Special thanks to Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar for sending this. I would start watching this excellent Dari Farsi documentary 1 minute 19 seconds in. There are many excellent ancient maps of central and south Asia.
I just want to watch this again and again, just to listen to the narrator’s voice. Majestic, wise, soft and sweet. For those so sure Afghanistan will fall; any nation with voices like this is perchance stronger than she appears. This may be where the homo sapien sapien modern civilization was born.
A middle eastern student shares how deeply offensive a condescending pretentious patronizing xenophobic post modernist baizuo caucasian is towards them. The baizuo caucasian tells the middle eastern student that he is a genie for solving a math problem and then apologizes for it afterwards, since after all the word “genie” comes from the middle east. Two phenomenons might be at play. One is baizuo. The other is anti muslim islamaphobia.
If this is coming from baizuo, this is a very old problem. It comes out of European imperialism in the 1700s and 1800s. The European intelligentsia tried to colonize the minds of their imperial colonial subjects with inferiority complex to damage their self confidence. Europeans also tried to deconstruct colonized peoples, causing them to be embarrassed by, hate and reject their ancient history, technology, science, product development, process innovation, civilization, culture, religion, spirituality, art, literature, institutions, ancestors and elders. Post modernism divided colonized peoples into many categories of oppressed and oppressors (mostly manufactured irrational concepts) to turn different groups of people against each other; implying that power oppression rather than meritocratic competence defined local hierarchies. This European colonization of the mind sharply lowered total factor productivity and material living standards in the developing world ceteris paribus. The Latinos, Africans and Asians got sick of it, and kicked the Europeans and their baizuo European intelligentsia out. You can read more about this in a Nuanced understanding of British Colonialism.
Sadly the baizuo caucasian intellegentsia did not seem to learn from this. In the 1960s they tried to undermine America’s heroes Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X. Please watch Muhammed Ali’s and Malcolm X’s videos speaking about the baizuo in American Caste (a). And the baizuo seem to continue to get worse year after year. I don’t understand how this is happening. Perhaps could this be a xenophobic jealous backlash against the accelerating socio-economic rise of the rest–especially darkies?
What can we darkies do about this? Should we ask to be considered white?
To the middle eastern student who wrote Prof Saad, maybe the caucasian overlords should learn that the vast majority of Aryans are Asians. Asians (Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang, Tibet, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, SAARC, South East Asia) are very proud to be Aryan or Arya, thank you very much. Arya or Aryan is a cultural rather than genetic marker. Arya means nobility. Maybe ignore the baizuo and become extremely successful in everything you do despite their efforts to sabotage you. Fewer and fewer foreigners are fooled by the hard bigotry of low expectations, by the lie that we cannot manifest our own miracles. Their time is almost up.
I would like to thank Prof Saad for being a glowing light of wisdom and inspiration for our world. Love you Saad!
In the comments, please mention if anyone would like to invite Prof Saad to be a guest for the Brown Caste podcast.
Five thousand years ago the greater Egyptian, Sumerian, Eastern (defined as pan Arya plus China) civilizations were very mathematically oriented. Many caucasians appear to believe that these ancient civilizations were racist. Possibly because of this many caucasians believe that math is racist.
Another possible reason many caucasians appear to believe that math is racist is because they fear it might unfairly advantages “brown” people (Asians, Arabs, Latinos) and “brown” cultures (eastern philosophy including Toaism and Confucianism, native american religion) at the expense of caucasians in the new global artificial intelligence, neuroscience, genetics economy.
Could part of the anger against math come from fear that mathematics, science, technology, seeking the truth through thought, seeking the truth without thought might be haram or blasphemous? (Obviously most Abrahamics do not believe this and this is not a critique of Abrahamism.)
I believe that mathematics is part of art; and that it derives from beyond normal gross thought. From what in Sanskrit is called Buddhi, Vijnayamaya Kosha, Ananda Maya Kosha, Sukshma Sharira, Kaarana Sharira, the subtle heavens.
Perhaps the anger against mathematics is part of a deeper anger against the subtle heavens? If so, one possible way to look at this is that to transcend the subtle heavens (including mathematics) it might be helpful to love them and love our way through them. Or to love and respect the racist (subtle heavens–including mathematics) until we transcend the various subtleties of thought and feeling.
Two 17-year-old boys accused of harassing four African-American middle schoolgirls — using racial slurs and urinating on one of the victims — are facing charges including bias intimidation and lewdness.
