The west is a culture not a race. For example many Asian people are more western than many white Americans.
And no amount of „admit you like being privileged“ changes that.
The west, as a culture, absorbs what is useful and discards the not useful.
This is the problem. Western culture isn't just white. Hell, the term 'white' is really a New World race. In the Old World, Europeans were enslaving each other and being enslaved by e.g. the Mamluks and Ottomans.
> “As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’
“He continued: ‘Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.’”
Yikes..
https://bsky.app/profile/leahmcelrath.bsky.social/post/3lheu...
It's also an essential one--sovereignty depends on it. That will be true as long as international relations are anarchic.
I think democracies are innately superior, including morally, to autocracies. I think market-based economic systems are innately competitive against--and in their capacity to empower individual production, morally superior to--command economies.
Immigrants and white people are unrelated categories.
Okay, so your argument is that "the west" can only mean something "innate"?
>Some common definitions of the west are white people
Well hold on. I thought "the west" could only mean something "innate"? What makes makes the US "innately" white? The US is 30% non-white, after all.
Karp said the west is innately superior. JumpCrisscross suggested this was acceptable because democracies are innately superior to autocracies. But western countries are not innately democratic. And democracy is not innately western. Superiority is not innate if its basis is not innate.
> What makes makes the US "innately" white?
People who define the west as white people do not consider all Americans part of the west. And I said it was a common definition. Not good.
Western thought and culture has been adopted and shaped by advances globally; including for ex. Russia; which is hardly in 'the west' geographically.
Is Russia innately democratic?
Of course not. But one of its fundamental advantages is its ability to build alliances and accept immigrants. Historically, those have been strengths of republics. That’s “innate” to the structure of the society.
> the world's largest democracy is in south Asia
India is a great example of Western culture hybridising with a local culture to produce a sum that’s greater than its parts. The British were dicks, particularly in India, and I’m not arguing that colonisation is okay. But I think it’s fair to say that a unified, democratic India very much flows from its exposure to Western systems of law and government. (India had indigenous democratic city-states. But in the south and never at scale.)
Even if the democracy commits mass genocide? I think the most dangerous societies/systems/governments are those filled by people who think they or their system are innately superior ( especially morally ) as it gives them moral cover to commit all kinds of evil.
Then again, Socrates and Plato thought democracies were innately inferior...
History certainly hasn't shown democracies to be innately morally superior.
This is a discussion that will never be improved by system proponents proclaiming theirs as superior, and bringing dangerously connotated terms like innate to the table is only making it worse.
We're in the midst of a backlash to reducing the word racism to a banal definition. Let's learn from it.
Karp's statement is xenophobic, jingoistic and bigoted. It's worded to not offend racists, because we have a lot of them in government right now. But it's not racist per se, and will be found agreeable by many non-racists in a non-racist way.
Japan is in the West and last time I checked they were still Asians.
I mean, no shit, the racist's definition of almost anything sociological is going to be racist.
Racism is not the sole exception. Most Japanese people do not consider themselves western in most contexts. Including xenophiles.
If only there was someone to tell them that all whites are really the same, so they would have understood. Well, Hitler had some ideas of unity close to that (with idiotic things like excluding "those stupid eastern slavs"). Modern racists see nothing but the skin colour, they don't even bother measuring your skull. That's how bad things have gotten.
Modern racists operate pretty much the same way as 100+ years ago
I never said “white people bad” but that is what you seem to understand, I wonder where it came from?
Your comment doesn't even make much sense in the vacuum except maybe as a quick fact check, but then you can consider my reply as just an extension of your comment. There is always someone who doesn't know that the WWII was not really about white people vs. non-white people type of thing.
WW2 was started by white supremacist ideology - the Japanese just conveniently fit into that, even being called honorary Aryans at times.
So yea WW2 was white supremacists vs everyone else
Though you can say it was about racial superiority, it was of a "race" that didn't exist yet. From https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism/ page 412:
> The famous "Right is what is good for the German people" was meant only for mass propaganda; Nazis were told that "Right is what is good for the movement," and these two interests did by no means always coincide. The Nazis did not think that the Germans were a master race, to whom the world belonged, but that they should be led by a master race, as should all other nations, and that this race was only on the point of being born. Not the Germans were the dawn of the master race, but the SS. The "Germanic world empire," as Himmler said, or the "Aryan" world empire, as Hitler would have put it, was in any event still centuries off.
And don't forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Decree
> Moreover, according to some around him, Hitler came to view the German people as having failed him, unworthy of their great mission in history and thus deserving to die alongside his regime.
I think you could say for Hitler, it was only about Hitler. For his inner circle, it was about Hitler and them, and so on. Each layer used and deceived the outer layers.
Japan is not in the west. Japan is not a western country. They are not a western peoples. They don't speak a western language. They don't have western culture. They don't even use western script.
In what world is Japan "in the West"? Ask a japanese person whether they are in the west or are westerners. They'd laugh in your face.
The west is narrowly western european or western european descended majority nations. Broadly it's european majority nations.
It can be both depending on the context. A westerner is a european or a european descended person.
> For example many Asian people are more western than many white Americans.
What does this even mean? How can an asian person be more western than a white american. That's like saying a white american be more "eastern" than a chinese person.
I've never heard an asian person say they are a westerner. There may be asian people who appreciate western culture more than some westerners, but that doesn't make them a westerner. No more than a white american who appreciates chinese culture more than the average chinese makes him a chinese person.
Or are we talking about different things here?
> How can an asian person be more western than a white american.
Very easily, since one is an ethnicity, while the other is a nationality/culture.
Sure. But culture isn't "innate". But being a westerner is innate. I could learn chinese, but that doesn't make me a chinese person. A chinese person could learn english but he is still "innately" chinese.
> Very easily, since one is an ethnicity, while the other is a nationality/culture.
I already acknowledged that. My point is what do you mean by a western person or a westerner. Anyone can partake in a culture. You can eat chinese food or indian food but that doesn't make you a chinese person or an indian person.
Am I wrong here. Or is the term "west/westerner" used differently around the world.
Not just to my eyes. To chinese eyes, african eyes, middle eastern eyes, etc. There have been tiktoks and youtube videos of westerners born in china who were called foreigners by the chinese themselves.
> What about a second generation child, still fully ethnically European?
Elon Musk was born in south africa, a non-western country in a non-western continent. Charlize Theron was born in south africa. They are both westerners. Doesn't matter where you were born.
The european person born in china can become a chinese citizen. But he can never become "chinese". Just like a chinese person can never become a european/westerner. He can become a EU citizen. He can become an american citizen. But he can't become a westerner. Am I wrong here?
This is true. I've seen folks--even smart ones--mis-use innate to mean fundamental.