Imagine there is a latin dance club, most want to dance rumba. But a pair who happens to be of other race wants to dance tango. Would sending them to another dance club be racist?
If some behavior associates with race, it doesn't mean that it is caused by race. There are plenty of African or Muslim origin people who assimilate just fine. It's just that a larger proportion than natives, some "other" groups commit more crime or live off of welfare. Race associates with less merit, yes, but doesn't cause it. Cause is merit, not race, hence not racism.
Imagine you're making a pizza, but you're out of pepperoni. Your mother-in-law is allergic to bacon. Now imagine I'm leaving your house and riding my bike into the sunset.
There are a lot of non-white british people (just like there are non-white americans), and he basically ignores that entire population. He assumes that you are only british if you are white and that london is worse now because there are less whites there. That has nothing to do with meritocracy, and arguable little to do with cultural non-fit.
There's a lot more to unpack in that article aside from just that, but that is the most blatantly obvious one.. And for what it's worth, I don't disagree with DHH on mass immigration. But he seems to have a lot more severe beliefs than just "mass immigration is bad".
> There are a lot of non-white british people (just like there are non-white americans), and he basically ignores that entire population.
There are many people who are mostly or wholly culturally British. I am not white and I live in the north of England and the biggest cultural non-fit is that my speech is obviously southern.
London does not, on the whole, feel very different culturally, from when I grew up there in the 80s. The biggest change in terms of the cultural impact of immigrants has been that of Eastern Europeans: things such as the availability if Polish food.
The issue is likely that readers for whom DHH sounds racist have (1) read the accusative fluff about him, and (2) then read some sentences in the blog post(s). If you read more, watched interviews or asked him directly, you'd get that it's less about race and more about merit. It's just that these attributes correlate (which is not racism).
I strongly disagree. I listened to a few of his interviews (one was the 5 hour long lex interview), and read the entirety of his more inflammatory blog posts. In one of them he specifically says he doesn't like modern London because it's not full of native british people, but what he really means is he doesn't like it because it's not full of white british people. Of course he doesn't say this outright but if you look up the statistics he sites you can see for yourself that he excludes asian, black and mixed british people from the statistic he lists. This is just one specific example.
I do think he also supports merit based immigration, but that doesn't mean he's not racist. He also very openly supports very extreme right wing political figures that promote things like ethnic cleansing. If you look into it more, he is pretty blatantly racist.
That's the verbiage racists use to try to make it sound like it's not racism.
Spoiler: it's racism.
Do you think if the immigrants didn't change the situation for the worse, he'd be making the same arguments? I doubt it.
-- cultural non-fit, rather than racist
Incredible
Imagine there is a latin dance club, most want to dance rumba. But a pair who happens to be of other race wants to dance tango. Would sending them to another dance club be racist?
If some behavior associates with race, it doesn't mean that it is caused by race. There are plenty of African or Muslim origin people who assimilate just fine. It's just that a larger proportion than natives, some "other" groups commit more crime or live off of welfare. Race associates with less merit, yes, but doesn't cause it. Cause is merit, not race, hence not racism.
Imagine you're making a pizza, but you're out of pepperoni. Your mother-in-law is allergic to bacon. Now imagine I'm leaving your house and riding my bike into the sunset.
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You start with a terrible analogy, and then you make a leap into saying false, racist things about crime. Incredible.
Immigrants commit fewer crimes
Also, Muslim is a religion not a race
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Based on his own blog post (https://web.archive.org/web/20250925050154/https://world.hey...) I would argue he does come off as racist.
There are a lot of non-white british people (just like there are non-white americans), and he basically ignores that entire population. He assumes that you are only british if you are white and that london is worse now because there are less whites there. That has nothing to do with meritocracy, and arguable little to do with cultural non-fit.
There's a lot more to unpack in that article aside from just that, but that is the most blatantly obvious one.. And for what it's worth, I don't disagree with DHH on mass immigration. But he seems to have a lot more severe beliefs than just "mass immigration is bad".
> There are a lot of non-white british people (just like there are non-white americans), and he basically ignores that entire population.
There are many people who are mostly or wholly culturally British. I am not white and I live in the north of England and the biggest cultural non-fit is that my speech is obviously southern.
London does not, on the whole, feel very different culturally, from when I grew up there in the 80s. The biggest change in terms of the cultural impact of immigrants has been that of Eastern Europeans: things such as the availability if Polish food.
The issue is likely that readers for whom DHH sounds racist have (1) read the accusative fluff about him, and (2) then read some sentences in the blog post(s). If you read more, watched interviews or asked him directly, you'd get that it's less about race and more about merit. It's just that these attributes correlate (which is not racism).
I strongly disagree. I listened to a few of his interviews (one was the 5 hour long lex interview), and read the entirety of his more inflammatory blog posts. In one of them he specifically says he doesn't like modern London because it's not full of native british people, but what he really means is he doesn't like it because it's not full of white british people. Of course he doesn't say this outright but if you look up the statistics he sites you can see for yourself that he excludes asian, black and mixed british people from the statistic he lists. This is just one specific example.
I do think he also supports merit based immigration, but that doesn't mean he's not racist. He also very openly supports very extreme right wing political figures that promote things like ethnic cleansing. If you look into it more, he is pretty blatantly racist.