I've just received a copy of an interesting new book titled The Howard Legacy. Written by a distinguished Australian scientist, Dr Peter Wilkinson, it looks at one of the most radical legacies of John Howard's term in office, namely the coming dominance of the professions by overseas fee-paying students.
I'll write a detailed review shortly, but those interested in further information can visit The Independent Australian website and click the Howard Legacy button to the left.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
A different dividing line
Does the existence of an indigenous minority make the mainstream national identity illegitimate? Not according to David Yeagley, a Comanche Indian. This is his perspective on the situation in America:
This could stand alone as an eloquent defence of traditional nationalism. It has an added significance, though, coming from an American Indian. We are accustomed to white liberals using indigenous affairs to further demoralise the mainstream. David Yeagley refuses to play his part in the script and speaks instead to encourage white Americans to uphold a national existence in the US, for his benefit as well as theirs.
Hat tip: Brave New World Watch
Original article: Vdare
The people of a nation must never be denied the expression of their natural love for their country. Without love of country, no nation can exist for long. It will become rather a heartless business convenience, a lusus naturae [joke of nature] of mean greed.
Okay, so America presents a bit of a problem. America is now multicultural. America has many races, many religions - and many ideologies, actually. What is in fact the country? Is there something that we all love? Is there something that is tangibly American?
My view as an American Indian: White Anglo-Saxon Protestants created this country. What is it that they love? What do they consider to be the country?
As an American Indian, I seek their opinion. Their view is the one I want to consider. I am bound to them in blood, war, and treaty. My history is theirs, and theirs mine. I have looked to them for the health of the country.
I must say, they seem quite lost now. They are either afraid of who they are, or ashamed. If they are indeed not proud of who they are, yet continue to constitute the polity they created, they throw a curve ball to the world.
... George Soros equates nationhood to "tribalism." Naturally, he is most interested in bringing down the greatest nation — America. And because of America’s multi-cultural conditioning, it appears an easy enough task. He wants an "Open Society," with closed doors to the basic, historic elements of human existence: religion, ethnicity, and nationhood. He wants a world that can be perfectly controlled, one without these pestilential differences.
This could stand alone as an eloquent defence of traditional nationalism. It has an added significance, though, coming from an American Indian. We are accustomed to white liberals using indigenous affairs to further demoralise the mainstream. David Yeagley refuses to play his part in the script and speaks instead to encourage white Americans to uphold a national existence in the US, for his benefit as well as theirs.
Hat tip: Brave New World Watch
Original article: Vdare
Friday, October 12, 2007
Why does the left treat us differently?
Why do white liberals accept the traditions of other cultures but not their own? Why do liberals associate any expression of white identity with supremacism?
It's not easy for traditionalists to grasp the answers to such questions. I want to to suggest in this post how liberals arrive at such positions, but to do so it helps if I begin with the liberal approach to gender.
Put briefly, liberals believe in autonomy as an overriding good. They believe that to be fully human we must be self-determining agents. We do not determine our sex for ourselves and therefore our sex is treated by liberals as something unnatural and restrictive, from which we must be liberated. Sex must be made not to matter.
For right liberals this means that the past, in which there were distinct sex roles, is to be regretted, but that as a matter of "progress", these sex roles will become defunct, particularly in terms of labour market participation, which for right liberals is a central social function.
Left liberals take things further. They too see the male career role as the premier one, and they ask why, if sex roles are artificial, there has existed "discrimination" and "inequality". Their answer is that a group of people have formed a social construct, "men", in order to dominate, exploit and oppress the "other", those categorised as "women".
Once left liberals take this view, a number of other positions logically follow. First, it isn't just a question of patiently waiting for "progress" to deliver the goods; instead, male "privilege" is to be aggressively attacked and whatever helps to form and uphold male loyalties or a masculine existence is to be deconstructed.
Second, a sense of active hostility to men becomes justified. For the more radical of liberal men, it begins to make sense to act against, and identify in opposition to, a traditional masculine culture.
When it comes to ethnicity there is a similar distinction between right and left liberals. We don't get to choose our ethnicity, and therefore liberals believe that it should be made not to matter.
Right liberals tend to take this as a universal principle. For them, all people are to assimilate into a culture based on liberal political values. Right-wing journalist Andrew Bolt does not even make the usual exception for Aborigines; he once complained that a group of Aborigines who wanted to retain control over an historic artefact, by acting as a tribe, were flouting:
Similarly Bolt has written that he doesn't like there being a category of Aboriginal art at the National Gallery because such categories "drive us back into our racial prisons".
Right liberals might well regret forms of racial discrimination in the past, but this is likely to be seen as a measure of the time, which progress toward liberal ideals is erasing. There is no particular reason for right liberals to feel an animosity toward their own race, so they tend to combine a belief in non-discriminatory mass immigration, often justified in terms of market needs, with a positive view of their own tradition. John Howard, for instance, has described his own position as follows:
This is the awkward position you arrive at when you accept as a universal principle the idea that ethnicity is not to matter, but when you have not lost your self-regard.
For the left, it's a different story. They once again ask the question of why there was once "inequality", in which whites were dominant in the West and, for a period at least, in colonies overseas.
Their answer follows the same train of thought as the one they give for gender inequality: they assert that a group of people organised themselves into an artificial category of race in order to dominate, exploit and oppress the non-white "other".
If whites are an artificial construct who oppress others in order to gain unearned privilege, then it is whites who stand in the way of the emergence of freedom and equality. This explains:
a) The apparent contradiction that white liberals seek to undermine the very societies most dedicated to ideals of freedom and equality in order to achieve freedom and equality.
b) The leftist insistence that white communities are aberrations whose existence is to be considered illegitimate. It is especially illegitimate for a community to exist in which whites are a majority and in a position to exercise power.
(Jennifer Clarke, a teacher at the Australian National University, recently described Australia as a "regionally anomalous white enclave run largely by white people to our own advantage", in which anti-discrimination laws should be applied more effectively so that "a majority of Australians would no longer be of northern European ethnic heritage".)
c) The apparent "self-hatred" of left liberal whites. If the whole purpose of a white identity is to oppress and exploit others, and to hinder the achievement of equality and freedom, then it is logical for left-liberals to turn against their own identity and tradition. In fact, it becomes logical for left liberals to fiercely seek to undermine whatever continues to hold together a white communal existence.
If white communities are, as left-liberals assert, artificially constructed to uphold privilege, and if this explains the existence of inequality, then certain other seemingly irrational positions taken by the left can be better understood. These include:
a) The idea that Australia's prosperity somehow holds back or keeps down the living conditions of people elsewhere. Jennifer Clarke, for instance, writes that:
The assumption is that we are prosperous not because of stable governance or a strong work ethic, but because we have monopolised the world's resources for ourselves. (As it happens, there's a story in today's paper which begins "Wars stripped $284 billion from Africa between 1990 and 2005, which is roughly equivalent to the entire amount of aid money given to the world's poorest continent." Perhaps there are better explanations for poverty in Africa than the efforts made by Australians to develop our own continent.)
b) The association of white nationalism with white supremacy. When individual whites assert their own communal loyalty, left liberals often describe them as white supremacists. This makes sense if you assume that the very purpose of "whiteness" is to establish dominance and privilege over others.
This is how Jennifer Clarke expresses her suspicion of English immigrants to Australia:
Even quietly leaving a multiculture is enough to associate you, in Jennifer Clarke's mind, with white supremacism and anti-social behaviour.
c) The belief that the pro-immigration, open borders liberal right are in reality white supremacists.
Leftists see themselves as dissenting outsiders and the right as the power wielding establishment. Since the leftist ideology assumes that power is wielded by whites to uphold white privilege and to exclude and exploit others, it stands to reason that the right (power wielding whites) must be white supremacists.
There are those on the left who persevere in this view even as the Liberal Party has raised foreign immigration to record levels and transformed the Australian professional classes with fee paying overseas students.
Here is Jennifer Clarke expressing such a view about the Liberal Party Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews:
d) An acceptance of the communal life of the "other". It seems odd that leftists should be so fiercely opposed to any expression of white communal identity, but then accept the same expressions of identity from other groups. Professor Robert Manne, for instance, has defended the existence of traditional Aboriginal communities as follows:
When it comes to white Australian society, Professor Manne seems to forget such fine principles. He sticks the boot in as hard as he can.
Perhaps the contradiction can be partly explained by the fact that the left doesn't universalise the principle that "ethnicity ought not to matter" as the right tends to do. There are different categories in the leftist way of thinking about the issue. There are white communities, which represent the oppressive power of ethnicity, which have invented racism and discrimination, and which represent what is artificial in terms of identity.
The non-white "other" must therefore stand as a different category, not participating in such negative aspects of identity. To set up a category of "whiteness" as the source of artificial and oppressive identity suggests that the "other" category cannot be the source of artificial and oppressive identity. The universalism is broken.
Or, to put it another way, leftists have a choice of contradictions. If they view non-white ethnicity as racist and oppressive, it undercuts the theory that such qualities are particular to the construction of whiteness. If, on the other hand, they view non-white ethnicity as positive and natural, it undercuts the liberal idea that ethnicity in general is a restrictive limitation on the individual - in which case, why shouldn't whites enjoy the benefits of ethnic identity as others do?
Finally, I'd like to suggest two reasons why it's difficult for left-liberals to abandon the theory they've adopted. First, the theory assumes that whites are dominant exploiters. Therefore, white left-liberals are likely to have a false sense of security about the position of themselves and their co-ethnics. They aren't likely to sense the dangers to their civilisation as quickly as they might otherwise be expected to.
Second, the theory has a kind of inbuilt defence. If there are whites who challenge the theory, this can be taken as merely confirming what the theory claims; that whites are conditioned to organise to defend their privileged status.
For these and other reasons, the theory isn't easily dismissed. Even so, as it takes ever more radical forms, it tends to alienate those not professionally committed to it, so we ought to keep hammering away at its inconsistencies and at its ideological foundations.
