The Constitutionalists are en route to Rustum:
"The duty officer, Hallmyer, was tall and blond and born in Lancashire; but he watched the other two with Asian eyes." (p. 44)
Right. On our street and in nearby cities, Lancashire Asians are a prominent social group, including Amir Khan. (Bolton, now in Greater Manchester, was historically part of Lancashire.)
"Hallmyer said, with the alien hiss in his English that Coffin hated, for it was like the Serpent in a once noble garden..." (p. 45)
Two points here:
yet another Biblical reference;
Coffin is a Christian and a racist.
England was a noble garden, now defiled by Asian immigrants? (This is Coffin's view, not Poul Anderson's or mine. We are learning more about Coffin, a man who takes his racial prejudices to another planet.)
22 comments:
I don't think he's prejudiced on grounds of color, but of culture. The man in question is as white as he is.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, I too don't agree that Joshua Coffin was being a racist in the sense Paul meant. You can dislike a CULTURE without being a racist.
Ad astra! Sean
Did I mean a particular kind of racism, though? The snake in the garden image is pretty vile and based on more than that the guy had a recognizable accent.
Kaor, Paul!
I still disagree. I think you are overlooking Coffin's sense of alienation and disenchantment, of what I might call culture shock.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: if it doesn't involve skin color, it's not "racism" in the sense the word is commonly used; and one should not move the linguistic goalposts because it's rhetorically convenient.
Human beings are instinctually tribal; the boundaries and definitions change, the phenomenon does not.
I think anti-semitism counts as a form of racism. I agree about not moving goalposts.
Antisemitism is a form of antisemitism; it antedates the very concept of "race" -- which was invented in the Renaissance, roughly.
Until Europeans started sailing to other continents, there was no such thing, because regional differences in appearance were gradual and people who walked or rose horses were only only vaguely aware of them. Sailing direct to Japan or Angola gave a different perspective.
Before that, people in, say, England knew that people got darker as you went south, but there was no concept of 'race' in the 18th-20th century use of the term. Spaniards were not seen as much different from Moroccans that way, or Greeks from Turks.
That doesn't meant that people didn't dislike, for example, "Moors" and "Saracens"; they did. But they based it on their -religion-, and their customs.
For that matter, the English and French cordially detested each other; there was a widespread folk-belief in England that Frenchmen had tails, like the Devil. But nobody thought they were 'racial' differences.
They were just 'the enemy tribe over there'.
Cf. Japanese and Chinese colloquial terms for each other -- chankoro, meaning "pigtail slave", in Japan, and xiǎo dōngyáng guǐzi, meaning "eastern dwarf devil".
So when Cofflin uses the term "Asian eyes" mentally, he's referring to acculturation to non-Western attitudes. He goes out of his way to note that the man in question -looks- stereotypically English/NW European, so it has nothing to do with appearance.
When Europeans first reached East Asia in the 16th century, they noted that southern Chinese had the same sort of complexion as Moors (North Africans), and that of north Chinese, Koreans and Japanese was like people from central Europe. Their features looked a bit strange.
But nobody called them "yellow", which was the axiomatic term by the late 19th century.
Marco Polo, centuries earlier, had hardly mentioned that sort of thing at all.
I thought that "Asian eyes" referred to the guy's facial appearance but maybe not.
I understand that some Roman Emperors might have been black but we are not sure because it was not noted at the time.
My understanding also is that "racism" specifically in the sense of white anti-black prejudice dates only from the trans-Atlantic slave trade when an ideology of African inferiority was formulated to justify what was being done.
Paul: Some Roman Emperors were North African, so they probably looked like Tunisians... or Sicilians. The Romans had some contact with black people on what's now the Egyptian/Sudanese border; the "Nubians". They were regarded as exotic, but were never around in sufficient numbers to really enter Roman consciousness much.
Now, they -did- have stereotypes about North Europeans, the Celts and Germanics, partly their own invention and partly based on Greek originals: basically, that they were physically impressive and sometimes "noble savages", but otherwise dumb as rocks and grossly uncouth, unable to hold their liquor, easy to fool and manipulate, etc.
Renaissance Europeans started in on what later became the standard stuff the minute they got to West Africa -- the place and the people weirded them out. If you read the chronicles of the very first English to reach the area, they class the locals as "apelike" and "savage" with vile customs and barbarous appearance.
Mind you, the contemporary English descriptions of the Irish aren't exactly complementary!
