The following is from http://www.neoeugenics.com/
Review of World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds
Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability by Amy Chua, 2003.
Reviewed by Matt Nuenke
Chua's new book is an excellent overview of just how common it is for
a country to be economically dominated by a racial minority. She takes
us into the workings of many countries, providing numbers, how the
races interact, and surprisingly she has provided a substantial amount
of data that supports alternative theories from her own.
She doesn't deal directly with why a minority can dominate the
majority, but a careful reading of this book supports two alternative
hypotheses. First, it supports the work by Kevin MacDonald on how
group evolutionary strategies, along with differences in innate levels
of ethnocentrism, can lead to racial boundary maintenance and racial
conflict. Second, it supports Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen's
observations that it is the level of average intelligence that
determines what groups will prosper and which ones will be
subordinated (IQ and the Wealth of Nations, 2002 - see
http://www.rlynn.247e.info/pages/article_intelligence/t4.htm for a
listing of an estimated average intelligences in 189 nations).
Her book is not very organized, but her thoughts and opinions do jump
out at the reader who is not willing to swallow her simplistic
assumptions. Her book is useful primarily for the support it lends to
group evolutionary strategies. In addition, it reinforces the
contention of evolutionists that when it comes to human behavior,
social scientists and political scientists are still bogged down in
just-so stories. They have no empirical program for analyzing human
behavior that is falsifiable and therefore scientific.
This review, or perhaps more correctly critique, of Chua's more
egregious biases and distortions, will follow the book page by page to
keep things simple. Even though I do not agree with her reasoning,
aside from perhaps agreeing that the West should not meddle in other
nation's concerns, her observations provide a much-needed look at how
racial conflict is endemic around the world.
Chua starts out explaining how her aunt had her throat slit in the
Philippines, by a Filipino employee, because of racial hatred, and she
quickly exposes East Asian's racism: "The murder of a relative is
horrible for anyone, anywhere. My father's grief was impenetrable; to
this day, he has not broken his silence on the subject. For the rest
of the family, though, there was an added element of disgrace. For the
Chinese, luck is a moral attribute, and a lucky person would never be
murdered. Like having a birth defect, or marrying a Filipino, being
murdered is shameful…. My family is part of the Philippines' tiny but
entrepreneurial, economically powerful Chinese minority. Just 1
percent of the population, Chinese Filipinos control as much as 60
percent of the private economy, including the country's four major
airlines and almost all of the country's banks, hotels, shopping
malls, and major conglomerates."
She goes on to explain how the East Asian Chinese think Filipinos are
lazy, unintelligent, and really don't want to work. Then she says that
they are also suffering extreme poverty, indignity, and hopelessness.
So why are such a desperate people also so lazy? She never gets beyond
these simplistic explanations and she is unable to accept that the
East Asian Chinese have an average IQ of about 105 versus an average
IQ among South Asians of about 90. Once intelligence and ethnocentrism
are taken into account, World on Fire starts making sense.
She then states what the book is all about, "a phenomenon - pervasive
outside the West yet rarely acknowledged, indeed often viewed as taboo
- that turns free market democracy into an engine of ethnic
conflagration. The phenomenon I refer to is that of market-dominant
minorities: ethnic minorities who, for widely varying reasons, tend
under market conditions to dominate economically, often to a startling
extent, the 'indigenous' majorities around them."
"Market-dominant minorities can be found in every corner of the world.
The Chinese are a market-dominant minority not just in the Philippines
but throughout Southeast Asia. In 1998, Chinese Indonesians, only 3
percent of the population, controlled roughly 70 percent of
Indonesia's private economy, including all of the country's largest
conglomerates. More recently, in Burma, entrepreneurial Chinese have
literally taken over the economies of Mandalay and Rangoon. Whites are
a market-dominant minority in South Africa - and, in a more
complicated sense, in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, and much of Latin
America. Lebanese are a market-dominant minority in West Africa. Ibo
are a market-dominant minority in Nigeria. Croats were a
market-dominant minority in the former Yugoslavia. And Jews are almost
certainly a market-dominant minority in post-Communist Russia."
To understand the true causes of ethnic conflict in this book only two
primary concepts need to be kept in mind that Chua fails to consider:
the difference in average intelligence between the groups being
discussed, and the level of ethnocentrism between different races.
These two factors play out differently for different races. The East
Asians, Semites (Lebanese and Jews), and Asian Indians for example
seem to have high levels of ethnocentrism or xenophobia. When they
dominate a society, they also maintain racial boundaries as well as
engage in kinship cooperation to advance their goals across borders.
That is, they cooperate between racial kin groups all over the globe
where they reside.
In contrast, where Whites have dominated, they are more
individualistic - they lack high levels of ethnocentrism. For example,
in Latin America, they are far more likely to marry outside their
race, and they cooperate less with other Whites in other countries.
They follow an individualistic elitism, making alliances with whoever
will advance their status, regardless of race. One could make the case
that this is not so in sub-Saharan Africa, where Whites would never
consider marrying Blacks. However, I would argue that this is not due
to high levels of ethnocentrism but rather to the extreme differences
in average intelligence - about 100 for Whites and only 70 for Blacks.
This much of a gap in intelligence is too large for any two groups to
mix socially - much less to marry each other.
"By contrast, the sobering thesis of this book is that the global
spread of markets and democracy is a principal, aggravating cause of
group hatred and ethnic violence throughout the non-Western world. In
the numerous societies around the world that have a market-dominant
minority, markets and democracy are not mutually reinforcing. Because
markets and democracy benefit different ethnic groups in such
societies, the pursuit of free market democracy produces highly
unstable and combustible conditions. Markets concentrate enormous
wealth in the hands of an 'outsider' minority, fomenting ethnic envy
and hatred among often chronically poor majorities."
True, our current promotion of democracy, globalization, free markets,
etc. may be destabilizing, situations that would not be as violent had
we not pursued these global programs - but that does not detract from
the fact that the ethnic violence is due primarily to differences in
the average intelligences of different racial groups. I can't blame
Chua individually for this lack of insight, because almost universally
the egalitarian stance is to never mention this as a cause of economic
disparity. And this ban on intelligence being factored in is upheld by
conservatives as well as liberals.
"Just 1 percent of the population, they have for generations
controlled 70 percent of the country's best land, largely in the form
of highly productive three-thousand-acre tobacco and sugar farms.
Watching Zimbabwe's economy take a free fall as a result of the mass
landgrab, the United States and United Kingdom together with dozens of
human rights groups urged President Mugabe to step down, calling
resoundingly for free and fair elections. But the idea that democracy
is the answer to Zimbabwe's problems is breathtakingly naive."