It's not easy for traditionalists to grasp the answers to such questions. I want to to suggest in this post how liberals arrive at such positions, but to do so it helps if I begin with the liberal approach to gender.
Put briefly, liberals believe in autonomy as an overriding good. They believe that to be fully human we must be self-determining agents. We do not determine our sex for ourselves and therefore our sex is treated by liberals as something unnatural and restrictive, from which we must be liberated. Sex must be made not to matter.
For right liberals this means that the past, in which there were distinct sex roles, is to be regretted, but that as a matter of "progress", these sex roles will become defunct, particularly in terms of labour market participation, which for right liberals is a central social function.
Left liberals take things further. They too see the male career role as the premier one, and they ask why, if sex roles are artificial, there has existed "discrimination" and "inequality". Their answer is that a group of people have formed a social construct, "men", in order to dominate, exploit and oppress the "other", those categorised as "women".
Once left liberals take this view, a number of other positions logically follow. First, it isn't just a question of patiently waiting for "progress" to deliver the goods; instead, male "privilege" is to be aggressively attacked and whatever helps to form and uphold male loyalties or a masculine existence is to be deconstructed.
Second, a sense of active hostility to men becomes justified. For the more radical of liberal men, it begins to make sense to act against, and identify in opposition to, a traditional masculine culture.
When it comes to ethnicity there is a similar distinction between right and left liberals. We don't get to choose our ethnicity, and therefore liberals believe that it should be made not to matter.
Right liberals tend to take this as a universal principle. For them, all people are to assimilate into a culture based on liberal political values. Right-wing journalist Andrew Bolt does not even make the usual exception for Aborigines; he once complained that a group of Aborigines who wanted to retain control over an historic artefact, by acting as a tribe, were flouting:
The humanist idea that we are all individuals, free to make our own identities as equal members of the human race.
Similarly Bolt has written that he doesn't like there being a category of Aboriginal art at the National Gallery because such categories "drive us back into our racial prisons".
Right liberals might well regret forms of racial discrimination in the past, but this is likely to be seen as a measure of the time, which progress toward liberal ideals is erasing. There is no particular reason for right liberals to feel an animosity toward their own race, so they tend to combine a belief in non-discriminatory mass immigration, often justified in terms of market needs, with a positive view of their own tradition. John Howard, for instance, has described his own position as follows:
It's perfectly possible for an Anglo-Celtic Australian who sort of has a lot of reverence to the traditional institutions of the country, and the traditional characteristics of Australia, and to want to hang on to those, to be completely tolerant and colour-blind and so on.
This is the awkward position you arrive at when you accept as a universal principle the idea that ethnicity is not to matter, but when you have not lost your self-regard.
For the left, it's a different story. They once again ask the question of why there was once "inequality", in which whites were dominant in the West and, for a period at least, in colonies overseas.
Their answer follows the same train of thought as the one they give for gender inequality: they assert that a group of people organised themselves into an artificial category of race in order to dominate, exploit and oppress the non-white "other".
If whites are an artificial construct who oppress others in order to gain unearned privilege, then it is whites who stand in the way of the emergence of freedom and equality. This explains:
a) The apparent contradiction that white liberals seek to undermine the very societies most dedicated to ideals of freedom and equality in order to achieve freedom and equality.
b) The leftist insistence that white communities are aberrations whose existence is to be considered illegitimate. It is especially illegitimate for a community to exist in which whites are a majority and in a position to exercise power.
(Jennifer Clarke, a teacher at the Australian National University, recently described Australia as a "regionally anomalous white enclave run largely by white people to our own advantage", in which anti-discrimination laws should be applied more effectively so that "a majority of Australians would no longer be of northern European ethnic heritage".)
c) The apparent "self-hatred" of left liberal whites. If the whole purpose of a white identity is to oppress and exploit others, and to hinder the achievement of equality and freedom, then it is logical for left-liberals to turn against their own identity and tradition. In fact, it becomes logical for left liberals to fiercely seek to undermine whatever continues to hold together a white communal existence.
If white communities are, as left-liberals assert, artificially constructed to uphold privilege, and if this explains the existence of inequality, then certain other seemingly irrational positions taken by the left can be better understood. These include:
a) The idea that Australia's prosperity somehow holds back or keeps down the living conditions of people elsewhere. Jennifer Clarke, for instance, writes that:
"the Australian way of life" itself may encapsulate undesirable social values, if that phrase extends to the idea that it is legitimate for those of us who live here to continue to monopolise more than our fair share of the earth's resources, while people who live in African refugee camps and Javanese slums must get by on far less.
The assumption is that we are prosperous not because of stable governance or a strong work ethic, but because we have monopolised the world's resources for ourselves. (As it happens, there's a story in today's paper which begins "Wars stripped $284 billion from Africa between 1990 and 2005, which is roughly equivalent to the entire amount of aid money given to the world's poorest continent." Perhaps there are better explanations for poverty in Africa than the efforts made by Australians to develop our own continent.)
b) The association of white nationalism with white supremacy. When individual whites assert their own communal loyalty, left liberals often describe them as white supremacists. This makes sense if you assume that the very purpose of "whiteness" is to establish dominance and privilege over others.
This is how Jennifer Clarke expresses her suspicion of English immigrants to Australia:
Similar questions might arise about some British emigration, particularly by "whites" leaving multicultural London. Antisocial behaviour by white supremacists or European or Christian chauvinists is not always defined or prosecuted as a crime ... but it can be just as destructive for a nation's social fabric.
Even quietly leaving a multiculture is enough to associate you, in Jennifer Clarke's mind, with white supremacism and anti-social behaviour.
c) The belief that the pro-immigration, open borders liberal right are in reality white supremacists.
Leftists see themselves as dissenting outsiders and the right as the power wielding establishment. Since the leftist ideology assumes that power is wielded by whites to uphold white privilege and to exclude and exploit others, it stands to reason that the right (power wielding whites) must be white supremacists.
There are those on the left who persevere in this view even as the Liberal Party has raised foreign immigration to record levels and transformed the Australian professional classes with fee paying overseas students.
Here is Jennifer Clarke expressing such a view about the Liberal Party Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews:
What many Australians, including Mr Andrews, still seem to want - decades after the "white Australia" policy was supposedly abolished - is a little piece of northern Europe at the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific. What they don't want are too many funny-looking people from Elsewhere coming here ...
d) An acceptance of the communal life of the "other". It seems odd that leftists should be so fiercely opposed to any expression of white communal identity, but then accept the same expressions of identity from other groups. Professor Robert Manne, for instance, has defended the existence of traditional Aboriginal communities as follows:
... if the traditional communities are indeed destroyed, one distinctive expression of human life - with its own forms of language, culture, spirituality and sensibility - will simply become extinct. Humanity is enriched and shaped by the diversity of its forms of life. It is vastly impoverished as this diversity declines. If contemporary Australians allow what remains of the traditional Aboriginal world to die, we will be haunted by the tragedy for generations.
When it comes to white Australian society, Professor Manne seems to forget such fine principles. He sticks the boot in as hard as he can.
Perhaps the contradiction can be partly explained by the fact that the left doesn't universalise the principle that "ethnicity ought not to matter" as the right tends to do. There are different categories in the leftist way of thinking about the issue. There are white communities, which represent the oppressive power of ethnicity, which have invented racism and discrimination, and which represent what is artificial in terms of identity.
The non-white "other" must therefore stand as a different category, not participating in such negative aspects of identity. To set up a category of "whiteness" as the source of artificial and oppressive identity suggests that the "other" category cannot be the source of artificial and oppressive identity. The universalism is broken.
Or, to put it another way, leftists have a choice of contradictions. If they view non-white ethnicity as racist and oppressive, it undercuts the theory that such qualities are particular to the construction of whiteness. If, on the other hand, they view non-white ethnicity as positive and natural, it undercuts the liberal idea that ethnicity in general is a restrictive limitation on the individual - in which case, why shouldn't whites enjoy the benefits of ethnic identity as others do?
Finally, I'd like to suggest two reasons why it's difficult for left-liberals to abandon the theory they've adopted. First, the theory assumes that whites are dominant exploiters. Therefore, white left-liberals are likely to have a false sense of security about the position of themselves and their co-ethnics. They aren't likely to sense the dangers to their civilisation as quickly as they might otherwise be expected to.
Second, the theory has a kind of inbuilt defence. If there are whites who challenge the theory, this can be taken as merely confirming what the theory claims; that whites are conditioned to organise to defend their privileged status.
For these and other reasons, the theory isn't easily dismissed. Even so, as it takes ever more radical forms, it tends to alienate those not professionally committed to it, so we ought to keep hammering away at its inconsistencies and at its ideological foundations.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Odd family values
I wrote a post last week about Clare, the young Perth woman who wants to have 11 children as a single mother and who has advertised in her local paper for sperm donors.
The oddest part of the story is that Clare wants her sperm donors to have "strong family values". How could a man donating sperm to a young single mother on welfare represent strong family values?
To my surprise one reader very much thought it possible, and wrote this comment to support his claim:
I can't dismiss this comment too casually. It expresses the modern liberal mindset, and its appeal to equality, rights and acceptance is likely to make it attractive to some people.
It's worth unpacking. If we were to set it out as an argument it would look something like this:
a) There are just individuals with rights and desires.
b) The aim is to give equal treatment to each individual to pursue his desires.
c) The way to do this is to be non-judgemental, non-discriminatory and accepting.
Can this way of thinking about things work? One reason to think not is that individuals have any number of desires, some of them superficial and some deep, and many of them contradictory. How does the individual order these desires? There must ultimately be some basis for judging these desires and their value, otherwise the individual would live incoherently.
When it comes to the family, individuals do attempt to order their desires. They ask questions such as:
What do I owe my spouse and children?
What do I owe society?
What represents character?
What holds society together?
What are the higher forms of love?
How are children nurtured?
How is a child brought undamaged to adulthood?
I suggest the following alternative to the argument made by my liberal reader:
1) Individuals have a mass of contradictory desires.
2) The aim is to encourage individuals to best order these desires.
3) To do this the influence of culture, of personal experience, of reason and of conscience are significant in forming judgements.
