Why are statues of abolitionists being torn down as well?

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Hehe. If you read the rest of my posts I think you'll find we're in very different places.



The usual story, if there is one, goes something like this: there is a heterogeneous territory, an empire of some sort. Its power fades as they always do. Homogenous groups usually based on kinship rise out of that decay and destruction and display great energy. They secure their home territories and either go on to form an empire of their own or are conquered again by a more powerful group. The cycle then repeats over a period of 2-300 years. There are anomalies and twists, but that pattern is more often found than not.

Also a society's ability to take in a few stray people cannot just be scaled up, expecting the same result. A few hundred people arriving in your territory generates little change and provokes quite a different response compared to a few million.



Yes. Firstly that is usually not a natural, peaceful and pleasant process. Secondly they are usually peoples of a similar stock. Can you tell apart an Englishman and a Welshman? Norman from an Anglo-Saxon? Even at the time? Cultural or even civic assimilation tends not to work across racial divides. That pesky racial identity pops up again, overpowering all other ties, often negating them. Do you know how many people reject a cultural meme or even an entire religion just because it's associated or "belongs" to another race? The Nation of Islam came into being mainly as an explicit rejection of Whiteness and Christianity.

This shouldn't be news, remember the Left wing "brainwave" that is multiculturalism came out of the obvious failure of the promise of cultural assimilation in the mid 20th century. It was a recognition of the failure of assimilation across great racial and religious divides and the last hope of a stable polity. It looks like it's going to fail too.



Some identities are stronger, more persistent and more cohesive. Family (direct blood ties) > Ethnicity > Race > Religion > Economics/Politics > Anything else.



Correct. Sometimes it is imposed deliberately, particularly in cities by cynical rulers. It doesn't actually erase the identities but it does impose a feeling of vulnerability that lowers the likelihood of violent action or other sorts of "trouble". Most people dislike this state of affairs however, especially when they start thinking about raising children. They will often move away if they can. Given the freedom to move around most people won't just seek their own kind, they will seek their own kind in numbers and slowly you end up with homogeneous areas inside the "empire" just waiting for the curtain to fall, as it always does.

Well, I can agree with that.

I have never been one to defend racist imagery. Particularly those images that try to re-write history as the early 20th Confederate statues were trying to do.

Have you ever heard of Metis people? They're an example of people from obviously different stocks mixing and assimilating their cultures and they're an example that isn't nearly as messy as you suggest they must be. There's also a bunch of names for tri-racial peoples throughout parts of the Americas, but clearly phenotype wasn't what they aligned their interests around.

Ironically out of the same meme that spawned NoI came 5% Nation who didn't originally but now accept members of all backgrounds and interpret 'the original god is the Asiatic black man' as including people of any ethnic background because even accepting their crazy beliefs regarding how white people were created white people were still created from the same stock as gods, so white folks can be gods and earths (terminology for male and female followers respectively).

Socialists from a wide spectrum of beliefs (along with at least some liberals) generally support multiculturalism, whether because it's aligned with their view of nationalism or because they believe working people have more similar common interests than do people as divided by ethnicity or state, and by and large they appear to actually believe it, but it isn't even required for a far-right nationalist state as demonstrated by much of Latin America at times.

I don't think phenotype is as definitive of characteristic as you insist it is.

What is really interesting about this thread is how comfortable people are about defending white supremacy and the Confederacy. Those statues were put up in support of white supremacy and as oppressive symbols. The raising of the statues was history. History, fortunately, is now tearing them down. Maybe our nation can achieve some of the ideals is stated at its beginning with that.

As far as erasing history, that is just a red herring. Even with the Confederate "Lost Cause" myth, the Confederacy has never been able to out run its past. The Cornerstone speech is still available to those that want to read it. Details of slavery are available. It is one of the most documented periods of US history.

It's not about defending white supremacy but what a statue means to different people. Where I live statues are usually not in celebration of the subject.

Also there is a strange contradiction with tearing down statues. On one side they're being torn down because they're said to celebrate the person and are said to have no historical value but on the other side they're being torn down down because of the dark shady historical behaviour of the people the statues represent.

Are they historical or not?

You will find things far more complex than you want to portrait them.

Those statues are historical they were used symbolically to support racist ideology in the building of them. And now those statues are being taken down in the same historical process, except the society does not think these symbols should be up. Just as the symbols of the Third Reich and Soviet Union and many regimes were treated. You are simply witnessing the process of history.

Taking your personal point of view based on the statuary in your area in Wales is not really a great reference point with which to judge Confederate statues and their history.

It can happen, most think that's how new peoples are born, through rare occasions of sufficient intermixing. But that doesn't exempt the new people from the game or the cycle of empires. What it means is that where you had two factions, you now have three. If that mixed group is the future of the territory - the parent peoples don't go quietly into the night.



Latin America is much more racially divided than people let on, the fact that they have a very detailed racial caste structure is a clue. The very unstable, nominally "economic" politics there is a thin veneer atop racial politics.



I could be wrong, it isn't something that can be easily proved. But it seems to fit much better with what is observed. No one ever did give a satisfactory answer to your question in that other thread: why do socially conservative foreigners not vote for the nominally socially conservative party? It's rather easy to answer with this model.

I'm against this sort of nothing-buttery too. But I still favor removing (at least most) statues of people whose primary claim to fame was their defense of a regime whose primary reason for existence was to preserve slavery.

As for other white historical figures, some sensitivity to local cultural context may be called for. For example, here in the U.S.A., a statue of Abraham Lincoln should probably not be placed right next door to an Indian Reservation or in a neighborhood containing large numbers of indigenous Americans. On the other hand, in a neighborhood containing both white and black Americans, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, alongside a statue of Harriet Tubman and/or Frederick Douglass, would be a nice unifying display. (As long as the latter aren't portrayed kneeling at Lincoln's feet, at least -- that would be offensive.)

That's one possibility, although I'd suggest the stereotype of conservatives as being at best unconcerned about racism and at worst sympathetic to racist views likely contributes more. There definitely exist conservatives who aren't, but the ones who are end up making the entire bloc look bad because it tolerates those views.

Even if you love every other plank on a candidates platform it's hard to get enthusiastic about voting for him when he wants to deport your mom or when the people at his rallies insist you need to go back home despite being in the only country you've ever lived in.

I believe that buying into the mindset you hold ultimately makes this outcome a self-fulfilling prophecy. The assumption a community won't be likely to vote for a party even though they have broadly similar values causes that party to not bother investing resources in outreach to that community. When low engagement is seen this is taken as proof that those people are unreachable and the idea that they're somehow unable to be won over because they're those people prevents a party from making an effort to learn how to reach out. The GOP tried to learn from their failures only to have the 2012 autopsy report ignored by people who fell into the trap that that mindset represents.

What could eventually break that pattern?

Most likely, the emergence of enough, and strong enough, worldwide international, inter-racial identities.

More about this later, in a separate post.


This depends partly on how big the country is to begin with, and on how well it's doing economically. Thus the U.S.A. can absorb a lot more newcomers than most smaller countries could.


The "Nation of Islam" and similar groups are an anomaly. Among black people on the African continent itself, Christianity has been spreading like wildfire these past several decades. And Christianity is still very popular among black people here in the U.S.A.

Also, the "Nation of Islam" and similar black "Muslim" groups have had periodic schisms in which some of the members end up embracing a more orthodox -- and much more cosmopolitan -- form of Islam. The best-known example of a black Muslim leader who made this transition was Malcolm X. Another was Warith Deen Mohammed.


Maybe in Europe but probably not here in the U.S.A.


Not necessarily. For example, for many people here in the U.S.A., religion is a stronger identity than "race" and much stronger than ethnic background.

For most Americans other than first, second, and maybe third-generation immigrants, specific ethnicities are a very weak identity -- pretty much completely ignored when choosing a mate, for example. "Race" is much stronger than ethnicity, but not necessarily stronger than religion or political/philosophical belief/value systems.

The strength of religion as a source of identity depends on how devout one is. Also, in the Bible Belt at least (less so outside the Bible Belt), atheists strongly prefer other atheists as partners and friends.

I can see why many Europeans might feel that "Ethnicity > Race > Religion." Most European countries are relatively small, and most are defined, in the first place, as centering around a particular ethnicity or set of ethnicities. And, if I understand correctly, religion is seen (by most Europeans other than African, middle-eastern, and south Asian immigrants) as just a quaint national cultural tradition.


Here in the U.S.A., I think most parents don't seek "their own kind" so much as they seek to live in the best school district they can afford to live in. In practice this perpetuates a racial hierarchy, insofar as the presence of black people (and, to a lesser extent, Asians) is seen as lowering property values (a self-fulfilling prophecy!) -- thereby also reducing funding for the local public schools (which are funded from local property taxes).

But I'm not aware of any parts of the U.S.A. that are actually becoming more homogeneous than they were before, other than a few areas in suburban New York State with rapidly-growing Orthodox Jewish populations. Here the key factor is religion, not race per se.

In any case there are also plenty of people who prefer cosmopolitan neighborhoods. I'm far from the only one.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 26 May 2021, 7:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

What are they for?

Looks like mental gymnastics to me, though not quite as fanciful as Kraftie's attempt tried to paint Mexican immigrants as progressive visionaries concerned about the ultimate future of Mankind. On a related question but on the flip side, why do White Evangelicals vote Trump - possibly the least Christian man in America in his personal life? And with greater enthusiasm than usual? The standard Left Wing answer is "they are motivated by racism" - but of course that would agree with my identity hierarchy model. Can't have that. No no.



I don't know if the pattern can be broken, it may be hardwired into us. And I doubt we'll ever see international identities strong enough to break the blood identities. It doesn't even work at a local level, how can it work internationally?



Myself I think size of territory and available wealth are secondary factors in the ability to absorb newcomers, the main factor is the number of sufficiently different foreigners who arrive.



It isn't an anomaly in diverse territories. I name the NoI in an American context, not a global one.



I don't believe this myself, while it's true ethnicity is more complicated in the U.S. I see no signs that religious identity trumps racial identity in the U.S., uniquely in the world. I wonder if you have a better answer for the question I ask funeralxempire above.



Traditional European heritage has all but disappeared in America, yes, they literally can't argue about ethnicity when everyone is a European mutt, but there's still race. It's one reason Racial politics is a degree more overt in the U.S. compared to Europe. I must disagree again about religion being a more powerful identity anywhere, let alone the U.S. but I am beginning to sound like a broken record.



Ah my evil question has another chance to shine. Why do White Evangelicals vote for the p**** grabber?



There is more than one way to arrive at that hierarchy, but that is a discussion for another time.

I'm not sure how it's mental gymnastics to say racist conservatives scare off potentially sympathetic voters who choose to not participate instead of supporting people who openly dislike them. That's pretty straight forward.

As for Trump and evangelicals; he fights their enemies more effectively than they do so themselves and he appeals to their authoritarian leanings. He'll protect them from a culture that's increasingly rejecting their beliefs. Or at least they believe.

Pointing to a single motive like racism or misogyny or whatever is an over-simplification that misses the point.

Acting because you believe, rightly or wrongly, that someone is racist against you is an expression of the racial identity is it not?



I find no such delusion. At best, if not entirely motivated by Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric, he was Michael Moore's hand grenade, the bull in the Washington China shop.



I claim a hierarchy of identities and motives, rather than just one. You can find exceptions to everything. But when considering the big picture the hierarchy can explain many outcomes, historical and present.

I think the answer to that question varies depending on how religious they are, and on how intent they are on imposing their religious values on the rest of us. For relatively nonreligious white people of evangelical Christian background, white racism probably has a lot to do with it. The more religious -- and more theocratic-minded -- evangelical Christians prefer Trump because he has been appointing federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, friendly to their cause.


When I spoke of the "size" of a country, I was referring to the size of its population as well as its geographic size.

Another factor is how homogeneous the immigrant foreigners are. If the foreigners are all members of one single ethnic group, it can feel a lot more like an invasion than if they are members of a wide variety of different ethnic groups.


But you were talking about "empires," and the U.S.A. is today's quintessential "empire" (in the sense in which you were using the word "empire," at least).


See above. I also don't think the importance of religious identity is unique in the world. For example, consider India vs. Pakistan. Originally they were all part of India, but got divided along religious lines. Also consider the long history of religious wars in Europe.

Indeed, though that has no bearing on what I was saying. It's the number of foreigners that dictate their behaviour and impact.



I agree. Though the West has had so much immigration since WW2 that even though it has been relatively diverse on the whole, you still have sufficient numbers of individual groups to see huge self-segregation and it's counterpart "white flight".

It's quaint and amusing up to a certain point.

Using the Chinese as an example, though it works with everyone:

There's a Chinese family living at the end of the street. <-- No problems here.
There's a Chinatown in this city. <-- Mmm nice food.
This town is now 60% Chinese. <-- Danger Zone. This is when the parallel economies really kick off, cultural customs become unofficial by-laws, local politics becomes dominated by new group, non-Chinese start being chased off and the residents start to resent being policed by the "other".



Yes I was. The U.S. is an empire even on its home territory and it always was. It's even more true today after decades of immigration.



Many if not most so-called "religious wars" are ethnic wars in disguise. Religion can and often does become a badge of kinship. I wouldn't however disagree that the modern schism in India wasn't mostly "resolved" (with the help of third parties) along the lines of religion. To split it along ethnic lines would probably result in a hundred different states. But at the same time, internally, India and Pakistan to an extent still retain a heavily racialised caste system that has always trumped any religious ties and the stability of the religious compromise remains in doubt.

Europe again, while there were a few genuinely religious squabbles (mostly internal), most of it was a handy excuse for good old fashioned national politics - national as in nation - the largest ethnic grouping, the badge of religion being used as cassus belli. The quintessential example is the Irish troubles, often wrongly called a religious conflict, when it is really an old fight between Irish natives and the descendants of Scottish settlers. I'm always drawn back to that joke/story that perfectly exposes what that conflict was really about:

A man is approached by a sinister looking group of men in Belfast.
They ask him if he is a Protestant or a Catholic.
The man replies "I'm an atheist".
The gang pause for a moment and say "but are you a Protestant Atheist or a Catholic Atheist?"