Casual Racism is Healthy

By Olivia Pierson
​[First published on Incite 22/1/19]

Citizens of the entire Western world are currently enthralled by a weird and hysterical paranoia about being seen to be any kind of ‘racist’.

Calling someone racist using public media is the modern version of clapping a person in the shame-inducing stocks at the heart of the public town square. Public humiliation works wonders when it comes to controlling people, but it’s particularly effective on those who care too much about what others think of them. If someone is more impervious to the terrors of being called a mean name, then no, or very little, humiliation occurs and the attempt at a public pillory is in vain. The trouble is, the wowsers crying ‘racist’ seek to smear your reputation and, with it, your livelihood. Therein lies the real sting of modern public humiliation.

The striking thing to me about all this racism-smearing in the media, is the utter small-mindedness of the folks wielding such trite accusations. Here are two examples from the last 12 months:

Example #1
In New Zealand a year ago, Sir Bob Jones wrote a satirical op-ed which mentioned replacing Waitangi Day with Maori Gratitude Day:

"While on the subject of Maoridom, rather than make kids learn the [Maori] language, here’s a much better idea. We should introduce a new public holiday, Maori Gratitude Day, in place of the much disdained Waitangi Day."

Bob’s article tongue-in-cheek suggested that on this day we (non-Maori) can be brought breakfast in bed and have our cars polished by grateful Maoris.

He explained:

“As there are no full-blooded Maoris in existence it indisputably follows that had it not
been for migrants, mainly Brits, not a single Maori alive today … would have existed.”
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What followed, of course, was a titanic hullabaloo with a petition signed by 70,000 people to strip Sir Bob of his knighthood, while the National Business Review immediately fired him as a columnist and a formal complaint was lodged at the Press Council – which did not uphold the complaint, due to robustness of freedom of expression laws in New Zealand. 

The Council noted that NBR would no longer be publishing Sir Bob’s columns and this was an “appropriate response to the justified public outrage.”

The Maori backlash against Sir Bob over this was one of, “how dare he say that we should be his f#$@##* slaves!” This was a particularly amusing response, considering that slavery was never practised by non-Maori in New Zealand, not even in the earliest days of colonisation. The only known practise of slavery on these shores was by Maori over other Maori tribes and by Maori over the peaceful yet ill-fated Morioris before they
were eventually almost completely wiped out through genocide and cannibalism. Touchy, touchy.

One of the things that struck me during this backlash was that when engaging with Maoris who refused to consider the funny side of "racist, white-supremacist" Sir Bob’s column, I happened to point out to a bunch of them the fact of their culture’s widespread practice of cannibalism in days of old. What did they do? They laughed and made jokes about it along the lines of… “yeah white-girl, too right, would love to put you in the pot.. yum yum… Lol… Lmfao,” etc.

It seems that some Maoris still retain a ‘casually racist’ sense of humour; it’s just that nobody else is allowed to. How did I feel about jokes of cannibalism being directed at me? Who cares? They are not going to actually cook and eat me any more than Sir Bob is going to actually enslave Maoris to polish his car – and that’s the point. It’s not serious. They are words not actions.

Example #2
In America last week, Steve King, Republican congressman of Iowa, has been pilloried for his “racist” remarks, again. He has already been stripped of his House committee seats and faces further disciplinary actions from House GOPs; those in his own party.

All this follows after an interview printed in the New York Times, where King, a staunch defender of Western civilisation, was portrayed in this light (if you can trust the NYT):

He supports immigrants who enter the country legally and fully assimilate because what matters more than race is “the culture of America” based on values brought to the United States by whites from Europe.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” Mr. King said. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

The word, more than any other, which has sparked this national outrage at King is the term “supremacist.” What does it actually mean? It means “the best” or “most superior” within the context of a group or groups. Bearing in mind that King is speaking about a powerful culture which has drawn millions upon millions of immigrants to live within its borders (and still does), there is absolutely nothing wrong with his statement. 

How indeed did the idea of verbally asserting white civilisation with its commitment to human freedoms and human flourishing, hence its superiority to, say, African, Asian or Middle Eastern cultures, become such a bloody offensive notion never to be uttered?

I’ll make it crystal clear: American culture was founded by entirely white men, nearly all Englishmen. What made it superior was its importing of English jurisprudence with the added improvement after the Revolutionary war of becoming a Constitutional Republic, instead of, like England, a Constitutional Monarchy.

What made it even more exceptional was the fact that, after President Lincoln managed to completely abolish slavery and set that new precedent into the stone of federal law, all men became equal under the law regardless of wealth, status, skin colour, race, or religious affiliation; thus, this was the America that entered the 20th Century. 

This created a superior country with supremely better laws to live under than any other country on Earth. So supreme in fact, that every single Western country which thrives today adopted those laws, or a very close variant of them.

That Congressman King is aware of the superiority of his culture should be to his credit, not his humiliation. We are now living in a time where equality is a much misunderstood term. Human beings are not naturally equal to each other; some “are more equal than others.”

