India/western Sociology

[dhu]

arrk says:



December 22,2009 at 06:13 PM IST



Indian traditions are not religions, but outsiders called it religion and the colonized accepted the description. Imagin a hindu has a Dharma Pattni, but no religious wife (which it would be if Dharma would be religion), even Dharma has Dharma but religion has no religion... I could go on to bring out absurdness of translating Dharma as religion but these two examples should bea good starting poing ..

[Capt M Kumar]

It's fine but what r u going to say when asked about religion in application form etc.

[dhu]

I guess, for now, it is enough of a step to acknowledge the differences.



Look at the incongruous use of the term 'religion' here:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRLVzmr0d...re=related

[dhu]

Although I don't believe in any type of 'scientific survey' in 'sociology and psychology' (because they eliminate the heathen perspective while parasitizing the same (among other things), the following is interesting:

A colonial mentality model of depression for Filipino Americans.

By David, E. J. R.

Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. Apr 2008



Many cultural and ethnic minorities have extensive experiences of being oppressed, which they may eventually internalize. However, psychology has yet to actively incorporate various forms of internalized oppression (e.g., colonial mentality [CM]) into the etiological conceptualizations of psychopathology. Using a sample of 248 Filipino Americans, the author tested a more complete and sociopolitically informed cultural model of depression symptoms. Results with structural equation modeling showed that a conceptual model that includes CM better explained depression symptoms among Filipino Americans than the model without CM and revealed that CM had a significant direct effect on Filipino Americans' experiences of depression symptoms. It is argued, through this illustrative case of depression symptoms among Filipino Americans, that incorporating the psychological effects of oppressive historical and contemporary conditions into our conceptualizations of ethnic minority mental health may lead to a more culturally accurate etiological understanding of psychopathology among historically oppressed groups.

[Husky]

[quote name='Swamy G' date='19 December 2009 - 03:40 AM' timestamp='1261173741' post='103040']

blogs.abc.net.au/religion/2009/12/is-yoga-hindu.html



Is yoga Hindu?

[color="#800080"](Does the pope wear a dress?)[/color]



[...]

However, the PWR panel included Dr Amir Farid Isahak, a medical practitioner and the Chairman of Interfaith Spiritual Fellowship Malaysia: he said there was no problem, provided a Muslim understood what they were getting into. His Holiness Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami (publisher of Hinduism Today) remarked that if you have the root of Hinduism, then the stem is Hinduism, and the flower is Hinduism. Another panellist, Professor Christopher Key Chapple, explained that yoga had traces of Jain and Buddhist elements in it too.



The Moderator of this session, Rev Ellen Grace O’Brian, runs the Centre for Spiritual Enlightenment in San Jose, California. [color="#0000FF"]Rev O'Brian said that yes, yoga had Vedic origins, and she certainly draws on the Patanjali Sutra, though at her centre they taught it as a spiritual practice for people of all religious backgrounds. Thus, at her Sunday morning ‘services’ she wears a stole like a minister. She offers a Winter Solstice Mass and at her Christmas Eve noon service , ‘with the beautiful ritual of the burning bowl’ they’ll make offerings of frankincense.[/color]

[color="#800080"](Christianism is the religion of thievery, lying and genocidal mania. That's why the reverend makes the same move the early church fathers did when they stole from Hellenismos: first admit that everything is from Hellenism while stealing it, since the Hellenes are alive and aware. And then eventually declare it was christian all along - after having killed all Hellenes and Hellenismos.

The bottomless pit of Hindu stupidity.)[/color]



So, more questions: who really owns a tradition? And what is the fate of Hinduism when its offspring takes off, as yoga has done in the West? And finally, what happens to traditions when they encounter each other not at their respective centres, but at points a long way distant from those meaningful core places?

[color="#800080"]("What happens?" What do people *think* happens? The same thing that happened to Hellenismos when the terrorism of christianism sucked its life out. Stupid questions. AKA invitation to interfaith dialogue.)[/color][/quote]

"Who really owns Yoga?"

Asking so innocently, as if they don't know. As if it's an open question with an open answer.

It belongs to Hindu Dharma, the knowledge comes from Hindu Gods. (Various Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita cover Yoga and are about union with Hindu Gods. Another example is Tirumandiram which is also about Yoga, and this knowledge - which Tirumoolar derived from Shiva - is about Shiva.)

Jaina Dharma too (don't know what forms Jains practice), meditation also belongs to Bauddha Dharma (IIRC, Buddha apparently found the other forms of Yoga a waste of time and discouraged followers from the unnecessary pursuit of them, though Brahmanas who later converted to Bauddha Dharma still kept to some practices they had been performing. See Encarta Encyclopaedia I think it was, one of the 1996-1999 CD-Roms. And also an article written by a Chinese Buddhist, which I just don't have, never saved, and am not going to bother looking up.)



All the above dialoguing by christianism is only to slowly steal Yoga from Hindus while distracting us with their meaningless words of how the ownership idea is "all relative, a matter of perception, a process", blablabla. "Can it really only belong to Hindus? Can't we all share in it? It isn't really religious. It's devoid of religion. (So that means tomorrow it can actually be about jeebus, which we will announce tomorrow.)"



It's a transfer of ownership by daylight robbery. And doubtless many Hindus are too much in a deep slumber - feeling complimented by the fact that the christoterrorists "appreciate" Yoga enough to "practice it too" or to "feel it is a part of their lives". This is not a compliment. It's not flattery when someone decides your moorthy of Bhagavan is so beautiful, he steals it while distracting you with his compliments (declaring that "something so beautiful must belong to everybody to be truly appreciated"), and then sticks it on a cross and uses it as a jeebus crucifix. And thereafter they invite you over to allow you to admire it too and suggest that you start praying to it.



When will Hindus learn? Nothing Hindu is shareable. It's not shareable property.



Same as how Tai Chi - including the martial art form of it - isn't merely exercise and is NOT shareable property, as if it were something secular. Now watch the following from an Australian site secularising Tai Chi all away into mere "healty exercise" again, which is "therefore universal". That it is healthy and has the good effects of exercise is a natural side-effect. But that is not the purpose of Tai Chi. Tai Chi is a deeply religious practice as Daoists have explained, and belongs to Daoism. Comparable to how Chakra Yoga in Hindu Dharma is about our Gods, Tai Chi is entirely about the Yin-Yang (which is central to Daoism and is the unified spiritual essence of their Gods - something like Purusha-Prakriti or Shiva-Shakti).



aww.ninemsn.com.au/dietandhealth/healthnews/928857/tai-chi-helps-stroke-patients

Tai chi helps stroke patients

Pamela Allardice

Thursday, November 26, 2009



In a study published in Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, Hong Kong researchers have discovered that tai chi can significantly improve quality of life in survivors of stroke.



Stroke victims are often left with balancing problems which may not be addressed by conventional physiotherapy.



However, the particular skills taught in tai chi — especially the ability to maintain balance while shifting weight and leaning in different directions — was shown to be of special benefit in helping these people face real-life challenges, such as standing in a bus or coordinating head, torso and limb movements while reaching for an item in the supermarket.



As a bonus, tai chi classes cost less than conventional physiotherapy and provide an opportunity for social interaction.



