The joy of living in other countries (South Korea for 15 years and the UK for 1-2 years), and traveling around the world by myself is experiencing the beauty of humanity.
As I learned Korean idioms I found that 1/3 to 1/2 were the same as English or very similar.
Do you have freckles? If you do, guess what? YOU probably have an African ancestor.
I do. I even have a living distant cousin in Cameroon who was descended from that person's brother or sister as (probably) she was enslaved and shipped to Virginia.
I can no more deny my African heritage than I can my settler one, nor should I.
Freckles =African?! Never heard that blanket statement before. I have lots of freckles and my dna test says I’m 100% Northern European…. Several new ideas around these days about what race came from where and when. Pretty sure I got no African in me, even originally.
Thank you. I'd never heard about the psyop invention of whitey in the 17th century. Makes sense. And very cool that a Marxist did the unearthing. It's so utterly rational and obvious that we are one, and we come in a variety of exteriors. Acculturation is a powerful propaganda.
Of COURSE they do. OB refernces some of those early in his piece. But this particular dialog is about the invention of racism. Skin color was simply an obvious method of identification, resulting in blatant abuse and murder, which carries on today.
As usual, a concise and thought provoking overview of a subject that has dogged us all for far too long . An interesting overlap (perhaps especially to Europe) is the intersection of race (colour) with white supremacy. I believe that Chinese were reviled not just because they were not white but because they were ‘heathen’. Muslims are abhorrent to many white supremacist groups but is the fundamental problem that they are largely brown. American black people are largely Christian but that doesn’t save them from being classified as a lesser group, to a white suprematist. Is it just a simple, non-white thing and the religion/cultural differences are just a tacked on additional excuse or justification? In the political arena, the fascist will use any excuse to ‘other’ a minority and white is probably just a convenient and adaptable definition. I certainly don’t have any definitive answers but thanks for stirring the thought process up with your piece.
I am not sure what the aside about vaccines was all about. I don’t know if this indicates some strange ‘anti-vax’ tendency on your part. I think I would rather shelve that one for now.
Sorry but what has a conspiracy theory about the origin of Covid got to do with whites supremacy? Or for that matter what has it got to do with vaccine efficiency?
Um, you're the one that opened the COVID debate. I am not antivax and worked as a mental health provider in the healthcare system for over 20 years. I took 3 of the COVID shots and experienced ongoing side effects. The vax did not prevent coming down with COVID or spreading it. The side effects have been devastating for many. And then there are the issues and questions of how the whole mess got started.
Who? Me? I was simply saying that I thought the vaccination reference was a little out of place in what was overall an excellent article. I’ve looked at the data and read the papers and the origin theories are messy and probably unprovable either way. As for the vaccine efficacy, the data on excess deaths seems pretty conclusive to me. If the problem with calling something a vaccine is just definition and semantics then I am not really interested.
If you were damaged by vaccination then I am sorry for you (I understand it can happen). I had all the jags with no bad outcomes, doesn’t prove anything.
Well, I was using the notion that the Covid vax is a true vaccine as an example of believing in something that isn't scientific at all, like thinking the Earth is flat.
Both notions are absurd, and the conspiracy "theory" is now proven fact. Covid was developed in a lab in North Carolina. It just got accidentally released in China, where they were working on it because to do so was illegal here.
IQ is genetic and the .1% figure is not only incorrect but irrelevant. White supremacy is an African idea. They looked at what Europeans could do compared to them and came up with legends about how whites had their eyes open and blacks had them closed when god created the world. Africa is as it is because it is full of Africans. They couldn't even invent the wheel.
LOL! Thank you for posting such an entertaining display of ignorance on my site. It makes a fascinating, and obvious, compare and contrast for readers.
White supremacy an African idea. Dude, I just told you who made it up! It wasn't the Africans. Their slavers were merely expanding their business to a new market. The Europeans were just CUSTOMERS to them.
And Africans have had the wheel for a very, very long time. Thanks for your subscription, though.
Have you read "A Resistance History of the United States" yet? He mentions Mr. Bacon and what a genocidal sleaze he was in contrast to Metacomet who fought to save his people in New England.
Dammit, I haven't. It's on my list. But Nathaniel Bacon was most certainly a genocidal sleaze. He just wanted more land for his tobacco. It wasn't like he gave a damn about indentured servants or slaves--they were just useful to him.
Deconstructing Whiteness is a valid endeavor. I think it would be better to deconstruct binary racialist thinking. That would be a better approach. Good article. Thank you for posting it.
Great read, OB... It's interesting how this triggers some readers as to where using "the other" to elevate one's self comes from. This also places in the back of my mind how those folks would have even a HARDER time with the concept of reincarnation. Oops... unprovable, but rather interesting to consider, once you have gotten past that three dimensional observation of what human beings are likely to act out on earth. We have such lessons to learn.
Lol, they have people wondering how they could have so misunderstood how white supremacists eat and train, they look so fit! Don't get me started on their spartan fashion sense ... lol
This is really illuminating piece of historical unmasking, what you write here. What you describing is like a universal strategy that elites always use: they make horizontal fissure in identity, on purpose, so it can hide the vertical chasm in wealth.
