Cultural Bigotry
I could never be fairly accused of being a racist. I have comfortably lived among natives in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and all regions of North America. I couldn’t care less about skin pigmentation or facial features, when evaluating the worth of another human being. Yet, like it or not; PC or not; it is impossible not to at least notice such obvious variations in humanity.
While the police can be ordered not to ‘profile’ subjects based on physical appearance, there is no way for the rulers to ever prevent the rest of us from doing so. As an example, when I lived peacefully as a decidedly minority Caucasian, among the predominant Asians and Pacific Islanders in Hawaii, even the bankers wore Aloha shirts as daily business attire. Anyone seen wearing a necktie in Honolulu’s balmy climate, was immediately considered suspect, by me and most everyone else, because they were undoubtedly either a lawyer, a politician, or a salesman from the mainland.
Were we ‘profiling’ and making perhaps inaccurate, or even unfair judgements based on physical appearance? You bet. Was that a form of prejudicial bigotry? Yes, of course. Was it irrational or wrong to do so? Not at all. The same Progressive snowflakes, who get their knickers in a twist over the very mention of profiling, get the vapors over the mere sight of bikers, armed citizens, KKK or Neo-Nazis protesters, Trump hats, and even riot police.
Prejudging others can be a rather significant survival skill, no matter how often we are exhorted not to be prejudiced. The police can be well-paid to risk not profiling for PC reasons; but the rest of us are not. Since doing so frequently elicits bogus charges of ‘racism,’ even when race itself is not even a factor (e.g. Jihadists), it is worth sorting out what it is that we really are all bigoted about. I submit that the common denominator of prejudice, intolerance, bigotry, tribalism, xenophobia, etc. is culture, not race.
The famed melting pot of immigrants that was once America, was a classic example of a dominant culture independent of race. Just as the multiracial Hawaiians readily accepted me as a kama’aina (local), when I deliberately learned to speak pidgin, adopted their dress codes, social mores, and cuisine, most Americans have eventually accepted those immigrants endeavoring to assimilate, whatever their racial or ethnic heritage.
Yet today, after a half century of Progressive efforts to indoctrinate us into their multiculturalism orthodoxy, Americans actively distrust and resent those immigrants being encouraged to settle in apartheid enclaves, and continue to defiantly maintain their native cultures in our land. This is especially true when their cultural mores are in direct conflict with our own, and strike us as offensive to our sensibilities. (Sharia law, misogyny, jihad, violent youth gangs, etc.)
Please note that these objections have nothing whatever to do with race, and everything to do with cultural conflicts. In fact, I would suggest that 150 years after the Civil War, any residual prejudices remaining in America, between the descendants of African slaves, and the descendants of their European masters, is more likely cultural bigotry than racism. To suggest that I have no right to disdain the alien, drug fueled, misogynist, ‘Gangsta Rap,’ Hip-hop, culture extant in our metropolitan ghettos today, and that I am somehow a ‘racist’ for doing so, is ludicrous.
I may not be able to avoid noticing their skin color, any more than I could avoid noticing their odd attire and hairstyles; but these all are merely outward manifestations, akin to uniforms denoting the team they belong to. Just as pink hair, body piercings, and/or excessive tattoos tend to inform me about membership in another somewhat alien culture, which is likely incompatible with mine. One on one, I find I can get along with most anyone; but when gathered into toxic cultural groupings, I find it prudent to avoid them. The bottom line is that my own prejudices are always cultural, not racial, and I suspect that this is substantially true of others.
Notice also how this cultural paradigm takes care of the ridiculous attempt, to label intolerance for Jihadist violence as racism against Muslims, as if that religion was a race. Islam is a pluralistic creed that has devout adherents from every race and ethnicity on the planet. It is odd that Progressives, who have no difficulty disparaging those of the Christian faith, can accuse anyone openly critical of terrorism within Islam, of being an Islamophobic racist. Again, it is the Jihadist culture found within Islam that we find offensive, and existentially dangerous to our existence, not the race or ethnicity of its delusional martyrs.
I make no apologies for preferring the culture I grew up in, in the sacrosanct land of our fathers, over those ethos I find intolerably barbaric, PC approved or not. Call me a cultural bigot if you like, or perhaps a culturist. I freely admit my prejudices against offensive cultures; but trying to shame me with charges of ‘racism,’ is a waste of time. I am blessedly, and will defiantly remain, immune to such specious epithets. â—„Daveâ–º