Also, of course, the trans-Saharan slave trade antedated the Atlantic one by a long time, so southern Europeans were familiar with blacks as slaves in an Islamic context, and some of them ended up in Spain, Portugal and Italy, as early as the 1200's, though not in any real numbers until the 1500's.
Incidentally, the standard Arabic slang for "black person" is "abdeed", which means "slave".
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Stirling's comments are so admirably comprehensive that I can hardly add to them. Except to say he handled the matter of Hallmyer's "Asian eyes" very satisfactorily. It was Coffin's metaphorical way of noting how Hallmyer was simply no longer culturally a Westerner.
Mr. Stirling: I used to know online an ex-RAF officer who had once been posted for some years in Libya before poor old King Idris was overthrown. He knew of Libyans who had only contempt for blacks and who frankly told him that if Western influence ever waned that trans-Saharan slave trading in blacks would be revived.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
A lot of clarification, yes. I am not sure how far it gets us, though. I still find Coffin's "serpent" remark offensive whether or not it is categorized as "racist" in a precise sense.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I still do not. That metaphor never struck me as racist.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Sure but I am waiving the term, "racist," and just sticking with the thought that that to compare Asians entering England with "...the Serpent in a once noble garden..." is offensive.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But it was the "Asian" values and mores espoused by the World Federation in ORBIT UNLIMITED that Joshua Coffin regarded as the "serpent." And if that meant stamping on ideas like the rule of law, the limited state, a scientific and rational outlook, etc., I have to agree with him. I do not think he meant ASIANS, per se.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I find it a bit of a stretch to apply Coffin's reflections here to the Federation.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I thought it natural to do so, with the Federation ruling Earth in such an autocratic and oppressively "Oriental" way.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And that has no connection with the Asian accent of a man from Lancashire!
Paul.
Cultural chauvinism is a universal human characteristic.
Even those who -think- they're not doing it are doing it; they're just using a different reference group (people who agree with them).
As I remarked once, if you try to fight tribalism you just forming an anti-tribalist tribe.
Which is GOOD and RIGHT and must fight the BAD-WRONG tribalist tribe!
It's like trying to outrun your own sweat.
A metaphor I find very apt, because it gets across the sense of trying to stop doing something that's as instinctive and natural as breathing.
Humans are social animals; and the social group we evolved to dwell in is the extended family-clan of 60-120 individuals, all of whom would speak the same language -- literally and metaphorically -- look alike, and be related by blood or mating-bonds.
All larger groupings are merely psychological projections from this.
It's not an accident, for example, that the basic combat unit of all armies is built around groups of roughly that size; that's how you mobilize empathy and fellow-feeling for fighting.
Unfortunately, there are some individuals and small groups on the political left who exactly correspond to the stereotype of fanatical sectarians, emphasizing their disagreements with everyone else and therefore not able to cooperate with anyone about anything. There are also a surprising number of good individuals who have a clear understanding of what they are doing and who are able to campaign on specific issues alongside people that they otherwise disagree with. So I find some hope for mankind in unexpected places. Anyone who wanted to confirm their preexisting prejudices about the left would have no difficulty in finding examples to prove their case if that was all what they wanted to do. But there is more to it than that.
I mention the left because I am familiar with it but probably similar remarks would apply to the right.
Paul: politics is a fight, and in a fight, the ones with the "passionate intensity" generally win.
That applies to both individuals and groups; the individuals with complete conviction, and the groups with the savage intensity of true believers in their own corporate righteousness. Those two phenomena go together anyway.
Not the result you get in every single instance, but over time it's the way to bet. The compromisers get compromised into extinction(*) and the ruthless, tribe-bonded fanatics impose their view.
This is not a problem that can be "solved", it's a condition that has to be managed.
(*) because they're dealing with people whose view is "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is negotiable". Hence negotiation goes their way.
Kaor, Paul!
Addressing your comment to me. The accent of that Lancashireman with the "alien" accent which so affronted Joshua Coffin points exactly to what I and Stirling have been trying to stress to you: how CULTURALLY, not "racially" different Hallmyer was from Capt. Coffin. And Hallymyer's "Asian eyes" referred not to his looks but how he regarded and thought about Coffin.
And I agree with Stirling both about cultural chauvinism, the instinctual, default nature of "tribalism" and how fanatical conviction and ruthless determination are very often advantages in conflicts.
Ad astra! Sean
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