No one is a native of the place we call home.—Mohsin Hamid, National Geographic, August 2019
Without interbreeding due to successive waves of migrants, “Europeans” would not exist.—Paul Salopek, National Geographic, August 2019
Imagine you are standing in a queue at a supermarket checkout when the lady behind you says, in a loud, angry voice, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from!” You are so dumbfounded by her rudeness that you can’t think of a suitable reply. What can you say to someone who takes one look at you and judges you as unworthy, even as too dangerous, to stay in her country—which is actually your country too.
This has never happened to me, even though I am an economic refugee. My family paid £10 each to escape by boat from hard times in their home country. They sought the land of opportunity and settled in Australia. They weren’t running from tyranny or oppression, but from rationing in the United Kingdom after the Second World War. They wanted to start afresh and put the horrors of the Great Depression and the aftermath of conflict behind them. They came in a respectable ocean liner and Australia welcomed them—even though it didn’t always accept their qualifications and Pommy bastard wasn’t a term of endearment.
I have never been assailed by the question Why don’t you go back to where you came from? because, as a white Anglo-Saxon, it is hard to identify me as the enemy. I am a good migrant. If you look Asian or Middle Eastern or have dark skin, you are fair game to people who judge on outward appearance.
I was recounting the checkout experience I witnessed to a group of friends when one them, of Sri Lankan heritage, said that this was a common experience for him too. Whenever a reactionary politician sounds off about race, my friend avoids hardware stores and shopping malls because of the insults he is subjected to. Our friend has lived in Australia most of his life; he is kind, highly educated, hard-working and has contributed a lot to society.
Unreasonable people seem to be gaining the upper hand. They feel entitled to say whatever they like, no matter how ill informed, unthinking, hurtful or damaging. They are happy to make a judgement about a person after a single glance, or after watching a reality TV show, listening to a shock jock, or looking at an Instagram post—and they are destroying our civil society.
Some people in wealthy developed countries are against particular migrants because of perceived racial, cultural and religious differences. We humans seem to be innately suspicious of people who are different from us. Some even believe that taking in people who are unlike them will dilute—even pollute—their culture. Even the legitimate right of refugees to flee atrocities is placed in jeopardy by labelling them terrorists, criminals, economic refugees or immoral people.
But the fact is that we are all migrants—we always have been. We have all come from somewhere else and belonged to other groups. The only constant is that we all belong to a migratory species called Homo sapiens. If we were to go back to where we came from, we would all have to return to Africa, where our story starts. The first Homo sapiens to settle in Europe left Africa about 45,000 years ago. They probably had black skin and light eyes and were hunter-gatherers. They mixed with our very close relatives, the Neanderthals. So, for a long time, we have not been a pure species.
About 8,000 years ago, Neolithic farmers started moving into Europe from Anatolia. With their light skins and dark eyes and farming lifestyle, they were very different from the original hunter-gatherers. A third major migration into Europe started about 5,000 years ago, involving the Yamnaya from the steppes of Russia and Ukraine. They were nomadic people, who drove cattle, rode horses and used wagons, spoke Indo-European languages and may have carried the plague.
If you look at the DNA profile of people in Europe today, the ancestry of these three groups is quite clear and quite varied. For example, English people are largely descended from Neolithic farmers and Yamnaya people in equal measure, with a little hunter-gatherer ancestry. In contrast, people from Sardinia have a largely Neolithic farmer heritage with only a little Yamnaya and hunter-gatherer ancestry.
There have been many migrations since these three major ones. The Romans went everywhere. But modern-day Greeks and Italians are not the same as the ancient Greeks and Romans, due to the waves of Vandals, Goths and Huns that swept across Europe from the east and north, putting an end to the Roman Empire. Then we have Celts, Picts, Scots, Gauls, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Jutes, Danes—and Vikings who, once Frenchified, became the Normans. Europe is one great big melting pot, there is nothing racially pure about it. The same thing happened elsewhere in the world.
It is irrational to discriminate against a group of people on the grounds of race because race has no basis in science. So called racial divisions, assumed to exist because people look different, do not have a genetic basis. We have diverged but our so-called races are not genetically discrete because, over thousands of years, we have also merged and remerged. Instead, race is a handy term we use to identify people as other or different. We are rather threatened by others. Sometimes with good cause—but, at other times, pogroms have been carried out against various groups of people who have posed no threat at all. Fear of others can quickly turn into hatred of whole groups and such fear is often whipped up by politicians and commentators as a way of gaining supporters. There is no greater sense of entitlement than feeling superior to others and therefore treating them in ways that you would find totally unacceptable were they members of your own group.
