When the Melting Pot Reaches a Boil

'The Face of Tomorrow'

As we have seen, some are hoping fervently for a 'post-racial' West in which we all blend to a mocha color and harmony comes at last.  In such a world, so it's thought, we'll see no more prejudice, exclusion, oppression, micro-aggressions, or 'other-ing.'  There isn't a social problem, it appears, that cannot be righted by us all becoming beige.

But where is the evidence that tossing diverse ethnies in a pot leads to a happy racial purée?  To those who insist it is coming, we at Those Who Can See offer three counter-hypotheses:

(1)  No multi-ethnic society will blend smoothly down to one race.

(2)  Multi-ethnic societies will always breed inequality, and the more disparate the groups, the more inequality there will be.

(3)  The resentments that spring from this can only weaken, not strengthen, society.


For these reasons, we propose that the ideal society is not ethnically diverse, but ethnically homogenous.

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The prophets of a Beige Future are everywhere.  Being colored is trendy; being white is bland:

'Ours! ... It was our people!  ... Everywhere you saw nothing but this superb brown color that only the loveliest human beings have... [...]  Personally, I don't want to be Western. I don't want to be a white Catholic; I'd rather be a black atheist.'

--French Socialist MP (and white Catholic) Jean-Luc Melenchon, describing a political rally full of immigrants

'Look at all the beautiful colours the women here are wearing. Within ten years this is what it is going to look like all over Europe. Back home it’s so bleak and dreary, the colours are devoid of life. ...' 

--Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg, appreciating the aesthetics of Lagos, Nigeria

We see echoes of the 'exoticism' of 18th and 19th century colonialism, where displaying a Chinese painted screen or an Ashanti mask in your drawing room was a sign of status. Today, appropriating not the possessions but the very identity of these 'exotics' has become à la mode.

La Japonaise (Monet's wife in Japanese costume), 1876

But let us not be fooled:  The light-skinned elite may preach 'marrying out' to the masses, but they avoid it scrupulously among themselves.  At the same time, it is rare that high-status men of color have children as dark as or darker than themselves.

 Black legends and their wives: Music greats Herbie Hancock and James Brown, sports icons Michael Jordan and Pele, acting legends Sidney Poitier and James Earl Jones (Courtesy of A Field Negro)

Which leads us to the two great color systems the colonial world has known:  The one-drop rule and the pigmentocracy. Is there evidence that either one can lead to post-racial paradise?
 

I.  Reversion to beige: Mission impossible

1) Latin Model : Pigmentocracy


Latins have long been less averse to crossing the color line than Teutonics. As E.B. Reuter put it in 'The Mulatto in the United States' (1918),

Of the white races, the Spanish and the Portuguese have mixed most easily and in largest numbers. They have mixed, moreover, with almost equal readiness with the Malay, the American Indian, and the African Negress ; and with less repugnance than any other people with whom these lower races have come in contact. 

This is visible in their ex-colonies, where the Spanish/Portuguese, native Indians, and Africans have combined to form a 'great brown middle.' A DNA study of Mexican-Americans in the Southwest found:

Our overall estimates of average Native American (39%), European (57%) and African (4%) ancestry in this population from Starr County, Texas are quite similar to what was observed for a sample of Mexicans from Mexico City by Wang et al. (2008), with corresponding proportions of 40, 57 and 3%, respectively.

Because 'one-drop' was not the law of the land, Spanish colonials kept careful track of the different gradations of color. C.B. Davenport (1913) lists them as:

Sambo = mulatto and negro  (3/4 Afro)
Mulatto = negro and white   (1/2 Afro)
Quadroon = mulatto and white   (1/4 Afro)
Octoroon =  quadroon and white  (1/8 Afro)
Mustifee = octoroon and white (1/16 Afro, also called 'hexadecaroon')
Mustifino = mustifee and white (1/32 Afro, also called 'dotriacontaroon')

Mulatto, Quadroon, Octoroon: In the U.S., but not Brazil, all fall on one side of the color line

E.B. Reuter (1918) explained the situation in Brazil thusly:

In social affairs, the color line between the whites and the mixed-blood race is neither hard nor fast. ... Intermarriage is forbidden neither by law nor by custom. ... The aristocracy here, as elsewhere in South America, are pure white... The aspiration of the half-breed is to be like the white man.  He is free to intermarry with the whites and his ambition is to do so. With each such crossing, the offspring approximate more and more to the pure white type.

Indeed, a century later, despite Mexico's or Brazil's P.R. as multiracial paradises with a happy, harmonious great brown middle, little has changed: cream apparently still rises to the top.

We have the evidence in popular culture:

 'Telenovas' loveliest ladies:'

Fresh off the plane from Spain?

 'Telenovas' hottest hunks:'

More Ben Affleck than Acatec Indian

In the halls of power:

 

 Mexico's last ten presidents:

 

Brazil's last ten presidents:

Or in the rare air of the super-wealthy:

Mexico's ten richest people, 2012:

Brazil's ten richest people, 2013:

The bottom of the ladder, however, is differently-hued:

Slum children in Mexico City,  Tarahumara Indians waiting for food aid,  Favela children in Rio de Janeiro

The racial divide is also a spatial divide:

Equalist paradise is yet to appear: the Paraisopolis slum rubs elbows with 

a gated condo complex in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Via a different route, Anglos have arrived at a similar result.  Let us consider their 'one-drop rule.'



2) Teutonic Model: One-drop rule

Teutonics have been much less ready to cross the color line, as seen in their ex-colonies today. E.B. Reuter, on the colonial era:

There is in Spanish and Portuguese countries no such sharp color line as exists where men of Teutonic stock are settled in countries outside of Europe.