Your say: What do you think of these findings? Have you tried tai chi? Share with us below... [color="#800080"](They don't mean "Have you 'tried' Daoism?")[/color]



1-5 of 5 comments

Tai ChiPosted by: sue, victoria, on 14/12/2009 3:49:35 PM

I have been doing tai chi for 5 years now, doing a weekly class. Sometimes i don't feel like going out at night, but by the end of the class I feel like i have more energy and better feeling of well being. I haven't had a stroke, thank God, but it helps our balance and whatever exercise you do on one side, you do on the other. I love it and intend to continue tai chi into old age.

Which "god" does that comment refer to? *Not* the Gods/Yin-Yang of Daoism.





Cheap entry from wackypedia, doesn't contain all, but I can't be bothered googling:

The concept of the Taiji "supreme ultimate" appears in both Taoist and Confucian Chinese philosophy where it represents the fusion or mother[1] of Yin and Yang into a single ultimate, represented by the Taijitu symbol. Thus, tai chi theory and practice evolved in agreement with many of the principles of Chinese philosophy including both Taoism and Confucianism.

[color="#800080"](Philosophy - is the word the west uses when it tries to divorce philosophy from religion: it's in fact one of the first words the west uses to steal religious material. "It's not religious, it's 'mere' philosophy." Then "it's universal/good for everyone's health". Eventually they declare it was about that non-existent terrorist jeebus all along.)[/color]



[1] ^ Cheng Man-ch'ing (1993). Cheng-Tzu's Thirteen Treatises on T'ai Chi Ch'uan. North Atlantic Books. p. 21. ISBN 978-0938190455.

Daoists explain its origins and meaning better.



Great. Look at the end of this paragraph on how the sneaky west starts claiming that Tai Chi's Daoist roots "can't be proven to be historical", so "the connection must all be some modern claim". These new conclusions are appended at the end to override the earlier references to works on the *religious* (Daoist) origins of Tai-Chi.

It's to make Tai Chi secular, so that it can be stolen:

When tracing tai chi chuan's formative influences to Taoist and Buddhist monasteries, there seems little more to go on than legendary tales from a modern historical perspective, but tai chi chuan's practical connection to and dependence upon the theories of Sung dynasty Neo-Confucianism (a conscious synthesis of Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian traditions, especially the teachings of Mencius) is claimed by some traditional schools.[2] Tai chi's theories and practice are believed by these schools to have been formulated by the Taoist monk Zhang Sanfeng in the 12th century, at about the same time that the principles of the Neo-Confucian school were making themselves felt in Chinese intellectual life.[2] However, modern research casts serious doubts on the validity of those claims, pointing out that a 17th century piece called "Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan" (1669), composed by Huang Zongxi (1610-1695 A.D.) is the earliest reference indicating any connection between Zhang Sanfeng and martial arts whatsoever, and must not be taken literally but must be understood as a political metaphor instead. Claims of connections between Tai Chi and Zhang Sanfeng appear no earlier than the 19th century. [10]



[2] ^ a b c d e Wile, Douglas (2007). "Taijiquan and Taoism from Religion to Martial Art and Martial Art to Religion". Journal of Asian Martial Arts (Via Media Publishing) 16 (4). ISSN 1057-8358.

This is all so infuriating. I don't get how christianism gets away with theft, mass-murder, and lies when there are still heathens on this planet to do something. It's because of traitors who are facilitating all this. They're the ones who fly off to the west and advertise for "healthy Yoga exercise", "which is really not religious", as if they own it and as if it's theirs to share. Tai Chi has the same problem apparently. So christians conclude "what great fools these heathens are, they're just going to let us steal it all from them".



One day, Hindus may grow a brain - stranger things have happened - and imitate the more enlightened Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Native American communities (I'm sorry if I misspelled) who have declared that the west should keep its Paws Off its traditions. They also declared that any of their own kind who sell/teach/... sacred Native American knowledge, skills and materials (any part of their indivisible identity) to the west/to outside the Native American community are traitors, and to be regarded as traitors by their own.



When that day of sense finally dawns, it will be too late for the Hindoos. Want: Wanneer de koe verdronken is, dempt men de put. (It's when the cow has drowned that people finally close up the well.)

[dhu]

[url="http://http://folks.co.in/2010/01/decolonizing-education/"]Decolonizing Education[/url]

The British have left but this spiritually emasculated creature of colonial rule is still with us. They are brought up to disregard everything Indian – especially Hindu – but uncritically accept anything coming from the West – like Marxism. With the end of European Imperialism, Marxism became the shelter of these intellectuals. Surveying the scene a century and half later, Ram Swarup commented on the continued existence of this anachronistic state of mind:



“… the Euro-Colonial-Missionary forces triumphed, represented by soldier-scholars like J.S. Mill, Hegel, Macaulay, Mars nd many others. They were thoroughly Eurocentric and they looked at India and other countries of the East with contempt and condescension. … They taught several generations of Indians how and what to think of themselves. They even borrowed the West’s contempt for their own people. Traditional India, during its recovery and reaffirmation, finds itself most fiercely opposed by these elite forces at home. …

[acharya]

Talking of "right" makes sense if there exists a "left". Does any "left" exist in TSP? For that matter, in India - is there anything truly called "left". If it doesen't there is no point in labeling "rights" - both in TSP and India.



Second, if "right" does exist - why is it necessarily "bad"? Talking of only the SS/BajDal as "right" appears to make only the "Hindu" giving rise to "right-wing" "extremism". What about the various Islamist parties in India, who are somehow never mentioned as "right-wing"? Are the Islamists "leftist"? On the othetr hand if both "Islamists" and "Hinduists" are "right-wing" then we have two right-wings fanatically opposing each other!



In India, there are no left-right divide and only two categories in the political-ideological spectrum - "value-based" and "vacuum-ideology". The values of the "Hinduists" can be diamterically opposite to the "Islamists" - but both work on commitments to some "value-systems". Even parts of the so-called "Left" belong to this "value-based" end. The "vacuum-ideology" is hogged by the so-called "centre-left" - it means total flexibility in trashing any and all value-systems as suits political expediency.



In TSP, in contrast - every political grouping is forced to belong to one or the other variation of a single "value-system". Therefore to outshine each other, they must become more "pure" in adherence to that "value-system". One of the arguments given towards the validity of "tolerant/totally inclusive of the foreign" "Hindu/India" (strangely it was supposed to be intolerantly exclusive in its treatemnet towards supposed oppressed classes within itself) is that it has helped the "Indian/Hindu" civilization to "survive". Look at TSP - it too has survived from an impossible beginning - in spite of cyclical waves of conviction from generations of "tolerant/inclusive/anti-bigot" Hindu-Indians that TSP was "soon" going to "implode".



TSP is managing to survive, extract "peace-tax" from the world and its neighbours, has joined the nuke owners club, and has uccessfully tied up a super-power's military in its land, and managed to play off rising powers against one another, and has hosted one of the most powerful radical movements after communism - that threatens a whole wide axis of countries and regions across the continents. All, by sticking to its single "value-system". Regular IED mubaraks may be a butt of jokes for us, but it is very much part of the "value-system" by which the foundational theology of that nation lives. We joke about it because we have never studied Islamic history of the ME in all its bare naked glory of violence.



