I have come to the conclusion that like Judas it
would be better if certain subjects had never been born. At least Judas played
a necessary part in the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. But it is
hard to see what benefit arises from the existence of sociology. If Judas is
placed in the innermost circle of hell despite the benefit that arose from his
life, where do we place the sociology department that not only gives us no
benefit, but more importantly does much harm?
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| A white raven : it's hard being different, among the gray masses |
A serious subject is one that allows a variety of
opposing views. The debate between these views is determined by reason or else
by experience. The theory about the world being flat is falsified by our being
able to sail around it, while the theory that bachelors can be married is falsified
by our reason and our understanding of simple words like “bachelor” and
“married”.
Sociology on the other hand is about taking ordinary
words and changing their meaning so that they mean something other than they
did previously. The crucial point to realise however is that just because a
sociologist at some point invented some theory, it doesn’t follow that this
theory is true. This is especially the case when this theory is both contrary
to reason and contrary to experience.
Sociologists invented the supposed distinction
between gender and sex. Until this point there had been no distinction.
Throughout human history the sex of a child was in almost all cases a
completely straightforward matter that was determined at the moment of the
child’s birth. This was the basic building block of humanity.
But as soon as a distinction is invented between
gender and sex all sorts of possibilities arise to subvert how people
understand themselves and those around them. All becomes unclear. Is your baby
a boy? I’ve no idea. We’re going to have to wait until he/she/ze/it tells us in
a few years.
Who proved that there was a distinction between
gender and sex? Was it proved by experience? Did someone see this distinction?
Was it proven by means of reason? No. All that happened is that someone at some
point decided that two words “gender” and “sex” which until that point had been
synonymous like “bachelor” and “unmarried” in fact were different in
meaning. If this sort of reasoning is
allowed, we can easily prove that some bachelors are married. But if we can
prove this, then we can frankly prove anything. If words mean what I want them
to mean I am through the looking glass where anything can happen. But this
isn’t to use reason it is to subvert it.
Until relatively recently it would have been
considered ludicrous to suppose that a man could literally become a woman or
indeed that a man could marry a man. But by inventing or annulling distinctions
the Left with the help of sociology professors chips away at our understanding
until we reach a point where we must affirm what once was considered to be
impossible or else be charged with a hate crime. The Left at this point has
succeeded in remaking us so that we are willing to do what we are told. At this
point socialism/sociology becomes possible, because humanity has been reborn in
the Left’s image. We then will actually be able to see that 2+2 = 5 just as we
can see that a man can be a woman. Black quite literally becomes white.
It sometimes takes decades of chipping away before
we reach the point where something that was considered an objective fact that
can’t be changed becomes first possible and then obligatory.
A while ago many of will have come across the story
of Rachel Dolezal (apparently now calling herself Nkechi Amare Diallo) a woman
who had for a long time portrayed herself as being black while in fact her
parents were white. She was teaching African studies at a university in
Washington State, but was subsequently dismissed from this position.
Most people responded to this story with bemusement
because we assume that race, just like sex is something fixed and objective,
caused by where we are from and who are parents are. But I strongly suspect
that a few years from now Dolezal will be seen as a martyr for her cause. The
reason for this is that sociologists don’t think that race is something
objective. It is a social construct.
How can this be? We are still in the bemused state.
But we were in that state with regard to sex just a few years ago. Until
recently if a little boy thought that he was in fact a girl you we would have
laughed and told him not to be silly. If you do that nowadays social services
are liable to take “her” away.
In a few years anyone will be able to say that they
are whatever race they choose to be. A person with blond hair and blue eyes and
the palest skin imaginable will be able to claim that they are Black or Asian
or a Native American. They will be able to do this even though it will be
possible objectively to prove that they are none of these things.
I came across a story recently about an Aboriginal
Australian cricket tour. The idea is to follow in the footsteps of some
Aboriginal cricketers who came to Britain 150 years ago.
The BBC describes this nineteenth century tour as
unheralded, but I am far from being a cricket follower, but I had read about it
long ago.
But it immediately becomes obvious when we compare
the tour that took place 150 years ago with the one that is to take place this
year that there is something rather different.
Can anyone be an aboriginal? Isn’t it something that
can be determined objectively by genetic testing? Apparently not. I came across a site which tried to explain the
issue.
Proposals of genetic
testing as a means of proving one’s Aboriginality have been dismissed on the
grounds that ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ are social, cultural and political
constructs which cannot be tested objectively.