There's one other issue I'd like to cover. There is a sense of "fragile identity" in my liberal reader's comment. It's as if he (she?) is declaring: I am my lifestyle choice. If you criticise my choice then you reject who I am - you reject me as a person.
I believe this to be wrong on two counts. First, the fact of being a person is not dependent on social attitudes. Our humanity is not contingent on what others think of us.
Second, one of the reasons for "judgement" is to throw off what is superficial or self-destructive and to reach toward higher forms of human identity. We won't help people reach toward these higher forms of identity by encouraging a culture in which all choices and all desires are equally accepted.
The oddest part of the story is that Clare wants her sperm donors to have "strong family values". How could a man donating sperm to a young single mother on welfare represent strong family values?
To my surprise one reader very much thought it possible, and wrote this comment to support his claim:
"Strong family values" means that he values every persons right and desire to have a family. Not that he thinks every family should be the perfect nuclear family. Families can be two mothers, two fathers, sole fathers or sole mothers. The old ideals need to be thrown out the window if we really want to have an equal society where every person, and every family is accepted, instead of judged as inadequate.
I can't dismiss this comment too casually. It expresses the modern liberal mindset, and its appeal to equality, rights and acceptance is likely to make it attractive to some people.
It's worth unpacking. If we were to set it out as an argument it would look something like this:
a) There are just individuals with rights and desires.
b) The aim is to give equal treatment to each individual to pursue his desires.
c) The way to do this is to be non-judgemental, non-discriminatory and accepting.
Can this way of thinking about things work? One reason to think not is that individuals have any number of desires, some of them superficial and some deep, and many of them contradictory. How does the individual order these desires? There must ultimately be some basis for judging these desires and their value, otherwise the individual would live incoherently.
When it comes to the family, individuals do attempt to order their desires. They ask questions such as:
What do I owe my spouse and children?
What do I owe society?
What represents character?
What holds society together?
What are the higher forms of love?
How are children nurtured?
How is a child brought undamaged to adulthood?
I suggest the following alternative to the argument made by my liberal reader:
1) Individuals have a mass of contradictory desires.
2) The aim is to encourage individuals to best order these desires.
3) To do this the influence of culture, of personal experience, of reason and of conscience are significant in forming judgements.
There's one other issue I'd like to cover. There is a sense of "fragile identity" in my liberal reader's comment. It's as if he (she?) is declaring: I am my lifestyle choice. If you criticise my choice then you reject who I am - you reject me as a person.
I believe this to be wrong on two counts. First, the fact of being a person is not dependent on social attitudes. Our humanity is not contingent on what others think of us.
Second, one of the reasons for "judgement" is to throw off what is superficial or self-destructive and to reach toward higher forms of human identity. We won't help people reach toward these higher forms of identity by encouraging a culture in which all choices and all desires are equally accepted.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Farmers in court for growing crops
Via Lawrence Auster comes the latest news from Zimbabwe:
So the situation in Zimbabwe is this: the last remaining whites are being driven from their farms, the land is being redistributed to government cronies, leaving a third of the population dependent on international charity.
Zimbabwe has descended to the depths in a single generation and South Africa, which is plagued now by violent crime, corruption and attacks on white farmers, isn't far behind.
The lesson is that you can't take your security, your prosperity or even your civilisation for granted. We don't live in the kind of world in which you can hand over power and expect to be treated justly.
Ten white farmers appeared in court in Zimbabwe yesterday accused of growing crops on their land — in a country where millions of people will need food aid within the next few months ...
Since 2000, when the government began seizing white-owned farms, many of them violently, the agricultural sector has collapsed and the economy has gone into freefall, with inflation now at 6,600 per cent, the highest in the world.
The World Food Programme estimates that it will be feeding 4.1 million Zimbabweans, one third of the population, by the end of the year.
Now the Chegutu group is charged with violating the Consequential Provisions Act, which gave the few hundred remaining white farmers a final deadline of Sep 30 to leave their land and homes.
The farmers ... have already given two-thirds of their farms to the government for resettlement ... They pleaded not guilty and face up to two years in prison if convicted ...
Didymus Mutasa, the lands minister, has said that the few hundred remaining white farmers will be forced out, one way or another.
"The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites," he said recently. "Too many blacks are still clamouring for land and we will resettle them on the remaining farms."
In fact many farms were given to members of the government and their cronies, and one minister has admitted that the new farmers have failed in their cultivation efforts.
Outside the court, the scruffy shops of Chegutu were empty of basic foods, and street vendors sold small, sour oranges.
They came from a once-prolific citrus farm in the district now devastated after it was seized by Bright Matonga, the deputy information minister, earlier this year.
So the situation in Zimbabwe is this: the last remaining whites are being driven from their farms, the land is being redistributed to government cronies, leaving a third of the population dependent on international charity.
Zimbabwe has descended to the depths in a single generation and South Africa, which is plagued now by violent crime, corruption and attacks on white farmers, isn't far behind.
The lesson is that you can't take your security, your prosperity or even your civilisation for granted. We don't live in the kind of world in which you can hand over power and expect to be treated justly.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
A civilisational mind
Ann Peacock writes what is effectively a woman's page for the Herald Sun. Some weeks ago she wrote an article on grandparents (Grand Tradition Failing, 26/08/07), in which she proved able to think her way out of modernist liberalism. How did she do it?
She did several things which modernists are usually reluctant to do:
a) She recognised an important good in her own experience (the relationship between grandchild and grandparent).
b) She recognised that this is not just an individual, subjective good but something real and objectively true, and therefore likely to be enjoyed by others too.
c) She recognised that this good has been harmed by an exaggerated emphasis on individual autonomy and that therefore autonomy shouldn't rule as the sole, overriding, organising principle of society.
Ann Peacock didn't draw out these points as I've done, but you can see them at work in her article:
This is very different to the usual liberal way of treating such matters, which is to assume that we are dealing with subjective preferences, each of which must be treated as being equally valid in order to avoid charges of discrimination, inequality, power domination or exclusion.
What if Ann Peacock is right? What if there does exist, as a particular objective good, a close and natural bond between grandchild and grandparent, which is important in nurturing the individual?
I do believe that such a bond exists, having witnessed the love of my own young son for his nan.
In this case, one social arrangement is not as good as another. To prefer one social arrangement, in which we maximise the opportunity for a particular good, is not an act of domination or exclusion, nor is it to be condemned as an infringement of equality.
You cannot have a functioning civilisation without recognising a set of distinct goods and what is required to preserve those goods. Ann Peacock does this, which makes her writing, in this case at least, seem unusually clear and mature.
She did several things which modernists are usually reluctant to do:
a) She recognised an important good in her own experience (the relationship between grandchild and grandparent).
b) She recognised that this is not just an individual, subjective good but something real and objectively true, and therefore likely to be enjoyed by others too.
c) She recognised that this good has been harmed by an exaggerated emphasis on individual autonomy and that therefore autonomy shouldn't rule as the sole, overriding, organising principle of society.
Ann Peacock didn't draw out these points as I've done, but you can see them at work in her article:
I wrote a few weeks ago about a sensational fundraising night - Nanna's night ... I wrote about how beautiful my Grandma and Nanny's memories are to me - sometimes, I think, even more so than ever, especially as I reflect on how our society has changed.
How, due to the trend toward delaying motherhood until we are in our late 30s or even early 40s, we are, by default, playing with fire and eradicating the whole grandparent phenomenon.
I mean, as we were striving to fit and balance our wonderfully successful single lifestyle with a career, and deeming pregnancy as something to be explored later, what we seem to have also been doing is denying our children the experience of grandparents.
Seeing this in so many people I know devastates me, particularly as I believe that love and wisdom of grandparents, along with the unconditional care from immediate families, are responsible for the nurturing of your soul.
Like so many others my age or older, many of my favourite memories of growing up are my grandparent memories ...
Some children in future generations will never know the complexities of that relationship between old and young and I do wonder what the ramifications of that gap will be.
This is very different to the usual liberal way of treating such matters, which is to assume that we are dealing with subjective preferences, each of which must be treated as being equally valid in order to avoid charges of discrimination, inequality, power domination or exclusion.
What if Ann Peacock is right? What if there does exist, as a particular objective good, a close and natural bond between grandchild and grandparent, which is important in nurturing the individual?
I do believe that such a bond exists, having witnessed the love of my own young son for his nan.
In this case, one social arrangement is not as good as another. To prefer one social arrangement, in which we maximise the opportunity for a particular good, is not an act of domination or exclusion, nor is it to be condemned as an infringement of equality.
You cannot have a functioning civilisation without recognising a set of distinct goods and what is required to preserve those goods. Ann Peacock does this, which makes her writing, in this case at least, seem unusually clear and mature.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Government suspends African refugee intake
The Herald Sun has described it as a "race storm". There has been much debate about the Government's decision to limit Africans to 30% of the refugee intake and to suspend any further refugee intake from Africa until July of next year.
Some on the left are claiming that it is merely a cynical election ploy. Although it's possible that the Government has publicised its policy to win votes, the policy has been in place for some time and is in line with the longstanding right-liberal attitude to migration.
In short, Australian right-liberals believe in high levels of immigration plus assimilation (often phrased now as "integration"). They want migrants to assimilate into the mainstream tradition, and so tend to take a positive view of the existing Anglo culture.
Left-liberals also believe in high levels of immigration but are more likely to support multiculturalism. Left-liberals often take a dim view of the existing Anglo culture as racist and oppressive; they tend therefore to value the immigrant cultures against the mainstream.
Given the right-liberal preference for high immigration plus assimilation, the Government policy is no surprise. There is evidence that African refugees aren't integrating well, so the Government has shifted places to Iraqis and Burmese without reducing overall numbers.
A recent column by Alan Wood is typical of right-liberal thinking on this issue. As you would expect, he argues for assimilation and against multiculturalism. He reminds us that the multiculturalists have denigrated the mainstream population:
He quotes historian John Hirst, who wrote of mainstream Australian society in these years that:
Wood complains that this multiculturalist disparagement of the mainstream led to a loss of public support for high immigration.
