Islam: Why We Culturally Profile It

(We are offline due to a much-needed research period at the moment, so we've decided to re-publish some earlier pieces you might have missed the first time.)

Paris, Nov. 13, 2015: The Indian summer meant many were enjoying a meal out on the patio

Four years ago this week, France experienced its "9-11": The Bataclan terror attacks. Shortly after, we published this body of data on why, exactly, Europeans are becoming so wary of the mass of Muslim immigrants streaming into their countries.

We publish it again on this terrible anniversary, with the footnote that all of the tendencies described therein have only intensified in the intervening four years.

We hope you appreciate this food for thought.

The Europe to come?

[Re-post, original post here.]

At the height of the Trayvon Martin affair, we met a young Afro-Canadian who strongly objected to being racially profiled. Drawing on the pool of data at our disposal, we presented, to the best of our ability, the reasons such profiling exists.

Today, as hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants pour into Europe to claim asylum, profiling again rears its ugly head. Not racial/ethnic this time, but religious:

At least five European countries have signaled that they prefer to grant asylum only to Christian refugees flooding the continent from the Middle East, not to Muslims.

“I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country,” Hungarian Prime Minister Orban said.  ... “Refugees from a completely different cultural background would not be in a good position in the Czech Republic,” said Czech President Milos Zeman.

 Lodz, Poland, September 2015

On what are these fears based? Ignorance, prejudice? We have been told for years that immigration is a gift, an economic boost, an injection of fresh blood, and that our new guests will culturally enrich our lives with their differentness (all while assimilating seamlessly thanks to their sameness). We at TWCS have thus decided to take a deeper look at the data.

But is Islam a religion, a culture, or a civilization? Has it genetically changed its adherents over time like Christianity has (cousin marriage enforced vs. forbidden)? In the absence of any genetic connection, does it culturally push its believers to certain behaviors? Could these beliefs and behaviors really, as the critics charge, prevent their assimilation into the West?

In a word--is this cultural profiling of Muslims based on fact or fantasy?

Victimization Whack-a-Mole

(We are offline due to a much-needed research period at the moment, so we've decided to re-publish some earlier pieces you might have missed the first time.)

Catch me if you can

[Re-post, original post here.]

In the 1982 comedy 'Tootsie,' actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) is desperate for work.  A casting director tells him what's wrong:

Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie (video at link)

The reading was fine. You're the wrong height.
   I can be taller.
No. We're looking for somebody shorter.
   Look, I don't have to be this tall. See, I'm wearing lifts. I can be shorter.

I know, but we're looking for somebody different.

   I can be different.
We're looking for somebody else.


Some people, in a word, cannot be satisfied. Trying to please them is like playing whack-a-mole: their unhappiness has no remedy. You're sure you've nipped it in the bud, but no, it pops up again, and then over there, and over there... is there any way to nab it once and for all?

In our blank-slatist world, where all groups are presumed equal, puzzling 'performance gaps' leave some feeling outraged. Rather than shake their fist at Mother Nature (the real source of disparities), they continue to demand action that they are sure will Close the Gap.  When it doesn't, the target changes. Then changes again, and again...  This endless merry-go-round of finger-pointing is a clue that what they seek cannot be found. Has all logic gone down the mole hole?  Pick up your mallet and follow us...

Why We Profile

(We are offline due to a much-needed research period at the moment, so we've decided to re-publish some earlier pieces you might have missed the first time.)

Calling 911 on black people may soon be a crime in parts of Michigan, Oregon and New York (h/t Steve Sailer ).  Why are Afro-Americans profiled so endlessly? We took a look at the data, and here's what we found.

[Re-post, original post here.]