Instead of labeling anything as "right" or "left" and an obnoxious plague, we should treat each ideology separately and see how far it takes a nation and how appropriate it is for that nation to consolidate itself and protect its existence/culture/civilization.

[dhu]

[url="http://http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264014"]How Free Are We? [/url]

Jakob De Roover

The second factor lies in the many forms of Protestant Christianity that dominate American society. The theological framework shared by these denominations inevitably transforms the Hindu traditions into a species of false religion. Naturally, political correctness no longer allows scholars and educators to speak of ‘heathen idolatry’ or the ‘cruelty’ and ‘tyranny’ of ‘false religion’. Therefore, they have turned to seemingly ‘secular’ depictions of caste, inequality, patriarchy and poverty in India to show that Hinduism is a pale and erring religion, opposed to liberal values. The earlier religious condemnation has become a social critique. Often, both go hand in hand. For instance, American evangelical organisations join forces with scholarly critics of caste to promote the idea that India should become ‘post-Hindu’, as in the case of Kancha Ilaiah and the Dalit Freedom Network.

[dhu]

Comment by an American:

It doesn't help that almost every desi I've met in the US, including a Sikh and an Orthodox Christian from Kerala, claims to be a brahmin.

A plastic category has been normed by our indologists and area studies specialists.

[Guest]

In this article: http://www.business-standard.com/india/n...ce/384884/



Why is so much reference to the Abhramic way of life - sin, sabbath, church itiyadi?

[dhu]

anti-colonial analysis by a paki muslim :

It's the thing about being molested by British colonizers and the counterpoint of 'racial' ideology of post-fascist Germany!



Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women.



Three years ago at our first congress I showed that, in the colonial situation, dynamism is replaced fairly quickly by a substantification of the attitudes of the colonising power. The area of culture is then marked off by fences and signposts. These are in fact so many defence mechanisms of the most elementary type, comparable for more than one good reason to the simple instinct for preservation. The interest of this period for us is that the oppressor does not manage to convince himself of the objective non-existence of the oppressed nation and its culture. Every effort is made to bring the colonised person to admit the inferiority of his culture which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behaviour, to recognise the unreality of his 'nation', and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own biological structure.



Vis-à-vis this state of affairs, the native's reactions are not unanimous While the mass of the people maintain intact traditions which are completely different from those of the colonial situation, and the artisan style solidifies into a formalism which is more and more stereotyped, the intellectual throws himself in frenzied fashion into the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying power and takes every opportunity of unfavourably criticising his own national culture, or else takes refuge in setting out and substantiating the claims of that culture in a way that is passionate but rapidly becomes unproductive.



The common nature of these two reactions lies in the fact that they both lead to impossible contradictions. Whether a turncoat or a substantialist the native is ineffectual precisely because the analysis of the colonial situation is not carried out on strict lines. The colonial situation calls a halt to national culture in almost every field. Within the framework of colonial domination there is not and there will never be such phenomena as new cultural departures or changes in the national culture. Here and there valiant attempts are sometimes made to reanimate the cultural dynamic and to give fresh impulses to its themes, its forms and its tonalities. The immediate, palpable and obvious interest of such leaps ahead is nil. But if we follow up the consequences to the very end we see that preparations are being thus made to brush the cobwebs off national consciousness to question oppression and to open up the struggle for freedom.



[color="#0000FF"]A national culture under colonial domination is a contested culture whose destruction is sought in systematic fashion. [/color]It very quickly becomes a culture condemned to secrecy. This idea of clandestine culture is immediately seen in the reactions of the occupying power which interprets attachment to traditions as faithfulness to the spirit of the nation and as a refusal to submit. This persistence in following forms of culture which are already condemned to extinction is already a demonstration of nationality; but it is a demonstration which is a throw-back to the laws of inertia. There is no taking of the offensive and no redefining of relationships. There is simply a concentration on a hard core of culture which is becoming more and more shrivelled up, inert and empty.

[rhytha]

Decoding the Hindu Trinity



In Hindu mythology, there are three worlds, three Goddesses and three Gods.

The three Gods include Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva who create, sustain and destroy. What is most baffling about this triad is that the sustainer and destroyer are worshipped, never the creator.



The root of this bafflement lies in a template that spellbinds the modern mind. It is the Western template, informed greatly by the Bible, where God is the creator making Devil the destroyer. To understand the Hindu trinity one needs to break free from this Western template.



The world Brahma creates is not the objective world. Hindu seers had scant regard for the objective measurable reality. They believed that the human mind is so prejudiced that it can never ever truly break free from the fetters of bias. They focused their explorations on subjective reality, the virtual image of the world that every individual constructs in his or her mind.

Data for this mental image of the world comes from the five senses. It is then shaped by prejudices, both positive and negative, which in turn is informed by memories and dreams, both pleasurable and painful. This is Brahmanda, Brahma’s world. This makes each and every breathing person a Brahma. Hence the Vedic maxim: aham brahmasmi, I am Brahma.



We are creators of our subjective world. And our behavior is a function of this constructed world of ours. While most of us construct a finite prejudiced worldview, it is theoretically possible to construct an infinite unprejudiced worldview. He who does that becomes one with the brahman, divinity itself. Until then, we remain Brahmas, unworshipped creators. Life is a journey from construction of Brahmanda to its deconstruction, from creation to destruction, from Brahma to Shiva.



Our constructed world has three components, visualized as the three Goddesses: the material component or Lakshmi; the intellectual component or Saraswati; the emotional component or Durga. LSD, in short! As we seek to make sense of our lives, we chase LSD. Though the Goddesses belong to no one, we seek to possess them, control their flow, make them predictable and dependable, though to our dismay they remain independent and whimsical.



Lakshmi matters, because she is wealth and health and fortune. She is critical to our survival. But survival alone is not motivation enough. Besides L we seek Durga, emotional gratification. We yearn for significance; we yearn to feel good about ourselves, we want to believe we matter. That is why we are not content acquiring and securing food, clothing and shelter. We want to feel important in the social order of things, in our family, amongst friends and peers. Hence the desire to enhance our careers, increase our influence in society and expand our business empires.



The pursuit of material and emotional gratification becomes an addiction. Growth is never enough to guarantee survival or satiate significance. One feels as if one is running on a treadmill of unpredictable speed. If you don’t keep up, you will fall. Fear of the fall keeps us running. As Brahmanda expands, it splits into three. This is Tripura, the three worlds, comprising of who we are, what we possess and what we do not possess. In other words: me, mine and others.



Invariably ‘me and mine’ matters more than ‘others’. In our myopic vision of our world, we delude ourselves that ‘others’ exist only to ensure the survival and significance of ‘me and mine’. This delusion is rooted in our scant regard for Saraswati, the S of LSD, who constantly draws attention to the other Vedic maxim: tat tvam asi, you are Brahma too.



In delusion, we forget that others around us are also constructing their own subjective realities, harboring similar ambitions of survival and significance, and having their very own Tripura. And in other peoples’ Brahmanda, our ‘me and mine’ is relegated to the world they address as ‘others’.