Wood then turns to research on immigration by Professor Putnam which shows:
Wood takes this as evidence not that immigration should be limited, but as:
So debate on immigration in Australia is restricted to the leftist preference for high immigration plus multiculturalism and the right-wing alternative of high immigration plus assimilation.
I doubt if either side is prepared for the real consequences of high immigration. In Britain the left has been unable to sustain the multicultural ideal after a series of race riots and terror attacks. The Labor Party leadership, and the official race relation organisations, have had to advocate compulsory forms of assimilation.
Similarly, the right is likely to find that once immigrant numbers reach a certain level assimilation won't happen on the terms they expect. A looming example of this is the possibility of Prime Minister Howard losing his own seat in the forthcoming election, despite giving so much to the East Asian immigrants in his electorate.
Some on the left are claiming that it is merely a cynical election ploy. Although it's possible that the Government has publicised its policy to win votes, the policy has been in place for some time and is in line with the longstanding right-liberal attitude to migration.
In short, Australian right-liberals believe in high levels of immigration plus assimilation (often phrased now as "integration"). They want migrants to assimilate into the mainstream tradition, and so tend to take a positive view of the existing Anglo culture.
Left-liberals also believe in high levels of immigration but are more likely to support multiculturalism. Left-liberals often take a dim view of the existing Anglo culture as racist and oppressive; they tend therefore to value the immigrant cultures against the mainstream.
Given the right-liberal preference for high immigration plus assimilation, the Government policy is no surprise. There is evidence that African refugees aren't integrating well, so the Government has shifted places to Iraqis and Burmese without reducing overall numbers.
A recent column by Alan Wood is typical of right-liberal thinking on this issue. As you would expect, he argues for assimilation and against multiculturalism. He reminds us that the multiculturalists have denigrated the mainstream population:
In the Labor years it was the role of cosmopolitan elites to keep ordinary, red-necked Australians and their inherent racism on the straight and narrow. It was an era of stifling political correctness, where critics were howled down with cries of racist by the cosmopolitan internationalist elites of the progressive Left.
He quotes historian John Hirst, who wrote of mainstream Australian society in these years that:
Its right to primacy was denied; indeed, it became the most suspect of all ethnic groups given its atrocious past.
Wood complains that this multiculturalist disparagement of the mainstream led to a loss of public support for high immigration.
Wood then turns to research on immigration by Professor Putnam which shows:
that over several decades immigration and ethnic diversity lead to mistrust, challenge social solidarity, break down community and are poison to social capital.
Wood takes this as evidence not that immigration should be limited, but as:
a powerful argument against multicultural practices that encourage ethnic separatism and discourage assimilation
So debate on immigration in Australia is restricted to the leftist preference for high immigration plus multiculturalism and the right-wing alternative of high immigration plus assimilation.
I doubt if either side is prepared for the real consequences of high immigration. In Britain the left has been unable to sustain the multicultural ideal after a series of race riots and terror attacks. The Labor Party leadership, and the official race relation organisations, have had to advocate compulsory forms of assimilation.
Similarly, the right is likely to find that once immigrant numbers reach a certain level assimilation won't happen on the terms they expect. A looming example of this is the possibility of Prime Minister Howard losing his own seat in the forthcoming election, despite giving so much to the East Asian immigrants in his electorate.
Are diverse suburbs vibrant or boring?
9000 Melbournians were asked to list the most boring suburbs in their city. The results? Broadmeadows, Dandenong, Melton and Footscray were voted the least interesting places.
If you live in Melbourne you'll know straightaway the significance of these results. Broadmeadows, Dandenong and Footscray are arguably the three most ethnically diverse, multicultural suburbs in Melbourne (Melton is an outlying satellite suburb).
For many years we've been told that it was the more traditional suburbs which were boring and that diversity would enrich them and make them more vibrant and interesting. As recently as August, Tony Calma ran this kind of line in defending multiculturalism:
It seems that the very opposite is true. The more ethnically diverse a suburb is the more likely it is to be rated as boring.
If you live in Melbourne you'll know straightaway the significance of these results. Broadmeadows, Dandenong and Footscray are arguably the three most ethnically diverse, multicultural suburbs in Melbourne (Melton is an outlying satellite suburb).
For many years we've been told that it was the more traditional suburbs which were boring and that diversity would enrich them and make them more vibrant and interesting. As recently as August, Tony Calma ran this kind of line in defending multiculturalism:
Australia is one of the most diverse nations on earth ... The interaction between our cultures is producing new, exciting ways of life and relationships.
It seems that the very opposite is true. The more ethnically diverse a suburb is the more likely it is to be rated as boring.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Clare the modern girl heroine?
Clare Edwards is a young Perth woman who loves children - she wants 11 of her own. She thinks a reasonable way of achieving this aim is to advertise in her local paper for a sperm donor and then raise her children on welfare as a single mother.
She's already had one child this way and has now advertised for sperm for a second.
She hasn't exactly been discouraged by those around her. Her grandmother has supported her on the grounds that she has made "a considered choice". Grandma, it seems, has picked up on the modernist idea that what counts in deciding whether an action is moral or not is "agency". The overriding good, in this view, is my autonomy as an individual; therefore, it's not so much what I choose that matters, but that my choice is informed and uncoerced.
Clare has also been supported by her local paper, the Subiaco Post, which has praised her as representing the "independent and can-do spirit of her generation, young people unbounded by the conventions of older generations".
Here we descend even deeper into liberal autonomy theory. According to this theory, we must be self-determining to achieve a full human status. This rules out a great many things: we can no longer be defined at all by our sex or ethnicity, as these are qualities we inherit rather than choose for ourselves.
Similarly, convention will be thought of negatively as a constraint on self-determination, rather than being judged in its different parts as being of positive or negative value.
So Clare appears to some as a heroine: as someone who makes her own choices, who is independent of men, and who is unbounded by convention.
She is so immersed in modern culture that she appears to be unconscious that anything might be amiss in what she has set out to do. Not only does she believe that she's "not denying her children anything" (such as a father), she's stated that she has chosen the sperm donor on the basis of his "strong family values".
Clare believes in strong family values, but accepts single motherhood supported by the state as an ideal model of family life. She is backed in this belief by other members of her family, by her local paper and even by the Government, which has sanctioned the ideal of a fatherless family by funding IVF treatment for lesbian couples and single women.
There are still some voices raised in protest. Bettina Arndt has written an article on Clare Edwards for the Herald Sun, which defends the convention of "Believing that children are better off with two parents" and which points to the disadvantage of children growing up without fathers.
The problem is that Clare is acting in line with the underlying principles of modern society, so Western culture is likely to continue to shift her way until these principles are effectively challenged.
She's already had one child this way and has now advertised for sperm for a second.
She hasn't exactly been discouraged by those around her. Her grandmother has supported her on the grounds that she has made "a considered choice". Grandma, it seems, has picked up on the modernist idea that what counts in deciding whether an action is moral or not is "agency". The overriding good, in this view, is my autonomy as an individual; therefore, it's not so much what I choose that matters, but that my choice is informed and uncoerced.
Clare has also been supported by her local paper, the Subiaco Post, which has praised her as representing the "independent and can-do spirit of her generation, young people unbounded by the conventions of older generations".
Here we descend even deeper into liberal autonomy theory. According to this theory, we must be self-determining to achieve a full human status. This rules out a great many things: we can no longer be defined at all by our sex or ethnicity, as these are qualities we inherit rather than choose for ourselves.
Similarly, convention will be thought of negatively as a constraint on self-determination, rather than being judged in its different parts as being of positive or negative value.
So Clare appears to some as a heroine: as someone who makes her own choices, who is independent of men, and who is unbounded by convention.
She is so immersed in modern culture that she appears to be unconscious that anything might be amiss in what she has set out to do. Not only does she believe that she's "not denying her children anything" (such as a father), she's stated that she has chosen the sperm donor on the basis of his "strong family values".
Clare believes in strong family values, but accepts single motherhood supported by the state as an ideal model of family life. She is backed in this belief by other members of her family, by her local paper and even by the Government, which has sanctioned the ideal of a fatherless family by funding IVF treatment for lesbian couples and single women.
There are still some voices raised in protest. Bettina Arndt has written an article on Clare Edwards for the Herald Sun, which defends the convention of "Believing that children are better off with two parents" and which points to the disadvantage of children growing up without fathers.
The problem is that Clare is acting in line with the underlying principles of modern society, so Western culture is likely to continue to shift her way until these principles are effectively challenged.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
The new happy family?
The Australian lesbian couple who sued their IVF obstetrician because they ended up with two babies instead of one generated a lot of media coverage last week - most of it unfavourable.
One of the more revealing comments came, I think, in an editorial in The Australian, which is the more right-liberal of the Australian daily papers. The editorialist thought that the lesbian couple should have taken a more positive view of their situation:
This kind of comment is pretty typical of right-liberal politics in Australia. Whereas left-liberals see themselves as dissenters and criticise society for having failed liberal principles, right-liberals talk up how much society has progressed in line with liberal values.
Right-liberalism might well appeal to those who have outgrown and become weary of a dissenting phase in life. However, if right-liberalism is the furthest "right" that politics goes, then society is in trouble.
Take the issue at hand. The editorialist thinks it's a great thing that lesbian couples and single mothers can access government funded IVF in Australia. What this IVF policy means, of course, is that society has officially accepted the idea that fathers aren't necessary to family life.
We aren't talking here about widowed or divorced women who attempted to follow the ideal of their children having a father in the home, but ended up in different circumstances. Instead, we're talking about the Government funding women to deliberately create fatherless families.
Once the idea of fatherlessness is officially sanctioned in this way, further assaults on the traditional family are inevitable. Perhaps one small example of what's to come is the recent Coles supermarket advertisement.
This begins as a classic happy family ad. Mum and the kids are caught in the rain and dash into Coles to do the shopping. Then they're shown safely at home, sitting around the table enjoying a hearty family meal prepared by a radiant mum.
