“Can someone please explain on what basis I am supposed to care more about the plight of the white working classes than that of, say, Congolese people driven out of their homes by war?”
(an oasis of sanity in a thread dominated by horrible bigots)
The idle musings of John Band
“Can someone please explain on what basis I am supposed to care more about the plight of the white working classes than that of, say, Congolese people driven out of their homes by war?”
(an oasis of sanity in a thread dominated by horrible bigots)
Oh come on John! Who in their right mind reads the CiF comments threads?
Also it's worth pointing out that there is in fact a rational and coherent response to the question posed above. Human beings have a natural in-built tendency to care more about those they can empathise with, and it is far easier to empathise with those who (a) look like you, and (b) live in similar situations.
That's not to say it's "right" (in some kind of moral or ethical sense) to care more about the white working class than Congolese refugees, but it's a perfectly valid explanation for why some people do.
Because they try to pick fights with you in pubs in the most obscurely complicated ways – part of the organic context of British culture! See minor event last nite; placed an empty glass on the end of a table and instantly faced with bloke demanding to know how much the pint cost.
Nothing to me of course; one of my fans bought it. Celebrity, eh.
Jim Bliss made my point for me, but does anyone really think middle England cares about the working class?
Isn't it closer to the truth that they think them lazy and are angry with them for leaving shit jobs for immigrants?
Had Madeline McCann's parents come off a council estate, would they not get done for neglect?
“Can someone please explain on what basis I am supposed to care more about the plight of the white working classes than that of, say, Congolese people driven out of their homes by war?”
Richard Dawkins would tell them that they should on the basis of degrees of relatedness. Those dreadful proles are are your relatives to a degree which Congolese people are not. But I guess Dawkins and Darwin are in a box marked 'Break open in the event of creationists & Christians. Not to be used for any other purpose – ever!'
However Ive no doubt the worthy commenter really does care about the Congolese and white working class people just the same – ie not at all.
Those dreadful proles are are your relatives to a degree which Congolese people are not.
Not to a statistically significant degree – genetic variances within people of a particular ethnic group dwarf the very small variances seen between ethnic groups.
It's fair to say that in primitive human societies – say, a hunter-gatherer tribe, or Norfolk – it's likely that people who look most like you are most likely to be your relatives and share a statistically significant number of genes. Racism exists because people can't quite get their heads around the concept that in a country with 50 million white people, Dave Bloggs is no more likely to be related to you than Mohammed Singh.
However Ive no doubt the worthy commenter really does care about the Congolese and white working class people just the same – ie not at all.
Hmm. I imagine he'd vote for sending more aid and fewer arms to Congo; this would be an improvement on the current situation…
Britlurker: Those dreadful proles are are your relatives to a degree which Congolese people are not.
JohnB: Not to a statistically significant degree – genetic variances within people of a particular ethnic group dwarf the very small variances seen between ethnic groups.
John Im I rather thought that egalitarian dead horse had been well and truly flogged by now. Its nonsense even on the race of it. How did people of the 'same' group happen to look…well, the same? Because they are genetically similar, more so than people from a 'different' group.
Ask yourself how did a group of people from Norfolk who were closely related to each other, say 200 years ago, and a group of people from the Congo somehow end up in a situation where people from Norfolk end up being more closely related to Congolese than others from Norfolk.
How did that happen?
If we consider that most people from Norfolk, right now, exhibit quite a degree of similarity to each other especially when considered with respect to a group from the Congo who themselves exhibit a high degree of similarity to each other.
What kind of covert international breeding program could bring this about? It would have to have been mind-bogglingly complicated to bring about this situation. To maintain over a few generations a situation where the population designated 'Norfolk' and that designated 'Congo' can interbreed and yield offspring in Norfolk who look white and offspring in the Congo who look black but in every other respect are similar to each other and dissimilar to those around them in Congo and Norfolk.
I dont buy it. Id love to see some evidence.
I mention 200 years ago but thats being pretty generous isnt it, precious few from Norfolk have ever been to Congo and vice versa and much of that will be very recent, certainly not enough time to bring about this supposed genetic variance within the Norfolk & Congo populations.
JohnB: people can’t quite get their heads around the concept that in a country with 50 million white people, Dave Bloggs is no more likely to be related to you than Mohammed Singh.
In short John that simply is nottrue, guess thats why they cant get their heads around it.
You are deploying a version of Lewontin's fallacy btw, a fallacy first put forward in the early 70s. Its been shot down by genetic and statistical analysis since – you just need to google that – but its clearly wrong just from a straightforward commonsense pov.
Also Id like to mention this definition of race:
"Although races are indeed fuzzy, extended families are even fuzzier, yet no one denies their reality. In fact, a race is not just like an extended family, it is an extended family. A race is simply an extremely extended family that inbreeds to some degree"
Thats from Steve Sailer, it seems like a good working theory to me, one which jars with you and me being more related to Mohammed Singh than to Dave Bloggs.
Again I ask you, just how could your Dave Bloggs/Mohammed Singh scenario have arisen, (forget the DNA jargon)?
Im not saying it couldnt happen, with genetic engineering, clever cross breeding programs, mass adoptions etc it could but Im not aware that it has.
Yes, statistically, you're likely to be very slightly closer related to Dave Bloggs than Mohammed Singh – the point is that variances from the mean within people of a given skin colour in a modern society are so large that this doesn't make much difference.
As in, if you're in London, most of the white people you meet are of Welsh/Nordic/Irish/French/German/Russian/Polish/Turkish descent anyway, not of Londonic descent. Skin colour is only a useful guide to relatedness in insular communities where migration has been limited, and we don't have many of those in the UK anymore.
That's why I mentioned Norfolk – since communities there remained insular until the end of the 20th century, it's likely that white people born and bred in Norfolk will be related to each other to a significant degree; but the same is not true for London, Manchester, Birmingham or Liverpool.