In Britain it's common for edgy comedians or political commentators to say stuff like 'whites are responsible for the world's problems'. See Sara Pascoe's comments on 'gammon' in the video; I like her, yet I find that stuff about her feeling guilty startlingly short sighted. I'm getting a bit fed up of this type of self-hate, especially because as a mixed race person, I find it incredible that language which would is openly racist if used against one half of my ethnic background, is used openly against the other half of my background; so I'm in the weird position where people are being openly racist against my identity, and I am an ethnic minority, and it's seen as perfectly fine by the intelligentsia, because in their rush to bandwagon on the 'evil whitey' rhetoric, they have forgotten some of their cherished adopted constituency of minorities have white mothers or fathers. As constructed racial categories break down, perhaps a lot of people are going to find they are on the wrong side of history in perpetrating this narrative?
"Raising a White Child as a Black Parent in an Age of White Guilt Hysteria"
The Arab Slave Trade, the imperialism of Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Assyria, Turkey, Mongolia, Central Asia, Japan and China, the bloody ethnic cleansing of Hindus, the destruction of Buddhist schools, the persecution of Eastern Christians, the execution of atheists, the oppression of minorities like the Hmong, the caste system of Japan or India... I know my history, and no part of the world has a monopoly on evil. The European peoples, themselves actually many distinct peoples some of who had nothing to do with the USA's race history, are not the unique cause of the world's problems. As Jawaharlal Nehru noted in "Glipses of World History", Europe was often a colony of Asia, so how can it be the origin of colonialism?
People in the west who are proponents of this white guilt attitude tend to underestimate the progress, goodwill and honesty of the west and it's institutions, which are remarkable in world history, instead fixating on the bad examples, like transatlantic slavery, CIA interference in South America, or the USA's history of race relations. In many countries, the kind of criticism that scientists, scholars, politicians and journalists place themselves under in America or Britain is often non-existent, or heavily contingent on the goodwill of religious bigots or other biased parties. The Arab world has never come to terms with it's history of African slavery as far as I know, but is never called out on it in documentaries of world history, nor has Pakistan come to terms with the massacres that established it's state religion of Islam in South Asia, while Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs are emblazoned in every BBC Documentary on civilization. In a functioning democracy all institutions reinforce one another and keep discourse honest; teaching critical thinking, the facts of science, sceptical history, sceptical journalism, and personal responsibility for truth. British history books, or documentaries, deals with English involvement in colonialism, but in British classrooms of a dozen ethnicities, perhaps teaching only white history is no longer good enough.
Isn't it better not hate any other human? Does one need to self-hate or is that ultimately just as evil and reactionary? I was raised to simply be good to others, not to divisively pin my colours on some identity, and set it in opposition to another, but the west currently seems obsessed with fractious/divisive ideologies regarding race and gender. I wonder how much of that will result in one group projecting it's Jungian shadow on another? Can't rights be won without demonizing another?
Speaking as a half asian man, I think citizens of the west should be a bit more proud of their civilization, and regain a sense of their progressive mission. I would rather live in the democratic culture that gave rise to Star Trek, Star Wars and JRR Tolkien than one where books are burned, and history dynamited. The west seems to me, to be more genuinely post-racial and pan-human than any other time in world history.