When my Brahmanda expands at the cost of your Brahmanda, conflict is inevitable. We end up as beasts fighting over territory. We end up playing the game ‘dog & bone’ and find glory in being the alpha male. At the core of this game is human fear of insignificance. This fear fuels our cupidity. This fear makes us go to war.



With his third eye, Shiva destroys Kama or cupidity, burns the three worlds and smears his forehead with three horizontal lines of ash. That he holds in his hand a trident, three blades united at the staff, is a reminder that the Tripura is a manmade construct born of human fear and imagination, and not a natural construction. That he demands offerings of Bilva sprigs that is constituted of three leaves joined at the base, is a reminder that true happiness comes when we balance our craving for survival and significance with sensitivity for others. Lakshmi and Durga without Saraswati will not work.



Vishnu facilitates this journey from Brahma to Shiva. Peace will come only when we empathize with others, when we realize that everyone is in the same boat, fearful Brahmas grappling with existential angst. From empathy comes dharma, elaborated in the epics, Ramayana and the Mahabharata, where as Ram and Krishna, Vishnu demonstrates the human ability to overpower the animal instinct to dominate, and make room for the helpless and the unfit. Only when we care for the other, will we stop being territorial beasts. Only then will LSD be shared rather than hoarded. Only then will we achieve what is aspired for in the triple chant that concludes all Hindu rituals: shanti, shanti, shanti-hi.



http://devdutt.com/decoding-the-hindu-trinity

[dhu]

Native American sepoy's response to being confronted with the fact of European theft of native land :

See what you don't understand is the land didn't belong to any one. If you knew any thing about Native people you would know that.

[dhu]

The latest Manifesto to percolate through:

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning [color="#FF8C00"][[kinda buddhist here]][/color] that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.



..In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

Anyone else getting the feeling that all these sundry "breakdowns" are theological in nature, due to the ever present gulf between reality and the normative ideal, which these fellows cannot reconcile with, even after a lifetime. No wonder mass murder is second nature to these fellows.

[dhu]

[url="http://www.amazon.com/Creation-America-Through-Revolution-Empire/dp/0521664810"]The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire[/url]

Francis Jennings

From Publishers Weekly



A longstanding historian of colonial America, Jennings (Benjamin Franklin, Politician, etc.), the former director of the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library, is tired of the traditional celebratory story of the American Revolution. "My book," he writes, "is an effort to tell the Revolution for adults." Jennings examines nearly every aspectAregion by region; battle by battle; and through the eyes of Indians, the British and the colonists. Along the way, he nimbly demonstrates that the colonists, though they claimed to be fighting for liberty, were fighting for the sort of liberty that didn't extend to Native Americans or black slaves. Hardly disinterested servants of the public good, he further argues, the founding fathers were politicians looking out for their own interests. Indeed, they weren't fighting for abstract principles; the colonists didn't, in truth, favor a democratic republic over an empire. To the contrary, according to Jennings, they were very devoted to the idea of empire; they simply wanted to run it themselves rather than "acting as agents for Great Britain." Throughout, Jennings looks especially at they ways in which ideas about race helped the colonists justify certain kinds of conquest. And although he does not say much that has not been argued dozens of times before, his synthesis is provocative, useful and clearly stated.





From Booklist



From the conventional view of the American Revolution as a struggle of oppressed colonists throwing off the yoke of royal tyranny, Jennings begs to differ. He asks readers to adopt the perspective of the many enslaved African Americans and marginalized American Indians. From their viewpoint, colonists' talk of liberty and equality rang hollow. Those high-sounding sentiments were little more than war propaganda, for their lands and their persons were either confiscated or enslaved by these very "freedom fighters." Starting with the founding of the colonies, Jennings documents the European settlers' determination to create empires. It took a few decades until they came to see their empire as distinct from Britain's. Early North American maps with their undefined boundaries reveal the western pretensions and breadth of the colonists' claims. Jennings presents his provocative views in a readable style that expands the substance of his argument.

[Husky]

^ That was a brilliant find.





This stamement:

Along the way, he nimbly demonstrates that the colonists, though they claimed to be fighting for liberty, were fighting for the sort of liberty that didn't extend to Native Americans or black slaves.

Exactly.

I've noticed many online Indians - in India and overseas - gush over the "founding fathers" and how upstanding they were. Not quite, as Jennings said.



IIRC either Jefferson refused to free his pretty "slave", OR he was tardy with the "hey, let's abolish" because he didn't want her freed (from him). Now where did I come across that... Don't know.



Anyway, indirectly related:

Jefferson in Paris (1995) [film]

One of the obsessive speculations in American history is whether Thomas Jefferson, in the years before he became president, had an affair with (and fathered a child with) his 15-year-old slave Sally Hemings.[...]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/...rson/true/

Is it true?

In 1998, the scientific journal Nature published the results of DNA tests designed to shed new light on questions first asked some two hundred years earlier: Did Thomas Jefferson have a relationship with a woman who was his slave? Did that relationship produce children?



Now, the new scientific evidence has been correlated with the existing documentary record, and a consensus of historians and other experts who have examined the issue agree that the question has largely been answered: Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings's children, and quite probably all six. The language of "proof" does not translate perfectly from science and the law to the historian's craft, however. And the DNA findings in this case are only one piece of a complicated puzzle that many in previous generations worked hard to make sure we might never solve.



In this section, FRONTLINE has gathered some of the key scientific and documentary evidence which has led historians to believe in Jefferson's paternity, as well as the "dissenting views" of those who continue to maintain that the evidence is not conclusive. FRONTLINE has also enlisted the help of historians to consider the Jefferson-Hemings relationship in the context of their own time.

Hmmm. 15 is underage isn't it. That would make the by then-ancient Jefferson a... a... a... cradle-robber? (To put it politely.)



But it's his hypocrisy on slavery that I imagine I remember reading about that possibly bothers me more.





Francis Jennings can have all the founding fathers. All except one. That Englishman, Thomas Paine. He's a good man.

http://web.archive.org/web/2003021119084...ution.html

To understand what the state of society [color="#0000FF"]ought to be[/color], it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe.

Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice

<img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

He has observed. And just going by that one statement, I think I read a calm admiration for them in his words.





All founding fathers are free to be accused. Thomas Paine should be exempted with special noted exception each time, to remind people that there was that exception.

He had no selfish or myopic reason to do all that he did; it was not purely ideological that he could ever allow it to be at the expense of anyone (this is in contrast with how communists make claims to various high ideals but are ready and willing to sacrifice everyone in the way). Paine was just convinced that mankind was better than how European society was then and tried to bring the improvement about.

[dhu]

Comment off Rajeev2004:

Arvind said...



His brother is Tunku. The family strategy is to have one guy write for the left in the West and the other guy write for the right. Both of them are big time Gungadins.



I think the only response to this sick guy should be "What if they go Muslim?" He cannot even call it as hate speech since the term was invented by his brother.

One brother is parroting the western left and the other, the western right. Their interests converge in targeting the heathen. And none are there to voice for the hapless heathen. Essentially they are loading both sides of the discourse against the heathen target.