The clever part about the 17th century Virginia planters is they did not need to invent the human division from the zero — they just hijacked what is already in our evolutionary hardware. We evolved, as species, in small tribal bands, where being loyal to in-group and suspicious to out-group was needed for survival.
So when they legally build "whiteness" after Bacon's Rebellion, elite did smart psychological move:
1. They flattened all the strong national hate that existed between European laborers already (this "narcissism of small differences" between English, Irish, Scottish).
2. They made completely new tribal line, based on tiny 0.1% DNA visual difference — the skin color.
By giving poor Europeans small, artificial piece of status, they broke the labor solidarity with success.
And we can see same playbook again and again through history — from strict endogamy in Hindu caste system, to the co-opting mechanism of Chinese imperial exam system, until today, in modern culture wars that are weaponized around migration and identity. Every time when bottom 90% start to look vertical, at the balance sheet, elites quickly make some distraction so people fight horizontally instead, over the crumbs.
Races do tend to differ in average mean intelligence though so race is real and has a meaning. Ethnicity is also interrelated with race to a large extent. While considering myself pro-white and pro-European I largely agree with you otherwise:
I don’t think the development of whiteness was all that surprising in European settler colonies in the western hemisphere, Australia, South Africa, etc when different races came into direct contact and conflict with the other. European settlers in the U.S. and Australia, Argentina, etc intermarried to an extent that most are of mixed ethnic origins. I am for example half Irish and half German. I’d personally prefer the term European-American in place of ‘white.’. What we need in North America is restoration of freedom of association where those who prefer more demographically homogeneous communities can have them and those who prefer more diverse environments can have them also to their hearts content and this would likely reduce racial hostility and tensions considerably. Extreme racialism or racism develops where groups feel threatened demographically, socially, and economically as we see in every human society where different ethnicities or races are competing for power, resources, and status within the same polity.
The joy of living in other countries (South Korea for 15 years and the UK for 1-2 years), and traveling around the world by myself is experiencing the beauty of humanity.
As I learned Korean idioms I found that 1/3 to 1/2 were the same as English or very similar.
We are the world.
I am fortunate enough to have visited both countries.
We are not the world. I am not African.
Do you have freckles? If you do, guess what? YOU probably have an African ancestor.
I do. I even have a living distant cousin in Cameroon who was descended from that person's brother or sister as (probably) she was enslaved and shipped to Virginia.
I can no more deny my African heritage than I can my settler one, nor should I.
Nope. No freckles. And are you saying most Irish are part African then? Lol.
Freckles =African?! Never heard that blanket statement before. I have lots of freckles and my dna test says I’m 100% Northern European…. Several new ideas around these days about what race came from where and when. Pretty sure I got no African in me, even originally.
It’s a correlation, not always true. I didn’t say it was always true, either.
Thank you. I'd never heard about the psyop invention of whitey in the 17th century. Makes sense. And very cool that a Marxist did the unearthing. It's so utterly rational and obvious that we are one, and we come in a variety of exteriors. Acculturation is a powerful propaganda.
Genes affect more than skin color.
Of COURSE they do. OB refernces some of those early in his piece. But this particular dialog is about the invention of racism. Skin color was simply an obvious method of identification, resulting in blatant abuse and murder, which carries on today.
As usual, a concise and thought provoking overview of a subject that has dogged us all for far too long . An interesting overlap (perhaps especially to Europe) is the intersection of race (colour) with white supremacy. I believe that Chinese were reviled not just because they were not white but because they were ‘heathen’. Muslims are abhorrent to many white supremacist groups but is the fundamental problem that they are largely brown. American black people are largely Christian but that doesn’t save them from being classified as a lesser group, to a white suprematist. Is it just a simple, non-white thing and the religion/cultural differences are just a tacked on additional excuse or justification? In the political arena, the fascist will use any excuse to ‘other’ a minority and white is probably just a convenient and adaptable definition. I certainly don’t have any definitive answers but thanks for stirring the thought process up with your piece.
I am not sure what the aside about vaccines was all about. I don’t know if this indicates some strange ‘anti-vax’ tendency on your part. I think I would rather shelve that one for now.
I am quite pro-vax. When they are proven to work, and intelligently applied. The COVID jab was neither.
And then there is the issue of where COVID came from...
Sorry but what has a conspiracy theory about the origin of Covid got to do with whites supremacy? Or for that matter what has it got to do with vaccine efficiency?
Um, you're the one that opened the COVID debate. I am not antivax and worked as a mental health provider in the healthcare system for over 20 years. I took 3 of the COVID shots and experienced ongoing side effects. The vax did not prevent coming down with COVID or spreading it. The side effects have been devastating for many. And then there are the issues and questions of how the whole mess got started.
Who? Me? I was simply saying that I thought the vaccination reference was a little out of place in what was overall an excellent article. I’ve looked at the data and read the papers and the origin theories are messy and probably unprovable either way. As for the vaccine efficacy, the data on excess deaths seems pretty conclusive to me. If the problem with calling something a vaccine is just definition and semantics then I am not really interested.
