Re: Aryan invasion theory and race

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...> wrote:

>
>
> some more basic, general and all-encompassing definitions of "racism" are:
>
> - "the belief that there are characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to each race" (Oxford English Dictionary);
>
> - "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary);
>

The latter adds the element of "superiority" not included in the venerable OED's definition. In this case it seems to me that the OED has it wrong, and that inequality (sup/inferiority) is essential to any definition of racism.

>
>
> > But if "racism" is defined loosely as someone who merely accepts
> > the concept of race as meaningfully distinguishing between classes
> > of people, then of course he would be a racist.
>
> Exactly. Yet, this isn't a "loose" definition of the term "racism"; on the contrary, it is the _main_ definition of it! See above.
>

Alright. But in that case, it can be said only more emphatically that practically all intellectuals who spoke out on related matters from the 18th to the mid-20th century must be called "racists", including slaves' emancipator Lincoln, anti-Nazi champion Churchill, China's founder-president Sun Zhongshan, philanthropist Albert Schweitzer, Mahatma Gandhi, etc. etc. These days, censorship of racist books and websites is advocated with the argument that the spread of racist ideas is a danger to the youth and to society. By that logic, there is a far more pressing need to ban the works of all these great worthies from the past than to ban those of puny contemporary neo-Nazis à la David Duke (an explicit supporter of the AIT), for the influence exerted by a Voltaire or a Darwin, part of the obligatory reading in thousands of schools, is far greater than that of today's internet racists. If Michael Hart must be banned, than so (or even more so) must Nobel Prize winners Churchill and Schweitzer.

>
> > In my opinion, "anti-racists" make a grave mistake in trying to
> > deny the fact of racial distinction, as if difference and legal
> > inequality were equivalent.
>
> "Scientific" racism, as defined above, has always provided the base for "legal" (i.e. State-driven) racial discrimination throughout history.<

It seems to me that "scientific racism" is a product of the enlightenment, whereas racial discrimination was older, e.g. Queen Elizabeth I banned blacks from settling in Britain in the 16th century, Spain enacted "limpieza de sangre" laws in the 15th, and pharaonic Egypt already restricted black immigration some 4,000 years ago. Just as the AIT and the OIT are espoused principally for other motives than their political uses, "scientific racism" was largely advocated by people who simply believed in it, regardless of its political uses. In Darwin's time there was no need to buttress colonial policies of racial discrimination, so firmly were they in place.

> But, Koenraad, what do you mean when you state that "racial distinction" should not be denied? Aren't you, by chance, trying to tell us you are a supporter of the idea that "racial distinctions" do exist (which is, alas, unsupported by scientific evidence)?<

I mean distinctions that are so elementary that no scientists has bothered to take the measurements needed to prove them. First a comparison from economics. When, in a famous incident, people denied that there are "laws" in economics, one economist seemingly interrupted the discussion with the question whether he could find a restaurant nearby where he could go and have lunch for free. After his opponents admitted that they didn't know of a place that offered "free lunch", he concluded: "Now *that* is an economic law."

Likewise, some racial distinctions are so elementary that I doubt anyone has cared to put them to the test. Thus, most laymen will be ready to take a bet that the chances for a black couple to have a white child are rather smaller than those of a white couple to have a white child. Skin colour *predicts* (as a scientific law should) the skin colour of the progeny. If there are no racial characteristics, i.e. collective hereditary traits, then the chances would be equal, or would be dependent on non-genetic factors. If you can prove that the chances of having a white baby are equal for parents of all colours (on condition that they, let's say, eat spinach), then you can say that racial distinctions are "unsupported by scientific evidence".

Incidentally, my experience with non-Europeans is that this frantic attempt to deny the mere fact of race is a typically white concern. Colourblindness is derided as a white privilege! I feel quite comfortable with that colourblindness or non-racism that i grew up with, and I still think it's the right thing; but i have also learned that it is a product of civilization, not a gift of nature spontaneously espoused by all men. Not all Hindus I know are racists (though many are: contempt for blacks and hatred of whites such as Sonia Gandhi, a.k.a. "the Shroud of Turin"), but all of them find it perfectly natural to refer to you and me as "whites". Whereas I was taught from childhood onwards to avoid such racial terms, which was not so easy for the handful of classmates who had returned or fled from their homeland Belgian Congo, the rest of the world seems to find it normal and unproblematic to divide mankind into races. And that doesn't make them racists in the sense of hating or belittling people of different races than their own.

>
> The concept that discrimination can be based on "race" presupposes the existence of "race" itself.<

But the reverse is not true. The existence of race does not imply racial discrimination. That is why scientists who do distinguish races need not be advocates of racial discrimination, or what I would call racists.

> However, the U.S. Government's Human Genome Project has announced that the most complete mapping of human DNA to date indicates that there is no distinct genetic basis to racial types -- see at
>
> http://tinyurl.com/4rct9o
>

If that is so, then surely this august institution can show us white couples having black babies?