Tunku is a fellow or something at the Rightist Hoover Institution; Amazingly, he has effortlessly adopted the entire range of western rightist concerns and regularly spouts minutiae on health care reform, gun laws, and probably abortion as well, etc..



Siddharth is a former Yale and Columbia inductee, now associate editor of the Hindu.



Amazing how these sepoys play the game to butter their bread on both sides.

[dhu]

An inglorious end to Philology:

Thank you for your response. You rightly wonder where this research leads to. We are indeed not interested in it as a historical curiosity.



I completely agree with you that it does not matter how a theory came into being as long as it is sustained by evidence and clarifies aspects of the world we live in. However, there are serious reasons to doubt whether this is so in the case of the Aryan Invasion or Immigration Theory.



The current literature about the Aryans and their migrations shows that the AIT/AMT is not as unproblematic or sustained by evidence as you seem to think. Of course, as I am not a Sanskritist, I am in no position to challenge the scientificity of the linguistic studies Witzel has done and I have no intention of doing so. However, I can say that when it comes to Witzel's and others' claims about the history of the Indian people and culture – that there once was an Aryan people, that had a Vedic religion, Sanskrit as its language, an ideology that structured society and imposed all of this on the indigenous population of India when they arrived there – these are not supported by the evidence he provides. The problem arises when scholars like Witzel link the linguistic facts about the Indo-Aryan languages to a people with a particular culture and religion.



As you yourself say: " the Rg Veda is not the record of an immigrating community,but was composed many centuries after IndoEuropean languages entered India; and secondly it was the record of only one of the many IE peoples in India." If this is true then this seriously challenges the foundation for theses that link the dispersal of the Indo-Aryan languages to the migrations of a people and culture (be it from or to India).



If we look at the literature about the Aryans we see that many scholars indeed struggle to link the available facts about India's past to claims about the culture, people and society at that time. This has brought many to conclude that 'the Aryans' only refers to a linguistic group, or to a cultural group which cannot be linked to a specific language, or to the followers of the Vedas but then without linking this to a culture or without making claims about the role these played in society, etc. Yet, at the same time the notion of the Aryans as a the people that had Sanskrit as their language and Vedism as their religion and ideology, remains unchallenged. The existence of such an Aryan people remains the starting point of most descriptions and studies of the development of the Indian culture.



So, in order to see whether Witzel's proof or evidence for an Aryan immigration is scientifically valid or not we need to take a closer look at the notion of the Aryans. That is, at the relation between the Vedas and a people with a particular culture, religion and language. We are currently working on an analysis of the contemporary literature on the Aryans to see whether there is any evidence for such a link. If not, then it becomes relevant to look at the development of the idea of the Aryans and their role in the development of the Indian culture. The article we uploaded takes a first step in doing this. We try to show that the fundamental theoretical outlines of the Aryan Invasion theory reflects the European cultural experience of India rather than any scientific or empirical research into the Indian past. We further argue that these theoretical outlines are Christian theological in nature. A lot more research needs to be done on this. Amongst other things about the relation between the notion of an Aryan people and the caste system.



With regard to 'problematizing the caste theory' the question should be 'which theory'?. The claim that there exists a caste system in India can hardly be called a theory. At the moment there exists no single theory that shows that there is such a system and how it works. The fieldwork results of the Centre for the Study of Local Cultures moreover show that at least in Karnataka no system exists that hierarchically divides society with the Brahmins on top.





I hope this clarifies the aim of the article.



Yours



Marianne

[acharya]

Macauley's Children

By Subhash Kak

http://www.sulekha.com/cgi-bin/column.cg...s_macaulay

http://www.hinduwisdom.info/articles_hinduism/120.htm





Imprinting is the key that explains many of our peculiarities. Imprinted birds and mammals act as if they were human. Goslings, when reared by a person, become imprinted to the caregiver, and they will ignore geese. Imprinted people live in their own world of symbols, and their behavior to an outsider would appear strange.



Imprinting occurs during a sensitive window of development. Imprinted animals will mate with their own kind but will prefer the animal to which they have been imprinted. In extreme cases they will refuse social contact with their own kind. Imprinting is fixed for life; it occurs also in motor patterns, as in birdsong. Humans are also imprinted--- to ideas and beliefs they are exposed to in their childhood.



All this has been known for a long time. Herodotus tells us of how hostage children raised in court became loyal to their captors. In the US, Canada, Australia, the children of the natives were forcibly taken from their parents and put in foster homes for this reason.



The Ottoman Empire built a bizarre but effective system based on this idea. It created the institution of the Kapi Kullari ("Slave" or "Ruling Institution"), whose members were legally slaves of the sultan: they were born Christians but were converted to Islam primarily through the practice of devsirme, where able-bodied young children were recruited as child-tribute and immersed in Islamic culture.



The kullars were forbidden to contract legal marriage, to have acknowledged children, and to own private property. They served solely at the pleasure of the sultan, at whose will they were promoted and executed. The slave status divested the kullars of any personality outside the service of the master.



The kullars as Janissaries were the best regiments of the Ottoman army; they also served in the palace jobs and as provincial governors. The Grand Vizier was invariably a kullar. They constituted a superlative bureaucracy: they were devoted to their duties, were completely loyal and since they were isolated from the general population, they were fair. Their non-hereditary status prevented the formation of a ruling elite that might threaten the sultan.



With time, the kullars began seeking reforms in their inhumane system. By the end of the Empire, they had won the right to matrimony. But as their circumstances changed they became venal; what was their strength as an isolated community now became a license to do good only for themselves.



If the kullars constituted the backbone of the Ottoman Empire, an institution, similar in spirit but somewhat different in form (but more subtle and resilient), was formed to safeguard the British Empire in India. This was the institution of the brown sahib, the colonial apologist, formed under the directive of the famous Minute of Macaulay (1835) who wished to create "a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.'' These Indian kullars may be properly called Macaulay's children.



The central idea in the imprinting of the Indian kullars was Macaulay's assertion that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India." The British, following Macaulay's ideas, dismantled the traditional pathshala system of village education, which had provided universal literary to the people. William Adam, a Scottish missionary in Bengal and Bihar during 1835-7, estimated that there were 100,000 pathshalas which were popular with all classes of people, "irrespective of their religion, caste, or social status," and the "curriculum was designed towards meeting the practical demands of rural society."



The village school had great room for improvement but it was very effective and was one of the institutions of local power. When it was superseded by the new system, controlled by the British bureaucracy using an alien language whose benefit ordinary people could not see, children of the poorer classes simply pulled out. This led to the illiteratization of the great masses of the Indian population.



The Macaulayite bureaucracy worked against other traditional knowledge also. For example, it targeted the millennia-old system of water tanks, which had been serviced by village councils. In its place was instituted a system of canal irrigation. This was done even where it was unsuitable, and the local councils were disbanded. Soon, the tanks fell into disuse and the water table dropped; this had disastrous effects for agriculture.



In the colonial state, the idea of profit was replaced by that of service of the British empire. The new system of education was instrumental for the socialization of this view. The idea of the other-worldly Indian was promoted.