In the outcry following the recent acquittal of Floridian George Zimmerman in the shooting death of an Afro teenager, many in the black community have voiced their displeasure.  Canadian graduate student Matthew Simmermon-Gomes is one:

What I do know is what it’s like to be a Trayvon Martin. To be suspect. I do know what it’s like to be followed by staff in a nice clothing store; to be stopped by police for walking down the street; to endure the thousand micro-aggressions and the hundred fearful looks, the patronising astonishment coupled with quiet indignation at my education or erudition. I know, in other words, what it is to be a person of colour in a world that privileges whiteness.

Reparations for Redlining?

We are offline due to a much-needed research period this winter, so we've decided to re-publish some earlier pieces that you might have missed the first time.

With 'reparations for red-lining' back in the news thanks to the plucky Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, here is the data we were able to find on this thorny question back when Ta-Nehisi Coates last tossed it in the punch bowl. We hope you find it as interesting as we did.  

*     *     *

FHA map of Los Angeles, 1939 

[Re-post, original post here.]

'Ingenious and powerful,' 'important and compelling', 'stunningly ambitious;' it has 'broken traffic records and vanished from newsstands,' 'setting ablaze' social media.  What is it?

It is 'The Case for Reparations,' Atlantic's June 2014 cover story by editor Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The idea has been tossed around since Emancipation, falling out of fashion as of late. Coates brings it roaring back in this long-form piece, calling on Euro-Americans to 1) publicly express their guilt about past oppression, and 2) pay reparation money to their Afro countrymen.  Does his argument hold water?

The 17-page article covers much ground, but it seems Coates seeks redress for three major wrongs:

• Slavery
• Land theft
• Red-lining

They are three quite different topics, and should be treated as such.  We shall begin by addressing the most recent: so-called 'redlining.'

Coates tells the story of Clyde Ross, son of Mississipi sharecroppers who came to Chicago in the Great Migration:

'Three months after Clyde Ross moved into his house, the boiler blew out. This would normally be a homeowner’s responsibility, but in fact, Ross was not really a homeowner. His payments were made to the seller, not the bank. And Ross had not signed a normal mortgage. He’d bought “on contract”: a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither. 

Ross had bought his house for $27,500. The seller, not the previous homeowner but a new kind of middleman, had bought it for only $12,000 six months before selling it to Ross. In a contract sale, the seller kept the deed until the contract was paid in full—and, unlike with a normal mortgage, Ross would acquire no equity in the meantime.'

Why was Ross obliged to buy a house 'on contract'? Because he could secure no regular mortgage financing. Chances are, in large part because he was Afro-American.

So, Where Does Multiculturalism Work?

Englischer Garten, Munich

Today's progressives have a seemingly unshakeable belief in the doctrine of Multiculturalism. All societies should be a zesty mix of different melanin levels, languages, religions, and cuisines. Anything else would be not only immoral, but boring.

Despite Putnam's evidence that diverse neighborhoods make everyone living in them less happy, this unflappable belief in the tonic effects of diversity seems to have gripped the modern leftist with claws of steel. 

U.N. Migration Representative and diversity evangelist Peter Sutherland

So we ask him: What is an example of a diverse society that actually works? To which we in the West may aspire?

Rue Polonceau, Paris, 2015

As it turns out, Multiculturalism is not such an easy beast to wrangle.

But we aim to try, to once and for all get our harpoon into that elusive animal: the Diversitopia on which we, in the West, may model ourselves.



Where to find it?

Widening Circle of Empathy: The Final Frontier

Sic Transit Gloria Homo Albus

The town of Székesfehérvár, Hungary--a thousand-year-old city home to the original royal court--just applied for the coveted 'European Capital of Culture.' The video they submitted was turned down flat by the E.U. jury. The reason?

(Video at link) 

'There are too many happy white people and crosses, and not enough migrants.' … One of the European Union’s experts said with astonishment: 'This is the propaganda film for white Christian Europe; everyone is white, happy and dancing in the streets.'