The prospect of being overwhelmed by large numbers of refugees and migrants is at the heart of a lot of the anxiety about the flow of people looking for new homes and opportunities. This is understandable because there are large numbers of people on the move around the world: 3% of the 7.6 billion people on Earth (258m) live outside their country of origin.
People move to other countries to escape devastating wars, as have the more than 5 million Syrian refugees who lost everything; they move to escape persecution for things that we would consider a democratic right in our own countries; or to escape violence, crime and chaos. People move because economic circumstances do not allow them to make a living in their own country. They move because of poverty and lack of social security. They move because over-population and environmental degradation mean that their land can no longer support them; and they move because they are seeking opportunities not only for themselves, but for their children. We would do the same if we were in their shoes.
But it is unsurprising that people become upset, outraged, fearful and angry about refugees and migrants when told about a million angry, ungrateful military age male Syrians swarming into a European country within a year. That would make anyone want to close the borders. But some facts have been put aside in this fear mongering. Such as the fact that, because of the civil war, much of Syria has been destroyed, around 500,000 people have been killed and many others maimed, tortured and otherwise traumatised by both sides of the conflict. Out of a population of 22 million, over 6 million have been displaced within Syria, and those that were able to (around 5.5m) have fled to other countries, mainly Middle Eastern countries, where many live below the poverty line and face a very uncertain future. Around a million have sought asylum in Europe, mainly in Germany. They were not all men and they did not all go there to cause strife.
In fact, research shows that Syrian refugees are generally not motivated by the desire to do harm to the countries they move to and that the danger that the West will be flooded by Syrian radicals is exaggerated. Those who seek asylum in the west are usually pro-west to begin with. One hopes that they will be made to feel welcome in their new countries, rather than treated with unkindness, racism and hostility. Most of these refugees do not hold radical religious or political beliefs and most want to return to their own country as soon as they can. There should be vetting of those seeking asylum in Europe—but they should not automatically be labelled as bad migrants.
Even when many of the migrants are men, as is the case with many of those who turn up in Spain from Africa, they are often primarily interested in earning money to send back to their families. Such migrants add to the prosperity of Europe. According to the OECD, over the past decade, 70% of the increase in Europe’s workforce was due to migrants and this was important to help grow the economy. Furthermore, they found that the inflow of migrants did not have a major impact on any country’s GDP.
There are many potential threats and we humans are very good at worrying about them. We are particularly good at erecting both metaphorical and physical barriers to protect us from the unseen hordes that we know are out there. Belonging to a group, especially if that group has powerful leaders and supports the status quo, is one way of feeling secure. Deep down, we clearly realise that this kind of behaviour is profoundly unkind and unfair because we tend to justify this position with the filmiest of reasons.
One in seven humans migrate—either within their own country, as when rural people move to cities, or to another country. More and more people are moving because of the effects of climate change. It is estimated that, by the year 2050, more than 140 million people could become climate refugees, who will all need to live somewhere and somehow. This will pose an even greater challenge than the influx of African refugees and migrants from across the Mediterranean into Europe or of Hispanic people trying to get into the United States from Central America because life is so bleak where they come from.
It will be hard to maintain an us and them attitude over the next decades, as increasingly large numbers of displaced people move in order to survive. We will need to become better at sharing—and we could gain a lot in the process. What we need is pragmatic, innovative and compassionate solutions. We need to challenge the persistence of prejudice, so that new people can be integrated into our societies in a civil, kind and orderly way—which will be good for them and good for us. To do this, we need to be clear about our values and expect newcomers to embrace them. For this very reason, fear, racism, superiority, entitlement and discrimination should form no part of those values.
We should feel at one with other humans in need because we are all very, very closely related. We share a common humanity, however we try to mask it. But giving up our tribes in favour of a global village seems an impossible step for some.
18 comments
“They are happy to make a judgement about a person after a single glance, or after watching a reality TV show, listening to a shock jock, or looking at an Instagram post—and they are destroying our civil society.”
What has not been mentioned is the influence of conservative politician’s here in Australia and the USA. In Australia we continue to bring in an abundance of immigrants to the detriment of everybody including the immigrants themselves. Instead of blaming politicians for mass immigration without adequate infrastructure and job availability, they instead turn their frustration onto immigrants – fueling tensions and creating further divide. Politicians love this, because it means people become more interested in politics and they use that emotion to manipulate the centrists, thus creating an us versus them mentality.
I live in Australia also and look ethic even though I was born here. I have found that in the past 5 years in particular I get dirty looks and do not feel comfortable just going to the supermarket anymore. I feel like a stranger in my own country and I know I am not the only one. The government created this mess and refuse to lift a finger to attempt to rectify it. I do not believe that people are inherently racist, instead I think they are easily influenced and manipulated, thus the rest of us must endure these false perceptions and ignorance which serve to undermine us all.