In 1947, there was hope that India would create a progressive nation-state, but Macaulay's children quietly seized power. Taught to hate India's past and lacking a defining center, they took the fashions of the day--such as Socialism and Marxism--, and elevated these to their religious ideology. The terms Socialism and Secularism--but with a perverted meaning--were even written into the Indian Constitution during the Emergency of the mid-1970s.



In awe of the British and insecure of their positions, those of the Macaulay children who went into governance were good administrators. But as the system of checks and balances eroded after independence, they lost their reputation for incorruptibility.



Blind adherence to an ideology can stunt intellectual and emotional growth. Such people are forever seeking approval from those whom they idolize, and they are unable to grasp the incongruity of their behavior. Emotionally stunted people are like imprinted children, who can be very cruel. (The Khmer Rouge massacres of Cambodia, amongst the most horrific of the past century, were carried out principally by teenagers imprinted to one brand of Marxism.) Adults, with the minds of children, also brook no opposition, although their ways may not be as drastic.



The Macaulayite establishment in India is especially intolerant: it also knows a few tricks of Stalin. It silences its opponents using censorship and a system of patronage. But recently, independent minded American-style Internet magazines have provided a means to side-step this censorship.



Take Arun Shourie's experience: Although India's most famous and recognized journalist and author, winner of the Magasaysay award, he was black-listed by mainstream publishers and the media as soon he turned his attention to subjects considered taboo by the establishment. During the last ten years he has been compelled to self-publish his books and newspapers have banned him. But thanks to his Internet column he remained hugely popular until he joined the Vajpayee administration as a minister and stopped writing.



Having been black-listed once, his books are still not reviewed, and his speeches as a minister are rarely reported unless his words can be twisted to paint him as a monster. He is like a non-person of the apartheid South Africa. The favorite abusive label to pin on the opponent is to call him "communalist" or "fascist", and Shourie has carried these labels frequently.



As another example consider Mark Tully, the distinguished British journalist and author, who was for a long time the bureau chief of BBC in Delhi. Just because one of his books was perceived as somewhat critical of the Macaulayites, he was called names and declared a sell-out. His books have also stopped receiving notices.



This is quite unlike the rivalry between the liberals and the conservatives in the West, where the most partisan writers concede that their opponents have the right to be heard through the print and the TV media.



Some have suggested that the current turmoil in India is just a struggle between the traditional and modern approaches to governance. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opponents of the Macaulayites and Marxists do not wish for a religious state. They want to build a modern society somewhat like that of the United States: forward-looking but yet connected to its culture.



Reading the reportage of the culture wars of India by Western journalists in a hurry, one gets the feeling that the only sane people in India are these Macaulay's children. The reformers are labeled nationalists, swamis, traditionalists, or worse. These journalists do not understand the real nature of the struggle.



It is funny. The West proclaimed a certain imagined view on India, and now its pupils insist this is the real thing, even though there is evidence to the contrary for everyone to see. Could there be a better case of the tail wagging the dog?



Resources: For those who wish to take part in meaningful debate on the nature of the Indian civilization, consider joining the IndianCivilization egroup. If you are interested in changing India's portrayal in the media and in textbooks, participate in the programs of ECIT and the discussions of the IndicTraditions egroup

[acharya]

WHY AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS ARE RACIST





Sociologists are people of the political left. That might not be a problem if it were not for the fact that the left in America is racist. The left in America is racist because by denying the importance of race in affecting our values, ideas, thinking, and politics, the leftists constantly do too little too late to seriously challenge and reduce the levels of racism. Instead, the left talks about race as a social problem, assuming the basic structure of American government and society is all right in its larger dimensions. American liberalism is a liberalism in a country that is more racist than sociologists ever imagined. The first slaves arrived in America in 1619. This is almost 400 years of racism and at present there is no sign that it will end anytime soon. For those 400 years the left in America has lived with racism. It has had two major upheavals, the first and second civil wars, to lessen the effects of racism, but America still continues to live with racism. While the more virulent forms of racism have been overcome, the United States remains a solidly racist country. Isn't it logical to question the economic-political motives of people who consistently do too little-too late? After 400 years of failure, why isn't it time to question the left's basic approach to racism?



American sociologists always underestimate, and therefore fail to anticipate, the resistance to racial reforms, such as the resistance in the two reconstruction periods in American history. In fact, sociology's record is a miserable failure in this regard. Why is it not appropriate to question the motives of people who consistently fail to predict this considerable resistance? Currently sociologists are supporting a new form of racial separatism under the cover of multiculturalism. And in the name of multiculturalism, they are censoring any alternatives to this way of thought. One has to question the motives of sociologists who will not support any alternatives to the multicultural separatist system.



Sociologists once found Booker T. Washington acceptable -- an acceptance that was politically motivated. The Southerners sought a black man who would symbolize that Reconstruction was over and who could be considered an ally against Northerners and internal enemies, such as the populists and labor organizers. They saw Washington as the black spokesperson who could reassure them against the renewal of racial strife. And Northern whites wanted a black leader who could give them a respite from the eternal race problem. They too were ready to declare an end to the Civil War and Reconstruction (Harlan 1972:227). If we can question the motivations of those who accepted Booker T. Washington, then why isn't it logical to question the motivation of current sociologists for accepting today's current multicultural separatism?



There are some truths that are so painful that people either decide not to listen to, deny or ignore them. This is the situation with the variable of race. American intellectuals don't want to think about race so they tend to ("deliberately") misunderstand the argument. Every American thinker has systematically denied that racism has had a major impact on the United States (beyond the obvious of affecting political outcomes.) Now, for every American thinker to deny the important role of race means that they all share a political philosophy in common (to a certain extent at least). They all deny the real role of race in our society. And in doing so, they all are racial or racist thinkers. This does not mean, as some sociologists have told us, that to call all American thinkers racist is to deny racism any validity. Rather this denial is just more evidence of the racist thinking of sociologists, because they deliberately misunderstand the point. The traditional definition of the political spectrum in America along economic lines still applies; racist thinkers in America come from all the different points of the political spectrum: extreme right wing, conservative, liberal, and Marxist. But they all consistently and deliberately underestimate the role of race in our society.



Sociologists Continue to Talk about Racism as Attitudes and Not Structure



Racism is more structure than attitude. America has lived with racism for almost 400 years and it is embedded in every aspect of its life. People don't want to change because it costs them too much to change. And this does not only apply to conservatives. One has to ask if middle class black and white sociologists are not subject to the same concerns -- that is they also are too comfortable with their level of affluence to change their thinking.



Sociologists constantly mention that the United States is becoming a multiculturalist nation because of immigration and demographic changes. However, given that racism is structural and not attitudinal there is every indication that these new immigrations will just adapt to the given system and live within it. They will then be provided with economic motives for not providing a greater share of the economic pie to the underclass.



In the current fascination with "white" racism sociologists are doing study after study uncovering the subtle ways in which whites justify the continuance of racism. This, however, continues a racist tradition of seeing racism as primarily an attitude and not a rational response to a racist structure. Indeed, sociologists' support for the multicultural caste system makes it more rational for Americans to be racist, precisely because economic goodies are handed out on the basis of race.



