Minorities

 

 

 

Eric Hoffer, on Pages 49 and 50 of his book, The True Believer, describes how minorities can be misfits. It would make sense to me intuitively that minorities are ready candidates for true believing because  the majority of any size (all the way from 2 people—the individual is the ultimate minority so the isolated, unpopular individual would be a ready candidate as a misfit--to hundreds of millions of Han Chinese) is aware of there powerful clout, social and political sway, and they feel united and willing to act together, when they are scapegoating upon minorities, turning them into misfits or keeping them in that role, for every majority needs a whipping boy.

 

Majorites practice altruist-collectivist ethics, identity politics, group-rights (my tribe against your tribe, and if we have the numbers and power over you, you could be or are in big trouble), group-living so the majority in-crowd and group are the ones that rule, fit, and naturally feel and enjoy expressing their racist and bigoted enmity in action against minorities nearby.

 

It is no wonder that minorities become frustrated.

 

Here is Hoffer (H after this): “A minority is in a precarious position, however protected it be by law or force. The frustration engendered by the unavoidable sense of insecurity is less intent in a minority intent on preserving its identity than in one bent upon dissolving in and blending with the majority. A minority that preserves its identity is inevitably a compact whole which shelters the individual, gives him a sense of belonging and immunizes him against frustration. On the other hand, in a minority bent on assimilation, the individual stands alone, pitted against prejudices and discrimination. He is also burdened with a sense of guilt, however vague, as a renegade. The orthodox Jew is less frustrated than the emancipated Jew. The segregated Negro in the South is less frustrated than the nonsegregated Negro in the North.”

 

Here again is paradox at work: the minority not seeking to assimilate is less frustrated than the one trying to assimilate. This is so because the one seeking to join the majority has left his people, his tribe, his organic, compact whole, behind; he is now out in the open, naked and exposed, relying wholly on his own resources to hold it together, go on and prosper, and nothing is more frightening to scared, nervous humans than having to run one’s own affairs without a gang or committee to provide at least moral support.

 

We need to teach people to individuate and individual-live: then those in the majority can readily welcome minority members as inividuals to join the majority, no strings attached. Then these minority members need not feel frustrated and seek a passing mass movement to overthrow society, to gain their sense of belonging somewhere, somehow.

 

Minority members, as individuating, individual-livers, would enjoy assimilating but do not much care if they do or not, because they have the strength, independent thinking, confidence and versatility to hold it together in isolation. A competent, surviving and thriving minority member, making it on his own, will not need to become frustrated because he adaptive, upbeat, resilient ego allows him to weather all storms in isolation, or as an in-crowd member of the majority or if he is still in the minority.

 

H: “Again, with a minority bent on assimilation, the least and most successful (economically and culturally are likely to be more frustrated than those in between. The man who fails sees himself as an outsider; and, in the case of a member of a minority group, who wants to blend with the majority, failure intensifies the feeling of not belonging. A similar feeling crops up at the other end of the economic or cultural scale. Those of a minority who attain fortune and fame often find it difficult to gain entrance into the exclusive circles of the majority. They are thus made conscious of their foreignness. Furthermore, having evidence of their individual superiority, they resent the admission of inferiority implied in the process of assimilation. Thus it is to be expected that the least and most successful of a minority bent on assimilation should be most responsive to the appeal of a mass movement. The least and the most successful among Italian Americans were the most ardent admirers of Mussolini’s revolution; the least and most successful among the Irish Americans were the most responsive to De Valera’s call; the least and most successful among the Jews are the most responsive to Zionism; the least and most successful the Negroes are the most race conscious.”

 

My response: As a great soul and maverizer minority that has been much persecuted, I sympathize with minorities being discriminated and persecuted against. It would, for example, in America’s case and in its best interest, to take advantage of those ethnic minorities and races that are here and want to assimilate, that the majority welcome them with open arms. We do not want millions of frustrated people being denied assimilation, so they join the Bolshevik mass movement now slowly building and sreading in America.