> Based on this evidence, "racial characteristics" logically cannot exist either.
>

Is it evidence or just a politically-compelled statement?

I know nothing about genetics, but I do have some experience with the politics of academic "consensus". For example, I have witnessed how all the archaeological and documentary evidence in the Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute converged on the thesis that the mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple, yet all the establishment historians pontificated that no pillar-bases had been found at the site, and that the pillar-bases were such that they could never have supported a single building, and that the building could not have been a temple anyway, and that the temple need not have been a Hindu temple, etc. Indeed, the position supported by all the evidence, against which the establishment historians have never presented a single piece of counter-evidence, is now officially held to be a proverbial instance of "Hindu chauvinist history falsification". India's dean of archaeology, Prof. B.B. Lal, is routinely derided as a "Hindutva historian" with as proof that he supported the "canard" of the destroyed Hindu temple. If the political pressure is big enough, it is perfectly possible to make academics say the opposite of what the evidence tells them. Now, race in the US is the same kind of hot potato as religion is in India, so an academic statement that happens to be so fully in tune with official policy doesn't impress me as independent scientific confirmation. Since I don't have the expert knowledge to disprove it, I'll wait till they show me actual evidence in layman's language, and simply reserve my opinion until then.

> > Better to accept difference, including biological inequality
> > (compare the number of Kenyan and Japanese marathon winners),
>
> You're again wrong. The gold medal winners for the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games marathon for women were two *Japanese* athletes, and those for the 1936 (!) and 1992 Olympic Games marathon for men were two *Korean* athletes! See at
>
> http://tinyurl.com/q4xbpr
> http://tinyurl.com/qwhqny
>
> Yours is typically an unscientific commonplace, Koenraad.<

Oops, caught on the wrong foot here. Well, indeed, I didn't know that. It seems I've ventured into territory I'm not really equipped for. And my reading of Hart's book hasn't exactly motivated me to read more of the same.

> Now please don't come up and tell us that black males are "innately" more capable than white ones to sexually satisfy a woman, or that the ancient Germanic tribes (a "Nordic race") were "innately" stronger than the ancient Romans (a "Mediterranean race") in combat! :^)
>
>

Nobody here would have come up with that commonplace until you did.

> > Kalyanaraman's position would be that... all AIT believers are
> > racists. I don't agree with that, but under the prevailing
> > ideological configuration, he can draw upon a concept recently
> > deployed by the "anti-racists", viz. "subconscious racism". I am
> > sure that Francesco does not hold racist opinions, but along with
> > the "anti-racists", Kalyan could say that you are nonetheless the
> > prisoner of an encompassing racism that goes deeper than your
> > conscious opinions, one that comes to the surface in thin disguise,
> > viz. in your belief in a white invasion of India.
>
> While making clear once again that I don't believe in any "Aryan invasion" of India, and that most of mainstream scholars in Indian pre-/proto-history, Vedic literature, and Indo-Iranian linguistics likewise *don't* think in terms of an "Aryan invasion" of India, let me state that this appeal of yours to a supposed "subconscius racism" shared by myself and said maistream scholars is just BS.
>

I don't believe in that "BS", but anti-racists do. They invest a lot in tests showing that even liberals have a more negative brain reaction when shown pictures of blacks. And I can testify to numerous discussion where "white" scholars spoke about or even to Indian scholars in language they would never use for one another. The explanation that some of them give is that it merely happens to be their experience that many more Indians than Westerners talk nonsense about AIT-related evidence, esp. in linguistics. Which is not entirely unfounded, given the total absence of comparative and historical linguistics as a subject in Indian universities. Anyway, it is that kind of repeated experience with white haughtiness that has made Kalyanaraman and Vishal Agarwal sense racism in your (generally well-informed) arguments.

> Charges of racism, "unconscious" or not, against the scholars who have argued for a non-autochthonouness of the Indo-Aryans to the Indian sub-continent are particularly malicious and odious when coming from such Brahmin supremacists as Kalyanaraman and others. True, caste discrimination within Hinduism is not properly a form of racism (although we could start another discussion thread on this very sensible topic), yet it approximates the definitions of "racism" I have provided in the beginning of this post -- just replace the term "race" with "caste" and examine the results!
>

Open contempt of lower-caste people is far more common among non-Hindutva Hindus than in Hindutva circles, which have made a conscious choice for nationalism, hence national unity, hence transcending caste distinctions, or "varna-blindness". But a rise in open anti-white racism is a very conspicuous new trend in Hindutva circles. This has to do with (1) the shift in attention from Muslim terrorism to the Christian conversion campaigns as the liveliest threat to Hinduism (though most missionaries today are non-white); and (2) India's rise as a global player competing not with Pakistan but with the US. I could cite some pretty vicious examples of proud Hindu contempt for conspicuous "whites", including even pro-Hindu ones such as David Frawley and myself; and of secondary contempt for non-resident Indians who have "abandoned" their homeland to "live among whites". But then again I won't, as I have tested the moderators patience long enough with these digressions.

Kind regards,

KE