This was an upbeat, positive sounding essay which its intent is clearly to mean no harm or give insult to anyone’s perspective. It’s an appreciated humanitarian read all the way.
After reading subsequent commentary given on the essay, it seems some don’t ponder or take into account countries human beings will never choose to migrate and why that is, take that into consideration more so than personal issues mentioned because it stands to reason countries people flee from do not tolerate difference or give respect to individual rights and will easily put to death, for instance, a gay person.
It would seem only fair countries which take in immigrants ought to be able to secure monetary compensation from a crappy run country which causes their citizens to forego a massive exodus.
«It would seem only fair countries which take in immigrants ought to be able to secure monetary compensation from a crappy run country which causes their citizens to forego a massive exodus» – Say it to Maduro. Although what am I talking about? The gays rights are the ultimate criterion and Maduro is not at all against gays. He is building socialism. That’s we who has to give him monetary compensation.
I’ll start believing races don’t exist when SJWs stop using straight “white” male as a pejorative.
As far as I remember, dear Elizabeth called for using the most primitive emotions to draw the attention of mankind to the problem of global warming.
The result was crazy Greta.
What will happen now? 🙂
“We share a common humanity … But giving up our tribes in favour of a global village seems an impossible step for some.” I am with Dangerfield there. What’s demoralizing for me, as a lifelong liberal, is that most of the energy against “giving up our tribes in favour of a global village” is coming today from the woke Left – from academic identity departments that make skin color or sex organs the definitive marker of identity.
It’s different to read something PC at Areo. Standard issue multicult, open borders stuff, hardly worth rebuttal, but perhaps one point:
“Some even believe that taking in people who are unlike them will dilute—even pollute—their culture.”
Well, if I take a large bowl, pour in a glass of white wine, and then pour in a gallon of red wine, yes, I do believe that the white wine will be diluted. How could it be otherwise? There are now areas in Sweden where a Swede dare not set foot, ‘dilution’ is not the word, hostile replacement by an invading army is more accurate.
Bunk. First of all, people aren’t inert liquids. They can learn other languages, change religions, eat new foods, adopt new habits, etc. Moreover, Sweden isn’t a monoculture to begin with, it’s a collection of subcultures like any other country. The fact that Swedish Death Metal is a thing should demonstrate that there is no pure ‘undiluted’ Swedish culture.
“There are now areas in Sweden where a Swede dare not set foot,”
Sweden, like other countries, has areas of low employment and high crime. The police still go there. This is like claiming “there are areas in Chicago where Americans dare not set foot”.
“…hostile replacement by an invading army is more accurate.” Panicky, innumerate, nonsense. People fleeing war in their home country aren’t “hostile invaders”, much less an army. They are just people trying to settle and remake their disrupted lives. Sweden has a population around 10 million, whereas there are something like 100,000 Syrians, i.e. around 1%. The overall foreign-born population is about 20% but that includes Finns (the largest group), Poles, and many others you wouldn’t drag out the foreign hordes rhetoric for.
There are actual issues with poverty, crime, and assimilation that Sweden has to deal with and large refugee influxes do put stress on the system, but reactionary chicken-little bloviating like yours does nothing useful.
“people aren’t inert liquids. They can learn other languages, change religions”
Indeed, and the history of (especially) the US shows that they can. But it also shows that some groups assimilate very well and others very poorly. The worst are the Muslims, who have even what I call ‘negative assimilation’ that is, whereas first generation refugees might at least be grateful for the chance they’ve been given to get away from their own culture, the next generation are likely to join ISIS. Muslims in Europe are not assimilating, they are setting up little emirates.
“there are areas in Chicago where Americans dare not set foot”
Sure, that’s equally troubling if you ask me. Mind in that case it would be whites who dare not set foot, not Americans per se.
“People fleeing war in their home country aren’t “hostile invaders””
Some aren’t certainly. But the Moroccans in Germany are. Or at least that’s what my German friends tell me.
“reactionary chicken-little bloviating”
Characterize it as you like, but I’m telling the truth. You’ve performed your virtue, but the problem remains. Personally I’d not advocate so much for the keeping of refugees out, but what I would do is deport troublemakers very speedily. You of course are more virtuous and welcome everyone and know that all we need is love.
‘It is irrational to discriminate against a group of people on the grounds of race because race has no basis in science. So called racial divisions, assumed to exist because people look different, do not have a genetic basis. We have diverged but our so-called races are not genetically discrete…’
Ahhh, the old continuum fallacy. The argument that is being made here (although it is not elaborated on at great length) is that because there are people that exist which have characteristics that make them difficult to place in one category, or the other, the categories themselves are empty, and convey no information. This is rank, utter nonsense.
