Posted on 10/20/2010 6:40:23 AM PDT by WebFocus
There was a reason that employers in the middle of the 19th century had signs that said, No Irish need apply — and why employers in the middle of the 20th century no longer had such signs. It was not that employers had changed. The Irish had changed.
The Catholic Church for years worked to bring about such changes among the Irish immigrants and their offspring, just as various religious and secular organizations among the Jews, among blacks, and among other groups worked to bring about changes within their respective groups. By and large these efforts paid off. All these groups were advancing long before there were civil-rights laws.
Yet today, attempts to get black or Hispanic youngsters to speak the language of the society around them are decried by multiculturalists. And any attempt to get them to behave according to the cultural norms of the larger society is denounced as “cultural imperialism,” if not racism.
The multicultural dogma is that we are to “celebrate” all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing — but somehow have better results in the future than those they had in the past. And, if they don’t have better results in the future, it is society’s fault.
Such notions have been tried and have failed in other countries and times, long before they became a fashionable dogma called multiculturalism.
In 19th-century Latvia and Bohemia, among other places in Eastern Europe, the great majority of Germans were literate, while most of the indigenous peoples around them were not. Not surprisingly, Germans had more education and skills and enjoyed a higher standard of living.
In both Latvia and Bohemia, the German minority held most of the jobs requiring education and skills. But, in both places, the indigenous people — Latvians and Czechs — could rise by acquiring the German language and culture, and many did.
But, for the newly rising Latvian and Czech intelligentsia, that was not enough. They wanted to be able to rise without having to learn a different language and culture.
Nor were Latvians and Czechs unique. Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Malays in Malaysia, and Maoris in New Zealand are just some of the others who have wanted the same thing — namely, to cling to their own culture and yet achieve the same success as people with a different culture.
Many of these efforts have failed and few have succeeded. But what is truly painful is how often the polarization created by these efforts led to tragedies, such as civil war in Sri Lanka and brutal expulsions of millions of Germans from Czechoslovakia, to the detriment of both the Germans and the Czech economy.
The history of blacks in the United States has been more complicated. By the end of the 19th century, the small numbers of blacks living in northern cities had, over the generations, assimilated the culture of the surrounding society to the point where they lived and worked among the white population more fully than they would in most of the 20th century.
In New York, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other Northern cities, black ghettos became a 20th-century phenomenon. It was after the massive migration of far less acculturated blacks out of the South in the early 20th century that a massive retrogression in black-white relations took place in the Northern cites to which the migrants moved.
The blacks who moved to these cities were of the same race as those who were already there, but they were not the same in their culture, values, and behavior. No one complained of this more bitterly than the blacks already living in these cities, who saw the newcomers as harbingers of a worse life for all blacks.
This same process occurred on the west coast decades later, largely during World War II, when the same influx of less acculturated blacks from the South marked a retrogression in race relations in places like San Francisco and Portland.
Cultural differences matter. They have always mattered, however much that may be denied today by the multicultural cult.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Survival of the Fittest is a scientific principle that is being deliberately ignored
The "No Irish Need Apply" signs weren't widespread anyway ~ but think about it ~ the Irish could read and write, yet the majority of Americans couldn't.
Frankly, it's time to put an end to this particular piece of quasi-history. The Irish, per se, had been in America since the early 1600s and their descendants constituted a very substantial part of American society by the time the Great Famines came around 200 years later. The earlier Colonial Era Irish still far outnumber the later Famine Irish many times over.
America's greatest combat heroes are named Timothy Murphy and Audie Murphy.
BTW, Audie's family was so poor they lived off his rabbit hunting. Timothy was a frontiersman who may have had one of the first double-barreled firearms ever made. He served as a Scout during the New York campaigns ~ his companions were mostly Oneida warriors.
It's a small world at the top.
This is one of the stupidist things I have ever read in my life and I am astounded that Sowell is the author. He is actually endorsing discrimination and segregation. Disgusting.
It is true about the signs. My father’s side of the family came here during the famine. There was a massive influx of desperately poor people and terrible prejudice against them.
He is also pointing out the ability of nationality groups ot improve their economic and social prospects by maximizing their own efforts and not adopting a group-grievance mentality, This is the opposite of invidious group and race discrimination.
You seem to have interpreted Sowell's article in exactly the opposite sense of what he intended.
I'm afraid you are falling for British propaganda designed to offset the fact the UK government failed Ireland with misguided price supports for grain during a time of famine ~ the United States, on the other hand, fought for the right to transport food to Ireland without UK interference and won the battle.
Otherwise ALL the Irish in the world would be living in Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico ~
Right on Ma’am.
CULTURISM
Culturism holds that majority cultures have a right to protect, promote and guide themselves. All non-western cultures are culturist. We have a right to be culturist as well.
We are losing the rhetorical debate. Injecting culturism and culturist into our vocabulary will help protect the West.
This is how culturism counters the words multiculturalism, racism, and individualism:
Multiculturalists say the West is just a random assemblage of diferent cultures from around the world. Culturism recognizes that western nations have unique traditional core cultures to protect, guide and promote. Multiculturalists ask us to “celebrate diversity.” Culturists don’t think they take cultural diversity seriously enough. At heart multiculturalists think all cultures are interchangeable and only refer to food, festivals and fashion. Culturism, the book, looks at the Aztecs and headhunters to show how diverse cultures can be. But 9/11 should have put the West on notice that not all cultures believe in democracy, individualism, the value of individual lives, the Protestant work ethic, female rights, gay rights, the relative separation of church and state or other parts of western culture. Unlike multiculturalists, culturists think the West has a core culture, think it requires protection, and take cultural diversity very seriously.
Charges of racism are used to silence all of those who would talk about the negative parts of cultural diversity. Worrying about racism makes some sense. But immigration concerns are not about race, they are about culture. Racism is stupid and dangerous. But if diversity is real, culturism is necessary.
Individualism is the third word. Culturism seeks to promote individualism realistically. If the West does not survive, individualism and individual rights will be discontinued. Individual rights being used to protect anti-social behavior can go to destructive extremes. Individual rights are now used to defile our airwaves, claim asylum and avoid culturist profiling. Being a citizen means sometimes considering what is best for the society you purport to love.
Culturism’s definition holds that majority cultures have a right to guide, protect and promote themselves. Multiculturalism has told us that the West has no majority culture to guide, protect and promote. They have also told us to stick up for it is racist. Furthermore, they seek to undermine the West iin the name of indivudal rights. To survive, the West must must be as culturist as other nations.
Protect the West, fight abuse of the word racism, stop multiculturalism, and safeguard individualism,
USE THE WORD CULTURISM - TELL PEOPLE YOU ARE A CULTURIST!!
No, I don’t think I did. I tore it out of the paper today to write a letter to the editor.
I’m talking about signs in the US saying that Irish shouldn’t seeks housing or employment. It is true.
Thank you.
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