It seems to me the best way to resolve the situation in Zimbabwe is to
just relocate the Whites back to the West. And the same goes for South
Africa. The area will never see peace with such a wide gap in
abilities and intelligence between Blacks and Whites.
"Indeed, this book will show that the world's most notorious cases of
'crony capitalism' all involve a market-dominant ethnic minority -
from Ferdinand Marcos's Chinese-protective dictatorship in the
Philippines to President Siaka Stevens's shadow alliance with five
Lebanese diamond dealers in Sierra Leone to President Daniel Arap
Moi's 'business arrangements' with a handful of Indian tycoons in
Kenya today…."
"More fundamentally, however, like their pro-globalization
counterparts, Western critics of globalization have overlooked the
ethnic dimension of market disparities. They tend to see wealth and
poverty in terms of class conflict, not ethnic conflict. This
perspective might make sense in the advanced Western societies, but
the ethnic realities of the developing world are completely different
from those of the West. As a result, the solutions that
globalization's critics propose are often shortsighted and even
dangerous when applied to non-Western societies."
Chua is rather vague with the above statement. There are of course
differences between countries - in fact every country is unique. But
ethnic conflict does have some universals that we could use -
universals that are a result of a great deal of research using
ethnographic databases by evolutionary psychologists and behavior
geneticists. I do agree however that class conflict, as a Marxist
tenet of all conflict is getting very stale. It is time to move on
using empirical methods of analysis.
"'Markets,' 'democracy,' and 'ethnicity' are notoriously difficult
concepts to define. In part this is because there is no single correct
interpretation of any of these terms. Indeed, I hope precisely to show
in this book that the 'market systems' currently being urged on
developing and post-Communist countries are very different from the
ones now in place in contemporary Western nations; that the process of
'democratization' currently being promoted in the non-Western world is
not the same as the one that the Western countries themselves went
through; and that 'ethnicity' is a fluid, artificial, and dangerously
manipulable concept."
The above is very typical for Chua - she makes vague statements
several times but never goes beyond the infuriatingly simplistic. How
is ethnicity fluid, artificial - and dangerous? Why make such a
statement when you never follow up on what you mean by it? The few
times that Chua deviates from a just-so story however, allow us to
peek in on her extreme bias - they are scattered about like the above
in one-liners that just seem to fall from nowhere.
"It is striking to note that at no point in history did any Western
nation ever implement laissez-faire capitalism and overnight universal
suffrage at the same time - the precise formula of free market
democracy currently being pressed on developing countries around the
world." On this I agree - democracy has many contradictions and to say
the least, it is not a coherent concept.
"Ethnicity is another controversial concept that has generated much
debate. For purposes of this book, I will assume that 'ethnicity' is
not a scientifically determinable status. Rather, 'ethnicity' will
refer to a kind of group identification, a sense of belonging to a
people, that is experienced 'as a greatly extended form of kinship.'
This definition of ethnicity is intended to be very broad,
acknowledging the importance of subjective perceptions. It encompasses
differences along racial lines (for example, blacks and whites in the
United States), lines of geographic origin (for example, Malays,
Chinese, and Indians in Malaysia), as well as linguistic, religious,
tribal, or other cultural lines (for example, Kikuyu and Kalenjin
tribes in Kenya or Jews and Muslims in the Middle East)."
Even though the definition of race is rather straight forward (see
http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/jen12.htm for the scientific
explanation of race), the race deniers have been active recently as
the Human Genome Project has been getting a great deal of press.
Forensic scientists can now determine a person's race from DNA, and a
recent article on using DNA for determining a mixed breed dog's
genetic lineage shows how far we have come in using genetics to
determine ancestry. Race as just a social construct is pure
egalitarian dogma with no standing in genetics.
"Ethnic identity is not static but shifting and highly malleable. In
Rwanda, for example, the 14 percent Tutsi minority dominated the Hutu
majority economically and politically for four centuries, as a kind of
cattle-owning aristocracy. But for most of this period the lines
between Hutus and Tutsi were permeable. The two groups spoke the same
language, intermarriage occurred, and successful Hutus could 'become
Tutsi.' This was no longer true after the Belgians arrived and,
steeped in specious theories of racial superiority, issued ethnic
identity cards on the basis of nose length and cranial circumference.
The resulting much sharper ethnic divisions were later exploited by
the leaders of Hutu Power. Along similar lines, all over Latin America
today - where it is often said that there are no 'ethnic divisions'
because everyone is 'mixed-blooded' - large numbers of impoverished
Bolivians, Chileans, and Peruvians are suddenly being told that they
are Aymaras, Incas, or just indios, whatever identity best resonates
and mobilizes. These indigenization movements are not necessarily good
or bad, but they are contagiously potent."
This is incredibly revealing. Here we have two races, one dominating
the other for 400 years, and the dominant one looks different and has
a larger brain! Brain size is correlated with intelligence - about 0.4
- which is quite significant. So what we really have, are two races
with some mixing. This would be analogous to the difference between
Whites and Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe. Some permeability did
occur, but genetically Ashkenazi Jews are closer to other Semites than
to Caucasians, and yet some genetic admixture from Caucasians,
followed by selection for Caucasian facial features, makes the
Ashkenazi Jews look more Western than the Sephardim Jews, who look
more like their Arab kin (Chua points this out when discussing
Israel). But my point here is that the Tutsi dominated over the Hutus
because they were a different race - and they were more intelligent.
That is the only reading I can make of the above statement, but Chua
prefers to make the point that the Belgians were a bunch of racists,
rather than explain away a far more parsimonious explanation - the
Belgians recognized the two races even though there was some admixture
between the two groups.
"Since Burma's [1989] shift to a market-oriented, open-door economy,
both Rangoon, the modern capital, and Mandalay, the ancient City of
Gems and royal seat of the last two Burmese kings, have been taken
over by ethnic Chinese…. In Burma's new market economy, the
Sino-Burmese minority have been transformed almost overnight into a
garishly prosperous business community…."
"The magnitude of the Chinese minority's economic power was
astounding. Constituting just 1 percent of Vietnam's population, the
Chinese controlled an estimated 90 percent of non-European private
capital in the mid-1950s and dominated Vietnam's retail trade, its
financial, manufacturing, and transportation sectors, and all aspects
of the country's rice economy…. Today in Vietnam, both markets and the
Chinese are back. The government's post-1988 shift to market
liberalization, or doi moi ("renovation"), has led to an astounding
resurgence of Chinese commercial dominance in the country's urban
areas. Vietnam's 3 percent Chinese minority cluster in Ho Chi Minh
City (still Saigon to most Vietnamese), where they control roughly 50
percent of that city's market activity and overwhelmingly dominate
light industry, import-export, shopping malls, and private banking.
