The next frontier of non-discrimination: obligatory interracial dating

You may be wondering, “How many can frontiers can there be?” Answer: There is much discrimination in the universe. (See, from just three days ago, the last next frontier of non-discrimination: diversity in residential neighborhoods.)

This is by a commenter at Dennis Mangan’s blog (I’ve slightly edited the comment):

At 10:43 in this video you can see a young woman at the University of Deleware who was made, along with other students in her dormitory, to answer a questionnaire judging how “racist” she was by HER WILLINGNESS to date blacks or Muslims. In other words, if she was not willing to date blacks or Muslims, then she was judged to be racist. The residential program starts off with the contention that “all” whites are racist. Everyone on the University of Deleware residence halls had to be “in” the program.

That video is about 14 minutes long. I can’t tell you how much it’s worth to watch it. The two academics who came up with the residence hall program at Delaware, are still there. They didn’t get fired for what they tried to pull.

LA writes:

According to that great conservative liberal, Dennie Prager, there would be nothing objectionable about the underlying anti-racist assumption of this program. He has said many times that if people prefer to marry people of their own race, they are racists.

Dimitri K. writes:

There was a joke in the USSR:

A guy applies for membership in the Communist party. The commision ask him questions. “Will you give up drinking alcohol if the Party requests?” “Yes, I will.” “Will you give up having girlfriends, if the party requests?” “Yes, I will.” “And will you give your life if the party requests?” “Surely, why do I need such a miserable life!”

I only wonder when such jokes start to appear in the U.S. When American students decide that they don’t need such a miserable life they are prepared for.

LA replies:

That’s extremely apt.

But your point is literally true from the point of view of my critique of anti-discrimination. I am always saying that the rule of non-discrimination, if followed consistently, means that no distinct society or culture can exist, no distinct human individual or human family can exist, no distinct species or organism can exist. Nothing can exist, since all things, in order to exist, must be different from, and thus be distinguished and discriminated from, other things.

Gintas writes:

Dimitri wonders,

I only wonder when such jokes start to appear in the U.S. When American students decide that they don’t need such a miserable life they are prepared for.

Wasn’t it Solzhenitsyn who said that once you are in the Gulag, you are truly free?

“You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again.” (Bobynin, The First Circle)

Jacob M. writes:

You wrote:

I am always saying that the rule of non-discrimination, if followed consistently, means that no distinct society or culture can exist, no distinct human individual or human family can exist, no distinct species or organism can exist. Nothing can exist, since all things, in order to exist, must be different from, and thus be distinguished and discriminated from, other things.

This reminds me once again of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s short story, “Null-O”, in which a cadre of materialist-reductionist mutant human beings decide that, because everything at the subatomic level is made up of the same undifferentiated pure energy, there can be no distinctions between one thing and another, and set out to rectify this problem of apparent differences by literally destroying the universe. Dick predicted this in 1958. Our social engineers are latter-day Null-Os.

LA replies:

At a multiculturalism conference at Columbia University in the 1990s that I attended, one of the speakers, an Asian-American man, said that he had been at a meeting between Vice President Gore and some Asian-Americans a few years earlier and Gore had said: “At the molecular level, we’re all the same.”

True. But it’s also the case that at the molecular level, or at least at the atomic or subatomic level, we’re the same as dust. So let’s turn ourselves into dust and get rid of all these morally troubling differences among ourselves.

LA continues:

Correction: Gore said that at the electronic level, we’re all the same. So forget about dust. Dust is still too differentiated for a true liberal’s taste. To achieve equality, we must be rendered into pure undifferentiated energy.

From: LL
Subject: Nondiscrimination…the final frontier

Lawrence: Does it not follow, if it is racist not to engage in interracial dating, that it is homophobic to eschew same-sex dating?

LA replies:

That’s the NEXT frontier. Or, as you put it, the final frontier.

Seriously, I can’t see any reason, given current liberal beliefs, why that wouldn’t happen.

After all, the liberals are pushing homosexual “marriage” on the basis that interracial marriage was once prohibited in southern states, just as same-sex marriage is currently prohibited, and then the laws against interracial marriage were overthrown. Therefore, say the liberals, it’s just as morally wrong to prohibit same-sex “marriage” as it is to prohibit interracial marriage.

So, if there’s no moral difference between a black and a white marrying each other and a man and a man—or a woman and a woman—marrying each other, there would not seem to be any moral difference between requiring a white student to date a nonwhite student (as some schools are apparently now doing) and requiring a male student to date a male student.

The great appeal of liberalism is its simplicity. Liberalism lays down one simple principle of justice, and then keeps applying that principle to more and more areas of life. This is what liberals mean by progress.

Gintas writes:

Might as well get a jump on things, and start talking about “sex realism” as well as “race realism.”

Larry G. writes:

The liberal rules are not meant to be applied consistently. They are a weapon to be used against opponents of liberalism. The liberal applies the rules to you, and thereby determines that you are a bad person. (The conclusion is never in doubt.) You cannot then turn around and apply the same rules to criticize the liberal—because you have already been determined to be a bad person, and your opinion is unworthy of consideration. You are a lower being, fit only to be scorned and called names.

If liberal logic was applied universally, liberals would condemn homosexuals for refusing to date members of the opposite sex. They would condemn Islamic societies for being Islamic, Chinese society for being Chinese, etc. Instead, they only criticize whites, conservatives, heterosexuals, and Western society. It’s not a principle, it’s a weapon wielded by people bent on destroying our civilization and replacing it with some mad, impossible utopia.

LA replies:

True, non-discrimination is a weapon, if looked at from the point of view of those liberal hardliners who know that they are seeking to transform or destroy the West. But then there is the vast liberal middle who have no conscious intention to transform or destroy the West, who believe in non-discrimination because they think it’s right and good. For them, non-discrimination is a principle. Yes, they may need various rationales to explain why this principle is only directed against whites, white men, Christians, etc., but they nevertheless see non-discrimination as a principle. Furthermore, various mainstream conservatives and Christian conservatives who automatically recoil from any notion of being concerned about Hispanic immigration certainly see non-discrimination as a principle. It does not matter to them that this principle is only binding on whites. They don’t care about that. All they care about is that they would be immoral if they violated the principle. That’s all that matters to them.

April 22

Lydia McGrew writes:

Re your thread on pressuring heterosexual people to date members of the same sex, while I doubt anyone will ever try literally to force this, in some women’s studies classes pressure has been exerted in this area. It’s been anecdotally reported that some years ago a women’s studies professor stood up before her class on the first day and told them that they should all have a lesbian relationship before the end of the semester. One girl (who happened to be the daughter of some very high-up administrator—I forget if it was the Provost or the President of the university) was aghast. She raised her hand and said, “Is that an assignment?” The professor smirked and said something like, “Well, it would be a good idea.” The girl told her father, and he called the professor on the carpet, but who knows how long that ended that practice.

I have also read of a phenomenon among college girls called “being LUG”—“lesbian until graduation.” At the moment, I can’t recall clearly that they decided to be LUG because of pressure from their profs, but my impression was that that was a factor.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 21, 2009 12:11 PM | Send