Below godless posted about whites marching in penitence for the sin of slavery. Many issues can be illuminated here. In the comments sections I reacted with a sarcastic quip where I basically implied that some whites believe themselves to be such morally exalted folk that they take upon their shoulders a sort of “white man’s burden” of shame that they would never expect from conventionally barbarous darkies. I think this is a relevant point, but it’s not the only issue.

Steve Sailer asserts that this sort of behavior is a way for a certain class of whites, generally educated professionals, to strike a moralistic pose that distinguishes them from working class whites who lack such cultivated sensitivities. It in other words, public remorse for some vague ancestral crime is a form of display that signals one’s social status, intellectual capacity and general spiritual development.

But to be more specific, I will give two examples:

Several months ago I was IMing Aziz Poonwalla about his religious group, the Daudi Bohras, and I inquired about their origins. The traditional theory is that they were generally converted from Vaishya castes, that is, traders. We chatted a bit about genetic evidence which indicates the close affinity of Indian Muslims with various Hindu communities and what not. Offhand, Aziz mentioned that progressive/liberal Bohras asserted that some of their community’s more regressive tendencies were the legacies of their Brahmin origins. I found this an interesting observation.

The “progressives” pointed to Brahmin ancestry (cultural traditions) as the root cause behind long-term religious pathologies.
Brahmin ancestry is generally considered prestigious in India (Syrian Christians from Kerala often claim Brahmin ancestry as well).

I believe the “progressives” have simultaneously struck a pose of moral righteousness & appealed to innate human snobbery. They know that they are sinners, that their community needs to reform and they have the self-awareness to acknowledge this, and, they have also highlighted their own “prestigous” ancestry. Of course, as righteous liberal Muslims, they shouldn’t be proud of Brahmin ancestry because they believe in egalitarianism. But I think the other factor is also at work, as conversations with people espousing this sort of puffy righteousness often elicit inordinate repetition of ostensibly “shameful” “facts” (yes, I know your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a evil tyrant of some dung hill!).

Let me now give a second example. In high school I had a friend named “Karen.” Unlike 90% of the students in my high school she was a liberal. In A.P. History one day we were talking about slavery, and as a normal American of our age, she did not speak of the practice positively. But, she mentioned offhand that her ancestors were from the South and they might have owned slaves, as if it was a source of shame. Well, at any given time 80% of white Southerners did not own slaves, though over the decades a family might have owned a slave at some time. Where did I get the 80% number? We had been talking about it 15 minutes before. Karen still suggested that perhaps her ancestors had owned slaves anyway, even though she had no knowledge they did, and in other circumstances had implied that her forebears were “white trash” fleeing economic deprivation in the late 19th century when they arrived in Imbler. But someone whose ancestors owned slaves is someone whose ancestors were at the top of the social pyramid, and I think that is what was at work in that particular case. As a guilty-white-liberal she displayed sufficient shame and regret about slavery to contrast herself with the general student body, but additionally, she also associated herself with the herrenvolk of ages past, a “natural” inclination which most humans give vent to.

Anyway, boasting about ancestors is dumb, seeing as how we’re all descended from “winners.” Slavery sucked, and reflection on the abomination is important. Nevertheless, I find ostentatious displays of remorse unseemly, because they seem to do far more for those expressing remorse than the memories of those who were wronged in the past.

Posted by razib at 12:25 AM