Once again, resentment among the indigenous Vietnamese is building…."
"Indeed, a recent survey of Thailand's roughly seventy most powerful
business groups found that all but three were owned by Thai Chinese…."
"In Malaysia, too, privatization and other market policies have
starkly magnified the economic dominance of the country's Chinese
minority. This is true despite extensive affirmative action policies
for the indigenous Malay majority, which have been in place ever since
bloody anti-Chinese riots in 1969 left nearly a thousand dead in Kuala
Lumpur. Today, the Malaysian Chinese - the largest Chinese minority in
Southeast Asia, representing about a third of the population - account
for 70 percent of the country's market capitalization."
"It seems safe to say that this entrepreneurial dynamism [of East
Asian Chinese] - together with frugality, hard work, willingness to
delay gratification, and intense desire to accumulate wealth almost as
an end in itself - cannot be traced to any single cultural, much less
genetic source."
However, we do know that the average intelligence of East Asians is
105, and all of the above countries are South Asian countries where
the average intelligence is around 90. I think it is obvious -
market-dominant minorities are more intelligent by some significant
amount. And since intelligence is about 80% genetic, then it is in
fact the genetic differences that explain widely disparate outcomes in
wealth - on average.
Of course, the ethnocentrism does enter in to increase the wealth of
East Asians: "The Chinese minorities have a worldwide head start
advantage of roughly $2 trillion in assets, not to mention their
famous 'social networks' of business connections, which are not merely
intraethnic but include Western and Japanese foreign investors as
well."
"Characterizing Bolivia's ethnic makeup is tricky, given the high
historical rates of 'racial mixing' and phenomena such as
'encholamiento,' in which a white man and an Amerindian or mestiza
woman (a chola) have a son, who, if successful, marks his success by
marrying a white woman. Today, Bolivian society is loosely divisible
into three layers. To use the terminology of Bolivia's census as late
as 1976, 'whites' make up 5 to 15 percent of the population,
'mestizos' make up 20 to 30 percent, and 'Indians' 6o to 65 percent.
These classifications are of course highly artificial; wealth can turn
a 'mestizo' or even an 'Indian' into a white. As the Bolivian
intellectual Tristan Marof wrote decades ago, 'Whites' are all that
have fortune in Bolivia, those that exercise influence and occupy high
positions. A rich mestizo or Indian, although he has dark skin,
considers himself white."
"Nevertheless, the bottom line in Bolivia is this. The country's
Amerindian majority, many of whom lived as serfs until 1952, are
largely excluded from the modern economy. Most live in poverty, with
no secondary education, no access to sanitation, and terrible teeth.
According to the government's own statistics, 90 percent of rural
Bolivians - overwhelmingly Amerindians - cannot satisfy basic
necessities. Among the 'mestizo' group, economic success is more
mixed. But Bolivia's whites enjoy wildly disproportionate wealth and
status."
Elementary really - Amerindians have an average intelligence of 90,
while Whites have an average intelligence of 100, and those between
the extremes have whatever wealth they have based on their
intelligence (and conscientiousness, the second most important trait
that determines wealth), on average of course. Luck always plays a
part in the fortunes of individuals, but for group averages we know
that IQ and some behavioral traits - also genetically based to a large
degree - are the leading predictors of success.
"With the exception of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (where from early
on indigenous peoples were largely extinguished), Latin American
society is fundamentally pigmentocratic: characterized by a social
spectrum with taller, lighter-skinned, European-blooded elites at one
end; shorter, darker, Indian-blooded masses at the other end; and a
great deal of 'passing' in between. The roots of pigmentocracy are
traceable to the colonial era. Unlike their (evidently more repressed)
British counterparts in, say, India or Malaysia, the Spanish
colonialists freely and prolifically procreated with indigenous women.
From the outset, Spanish and Portuguese chroniclers waxed enthusiastic
about the charms of Amerindian women, who were 'beautiful, and not a
little lascivious, and fond of the Spaniards' by one account and 'very
handsome and great lovers, affectionate and with ardent bodies' by
another. In an important sense, the Spanish Conquest of the Americas
was a conquest of women. The Spanish obtained Amerindian girls both by
force and by peaceful means - sometimes, for example, as tokens of
friendship from the Indian caciques. Intermarriage, concubinage, and
polygamy were common."
So the Spanish colonialists were typically horny men! Chua makes this
sound unusual, but it is a theme throughout her book - where males
venture without their women, they are forced to interbreed with the
natives. What is interesting is the fact that Whites again show far
less ethnocentrism than other races that dominate - Whites are far
more individualistic. They care more about their own success and show
little interest in forming global networks with their "racial kin"
that is found in other races. Predictably, White domination will
eventually decline in all of the American nations as more intelligent
or ethnocentric races displace them. For example: "Needless to say,
Slim has no Amerindian ancestors. As elsewhere in the world, the
Lebanese community in Mexico is very tight: Slim's late wife was also
Christian Lebanese, and, reportedly, most members of Slim's extended
family have married other Christian Lebanese; virtually all are
extremely wealthy."
"In Brazil, which I'll say more about in a moment, 50,000 (less than
0.01 percent) of the country's 165 million population still own most
of the country's land. Again, the latifundio owners are unmistakably
white; the peasants, however, are typically descendants of African
slaves…."
"Similarly, a 1965 survey of Bogota executives revealed that although
Colombia has had relatively little immigration, 41 percent of the
country's leading entrepreneurs were foreign born. Some of Latin
America's most stunningly successful immigrant entrepreneurs have been
Lebanese or Jewish. In terms of numbers, both groups are tiny,
representing almost negligible minorities in their countries of
residence. In terms of economic dynamism, however, both groups have
been extraordinary. In addition to Slim, a surprising number of Latin
America's wealthiest businessmen are Lebanese." It is interesting that
Chua would mention the Lebanese as often as she does, but she mentions
Jews just a few times (except for the Russian Jews later), such as:
"Jews are no longer peddlers in Latin America today. In a matter of a
few generations the Jewish communities of Latin America have
transformed themselves from struggling immigrants into financially
powerful businessmen and professionals. In 1994 nearly 53 percent of
employed Jews in Mexico identified themselves as directors, managers,
or administrators while another 26 percent identified themselves as
professionals. Throughout Latin America the rate of upward social
mobility among Jewish communities has been astounding over the last
century. In Brazil, the Jewish Klabin and Lafer families, linked by
marriage ties, are among the wealthiest in the country; their jointly
owned, diversified industrial firm is the largest newsprint producer
in Latin America. More generally, approximately two-thirds of
Brazilian Jews belong to the 'elite.' In Panama, the minuscule Jewish
minority - only 0.25 percent of the population - disproportionately
dominates the country's wholesale, retail, real estate, and services
sectors and represents 40 percent of the traders…." Wherever Ashkenazi
Jews live, they are in fact the dominant racial group. I know of no
country where they are not wealthier on average than all other racial
groups.
