KNOWLEDGE AND RACE

Why does the media use language to side with Israel in the currently re-intensifying conflict with Palestine? Why was the media so invested in the Ukraine conflict and completely ignored the Russian side of the story in its narrative? Why is the white world quick to label acts of violence of non-white people as terrorist attacks while aggressions of whites are always tied to mental illness? Most importantly, why do we always ask so many “why questions” on these discursive matters but do not manage to achieve a lasting rethinking of discourse and narratives? This article provides all the answers to these questions and lays out an agenda to achieve this lasting reflection of discourse in politics.

Biologic Circumstances

To properly identify the answers, we would first of all describe the problem. From the above, one can assume that everyone is familiar with the discursive pitfalls of contemporary political communications. When we isolate the actors within this constellation, we will quickly see that it is the so-called “white” world that is applying one-sided language to position favourable ideas and notions on important matters. Central European nations, comprising Germany, the BeNeLux states, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Italy and all colonial extensions of them, such as Canada, Australia, the United States of America and New Zealand, form the ethnic core of the white world. Surely, one could argue whether the Scandinavians and Slavs of Europe count to the white world as well but because of their distinct ethnic history and culture, they should rather be seen as different ethnicities, though as closely related to the whites. In this world, we can locate the most influential news and media outlets measured by informational reach. Not only media giants like CNN, BBC, FOX, CNBC and Reuters fall under this umbrella, but also the big entertainment conglomerates Disney, Warner Bros and Springer. Now, these media companies may have slightly different orientations but nonetheless share the same cultural core properties. Biologically and culturally, their discursive boundaries are already limited to a certain way of thinking that is informed by the way of life of the main populations in those territories.

The most important of such properties is that the white person is, compared with all other ethnicities, biologically disadvantaged in terms of survival chances. Both in the realm of direct reproduction and of direct survival combat, the white world will come short in any direct comparison with other ethnicities. This is why the white cultures needed to develop other properties that made up for the lack of physical survival capability. Technologic, military and economic development helped those nations to achieve a high status of material wealth and translate it into political power to secure a better position in the global comparison with other regions based on different ethnic cores. But the most striking method of survival of the white world is the knowledge discourse. When we look at the field of scientific advancement, we are inclined to state that most publications and innovations come from the white world. The main education institutions are located in the United States of America and Great Britain. One could follow that the white world is more intelligent than the rest of the world, simply due to the sheer size of its academic realm. However, that is rather the result of efforts to create a knowledge hierarchy between the white world and all other ethnicities there are.

Selective Listening

The disadvantages in survival constellations lead the white world to isolate itself mentally from other ethnicities, which is also why racism is also a social innovation originating in the white world. By creating mental borders around them, the white world can create a system of its own truth there. Its economic and military power is then used to defend the claim of the own subjective truth against other ethnicities. For example, we view the Oxford University in England and the Harvard University in the United States of America as the pinnacle of scientific progress. Surely, students and professors of those universities added to many scientific fields over the centuries. However, the reason why we view them as better than others is that the rating agencies that rank universities are also located in those very same nations. Further, alumni from those are mostly employed in monetarily successful white companies. Those companies explicitly look for alumni from those universities, thus making the authoritative claim of better knowledge of those universities a self-fulfilling prophecy. At the content level, those universities do not teach more or better content than comparably prestigious institutions elsewhere. Also, they are more exposed to political agendas and economic interests. Due to the high fees and high degree of elitism behaviour (e. g. dispatching professors to expert committees and hosting politicians for speeches), the stake of national politics in those institutions is so high that the degree of objective education is heavily impaired. Hans Morgenthau was among the leading figures to point out that knowledge and scientific progress are often inhibited by interests, as science is less driven by intrinsic curiosity and more by requirements of the political agenda. A suitable situation to illustrate that white knowledge production is not superior to modes of science is the mapping of the solar system which was known to mankind centuries before this knowledge came to Europe and was then challenged by the church.

What is being applied to modes of scientific advancement also holds true for news and information. Because education and science have become white-centric and have been defended through economic and political power, those aspects are also used to establish an authoritative claim on the truth of transactional information. When a news outlet describes attacks of Hamas as killings but describes the human losses on the sides of Palestine in a passive voice, for example, by formulating it as “Palestinians died in the conflict”, a normative assessment is being made that receives acceptance as the source of this information has a higher prestige due to the authoritative knowledge claim. Sticking to this example, the Jewish ethnicity is phenotypically closer to the white ethnicity and also culturally intertwined. It is a normal human reaction to side with those groups that are culturally and ethnically closer, just like African states would side with other African states in a conflict that would involve a non-African counterpart. However, the choice to accept this framing and stance from an external standpoint is dependent on the way the narrative is bolstered with material structures. Because the African world has not been able to establish its own knowledge regime through education and was not able to expand it through economic and political power, the factual correctness and way of reporting on issues will not suffice to convince third parties to accept the transactional information transfer from this camp as authoritative. However, the non-African counterpart in this example would, given that it is white, be more able to attract public support due to the subjectively established superiority of its knowledge regime. In short, the white world does not need to argue with facts or reason to form public opinion. They have the prestigious education institutions, the scientific progress and the economic and political means to validate every piece of information as the gold standard. Based on this, they can shape public discourse. The global public has accepted the white informational knowledge regime as successful, desirable and authoritative, and therefore, contradictions and false information are being accepted as being true. In order to remain capable of surviving, this subjective knowledge superiority is further reproduced by the white public itself.

An Agenda For Improvements Of Knowledge Regimes

In nearly all cases of improvement, proper identification of problems is crucial as the sources of problems provide us with the answers to how to solve the issues at hand. In this case, the problem lies in the survival considerations of the white ethnicity. It requires the world to acknowledge its white ethnicity’s superiority as legitimacy of power always requires an accepting counterpart. It follows that the world needs to dismantle the thought of white superiority in terms of knowledge. Only by refusing to place the white ethnicity on top of everything else more objective discourse and fairer flows of information are possible. Among the techniques to achieve this are surely the boycott of white products, brands and services, refusal to attend white universities, consuming other news and entertainment sources, refusing the use of the English language as a global language and generally displaying a more national and regional style of consumption. However, change and reflection elasticities of the behaviour of the masses are incredibly rigid. There will not be enough intrinsic drive to stop watching Hollywood movies or listening to Euro-American music. The masses will not be able to initiate and upkeep patterns of consumption that are more oriented towards national and regional products and services. For one, the marketing means and efforts of the white world are too mighty to allow for such consumption shifts, and it has proved to be flexible enough to use such societal shifts to profit from them. Rather, the only effective method is to indirectly dismantle the perception of white superiority by fostering more cultural self-awareness. Patriotism, induced by better historical education and strengthening of socio-cultural norms, is the most effective way to proactively channel consumption behaviour towards one's own cultural region. Just like the white world established closed knowledge systems within their world by focusing on their own internal capabilities, the rest of the world needs to apply the same strategy at home. That way, domestic knowledge production, which needs to be designed to also produce tangible and value-creating results at home, will regain prestige. Relative to the knowledge regime of the white world, the information flows at home will be authoritative enough to also healthily inform global political discourse, enabling proper knowledge advancement. As always, the best method to resolve problems that are externally induced is to adapt the own behaviour to create lasting effects.