Any Rand

[jbor]

> on 22/10/02 1:29 PM, Michael Kenny at mikenny79 at hotmail.com wrote:
> 
>> From: jbor 
>> To: 
>> Subject: Re: Any Rand
>> Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 08:18:40 +1100
>> 
>> In the polemic in which she argues that racism is "the lowest, most crudely
>> primitive form of collectivism" she still manages to describe the "Negro
>> leaders" as racists and the civil rights bill of 1964 as an "absurdly evil
>> policy". ('Racism', September 1963, in _The Virtue of Selfishness_, pp.
>> 126-134) 
> But you've just cut out a little bit of what she said to make it sound like
> she's a racist.  I found excerpts of this essay online.  Assuming the
> quotations are uncorrupted, here's a fuller context:
> 
> "That absurdly evil policy is destroying the moral base of the Negroes' fight.
> Their case rested on the principle of individual rights. If they demand the
> violation of the rights of others, they negate and forfeit their own. Then the
> same answer applies to them as to the Southern racists: there can be no such
> thing as the 'right' of some men to violate the rights of
> others...............
> 
> It is proper to forbid all discrimination in government-owned facilities and
> establishments: the government has no right to discriminate against any
> citizens. And by the very same principle, the government has no right to
> discriminate FOR some citizens at the expense of others. It has no right to
> violate the right of private property by forbidding discrimination in
> privately owned establishments.
> 
> No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of another man.
> A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with
> him. Racism is an evil, irrational and morally contemptible doctrine--but
> doctrines cannot be forbidden or prescribed by law. Just as we have to protect
> a communist's freedom of speech, even thoough his doctrines are evil, so we
> have to protect a racist's right to the use and disposal of his own property.
> Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue--and can be fought only by
> private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism.............."

Yes, her argument in this particular tract is that initiatives for positive
discrimination that seek to redress those social and economic disadvantages
resulting directly from institutional racism are exactly the same as the
institutional racism itself. They aren't. To reach such a conclusion - and
the essay does end up as a polemic against the US civil rights movement -
she demonstrates what I consider to be a wilful misunderstanding of both the
causes and the effects of racism.

>> Throughout her polemical writings she continually labels non-Western
>> societies and cultural manifestations as "primitive" and "savage".
> 
> But theses labels haven't been exclusive to non-Western cultures.  She also
> levels those names, or names like them, at Western culture before the
> industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism, and other events she thought
> were good.  Even still, she has plenty of complaints about Western culture,
> and certain invidividuals within who she sees as carrying on in 'primitive'
> ways. 

She constantly invokes this dichotomy of the "primitive" and "savage" versus
the "civilised" and "rational". It's the dichotomy she sets up which derives
from suprematist, or racist, ideology, regardless of who she applies it to.

>> Sometimes 
>> she is merely condescending: "Today, when the influence of Western
>> civilization is breaking up the static, tradition-bound culture of Japan,
>> young Japanese composers are doing talented work in the Western style of
>> music." But sometimes her "analyses" reveal a deeply-ingrained cultural
>> suprematism, no matter how much she disguises it behind babble about "man's
>> psycho-epistemological method of functioning":
>> 
>> The connection of music to man's cognitive faculty is supported by the
>> fact that certain kinds of music have a paralyzing, narcotic effect on
>> man's mind. They induce a state of trance-like stupor, a loss of context
>> of volition, of self-awareness. Primitive music and most Oriental music
>> fall into this category. The enjoyment of such music is the opposite of
>> the emotional state a Western man would call enjoyment ....
>> The deadly monotony of primitive music - the endless repetition of a
>> few notes and of a rhythmic pattern that beats against the brain with
>> the regularity of the ancient torture of water drops falling on a man's
>> skull - paralyzes cognitive processes, obliterates awareness and
>> disintegrates the mind. ... ('Art and Cognition' 1971, _The Romantic
>> Manifesto_, pp. 45-79)
> She's giving reasons for why she thinks certain kinds of music are detrimental
> to thinking.  I don't think it's racist to think that tribal music has a
> hypnotic effect on a person's mind, and that this does not help someone focus.
> I've certainly spaced out to tribal-sounding music.  I don't know if this is
> bad all the time, or that it doesn't have some useful effects.  It's certainly
> relaxing, which can be useful.

Her point is that this sort of music is culturally inferior. The inference
is that those who compose, perform and/or enjoy this type of music are also
inferior. She's anti-hippie, anti-mysticism, anti-abstract art and
anti-"Dionysian" as well, of course, but all of her aesthetic prejudices are
based on a notion of the inherent superiority of Western culture and
society, of "rationalism".

>> I've got a hazy recollection that one of the most vilified characters in
>> _Atlas Shrugged_ is African-American, and one of the most pathetic is
>> Jewish, though I could be misremembering.
> Could be.  I haven't read the book.  But in the context of this quotation
> cited below, I think it would be unfair to think Rand was saying "All blacks
> or all Jews are like this, because I portrayed one character of that group as
> a dumb or immoral person."

The impression I have is that these were the only characters from those
ethnic backgrounds in the book, or in any of her books. I could be mistaken
on this, however ....

Perhaps "rabid" was the wrong adjective, though I do find her cultural
prejudices, and the way she trumpets them, quite deplorable. Perhaps
"latent" is the more apt term.

best


> "Even if it were proved--which it is not--that the incidence of men of
> potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain
> racess than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about
> any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one's judgment of him. A
> genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same
> race--and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share
> his racial origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice:
> the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an
> inferior because his race has 'produced' some brutes--or the claim of a German
> brute to the status of a superior because his race has 'produced' Goethe,
> Schiller and Brahms."
> 
> I'll get a copy of that Racism essay and read it in full to make sure that the
> internet site I got the quotations from weren't corrupted.  Here's the site I
> found the excerpts from if you'd like to read them and check them:
> http://snow.prohosting.com/rights/randrace.htm
> 
> --Mike 
> 
>> best 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> on 21/10/02 10:49 AM, Michael Kenny at mikenny79 at hotmail.com wrote:
>>> 
>>> What did she do or say that was racist?
>>> 
>>> --Mike 
>>>> From: jbor 
>>>> To: 
>>>> Subject: Re: Any Rand
>>>> Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 08:48:13 +1100
>>>> 
>>>> Not to mention her rabid racism, her leading role in the Hollywood
>>>> anti-Communist witchhunts of the late 50s, and the way that her
>>>> pseudo-philosophy infiltrated the American Zeitgeist over several
>>>> generations. 
>>>> 
>>>> best 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> on 20/10/02 1:28 PM, Dave Monroe at davidmmonroe at yahoo.com wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Me, I'm just not into pedantic, badly written, even
>>>>> more badly, er, philosophized, at any rate overblown
>>>>> right wing romance/rape fantasy novels, is all ...
>>>>> 
>>>>> --- Terrance wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David Morris wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> --- Terrance wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> What's your problem with Ayan Rand now?
>