Ask Zompist: A possible source of racism

Mark, in addition to my earlier question about racist Europeans, let me ask you a question in bad taste:

Are our problems with rampant anti-Muslim hysteria due to the fact that Muslim girls are, uh, restrictedly available to non-Muslim men? I think most of racism comes from young men lacking access to vaginas, and consequently, if a certain immigrant group includes lots of eligible girls available to the native young men, shouldn’t it reduce racism and interracial tension? Does pussy cure racism?

—Panu

Wow, that certainly is a question.  I can think of one bit of evidence in its favor: East Asians, in this country, often marry whites, and are not subject to much racism.  I’d agree (from experience) that intermarriage is the best way to understand another culture.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that the correlation holds up.  Despite miscegenation laws, there’s been a lot of black-white mixing in the US (this becomes obvious comparing American blacks with Africans), but I don’t see that this mitigated racism much.  Hindu Americans work hard to marry only other Indians, but I’ve never heard that this causes any resentment or racism.

Personally, I think racism is just part of the general primate (not just human) dislike of outsiders.  In some ways the remarkable thing isn’t that racism still exists, but how far our boundaries have expanded.  In ancient times someone from the next settlement over was highly suspect; modern urban populations can be tolerant of almost anyone.  (Even a Muslim can theoretically marry any of half a billion people.)

 

Ask Zompist: If I had godlike redrawing powers

Alert reader Eric McGill has an interesting question:

I’ve been thinking about your blog entry on nationalism, and reading other people’s suggestions for the Middle East, all of which seem to want to give independent ethnic groups their own countries, and I’m left wondering how you would redraw the Middle East. Or, for that matter, Eastern Europe or the Balkans.

 It’s dangerous to ask someone like me to draw maps. Drawing maps, especially interesting alternative maps, is all too addictive…

So I think I’ll rephrase your question in two ways.

1. How should the great powers have redrawn the map when they had the chance?

In much larger units.  Africa and the Middle East have suffered greatly because of arbitrary lines (which divide ethnic groups and thus cause endless trouble) and too-small nations (which have few resources and become geopolitical debits, unable either to form large internal markets or to adequately protect themselves).

There are a few exceptions, of course– mostly small East Asian nations that could easily function as nation-states.  Thailand is a natural nation; Iraq or the Sudan is not. 

Large nations can be problems too– Russia took a lot longer to recover from the fall of communism than smaller, nimbler states like Poland or the Czech Republic.  But the problem isn’t size per se.  Once India and China found ways of unleashing their entrepreneurial spirit, their size became an advantage.  

2. What should small independent states do now, if nationalism isn’t such a great idea?

Pension off their nationalist leaders, then form European-style unions.  The first step is likely to be the hard part.  Unions have been tried before, notably Egypt and Syria.  They don’t work because of the big-fish-in-a-small-pond phenomenon: two or more generalissimos would rather lord it over a small country than unite to form a richer, more powerful nation where at most one of them can be big kahuna. 

It’s hard to imagine even this working in the Middle East.  But hey, in 1946 it was hard to imagine it working in Europe.   

 

Ask Zompist: McCain

What is your informed opinion of McCain? Personally, I think that for a Republican, he’s not that bad. He has reputedly said that Democrats are OK and that he can do business with Democrats - which I personally think is a good thing, because you guys must all be tired of having an essentially divisive president. How would the internal political climate of the States develop under McCain, in your opinion? Would this undeclared Dem-Rep civil war stop?

 

–Panu Petteri Höglund

Anyone hated by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, James Dobson, and Rick Santorum can’t be all bad.  McCain is definitely a grown-up and he’d certainly be a huge improvement on Bush.

 

 On the plus side, he voted against Bush’s first two sets of tax cuts, he’s squarely against torture and has vowed to shut down Guantanamo, he’s known for trying to reform campaign financing, he has a reasonable position on immigration, and he worked closely with John Kerry to normalize relations with Vietnam.

 

 

The graph (from Wikipedia) shows an interesting change in the mid-1990s; McCain moved substantially to the left.  However, I think moderates and liberals may be easily deceived, because they personally like the guy, as to how centrist he really is.

 

On the minus side, he served quite happily as Bush’s pit dog on the Iraq war, voted to extend Bush’s tax cuts, tried hard to court the religious right, supports banning abortion, and opposes universal health care. 

 

I lost a lot of respect for him when he started cheerleading for Bush, because he’s smart enough to know better.  It was obviously politically expedient as a Republican for him to court the base, but his reputation was precisely as a maverick who didn’t bow to political expediency.

 

At this point McCain has painted himself into a corner with Iraq.  He’s recognized that things have gone wrong, but I don’t see any evidence that he has a plan to make things any better.  I can’t see him getting elected by promising to ramp up the war, but I can’t see his projected decades-long occupation working without such a ramp-up. 