If you were damaged by vaccination then I am sorry for you (I understand it can happen). I had all the jags with no bad outcomes, doesn’t prove anything.
So funny how there are only certain facts we are to pay attention to.
"Jags" ... hmm, actually, I like that term better than "jabs".
I agree, the COVID jags weren't vaccines. It was something very sinister and the full effects and the model have yet to play out.
Well, I was using the notion that the Covid vax is a true vaccine as an example of believing in something that isn't scientific at all, like thinking the Earth is flat.
Both notions are absurd, and the conspiracy "theory" is now proven fact. Covid was developed in a lab in North Carolina. It just got accidentally released in China, where they were working on it because to do so was illegal here.
But OB, not to worry ... as always they have our best interests at heart, right?
RIGHT???
PLEEEEEEEZE!!!!!
IQ is genetic and the .1% figure is not only incorrect but irrelevant. White supremacy is an African idea. They looked at what Europeans could do compared to them and came up with legends about how whites had their eyes open and blacks had them closed when god created the world. Africa is as it is because it is full of Africans. They couldn't even invent the wheel.
I believe you're late for your Klan meeting, Garrett.
Right. Only KKK members believe in genetics. Totally bro.
LOL! Thank you for posting such an entertaining display of ignorance on my site. It makes a fascinating, and obvious, compare and contrast for readers.
White supremacy an African idea. Dude, I just told you who made it up! It wasn't the Africans. Their slavers were merely expanding their business to a new market. The Europeans were just CUSTOMERS to them.
And Africans have had the wheel for a very, very long time. Thanks for your subscription, though.
https://youtube.com/shorts/JIZkqikGx5o?is=WD5npl_mSlo-uSyP here you go buddy. Straight from the horse's mouth. And they did not have the wheel until whites gave it to them.
Have you read "A Resistance History of the United States" yet? He mentions Mr. Bacon and what a genocidal sleaze he was in contrast to Metacomet who fought to save his people in New England.
Dammit, I haven't. It's on my list. But Nathaniel Bacon was most certainly a genocidal sleaze. He just wanted more land for his tobacco. It wasn't like he gave a damn about indentured servants or slaves--they were just useful to him.
Deconstructing Whiteness is a valid endeavor. I think it would be better to deconstruct binary racialist thinking. That would be a better approach. Good article. Thank you for posting it.
Great read, OB... It's interesting how this triggers some readers as to where using "the other" to elevate one's self comes from. This also places in the back of my mind how those folks would have even a HARDER time with the concept of reincarnation. Oops... unprovable, but rather interesting to consider, once you have gotten past that three dimensional observation of what human beings are likely to act out on earth. We have such lessons to learn.
Lol, they have people wondering how they could have so misunderstood how white supremacists eat and train, they look so fit! Don't get me started on their spartan fashion sense ... lol
This is really illuminating piece of historical unmasking, what you write here. What you describing is like a universal strategy that elites always use: they make horizontal fissure in identity, on purpose, so it can hide the vertical chasm in wealth.
The clever part about the 17th century Virginia planters is they did not need to invent the human division from the zero — they just hijacked what is already in our evolutionary hardware. We evolved, as species, in small tribal bands, where being loyal to in-group and suspicious to out-group was needed for survival.
So when they legally build "whiteness" after Bacon's Rebellion, elite did smart psychological move:
1. They flattened all the strong national hate that existed between European laborers already (this "narcissism of small differences" between English, Irish, Scottish).
2. They made completely new tribal line, based on tiny 0.1% DNA visual difference — the skin color.
By giving poor Europeans small, artificial piece of status, they broke the labor solidarity with success.
And we can see same playbook again and again through history — from strict endogamy in Hindu caste system, to the co-opting mechanism of Chinese imperial exam system, until today, in modern culture wars that are weaponized around migration and identity. Every time when bottom 90% start to look vertical, at the balance sheet, elites quickly make some distraction so people fight horizontally instead, over the crumbs.
Inspired by your essay this is more far-ranging theory of how elites manage society:
https://darkomulej.substack.com/p/racism-caste-and-the-mirage-of-meritocracy
Races do tend to differ in average mean intelligence though so race is real and has a meaning. Ethnicity is also interrelated with race to a large extent. While considering myself pro-white and pro-European I largely agree with you otherwise:
I don’t think the development of whiteness was all that surprising in European settler colonies in the western hemisphere, Australia, South Africa, etc when different races came into direct contact and conflict with the other. European settlers in the U.S. and Australia, Argentina, etc intermarried to an extent that most are of mixed ethnic origins. I am for example half Irish and half German. I’d personally prefer the term European-American in place of ‘white.’. What we need in North America is restoration of freedom of association where those who prefer more demographically homogeneous communities can have them and those who prefer more diverse environments can have them also to their hearts content and this would likely reduce racial hostility and tensions considerably. Extreme racialism or racism develops where groups feel threatened demographically, socially, and economically as we see in every human society where different ethnicities or races are competing for power, resources, and status within the same polity.