Just a few months later, the soccer World Cup final pitted France against Croatia. Before the match, France's Anti-Defamation League posted:

'France's team, multi-colored, multi-ethnic, goes head to head with a Croatian team that's distressingly uniform.  Knowing Croatia's history, no surprise. Balkan-centric, nostalgic for an era which worshiped only brute strength, they play a soccer that is bland, colorless, flavorless…

'France will win—she's already won! She unites, welcomes, understands. … Let's keep fighting so that our Republic's values stay on top, even if—against all odds—we lose.'

Hungary 'too white,' Croatia 'colorless'… Whence this race-obsessed rhetoric? 

Steven Pinker has written at length about the 'widening circle of empathy.'  We at TWCS believe that it has four phases, and that certain Western countries have now entered the fourth and terminal phase: the desire for self-replacement.

On what do we base this claim?

And if true, where does it come from? How do we know when it's approaching? Is there anything we can do to stop it?

Segregation: Our Most Cherished Myths

Tennessee, 1955

Newsweek recently sounded the alarm in a long-form piece on what they view as a troubling new trend:

Sixty years after Brown vs. Board, forty years after the end of busing, it appears that all the social engineering in the world can't make our multicultural dreams come true:

Economist Tyler Cowen, who is a conservative, calls white parents’ visceral fear of a mostly black school “discouraging.” ... [Journalist] Hannah-Jones agrees. “You’re gonna have to force and cajole people” into integration, she says, which is why the court orders of the 1960s and ’70s proved effective. “We’re not going to do this voluntarily.”

 Boston busing protest, 1970s

By 1988, the high point of school integration in the U.S., nearly half of all black children attended a majority-white school. … Since then, however, the gains of Brown v. Board have been almost entirely reversed. 

Water will find its level. Yet the narrative remains that somehow, after enough 'forcing and cajoling,' a diverse and happy future awaits us all--even ethnic groups as radically different as Northwest Euros and Sub-Saharan Africans.  

Train station, Pretoria, South Africa

We at TWCS, on the contrary, posit that: 

• Any time a large flux of Afros has arrived among ethnic NW Euros (up to and including the present), the latter have reacted sharply by separating themselves, and 

• Their reasons have been not senseless but on the whole fairly defensible.

The two biggest laboratories for this social experiment, of course, have been South Africa and the United States. We have chosen to examine the latter.

Johannesburg 1990, Detroit 1973

Is Hannah-Jones right? Will enough 'forcing and cajoling' bring about the multicultural blessings we've long been waiting for?  Or, on the contrary, have we believed so many myths about segregation that we've painted ourselves into a policy corner? 

I Lift My Lamp Beside the Cold Hard Facts

Have we arrived?

Why, one may ask, have so many leftists gone ballistic over a short stoppage on immigration from 7 terror-prone states?  

Via Steve Sailer

Crowds are mobbing airports. Pundits, movie stars, sports players, foreign heads of state, all lifting their voices in horror….

As though such a banal, oft-practiced, and sensible measure were some kind of crime against humanity.

Headlines courtesy of Breitbart News

It is a question worth asking. An alien arriving from another planet might think Trump had just announced he was planning to rain down bombs on these countries for years. (Thus confusing Trump with his predecessor.) Such country-specific migration blocks are nothing new, and have been a favorite of Democrat presidents from Obama to Carter to old FDR himself. Yet our current hysteria continues unabated.

Agitated Hollywoodians won't take this lying down

One can't be blamed for feeling as though one has arrived at Saint Anthony's 1700-year-old prophecy. Truly, has the whole world gone mad?

Though we're hard at work on our next piece, we're taking a quick break to provide a few links to those seeking some facts and data in the midst of this planetary pants-soiling. 

Some may wonder:

The Diversity Tax

Historic Carpetright Building in London, 1930: Built, 2011: Destroyed by Diversity

It is in our day an undisputed fact, almost a religious dogma, that 'diversity is our strength.' This credo is endlessly repeated by our leaders, including the heads of state of the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and France.