 

As for political acrimony– it would lessen if the White House wasn’t orchestrating it.  But the right was noisy and nasty all through Clinton’s presidency without being in power, and they haven’t gone away or mellowed out.  If anything they may get nastier, since raging and ranting are easier to do when you’re out of power and don’t actually have to run anything.  If the Democrats keep control of Congress, which seems likely, however, their ability to influence events will be much smaller, and McCain will, like it or not, have to govern more from the center– he’d probably look more like Bush I or Nixon than like Reagan or Bush II.  I’d guess we’d get smaller deficits, more civil rights, incremental progress on the environment, maybe some agreements on immigration and campaign finance reform, and no health reform.

 

Ask Zompist: Wild mouse

I’m trying to draw maps of bicycling routes so I can distribute them to other riders for touring. What I’m wanting to do is actually trace the routes from real maps so I only show the roads I want plus add text for points of interest. My problem is that when I move the mouse across the map I don’t get a true 1 for 1 copy. Sometimes the mouse line just takes off and it doesn’t follow turns and curves worth a flip. I bought an iPen to replace the mouse but it didn’t work any better. You look like you’ve done a lot more detailed drawing with a mouse than what I’m trying to do. Are there settings or something I need to do for the mouse? I am using the pen in Corel’s Paint Shop Pro Photo XI.  

Can you help? 

—Bob

I don’t know that program, but from similar experiences in Flash and Illustrator I’m guessing that the pen you’re using (i.e. not the iPen but the software tool) is smoothing out the line too much.   See if there’s a tool setting for following the mouse movements more closely without smoothing (there is in Flash), or try another tool.  Sometimes working at an expanded scale will help, or just drawing more slowly.

 

Ask Zompist: Racist Europeans?

Mark, I have been alarmed by a gang of virulent, gun-toting xenophobes and racists here in Finland entering the mainstream and intimidating people in the Net– I have been targeted myself. In general, I think that while there have been horrible racisms in the United States, the innate dynamics of the United States– of the United States constitution– is antiracist and inclusive. In my opinion, there seems to be a strong conservative opinion in the United States which sees immigration as a broadly good thing– the underlying idea being, that “this America of ours sure is a great country, because everybody else wants to join America”. At the same time, in Europe foreigners are not seen as people joining our national project, but as foreign infiltrators who can never become one of us.

Do you agree that Europe is “innately” more racist than the United States? 

—Panu Petteri Höglund 

 

Neat, a chance to upset everybody.

 

As a general caveat, I think racism is pretty universal.  The Western racism that led to slavery and colonialism wasn’t some exceptional iniquity peculiar to Western culture— it’s just that Western racism could be imposed on the rest of the world due to Western economic dominance.  

 

Historically, American are good at welcoming immigrants— in the long term.  Hostility to Germans, Jews, and Irish, for instance, is a historical footnote, and the Italians, Scandinavians, and Eastern Europeans who came around the turn of the 20th century are nearly as Americanized.  East Asians and Indians are well on their way in this process; and despite 9/11 I don’t think native-born Muslims will ever be a problem.  Hispanics are something of a special case because, although they assimilate just fine, they keep coming, so there are always new immigrants for xenophobes to get upset about.

 

In the early 20th century it was a commonplace for Europeans to look down on us for our shameful treatment of blacks… the French could smugly point to their acceptance of Josephine Baker and James Baldwin, exiles from American racism.  But it’s not hard to accept a handful of distinguished immigrants.  Europe didn’t do nearly as well with the influx of Arab immigrants.  My impression is that Arabs in Europe and blacks in America face very similar attitudes and problems.

 

Those problems shouldn’t be intractable, however.  The American racial situation has been improving for decades; and I don’t see any reason they won’t look better in Europe in a generation, as Europeans get used to immigrants, to say nothing of more mobility within the EU.  We may have more experience with successful assimilation, but Europe has advantages too, such as a much firmer safety net for the poor.

 

The long-term view may not be much comfort if you’re being harassed right now by violent xenophobes.  We can’t merely hope that they  go away; institutions should be mobilized to combat them.  In the US, the RICO act has been used to decimate the Klan and other groups, largely by taking away leaders’ ability to delegate responsibility away to their hired guns.  I hope the European left has also gotten over its old infatuation with armed radicalism (à la Régis Debray); if the left is allowed to idolize thuggery it’s hard to maintain that the right should not.   

 

Ask Zompist: Republicans vs. Iraq?

Why is Ron Paul the only Republican presidental candidate to oppose the war in Iraq? The 

other candidates aren’t exactly toeing the party line on other issues. So why can’t any 

Republican say the US should pull out of Iraq - without also saying it should pull out of 

Korea?

—Gareth Wilson

 

That’s pretty easy: because they’re going after Republican voters.  Republicans still approve of George Bush by large majorities, and about 70% support keeping troops in Iraq.  They’re just not going to get the nomination by either opposing the war, or directly criticizing Bush.

 

Now, it’s true that the electorate as a whole is sick of the war.  Most likely, then, the nominee will track back to the center after the convention.  It’s hard to imagine that cheerleading the Iraq war will be a winning strategy this fall.  If Hillary wins the Democratic nomination, I’d guess Iraq won’t be a huge issue (since she is not itching to leave quickly).  If Obama does, it will be, since that allows the Republicans to reframe the debate— they’ll sidestep the disastrous conduct of the war and spend the fall talking about Obama “cutting and running”.