Multiculturalism Creates Pity Which Creates Unstable Politics

Interesting opinion from the always-polite and always challenging Jared Taylor:

The presidential election of 2008 brings to mind another vote that took place 16 years ago in South Africa: the referendum in which whites voted to turn power over to blacks. Though it has long been overshadowed by the 1994 general elections that brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power, it was the referendum of March 17, 1992, that ended white rule.

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They feared international isolation more than they feared black rule; whites voted 68 to 31 percent for “continuation of the reform process.” Nor was this a decision forced upon Afrikaners by white English-speakers. Though some militant groups boycotted the referendum, all election analysts agree that a majority of Afrikaners voted “yes,” and some even believe there was more support among Afrikaners than British South Africans. Whites therefore had the chance to keep their country, but gave it away. That vote ensured the ANC victory of 1994 and everything that has followed.

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Fifty-five percent of whites wanted John McCain to be their president but it was blacks and Hispanics who got the president they wanted, not whites. Every year, as the number of non-whites increases, whites will have less say about who rules them.

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If their numbers continue to decline, whites will not get the schools, the neighborhoods, the culture—and ultimately, the country—they want.

Perhaps it is because whites have brought diminished status upon themselves that we are expected to take pride in it rather than fight to reverse it. As Paul Krugman explained helpfully in the New York Times, “If the election of our first African-American president didn’t stir you, if it didn’t leave you teary-eyed and proud of your country, there’s something wrong with you.” This means there is something wrong with at least 55 percent of whites, but that has been the Times’s position for years.

Mr. Krugman’s joy in Mr. Obama’s victory is shared by whites all around the world. “We have great hopes that we are standing at the dawn of a new era,” wrote the Norwegian daily Aftenposten. “One Giant Step for Mankind” read the front page of England’s Sun newspaper. A headline on the London Telegraph website declared: “Barack Obama Victory Allows Britain to Love US Again.” The Times modestly headlined its election story, “The New World.” Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada spoke of Mr. Obama’s “tremendous, historic” victory, and the Toronto Sun called it “an historic milestone like no other.” Le Monde in Paris noted that “from Left to Right, [French] politicians have been competing for superlatives with which to praise the election of Barack Obama.” Milan’s Corriere della Sera wrote that Mr. Obama was “the man who can save America from utter breakdown.”

This chorus of rejoicing has eerie parallels to how the world’s whites welcomed black rule in South Africa. In 1993, Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their new, “power-sharing” constitution. Mary McGrory of the Washington Post gushed only slightly more than most when she wrote in her May 12, 1994 column that “Nelson Mandela has won what the [Washington] Post calls ‘one of history’s sweetest victories over racial subjugation’ and he is going to keep it clean and beautiful so that newspaper readers will think they are reading scripture when they read dispatches from South Africa that cannot be read except through tears.”

Fourteen years later—just 14 years later—does anyone have second thoughts? Under white rule, South Africa was climbing steadily in the UN’s Human Development Index. It reversed course the first year of black rule and has dropped ever since. South Africa can no longer keep accurate crime statistics, but it is unquestionably one of the most dangerous places on earth. Anyone who can afford to lives in a private fortress, and carjacking is so common it is considered foolish to stop at a red light after dark. Amazon.com limits shipping to South Africa because postal workers steal so many packages. Interpol reports that South Africa has the highest rape rate in the world—and the highest AIDS rate. About one-fifth of South African men admit they have raped a woman, and an estimated 35 percent of the armed forces have AIDS. Race preferences for blacks are so ruthless that approximately 50 percent of white men are self-employed and nearly a million whites have emigrated, most citing crime and race preferences.

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Whites are placing their destinies in the hands of others. The South Africans did it suddenly; we are doing it gradually.

AR

If this were a mainstream media article, you would expect a disclaimer here telling you how much I do not agree with Jared Taylor and his politically/socially incorrect viewpoint. That alone should tell you something.

I think if we focus too much on black and white the issue becomes cloudy. Instead, I think we should focus on two groups: the demographic majority, and those who want the power now held by the demographic majority (this second group is comprised of members of different ethnicities, including the majority of it, which is of the same group as the demographic majority).

Multiculturalism cannot work because it destroys consensus. It is a form of pluralism, or the idea that we can agree to disagree -- on fundamental issues and values, including their means of transmission, "culture" -- and still be OK as a nation. We destroy consensus, but we keep the benefits of society, so everyone thinks this is a good idea.

History shows us that it's a path to destruction, because without consensus, it's impossible to measure actions against an abstract yardstick. As a result, politics becomes balkanized and the question of the day becomes: "what are you gonna do for me?" and how to increase personal wealth, personal convenience, etc. at the expense of the collective.

The ethnic issue merely complicates this: those within the demographic majority who oppose consensus, generally because they are afraid of reality, use the pitied, minority ethnicity as moral justification for destroying the demographic majority.

The minority ethnicity then does what any group would do: destroys what the demographic majority created, and replaces it with something more appropriate for the demographic minority.

It's simple math when you look at it outside of black and white. It would happen with Swedes and Russians mixed in a nation; Chinese and Vietnamese; Christians and Muslims. Any two or more groups in a pluralism are in competition. The focus should not be on ethnicity, but on the instability of pluralism as a mathematical model for civilization.