It is helpful to point out the subtle racism of white Americans. But what is not helpful is the implication that racism has a specific color. The racism of "white" racism is actually what is best described as sociological racism. Biology is no longer the dominant paradigm used to support the various degrees of racism. Rather the language of biology has been replaced by sociological terminology. We are all, black, white and brown, participants in a racist society, and we all have to manifest appropriate attitudes to exist within that racist society. Sociologists concentrate on other peoples' racism while being unaware of their own.



The truth of the matter is that most people are conformists. They want to have a peaceful, happy life and to have this life they conform to whatever norms and structures exist at any given time (see Ogburn). If they live in a racist society, they adapt to that society. If that racist society can be replaced with a non-racist one, they will happily adapt to that society. In a racist society, it is most rational to be racist.





Sociologists Talk the Talk but Don't Walk the Walk



James B. McKee (1993) writes of the sociological work on race as a failure. One of the reasons he cites for this is the inability of people to see beyond the self-interests of their own time and place -- their social context. We would argue that human beings were evolutionarily designed not to see beyond their social context, because to do so would bring ostracism from the group (which, in turn, often led to death). The end result is that most people, even the educated ones, are "sheep" that follow within the larger guidelines of their society. It is only the odd-ball thinker who has the combination of the right biological makeup together with at least some courage/persistence and the right set of environmental circumstances who challenges the system and thereby makes a breakthrough in creative thought. (We recognize that this reference to biology runs up against the sociological prejudice against evolutionary theory, but refer to it even if it is not politically correct.)



Sociologists are educated people compared to most of their fellow Americans, but the key word in "educated people" is the word "people," not "educated." Human beings are very weak creatures and are subject to all sorts of self-interested thinking. Indeed, it can be argued that in the social evolution of human beings they had to develop all sorts of deceptions and denials and wishful thinking just in order to survive. Do something wrong and see watch how fast the person is ostracized. And since human beings often do something wrong, they have learned all types of deception. The trouble here for educated persons like sociologists is that, as people, those denial qualities limit their and everyone else's ability to think freely of their social context. That's why the vast majority of even the educated people are prisoners of their times. Not to mention that any new thinker is punished economically for not going along with society, and so is never heard of again.



Sociologists write beautiful words of equality and mutual understanding, but their actions of support for separatism and their censorship of alternative perspectives show that they are racist at heart. There is an old saying that talk is cheap. And nothing could be much cheaper than the multicultural sociologists' praise of themselves as wonderful people working for racial and ethnic harmony. But in reality, the vast majority of sociologists live in a segregated world just like the majority of more privileged Americans. They are very comfortable in their segregated world. They live in segregated neighborhoods; send their children to largely segregated schools; work at universities and other occupations where the higher positions are dominated by whites; and have friends and associates characteristic of a segregated world. They are enjoying their lives within the racist system. Given all this, it does not seem so far-fetched to suggest that part of the inability of sociologists to realize the true nature of racism is their own high degree of creature comfort in American society.



Sociologists never see their own hypocrisy for sociological (and liberal) theory makes it possible for sociologists to have their cake and eat it too. They can feel good about themselves as regards racial/ethnic matters and yet not really have to sacrifice at all to feel so good. When going to conferences in different cities, sociologists currently love to talk about the multiculturalism of the host city and all the great ethnic restaurants where they can eat. This obvious feel-good contentedness does not seem to disturb any of the readers of the ASA Footnotes.



Sociologists do not want to see their own racism. They are too happy and comfortable in their sense of superiority to their fellow Americans. And the fact is that many of them have built reputations supporting the lies of New Leftism/multiculturalism. It would be too unpleasant for them to consider that they have been contributing to racism rather than resisting it. It is in their self-interest to stick with and further promote multicultural separatism. Their self-images and academic reputations depend on continued support for separatism.



There is another old saying: You can deal it out, but you can't take it. Sociologists love to call other people racists. They pride themselves on pointing out where racism still lurks. But using the "R" word in application to the sociological discipline brings shock and disbelief to sociologists. Many close their minds as soon as the "R" word is applied to them. A common defensive tactic is to become so offended at being "personally" insulted by being called racist that they do not consider the charge at all, except to censor it. They get this "sincere" indignation that prevents them from really considering just how much they adhere to sociological racism.



Sociologists will also not take responsibility for their actions. Many New Left sociologists participate in or condone political events such as the riots at the 1968 Democratic Party National Convention in Chicago that fostered political backlash. They, however, refuse to take any responsibility for bringing on this backlash. The irresponsible and provocative rhetoric of sociologists in their writings, speeches, and conversations gives conservatives a great deal of political ammunition. Given the rhetoric of sociology, conservatives can easily denounce them as anti-American and this sounds a responsive chord in the larger public.



For the authors, the real proof of just how racists American sociologists are has come in trying to resist the dominance of neo-segregationism in the discipline by proposing a neo-integrationist approach that is not in contradiction to the facts. For over ten years we have fought to get our ideas published with very little success. American sociologists have consistently engaged in censorship. In fact, our main thesis, that America's political changes only occur within an overwhelmingly racist society, has still not been permitted to be published by sociology professors and editors. Sociologists have noted the ongoing racism of white Americans in their contradictory positions of being supportive of racial tolerance while being very critical of nearly all the measures designed to reduce racial intolerance. Sociologists have a similar contradiction between words and action. The overwhelming resistance from the sociological community to attempts to fight the ever-growing neo-segregationism, marked by their arrogant and close-minded attitude that they already have the truth, thank you very much, is proof that their sociological liberalism is a racist liberalism.



There is very little difference between the racism of white sociologists and black sociologists. It may be that black sociologists are even more perverted than white sociologists, precisely because they support multicultural separatism to a greater extent than their white counterparts. And, in this sense at least, black sociologists are actually less open to alternative ways of thinking than the white sociologists. Black and white sociologists at one time supported Booker T. Washington. Black sociologists seem to be back again supporting racist separatism.





Sociology Has Helped Strengthen the Caste System



The sociologists have been major players in pushing multiculturalism as a philosophy and policy approach. They have provided the justification and the apology for a new form of racial separatism in the vein of Booker T. Washington. The United States government in cooperation with social scientists and educators has built a stronger caste system, one that doles out rewards on the basis of race and ethnicity, as did the Booker T. Washington separate but equal system. (Actually, Booker T. Washington was a better person than those sociologists who presently work for multicultural separatism. In secret, Booker T. worked to promote integration at the very same time he publicly worked for the separate but equal system. But our multicultural separatists of today do not work in secret for integration. They have told the entire world that integration does not work and therefore have given up on it and now support separatism.) When the government starts handing out rewards on the basis of race and ethnicity, they have now created an economic incentive for the various racial/ethnic groups to become super racial or ethnic and stress their differences rather than what is common to them. Indeed, one could say that sociologists are working for racism, not against it!



The strategy of ethnic minorities, although couched in wonderful sounding rhetoric, is actually racist in nature. There is the rhetoric of sociology and there is the reality of how American society actually works. By spouting non-racist terminology, ethnic minorities can disguise what is really going on and use the economic benefits from the multicultural caste system to step over the blacks, all with the blessing of black sociologists. One would be hard put to think of a more diabolical scheme.