Some people make a go of their lives by way of personal ambition and achievement with splendid results, while others prefer to cruise through life more easily and their lives will bear out their own efforts or lack of them. There are people who prefer to live in a state of total government dependence and demand that their needs be provided for by others.
Equality is not, and should not be, a human end or purpose for societies to try to create – that only leads to homogeneity of the ugly, communist/socialist variety. Where the word equality truly has meaning is in how people are treated under the civic and criminal laws of a culture. Western culture has attained and maintained an incredibly high standard of equality in this supremely important regard.

Knowing we are all equal under the law has allowed a robust and generous live-and-let live spirit to thrive in our various countries. A strong resilience to and indulgence of ribbing, teasing, open criticism, verbal insults and irritating banter about racially stereotypical traits is necessary in multicultural societies; in fact, it is downright healthy.

Asians are maddening drivers (along with most women – Asian women are frankly terrifying behind the wheel). Jews are witty and argumentative – and intensely focused on money, so are the Dutch, and Indians bloody well do “try it on” when it comes to haggling about price; so do Arabs when they’re not treating their women appallingly. Americans are loud, proud, fat and cocky, Brits don’t ever like to publicly make too much of a fuss about anything, so privately whinge about it instead. Ozzies are crude and obnoxiously loud, considering the hideousness of their munted English accent, and New Zealanders put way too much stock in appearing self-effacing and humble while also munting the English language in an inordinately hideous way. There it is.
 
Of course, these things are not always true of the various races, but are true enough for there to be a stereotype in existence about them.
 
Casual racism is actually very amusing, but even when it is spoken from a serious mouth is nothing to get knickers-in-a-knot over. Why? Because we have legal systems which do not tolerate serious harm being done to us, either physically or by damaging our personal property. An insult to our race won’t hurt us. It might make us ‘feel uncomfortable’ but then so can many things, including anal piles. There is no law on this earth to legislate against discomforting feelings.

NZ filmmaker Taika Waititi became the face of the NZ Human Rights Commission campaign against casual racism called “Give nothing to racism.” It has to be one of the most patronising, ineffectual and sad attempts by bureaucrats in this country to virtue signal and try to propagandise New Zealanders into thinking we are nothing but a bunch of racists.
 
Waititi stated that:

”I think New Zealand is the best place on the planet, but it’s a racist place… NZ is as racist as f#$%.”

The big evidence that he gave for this grave assertion was: “He recalled being interrogated by shop owners when he went to buy a packet of chips, and related an uncomfortable experience from one of his early jobs.” That traumatic memory which he remembered was as follows:

“I remember getting a job at a dairy and they would never give me a job at the till, I was always at the back washing vegetables.”

**[I sincerely hope me relaying this tragic incident hasn’t caused anybody undue feelings of discomfort. For those who may require trauma counselling, I am virtue-signalling my deep awareness about human nature by providing an 0800 number at the end of this article.]

I did say near the beginning of this article that the utter small-mindedness of the folks wielding such trite accusations is striking.

How about this example of casual racism, reported by those great paragons of virtue at the NZ Herald:

A born-and-bred Kiwi mum of part-Malaysian descent was outside a Chinese massage centre in Auckland one morning last week waiting for it to open. A passing white man in his 40s called out “hello” to her in Chinese and theatrically bowed his head in her direction to emphasise the greeting.  I blurted out, ‘I am not Chinese and I don’t work at the centre’,” she told the Herald on Sunday. “He bowed again and said, ‘Oh, so you are a local.’ He was speaking very slowly, as if English was my second language. I thought it was ridiculous to be bowing and carrying on like that in St Lukes. I don’t believe he was intentionally trying to be insulting but it really pissed me off.  It was very patronising and made me feel uncomfortable.”

Again, the myopic small-mindedness! If one were to take a generous view of the “white man” one would only conclude that he was trying to be kind and welcoming. My less-than-generous guess is that the “white man” had been infected with nauseating race relations propaganda and was probably going out of his way to try hard not to look like a racist New Zealander (as he is being systematically told that that’s what we all are, except lovely old him). Either way, he was damned by little-Miss-born-and-bred-Kiwi-mum-of-part-Malaysian-descent, and some dopey numpty who writes for the NZ Herald thought that this trivial story was worth publishing as a great example of terrible casual racism in our country.

Ladies and gentleman, I submit that casual racism is par for the course of a healthy mixed raced society with a free future. The soft-headed and thin-skinned amongst us don’t like our free ways, our free speech and our freedom to offend, but like it or not, it happens to be either the culture they themselves have thrived in and had the opportunity to live excellent life-styles within, as hypocrites like Mr. Waititi (whose films depict every Maori stereotype under te-ra) have, or the country they have chosen to live in because they’ve moved here from somewhere less desirable. 
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This is Western liberty we are talking about and “racism,” casual or otherwise, has become a catch-all phrase to try to instil guilt where none should exist. Like it or lump it, but don’t self-righteously infect it with weak-spirited, subjective, goopy, hurty feelings that leave us without a spine, without a sense of humour and without a sense of history as to how humans of different races actually thrive together. “Don’t mention race ever, even in jest,” is just never going to cut it.

** The trauma counselling number as mentioned above is 0800 GROWASPINE.

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