3 Jan 2023
Group identity: Some thoughts for the new year
The term "race" must now be regarded as obsolete. Leftists use the term "racist" to refer to a great variety of apparently unrelated things so the term is no longer informative. So I will NOT use the term here.
"Group identity", on the other hand is very widely and uncontroversially used. Leftists talk of little else. They talk of gays, transexuals, blacks and Christians with great abandon. They like the first three of those group identities and despise the latter.
I am very happy with that sort of usage but disagree with the values that Leftists put on the identities concerned. I think that gays and transexuals are unfortunate; I note the century of research that has shown people of predominantly African ancestry to be of markedly lower average IQ and I think that Christians are a major support of civilized society.
But the thing that I deplore most is the overwhelming attention that minority identities get in the media. It is greatly disproportionate to the numbers concerned. Like most people, I relate best to people like myself and as a WASP, I am interested mostly in news about people in that group.
But I usually have to plow through news about various minorities and their pronouns before I get to news that interests me. I would like it better for equity to be observed in news stories, with people who constitute (say) 2% of the population appearing in only 2% of the stories I encounter. But I know that I will have to put up with being bored by much of what does actually appear. I will survive the imbalance, however. It's no real burden to skip stories about transexuals (etc.) and I do.
Another group preference I have concerns people's appearance. To me the people of Northern Europe all look the same. By appearance alone I cannot tell the difference between the native people of England, Ireland, Nederland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Poland and Russia. They have a high frequency of blue eyes and blond hair during childhood but neither of those things are universal among them.
But they do tend to have what was once called "fine features", which I take to mean narrow noses, thin lips and a long, narrow head. Round heads are not "fine". And since my ancestors were transplants from that Northern European group I am identifiably part of it.
And I like the appearance of the group to which I belong. The converse of that liking is that I tend to dislike the appearance of people who do not have fine features. A person with a flat nose, thick lips and a round head looks unattractive to me and I would prefer not to have them in my environment. Mostly I get that wish. I live in a place populated mostly by Northern transplants like me. And the largest minority is Chinese, who have VERY fine features
Below is an example of a face that I would rather not see in my surroundings. No personal discredit to her, though. Bess Price was a Country Liberal Party member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 2012 to 2016.
And a Northern lady with fine features below
It's Ingeborg Hallstein in her earlier years
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