Structural scam
Can claims of structural racism survive some basic questions?
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Convert or Die.
In the media, at companies, in sports events, everywhere and always, white people are told that their societies are structurally racist, and that it is their racism that is holding back “people of colour”. The latter category lumps together everyone from Middle Easterners to Indians to Chinese to Africans – peoples who have almost nothing in common – to create a binary between whites and non-whites.
In this set up, not being white is a handicap, as it is only whites who have “white privilege”. Furthermore, whites have benefited from a legacy of colonialism and slavery that is unique in history.
The slavery committed by whites is, for some reason, not comparable to anything else in history, even to Islamic slavery, which claimed more victims, lasted longer and was in some ways more brutal.
It is alleged that, without slavery, the West would not have prospered. However, it is never explained why the Middle East does not prosper still, despite having engaged in the same type of slavery.
According to this worldview, any discrepancies in outcomes between whites and non-whites are the result of a single factor: structural racism. By merely being white, whites benefit from this structural racism and from the oppression of non-whites.
Everything, and I mean everything, is suffused with racism. The media has published articles claiming that veganism, tipping waiters, the orcs in Lord of the Rings, soap, Mary Poppins, Artificial Intelligence, yoga, fighting obesity, showing up on time, mathematics, Mozart, fried chicken, the wine industry, bra colours, camping, hiking, and, of course, the police, history and capitalism, are all racist.
How is hiking racist? The equipment costs too much and non-white people are assumed to be poorer.
How is fried chicken racist? It perpetuates stereotypes. (I am sure that stopping yourself from having fried chicken because you are thinking of black people does not perpetuate stereotypes).
How is Mozart a symbol of white supremacy? He is known by one name, and black artists are not (is 2Pac one word or two?).
The list goes on.
It is comical, at first, but it quickly becomes farcical and then menacing. The point is to force the question of race on every single aspect of life. The point is to stop people from taking any action that is not “racially conscious”. This, we are told, is anti-racism, and it is superior to simply accepting people as they are.
Being an immigrant to the UK who can pass as white and as Middle Eastern, I find myself in a privileged position: I get to play both privileged white and oppressed person of colour. Plus, I am an outsider - no ancestor of mine was enslaved or traded in slaves. So, please permit me to pose some questions about structural racism.
The first question I would like to ask is, which society, other than Europe and the US, had ever banned slavery in the history of humanity? Which society, other than the white, Christian West, ever used military force to end slavery?
The British Royal Navy and the US Union soldiers shed blood to end slavery, and it was the first time in history anyone had gotten that notion. The British military even fought against blacks to stop them from enslaving other blacks – slavery was normal in Africa and was a key source of wealth for all African empires.
The charge for abolition was led by people we would call today the religious right. The religious right of the 1800s campaigned effectively to get their governments to commit military resources to ending slavery – resources that presumably they could have used to plunder poor indigenous people, as the currently fashionable narrative goes.
The British Royal Navy went as far as to patrol the eastern coasts of Africa to stop the Islamic slave trade as well, not just the trade that its own former colonies were involved in. This kind of mentality would have made absolutely no sense to an Aztec or a Viking or any other kind of pagan.
It makes no sense to a Muslim, either. When the British ambassador told the Muslim Sultan of Morocco to end slavery, the sultan’s response was that it is natural, and has been since the time of the Sons of Adam, and no one would ever argue to remove it. Today, we see that wherever an Islamic society breaks completely free from the Western-led system, slavery returns, as we saw in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Throughout the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, a modernised form of slavery is permitted. Forced labour is common, and you can be worked to death with almost no pay if you are a labourer from the Indian subcontinent.
Yet, we never hear the “anti-racist” voices criticise these oil rich countries. Blackrock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and others all lecture their Western customers about structural racism. They would never speak out in front of their customers in the Gulf, though.
Yes, there is in the West a shameful history of slavery. It is only shameful, however, because Christian morality says that slavery is shameful. Aztec, African, Roman, Greek or Islamic societies would not call slavery shameful. They would call it natural.
In addition to the shameful legacy of slavery, there is also a proud, luminous history of British, American and other white, Christian people heroically and selflessly fighting for equality and justice. And these people fought to spread a ban on slavery well beyond their borders to benefit peoples that are not theirs. This is truly exceptional.
