Ask A Genius 801: Racial Stereotypes and More

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/10/17

[Recording Start]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This one is about racial stereotypes based on a little bit older conversation.

Rick Rosner: All right. So, yeah one of the previous times we talked recently, we were talking about how racial stereotypes, particularly stereotypes applied to black people. All kind of fit under the same umbrella that white people should have control over black people because black people can’t control themselves; they’re either too animalistic or too dumb or whatever. It’s all bullshit. All these stereotypes began under slavery and continued under the replacements for slavery; Jim Crow and the prison system. And we’re all just justifications for white people being in charge of black people. It’s kind of custodial arrangement supposedly for everybody’s own good; the black people can’t manage themselves and so white people manage them, which helps them not be fucked up by the world and also helps everybody else not be fucked up by black people and it’s just bullshit.

But it made me think about has there ever been a custodial arrangement like that where one group of people has claimed that we’re better than you guys and women and we will be in charge of you to help you live in the world. Well it’s got two parts. Has it ever been honest? I doubt it’s ever been honest, that seems like bullshit. And has it ever worked? This kind of supposedly but paternal but really just exploitative type of arrangement, one group over another; has that ever been legitimately good? And we know slavery wasn’t good. We know what the Americans did to Native Americans; it was not good. We know what Canadians did to First Nations wasn’t good and what the English did to all its colonies, especially India was all based on bullshit and exploitation and men over women too. So, I’m asking you, Scott. Has there ever been a paternalistic Arrangement that was semi honest and actually was to the benefit of the people who were subject to it?

Jacobsen: Singapore, under Lee Kuan Yew.

Rosner: How’d that work?

Jacobsen: He was duly elected; let’s say for 30 or so years.

Rosner: When was this?

Jacobsen: In the 1980s to the 2010s. He died. He was succeeded by a guy named Goh Chok Tong and then his son took the post after Goh Chok Tong and is currently in power now. His name is Lee Hsien Loong. 

Rosner: So what you’re saying is that this is a benign dictatorship?

Jacobsen: Their purchasing power parity is about twice candidates. They are a very rich country.

Rosner: But you’re calling these guys dictators?

Jacobsen: Soft dictatorship and there is mixed commentary. Even prominent commentators in the United States, one indo-American commentator, I  forgot his name, he’s very bright; he interviewed Lee Kuan Yew and he said that if there had to be a dictatorship of any kind then the one I would want to be under would be Lee Kuan Yew’s,  something like that.  So it’s sort of they have high quality of life, they have long lives, they have good education, they have very terrible freedom of expression and freedom of the press. 

Rosner: I spent like a day and a night there I think with Carol and she worked for an international company, she took me along on a trip and it’s very nice there. You’re a little nervous because you don’t want to run afoul of their police who would get you arrested for chewing gum I think. Now it’s gotten even more science fiction-y, like the architecture is insane and probably everybody has much better devices than we do. So, okay I’ll buy benevolent dictatorship but is there ever a place that you know of where one group said, well you guys are kind of primitive and we’ll run you for a while and get you up to speed. Has that ever been a fucking thing or is it always bullshit and exploitation with one group over another?

Jacobsen:  It’s sort of in the question a bit loaded because if it’s as you said one group over another, then automatically it’s a power dynamic.

Rosner: Yeah, but has the power dynamic ever been exercised reasonably? And I think what reasonably would be is a technologically advanced power or group, comes in and… even by them occupying like when Whitey came to Australia they fucked over the Aborigines. 

Jacobsen: In any in any case of exploitation and annexation and a ratio of culture and people, it is most likely to be negative. One could make an argument for some positives as in modern technology, modern scientific understanding of the world, cosmopolitanism maybe, and things like this. However it’s very hard to make an argument in any sense where colonialism becomes a good because most of the world got rid of colonialism around the early 20th century. I mean the post colonial countries are listed as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, United States, and South Africa as they were getting over their colonialism into post-colonial period. Israel by some arguments around the Balfour Declaration, through the Balfour Declaration was becoming a colonial country slowly through annexation of territory that was not by law its, and in doing so it became the only country at the founding of the United Nations partaking of colonial policy. And for the citizenry of Israel, it’s very good; it’s a high-tech country, it’s a long lived country, it’s a healthy country, it’s a high education country.

Rosner: Yeah but they have their boot on the completely misgoverned Palestinians.

Jacobsen: Yes, I mean they are absolutely. So in Palestinian territories, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip; those are apparently poorly managed. However they’re also under the boot of the Israelis and it’s to the point of a very significant annexation of territory and very significant differentials in a plaque application of laws regarding human rights.

Rosner: And like a bunch of probably lopsided atrocities at this point where…

Jacobsen: Sniper shooting children and journalists and medical aids will be one.