"Obviously, Latin America differs from Southeast Asia in countless
respects. Because of extensive miscegenation, ethnic and racial lines
in this region are not nearly as starkly drawn, and Latin America has
been able to avoid the extreme ethnic animus and violence seen in
Southeast Asia." Yes, so much for the hope that massive miscegenation
will solve our racial problems here in America. Racial groupings, as
genes get mixed up, just reformulate themselves into new groups. Just
like there are many ways of structuring cultures or political systems,
those systems create numerous racial groupings. Races are not
stagnant, they are constantly in a state of flux - with or without
miscegenation.
Jews in Russia:
"Instead of dispersing ownership [in the 1990s] and creating
functioning markets, these reforms had allowed a small group of greedy
industrialists and bankers to plunder Russia, turning themselves
almost overnight into the billionaire-owners of Russia's crown jewels
while the country spiraled into chaos and lawlessness…. As it turns
out, six out of seven of Russia's wealthiest and (at least until
recently) most powerful oligarchs are Jewish. This fact became public
knowledge in the United States just a few months after my conversation
with Jerry, when Chrystia Freeland in Sale of the Century offered a
journalist's firsthand account of how, without actually breaking the
law, a handful of cold-blooded, extraordinarily savvy businessmen -
all but one of them Jewish - used the privatization process to become
the owners of vast amounts of Russia's mineral wealth and the
overwhelming victors in Russia's 'gladiator capitalism….'"
"When I first mentioned to my husband, who is Jewish, that six out of
seven of Russia's wealthiest tycoons are Jewish, he raised an eyebrow.
'Just six?' he asked calmly. 'So who's the seventh guy…?'"
"Russia has roughly 147 million inhabitants. The National Conference
on Soviet Jewry estimates that Jews make up less than 1 percent of the
population. Given these demographics, how is it that six Jewish
businessmen came to wield such astounding economic and political
power? In general, it is much harder to talk about Jewish economic
dominance than that of any other group. This is because of the
numerous episodes in which exaggerated or even patently false claims
of Jewish economic dominance led to vicious discrimination,
ghettoization, and some of the worst atrocities in human history. As a
result, whereas one can relatively freely explore and talk about the
phenomenon of, say, a 3 percent Chinese minority controlling 70
percent of a country's wealth, it is far more difficult to ascertain
or even discuss the extent of Jewish economic influence in any given
context. Nevertheless, Jews have been in many ways the quintessential
market-dominant minority."
Chua of course had to have at least one part of the book that looked
at Jewish domination in one country. Not to do so would have been too
obviously biased. But when she does tackle the issue, using a rather
weak example because it only includes six individuals, it is one of
the most egregious examples of double-speak apologia that I have ever
read: "Discussing Jewish economic success in present-day Russia is
especially fraught because of the virulent history of Russian
anti-Semitism. For centuries, anti-Jewish policies in Russia -
expulsions (dating to as early as 1727), harsh economic restrictions,
coerced twenty-five-year terms of military service, persecutions,
pogroms, and so on - were to a large extent successful in preventing
Jews from prospering, let alone being economically dominant."
Is Chua for real!? Of course they were persecuted - Jews are the
"quintessential market-dominant minority!" If they were not
suppressed, they would have taken over. Isn't that what this book is
about? Racial tensions between market-dominant minorities and the
majorities!
But the duplicity gets even better: "At one point we asked Sonia [a
Russian Jew] if she had any thoughts as to why so many of the
oligarchs were Jewish. Sonia shook her head. 'You don't understand,'
she said dismissively. 'These oligarchs - they are 95 percent Russian
and only 5 percent Jewish. They are fully assimilated, products of the
Russian environment. The Jews in Russia, it is not like the Jews in
the U.S. In the U.S., there is an active Jewish community, synagogues,
organizations. In Russia there is nothing. For most people, it is just
something they have stamped on their passport.'"
Oh really? How convenient - after discussing Jews as a market-dominant
minority, she tries to rationalize their Jewishness away. Well, if
Jews in Russia aren't really Jews at all, at only 1 percent of the
population, and fully assimilated, why do they continue to only marry
Jews? That is obvious - they are just as Jewish as any other Jew with
regards to race. So again I will ask - is anti-Semitism ever
justified? Let see how Chua deals with this issue when applied to
Whites instead of Jews.
"The problem is starkest in southern Africa. In country after country,
a handful of whites engorged themselves on natural resources and human
labor, creating enclaves of spectacular wealth and modernization,
surrounded by mounting, justifiable hatred among the indigenous black
majority. The typical result has been horrific violence."
Let me see if I can sort this logic out? When a White minority
economically oppresses the Black majority, a reaction against this
oppression becomes "justifiable hatred." When Jews economically
oppressed the Whites throughout Europe - often with the consent of
ruthless monarchies - this becomes "virulent…anti-Semitism." Sorry, it
looks all the same to me! When one race oppresses another, look for
bad things to happen. (See MacDonald and Lindemann listed at my web
site bibliography for books on the history of Jewish market-dominant
minority involvement in Europe.)
"Under the Portuguese, Angola suffered from one of the most oppressive
forms of colonial rule: Until the nineteenth century, Portugal used
the area as a 'slave pool' for its more lucrative colony in Brazil
while plundering Angola's precious gemstones and metals. Even just
thirty years ago, 335,000 Portuguese colonialists ruthlessly ran and
controlled the virtual entirety of Angola's economy. In Another Day of
Life, Ryszard Kapuscinski describes their almost overnight departure
in 1975, when Angola was granted independence in the midst of rising
chaos and violence…."
In the United States, Portuguese are considered Hispanic, so are
Hispanics oppressing Blacks in Angola or is this White oppression? It
gets so confusing when so much of one's intent is to make Whites more
evil than other market-dominant minority races.
For example, of all the stories one could tell about any group of
people, that seems like a replay of Jim Balushi's "Animal House," Chua
includes just one such story in her book:
"Meanwhile, the so-called 'Kenyan Cowboys,' or 'KCs,' try to maintain
the legacy of Happy Valley. Fun-loving, decadent, bafflingly immature,
these young men and women are stuck in a time warp, somewhere in the
heyday of British colonialism. While the great majority of Kenya's
roughly 3 million blacks struggle to survive on less than two dollars
a day - 45 percent are unemployed - the KCs spend their days sipping
tea and playing bridge, polo, or cricket. Weekends, they go on safari.
