To:    Comment at the Guardian
Re:    The higher status conferred by lighter skin typical of man's animal behaviour
Date: Monday 8 January 07

In response to a Guardian article, "Beyond the pale" by Sarita Malik on how the cosmetics industry exploits and encourages the tendency of many Asians and other non-Europeans to give higher status to lighter skin.

Link to article and thread at The Guardian.
 

As some of you will already know, I consider mass immigration into our natively overpopulated continent and the creation of a multi-racial/multicultural "melting pot" - into which many, native and immigrant alike, do not want to see their ethnic and cultural identities dissolve and disappear - acts of MADNESS, which I have been trying to understand the cause of.

The push and pull of economic forces are plain enough, but where does the supporting, often fanatical, ideology of the leftwing media come from?

The desire for the "moral high ground", created in response to the insane racial ideologies of particularly the Nazis, but also of apartheid and forced southern-states segregation, and the socio-political advantages (especially over more conservative rivals) that go with it, is one explanation.

Another becomes evident when you tot up the amount of news print now devoted to immigration, race and multicultural issues: leftwing journalists have helped create for themselves a gushing and endlessly renewable source of work writing and moralizing about the conflicts and problems that a multi-racial and multicultural society bring with it.

But what will they do when the "melting pot" has done its job and everyone is racially and culturally more-or-less the same? Fortunately for them, that day is still a long way off, and because of the resistance to it, perhaps will never come.

More in this vein at http://www.spaceship-earth.org/Letters/Editor/Index-non-pc.htm
 

 
2nd Post
 
 
I have to say, there are some excellent posts on this thread, but surely the underlying issue here is one of commercial exploitation.

The enlightened attitude is to accept and love yourself (particularly your physical appearance) as you are, which anyone who genuinely cares for you will encourage you to do. But hardnosed business is only concerned with making money from us, either as workers or as consumers.

An individual satisfied with his or her natural appearance is no good to the cosmetics industry at all. They need people who are dissatisfied and thus buy their products to "improve" their physical appearance. The more dissatisfied the better, so they spend billions of dollars promoting dissatisfaction.

I remember feeling outraged at an advert offering cream to hide "ugly" freckles - and not just because I have a few myself and love them in others.

 

3rd Post
 
I'd like to pick up on the very interesting observation that amongst Europeans a tanned skin was once looked down on as a characteristic of the lower classes, who had to work in the open fields, while the upper and middle classes enjoyed the higher status (together with the respect and admiration of the lower classes) of having cushier jobs, or not having to work at all.

This provides a very clear illustration of the irrational (also unjust, inhumane and unsustainable) animal behaviour patterns that still very much dominate human behaviour (even that of "civilized" white men and women!) and the socio-economic order (and environment) it has given rise to.

Instead of conferring social status according to the positive contribution someone makes to society - which would be the just, humane, enlightened and sustainable thing to do - we still tend to confer it according the amount of POWER they have, or are thought to have.

 
4th Post
 
 
"I know of many cases where an Asian parent would rather their son or daughter marries a white person than a black person - the ultimate taboo - and one which is fundamentally to do with skin colour."

Although she may not realize it herself, I don't think the author is being entirely honest here. I've met Asians who are as dark skinned as many Africans, but it is the latter - I'm sure, but correct me if I'm wrong - she means by "black person", or someone with a high and noticeable proportion of African blood in them, and it's a sentiment that is reciprocated by most white parents, I suspect, who would rather their son or daughter married an Asian (or Chinese) person than someone of African descent.

Why is this? Or is it "racist" even to ask the question and to want to understand it?

I do not think it is just, or even primarily, about skin colour, but about what is associated with it, and with being African.

It is also about the degree of noticeable difference from oneself and one's own ethnic group. Most of us vainly, but not because we are "racists", want our grandchildren to resemble ourselves. Is it perfectly natural (rather than "racist") for a white grandparent to want, or at least, prefer, a white grandchild.