The second question that white people should not ask, but that I might be permitted to ask, is this: where in the law is there evidence of structural racism? I am not asking whether there are racist people. There are, in every race, everywhere. Indeed, I would argue that a global and historic perspective would show that it is more common to be racist than to not be racist. Opposition to racism is a religious idea that comes from universalist monotheistic religions that claim that every human being is created in the image of God with inherent dignity.
Based on this idea, in the West, there are explicit and broad bans against racial discrimination, along with grievance processes and compensation mechanisms. A private employer may not openly prefer people of his own race – unless he is not white. Universities can be historically black and favour blacks in the USA, but they may not be historically white and favour whites.
Affirmative action or “positive” discrimination is permitted in most Western societies, but discrimination in favour of the white majority is forbidden. It is worth recalling that the norm in Africa, Latin America and Asia is discrimination against foreigners in favour of the native majority. Mexico, Chile, Nigeria, South Africa, Israel, the Persian Gulf and China, among many others, all pursue forms of economic nationalism, seeking to improve the economic wellbeing of the majority and to boost domestic capital. It seems intuitive that the state would protect the native population and domestic producers. To my mind, it is natural for Malaysia to seek to enhance the economic power of Malays, as it does, or for South Africa and Zimbabwe to seek to enhance the economic power of black citizens, as they do.
From a global perspective, what is surprising is that Western governments ban policies and practices that openly favour their own white majority. This is inconceivable in any other part of the world.
The third question I would like to respectfully ask is, if white society is so racist, why do so many minorities do so well in it? Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Indian and Korean British and American people earn more than white British and American people. Why would racist societies allow this? Why are white working-class young men in the UK the demographic least likely to go to university? How does this fit with these being structurally racist societies?
I was once told that the presence of good economic opportunities for minorities is not evidence of absence of structural racism – dismissing the question out of hand. I am not sure how that could be true, though.
If the system permits fair economic opportunity, and people can advance regardless of their race or country of origin, then what exactly does structural racism mean?
The fourth forbidden question is: are there things that some minorities can do to improve their own situations? Is there perhaps a difference between the culture of black Americans in the South Side of Chicago and that of second generation Ghanaian Americans?
Could the underperformance of black Americans be related to fatherlessness, the glorification of degeneracy and violence in pop culture, or a preference for ostentatious consumption over thrift?
Is there a cultural explanation for why Koreans or Chinese do better in the West – and at home – than African or Middle Eastern people?
Are we to pretend that all cultures are equal, even though evidence to the contrary is staring us in the face?
I know that a crippling culture of deceit, vanity and disrespect for time holds back people in the Middle East. Some manage to transcend this culture and perform exceptionally well, others do not, and that culture continues to hold them back. Could something similar be happening with other groups in the West?
Should we not have an honest, courageous conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of various cultures? Perhaps that would help more than claiming that all cultures are equal.
The fifth question that is bound to land you in hot water if you are white, but you could get away with if you are not, is this: if white society is so racist, why are so many non-whites desperate to get to white majority countries? The poorer residents of the Third World walk and swim to the West. The middle classes have their babies in the US or Canada to benefit from birth right citizenship. Alternatively, they send their children to study in Europe in the hope that the children would gain employment and citizenship. And the rich park some of their assets in the West to benefit from various visa schemes and to enable their children to live there.
Why would the residents of the Third World, across all social classes, be so desperate to move to a society that will only supposedly oppress them? Clearly, Third World citizens like me did not come to the West because we believed in the white privilege, non-white victimhood myth. We did it because the very opposite is true.
It is only in the West that we stand a chance of fair treatment, or as fair as life ever treats anyone.
The final question one must not ask is, what presumed glass ceiling needs to be broken for us to say that the West has defeated racism?
Is Barack Obama twice winning the popular vote in the US not enough? In the UK, minorities dominate the ruling Conservative Party’s front bench - that is, they hold the most important positions in the British government. How is this consistent with claims of institutional racism?
How is the underperformance of white working-class people in the UK and the US somehow construed as evidence that the system is stacked in their favour?
Is racism over only when everyone in the West ends up in their local version of Chicago’s South Side, or Haiti?
Or is racism over only when we are in the communist egalitarian utopia? What milestones must we pass before we can say that we have beaten structural racism?
Or is structural racism an eternal crusade – or, more likely, an eternal scam?