Merely because there are some people who may be difficult to place in one category or another does not necessarily invalidate the descriptive value of the categories, as a matter of logic. However, if the number of people in the overlap, who were difficult to categorise, were extremely large as a proportion of the group being categorised, then that could mean that those categories were meaningless. Whether that is the case with respect to certain categories as applied to a group is an empirical question.
But the empirical evidence does not support the argument that racial categories are meaningless. Rather, we can identify someone’s racial group with a fairly small number of genetic loci. For example, Michael J Bamshad et al, ‘Human Population Genetic Structure and Inference of Group Membership’ (2003) 72(3) American Journal of Human Genetics 578 found that with 100 logic it was possible to tell whether someone originated from Africa, Asia or Europe (with only 20 loci it allowed 79% accuracy for Europeans, 82% for Asians and 91% for Africans).* The fact people can be so accurately sorted indicates that common racial categorisations reflect some underlying reality, and are not MERELY social constructs.
How significant the biological differences are compared to differences arising from the social aspect of race in respect of important characteristics I am not going to venture an opinion on. But I felt I couldn’t let the canard I’ve quoted above pass without comment.
* Obviously how genes indicate geographic origin isn’t the same as asking whether the genes correspond to certain racial categories, but there’s self-evidently significant overlap. See Guang Guo et al, ‘Genetic Bio-Ancestry and Social Construction of Racial Classification in Social Surveys in the Contemporary United States’ for a case where conventional racial categories were used.
“No one is a native of the place we call home.—Mohsin Hamid, National Geographic, August 2019”
BULLSHIT. I was born and raised in America, that makes me a native of America.
“Around a million have sought asylum in Europe, mainly in Germany. They were not all men and they did not all go there to cause strife. In fact, research shows that Syrian refugees are generally not motivated by the desire to do harm to the countries they move to …”
Obviously not, and I don’t think anyone ever claims that *all* of them are radicals intent on harm. The issue is whether 5 or 10 percent them, or of their children, might be attracted to extremist versions of their religion.
“It is irrational to discriminate against a group of people on the grounds of race because race has no basis in science. So called racial divisions, assumed to exist because people look different, do not have a genetic basis.”
That’s not actually true. What is true is that “races” are not *discrete* with clearly demarked boundaries. But, over history, humans have separated into groupings, and humans today do show shared-ancestry clusterings. The first population that migrated into Australia from Asia, about 50,000 years ago, is distinguishable from the Europeans who migrated into Australia in the last couple of hundred years. And yes, these shared-ancestry clusterings can indeed be discerned in genetic profiles. Again, these clusterings are not discrete, they are fuzzy-edged, and there is also blurring from inter-marrying, but these clusterings really are real.
The claim that “race has no basis in science” is just virtue-signalling: “I’m so anti-racist that I’ll deny that races even exist!”.
True, Coel. Even more problematic, the woke progressives who are so eager to deny the existence of race in this context are the same ones insisting on campuses that race is the defining feature of identity (e.g. “I don’t see race when I meet someone” is formally listed as a microaggression at many universities). This doesn’t mean I’m against the core idea of shared humanity beneath a surface of racial differences; it just means that woke progressives have lost the moral authority to carry that message.
It is most interesting that race can be nothing, yet everything at the same time. A Social Construction conjured up by whitey to help him Oppress, yet at the same time the most fundamental part of Identity.
Well, yes. But why is the following written as so obviously wrong that it’s dismissed with an “even” – “Some even believe that taking in people who are unlike them will dilute—even pollute—their culture”. It’s patently clear that one culture is affected, or in conflict with, another. Your county, Australia, legalised homosexuality only in 2017. It takes literally generations to progress from illegality of homosexuality to legalising same sex marriage. Other cultures can have extremely conservative and religious attitudes that don’t just fall away when they encounter something different. Also, you’re talking about a country’s culture. Immigrants from different cultures naturally and understandably, but unfortunately, self segregate, as do the locals from the current culture. Such segregation creates areas where the new culture is dominant, leaving the poorer, or more resistant to moving, now living amidst a different, often offensive to their sensibilities, culture. I don’t think you should dismiss the resentfulness of such people as bigoted. (One wonders how e.g. Islamic your particular neighborhood is – I suspect not very)
On the topic of gay marriage in Australia, the areas that had the largest number of ‘No’ votes were all high immigrant areas of suburban Sydney. Even ultra conservative rural parts of the country voted in favour of same sex marriage, so yes, there are downsides to introducing new cultures into another nation without requiring some degree of assimilation.
Interesting, Greg, thanks.
It’s also interesting that there are 4 down votes on your comment (at writing) even though it is factual statement with a logical inference (and no replies as to why they think it deserves a down vote)