Excessive Immigration

by Winston C Banks

  We then have what is often called everyday, casual, unconscious, coded, systemic or institutionalised racism. As the Jewish psychoanalytic writer Kovel (1988) puts it: ‘far from being the simple delusion of a bigoted and ignorant minority, racism is a set of beliefs whose structure arises from the deepest levels of our lives’. So-called unconscious racism is a highly problematic concept which can only be inferred like other unconscious material by others (Blanton & Jaccard, 2008). The much-used Implicit Association Test (IAT) created by psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald has been accepted uncritically as accurately measuring implicit racial bias, but recent critiques cast serious doubt on its value (Singal, 2017). These kinds of racism are not about violence or intentional rudeness but putative subtle discrimination against the BAME community by whites, resulting in personal feelings of hurt and barriers to employment or promotion. Microaggressions are said to be those small, subtle, unthinking words and actions that exclude or stereotype non-whites or other BAME people (Anderson, 2009). As an example, Oxford University’s equality and diversity unit in April 2017 urged its staff to look into the eyes of BAME students and colleagues rather than looking away (until they were forced to retract this well-meaning policy because it upset neuro-diverse people who dislike being looked at). It has been pointed out, however, that microaggressions are definitionally hazy and subjectively interpreted (Lilienfeld, 2017). Coded racism, likewise, seems ubiquitous to SJWs as ‘dogwhistle politics’, or public messages transmitted in euphemisms or oblique references to non-whites, but is open to doubt as to any pervasive reality.

  Figures revealing that an insufficient percentage of BAME people are found in certain professions, and particularly at the top of those professions, have stoked debate and action for positive discrimination or affirmative action. This trend has led to all-BAME shortlists for some jobs, and promotion of BAME staff to senior positions as role models. This quite naturally creates resentment among many whites, particularly those who have never benefited from a leg-up themselves. But it is also opposed by some blacks who regard it as patronising and ultimately self-defeating, encouraging blacks to wallow in victim culture and become ever more dependent on white largesse. See also Farron (2014).

  It is repeatedly claimed that the police are institutionally racist, which leads to lack of role models for blacks, to racist attitudes among the police and ultimately to police brutality against blacks, and murder of blacks on the streets, in police cars or prison cells. Specific incidents have hit the headlines in the USA, the UK and elsewhere, and have often led to riots and protests, and of course to Black Lives Matter protests. Police forces have been subjected to reviews and hiring and promotion procedures changed to enable non-whites to fill quotas and make the police more representative of the communities they serve. The UK’s National Black Police Association promotes improvements in employment, investigation of deaths in custody and other issues. But the police are still criticised for stop-and-search procedures which disproportionately focus on young black men, and prisons still have much higher populations of BAME inmates than they ‘should’ have. Many young black men acknowledge that they had better conduct themselves in public with decorum if they want to avoid suspicion. (Thomas, 2017, offers insights into the relevant US experience of blacks.) Here we meet the problem of probable everyday white-on-black racism colliding with the culturally different behaviour of many blacks, a topic so incendiary that it is almost impossible to speak about.

  It is claimed that everyday racism, the quotidian impact of slights, limits to hospitality, less than an open welcome, take a severe toll. Some have argued that these daily stresses are far more than annoying inconveniences — they are, rather, cumulative contributions to impaired physical and mental health. The campaigning group Black Mental Health UK advances a highly politicised agenda, according to which even the UK Mental Health Act represents state oppression of people of African descent. Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) presents evidence for the claim that small utterances can add up to something akin to physical violence. The sense of threat registers with the brain. Perceived microaggressions become chronic stress for the targets. In other words, speech perceived as violence is violence by this account (see also Jacobs, 2017). But it is also possible (and I think probable) that we all experience heightened stress in multicultural societies, living and working in dense communities alongside some people who are not like us, updating ourselves on changes in the law designed to protect or favour ethnic minorities, being accused of racism, and constantly monitoring ourselves for unconscious racism, fearful of giving offence or being considered bigots.