Celebrating racial/ethnic separatism leads to contentment among sociologists and others. Consequently, they censor any attempts to criticize the caste status quo and to start a new civil rights movement. The fact is that sociologists have a conflict of interests. They support a separatist system that in turn rewards them with monies to do racial/ethnic studies that are then used to further bolster the caste system. They are, in a sense, corrupted by the very system they helped create.



The multiculturalist impulse in sociology has contributed to the splitting off of African-American studies from sociology and the consequent denigration of racial/ethnic studies in sociology itself. So there is even separatism within the discipline.



How do sociologists justify their support for separatism? Many of them don't. Rather they continue to hide behind the myth that liberal/New Left/multicultural sociologists are "objective" in their work. But this is just one of the most blatant lies used to hide the fact that they are actually very political beings. To support separatism is not being objective, it is being highly political.



The real perfidy of multiculturalism is that sociologists are doing their utmost to try to make the word multicultural synonymous with tolerance and live-and-let-live. They are trying to make it nearly impossible for anyone in the future to dissent from multiculturalism because it would be equivalent of dissenting from tolerance itself and thereby supporting intolerance.



Sociology has had a bad influence on political debate in America. They have polarized the nation with their insistence of replacing the old economic political continuum with one based on positions on racial matters. And they have thereby weakened the very people they say they support: the liberals in the Democratic Party.





Sociologists Ignore the Truth



Because sociologists are lying about race, and because race is such a fundamentally important factor in American society and politics, they are also lying about almost every major assumption of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. No matter how much certain sociologists try to tell the larger sociological community that they are ignoring the truth, they continue to ignore it. You can point out that there is no American dilemma, that it is merely a case of the liberal's having their cake and eating it too. But they are not listening. This is just one more way that sociologists continue their racism.



When it comes to tenure decisions, there is an old saying that "if they like you, they'll forgive any mistake you make, but if they don't like you, they will find any excuse to get rid of you." A similar statement can be made about sociological ideas: "if they like your ideas in the sense they are politically acceptable, they will publish what you have to say regardless of your mistakes, but if they don't find your ideas acceptable, they will find any excuse not to publish them."



Sidney Wilhelm (1973) wrote a very provocative article on equality as America's racist ideology, but the sociologists merely ignored it. They pretended it was never written and went on with their racist thinking and writings. Wilhelm got so discouraged that he dropped out and became a pig farmer. Maybe he thought to himself, if sociologists are just to write racist articles and books, better it be left to others.



Sociologists Have Lost Their Edge



When one looks at the African-American section of book stores one sees book after book written about what James Baldwin called "feel good" stories. So many of today's books dealing with African-Americans are in this feel good tradition that describes how wonderful various African-American heros are or were. The books written in the multicultural vein are also pretty much in this same feel good tradition. It is an approach that just reinforces the comfortableness of the reader with the racial caste system and in that sense these various hero tales are separatist tales.





Sociology As a Sect



Today multicultural sociology is like a sect dominated by a New Leftism converted into racial/ethnic separatism. Like most sects, sociology recruits strange people on the political fringe, often ones with chips on their shoulders. These people are alienated from the larger society, but actually support, rather than offer any useful alternatives, to the racial/ethnic caste system in America. These strange people then write "politically correct" reports supporting multicultural separatism and censor any "politically incorrect" reports.



Part of being a sect is being socially isolated. Multiculturalism has been largely rejected by the American electorate. This has left sociologists feeling more isolated and paranoid. Rather than adjust their moral compass, the sociologists have chosen to live even more in their hallucinogenic dream world of multicultural separatism.



Sociologists are much like the Southerners we knew as children during the civil rights struggle. We looked around and thought "These people are crazy." They've built up this whole system of lies that they all believe in unequivocally. One could not speak the truth in the South for fear of the Southerners' hostility, prejudice, and possible violence. These days we have much the same feeling about our fellow sociologists. Sociologists are living in a dream world. How ridiculous are these people who think they can make Americans accept one hundred plus different cultures as equal to traditional American culture when they have never been able even to convince Americans not to dislike, hate, or fear black Americans?



Members of a sect primarily talk to each other and get their sense of truth from the group. This is largely true of sociologists who are highly isolated socially from the larger society. While the majority of the electorate are to the right of the old liberal position, the vast majority of sociologists are to the left of the majority. And as in any sect, this isolation does not bother the members of the sociology, but rather feeds their sense of moral superiority to the larger society. This sense of moral superiority is unjustified, of course, but members of the sociological sect have no idea of this. They are insulated by their own isolation of thought and social interaction from checking their ideas with the larger world. They cannot monitor themselves to regulate their degree of misperception of reality. In a sense, there are no checks and balances on the system of sociological thought.



Since sociologists feed off one another, it is somewhat like the blind leading the blind. One sect member checks his or her thought with other sect members and, even though the whole process is skewed and off-kilter, their own thoughts get reinforced. The dissenter from this perspective is told to be quiet. If the dissenter does not refrain from speaking, then stronger sanctions are applied. In sociology, the most common action is for a dissenting paper to be returned with a form letter with no comment at all. There is a wall of silence from the censors, so the dissenter is often bewildered as just what is wrong with the paper. The paper or papers are sent in again and again and meet the same wall of silent rejection. At this point, most dissenters would be cowed into silence, but if the dissenter is rash enough and calls the sociology sect members on their bias, they begin to act like an employer accused in a racial discrimination suit.



In a sect as large as sociology, there occur natural cliques of "scholarship." These cliques only let ideologically conforming members into their group. Dissenters are not allowed to speak. The members of the clique publish each others papers, cite each others' works, and write letters of recommendation and commendation for each other, all the while not at all being aware that they are living a life of pseudo-social science.



Sociology, like most sects, are isolated from and hostile to the larger society. Many sect personnel are hateful to the outside world and constantly bad-mouth it. Similarly, sociologists use such provocative language as physical and cultural "genocide" for the traditional process of assimilation. What idiocy won't sociologists support? For instance, the New Leftist/multiculturalist impulse has brought about the absolute lunacy of Afrocentrism (see Lefkowitz). Sociologists have their own language of multicultural separatism that has been rejected by an electorate who now feels that even the word "liberal" is too far to the political left. The larger world sees the sociologists as largely irrelevant and will only allow them to speak on television on specific micro studies, rather than let them comment on macro approaches to society wide problems. The larger world sees the sociologists as somewhat crazy -- as people who talk only amongst themselves with their special vocabulary of separatism. And the larger public sees sociologists as liberals who have nothing good to contribute..





Bibliography





Lefkowitz,Mary

1996 Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. New York: Basic Books.



McKee, James B.

1993 Sociology and the Race Problem: The Failure of a Perspective. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.



Ogburn, William Field

1961 "Social change and racial relations." Pp. 200-207 in Jitsuichi Masuoka and Preston Valien (eds.), Race Relations, Problems and Theory: Essays in Honor of Robert E. Park. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.



Willhelm, Sidney M.

1973 "Equality: America's racist ideology." Pp. 136-157 in Joyce A. Ladner (ed.), The Death of White Sociology. New York: Random House.



http://www.vernonjohns.org/vernjohns/whyracist.html