here in that ancient time. Meaning; Native Americans are descended primarily from Middle Eastern and Western European people. This inevitably leads us to the the question: "Who really, then, is “Native American?”
No one, no group, at anytime, until the last three hundred years identified themselves as a people based on race. Even then, the broader idea of race was only known and debated in select parts of Europe by a very small number of scientists.
If slavery and colonialism were universal, then, all people, on every continent, and of every race, are accountable. There would have been no European slave trade without an African slave trade. With Africans supplying the slaves through tribal warfare and kidnapping, to European buyers. The Japanese, likewise, enslaved the Chinese.
The single greatest conflict in human history was fought between “Caucasians” namely; Russia and the U.S.. A protracted Cold War was carried out by proxies around the world, which threatened global civilization unlike any other. The term “Caucasian” was originally used as name for people from the Russian Caucuses, but has come to simply mean "White people." The Cold War, however was fought by people of every race and every creed, Christian and Jew, mystics and atheists.
In the end, the issue of race is almost certainly framed in a certain way to argue for a debt of wealth that's owed by one group to another. Meaning; a debt owed by whites to blacks. At least that's the debate in America. If most white people are descended from Europeans who fled their countries due to persecution and arrived after slavery was abolished, it doesn't matter. “White Privilege” is the new term, the new mantra that covers all sins—and makes all accounts payable, increasingly, to anyone who isn't white.
This brings us back to the theoretical debt owed by Americans to the many arriving immigrants, most of whom who are, apparently, only taking back what was theirs to begin with. That is the story being offered by La Raza (The Race), by some progressives too. If there's little or no real evidence to support their claim, this new racial myth will do. And then no one should be surprised when the world, once again, makes it's descent back into tribalism. That is what we’re facing. Not utopia. Not a new day of racial harmony. But a new day when a small number of politicians are given sufficient power to mediate all disputes, transferring wealth from one group to another, but mostly from the people to themselves.
This brings us back to the theoretical debt owed by Americans to the many arriving immigrants, most of whom who are, apparently, only taking back what was theirs to begin with. That is the story being offered by La Raza (The Race), by some progressives too. If there's little or no real evidence to support their claim, this new racial myth will do. And then no one should be surprised when the world, once again, makes it's descent back into tribalism. That is what we’re facing. Not utopia. Not a new day of racial harmony. But a new day when a small number of politicians are given sufficient power to mediate all disputes, transferring wealth from one group to another, but mostly from the people to themselves.