Rosner: The Palestinians lob rockets into Israel; shitty rockets that do some damage but they don’t kill that many people and then the Israelis who have all the power can be pretty ruthless in fighting back.

Jacobsen:  At the United Nations it’s pretty much universally accepted that Israel is the major crime committer although there are crimes committed by some Palestinians, certainly. It’s also an important point, as a really quick sort of asterisk side note, the Palestinian territories do have status as an observer member State, as a voting country in the United Nations, and we call it member state. The only two observer member states are Palestine and the Vatican. So they have no holding power, however they are recognized as member states whereas countries in the United Nations discourse as legitimate Nations of the world. So to any denial of their stature as a member state say, would be against the facts.

And in Canada, as a Canadian I’m not speaking from a sort of a posturing here, I’ve interviewed the all the active UN Special Report tours, I’ve interviewed extensively over two or more years the country director for Israel Palestine for Human Rights Watch. The only one I really haven’t interviewed has been the country director for Canada for Human Rights Watch and anyone from Amnesty International regarding that but I pretty much got all the big names from Norman Finkelstein who is the main Protégé of Noam Chomsky, and so on. So I’ve kind of interviewed the proper people and had to do the proper research at the time that I was doing that kind of work but Canada says the right thing i.e. in line with International norms but does the wrong thing and it may even pressure to sort of stop that information from getting out through our country’s representative.

So, it’s mixed. That’s a very good case actually; the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Rosner: But there is one kind of interesting thing about or I just thought of this about Israel. So Israel, they fuck over the Palestinians. This has been going on for a long time and the Palestinians contribute to their own fucking over by having been incompetently and aggressively governed, lined up with forces like Hamas that just want Israel wiped off the face of the earth.

Jacobsen: And there is some anti-Semitism coming from Palestinians against Jewish Israelis, that is certainly right there too and that’s an evil. 

Rosner: Right, but I mean part of the blame goes back to the colonial powers who bugged out of their leaving ridiculous borders and didn’t solve anything but then it goes back for Millennia before that, that even without the colonial powers fucking everything up it, wasn’t going to be smooth anyway. But it seems like individual Israelis, I don’t know if this is kind of a rule and I don’t know that many Israelis, but it seems like they’re overall not debased, that they’re not Nazis basically for the most part. I mean there are hard line Right Wing Israelis who in their desire to keep the Palestinians in check are pretty Nazi but like the overall country doesn’t seem to be like a fucked up country like that. Do you agree? 

Jacobsen: Usually the people who act badly or poorly causing a lot of problems are the ones in power. The one restaurant I worked with, one of the many, one of the boss there was reformed Jewish as you are. She was a single mom of three daughters of varying ages and she had lived in Israel for a bit, I believe in the Golan Heights; that’s where she met her ex-husband. So she was Israeli and we got along great and she’s a lovely person. So, I wouldn’t take that as anything.

Rosner: Well statistically, only a quarter of American Jews voted for Trump, three-quarters voted for Biden and Clinton. Trump threatened America’s Jews, said that we weren’t grateful enough to him and we better watch out. Yesterday he tweeted some shit about that, not tweeting because he can’t; he’s been kicked off of Twitter. But Jews in general, well not in general, but the vast majority of American Jews and I would think Jews around the world are not entirely on the side of the hardliners against the Palestinians. I think most Jews not in Israel would acknowledge that Israel’s kind of being an asshole State against the Palestinians for what that’s worth. But I guess the answer to my question is that neither of us can think of a situation where a dominant power, a dominant group over some other group kind of willingly looked at the group that they were dominating and said “You guys are fine, we’re going to withdraw,” it’s always kind of been as the result of strife.

Jacobsen: Inherently it is a violent act to take over another people’s land, people don’t like. 

Rosner: Yeah but we can’t think of a situation where a group came in and didn’t fuck over the people who were already there. If you fucked over people in the past; it’s reparations. Nobody’s ever done advanced reparations.

Jacobsen: Maybe late stage America with some of its smarter immigration policies around taking in people with education, money, connections, etc. I mean that period of its history when an instance of doing is less so was doing that, yeah it was a benefit to the country as a whole but that’s people coming in. Then sort of there’s an admixture of their culture and the dominant cultures, this sort of a mutual assimilation process.

Rosner: Yeah, except that there were always groups coming in that the Americans who are already here preferred to other groups. We didn’t like the Irish, we didn’t like Italians, we didn’t like Jews and there were policies. It was pretty open in terms of Federal Immigration Policy until the 1920s. But there was still like wild exploitation. The Chinese were exploited in building the railroads and people coming to New York City and other big cities were exploited as workers doing the shit work and living in terrible conditions. Federal policy was not unwelcoming or was less unwelcoming at various times but there were still systems in place that worked against ethnicities that were frowned upon or fear or whatever.

[Recording End]

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