In the summer they jet set to Europe. The rest of the time they
frequent anachronistic private clubs like Nairobi's Muthaiga Country
Club, where their predecessors amused themselves in the 1930s by
swapping wives, throwing gramophones out the window, or shooting
bullets into the stuffed lion still displayed in the hallway. The KCs
strive to carry on this tradition, mainly through drinking and such
activities as putting 'butter pats on the carnations on the dinner
table and throw[ing] them up at the ceiling to see if they will
stick.' Although discrimination against Africans and Asians officially
ended in the 196os, the Muthaiga Club's membership remains
predominantly white. All the staff are black."
This bizarre sidebar of a story can only be explained as Chua's way of
belittling Whites as if they are a bunch of morons. It jumps out at
the reader - showing the extreme hostility she has towards Whites in
general, While acting as an apologist for all other races except for
her own Chinese. The Chinese are treated in a straightforward manner,
as if they are not really a people but a phenomenon, more of
statistical interest rather than anything else. Chua shows her true
racialism by the way she treats different races under identical
circumstances. Hatred, fear and disgust are meted out according to her
hierarchy of evil racial essences. How charming Amy - but also how
transparent.
"However contested the reasons, at least one basic fact is not: Among
black Kenyans, deservedly or not, the Kikuyu have for generations been
disproportionately wealthy. Even today under President Moi, who has
openly pursued pro-Kalenjin policies, the Kikuyu continue to have an
unusually solid business and middle class. Kikuyu elite remain the
owners of large tracts of valuable land, much of it handed to them
under Kenyatta. Of the few black members of the Muthaiga Club, almost
all are Kikuyu, who are fighting tooth and nail to keep out the
emerging new Kalenjin elite."
I wonder if these Black Kikuyu also like to toss butter dipped
carnations at the ceiling to see if they will stick? My guess is the
Whites in Kenya don't care about race, and that the Kikuyu are more
intelligent than the average Kenyan and therefore welcome were
welcomed into the White's clubhouse. Again, it is a matter of
intelligence.
"The Kikuyu are by no means an exceptional case. Disproportionately
successful African minorities can be found in virtually every corner
of the African continent. The Ibo, known as the 'Jews of Nigeria,' for
example, are famous the world over for being an unusually driven and
enterprising 'trader' minority. Within Nigeria, Ibo subcommunities
dominate key economic sectors…. On the other hand, many Nigerians,
especially Ibo, believe the explanation is genetic. Some have
suggested that the Ibo are a lost tribe of Israel; this theory appears
to have been discredited…. In addition, like the Chinese or Koreans,
the Ibo have sophisticated social networks that are almost
impenetrable by outsiders…. In the United States there are strikingly
successful Ibo communities in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and other
major cities."
It seems like the reputation of the Jews is everywhere! Like the Jews,
from what Chua has written, it seems like the Ibo are successful
because of their race (their genes). They are more intelligent and
more racially cohesive - the two primary factors leading to racial
hierarchies.
"Kenya's roughly seventy thousand Indians, less than 2 percent of the
population, are in fact dramatically more affluent as a group than the
vastly more numerous black Kenyans around them…. It is often suggested
- not only by Kenyans but also by Westerners - that Indian economic
dominance in Kenya is due to their manipulation of the political
process as opposed to any superior entrepreneurialism…. Unlike
Africa's white settlers, who came over with guns and the might of
Europe behind them, most of Kenya's Indians descend from 'coolie'
laborers imported by the British in the late 1800s to build the
Uganda-Kenya railway. The descendants of these laborers worked as
struggling artisans, clerks, or traders. They rose from destitution
not through political favoritism, but rather despite discriminatory
restrictions by colonial whites on one side and intense animosity from
native Africans on the other. As early as 1924 there were a surprising
number of Indian doctors and lawyers, almost all self-made. Indeed, in
the same year Indians already controlled a stunning 80 to 90 percent
of Kenya's commercial trade. Few of these early Indian businessmen had
anything to do with politics."
In reading how Asian Indians (there are many races or castes in India)
were brought in by Whites as coolies, my first question is why? Were
the Kenyans so backward or of such low intelligence that they couldn't
build a railroad? Why would these coolies be imported when so many
Blacks were available? It seems obvious that the story told here is
incomplete. However, what we can see is that the Asian Indians are
dominant because they are smarter than the average Black Kenyan.
"I had the good fortune recently of meeting with a group of five
native Sierra Leoneans. The group's leader, whom I'll call Mr.
Michaels, was a prominent Freetown lawyer and law professor. The other
four were his adulating and exceptionally smart students…. But didn't
Sierra Leone still have laws discriminating against Lebanese? I asked
them about section 27(4) of their constitution, which essentially
authorizes discrimination against 'non-native' citizens of Sierra
Leone, including ethnic Lebanese who were born in Sierra Leone and
whose families have lived there for four generations. 'It is the
Lebanese who discriminate against Sierra Leoneans,' one of the
students repeated while the others nodded. 'For example, no Lebanese
woman would ever marry a (black) Sierra Leonean man. I have never
heard of a single case. Some Lebanese men do marry Sierra Leonean
women, but those women are then treated as second-class citizens.
Sometimes their children are even taken away from them!'"
My reading of the above is that people from other countries are
extremely intolerant of foreign races and have no hesitation of
discriminating against them, while expecting the Western nations to
open their doors to them when they want to immigrate into our midst.
Moreover, there is a great deal of ethnocentrism in the Lebanese
(Semites from Lebanon). This theme is played throughout the book.
Other nations are extremely intolerant of foreign races, most are
extremely xenophobic compared to Whites who are far more
individualistic, and it is the difference in the average intelligence
of different races that is the primary factor in who is dominant.
After that, each nation has its own special story. Did Chua ever get
an inkling of the underlying racial message she was writing about? One
thing I have learned, deciphering deception from self-deception is
extremely difficult. The human social mind evolved to be deceptive.
But Chua sticks pretty much to a series of just-so stories:
"The only point I wish to highlight here is that there are important
links between colonialism and the phenomenon of market-dominant
minorities. Not only were the colonialists themselves market-dominant
minorities, but colonial divide-and-conquer policies favored certain
groups over others, exacerbating ethnic wealth imbalances and
fomenting group tensions. Indeed, in some cases these policies may
have created 'ethnic identities' and 'ethnic differences' where they
previously did not exist. Today, moreover, most starkly in southern
Africa but also in Latin America and elsewhere, many market-dominant
minorities are the descendants of former colonizers. Thus, the
pervasive existence of market-dominant minorities throughout the
developing world is one of colonialism's most overlooked and most
destructive legacies."
