The self-evisceration of British culture continues apace. The process is intensified by the fact that the bodies that should be guarding that culture are run by people who are deeply “progressive” and who would rather push their mum off a cliff than be called racist. Here are two stories from the last few days.
It’s been reported that the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is taking a good deal of its exhibits off display. I must admit, this is one of the less surprising developments and one that does at least have some justification.
I visited the Pitt Rivers with a friend this year, just before the Coof Coof closed everything down. We were both surprised by how old school it was, like a massive cabinet of curiosities. The Pitt Rivers is a leading ethnographic museum with a huge and eclectic collection. The excellent American travel writer, Bill Bryson, described it as “…packed beautifully, and practically to the ceiling with the most wonderful array of ethnographic objects, all soothingly lit and artistically arranged.” I remember we agreed at the time it wasn’t likely to be like this much longer.
The Pitt Rivers is the legacy of Augustus Pitt Rivers who donated his own archaeological and ethnographic collection to Oxford University in the 1880s. His career as an archaeologist and ethnographer only happened because of his service abroad in Victoria’s army and was facilitated by and a product of the British Empire. Or, as the museum’s own website succinctly puts it.
“The Museum’s rootedness in coloniality comes to us in materialized form through its unique Victorian galleries, the often-problematic language of its historic labels, and the very presence of its collections. Collections like the one we steward, were largely gathered during the time of the British Empire. During this period, systems and structures used for the exploitation of resources and people, including enslavement, were set up in institutionalised form in order to accumulate wealth and power for the colonisers. Part of that system of disempowerment of local authority was through the taking of (often sacred) objects. The people who took these objects felt entitled to do so; to appropriate them in order to represent cultural practices, and to speak about and for others from eurocentric perspectives.”
So, if they really want to “de-colonise” their museum, then closing it down and sending all the stuff back to the original countries would seem to be the only option. This would, of course, involve making a lot of comfortably off, Guardian reading, bien pensent museum folk redundant, and that would never do. It would also miss the opportunity to bolster and push the narrative.
Apparently, there’s been a thorough review going on for three years and they are now de-colonising their collection (in line with the Gospel according to the Guardian, of course). The changes will be wide ranging, but the headline grabbing removal is that of the South American shrunken heads (Shuar tsantsas) collection and trophy heads from the Naga people of north-eastern India/north-western Burma. I share the misgivings about the display of human remains in museums, wherever they come from and however they were acquired. However, the main reason for removing them is given here by the museum’s Director, Laura Van Broekhoven.
“…visitors often saw the Museum’s displays of human remains as a testament to other cultures being ‘savage’, ‘primitive’ or ‘gruesome’. Rather than enabling our visitors to reach a deeper understanding of each other’s ways of being, the displays reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking that goes against the Museum’s values today.”
Imagine that, thinking that cutting off an enemy’s head and keeping it as a trophy is “savage”? What unsophisticated hicks these visitors must be.
Notice, the heads are going not due to understandable issues about displaying human remains so much as the fact that they do not fit the narrative. It’s hard to maintain the fiction that “the colonised” were innocent children of nature, living sweet and blameless lives in the beautiful, peaceful Eden of Rousseau’s imagination with a horned Naga trophy skull gazing down.
There is a clear double standard and inherent racism in the attitude displayed here. The Naga fought others and took trophies when they won, it was part of their culture. It was part of my people’s culture to roam about kicking the crap out of others and nicking their stuff. The British did just what most cultures have done when they’ve had half a chance, just on a much, much bigger scale. If it is asserted that we should not have done this then why exactly? Because we should have known better? Are we better moral creatures than the Naga, and the Mongols, Moghuls, Aztecs, Zulu and Han? Surely that’s a racist assertion?
It’s true that taking some of these objects did serve to bolster authority, just as the conquering/colonising armies of Islam would turn churches into mosques. However, the main motive for bringing most of this stuff back to Britain (other European countries too of course, but the British seem to have been especially bitten by the bug) was to show the folks back home, people were interested. Many of the soldiers, sailors, explorers and colonists were genuinely fascinated by the people and cultures they met with. Curiosity led to study, study to understanding, understanding to a change of attitude. The very attitude and mindset that condemns the colonists today, the knowledge of these other cultures, it all grows out of the knowledge and experience gathered by those who stand condemned.
