Because my blog is not widely popular, I have the luxury of being \u201cnot politically correct\u201d from time to time. My thoughts for today fall into that category. I\u2019ve been thinking about the \u201cIslamic problem\u201d and the \u201cAfrican-American problem\u201d side-by-side. Of course, I\u2019m taking the perspective of a main-stream American white guy. Also of course, I have my prejudices. Third “of course”, I\u2019m trying to be as fair and open as possible about this stuff as possible, given who I am and where I come from. Final “of course”: at the end of the day I do have my opinions, and I\u2019m sticking with them whether popular or not. <\/p>\n
With that being said, let me get back to comparing the Islamic problem and the African American problem. Both represent large groups of people who are having their problems fitting in with \u201cWestern culture\u201d and economics. They both have legitimate beefs with this culture, but they both also have common beliefs and practices that keep them from fitting in and achieving full economic participation. Another \u201cof course\u201d is needed at this point: of course, this is a broad-stroke statement. There are millions of people from both groups who have fully adopted and integrated with \u201cThe West\u201d and are quite successful, in many ways. But in general, both groups seem to have their problems with mainstream western culture and with poverty. They too often represent the economic outcasts, and they express anger about this. <\/p>\n
The interesting thing is that they both have something the West wants. The black culture has a certain cultural verve that whites seem to crave (hip hop music, trendsetting words and expressions, sporting and artistic prowess, etc.). The Islamic culture has oil. So we have to deal with eachother, like it or not. Another interesting thing is that both Islam (as both a religion and a culture) and the black culture have many legitimate criticisms of the western mainstream. They seem to imply that we are too materialistic, too impious, too stingy, too impersonal (although I\u2019m NOT trying to merge the Islamic vision and the Black vision into one; they are very different, and would have many points of disagreement and friction between themselves). These cultures certainly have many of their own faults, and even hypocrisy; but alot of their cultural critiques ARE worth thinking about. They do contain some significant truths.<\/p>\n
Well, aside from a few weirdos like myself, no one could seriously discuss the commonalties between the black problem and the Muslim problem in public. If some kid in grad school attempted to do a sociology thesis on this, he or she would be banned forever from the halls of academia. If a serious article about this appeared in the Washington Post or the New Yorker, the author would never publish again, and the paper or magazine would have to issue profuse apologias. The world of thought just ain\u2019t ready for open-mindedness these days. And that\u2019s too bad. I think it would be better for everyone to start slugging it out in academic words and logic, and leave the law suits and protest marches and political invective (and even guns and weapons of mass destruction) behind. But of course, I\u2019m not holding my breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Because my blog is not widely popular, I have the luxury of being \u201cnot politically correct\u201d from time to time. My thoughts for today fall into that category. I\u2019ve been thinking about the \u201cIslamic problem\u201d and the \u201cAfrican-American problem\u201d side-by-side. Of course, I\u2019m taking the perspective of a main-stream American white guy. Also of course, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}