The incident, which took place during an Oct. 18 high school football game in the New Jersey suburb of Lawrence Township and was partly captured on a video that circulated on social media, involves a cast of characters that has given some observers pause: Police say the boys are of Indian descent.
While it’s tempting to see the reported ethnicity of the boys suspected in the assault as complicating the story and raising questions about whether the assault should be thought of as racist, I look at it through a different lens. Instead of asking what the boys’ reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-black assault in a very traditional way. In doing so, the assailants are demonstrating how race is a social construct that people make through their actions. They show race in the making, and show how race is something we perform, not just something we are in our blood or in the color of our skin.
I want to emphasize the “complicating” aspect. Many American intellectuals don’t want to complicate an already tragic story, in black and white. Those of us of “Asian American” origin complicate that story (as do people of Latino background), so we are co-opted into the preexistent story that already exists. We are subalterns in a black and white story.
So these boys are brown kids in “whiteface”, to serve a particular narrative.
But, I believe literally every one of the South Asian readers of The New York Times that read this knows very well that anti-black racism is not something learned in the United States of America by Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc.
A growing part of the global caucasian intelligentsia are attacking Hong Kong protesters as far right fascists. This is part of a growing trend among xenophobic caucasians attacking Asians for “white supremacy”, “nazism”, “racism”, “oppression”, “patriarchy”, “imperialism”, “colonialism”, “hegemony”, “exploitation.”
Why is this happening? Is it just jealousy? Is it that many caucasians fear that “darkies” own a growing percentage of global wealth, earn a growing percentage of global income? Is it fear that “darkies” have growing competence, capacity, merit, mental health, intelligence? Is it fear about improving “darkie” academic outcomes?
I am not sure. Can everyone share their thoughts?
How should us “darkies” react?
I believe in loving and respecting our enemy with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds and all our might. This includes everyone who is disrespectful, not loving, racist, bigoted, prejudiced, white supremacist, Nazi, facist, oppressive, hegemonic, exploitative, patriarchal towards us. And everyone who accuses us of being disrespectful, not loving, racist, bigoted, prejudiced, white supremicist, Nazi, facist, oppressive, hegemonic, exploitative, patriarchal. And everyone who labels and mislabels us. And everyone who falsely accuses us.
Everyone has the right to freedom of art and thought. If we truly love and respect others, then how can we not respect their right to disrespect and not love us?
The sweetness of love will gradually melt their hearts.
Some might say that this works for most people who are mean to others, but is insufficient for dangerous people. For particularly dangerous people, we can combine the deepest of love and respect with dialogue. And for the most dangerous people, we can combine love, respect, and dialogue with other things.
Can there be any other way?
This topic is one of the reasons The Brown Pundits Podcast would like to interview Irshad Manji:
Irshad Manji has touched the sweetness of the heart, the silence that is always with us. And while I agree with her that we should respect and love others, and not label others. I don’t think we have the right to limit the freedom of art and thought of others by asking them not to label and mislabel us.
One example that inspires me is how Krishna dealt with harsh bigotry, criticism, false allegations, others mislabeling him, disrespect, bigotry, prejudice, white supremacy, Nazism, fascism, oppression, hegemony, exploitation, patriarchy. Krishna insisted that others be allowed to criticize Krishna.
I would be curious to listen to Irshad Manji’s thoughts about this.
One of the strange admissions I will make is that I have not read Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. This is J. D. Vance’s book describing the various social and cultural forces which maintain deep pockets of poverty and dysfunction across much of greater Appalachia. Vance, though a Yale-educated lawyer, is from this region, and of the deprived class.
I say strange because I happen to be cited in the book. Vance has told me that some of my writing on the historical origins of the Scots-Irish made him aware that he was not just a white American, that he had a very particular ethnicity in the broader Anglo-American context. The fact is that Vance’s politics are broadly consonant with mine, and I tend to be wary of reading books where I suspect I will agree with the overall message. I don’t find it useful to simply reiterate my own opinions, as I already hold them.
With all that said, I recently saw on Twitter that a literal Communist academic accused Vance of promoting the white genocide meme because he wrote about replacement level fertility among Americans. Just like an inquisitor sees witches behind every corner, American Leftists see a fascist and a racist everywhere they look. But that’s not the interesting point.
Vance responded that he had a mixed-race son.