There’s a stark and informative contrast with Chinese history, in the early-1400s the Admiral Zheng He (AKA Cheng Ho) led great flotillas of Chinese ships on voyages of trade, diplomacy and exploration. Although a lot of research has been done it’s not totally agreed as to just how far they got. Certainly, all around south-east Asia, India and to the coast of east Africa, maybe to the west coast of the Americas and some claim even right around the globe. The ships were bigger than the largest European vessels of the time. though not as big as often claimed.
These voyages come under the heading of what I like to call “so what?” history. Things that happened, that are interesting, but don’t ultimately matter. E.g. Some Russian bloke invented an aeroplane before the Wright Brothers? So what? He didn’t develop it, they did. He may as well have stayed in bed. He didn’t invent the aeroplane.
Of course, the Chinese Communist Party makes much of Zheng He today. His exploits help bolster claims to ownership of this that and the other “since ancient times”. Don’t be surprised if the next PRC mission to the Moon ‘finds’ a plaque in Mandarin saying “Zheng He was here.”!
What happened when the gallant admiral got back to the Celestial Empire? The authorities burnt the boats and destroyed (most of) his records. The Chinese never sent out a such a fleet again, content to bully and conquer people they could access by foot and who looked a bit like them (this seems to be ok in the PC/SJW world view for some reason). Their reaction to all the wonders Zheng He described was (and I’m paraphrasing here) “So, what you’re saying is that the world is full of hairy barbarian ghosts and we’re the best? We knew that already.” Now THAT’s racism.
And next, of course, the BBC…
From the pearl clutching navel gazing of the museum world to the money saturated swamp of soccer and the beleaguered, increasingly Stalinist, bunker of the BBC.
The BBC’s football commentators have been issued with strict guidelines and lists of forbidden words and phrases for when they start to once again take up the herculean task of turning “If one team scores more goals than the other team then they win.” into something worth listening to. (No, I’m not a fan of soccer, I know, I lose English points for that but what can you do?).
The use of “racist words and phrases” is specifically outlawed. This confused me, even actual racists don’t use racist words and phrases these days. Anyone using such language on TV would be sacked PDQ and this has been the case for a long time.
No, as actual racist language has been long banished the goal posts must be moved, it’s way more subtle, and sinister now. Putting an emphasis on a black player’s strength and speed, while ignoring his thoughts on the fifth proposition of Euclid, is seen as racist stereotyping. Saying it was a “cakewalk” for the winning team is to indulge in a phrase that comes from the days of slavery in the southern US (the phrase does indeed come from that time and culture, which I was unaware of until I looked it up, but the cakewalk dance was actually a satire by the slaves of the sedate ballroom dances going on in the grand mansions of the slave owners, so there.).
A report has come to the conclusion that this sort of outrageously racist language used by commentators is one of the elements of systemic racism that is systemically and racistly stopping black players from dominating the managing of soccer the same way they dominate the field of play.
Yes, it has long bothered people who are bothered by such things that while those of “darker skin tones” are rather over-represented among the players, they are very under-represented among the managers and other senior non-playing positions. It’s certainly a fact that this is the case, and frankly I don’t care. Partly because I loathe soccer, but mostly because I hold what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote to be true.
“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
The equality of outcome/equality of opportunity issue summed up in twenty-four words. It should be written in letters four inches high on the wall of every classroom, local and national government office and newsroom.
I don’t care if there are very few or no black managers, any more than I care that there are far more black players than statistics and “equality of outcome” would say there should be. In a free (or even just fairly free) society there will be concentrations of certain folk in certain fields of human activity. The converse must therefore also be true. If there are concentrations of, let’s call them X people in activities 1 and 2, there must be fewer of the X people in activities 3 and 4.
London’s Metropolitan Police regularly clutch their pearls at their failure to get “enough” Hindus, Moslems and Caribbeans to join up. Sikhs, on the other hand, are over-represented. I used to go out with a Hindu chap, we were watching one such hand wringing report on the TV one evening (this would be maybe two decades ago). He shouted at the TV in frustration. “Of course Hindus don’t become bloody coppers! What Hindu mum wants her boy in the police? They want them to be doctors or lawyers, or at least in business. As for Sikhs, you can’t keep those buggers out of uniform!”. He was a pathologist himself.