Former University of Michigan President Lee Bollinger:

Diversity is not merely a desirable addition to a well-run education. It is as essential as the study of the Middle Ages, of international politics and of Shakespeare. For our students to better understand the diverse country and world they inhabit, they must be immersed in a campus culture that allows them to study with, argue with and become friends with students who may be different from them.

By 'diversity,' of course, Mr Bollinger does not mean diversity of opinion (verboten on many campuses), but diversity of melanin content.  

Nearly every political, religious, academic, and cultural leader in every Western country today agrees that (racial) Diversity is, indeed, Our Strength. Or as the French say, 'La diversité est une richesse.'

Are they right?

We at TWCS propose, on the contrary, that in Western countries diversity has proven to be much more like a tax. A tax that falls, like medieval manorial dues, disproportionately on the working classes.

Fort Hood Massacre: Diversity über alles

A tax is not ipso facto a bad thing. Most of us happily pay income or sales tax knowing it helps fund our roadways, police, garbage pick-up, etc.

But how much is the Diversity Tax costing us per year?  And what, exactly, are we getting in return? Is it worth it?

In order to get a closer look, we invite you to join us on a trip through the modern Multicultural West.  It may be wise to bring your checkbook.

Why We Culturally Profile

The Europe to come?

At the height of the Trayvon Martin affair, we met a young Afro-Canadian who strongly objected to being racially profiled. Drawing on the pool of data at our disposal, we presented, to the best of our ability, the reasons such profiling exists.

Today, as hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants pour into Europe to claim asylum, profiling again rears its ugly head. Not racial/ethnic this time, but religious:

At least five European countries have signaled that they prefer to grant asylum only to Christian refugees flooding the continent from the Middle East, not to Muslims.

“I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country,” Hungarian Prime Minister Orban said.  ... “Refugees from a completely different cultural background would not be in a good position in the Czech Republic,” said Czech President Milos Zeman.

 Lodz, Poland, September 2015

On what are these fears based? Ignorance, prejudice? We have been told for years that immigration is a gift, an economic boost, an injection of fresh blood, and that our new guests will culturally enrich our lives with their differentness (all while assimilating seamlessly thanks to their sameness). We at TWCS have thus decided to take a deeper look at the data.

But is Islam a religion, a culture, or a civilization? Has it genetically changed its adherents over time like Christianity has (cousin marriage enforced vs. forbidden)? In the absence of any genetic connection, does it culturally push its believers to certain behaviors? Could these beliefs and behaviors really, as the critics charge, prevent their assimilation into the West?

In a word--is this cultural profiling of Muslims based on fact or fantasy?

Crashing the Gates: A Crash Course

Storming the Hungarian border at Hogros, Serbia, September 16th, 2015

(Or, The European Migrant Crisis: A Reader.)

From the Pope to the E.U. to the U.N., the narrative has taken shape: 'Millions of refugees fleeing war-torn regions are flooding into Europe, and we must take them all in.'  If one doesn't embrace it whole-heartedly--and many Europeans do not--one is 'vile,' 'shameful,' and 'spreading hate' (to quote German chancellor Angela Merkel).  Such closed-minded bigots need to open their hearts and homes.

We here at TWCS argue that there is much more to the story. From our privileged perch here in continental Europe, we enjoy access to scores of local news stories which haven't seeped into the international media. So as with the Charlie Hebdo massacre, we're taking a slight detour from our normal blogging in order to give a press round-up we hope some may find useful. From our seat in the very front row, we humbly invite you to join us on a tour of the less-reported sides of this epochal event. But kindly buckle up first.

Reacting to Spree Killings, Progressively

[Please excuse this brief detour; we are still hard at work on our 'Re-colonization' series.]

Of the many things Progressives are known for, number one is being on the right side of history.

So in the wake of this latest U.S. spree killing, we turn to our leading leftist voices to help us make sense of the madness.

Having studied their recent corpus on the question of the spree-killer-for-a-cause, we believe we've found some progressive principles to light our way.