  We might argue too that many whites are guilty of silent or closet racism. That is, secretly but consciously, they harbour misgivings about BAME people and their significant presence in white majority countries but outwardly appear tolerant and even welcoming. Criticism of BAME members goes underground, while politically correct acceptance is the default behaviour. Few wish to be thought racist or to be outed as racist in the workplace, for example. Perhaps their racism only shows in crises. It seems doubtful that many whites (or blacks for that matter) are truly colour-blind and harbour no misgivings whatsoever. A 2014 British Social Attitudes survey found that 30% of people admitted to harbouring ‘some prejudice’ (comprised of both ‘a little’ and ‘very prejudiced’). As usual, prejudice is greater among older and less educated people. As noted by the BSA’s co-director (Park, 2014), there is a problem in asking people to self-report on racism, and in not defining distinctions between degrees of racial prejudice. Attitudes also change across the years. But we can remark on the willingness and honesty of respondents, who know that their prejudice is considered a negative trait. Similar polls consistently find that up to 75% of the British public consider immigration to be too high (Migration Observatory, 2016). And just how many people, white or black, find themselves never experiencing forgivable involuntary racist thoughts?

  Most perceived racism is associated with attitude and behaviour or with crude expressions of revulsion or dislike. But there are also highly articulate forms of analysis and preference that divide views. Those academics and articulate critics of mass immigration who raise concerns about race differences, cultural mismatches, crime, and IQ, for example, are sometimes the most vilified by CM vigilantes. People past and present like Enoch Powell, Hans Eysenck, Douglas Murray, and Richard Lynn, in the UK; Stefan Molyneux, Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy in Canada; and in the USA Arthur Jensen, Charles Murray, Kevin MacDonald, Harry Harpending, Linda Gottfredson, Anne Coulter, Jared Taylor, and many others are all suspected of holding and propagating white supremacist, scientific racism, or xenophobic views, while the substance of their actual arguments go unexamined or are assumed to be axiomatically wrong. Such scholars and pundits do not all share the same views (some may have crudely ‘racist’ views and some not) but they are mostly right-wing and subject to character assassination by the left. Once on the ‘extremist files’ of the Southern Poverty Law Center, their lives are made very difficult.

  There are areas too in which racism overlaps with classism. For example, a mild involuntary reaction resembling snobbery can pertain to certain speech forms. Lower-class, especially cockney-English speakers often shorten the ‘ing’ at the end of words (like speaking, to speakin’), or seem unable to pronounce the hard ‘th’ (instead resorting to ‘v’ or ‘d’, e.g. wiv for with or dis for this) or the soft ‘th’, instead resorting to ‘f’, e.g. fink for think (Robertson, 2017). This may be a feature of some Londoners’ speech but is often heard among blacks. Another is when the word ‘tune’ for example is pronounced as ‘toon’. Pronunciation of the word ‘ask’ as ‘arks’ by many Britons of African-Caribbean origin also falls into this category of mis-speech. As a traditional, old, white English speaker, I have to confess these ‘set my teeth on edge’ and may constitute mild (silent) racism, especially when mixed with doubts about the intelligence of some non-whites. This is not to mention the vocal differenc
es introduced by blacks and others, which may seem harmless or even attractive to some (e.g. the Barry White voice) but can also grate or overburden the aural sensitivities of some native Britons (see Xue, 2006). It is sometimes argued that language simply changes and evolves according to popular use but we can counter-suggest that mass immigration bombards us with distressing micro-erosions of traditional culture.

  It is notable that such changes tend to be towards vulgar ‘economy’ rather than elegance, and often hinge on incorrect grasp of grammar and lazy pronunciation. A 1956 novel like Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, written in Caribbean creole, illustrates this. Weber (2015), however, in his curiously Reichian-inspired work, regards critical commentaries like this as ‘language racism’ and explores the concept of ‘linguistic genocide’ as dominant languages erasing multilingualism. The wariness of people like me is about these changes representing examples of the degradation of culture, driven by immigration and multiculturalism that has occurred too fast, too massively, and largely from unsophisticated cultures. Associated with Black Lives Matter, for example, the phrase ‘stay woke’ is pushed to mean something like ‘remain aware of the reality of structured racism’. ‘Wokeness’ thus becomes a ‘thing’ somewhat like spiritual enlightenment, or casting off false consciousness, but its ungrammatical character is promoted as a virtue of black vernacular creativity. Now, raising these points here — is it mischievous racism and hate, or is it valid and necessary debate?