It’s a fact that folk from some cultures tend to gravitate towards some fields and away from others, and for largely cultural reasons. There is zero difference ethnically between a Punjabi Sikh, Punjabi Hindu or Punjabi Moslem, but they all have different levels of representation in different fields. None of this means a Hindu can’t or shouldn’t be a copper, or a Sikh become a doctor, or a Jamaican become a soccer manager, or a one-legged black Welsh lesbian with a squint become the next head of the Indian space programme. But the demented determination to ignore all this, to assume any and all disparity is due to racism and to impose equality of outcome is damaging and dangerous.
The lads have more than once mentioned the excellent Kurt Vonnegut short story, Harrison Bergeron, that illustrates the vicious futility of trying to impose equality of outcome. If you don’t know it, it’s worth reading.
In this case the already blossoming policing of language is extended, strengthened and normalised. I shudder to think where this will end up. Maybe Harrison’s weights and headphones are some years away, but they’re coming, maybe metaphorically, but they’re coming.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it helps to rehearse these arguments and to share egregious examples of PC madness with others (not to mention getting it off my chest.).
4 replies on “Shrunken heads and shrunken vocabularies.”
I like the twenty-four word explanation of reality, but I think it would be better with a more neutral word than “capacity.” (Yes, I know “capacity” ought to be neutral, but the reality is that it isn’t.)
Also, I’d like a short statement explaining why equality of outcomes is actually immoral, not just non-reality based.
Too tired today to come up with these myself.
In a sense, Bill and Scott’s show is preaching to the choir, but as they say, this is practice. Writing it out is good practice for you, getting your thoughts in order and well established in your mind’s corridors (and if I were a better Bible reader I would remember at least 3 verses that say that). It also gives the choir a chance to formulate our own thoughts in response to yours and writing them down, more firmly solidify our arguments and defenses.
The museum just has to hope the statue pullers we have here don’t come for their stuff, because regard for the hoi polloi is not in their vocabulary.
The Chinese brutalizing their own similar people probably falls into that multicultural pot where anyone who isn’t white or western can have a culture that is equal of anyone else and can do whatever they wish without criticism from western whites, but WW have no culture that can be held up nor can they speak about anyone else’s.
Sports team coaches seem not to be drawn from the ranks of the players but from those who COULD NOT play, at least not very well. In the US, we tend to have far more players going into commentary on the TV coverage. When you have a team of 30 (average number I hope) and need 1 coach, you’ll have 29 that are beat out. American football does have a number more coaches and some of the specialist coaches are former players, but it seems for most things, the people that are naturally good at something are not often good at teaching. The people who had to struggle and generally failed often are better at showing how not to fail to those that have the physical and mental ability to succeed where they could not.
Ethnic groups not filling every occupation at the ratios the “experts” think is appropriate is similar to many girls not going into deep math careers or putting in the time to rise to the very top of the cutthroat business. People are, as you said, all different, and for the party that has been saying “believe the science” and “follow the science” even more of late than they usually have (now that they’re a little distracted from their climate scam, though they are trying to use it to cover their failures in the western US) seem to ignore the way women are wired for cooperation, nurturing and other feminine qualities. I suppose if a number of male CEOs just declared themselves female, all of the imbalances would be corrected and the shrill would have to be silent.
Yup, soccer managers, in the UK at least, are usually ex players, but not the best by any means.
Maybe if young black lads (on both sides of the Pond) weren’t constanty told their own society is out to get them and that any and all failure on their part isn’t really their fault that might help too.
I suspect the lack of black former players as coaches here in the US is more due to the one and done for the basketball (one year of college since they have to be 19 to play in the NBA) or the farcical “student athelete” fiction that excuses many players academic woes and leaves the focus on the money made on their non-compensated shoulders. I think some of the after game interviews are not a good judge of their intellect since how can you respond to many questions without giving away internal planning and playbook secrets, on the other hand, so many of them just don’t seem all that smart.
I also suspect that after beating up their bodies playing the game and making their millions, they would rather retire to a cushy life and not spend 60 hours a week poring over gameplay footage, devising coaching plans, play schemes and such. At some point you do have enough money, especially when you’ve done hard work to get it and have to do actually hard work to get more. The good players tend to play a long time and are probably pretty tapped out when they are ground up.