But there's no dad. Maybe we're supposed to assume that he's hard at work somewhere supporting the family. Perhaps he'll show up in a later ad. I wonder, though, if Coles is attempting to appeal in this ad to a single mother audience.
If we do shift toward a culture in which the fatherless family becomes an accepted norm, expect poorer, working-class men to be hit hardest. Expect, too, less stable forms of marriage to develop, as it won't be thought to matter as much as it once did if mothers eject fathers from the family, or if fathers themselves walk away from family responsibilities.
I can't see either left-liberals or right-liberals countering any such negative trends. To secure change, we need to break free from the limitations of current understandings of left and right toward a genuinely non-liberal alternative.
One of the more revealing comments came, I think, in an editorial in The Australian, which is the more right-liberal of the Australian daily papers. The editorialist thought that the lesbian couple should have taken a more positive view of their situation:
This couple has so many blessings: they have each other to love; two incomes; two babies, and they live in a society where they are able to get IVF treatment, much of it free, regardless of sexual orientation or marital status.
This kind of comment is pretty typical of right-liberal politics in Australia. Whereas left-liberals see themselves as dissenters and criticise society for having failed liberal principles, right-liberals talk up how much society has progressed in line with liberal values.
Right-liberalism might well appeal to those who have outgrown and become weary of a dissenting phase in life. However, if right-liberalism is the furthest "right" that politics goes, then society is in trouble.
Take the issue at hand. The editorialist thinks it's a great thing that lesbian couples and single mothers can access government funded IVF in Australia. What this IVF policy means, of course, is that society has officially accepted the idea that fathers aren't necessary to family life.
We aren't talking here about widowed or divorced women who attempted to follow the ideal of their children having a father in the home, but ended up in different circumstances. Instead, we're talking about the Government funding women to deliberately create fatherless families.
Once the idea of fatherlessness is officially sanctioned in this way, further assaults on the traditional family are inevitable. Perhaps one small example of what's to come is the recent Coles supermarket advertisement.
This begins as a classic happy family ad. Mum and the kids are caught in the rain and dash into Coles to do the shopping. Then they're shown safely at home, sitting around the table enjoying a hearty family meal prepared by a radiant mum.
But there's no dad. Maybe we're supposed to assume that he's hard at work somewhere supporting the family. Perhaps he'll show up in a later ad. I wonder, though, if Coles is attempting to appeal in this ad to a single mother audience.
If we do shift toward a culture in which the fatherless family becomes an accepted norm, expect poorer, working-class men to be hit hardest. Expect, too, less stable forms of marriage to develop, as it won't be thought to matter as much as it once did if mothers eject fathers from the family, or if fathers themselves walk away from family responsibilities.
I can't see either left-liberals or right-liberals countering any such negative trends. To secure change, we need to break free from the limitations of current understandings of left and right toward a genuinely non-liberal alternative.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Learning from MASH
I learnt a rather curious fact by watching, of all things, an episode of the TV comedy show MASH.
The episode, The Red/White Blues, first screened in 1981. The plot is that the malaria season is about to descend on the MASH unit (during the Korean War, sometime between 1950 and 1953).
There are no stocks available of the usual anti-malaria drug, so the unit is sent a case of primaquine, a malaria suppressant. Colonel Potter isn't happy, and asks "What about the negroes?"
It turns out that those of black African descent can't be given primaquine, as it was known to give them hemolytic anemia. Everyone else is given the medicine, but Corporal Klinger (of Lebanese ancestry) and several others become sick. He is thought to be malingering, but is later diagnosed to be suffering from hemolytic anemia. We're told at the end of the episode that by the late 1950s it was also recognised that people of Mediterranean descent were unable to tolerate primaquine.
Why is this significant? As I mentioned in my last post on whiteness studies, modern liberals often deny the real, biological existence of race. Instead they prefer to view race as a social construct.
One of the arguments often made against the 'social construct' view of race is that modern medical science is finding that there are drugs which work effectively with some races but not others. Therefore, the real, biological existence of race is being accepted (and put to scientific use) by medical researchers at the very time it is denied by certain liberal academics.
What the MASH episode reveals is that knowledge of the biological differences between the races has been known to medical researchers since at least the early 1950s. It's not new knowledge after all. The reality of such differences was accepted in an uncomplicated way by the liberal scriptwriters of MASH as late as the early 1980s.
Race denial is an expression of how latter-day liberals would like things to be; it tells us something about ideological preferences rather than the larger developments within medical science.
The episode, The Red/White Blues, first screened in 1981. The plot is that the malaria season is about to descend on the MASH unit (during the Korean War, sometime between 1950 and 1953).
There are no stocks available of the usual anti-malaria drug, so the unit is sent a case of primaquine, a malaria suppressant. Colonel Potter isn't happy, and asks "What about the negroes?"
It turns out that those of black African descent can't be given primaquine, as it was known to give them hemolytic anemia. Everyone else is given the medicine, but Corporal Klinger (of Lebanese ancestry) and several others become sick. He is thought to be malingering, but is later diagnosed to be suffering from hemolytic anemia. We're told at the end of the episode that by the late 1950s it was also recognised that people of Mediterranean descent were unable to tolerate primaquine.
Why is this significant? As I mentioned in my last post on whiteness studies, modern liberals often deny the real, biological existence of race. Instead they prefer to view race as a social construct.
One of the arguments often made against the 'social construct' view of race is that modern medical science is finding that there are drugs which work effectively with some races but not others. Therefore, the real, biological existence of race is being accepted (and put to scientific use) by medical researchers at the very time it is denied by certain liberal academics.
What the MASH episode reveals is that knowledge of the biological differences between the races has been known to medical researchers since at least the early 1950s. It's not new knowledge after all. The reality of such differences was accepted in an uncomplicated way by the liberal scriptwriters of MASH as late as the early 1980s.
Race denial is an expression of how latter-day liberals would like things to be; it tells us something about ideological preferences rather than the larger developments within medical science.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Whiteness studies
I wrote this article for the Autumn 2007 edition of The Independent Australian. It draws on a number of pieces written earlier for Oz Conservative.
Ten years ago there were no such courses. Now “whiteness studies” is being taught at over 30 American campuses. In Australia too there are academics teaching this subject; in 2003 they formed their own whiteness studies association.
So what is it? In short, it’s a field of studies based on the theory that whites invented the idea of biological race in order to oppress indigenous peoples and to benefit from unearned privileges.
An Australian whiteness theorist, Damien Riggs, has summarized the new field of studies as follows:
What is the effect of these studies on white students? One young Australian woman, Veronica Coen, tells us that her whiteness studies course led her,
She then,
Nado Aveling, who teaches whiteness studies to student teachers at Perth’s Murdoch University (it’s a mandatory part of the course) tells us of the students’ reactions that:
A social construct?
So whiteness studies confronts students with the claim that their identity is a false social construct, built around the oppression of Aborigines, and that the lives they lead are built unjustly on unearned privilege.
It’s a significant claim to make, but not one which is intellectually coherent. Even its starting point makes little sense.
Damien Riggs tells us that his approach “starts from an understanding of race as a social construction” and that we should reject “the legacy of ‘biological’ explanations of race”.
So we are meant to accept the idea that a “white race” exists not as a biological fact, but as a social construct – as something simply made up by society for its own purposes.
Why would someone make this claim, when it contradicts the visible evidence of a biologically existing white race? The answer has to do with certain intellectual assumptions existing within liberal modernism.
Liberal modernism asserts that to be fully human we must be autonomous in the sense that we are able to determine for ourselves who we are to be. Therefore, liberal modernists don’t like to recognise the existence of a “biological destiny” in which we are influenced in our identity by our sex or our race (or by other inherited or traditional qualities which we don’t choose for ourselves).
Liberal modernists therefore often prefer to believe that qualities like race are oppressive social constructs whose real existence can either be denied or made not to matter.
Inconsistency
Riggs is therefore following a modernist ideology in claiming that race is a social construct. However, even in ideological terms, this claim is incoherent.
Why? One reason is that whiteness theorists don’t simply want to declare race null and void. They want to pin down whites as guilty oppressors. Therefore, they are concerned to emphasise the idea of “whiteness” as a racial category at the same time as they deny the real existence of a white race.
To make this clear, whiteness theorists are strongly opposed to the idea of whites being race blind. They want to make whites more conscious of their “racialised” existence, whilst still claiming that there is no such thing as a really existing white race.
It’s a difficult distinction to hold and Damien Riggs himself warns that,
Similarly, whiteness theorists dismiss the idea of really existing races and yet they recognise Aborigines as a real entity, even to the extent of claiming that Aborigines are sovereign over other groups (Riggs states that “indigenous sovereignty is the ground on which we stand”).
Then there is the issue of “complicity”. Whiteness theorists don’t want to allow any escape routes by which whites can escape the guilt of their unearned privileges. Robinder Kaur, a whiteness theorist at York University has explained that for whites,
“there is no 'safe space', no haven of guiltlessness to retreat to.”
Therefore, whiteness theorists emphasise the idea of “complicity”: that all whites, even the whiteness theorists themselves, are complicit in white guilt. It is made clear that you are still complicit, even if you renounce all privilege, or choose to identify with Aborigines, or dedicate your life to anti-racist causes. You remain a guilty white.
This may serve a useful purpose within whiteness theory. However, it adds to the intellectual incoherence of whiteness studies. After all, the original purpose of liberal moderns declaring race to be a social construct was to allow individuals to autonomously choose their own multiple, fluid identities. Now, though, we have whiteness theorists, as liberal moderns, talking about whiteness as the most absolute, fixed and inescapable of racialised categories.
Whiteness theorists simply haven’t thought through such implications; they haven’t made a good enough effort to formulate a consistent ideology.
Privilege
Whiteness studies claims that all whites enjoy unearned privilege at the expense of indigenous peoples. How, though, is this claim justified?
Veronica Coen, the student I quoted above, thinks that white Australians benefited from Aboriginal labour in colonial times. This seems an unlikely explanation for the prosperity of modern Australia. Though Aboriginal labour was important in some areas of Australia, its economic importance overall must have been small compared even to white convict labour let alone to that of free settlers.