In colonial South Africa:

The white inhabitants recognize no difference between the various shades of Negroes, but draw an impassable color line with the whites on one side and all grades of the colored population on the other.

But has the 'one-drop rule' had any real power?  Steve Sailer looks at a study from Mark S. Shriver:

Yet, from another perspective, a sizable degree of racial mixing is highly unusual. There simply aren't many African-Americans or European-Americans who are mostly white but also substantially black. Shriver pointed out, "There is a very small degree of overlap in the population distributions." In America, most of the whites are extremely European and most of the blacks are quite African.

Despite the notorious arbitrariness of the "one drop" rule, the actual American population conforms to its strictures surprisingly closely.

In the U.S., roughly a tenth of the population has always been of African descent. Despite the fact that 'most of the Blacks are quite African,' it is striking to look at the faces of those Afros who have enjoyed the most prestige and influence.  Here, for example, are some famous figures from 'Black' history (elegantly laid out by Karl F. Boetel):

Our first 'black': president, attorney general, secretary of state, female secretary of state, and cabinet member:

The first 'black': Supreme Court justice, elected Congressman, governor; 'black' pioneers Washington and DuBois:

The first 'black': surgeon, cardiologist, man to earn a B.A., man to earn a Ph.D., army general:

Celebrated women--The first 'black' woman: to earn a U.S. patent, earn a B.A., earn a Ph.D., teach at University, fly a plane:

Mr. Boetel has kindly reminded those who may have forgotten what an actual West African looks like:

 Thank you, Mr. Boetel.

Sailer:

According to Shriver, only about 10 percent of African-Americans are over 50 percent white.

This was also true in the 19th century, and it is to this group that W.E.B. DuBois was making a veiled reference when he spoke of the 'talented tenth':

The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.

The uncomfortable truth is that the most exceptional Afro-Americans have nearly always come from that part of the race that is of half or more European blood.  Even today, socio-economically, lighter means higher on the ladder:

Image source

(For the clearest argument ever made on the subject, see E.B. Reuter's 1918 'The Mulatto in the United States'.)




II.  Multi-ethnic 'paradise'... and bitter reality


1) Endless inequality

In the absence of a uniformly beige populace, blank-slatists still manage to aggressively promote Perfect Equality among the different hues.  Every field of human endeavor should reflect exactly the ethnic breakdown of the nation.  Yet despite the endless five-year plans, many gaps stubbornly refuse to close. In the U.S., for example, multi-ethnic 'paradise' par excellence:

Contrary to much fanfare and depsite the billions of dollars spent to try to close them, such gaps are persistent, showing no signs of closing any time soon.



2) Jealousy and Resentment

The Less Able resent the More Able:

The result of a prolonged state of inequality between ethnic groups does not need to be guessed at. At the most extreme, we have the violence directed at the Indians in Uganda, the Euros in South Africa, the Chinese in Malaysia, or the Jews all over Europe.

Over-achievers: Indians fleeing under Idi Amin's expulsion of this market-dominant minority

If we can't be you, we will destroy you-- The South African genocide continues: 'John Cross, 78, fought back fiercely against his black killers while they poured boiling water down his throat. They then shot off the top of his skull. His wife Bina, 76, was tortured for five hours with boiling water.'  This is one of the least horrific in the never-ending series of Boer murders.

The longest day: May 13, 1969, when native Malays decided to teach the too-successful Chinese a lesson. 196 died in the pogrom.

Market-dominant minority par excellence: The seemingly endless list of places from which Jews have been expelled

The More Able resent the Less Able:

In countries where the More Able have repented for their superior ability and begun to hand out goodies to the Less Able, an unsurprising turn has come.  Those in the 'oppressor' group who are pushed out of jobs, college spots, or business loans in favor of less-qualified 'oppressees' begin to resent it.

 

In the West, this has led to many social ills: One is taxpayer-funded lawsuits over seemingly simple questions, like 'Should it be the higher scorers or the lower scorers who are let into medical school or promoted fire captain?'  Another, as Thomas Sowell argues, is companies avoiding hiring minorities because they become so difficult to fire.

Outside the West, the consequences have ranged from serious to bloody.  The end of apartheid in South Africa ushered in the 'Black Empowerment' system (strict racial quotas for jobs and colleges) which has led to top schools refusing the best and brightest, the slow disintegration of the Air Force, and a general Euro white flight out of the country. Brain drain has also afflicted Malaysia since it began favoring its indigenous but under-performing Malays against the superior Chinese--the latter are leaving the country in droves.

More grave still, Sowell has ably argued in his Affirmative Action Around the World that resentment against quota policies has led to widespread violence against Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and Dalits in India.

 Dalits in India and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka: Affirmative action's winners or losers?

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All of this is not news to those who know even a bit of history, or who pay attention to international affairs.  If there is one constant in the travails of homo sapiens sapiens, it is that he gets on best with his own kind.  Yet to the social engineers who would shepherd us into multicult euphoria, it is as if these millennia of inter-ethnic strife didn't exist.

In today's multi-ethnic states, far from becoming race-free melting pots, we mostly stick with our own.  Our darkest men have a tendency to mejorar la raza when they can, and our elite is invariably light-skinned--even our Afro elite.  Those of the darkest hue are found disproportionately at the bottom of the ladder.

The jealousy, anger, and resentment that fester when unequal groups are forced together and told, 'You are equal!' should give us pause.  Rather than encourage the arrival of ever more alien ethnies into our countries, we should do everything in our power to keep them as ethnically homogenous as possible.  The evidence, in this case, speaks for itself.

Previously:

The Future of America: Brown?,

Who's Afraid of Affirmative Action?,

Ethnic Co-existence, Yesterday