It is time we found the courage to talk about these things, sensitively, but honestly, instead of suppressing any discussion as a form of racism, which it is not; and even if it were, it is still better (and less dangerous) to talk about it than to suppress it, banishing it to the subconscious, as we do at the moment.

 
5th Post
 
[Warewolf], I much appreciate your responses to my last post, despite saying that you think I'm a "racist". At least you are still talking to me. The trouble is, calling someone a "racist" is very insulting (by definition, "racists" are nasty people whom no descent or civilized person wants anything to do with) and quickly puts and end to discussion.
 
I would like to continue this discussion with you - in another thread, maybe - but there is no point if you are going to refer to me as a "racist". It is like being called a "infidel" in medieval Europe (or modern Saudi Arabia), a "communist" in McCarthy's America or a "counter-revolutionary" in Stalin's Soviet Union. You may (obviously do) think that some of my opinions and attitudes are "racist", but look the word up in the dictionary and see how it is actually defined.
 
I do have a strong sense of ethnic identity (thus my "ethnocentricity" gingerwaster), but then so too do many non-Europeans, including many people of African descent, without anyone suggesting that they are "racists". It's just that collectively ethnic Europeans are still in a state of shock at the consequences of the criminally insane racial doctrines of the Nazis, making them very fearful (terrified) of any suggestion that race has any meaning at all. And others (understandably, like yourself) are taking advantage of this.
 
[gingerwaster], you bring up some very important points, which I'd like to discuss with you, but again, this is not really the right thread. We are indeed witnessing a huge paradigm shift, but I do not share your Marxist (?) perspective, i.e. model, for explaining it. I have, i.e. am still developing, what I refer to as an evolutionary, anthropological model of history and society.
 

6th Post

 
[Warewolf], I'm sorry it has taken me until now to respond to your last post.

I am still struggling within myself, despite being well into middle age (57), to form attitudes and opinions that are in harmony, not just with what I believe to be rational, just and humane (e.g. to respect all human beings as I wish to be respected myself) but also with my FEELINGS, to which belongs a strong sense of ethnic or racial identity (with the lives, history and culture of my ancestors and those most closely related to them).

I also love human diversity (racial and cultural), which is a consequence of human populations having been largely isolated in the past, but in Britain is now being destroyed in the "melting pot" of multi-racial/multicultural society.

A small or moderately sized melting pot is fine, because it actually increases human diversity by creating mixtures of different races and cultures. What I fear, and oppose, is a melting pot that consumes us all, in which, over time, all racial and cultural diversity dissolves and disappears.

Those who want to join the melting pot, of course, should be free to do so (who knows, even at my age, perhaps I'll meet a beautiful black or Asian woman and want to jump in myself!), but, having created such large melting pots in places like London, if it is not to consume us all by default within a few generations, then those of us with a sense of racial and cultural identity, which we want to preserve and cultivate, must be allowed to do so (in a humane and civilized fashion, of course), even when we are white, without being accused of "racism".

[gingerwaster], my apologies to you too for not responding sooner.

I did put a question mark after "Marxist". You seemed to be expressing the (self) hate towards the development of European civilisation typical of many leftwing thinkers. I'm not defending or justifying colonialism, or any of the other terrible things that Europeans have done (not just to others, but even more, to themselves), but they are still "my people", so to speak, whom, I suppose, because my own ancestors are among them, I feel a special affection for and interest in (not to be confused with "racism"!).

Notwithstanding what I've just written, I agree very much with most of what you write, in all your posts. I don't think our perspectives are so far apart. You make many good points that I would like to respond to, but don't have the time (I'm a very slow thinker and writer).

I must point out though, that I'm not "blaming" the situation on anyone, but trying to understand it. It goes "very deep" indeed, I agree. Why do we behave with such stupidity and inhumanity, and then some how manage to weave a web of self-delusion that enables us to deny, rationalize or justify it all?

I'm developing my own, evolutionary, anthropological approach to this question, which, I think, offers some very illuminating explanations. I won't go into it here, since I've already done so in other threads, and on my homepage, of course, which is why I usually add a link to it.

My homepage: http://www.spaceship-earth.org