The View From the Ground

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It is an odd set of standards we find ourselves using in our generic social discourse these days. The same set of behaviors are either just peachy or appalling depending on the perpetrator. If done by any other than the European (i.e. Dead White Male, patriarchal) culture, the most bizarre and cruel things are written off as "cultural diversity" or celebrated as "indigenous culture". But let them be practiced by the DWM culture and they morph into "oppression", "cultural imperialism", and, of course, racism, sexism, homophobia and/or religious intolerance.

Today’s example of wrong-headed fuzzy liberal analysis is slavery. Slavery is one of those essentially universal human cultural institutions that ought to serve to remind us that the notion of original sin is depressingly accurate. Most cultures throughout recorded history have countenanced slavery of some sort. African, Asian, European, American, the forced servitude of some people to the benefit of others appears to have been mainstream politics. (At this point the cynic will interject, "Yeah, it’s called government". I am thankful that I am not yet quite that cynical).

So what is it about the slavery of Africans by Europeans in America that so sets it apart from the rest in the eyes of the modern progressive? I mean besides the use of DWMs as the boogie man for all occasions, as discussed in a previous column? My assessment shows that there are two unique features of American slavery that do in fact set it apart.

The first is well illustrated by Dinesh D’Souza in his book "The End of Racism". This is a book that belongs on every thinking person’s bookshelf. D’Souza makes a compelling argument that the emerging DWM scientific propensity to classify things and people led to a unique, quasi-scientific notion of racial superiority that was indeed truly unique. Earlier cultures were wildly xenophobic, but they pretty much hated (and enslaved) anyone who was not them, regardless of race, creed or color. The European innovation was to classify and examine the "others" according to their physical characteristics. This classification almost inevitably led to the development of beliefs of relative racial superiority, which in turn made the notion enslaving Africans practically a duty. This is an interesting argument in which many grains of truth are embedded. But it is difficult to see how the knowledge would be of comfort to, say, the Christian Sudanese, who are being enslaved by Muslim Sudanese. I suspect slavery as a consequence of xenophobia or sheer nastiness is of little qualitative difference compared to slavery resulting from racism.

The second feature is the truly astonishing one. I am not a historian, but I have read quite a bit of history. I have been able to find one and only one instance in which a culture took a good, hard look at itself and said, "This slavery thing is just plain wrong. It is morally wrong and at odds with those things we believe". That was, of course, in Europe and America in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The same DWMs who paved the way for women’s liberation deliberately went counter to human experience and abolished slavery. In the U.S. This was done at the cost of hundreds of thousands of very Dead White Males.

So how is it that the critics of DWMs convert the only culture that has consciously abolished slavery into the "scourge of the earth"? I suspect it is the internalization of western cultural norms combined with the external rejection of those same norms. Have you ever noticed how the protest against DWM culture and it institutions only makes sense in light of core western (DWM) values? To decry slavery only makes sense if one believes that slavery is a deep moral wrong. Therefore one can only rail against American slavery if one has bought into the decidedly DWM notion that slavery is morally abhorrent. This leads to a maddening circular reasoning in which DWMs are judged by the very best of their own values, rather than against the rest of human experience, while all other cultures are judged against….nothing.

It huts my brain to just work these thoughts through. To create a whole worldview on this basis is a remarkable misdirection of mental energy. No wonder lefties are so grumpy. They must have perpetual headaches from the mental gymnastics they have to go through just to keep up with their own worldview.

The bottom line is that DWMs are unique in human history in that they consciously abolished the institution of slavery. For this they deserve our praise, not our scorn.