Re: Does "white privilege" exist? If so, should it be corrected?
Hey German Guy, I just read and thought it was interesting.
I was having a discussion with my brother (who has spent a lot of time in Germany) about Muslims in Europe generally and how there is a huge problem of unemployment, underemployment, and Muslims living in ghetto's. I understand this is a very big problem in France and a significant problem in Germany.
He argued that the problem was with the Muslims who refused to integrate and chose to live in ghettos.
I argued that the Muslims were being discriminated against and as opposed to not assimilating, their difference were not being accepted by Germans and they were pushed to the ghettos as a result of discrimination. If this is the case, it is not disimiliar to the plight of blacks in America.
Contrasting Muslims in America with Muslims in Europe, we find that in almost every way, American Muslims are well above average. They only make about 25 of the population, but they tend make more money, have more education, longer marriages, lower debt, lower crime rates than the general population.
I believe that discrimination, especially, but not exlusively, institutional repression, has an effect on groups that is not easily corrected.
I read a study once about repression in Ireland a few decades back. The Irish Protestants were the repressors and the Irish Catholics were the repressed. The study found, among other things, that the irish Catholics had an average of 15 point lower IQ than the Irish Protestants. What is fascinating is that these people were so close genetically that they could have been close cousins, so clearly there was nothing biological about the difference, it was all the result of repression.
What do you make of the Muslim issue in Europe?
Is there a white advantage?
My guess is that it's a mix of both, concerning Muslims in Germany.
First, I think the problem is not as grave as in France, for example, and there are actually not few immigrants in Germany from Muslim countries who achieve to some extent. But there certainly is a large number of Muslim immigrants who don't, and there are problems that come with this problem.
There have been studies that found that there is indeed prejudice on the side of teachers and employers in Germany against Muslims (usually immigrants from Turkey in our case): When the application letters are absolutely identical, people with Turkish sounding names have a significantly lower chance to be invited to job interviews. The mostly public German education system has been found to advantage children from families with better education background and perpetuating the low performance of children with a low social background -- and most immigrants from Muslim countries are living in a socially bad situation. On top of that, there are many prejudices, which may or may not contain a true core, such as "Muslims are aggressive/religious fanatics/treat women bad/are terrorists/stick to their own kind" and so on, which make it difficult for those immigrants who aim at blending in to achieve that.
That's one side. On the other side, I'd say it is indeed a problem that many immigrants from Muslim countries in Germany maintain a culture that's not compatible with our way of life: Misogynist views, general intolerance towards certain minorities such as Jews or homosexuals, ideas of religious supremacy, paternalist-authoritarian attitudes and traditions. Many of these attitudes are not necessarily specifically Muslim, as many people two or three generations ago in Germany shared similar ideas. But they are clashing with today's pluralist and secular society in Germany. These attitudes are an obstacle on the side of the immigrants when it comes to integration. In extreme cases, this mutual alienation causes them to get even more radical in their views, joining religious and/or political extremist groups such as radical islamists.
A counter-reaction on the side of natives then is xenophobic extremism, such as displayed in the actions of islamophobic groups, who fuel hatred against Muslim immigrants in general, usually within far-right action groups with nationalistic and chauvinistic views.
So IMO, the problem is something both sides have to work on together, not against each other. Waging culture wars against "these evil Muslims" is only going to increase the rift on both sides and will not possibly yield any constructive solution to the problems that exist. Disarmament of hateful rejection and generalization of "the other side" is required on both sides.
As for the difference between Muslims in America and Germany, my guess is this has to do with the social background of the respective immigrants: Germany invited many Turkish people in the 70s and 80s as cheap labor. They usually came from the poorest regions of Turkey, had only few education and even less money, and were hired in Germany for the dirty works no German wanted to do. In America, on the other side, my guess is that especially highly educated people from Muslim countries, with either much money or good education, are allowed access to a Green Card or other means of permanent residence.