Is there any real correlation between the history of colonialism and
market-dominant minorities? I can't find any though she seems to think
there is one. This book does not even attempt to use empirical
analyses to make conclusions - the whole book is just a series of
stories with Chua's fabricated conclusions. In fact, to the best of my
knowledge, only once does she make mention of a social science
perspective before moving on to more stories.
"In Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto won the support of the impoverished
masses (as well as members of his own, landowning zamindaar class)
through rousing public speeches that accused 'Twenty-Two Families' -
almost all Mohajir immigrants from India - of stealing the nation's
wealth." Was this theft also a legacy of earlier colonialism, or due
to the unique innate intelligence and behavioral traits of the
Mohajir?
"When a poor democratic majority collides with a market dominant
minority, the majority does not always prevail. Instead of a backlash
against the market, there is a backlash against democracy. Often, this
antidemocracy backlash takes the form of 'crony capitalism': corrupt,
symbiotic alliances between indigenous leaders and a market-dominant
minority. For the global marketplace, this is a cozy solution. The
indigenous regime protects the market-dominant minority's wealth and
businesses. In turn, the World Bank and IMF supply loans. In the short
run the result is a boom in foreign investment, economic growth, and
riches for the rulers and their cronies. At the same time, however,
the country's inner furies begin to boil. Sooner or later - and it is
usually sooner - the situation explodes."
Chua again has just describe the hundreds of years of gentile-Jewish
conflict in Europe. Whether under feudalism or democracy,
market-dominant minorities have insinuated themselves between the
rulers and the ruled. Not much has changed in this regard over the
last 10,000 years since we left our hunter-gather ways. And why is it
so easy to have a market-dominant minority between the elite and the
ruled?
"Even today, many poor and lower-middle-class whites feel more
solidarity with Bill Gates or George W Bush than with
African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans of comparable economic status.
Indeed, as many have observed, large numbers of working-class whites
in the United States oppose welfare and increased government spending
on social services, often voting against what might be expected to be
their economic self-interest. It is widely suspected that racism
(together with a thriving ideology of upward mobility) plays a role in
this pattern."
Sorry Amy, but this arrangement, like I stated above, has been in
existence forever. Simply stated, most people look up to their
racial-kin elite-rulers, expecting some solidarity, while the elite do
not reciprocate. In terms of group evolutionary strategies, once a
person becomes powerful enough, they no longer need the collective
protection of racial solidarity and they return to a much narrower
form of self-interested nepotism. In short, the elite very often will
bail on their own kind. Instead, they form alliances with other
elites, for the benefit of their own group of 'crony capitalists' or
'crony politicians,' etc. Class conflict is a Marxist dream that does
not exist in real human behavior.
"In Ethiopia, where members of the Eritrean minority have long
dominated business, especially in key sectors such as transportation,
construction, and electronics, the government took a more direct
approach. Between 1998 and 1999 the Ethiopian government deported en
masse 52,000 Eritrean-Ethiopians - almost the entire Eritrean
community - as part of a larger war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. In
classic ethnonationalist fashion, the expelled Eritreans - most of
whom thought of themselves as Ethiopians - were first stripped of
their citizenship…. Although Eritreans have lived in Ethiopia as long
as either country has existed within defined boundaries, the Ethiopian
government subsequently declared all Eritreans to be 'non-Ethiopian,'
then 'non-citizens,' and ultimately 'aggressors.'"
So much for racial tolerance by Africans! What would happen if say
England tried to expel all of the Jews because they were a
market-dominant minority?
"In the spring and early summer of 1994, Hutu Power began broadcasting
nationwide calls for the slaughter of Rwanda's Tutsis. In Gourevitch's
words, 'Hutus young and old rose to the task.' In just one hundred
days, ordinary Hutus killed approximately eight hundred thousand
Tutsis, mostly with machetes: 'Neighbors hacked neighbors to death in
their homes, and colleagues hacked colleagues to death in their
workplaces. Doctors killed their patients, and schoolteachers killed
their pupils. Within days, the Tutsi populations of many villages were
all but eliminated, and in Kigali prisoners were released in work
gangs to collect the corpses that lined the roadsides. Throughout
Rwanda, mass rape and looting accompanied the slaughter.…'
Undoubtedly, Belgian racism and favoritism and decades of corrupt
dictatorship laid the groundwork for the genocide that followed."
Yup, back to the evil White man! Actually, I have a different take on
the situation. Rather than blaming the long-gone Belgians for the
slaughter of 800,000 people in just 100 days, it was the Radios!
That's right, there is no way that the such a coordinated effort of
human annihilation could have been carried out if it wasn't for the
use of the radio to direct the action. Again, I would suspect Chua
would blame the West for inventing the radio and bringing it to
Africa. Never blame the poor lowly African for their savage behavior.
"A more complicated example is the former Yugoslavia, where among many
other dynamics, the Croats and Slovenes have always been, and continue
to be, disproportionately prosperous vis-a-vis the more populous
Serbs…. Moreover, Croats and Slovenes have their cultural roots in
Western Europe: They are almost all Catholic, were part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and have traditionally used the Roman
alphabet. As a result, Croats and Slovenians have long had important
business and trade ties with the Western European nations, including
Germany, which has been a major foreign investment partner. The south,
by contrast, was part of the Ottoman Empire; Serbia borders Romania
and Bulgaria on the east. The Dinaric Alps cover most of Bosnia,
Montenegro, and western Serbia, which made communications between
regions historically very difficult. Most Serbs belong to the Eastern
Orthodox Church and favor the Cyrillic script. Serbia suffered
economically under Turkish rule. Infrastructure and industry were
neglected, and the majority of Serbs continued to engage in
low-technology agriculture, although oppressive rural taxes drove many
farmers to the cities and neighboring states."
Or it could be that the Croats and the Slovenes are just more
intelligent than the Serbs.
"With China's astounding growth rates over the last decades, many have
suggested that China will soon join the ranks of the 'Asian Tigers' -
Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore - none of which
is considered 'developing' anymore. Along these lines it is striking
to note that none of the Asian Tigers has ever had a market-dominant
minority. In all the Asian Tigers, the ethnic majority - the Japanese
in Japan, the Koreans in South Korea, and the Chinese in Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and Singapore - is both economically and politically
dominant."
And the East Asians above are far more intelligent than South Asians,
and are racially very different. Using genetic studies, if the world
was divided into four major races, they would include in order of
average intelligence: sub-Saharan Africans (70), South Asians (90),
Caucasians (100) and East Asians (105). With regards to racial
differences, some genetic maps have placed East Asians closer to
Caucasians than to South Asians. Therefore, the control of South Asian
economies by East Asians is very similar to Caucasian control of
sub-Saharan Africa.