The site continues to explain that “It should be
emphasised that Aboriginal identity no longer has anything to do with the
colour of the skin.”
Aboriginals in Australia have suffered great
prejudice and are frequently poorer than other Australians. The Australian
Government has been trying to make up for this. There are grants and various
programmes open to aboriginals, but not to anyone else.
I’m not on the whole a great fan of what the
Americans call “affirmative action”. Letting someone into Harvard with worse
grades than someone else because they have different colour skin is just as
much a form of racism as saying you can’t sit on this bench because you are
black. I would prefer that we could work towards the day when we didn’t give a
damn about race rather than viewing everything through the lens of skin colour.
But clearly if there is to be positive discrimination there have to be
objective ways of determining who is and who is not to gain from it. If anyone can get into Harvard without the
required grades just by stating that they are black the whole concept of
“affirmative action” will rapidly collapse.
But if you don’t use genetics and you don’t use
appearance how can it be determined whether someone is an Aboriginal?
According to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, “Your Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
heritage is something that is personal to you. You do not need a letter of
confirmation to identify as an Indigenous person.”
But then can just anyone gain the advantages of
being an aboriginal just by saying that they are one?
It becomes a little more complex. There are three
criteria:
Being of Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Islander descent
Identifying as an
Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person
Being accepted as such
by the community in which you live, or formerly lived.
But how is someone to show that these criteria apply
in a particular case. The Institute explains.
“Doing your family
history may help you obtain proof of your heritage. You might find a birth,
death or marriage record that traces your family to a particular Aboriginal
station or reserve. Or you might have oral history stories that can connect you
to a particular area or person or photograph.”
The key then is to be accepted by other aboriginals
and to find either an aboriginal ancestor or some sort of oral history that
suggests there was such an ancestor.
It would appear that even one aboriginal ancestor no
matter how long ago is enough to make someone an aboriginal. But this is rather
similar to the idea that used to apply in the Southern States of the USA that
even one drop of black blood made a person black.
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| Ava Gardner plays Julie Laverne in Showboat (1951). It only takes one drop |
But why depend on oral history when it is possible
to use DNA samples to objectively show a person’s ancestry? The problem is that
if we analyse the DNA of a white person from Britain we will probably find that
we are each descended from people from all over the world. I have not done such
a test, but it is probable that I have an ancestor who came from Africa. If
there are four generations per century, there are forty between now and William
the Conqueror. That means I have a 1099511627776 grandparents since 1066, which
is more than the population of the world today. The absurdity of genealogy is that
each of us in fact is related to everyone else. You are related to Napoleon.
Everyone is. So it is entirely possible that I have an ancestor who was an
aboriginal from Australia. Does that mean that if I can prove that I have such
ancestry I can go to Australia and claim various grants? Would not my DNA be
enough to make up for my lack of oral history?
This is all going to become very silly very quickly.
If Rachel Dolezal can find a black ancestor, then she can legitimately claim
that she is black. If she used DNA testing then she almost certainly could find
a gene that comes from Africa. Moreover if her identification as being black is
simply a personal matter, then it is outrageous that she was dismissed from her
job. She was black simply because she said it. Moreover she had been accepted
into the black community and she quite possibly could have found people from
that community who could orally confirm her black descent. But anyway if race
is just a social construct then it needs no more objective proof than I need to
claim that I am a man despite my DNA saying that I am a woman. If I can ignore
DNA with regard to sex, why on earth can I not ignore it with regard to race?
The Left suggests that because I am white it is
“cultural appropriation” for me to wear a Mexican hat or a Chinese dress. But
very soon I will simply respond, “But I am Mexican, I am Chinese.” The Left
wants women’s only shortlists to increase women’s representation into
Parliament and complains when women cricketers don’t earn the same as men. But
the men’s team can say that we are in fact women, just as John Humphreys can
say he is really Joanna meaning that it is in fact men who are paid less for
presenting the Today Programme.
At some point in the near future we will have to
accept that a white man is in fact a black woman soon after that we will all
have to believe that a square has three sides. Alternatively we can accept that
someone who looks white is white even if one ancestor hundreds of years ago was
black and that objective qualities like race and sex are fixed rather than
matters of choice and subjectivity. Only at this point will we come back from
the land beyond the looking glass where words mean what I want them to mean and
anyone can be anything. At this point too we might cease to be quite so
obsessed with issues of race and sex and that what really matters about a
person is “the content of their character.”
