Does ethnicity matter?

Posted by Guest Blogger on Saturday, 04 March 2006 14:18.

Does ethnicity matter? Is it important?

Right-wing (classical) liberals generally answer with a consistent “no”. Even if they feel some sense of ethnic identity themselves, they believe that a modern, autonomous individual should be shaped by his own reasoned choices. We don’t get to choose our ethnicity, so it is assumed (at best) that ethnicity is something of secondary rank within human nature, something of a sentimental nature, but not relevant to how we choose to organise our lives or our society.

Left-wing liberals are less consistent. Like all liberals, they believe that we are human because of a freedom to exercise our individual will. Therefore, they tend to read issues in terms of power relations: who is dominant in their will over others. Those tagged as dominant tend to lose moral legitimacy, as they are thought to have organised a privilege at the expense of the oppressed “other”.

What this means is that left-wing liberals will generally be harsher on ethnic groups tagged as “dominant” than on those they consider oppressed – especially if the “oppressed” group is thought to be rallying around ethnic discrimination to improve their status.

For a traditionalist conservative like myself, neither of these liberal views is adequate. A traditionalist would argue that ethnicity is important in creating a social context for individual life and in providing a core source of identity for individuals.

This is true whether we belong to a large, successful, “dominant” ethnic group (e.g. the Japanese), or a small, beleaguered one (e.g. an Amazonian rainforest tribe).

The importance of ethnicity is evident even amongst Western populations who are supposed to have transcended it some generations ago.

In my recent reading I have happened across the following three stories, each highlighting the continuing relevance of ethnicity in the West.

The first deals with an unhappy topic: the suicide rate amongst adoptees in Sweden. A large scale research project has found that children adopted from overseas are several times more likely to suicide than ethnic Swedes.

Why? One plausible explanation offered by the research is that it’s “not unusual for foreign adoptees to have greater problems in finding their identity in relation to their parents and society as a whole.” In other words, they suffer because they are less sure of who they are both in terms of their family and their ethnicity.

(After the Asian tsunami the UN discouraged adoption offers from Australia for precisely this reason.)

Then there is the following snippet of information from a science website:

If your spouse is genetically similar, you’re more likely to have a happy marriage ... Child abuse rates are lower when similarity is high, and you’ll also be more altruistic and willing to sacrifice more for someone who is more genetically like you, research shows.

This supports data produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing that divorce is twice as likely when spouses are born in different countries.

Finally, there was the newspaper report on housing trends in Melbourne. The featured family, the Gannons, were moving from West Brunswick to McKinnon for several reasons:

I saw it as a very good area to bring up a family, probably as opposed to where we live at the moment. Nothing against it, but you’ve got schools that aren’t that great, a big influx of migrants, we’re not that far away from Housing Commission, which affects the schooling, so that was a consideration.

All these cases involve serious issues: where to raise your family, marriage outcomes, mental health. In each case, ethnicity remains an important factor and can’t simply be relegated to a sentimental B-League, as some liberals might expect us to do.

Tags: Ethnicity and Ethnic Genetic Interests

Comments:

Posted by Bo Sears on Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:44 | #

Does Ethnicity Matter?

Yes, ethnicity matters, but it is important to realize that ethnicity is only one of a fairly large number of kinds of shared characteristics the engages bonds between and among peoples that create trust, enhance communication, and enable cooperative, non-coerced activities.

To ask the question is to answer it: of course.

Posted by slinker, sailer, toldya, sly on Sat, 04 Mar 2006 21:56 | #

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4770744.stm

Well then, South Asian ethnicity is certainly important in Canada. Physically and culturally alien South Asians are allowed to bring weapons to school; it’s their “religion” don’t you know. White kids of course cannot bring such weapons to school, putting the South Asians in a position of “superior firepower.”

I assume this is another example of fair “competition” according to the Desi crowd. After all, what can be more “fair” than a knife-wielding Asiatic vs. an unarmed white? Whatsamatta, whitey, afraid of “competition?”

Another example of “fair competition” is that Asians are considered “socially disadvantaged” in the USA, and thus benefit from small business grants and other handouts funded by tax dollars.

Not to mention the ethnic nepotism.

But hey, as was stated on this blog before, “fair competition” is defined by the Desi crowd as that which is rigged in order to advance Asian interests over those of people of European ancestry.

Posted by Amalek on Sat, 04 Mar 2006 22:00 | #

When we see the popularity of plotting one’s family tree on the internet; when we behold adoptees desperately searching for their birth parents, often years after they thought they had forgotten them, because they want to show them their own children and delight in the phenotypical similarities; when we contemplate the elaborate lengths people go to in setting up reunions of a clan or those with the same surname; when we notice how the descendants of British immigrants in the New World and Down Under keep in touch, often minutely, with developments in the old country; when we observe how neighbourhoods fill up with those who look like each other… then we know that ‘ethnicity’ means a great deal, and that actions speak in the still small voice that is louder than the deafening demands of the race-mixers and cosmopolites.

People want roots: a sense of connection with the past and their fellow men at home and abroad, a kinship in time and space, a heritage that is distinctive, not universalist. The Human Race is too big for most of us to feel pride in being members of it. Its lowest common denominators do not stir the blood; men define their importance much more by differences (and yes, by feelings of superiority) than by the beige-coloured bromides of the United Nations.

We feel fortified by belonging to the Big Battalions of our extended racial family as well as the little platoons of our relations and friends. Beyond the brightness of acquaintanceship hovers the dark comforting penumbra of friends not yet met: strangers who can be our brothers.

As soon as we meet such strangers, there is a sporting chance that we will discover a language, a faith, a set of assumptions about how the world works and what makes life worth living, that is more apt to be our own than when the acquaintance looks, sounds and smells alien. So it is, and so it will be. The subspecies of Man will never sink their differences, for they are intrinsic. If a beige race ever peopled the Earth, it would no longer be homo sapiens.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Sun, 05 Mar 2006 00:28 | #

Amalek, I liked your comment so much I posted the first half of it in the comments section at my own website - hope you don’t mind.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Sun, 05 Mar 2006 00:40 | #

I recall now having written a piece on a foreign adoptee (into England, not Sweden). It dealt with the confusion of identity issue directly: Precious Williams.

Posted by Jason Soon on Sun, 05 Mar 2006 11:58 | #

Interesting. I read a more or less cogently argued piece by Mark Richardson, one which I disagree with as a classical liberal of course but Mark’s a fine and intelligent writer and I can appreciate his philosophical clarity. Then the mood gets broken by coming across yet again Fred Scrooby’s creepy obsession with me. Seems like Fred can’t write a post without thinking about me.

For chrissake Fred let me spell it out for you again - I was born in MALAYSIA, a country which I have many close relatives in but not much identification with because it’s a Muslim majority nation and one still subject to some authoritarian mores. I now reside in Australia which I do identify with.

My GREAT GRANDFATHER came from China, my grandparents and everyone else from thereon were good Straits Chinese citizens of the BRITISH colony of Malaya (until it became independent in 1957) and we probably even have some MALAY blood from intermarriages. I could really give a shit about race replacement in China, no one from my parents’ generation down can read or write Chinese or speak Mandarin, we speak various Chinese dialects, Malay and English and were all educated in English schools. I wish the individuals of China well like I wish all individuals striving for a better future in a globalised new world order of free trade. Once again let me repeat it for your benefit - I could give a rat’s arse about race replacement in China.

Posted by slinker, sailer, toldya, sly on Sun, 05 Mar 2006 12:12 | #

But, of course. China is in no danger of race replacement, and, most likely, never will be. With 1.3 billion people, 90% plus being Han Chinese, no immigration and a xenophobic, nationalist populace, why should any Chinaman give a “rat’s arse” about it?

The Chinese are in an expansionist mode, spreading their people and their genes into other people’s lands, Soon being one example of millions.

Posted by Phil on Sun, 05 Mar 2006 12:37 | #

I could really give a shit about race replacement in China, no one from my parents’ generation down can read or write Chinese or speak Mandarin, we speak various Chinese dialects, Malay and English and were all educated in English schools. I wish the individuals of China well like I wish all individuals striving for a better future in a globalised new world order of free trade. Once again let me repeat it for your benefit - I could give a rat’s arse about race replacement in China.

Jason,

No offence intended but I don’t want the entire world to be full of rootless cosmopolitans. The existence of “fatherlands” is what makes the world an infinitely interesting place. Nothing could be worse than a world filled with nothing but strip malls and McDonalds with a uniform race speaking the same language.

Humanity will have died for all practical purposes when that happens.

I don’t dispute what you are saying as regards your sense of affiliation. But that is really not the issue. As a fair minded man, I would say that we wish all peoples well - all nationalities. BUT, we don’t want nations to be destroyed by mass immigration which leaves nothing of the old stock, the old traditions or the possibility of anything of blood and soil surviving.

As a member of a racial minority in Australia, I can understand why you would take the position you would want to take. It doesn’t suit your interests to support a whites only immigration policy (obviously). And we don’t insist that you should because we know that it is only human to act in one’s self interest. So we do not expect you to be supportive of our position.

But, to deny that we do not even have a case or that our case lacks legitimacy utterly would be intellectually dishonest, don’t you think?

Posted by Phil on Sun, 05 Mar 2006 12:37 | #

Good point.

Posted by Al Ross on Mon, 06 Mar 2006 23:42 | #

Jason Soon doesnt have ‘much identification’ with his Malaysian birthplace because it is a Muslim majority nation and subject to ‘authoritarian mores’. Such mores are a colonial legacy and their original purpose was the defeat of Malaysian Chinese communist insurgents during the ‘Emergency’ of 1948-60’. In other words mass immigration, over which the majority Malays had, thanks to British rule, no control, almost ruined the emergent nation’s future.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Tue, 07 Mar 2006 06:31 | #

The subspecies of Man will never sink their differences, for they are intrinsic. If a beige race ever peopled the Earth, it would no longer be homo sapiens.

This idea fails in the face of evolution. Darwin provides evidence that the races of man have formed by ‘sinking their differences’ and in fact, remain very much homo sapien.

On the Formation of the Races of Man.- In some cases the crossing of distinct races has led to the formation of a new race. The singular fact that the Europeans and Hindoos, who belong to the same Aryan stock, and speak a language fundamentally the same, differ widely in appearance, whilst Europeans differ but little from Jews, who belong to the Semitic stock, and speak quite another language, has been accounted for by Broca,* through certain Aryan branches having been largely crossed by indigenous tribes during their wide diffusion. When two races in close contact cross, the first result is a heterogeneous mixture: thus Mr. Hunter, in describing the Santali orhill-tribes of India, says that hundreds of imperceptible gradations may be traced “from the black, squat tribes of the mountains to the tall olive-coloured Brahman, with his intellectual brow, calm eyes, and high but narrow head”; so that it is necessary in courts of justice to ask the witnesses whether they are Santalis or Hindoos.*(2) Whether a heterogeneous people, such as the inhabitants of some of the Polynesian islands, formed by the crossing of two distinct races, with few or no pure members left, would ever become homogeneous, is not known from direct evidence. But as with our domesticated animals, a cross-breed can certainly be fixed and made uniform by careful selection*(3) in the course of a few generations, we may infer that the free inter-crossing of a heterogeneous mixture during a long descent would supply the place of selection, and overcome any tendency to reversion; so that the crossed race would ultimately become homogeneous, though it might not partake in an equal degree of the characters of the two parent-races.

The issue is not that it cannot happen or even that it will not happen. Darwin shows that when races are in close proximity crossing has, does and will happen.

The evidence is clear in the New World where European races have crossed, (a fundamentally antithetical position a century ago when even Scots, English and Irish married predominantly their own kind) and have become, at least in the eyes of many, homogeneous and probably will not revert to their former distinct ethnicities. Thus while ethnicity is important, it appears to diminish over time in certain settings. And in many ways accounts for the current predicament.

Rushton makes this distinction in his paper Mate Choice and Friendship in Twins ‘Evidence for Genetic Similarity’. He suggests that even those that marry across ethnic lines may “prove the rule”. A Hawaiin study of inter-ethnic marriages, showed that couples made up for ethnic dissimilarities by choosing mates more similar to themselves in other ways.