Even the claim that whites are privileged from having taken Aboriginal land has its problems. The prominent Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has pointed out that Aborigines who were never dispossessed of their land experience similar problems to those who were:
Pearson blames the dysfunction in Aboriginal communities not on whites having taken wealth from them, but rather on having given it to them in a misguided transfer of welfare money. He remembers a more intact community in the time before such transfers:
Pearson is exactly right to identify these social norms as being a real privilege. It’s much easier to prosper when you are surrounded by people with a strong family and work ethic. Whites who aren’t exposed to this ethic in their homes or communities tend to experience the same loss of living standard as non-whites do.
There is one other way in which whiteness theorists have tried to explain white privilege. According to Peggy McIntosh, an American writer, she experiences a daily privilege as a white person on the following grounds:
One way to criticise this approach is to point out that American blacks, who Peggy McIntosh is taking to be the oppressed group, don’t really have that much trouble finding their own areas to live in, or their own music, or food they like, or films and posters in which they feature.
The more important criticism, though, is once again a lack of coherence. White Americans are told endlessly that diversity is a blessing which will enrich their lives. Peggy McIntosh, though, is basing her case that whites are privileged on the idea that whites can more easily escape the effects of diversity than blacks.
In other words, to accept Peggy McIntosh’s argument requires us to believe that it is oppressive to live in diverse areas in which we are no longer the majority race. If this is the case, though, why would white Americans choose to accept diversity, if the consequences are really so undesirable?
In fact, the logical consequences of Peggy McIntosh’s argument go much further than this. If I lived in a country with a million white people, but not a single non-white, then I would not be privileged and I would not need to feel guilt about my existence. However, if a single non-white was allowed to live in my country, then I would be privileged in comparison to them, I would breach the morality of modern equality, and my identity would be called into question.
It seems to me that Peggy McIntosh needs to reconsider her intellectual assumptions as they lead her to political absurdities.
Identity
What else is wrong with whiteness studies? Remember Robinder Kaur? She was the Sikh woman I quoted above who told whites that there was no escape from their guilt.
As it happens, Robinder Kaur is an editor for a magazine called Kaurs. This magazine celebrates the identity of Sikh women as follows:
And how does the magazine think that the Sikh community has prospered? The editor thinks that life is full of challenges, which leads to this advice:
So we have here a clear double standard. For Robinder Kaur her own identity as a Sikh woman is a positive thing, and Sikhs are to think of their past as a “glorious heritage”. If Sikhs have done well it is due to hard work, confidence and dedication. For whites, though, there is only guilt. Our past is to be regarded negatively as a history of oppression of others, and our prosperity is unearned.
Obviously I don’t think whites should lamely accept such a double standard. It’s natural for Robinder Kaur to think of her own ethnic identity in positive terms, and we should follow her lead in regarding our own identity a similarly positive way. What kind of life would it be if we accepted the double standard in which our role, unlike others, was one of inescapable guilt? How could a psychologically healthy life be built on the assumptions of whiteness studies?
Racism
There’s one final issue to deal with. Whiteness theorists would regard themselves as being cutting edge anti-racists. Yet, in one further act of incoherence, it is they who are peddling a dangerous racism.
Whiteness theorists are creating a picture of whites as a “cosmic enemy”: as a force in the world standing in the way of justice and equality. Groups who are regarded this way shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves targeted for removal. Here, for instance, is the “solution” of Dr Noel Ignatiev, a Harvard academic and whiteness theorist, to the “problem” of whites:
The problem is that it’s not a few radical cranks pushing this line, but a growing academic movement within our universities. This movement has the power to influence the minds of students and to set an intellectual and political agenda. We should therefore be concerned about the appearance of whiteness studies and be ready to take up a political fight against it.
Ten years ago there were no such courses. Now “whiteness studies” is being taught at over 30 American campuses. In Australia too there are academics teaching this subject; in 2003 they formed their own whiteness studies association.
So what is it? In short, it’s a field of studies based on the theory that whites invented the idea of biological race in order to oppress indigenous peoples and to benefit from unearned privileges.
An Australian whiteness theorist, Damien Riggs, has summarized the new field of studies as follows:
Whiteness is seen as a thoroughly racialised project that aims to legitimate the authority of certain groups over others by drawing on a legacy of ‘biological’ explanations of race … Whilst this approach starts from an understanding of race as a social construction, it also acknowledges the very concrete ways in which race shapes experiences of oppression and privilege.
What is the effect of these studies on white students? One young Australian woman, Veronica Coen, tells us that her whiteness studies course led her,
to recognise that my privilege as an educated middle-class white woman was directly attributed to my ancestor’s theft of indigenous land and their exploitation
She then,
took a frightening journey into Australia’s violent history … The path was at times very distressing. My study journal was often wrinkled with tears.
Nado Aveling, who teaches whiteness studies to student teachers at Perth’s Murdoch University (it’s a mandatory part of the course) tells us of the students’ reactions that:
responses are often strongly emotional, and resistance, misunderstanding, frustration, anger and feelings of inefficacy may be the outcomes.
A social construct?
So whiteness studies confronts students with the claim that their identity is a false social construct, built around the oppression of Aborigines, and that the lives they lead are built unjustly on unearned privilege.
It’s a significant claim to make, but not one which is intellectually coherent. Even its starting point makes little sense.
Damien Riggs tells us that his approach “starts from an understanding of race as a social construction” and that we should reject “the legacy of ‘biological’ explanations of race”.
So we are meant to accept the idea that a “white race” exists not as a biological fact, but as a social construct – as something simply made up by society for its own purposes.
Why would someone make this claim, when it contradicts the visible evidence of a biologically existing white race? The answer has to do with certain intellectual assumptions existing within liberal modernism.
Liberal modernism asserts that to be fully human we must be autonomous in the sense that we are able to determine for ourselves who we are to be. Therefore, liberal modernists don’t like to recognise the existence of a “biological destiny” in which we are influenced in our identity by our sex or our race (or by other inherited or traditional qualities which we don’t choose for ourselves).
Liberal modernists therefore often prefer to believe that qualities like race are oppressive social constructs whose real existence can either be denied or made not to matter.
Inconsistency
Riggs is therefore following a modernist ideology in claiming that race is a social construct. However, even in ideological terms, this claim is incoherent.
Why? One reason is that whiteness theorists don’t simply want to declare race null and void. They want to pin down whites as guilty oppressors. Therefore, they are concerned to emphasise the idea of “whiteness” as a racial category at the same time as they deny the real existence of a white race.
To make this clear, whiteness theorists are strongly opposed to the idea of whites being race blind. They want to make whites more conscious of their “racialised” existence, whilst still claiming that there is no such thing as a really existing white race.
It’s a difficult distinction to hold and Damien Riggs himself warns that,
It is important to recognise that in talking about race we run the risk of reifying race as a ‘real entity’
Similarly, whiteness theorists dismiss the idea of really existing races and yet they recognise Aborigines as a real entity, even to the extent of claiming that Aborigines are sovereign over other groups (Riggs states that “indigenous sovereignty is the ground on which we stand”).
Then there is the issue of “complicity”. Whiteness theorists don’t want to allow any escape routes by which whites can escape the guilt of their unearned privileges. Robinder Kaur, a whiteness theorist at York University has explained that for whites,
“there is no 'safe space', no haven of guiltlessness to retreat to.”
Therefore, whiteness theorists emphasise the idea of “complicity”: that all whites, even the whiteness theorists themselves, are complicit in white guilt. It is made clear that you are still complicit, even if you renounce all privilege, or choose to identify with Aborigines, or dedicate your life to anti-racist causes. You remain a guilty white.
This may serve a useful purpose within whiteness theory. However, it adds to the intellectual incoherence of whiteness studies. After all, the original purpose of liberal moderns declaring race to be a social construct was to allow individuals to autonomously choose their own multiple, fluid identities. Now, though, we have whiteness theorists, as liberal moderns, talking about whiteness as the most absolute, fixed and inescapable of racialised categories.
Whiteness theorists simply haven’t thought through such implications; they haven’t made a good enough effort to formulate a consistent ideology.
Privilege
Whiteness studies claims that all whites enjoy unearned privilege at the expense of indigenous peoples. How, though, is this claim justified?
Veronica Coen, the student I quoted above, thinks that white Australians benefited from Aboriginal labour in colonial times. This seems an unlikely explanation for the prosperity of modern Australia. Though Aboriginal labour was important in some areas of Australia, its economic importance overall must have been small compared even to white convict labour let alone to that of free settlers.
Even the claim that whites are privileged from having taken Aboriginal land has its problems. The prominent Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has pointed out that Aborigines who were never dispossessed of their land experience similar problems to those who were:
the problems are pretty similar between communities that have never been dispossessed of their land – like in the western Cape York peninsula – and those that had been positively uprooted. It wasn’t about poverty, and it wasn’t about land, and it wasn’t about the degree of trauma experienced in history.
Pearson blames the dysfunction in Aboriginal communities not on whites having taken wealth from them, but rather on having given it to them in a misguided transfer of welfare money. He remembers a more intact community in the time before such transfers:
Everybody in Hope Vale of my generation or older grew up in a family, or household, where parents worked hard, the kids were looked after. They were bequeathed a real privilege.
Pearson is exactly right to identify these social norms as being a real privilege. It’s much easier to prosper when you are surrounded by people with a strong family and work ethic. Whites who aren’t exposed to this ethic in their homes or communities tend to experience the same loss of living standard as non-whites do.
There is one other way in which whiteness theorists have tried to explain white privilege. According to Peggy McIntosh, an American writer, she experiences a daily privilege as a white person on the following grounds:
- I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
- I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my own race widely represented.
- I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions
- I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my own race.
- I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my own race.
One way to criticise this approach is to point out that American blacks, who Peggy McIntosh is taking to be the oppressed group, don’t really have that much trouble finding their own areas to live in, or their own music, or food they like, or films and posters in which they feature.