I. Do not make generalizations about his group

Why Re-Colonization? Future Orientation

Mongongo tree and fruit

Each day, the Kung San walked long distances to the mongongo groves to collect their fruits.  

Once he asked a tribesman why nobody had ever made an attempt to grow mongongo trees near some of the permanent water holes where the tribe resided.  "You could do that if you wanted to," he replied, "but by the time the trees bore fruit, you would be long dead." --Anthropologist Richard Lee

(part I of two)

At independence, 50 years ago, optimism for the tropics was high. No one could have dreamed that half a century later, a massive movement for re-colonization would be afoot--led not by Africa's leaders but by her masses.

1960: Demanding Europeans leave Africa; 2014: Africans demanding to be let into Europe

We have looked at some of the reasons that the global South wants into Teutonic countries.  But the real appeal is broader.  Globally, tropical peoples are trying to migrate to lands run by temperate peoples.

Image source 

Like a baby trying to crawl back into the womb, the formerly colonized are coming back to their old foreign masters and begging (or demanding) to be ruled by them again.

One year of African boat people = a city the size of Venice. Can Europe absorb them all?

Why?

We propose two major reasons: Future orientation and Commonweal orientation.  These two qualities, we argue, are plentiful in the North but in short supply in the South, where their opposites (Short-Sightedness and Clannishness) can be found in abundance.

Today we shall focus on the former: Future orientation. We argue that the shortage of this trait in warmer climes has prevented these societies from developing the way they wish to. This is why, two generations after independence, millions are voting with their feet to place themselves back under Euro rule.

We also argue these traits follow tropical peoples long-term, which is why North America's centuries-old African population has never assimilated. This too, we shall show, should be a cautionary tale for European deciders on immigration.

So what is the evidence to back up our assertions?

I Don't Belong Here

Paris, France; Ferguson, United States

France is still reeling from the Islamist attacks against satirical rag Charlie Hebdo which killed 17.

As commenter Kolia points out, many of the murder victims weren't white indigenous French--an Arab and an Afro cop, four civilian Jews. Does this mean religion trumps race?

The truth is that Arab (and Afro) immigrants to France pose two different kinds of threat to the natives.  The distinction should be made clear.

For Americans, one of these two will look very familiar, and one will not:

• (1) The daily incivility / insults / beatings / rapes perpetrated by Arabs / Blacks against indigenous white French.  No religious aspect to it at all; pure ethnic minority alienation.

• (2) The ever-growing calls to bend French values to mirror those of their guests: Single-sex swimming pools, halal meals, legalized polygamy, criminalized blasphemy... The most extreme is the young man radicalized by an imam who tries to launch a caliphate by holy war.

All the world's a-tizzy about (2).  While we admit Islam is a genuine threat to parts of Europe, we're going to swim against the tide and take a look at the more 'banal evil' of (1). Why? This is the everyday brutality the French must live with day in, day out, and it bears a striking resemblance to that aimed at Euro-Americans by their Afro countrymen.  What can the data tell us about hopes of assimilating these two alien minorites on either side of the Atlantic?

Is Nothing Sacred

'A towelhead kisses a kike's ass'--Charlie Hebdo on the 1977 Egyptian visit to Israel

 ('So, should we make peace?' 'Keep going, I'll let you know')

Despite appearances, we are hard at work here at Those Who Can See, sticking to our adage of 'if it ain't ready, don't publish it.'  An unusally busy winter work schedule is slowing down but not stopping us.

But a quick interlude is in order.  The recent attacks in France have taken over the news cycle here, spawning much journalistic heat but little light on both sides of the Atlantic. We'd like to give a brief snapshot of some of the  less-seen bits of the story.

Alors, pour les curieux...


I. The Magazine

Charlie Hebdo, for those unfamiliar, is a French satiric weekly born in 1970 from the ashes of Hara Kiri, itself inspired by Mad Magazine.