"In Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, rates of intermarriage
between the Chinese and the indigenous majority are close to zero…."
"The Chinese were not always so welcome in Thailand. After 1842 in
Thailand (then known as Siam), large numbers of immigrants arrived
from China. These principally male immigrants typically married Thai
women and prospered. Indeed, the Chinese in this early wave of
immigration were more or less completely absorbed into the Thai
population."
"Discord between the two peoples began after 1910, with the rise of
nationalism in both China and Thailand. In 1909 the Chinese government
passed a nationality law proclaiming that all persons with Chinese
fathers were Chinese, no matter where they were born. This included
most Thai Chinese, who suddenly found themselves with an identity
crisis. There was another critical factor: After about 1910, Chinese
women began accompanying their husbands and sons in significant
numbers to Thailand, raising a barrier to intermarriage and
assimilation. In any event, by the early twentieth century it was the
strong opinion of the nationalist Thai king Vajiravudh, also known as
Rama VI, that the Chinese were a 'problem' for Thailand, because they
remained stubbornly 'ethnic Chinese,' insultingly refusing to take on
Thai national identity."
"Thus, in his famous tract The Jews of the East, King Vajiravudh
compared his country's Chinese minority to the European Jews. His main
arguments, summarized by historian Victor Purcell, are as follows: 'In
Siam . . . there exists a situation analogous to the Jewish question
in countries of the West. This is The Yellow Peril. The danger arises
solely from the Chinese from whom the Siamese are even more different
than Europeans are from the Jews. The first similarity between the
Chinese and the Jews is in the matter of racial loyalty. No matter
where they live, what nationality they assume, Chinese remain
essentially Chinese. But theirs is race loyalty, not love of country.
.. . .It is argued that Chinese intermarry with the people of the
country: so do the Jews. But when a Chinese man marries a Thai woman,
the woman becomes a Chinese and adopts Chinese customs in every
detail. Their children become Chinese also….'"
Increasingly as we analyze Chua's book with an evolutionary
perspective, Jewish anti-Semitism looks an awful lot like plain
ordinary hostility towards real or potential market-dominant
minorities - it is simple racial intolerance towards an oppressor. It
feels good to be on top, but it can also be hazardous. Peaceful
separation of the races seems to be the only real lasting solution.
Chua then goes off again into one of her apologias:
"Take the United States. While some ethnic minorities have
outperformed others, the United States economy is absolutely not
controlled by any ethnic minority. On the contrary, if any group can
be said to dominate our economy, it is the 'white' majority. Generally
speaking, Caucasians dominate every major economic sector: finance,
technology, real estate, professions, corporate ownership and
leadership, and so on. The ten richest Americans in 2001 - Microsoft's
Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer [is half-Jewish]; Oracle's
Lawrence Ellison [is Jewish]; Warren Buffett; and five members of the
Wal-Mart-founding Walton family - are all white. (Incidentally, if
Jewish-Americans are viewed as an ethnic minority in the United
States, they do not remotely dominate the U.S. economy; unlike in
Russia, for example, none of the ten wealthiest Americans is Jewish.)"
Chua goes out on a limb here and it has broken. First, let's look,
since she brought it up, at the ten richest Americans. (Note by the
way how she now uses the term 'White' to refer to only Caucasians -
for clarity I use the term White to refer to Caucasians.) She made an
error with regards to Ballmer and Ellison (in square brackets above)
that she says she will correct in the paperback edition of her book.
So let's look at the numbers again. If we include the Wal-Mart-family
as one unit, the five richest families in the United states are then
30% Jewish and 70% White (1.5/5=0.30). Since Jews are only about 2~3%
of the population, they are over-represented by a factor of at least
ten. They are therefore on this basis alone, a market-dominant
minority. In fact, on a whole list of criteria supplied by Jews, Jews
outperform Whites by a large margin (as do East Asians in the United
States - see http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/poj.htm for data).
After skirting over the Jewish issue, Chua again has to get a dig in
at Caucasians: "Nonetheless, the core ethnic problem in the United
States, as experienced by ordinary Americans, is one that pits an
economically and politically dominant 'white' majority against
economically and politically weaker ethnic minorities." Beautifully
done don't you think? Apparently, she has learned the skill of Jewish
apologia from her husband very well.
Like many Americans, growing up in the North, I was aghast at the way
Blacks were treated in the South as portrayed on television during the
60s. Even here, Chua has provided us with a new perspective on Jim
Crow:
"After the Second World War, with the rise of the civil rights
movement in the United States, the paths of the American South and
South Africa dramatically diverged. Nevertheless, the bottom line
remains. After the Civil War, whites in a number of Southern states
suddenly found themselves in the position of a starkly market-dominant
minority, fearful of 'black domination,' revenge, confiscation, and
radical redistribution at the hands of a newly empowered black
majority. Facing what it saw as the unresolvable conflict between a
black-dominated democracy and the maintenance of their own wealth and
status, Southern whites opted aggressively for the latter, doing
everything in their power to undercut the former…. Thus, along with
the developing-world illustrations I gave in chapter 6, the American
South during the Jim Crow era is a classic example of a backlash
against democracy, in which a market-dominant minority, fearful of
confiscation and redistribution, seizes political power.
Unfortunately, the historical record of the West is darker still."
Ergo, they were only human. Any other group would have done the same,
and if it weren't for White guilt, we would be shutting down
immigration before we find ourselves in a similar situation in a few
decades.
"First, the Jews in Weimar Germany were not an economically dominant
minority in the sense that, say, the Chinese are economically dominant
in most Southeast Asian countries. Claims that 'Jews ran the German
economy' were patently false. Second, I am distinctly not suggesting
that the roots of anti-Semitism in Weimar Germany, or anywhere else
for that matter, were economic in nature. Anti-Semitism in Germany, as
elsewhere in the world, existed long before Jews were particularly
successful economically. (Economic grievances certainly had nothing to
do with the numerous pogroms directed at poor shtetls in Russia and
Eastern Europe.) Third, Weimar Germany obviously differed in profound
respects from most of today's developing countries. For example,
Germany was a former imperial power, with colonies and protectorates
all over Africa and a formidable naval fleet and army. Weimar Germans,
including women, were far more educated than the average inhabitant of
the developing world today. Commentators have described Weimar Germany
as 'a cradle of modernity.' Moreover, Weimar Germany had a powerful
industrial base, an impressive network of railways and infrastructure,
and a highly sophisticated banking system…. On the other hand, almost
no Jews were peasants, farmers, or members of the urban proletariat,
and the average income of Jews was 3.2 times that of the general
Weimar population."