I am not a specialist on J. D. Vance, so this was news to me. I didn’t know anything about his personal life. A little Google yielded the fact that Vance is married to an Indian American, a law school classmate. And, a little more research quickly yields the fact that she is from a much more privileged class background than J. D. Vance (most Americans would be!). In fact, judging by the community that she grew up in, it is highly unlikely that her family was not upper-middle-class (OK, it was easy to look up her parents and their professions, they are doing very well).
The question I pose here is that as the children of Mr. and Mrs. Vance grow up, will they perceive that they obtain privilege from their white father? Is J. D. Vance more privileged than his wife? A plain reading would probably result in the admission that this is ludicrous. The Vance children will grow up with a paternal lineage defined by hardscrabble lives, with the squandering of opportunities. In contrast, their maternal family will be descended from successful professionals. Immigrants who sunk roots in San Diego.
There is a lot of talk today about “intersectionality.” Usually, I don’t find that that is in good faith. But let’s take the intersecting parameters of the backgrounds of the Vances into account. Who is more privileged? I suppose it depends on how you define “privilege,” but my own personal take is that in fact, J. D. Vance’s wife is more privileged by background than he is, despite her visible nonwhiteness (which no doubt does result in some discrimination).
In the years before the Civil War, popular racial supremacism arose in the American South to engender solidarity of identity for whites, from the poor masses to the rich planter elite. It was the solidarity of the “aristocracy of the skin.” This explicit racial caste system was such that the poorest white was above the status of the most accomplished black. The way in which we talk about race and class in much of American discourse seems to default back to this idea.
Many of my white academic friends (not all!) from working-class or poor backgrounds believe that because of their class status, they now have the same privilege as other white people. That the past is the past. That is, white people can move up and down the class hierarchy, and yet retain the skin privilege. History does not shadow them in the way that it does the dusky folk.
White people are magic.
As the 21st-century progresses I think some of us, of all races, need to move beyond this way of thinking. Many South Asian academics I know personally who come from privileged backgrounds speak of themselves as a subaltern and marginal people. But there’s nothing subaltern and marginal about their lives. Empirically I think the “white people are magic” thesis is just wrong. They bleed just like the rest of us.
Opposition politicians genuinely co-operating cross party today to listen to @GretaThunberg and key voices from #Youthstrike4climate about what needs to happen to tackle our climate emergency.
I had posted this last night but saved it in the draft. I just heard a story about a Bursar of a Cambridge College telling an *Asian* lighting Engineer that he should watch out with the lighting because otherwise you can’t see “black people in the dark except for their teeth.” Continue reading “The unconscious whiteness of Britain-“
So those 'Proud Hindus' wailing & rending their garments at #NotreDame & vicariously jumping on nonsense-wagon of civilisational destruction, making stupid comparisons to 'Indian Culture'. Were you wailing & keening when your stormtroopers dismantled the Babri Mosque by hand?
This status represented my initial thoughts on Notre Dame. Not all monuments are equal and the Notre Dame has a place in the global imagination. Continue reading “Notre Dame & Babri Masjid”
I find the best analogy for the caste system happens to be Latin America. There was intense mixing in Latin American; there is creolic elements (I mean creole in the general sense not specific) throughout the continent. Continue reading “South Asia is Latin America minus 2,000years”
I was pondering over this last evening since the rate of Westernisation in India is somewhat mind-boggling. Alia Bhatt’s dress to the filmfare awards is what any Hollywood siren would happily wear. I can’t imagine a Pakistani actress wearing that in the next decade, for better or for worse.
I know it sounds hideously hypocritical but at the same time I don’t know how much would I want the Turanic triangle (AfPak+Iran) to really transform in a cultural space. While I would like to see Islam’s reform I wouldn’t want to see the base cultures become Western.
I also do not think that IndoPak will ever be a thing again; Pakistan is sailing out of South Asia and Indians have let them do so. It’s a mistake since our natural ties are within the geographic range but it’s not something I especially care about. If the Brits were able to shatter South Asia so easily perhaps it was never a real construct..
Considering that the West is becoming more pagan and spiritual and India is becoming more Abrahamic (Hindutva is like the Bhakti movement, the Abrahamification of Hinduism).
I notice that Westerners now hold India to the same standards and don’t treat it as some “exotic” part of the world.
Contrast this to the Jewish-American travelloger, Drew Binksy:
