How Envy Causes Racial Conflict

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https://www.unz.com/article/how-envy-ca ... -conflict/

Exerpts:

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Envy is a negative feeling aroused by noticing an advantage enjoyed by someone else. Sometimes unfavorable comparisons of this kind motivate people to try to get a similar advantage for themselves. In that case, the result is emulation, not envy. The envious man dwells on his perceived inferiority, which humiliates him and often arouses a sense of impotence or self-pity. The differences in status that provoke such feelings need not be great. In fact, truly enormous differences such as between a peasant and a king tend not to arouse envy, because the peasant has a hard time even imagining himself in the king’s place. Invidious comparisons arise most easily among relative peers.

Envy is also distinct from any desire to possess the advantage in question. Very often, it is aroused by advantages which by their very nature cannot be transferred from one person to another, or by things that would be of no benefit to the envious man if he did come into their possession. So, it is not a form of covetousness. An envious man with a broken leg does not so much want to be whole again as to see everyone else break their legs. His concern is not primarily with his leg per se, but with a sense of inferiority in comparison with others, which he would like to avenge upon others. This is one reason schemes for redistributing wealth do not solve the problem of envy. A person with an envious disposition tends to see whatever confirms his envy, and he can always find new inequalities to focus on once one has been removed.

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Schoeck even found examples of tribes without any concept of personal success or achievement at all. Anyone who prospers is thought to have done so at the expense of someone else. In order to justify this view, goods of which the supply is not limited are treated as if they were scarce. Among the Dobu Islanders of Melanesia, any man who farms more yams than his neighbors is accused of having stolen them, usually through black magic. People will not admit the possibility that a man might be eating better than his neighbor because he has put in more honest work tilling his yam field. All prosperity is caused by the deprivation of others. The result, of course, is a general fear of good crops, and an entire society is kept at the level of bare subsistence.

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“Critical race theory” is a pretentious name for what is in fact a reemergence of the most primitive, envy-driven form of reasoning. Emotionally, its appeal is identical to that of the Dobu Islander’s belief that his neighbor is eating better only by spiriting yams out of other people’s gardens. And it is not merely a rationalization of and justification for envy but, insofar as it is successfully propagated, it’s a means of creating envy where none previously existed. Critical race theory inculcates resentment among children to whom it might otherwise not have occurred to compare themselves invidiously with their white neighbors, and directs their attention away from practical ways to improve their own lives. As we have seen, many societies have been dominated by envy, but I cannot think of another case of a regime systematically trying to maximize envy in the rising generation. It is genuinely cruel to the non-white children who are supposedly its intended beneficiaries, but as we would expect from envy-inspired behavior, the aim appears to be to harm us rather than to help them.

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Eventually the envy directed against successful white students and shiny new buildings began to include high-achieving blacks. They found themselves accused of being sellouts and “acting white.” Roland Fryer of Harvard devised a quantitative study of this “acting white” effect. He discovered that in integrated classrooms, as the grade-point averages of black students increases beyond the level of a B+, they tend to have fewer friends. In schools that were almost all black, he found “no evidence at all that getting good grades adversely affects students’ popularity.” A president of Atlanta’s Spelman College also noted that “an oppositional identity that disdains academic achievement has not always been characteristic of black adolescent peer groups. It seems to be a post-desegregation phenomenon.” The reason should be obvious: invidious comparisons depend upon proximity. School integration is a classic example of the harm that can be done by failing to understand the importance of envy in human relations.

^ Bold above is interesting. Diversity + Proximity = Bullied Smart Kids? Surely a new rallying call for the separatists.

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Occasionally we discuss the high proportion of human achievement originating in Europe and its people. Until fairly recently, this historical fact was considered so obvious that it was not worth talking about. And this does not mean, by the way, that Western man ever sought to deny the genuine achievements of others; a self-confident people feels no need to begrudge due recognition to others. Today, the basic facts of Western accomplishment are under attack, and a response has become necessary. Many of you will be familiar with the important work done by Prof. Ricardo Duchesne in this area. Once again, self-congratulation is not the point. Speaking personally, contemplation of the vastness of Western achievement is more likely to inspire me with a feeling of humility than one of pride or arrogance. Measured against what our ancestors wrought, our personal achievements are laughably modest.

It has sometimes occurred to me that the biggest problem with the idea of racial equality is that whites are the only people who can be made to believe in it. The resentment so often evinced towards whites arises deep in the limbic part of the brain and thus remains uninfluenced by egalitarian exhortation, which operates only at the more superficial level of the cortex and rational thought. That is why decades of efforts have done so little to assuage feelings of racial inferiority.

What can be done to combat racial envy? This is not an easy question. If we look to our own tradition of ethical thought developed over many centuries within Christendom, we find envy characterized as a sin. It is one of the seven cardinal sins upon which most more specific sins hinge. Sin is an essentially spiritual phenomenon which means, among other things, that it must be combatted at the level of the individual soul. There is no possible political or legislative program to eliminate envy any more than pride or wrath. These are timeless temptations intrinsic to the human condition.

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Another lesson is that we should not take too literally the accusations about slavery and colonialism constantly cast in our teeth. No one would care about the sins of our great-grandfathers, real or imagined, if we were not more successful than certain other races today. It is observed superiority that inspires resentment, not the wrongs of past centuries, which are at most post facto ways of rationalizing resentment.

Oh and in before idiots who don't want to tackle the content, attack the author instead.

Just to note: This is adapted from remarks given at the 18th American Renaissance conference on November 13, 2021.

This is literally the talking points from a white supremacist conference. I guess the mask is off now?

Envy causes racial conflict much in the same way envy causes conflict between me and someone who just mugged me.

Which is to say:
It has nothing to do with envy. Recognizing that you are being f***ed by an unjust system does not make you envious.

Yeah I was about to say the same thing. I poke my head onto the AmRen site once in a while when I can stomach it so I can feel better about myself.

This is lifted straight from white supremacist sources and I hope the mods act accordingly.

I continue to appreciate it when social conservatives betray their amorality by being allowed to run their mouths. They dig their own graves. Good.

So? It's not gonna be like opening the Ark if you dare to read it. I thought it was quite interesting. Envy is definitely a strong hidden hand through much human interaction, both of the individual and of the group, it would be no surprise if it reared its head in racial politics too.

!	Cornflake wrote:
	Locked, for the reasons already stated above. Responding with "So?" to the statement "This is literally the talking points from a white supremacist conference" is not a good look.