The more important criticism, though, is once again a lack of coherence. White Americans are told endlessly that diversity is a blessing which will enrich their lives. Peggy McIntosh, though, is basing her case that whites are privileged on the idea that whites can more easily escape the effects of diversity than blacks.
In other words, to accept Peggy McIntosh’s argument requires us to believe that it is oppressive to live in diverse areas in which we are no longer the majority race. If this is the case, though, why would white Americans choose to accept diversity, if the consequences are really so undesirable?
In fact, the logical consequences of Peggy McIntosh’s argument go much further than this. If I lived in a country with a million white people, but not a single non-white, then I would not be privileged and I would not need to feel guilt about my existence. However, if a single non-white was allowed to live in my country, then I would be privileged in comparison to them, I would breach the morality of modern equality, and my identity would be called into question.
It seems to me that Peggy McIntosh needs to reconsider her intellectual assumptions as they lead her to political absurdities.
Identity
What else is wrong with whiteness studies? Remember Robinder Kaur? She was the Sikh woman I quoted above who told whites that there was no escape from their guilt.
As it happens, Robinder Kaur is an editor for a magazine called Kaurs. This magazine celebrates the identity of Sikh women as follows:
The magazine will encourage the Sikh woman to rediscover herself in the light of the glorious heritage and current meritorious achievements of the Sikh community.
And how does the magazine think that the Sikh community has prospered? The editor thinks that life is full of challenges, which leads to this advice:
... how to overcome these challenges and emerge as a winner? Hard work, confidence, dedication and, of course, the blessings of the Almighty are a sure recipe for success.
So we have here a clear double standard. For Robinder Kaur her own identity as a Sikh woman is a positive thing, and Sikhs are to think of their past as a “glorious heritage”. If Sikhs have done well it is due to hard work, confidence and dedication. For whites, though, there is only guilt. Our past is to be regarded negatively as a history of oppression of others, and our prosperity is unearned.
Obviously I don’t think whites should lamely accept such a double standard. It’s natural for Robinder Kaur to think of her own ethnic identity in positive terms, and we should follow her lead in regarding our own identity a similarly positive way. What kind of life would it be if we accepted the double standard in which our role, unlike others, was one of inescapable guilt? How could a psychologically healthy life be built on the assumptions of whiteness studies?
Racism
There’s one final issue to deal with. Whiteness theorists would regard themselves as being cutting edge anti-racists. Yet, in one further act of incoherence, it is they who are peddling a dangerous racism.
Whiteness theorists are creating a picture of whites as a “cosmic enemy”: as a force in the world standing in the way of justice and equality. Groups who are regarded this way shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves targeted for removal. Here, for instance, is the “solution” of Dr Noel Ignatiev, a Harvard academic and whiteness theorist, to the “problem” of whites:
The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race.
... The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition.
... we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed – not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.
... treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.
The problem is that it’s not a few radical cranks pushing this line, but a growing academic movement within our universities. This movement has the power to influence the minds of students and to set an intellectual and political agenda. We should therefore be concerned about the appearance of whiteness studies and be ready to take up a political fight against it.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Giving inclusion a twist
Last week Peter Costello outlined the goals of the Liberal Party if re-elected for a fifth term. Much of what he said was based on the idea that it is our role in the market which matters. For instance, he called for greater "inclusion and opportunity" by which he meant treating mentally and physically disabled people so that they could return to the labour market:
Similarly, he wants more old people and women to participate in the labour force:
Costello is no doubt right that there are people whose lives might improve through better access to employment. Even so, the assumption seems to be that it is our representation in the market which is the measure of our progress. Costello is veering toward a view of the individual as Economic Man - as man seen primarily in terms of his economic function.
Which isn't so surprising for a member of the Liberal Party. Most politicians, whether left-wing or right-wing, are liberal modernists in the sense of assuming individuals to be autonomous, abstracted individuals, each pursuing his own desires.
A key question for liberals is how a society made up of such individuals can hold together. Left-liberals generally believe that society can be managed by the neutral expertise of state bureaucrats. Right-liberals believe, ingeniously, that individuals can pursue their own selfish ends in a market and that the hidden hand of the market will ensure that such activity works out for the overall progress and profit of society.
However, the right-liberal idea can only work conceptually when it is activity within the market which is under consideration. So there's a reason for right-liberals to focus on individuals in terms of their market activity.
If Costello does become the next leader of the Liberal Party, the signs are that he will follow a right-liberal politics. Perhaps the best that conservatives can hope for is that he will be more of a pragmatist than an ideologue, and so not drive the liberal agenda as hard as some other politicians.
There are some people that have health problems which are entirely treatable and which, if they are treated, they can return to the workforce and lead a meaningful working life. Let's use our economic strength to treat some of these people so they can enjoy inclusion in mainstream economic life.
Similarly, he wants more old people and women to participate in the labour force:
"a lot more people seek to work today. The participation rate is much higher - it's 65 per cent -" ... But there are still groups under-represented in the work-force, to some degree women - although there has been a huge leap in their participation - and mature workers, though thinking towards them has changed.
Costello is no doubt right that there are people whose lives might improve through better access to employment. Even so, the assumption seems to be that it is our representation in the market which is the measure of our progress. Costello is veering toward a view of the individual as Economic Man - as man seen primarily in terms of his economic function.
Which isn't so surprising for a member of the Liberal Party. Most politicians, whether left-wing or right-wing, are liberal modernists in the sense of assuming individuals to be autonomous, abstracted individuals, each pursuing his own desires.
A key question for liberals is how a society made up of such individuals can hold together. Left-liberals generally believe that society can be managed by the neutral expertise of state bureaucrats. Right-liberals believe, ingeniously, that individuals can pursue their own selfish ends in a market and that the hidden hand of the market will ensure that such activity works out for the overall progress and profit of society.
However, the right-liberal idea can only work conceptually when it is activity within the market which is under consideration. So there's a reason for right-liberals to focus on individuals in terms of their market activity.
If Costello does become the next leader of the Liberal Party, the signs are that he will follow a right-liberal politics. Perhaps the best that conservatives can hope for is that he will be more of a pragmatist than an ideologue, and so not drive the liberal agenda as hard as some other politicians.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The problem of the inner woman
What happens when things just don't work out as they were supposed to? Some feminists are now confronting this very problem.
Take a recent article by Laura Kipnis, an American professor of media studies. It was introduced by the following subtitle:
What answer does she give? Ordinarily, a feminist would blame the patriarchy. The usual argument runs as follows: the primary aim of life is autonomy; men have established a patriarchy to dominate women; women are therefore oppressed by a social system in which men are autonomous but women are dependent; the pursuit of justice, freedom and equality therefore requires women to become independent of men, especially through the pursuit of careers.
Kipnis is strongly influenced by this orthodox view:
The problem is that women still don't seem liberated. Kipnis thinks that modern women feel such a lack of control and sense of inadequacy that a whole self-help industry has sprung up to tell women how to live their lives.
This is where it gets particularly interesting. Kipnis believes that feminism has hit a brick wall because of a conflict between the goal of feminism (autonomy) and the "inner woman" (femininity):
Kipnis herself would prefer to see the feisty feminist triumph. She recognises, though, that feminists underestimated the stubborn desire of the "inner woman" to live in relationship with a man:
Which turns relationships into an "agonised business" for many women:
Kipnis finishes by again emphasising that the "inner woman" is the stumbling block for feminism:
So where is feminism supposed to go from here? Is it supposed to wage war on the inner woman in order to achieve its political goals?
The easier option is to drop the underlying assumption that autonomy is the overriding good in life. If autonomy is seen to be one good amongst many, then it can be left to individuals and communities to find a balance between it and other goods.
Finding the right measure is a much less conflicted option than seeking absolute autonomy and being caught between this political aim and your own "obdurate" inner self.
Take a recent article by Laura Kipnis, an American professor of media studies. It was introduced by the following subtitle:
In our post-feminist Western world, women are supposed to be able to have it all. So why are so many dissatisfied?
What answer does she give? Ordinarily, a feminist would blame the patriarchy. The usual argument runs as follows: the primary aim of life is autonomy; men have established a patriarchy to dominate women; women are therefore oppressed by a social system in which men are autonomous but women are dependent; the pursuit of justice, freedom and equality therefore requires women to become independent of men, especially through the pursuit of careers.
Kipnis is strongly influenced by this orthodox view:
For the first time in history, women are relatively free from traditional fetters. No longer is womanhood synonymous with motherhood for those who don't so choose.
... with more control over maternity, record numbers of women are now participating in the workforce, meaning that womanhood is no longer synonymous with dependency. In fact, women can now be entirely free from men should they so choose.
The problem is that women still don't seem liberated. Kipnis thinks that modern women feel such a lack of control and sense of inadequacy that a whole self-help industry has sprung up to tell women how to live their lives.
This is where it gets particularly interesting. Kipnis believes that feminism has hit a brick wall because of a conflict between the goal of feminism (autonomy) and the "inner woman" (femininity):
Feminism ("Don't call me darling, idiot") and femininity ("I just found the perfect push-up bra") are in a big catfight, nowhere more than within each individual female psyche ... Gender barriers have largely crumbled, and women have increasing economic independence from men if they choose it. But one keeps stumbling across a certain ambivalence, an ambivalence among women themselves.
Which is why being female at this point in history seems an especially conflicted enterprise ... Which one should it be? The Feisty Feminist or the Eternal Feminine?
Kipnis herself would prefer to see the feisty feminist triumph. She recognises, though, that feminists underestimated the stubborn desire of the "inner woman" to live in relationship with a man:
Yet it turns out there are rather obdurate female longings with regard to dependency on men, despite pronouncements to the contrary - women need men like fish need bicycles - back in the heady years of the second wave. It turns out that fish are devoted cyclists. Indeed, the problem these days is that the bicycles seem to be fleeing the fish.
Which turns relationships into an "agonised business" for many women:
... we're facing a disastrous resource shortage .... single heterosexual men wishing to couple on a long-term basis. It's not just that demand exceeds supply but also that the majority of single men are - according to field reports from those who've hazarded dating them - "relationship challenged", in flight from commitment, their true feelings, real women.
