They have to stick that in along with the ole racist European trope.
The "noble savage with lost spiritual wisdom" thing speaks to certain crowds I guess.
Other than that claptrap, the article is pretty good.
The "noble savage with lost spiritual wisdom" thing speaks to certain crowds I guess.
Other than that claptrap, the article is pretty good.
Ostensibly, by "that," you are referring to the spiritual aspects of navigation noted in the article. But the "ole racist European trope" may better be classified as a plain acknowledgement of the facts on the ground. For example, the article states:
"To show that Polynesians descended from Europeans, Abraham Fornander in Hawai‘i, and Edward Tregear and J. Macmillan Brown in New Zealand, built the case at the end of the 19th century using the emerging science of linguistics to trace Polynesian languages back to Sanskrit and to European languages."
and:
"Ethnologist S. Percy Smith was one of several scholars who praised the Polynesians’ “intelligence, their charming personalities, and—one likes to think—their common source with ourselves from the Caucasian branch of humanity."
We could probably look up Fornander, Tregear, and Brown in the literature and gauge their relevance in their field. Ditto for Percy. Maybe it really is a liberal conspiracy to undermine the meritocracy. From the 1930s. Before we do that, though, maybe we should do a search on that tool of the left wing, Google, which turns up https://teara.govt.nz/en/ideas-of-maori-origins/page-2 among the top results for "aryan polynesian theory."
I think the quotes above more lend support to the idea that the article mentions in passing an accounting of the history of the (at least) sometimes racist scholarship in this area, rather than a trope. It's certainly possible that there are "factual tropes," I suppose. Nazis were, after all, pretty bad, no matter how many times we say it. (I have to say that I do think it's cowardly of people to hide behind the connotation of "fiction" in the word "trope." Like, they can't say "lie" or "propaganda" without revealing their racism, so they use "trope." Cheap.) However, calling something a "trope" in order to dismiss it as, I dunno, SJW tears or whatever, is a bit disingenuous. One might even call this common tactic an actual "trope," and a counterfactual one, of the alt-right.
Assigning any recognition of the stretches you mention to to an alt-right world view.
We barely know our own motives then go on to assign motive to others. Which is exactly the mistake these kind of articles make. But I guess it sells. The article would have been better on it's own merits however imo, it didn't need to slander folks from the past who tried to figure things out with "hurr, durr, cuz white people all racist". That detracted from the point it was making.
> "Your math is a conspiracy of the patriarchy!"
So, while I identified a tactic of the alt-right, without outright accusing you of being in the alt-right, I have to say that I'm not encouraged by this "coincidence," scare quotes deliberate. Well, I'm encouraged that I seem to be spot on in finding these rhetorical techniques. I'm discouraged at its prevalence.
This may come as a news flash, but there is a long, long history of racist scholarship in the West. And not the covert, "Well, there seem to be differences but we can all sorta be equal anyways" kind, but exactly the kind of, "Gosh, these inferior Polynesians did something better than we Caucasians. Ha! I got it! They're secret Caucasians! I knew it! See, if we go to the Sanskrit, we can see right where these inferior foreigners diverged and began their decline, holding on only to the True Scotsman, I mean, True Navigation Technique!"
> [The article] didn't need to slander folks from the past who tried to figure things out with "hurr, durr, cuz white people all racist".
I am, I suppose, as concerned as the next guy with the reputation of Professor A. H. Keane, quoted in the article describing Polynesians as "one of the finest races of mankind, Caucasian in all essentials; distinguished by their symmetrical proportions, tall stature...and handsome features," as thorough as he is do remove the Polynesians from the vast morass of ethnic inferiors. However, I still think that I'll just risk the accusation of deliberate racism against Keane, no matter how slanderous it turns out to be. I mean, gosh, first they came for the late 18th-Century scholars, and I'm doing nothing, because I'm not a white identitarian. Cats and dogs living together!
Look, if you're not on the alt-right, or if you are but you're just "concerned about some things" and not in it to win it with the Charlottesville-marching unholy dreck, then I have some bad news for you: You're a tool for some very awful people with a very retrograde, and ultimately self-destructive, agenda. Take a deep breath, because your rhetoric is their rhetoric, and you're accomplishing their ends.
Minor correction: it was Charlottesville-marching unholy dreck.