Chua makes several errors above. First, if any racial group made "3.2"
times the income of another group living side-by-side, there will
probably be animosity. After all, that is where the ethnic animosity
quite often comes from - the hostility of just being aware of
differences. Chua feels free to condemn Whites in the United States
for making somewhat more money on average than Blacks. What does she
think it would be like if Whites made 3.2 times the average income of
Blacks? Absolute outrage under our current egalitarian principles!
Even today, small disparities in income between men and women is
considered anathema to liberal society. To the contrary, even though
Jews were suppressed throughout Europe for hundreds of years, it was
their recurrent ability to re-emerge again and again as a
market-dominant minority that was the salient feature of
anti-Semitism. Ashkenazi Jews, having an average intelligence of 108,
and having a high level of conscientiousness (drive to get ahead) as
well as maintaining impermeable racial boundaries - or failing to
fully assimilate in any country they lived in, was the basis for
anti-Semitism. Racial hostilities towards Jews is very similar to
racial hostilities towards the East Asians - and includes economic
dominance and xenophobia or a refusal to identify with the host
nation, a refusal to assimilate. (Jews do differ from East Asians in
one major dimension. The Jews see persecution and victimhood
everywhere, whereas the East Asians accept misfortune without the
cacophony of despair and the blaming of others for their often
unfortunate predicaments.)
"As I have repeatedly stressed, ethnic identity turns not on 'biology'
but on subjective perceptions, which are in turn the product of
prevailing ideologies in part constructed by elites and politicians.
In Israel, the powerful official ideology is that Jews - whatever
their social origins - are one people, and thus one 'ethnicity.' When
I ask Israelis whether the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardic
Jews might be seen as an ethnic difference, roughly half of them
answer, 'Of course it's an ethnic difference,' while the other half
respond with an annoyed 'Of course not, that's ridiculous.'"
The above is a fantastic example of duplicitous logic. Notice how she
creeps up to the 'race as biology' question, and then tries to dodge
the issue. Notice how half of those she asked believed that Judaism is
an ethnicity and half didn't - but what does that mean? In fact, what
she really found out is that half the Jews believe that being a Jew
means being a member of a racial tribe. For Jews, it is all about race
and at least half of them will tell you so. That is why there is a lot
of work by Jews in genetic testing - they want to be able to tell who
is genetically a Jew so they can determine by DNA who have a 'right of
return' to Israel. She goes on:
"Israel is a Jewish state - this is just the problem for the country's
Palestinians. As a matter of official policy, every Jew has an
automatic right of admission to Israel, the famous Jewish 'right of
return.' Judaism is the official, established state religion. Every
Jewish immigrant, whether from Russia or Iraq, is subjected to strong
ideological pressures to learn Hebrew as quickly as possible, to
'assimilate' into mainstream Israeli society, and to make a total
commitment to the Israeli state."
What she fails to mention however is that Jewish atheists are as
welcome as Orthodox Jews. The 'right of return' is based on race, not
religion. Judaism in fact is considered to be an earthly religion, one
based on blood, not redemption. It is a racialist religion - not
unlike what passes for a religion among the East Asians. It is
religion that is more based on ancestor worship and genealogy. As she
observes in her book: "Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew recently explained in
an interview in Foreign Affairs that 'Asian societies are unlike
Western ones. The fundamental difference between Western concepts of
society and government and East Asian concepts' - referring to China,
Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, as distinct from Southeast Asia - 'is that
Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of
the family.'" My interpretation then is that East Asians and Jews have
these two commonalities - they are both highly intelligent and their
cultures or religions are racialist or perhaps even more narrowly
particularistic nepotism. Their morality stops at the borders of the
tribe or even the family. That is why it is so easy for them to take
advantage of other races without remorse or compassion.
So, does Chua think that family values, culture or some other
environmental factor is responsible for economic success? It doesn't
appear so, even though many Jewish apologists like to say that Jews
are so successful because of Jewish culture (whatever that is).
"To the extent that religion and other cultural factors play a
significant role in producing the market dominance of certain groups,
the appropriate policy implications are by no means clear. Even if
there were a demonstrable relationship between certain religions and
economic success, an effort to instill 'entrepreneurialism' through,
say, group conversions to Protestantism (or Judaism or Confucianism,
depending on the theory) would seem unpromising. Attempts to inculcate
a 'work ethic' may seem more attractive, but have not proved any more
effective. Indigenous elites in developing countries have frequently
encouraged their fellow citizens to emulate market-dominant minorities
and to become more 'diligent' and 'motivated.' Malaysia's prime
minister Mahathir, for example, has often urged his Malay constituents
to model themselves on their more 'hardworking' and commercially
'astute' Chinese counterparts. Not surprisingly, such governmental
'cultural revolutions' - attempting to change culture from the top
down - have been notoriously unsuccessful.'"
Of course Amy, because races differ in their economic success because
they are genetically different - intelligence, behavioral traits, and
NOT skin color are the determining factors. Finally, she shows what
can happen anywhere by using affirmative action quotas:
"In many respects the results of the NEP have been impressive. While
the NEP has not lifted the great majority of Malays (particularly in
the rural areas) out of poverty, it has helped to create a substantial
Malay middle class. Between 1970 and 1992 the percentage of Malays
occupying the country's most lucrative professional positions went
from 6 percent to 32 percent. The proportion of bumiputra doctors rose
from 4 percent to 28 percent; dentists from 3 percent to 24 percent;
architects from 4 percent to 24 percent; and engineers from 7 percent
to 35 percent. In the corporate sector the bumiputra ownership share
of corporate stock at par values jumped from 1.5 percent in 1969 to
15.6 percent in 1982 to 20.6 percent in 1995. There is no possibility
that free markets could have produced such results."
Nor could fairness produce such results. After years of trying, just
like in the United States, the only way equal outcomes can be achieved
is by coercion. Individualism is swept away, and group rights become
paramount. Every group must be equal by transferring by force property
from one group to another. If this was fair for the Malays to do to
the East Asians, then it was fair for the Germans to do to the Jews in
Nazi Germany.
I hope reading this review of Chua's book does not prevent anyone from
reading it. By understanding the fundamentals of group evolutionary
strategies, the difference in average intelligence of races, and other
essential aspects of evolutionary psychology, this book is a
delightful reading of the racialist perspective. It is rare indeed
that we get a committed antiracist to publish a book that goes a long
way in showing just how relevant race is all over the world - and in
the end how it is always the same.
Matt Nuenke, June 2003.
www.neoguenics.com
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