Thus it falls to the intimacy seeking female to blockade the escape routes and lure those men out of ambivalence and into domesticity.
Kipnis finishes by again emphasising that the "inner woman" is the stumbling block for feminism:
So if something remains a little obdurate about female inequality after the past 40 years or so, it's because feminism came up against an unanticipated opponent: the inner woman ...
Feminism, once construed as a liberation movement, has somehow ended up producing more dichotomies and more impasses ...
So where is feminism supposed to go from here? Is it supposed to wage war on the inner woman in order to achieve its political goals?
The easier option is to drop the underlying assumption that autonomy is the overriding good in life. If autonomy is seen to be one good amongst many, then it can be left to individuals and communities to find a balance between it and other goods.
Finding the right measure is a much less conflicted option than seeking absolute autonomy and being caught between this political aim and your own "obdurate" inner self.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
But why is Deveny wrong?
Catherine Deveny woke up one morning, opened her newspaper and found out that athlete Jana Pittman had changed her last name to Rawlinson. Deveny could not, at first, understand what had happened:
Deveny is pretty free with the insults here, so it's not surprising that she attracted a largely hostile response. Most of the criticism, though, focused on her bitterly aggressive style, rather than on her argument.
So why might a woman change her name on getting married? Is she simply a deluded victim of the patriarchy in doing so? Or are there other ways of explaining this custom?
Paternal pride
Societies generally don't have to worry about connecting mothers with their children.
It's possible, though, to have a situation in which men father children, but then don't stay around to help raise and socialise them.
This is roughly what happens within black American families. About 70% of children within the black community are born to single mothers. The social consequences for both mothers and children aren't good; there is an increase in poverty, crime, drug use and gangs.
There is a rational purpose, therefore, in encouraging men to stay. And one way of doing this is to appeal to the instinct men have to feel a pride in paternity, including a pride in family lineage.
My own father often discusses the history of our family (sometimes considerably embellished) and he is obviously concerned to keep the family name going. If you grow up as a boy in such an atmosphere you absorb a basic expectation: that you will marry, father children and do your best to raise them so that they too can successfully carry on the family tradition.
The idea that you would reproduce simply as a sperm donor for a single mother just doesn't match expectations.
That there is a benefit in women encouraging male participation in family life is borne out by research into the "marriage gap" in America. There is a growing divide between upper class women, who continue to believe that paternal investment in family life is important, and lower class women, who are more likely to become single mothers, or remain de facto, or divorce and remarry:
It is the better educated and more ambitious women who most want to keep the father of their children around. They are seeking a high level of paternal investment and they're more likely to be successful if men are encouraged in their instincts toward a pride in paternity and lineage.
A counter-argument might be that a woman could achieve the same desired effect by having her children adopt her husband's family name whilst she retains her own. This is, as I understand it, the custom in some countries such as The Netherlands. It seems, though, that once the children adopt the father's last name, many women find it simpler to also change their own name, and some feel that it improves the sense of family unity if they too share their husband and children's surname.
Status seeking
A while back feminists decided to introduce the term "Ms" as a title for both married and unmarried women. It didn't work. Most women still prefer to use the title "Mrs" after marriage.
The most obvious reason for the failure of "Ms" is that many women still associate marriage with status, and that "Mrs" therefore denotes a positive status compared to either "Ms" or "Miss".
Similarly, it's possible that for some women a change of surname on marriage is another marker of increased status.
Is it rational to encourage this form of status seeking? It depends on what you think of marriage. If, like Catherine Deveny, you're hostile to marriage, then you won't approve of the link between marriage and status. However, if you believe that that marriage is of overall benefit, it does become reasonable to encourage such "marital status seeking" amongst women.
A romantic gesture
You can't ignore heterosexuality in all this. Think of the psychology of relationships between men and women. A man perceives that a woman has something to give. He pursues her and tries to win her over.
A woman in yielding makes herself vulnerable. She gives herself in trust to the man; she places herself in his care.
For a man, there is a kind of thrill in the realisation that the woman has voluntarily consented to yield to him.
At no time is this interplay between men and women likely to be more intense than when we marry. The sense of feminine yielding is much more likely to lead to women changing their name (and residence and even their religion) than vice versa.
Do women experience this as an oppression? I don't think so. For some women, the romantic interplay is intoxicating. They try to heighten the effect by making the act of yielding more dangerous: they place themselves in the care of "bad boys" who can't be trusted to do the right thing.
The columnist Andrea Burns wrote recently about her own addiction to bad boys:
If anything, the "thrill" that women get in yielding and trusting needs to be drawn in at times (which seems to be the theme of various Jane Austen novels).
The problem for Deveny is that these kind of feminine romantic gestures run counter to the official political programme of female independence and autonomy. It's difficult, though, to entirely suppress heterosexual instincts. Most women make some sort of compromise between their heterosexuality and feminist politics; Deveny is too strident to accept a compromise position.
Then it dawned on me. She has got married, bizarre enough in itself these days, and changed her last name to her husband's. What an anachronism ...
Wake up! We are in 2007. Women are no longer owned by their father and then their husband. So why are some women still changing their surnames? And why do some men still want them to? It's sad, it's misogynous, it's archaic, it's insecure and it's unnecessary.
Why would you do something so drastic simply because you decided to delude yourself it was easier? Because you are deeply insecure, deeply conservative or deeply stupid. And in deep denial.
Deveny is pretty free with the insults here, so it's not surprising that she attracted a largely hostile response. Most of the criticism, though, focused on her bitterly aggressive style, rather than on her argument.
So why might a woman change her name on getting married? Is she simply a deluded victim of the patriarchy in doing so? Or are there other ways of explaining this custom?
Paternal pride
Societies generally don't have to worry about connecting mothers with their children.
It's possible, though, to have a situation in which men father children, but then don't stay around to help raise and socialise them.
This is roughly what happens within black American families. About 70% of children within the black community are born to single mothers. The social consequences for both mothers and children aren't good; there is an increase in poverty, crime, drug use and gangs.
There is a rational purpose, therefore, in encouraging men to stay. And one way of doing this is to appeal to the instinct men have to feel a pride in paternity, including a pride in family lineage.
My own father often discusses the history of our family (sometimes considerably embellished) and he is obviously concerned to keep the family name going. If you grow up as a boy in such an atmosphere you absorb a basic expectation: that you will marry, father children and do your best to raise them so that they too can successfully carry on the family tradition.
The idea that you would reproduce simply as a sperm donor for a single mother just doesn't match expectations.
That there is a benefit in women encouraging male participation in family life is borne out by research into the "marriage gap" in America. There is a growing divide between upper class women, who continue to believe that paternal investment in family life is important, and lower class women, who are more likely to become single mothers, or remain de facto, or divorce and remarry:
America really has become two nations. The old-fashioned married-couple-with-children model is doing quite well among college-educated women. It is primarily among lower-income women with only a high school education that it is in poor health...
Virtually all — 92 percent — of children whose families make over $75,000 are living with both parents. On the other end of the income scale, the situation is reversed: only about 20 percent of kids in families earning under $15,000 live with both parents ...
Educated, middle-class mothers tend to be dedicated to what I have called The Mission, the careful nurturing of their children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development ... It’s common sense, backed up by plenty of research, that you’ll have a better chance of fully “developing” your children — that is, of fulfilling The Mission — if you have a husband around.
It is the better educated and more ambitious women who most want to keep the father of their children around. They are seeking a high level of paternal investment and they're more likely to be successful if men are encouraged in their instincts toward a pride in paternity and lineage.
A counter-argument might be that a woman could achieve the same desired effect by having her children adopt her husband's family name whilst she retains her own. This is, as I understand it, the custom in some countries such as The Netherlands. It seems, though, that once the children adopt the father's last name, many women find it simpler to also change their own name, and some feel that it improves the sense of family unity if they too share their husband and children's surname.
Status seeking
A while back feminists decided to introduce the term "Ms" as a title for both married and unmarried women. It didn't work. Most women still prefer to use the title "Mrs" after marriage.
The most obvious reason for the failure of "Ms" is that many women still associate marriage with status, and that "Mrs" therefore denotes a positive status compared to either "Ms" or "Miss".
Similarly, it's possible that for some women a change of surname on marriage is another marker of increased status.
Is it rational to encourage this form of status seeking? It depends on what you think of marriage. If, like Catherine Deveny, you're hostile to marriage, then you won't approve of the link between marriage and status. However, if you believe that that marriage is of overall benefit, it does become reasonable to encourage such "marital status seeking" amongst women.
A romantic gesture
You can't ignore heterosexuality in all this. Think of the psychology of relationships between men and women. A man perceives that a woman has something to give. He pursues her and tries to win her over.
A woman in yielding makes herself vulnerable. She gives herself in trust to the man; she places herself in his care.
For a man, there is a kind of thrill in the realisation that the woman has voluntarily consented to yield to him.
At no time is this interplay between men and women likely to be more intense than when we marry. The sense of feminine yielding is much more likely to lead to women changing their name (and residence and even their religion) than vice versa.
Do women experience this as an oppression? I don't think so. For some women, the romantic interplay is intoxicating. They try to heighten the effect by making the act of yielding more dangerous: they place themselves in the care of "bad boys" who can't be trusted to do the right thing.
The columnist Andrea Burns wrote recently about her own addiction to bad boys:
Maybe there is something addictive in the poison relationship? ... I'm talking about a feeling we get that is so powerful we just can't keep away. These boys who treat us so bad, but make us feel so good are everywhere ... No one wants to date a nice, boring bloke. That's just not exciting.
If anything, the "thrill" that women get in yielding and trusting needs to be drawn in at times (which seems to be the theme of various Jane Austen novels).
The problem for Deveny is that these kind of feminine romantic gestures run counter to the official political programme of female independence and autonomy. It's difficult, though, to entirely suppress heterosexual instincts. Most women make some sort of compromise between their heterosexuality and feminist politics; Deveny is too strident to accept a compromise position.
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