  There are also whites who confess to racism of whatever degree, and who deal with it by examining their white privilege, declaring their guilt, working on it in training events or in therapy, and doing penance. Even those who at first well-meaningly espouse colour-blindness have to accept that this too is a form of racism, a delusion to be confessed and overcome (Wise, 2010). Those who go out of their way to make friends with blacks, who volunteer in the developing world, who give money to relevant charities, who join anti-racist organisations and march for social justice, who explicitly welcome refugees and take them into their homes, are all examples here. This can be regarded either as simple decency, or as cultural self-hatred. This attitude could however be reframed as racial empathy, were it not trying so unnaturally hard.

  We all collude in a kind of racism when we refuse, according to the extreme political agenda of black activists, to tear down our statues of famous white Britons who might have had any link with the colonial era and slavery. Cecil Rhodes has been one such candidate at Oxford University, but the University of Liverpool’s association with William Gladstone, and Kings College London’s display of too many portraits of illustrious white male founding fathers have also incurred SJWs’ bullying wrath. The Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch (2017) provocatively calls for the dismantling of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, in an article naming Nelson as a white supremacist and accusing Britain of ‘unquantifiable acts of cultural terrorism’. This is an ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ position, and part of a tedious war of attrition against whites. See also the position of Craig (2017), a human rights lawyer who repeats the trope that white society is systemically racist and must be radically changed. However, this historical witch hunt runs into embarrassing places, such as the finding that Mahatma Gandhi during his time in South Africa regarded black Africans as inferior to Indians and whites (Biswas, 2015).

  I should mention too the concept of internalised racism here. This is racism towards one’s own group, even towards oneself. At its grossest, it can be illustrated by blacks who appear to hate themselves (Douglas, 2013) or other blacks, and/or who spurn the usual narratives of racism, for example denying the importance of slavery, colonialism, or everyday persecution, and stereotyping. Such black people do not realise what they are doing, or they are Uncle Toms, in the standard anti-racist view. But it isn’t just about negatives. Hirsch (2018b), for example, reports with disingenuousness and quasi-disdain the black male stereotype of ‘the extras black men bring’ to sex. These are — bigger penises, better rhythm, and alpha male confidence: ‘they want to feel a strong man inside them, dominating them’. This reinforces the myth of blacks as primarily bodies rather than minds. In a related double-bind, we have seen how some Jews feel obliged to deny the ‘stereotype’ of high Jewish IQ.

  Here is a humorous aside to illustrate racist stereotyping. First, why do Mexicans and blacks not get married? Because any children they had would be too lazy to steal, so they would starve. Second, how do white men satisfy their wives? They hire a poolboy. Some will find these well-worn jokes funny and some will not. The first joke assumes that blacks and Mexicans do not marry (but of course they sometimes do), and plays on stereotypes of unemployment, crime and dependency. The second assumes that white men cannot satisfy their wives sexually (but some presumably do), and implies through stereotype that black men are sexually superior, and that white men always can and do pay someone else to do their dirty work. Racist humour works both ways, then. There are ample intercultural jokes available but in the humour-proof PC world such jokes are either banned or not found funny. According to one study (Akerstedt, 2017), many Muslims hate jokes about Islam, even to the homicidal proportions shown in the Danish cartoons crisis of 2004, and the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre. But another scholarly piece (Cheng, 2003) argues that intercultural humour is alive and well in conversations; and Jewish humour is virtually an institution, especially that making fun of Jews themselves in a group-stereotyping way (Halkin, 2006).