It is the baby of counter-culture leftists.  Their number one targets have always been conservatives and Christians. A sampling (some courtesy of MPC):

When the famous 'Piss Christ' angered Catholics in Avignon, Charlie said:

All Religions in the Shitter!

Reparations for Red-lining?

FHA map of Los Angeles, 1939 

'Ingenious and powerful,' 'important and compelling', 'stunningly ambitious;' it has 'broken traffic records and vanished from newsstands,' 'setting ablaze' social media.  What is it?

It is 'The Case for Reparations,' Atlantic's June 2014 cover story by editor Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The idea has been tossed around since Emancipation, falling out of fashion as of late. Coates brings it roaring back in this long-form piece, calling on Euro-Americans to 1) publicly express their guilt about past oppression, and 2) pay reparation money to their Afro countrymen.  Does his argument hold water?

The 17-page article covers much ground, but it seems Coates seeks redress for three major wrongs:

• Slavery
• Land theft
• Red-lining

They are three quite different topics, and should be treated as such.  We shall begin by addressing the most recent: so-called 'redlining.'

Coates tells the story of Clyde Ross, son of Mississipi sharecroppers who came to Chicago in the Great Migration:

'Three months after Clyde Ross moved into his house, the boiler blew out. This would normally be a homeowner’s responsibility, but in fact, Ross was not really a homeowner. His payments were made to the seller, not the bank. And Ross had not signed a normal mortgage. He’d bought “on contract”: a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither. 

Ross had bought his house for $27,500. The seller, not the previous homeowner but a new kind of middleman, had bought it for only $12,000 six months before selling it to Ross. In a contract sale, the seller kept the deed until the contract was paid in full—and, unlike with a normal mortgage, Ross would acquire no equity in the meantime.'

Why was Ross obliged to buy a house 'on contract'? Because he could secure no regular mortgage financing. Chances are, in large part because he was Afro-American.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

 Nigel Farage celebrates UKIP's E.U. election victory, May 2014

Political maps have changed much since one hundred years ago. Or two hundred, or five hundred.

Some changes have crept in; others have exploded. It can be interesting to look at old maps and think, how will ours look to our descendents?

"The world" in 1570

Imperialism was the trend for much of the modern era. Most peoples were swept up into the folds of empires-- European, Turk, Chinese.

Empires of the world, 1914

But West European colonialism dissolved in the 1960s, Soviet imperialism in the 1990s. Since then the trend has gone the other way:  States are fracturing ever more.

1960 to 1990: A multiplication of states

The one exception is the quasi-super-state known as the European Union, which has been hoovering up members as fast as it can.

Bucking the trend: EU grows ever larger

The recent eurozone crisis has led to calls for 'a United States of Europe.'  Only a true federal authority in Brussels, with control over member states' moves, can lead to a happy European future:

European Commission vice-president Viviane Reding has predicted that the eurozone will become a federal state, while urging the UK not to leave the Union. ... “In my personal view, the eurozone should become the United States of Europe."

... Reding noted that euro countries have made an “extraordinary” leap in terms of integration due to the economic crisis. Citing the commission’s new powers to scrutinise national budgets and plans to create a banking union, she said: “a few years ago no one could have imagined member states being prepared to cede this amount of sovereignty.”

Indeed.

The United States itself, a grand experiment in federalism, has seen its central government intrude ever more deeply on states' rights over the last century.  Is this a happy thing?  At the same time, the massive post-1965 immigration experiment has flip-flopped U.S. demography.

These trends have created deep American fault lines.  Europe is in fact trying to emulate the U.S. at the very moment when the latter seems to be fracturing.  In both cases, then, we have a tension between creeping federal authority on one hand, and a desire by regions to throw off that authority on the other.

What does the future hold for these two super-states?

We at Those Who Can See feel it is naively optimistic to imagine in 100 years the maps of our descendents will look the same as ours.  Where are these two chunks of the Europsphere headed?