First of all, the issue is culture, not race
Open borders fantasists always want to turn any discussion of immigration into a question of race, and of course, label their opponents "racists." This is today's trump card: once you play it, your opponent is just supposed to whimper away with his tail between his legs.
For example, one person in my Facebook feed said that Brexit was all about the dislike of "brown people." He apparently is not aware that after 2004, when England was being flooded with very pale Poles, Latvians, and Lithuanians, many people in England saw that as problematic, even though these immigrants were whiter than the average Englishman.
That is because the real issue is culture, not race. If the families of England were to adopt a million Pakistani newborns this year, in 20 years, they would be a million brown-skinned Englishmen. But if 1 million Pakistani adults were to come to England this year, and settle in nearly 100% Pakistani enclaves, then in 20 years, we will see little pockets of Pakistan scattered throughout English territory.
And a culture can withstand some amount of that sort of thing: Catholic Western Europe always had enclaves of Jews scattered throughout its territory, yet remained a cohesive culture. But if you get enough of it, the incoming culture swamps the existing one, which then disappears, or retreats into enclaves of its own. Just ask the Iroquois or Algonquins how their nations are doing today. Or talk with someone from Tibet about Chinese immigration into their country.
And there are people who love their own culture, and don't want to see it disappear and be replaced by a foreign one, whether that foreign culture is embodied in very pale Estonians or very dark Ghanians. The idea that this is all about "race" is a smear propagated by cosmopolitans who don't love any culture.
For example, one person in my Facebook feed said that Brexit was all about the dislike of "brown people." He apparently is not aware that after 2004, when England was being flooded with very pale Poles, Latvians, and Lithuanians, many people in England saw that as problematic, even though these immigrants were whiter than the average Englishman.
That is because the real issue is culture, not race. If the families of England were to adopt a million Pakistani newborns this year, in 20 years, they would be a million brown-skinned Englishmen. But if 1 million Pakistani adults were to come to England this year, and settle in nearly 100% Pakistani enclaves, then in 20 years, we will see little pockets of Pakistan scattered throughout English territory.
And a culture can withstand some amount of that sort of thing: Catholic Western Europe always had enclaves of Jews scattered throughout its territory, yet remained a cohesive culture. But if you get enough of it, the incoming culture swamps the existing one, which then disappears, or retreats into enclaves of its own. Just ask the Iroquois or Algonquins how their nations are doing today. Or talk with someone from Tibet about Chinese immigration into their country.
And there are people who love their own culture, and don't want to see it disappear and be replaced by a foreign one, whether that foreign culture is embodied in very pale Estonians or very dark Ghanians. The idea that this is all about "race" is a smear propagated by cosmopolitans who don't love any culture.
This is sort of off-topic but sort of not: it's also disturbing how the whole EU referendum question got morphed into a migration referendum in the first place. There is logical and respectable position that we should leave the European Union but rejoin the EEA trade block. It may be that this is more or less the *only* practical course of action in the short term. Somehow 'EU' became 'migration' become 'racism'. As long as I can remember, disquiet about distinctly opaque Brussels rule has been equated with xenophobia. And it's happened again! Except, this time, the last link in the chain, that concern over migration equals racism, didn't hold. So equating Brussels with migration backfired badly as migration has become a valid concern. Actually, we may end up leaving the EU without it having any impact on migration whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an "open borders fantasist", but the culture argument does give the same kind of heebie jeebies that race-oriented ones do.
ReplyDeleteOther conservatives like to hammer on about assimilation and "incompatible cultures", but that just doesn't seem like something the law ought to concern itself with.
My preference would be for a political apparatus that is legalistic and opposed to being down-to-earth cultural.
"The idea that this is all about "race" is a smear propagated by cosmopolitans who don't love any culture."
Except a cosmopolitan one.
I am a non-ethnic cosmopolitan, and yet, I would not live in the UK.
ReplyDeleteIt is too multicultural for me.
Which is to say it has no culture of its own.
UK is like a shopping mall of different countries, where people come and go, but never stay.
I currently live in the region of Catalunya in Spain, and why is Catalunya Catalunya? Because of a heavy top down effort by the government to maintain and preserve its culture. Catalunya gets a lot of immigrants from South America, Africa, and Asia, but within one generation, they all begin to speak Catalan and identify as Catalans. In some cases, black and brown Catalans are more fiercely Catalan than the white ones. Not at all cosmopolitan, but that is precisely why I like it.
If Catalunya were full of cosmopolitan people such as me, I would have never moved here. It would be too boring.