  The 2010 farce/satirical film Four Lions, focusing on incompetent jihadis in the UK, received positive reviews and triggered no outrage. A very funny television satire, Real Housewives of ISIS, proved difficult for many Muslims to laugh at. East is East, a 1999 comedy film also portrayed with great pathos the cultural tensions of a first- and second-generation mixed-heritage Muslim household in Salford. Goodhearted humour conveys the ambiguities of immigration in ways that overcome typical polarised representations. The retort from the old white Powellite, Mr Moorhouse across the road — ‘You let one of ’em in, and the whole fuckin’ tribe turns up’ — is, in context, very funny. Lines from the young male members of the Khan family about their prospective, arranged Pakistani marriage partners and their family — ‘Mum, the Pakis are coming!’ and ‘I’m not marryin’ a fuckin’ Paki’ — are also funny. The film manages to do what screeds of polarised commentary cannot do, that is, it shows the nuances of interpersonal and intercultural absurdity and pathos.

  Overwhelmingly, the term racist is used as an insult or as an epithet intended to wound, shame and diminish. It is rarely if ever used in a context encouraging dialogue and understanding. Like ‘black excitability’, ‘psychotic whiteness’ or ‘medieval Muslims’, all such terms can be taken as racism pure and simple. This is not surprising, since this entire field is so unfortunately polarised. Those assigned the label of racist are condemned by leftists as beyond civilised debate, indeed as almost subhuman, which is an ironic result. It is axiomatic among dogmatic, militant egalitarians that there cannot possibly be any truth in suggestions that significant differences exist between ethnic groups; or where there are differences, these revolve around white privilege and white racism. The SJWs have the whip hand. They could probably append any number of damaging names to me, such as white supremacist, scientific racist, populist, xenophobe, bigot, without their name-calling being designated as hate crimes, since extreme leftist insults appear exempt from the appellation of hate crime.

  Nathalia Gjersoe, a developmental psychologist, wrote in a Guardian article about the problems of stereotyping (Gjersoe, 2015). ‘It is an embarrassing and oft repeated finding that while the majority of people in Western countries these days are egalitarian believers in a fair meritocracy, on tests of unconscious racial bias about 70% show a preference for their own race’. She goes on, ‘this conflict between people’s dearly held beliefs and their nasty little unconscious racial biases is troubling’. Where to begin to critique these views that p
artly duplicate Godsil et al. (2014) but fall short of their insights? Everyone says (has to say) they believe in equality and meritocracy but these concepts are far from straightforward. Many of those espousing the egalitarian cause are themselves comfortably middle class and possess all the expected advantages of their situation, just as their children benefit from such circumstances and navigate education, employment and economically favourable lifestyles better than those, white or black, from lower down the socioeconomic pyramid. Who does not show a preference for their own race, their own family, children, and community? Gjersoe shows her true (non-objective) colours best with her phrase ‘nasty little unconscious racial biases’. If you (white people) don’t work on these nasty aspects of yourselves, you’re obviously bad, racist. But who says these biases are necessarily unconscious, or that we must be embarrassed by them? We are often shamed into such positions by SJWs, but we are quite at liberty to say, ‘Yes, like most people, I prefer my own kind, and I am not embarrassed by this; my biases are not unconscious or nasty, and I do not intend to engage in guilty heroic acts of self-re-education to overthrow them; but I decently refrain from overt or unkind racism’.

  An illustrative topical case is provided by Munroe Bergdorf, a dual-heritage (Jamaican and white English), gay/transgender anti-racist activist who was also a DJ and was a model for L’Oréal before they sacked her. Bergdorf is an outspoken person whose formulaic anti-racist tirades on white responsibility for structural racism have earned her both fame and persecution. In her words, white people’s ‘existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour’ and the white people’s ‘race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth’ (Iqbal, 2017). The writer of this piece on her in The Guardian states in ridiculous, uncritical terms, ‘institutionalised, systemic racism is just as damaging as a violent, racist attack’. We can certainly dispute Bergdorf’s analysis of white Western success. We can also raise her case as illustrating the problematic pluralism of well-known Jamaican homophobia, African Christian homophobia, and Islamic homophobia. None of these three can be called white and none is sympathetic to Bergdorf; on the contrary, they are deadlier to her personal situation than the tolerance of the average British white person.