April 10, 2013

1971 "Crying Indian" anti-littering PSA and racial shaming

After WWII, as Americans became more mobile and affluent, littering started to be a more annoying problem, especially as paper wrappers, non-biodegradable plastic junk and very slowly rusting aluminum cans proliferated. 

Executives from big consumer packaged goods corporations like Anheuser-Busch that manufactured much of the litter founded the Keep America Beautiful organization in 1953. In the mid-1960s, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson made highway beautification, including anti-littering, her pet cause. On Earth Day 1971, Keep America Beautiful debuted its famous Crying Indian public service announcement TV spot (above).

Ginger Strand wrote in Orion:
IF YOU WATCHED television at any point in the seventies, you saw him: America’s most famous Indian. Star of perhaps the best-known public service announcement ever, he was a black-braided, buckskinned, cigar-store native come to life, complete with single feather and stoic frown. In the spot’s original version, launched by Keep America Beautiful on Earth Day 1971, he paddles his canoe down a pristine river to booming drumbeats. He glides past flotsam and jetsam. The music grows bombastic, wailing up a movie-soundtrack build. He rows into a city harbor: ship, crane, a scrim of smog. The Indian pulls his boat onto a bank strewn with litter and gazes upon a freeway. 
“Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country,” intones a basso profundo voice [actor William Conrad*], “and some people don’t.” On those words, someone flings a bag of trash from a passing car. It scatters at the Indian’s feet. He looks into the camera for the money shot. A single tear rolls down his cheek. 
“People start pollution. People can stop it,” declares the narrator.
Rewind. Replay. Thanks to YouTube, you can watch this ad over and over, framed by excited viewer comments: “A classic!!” “Very powerful.” “Best PSA ever made.” Most YouTubers agree with the trade journal Ad Age, which included the campaign in the century’s top hundred. Some netizens even claim the ad motivated them to pick up trash or chide litterers. The Advertising Educational Foundation declares the spot “synonymous with environmental concern.” Wikipedia says it “has been widely credited with inspiring America’s fledgling environmental movement.” The crying Indian wept for our sins, and from his tears sprang forth a new Green Age.

Of course, the veteran Western movie character actor Iron Eyes Cody was really an Italian American and the commercial was paid for by corporate interests that didn't want disposable containers outlawed. 

But, it more or less worked. White people felt shamed by the crying Indian and therefore littered less.

Racial shaming remains popular and effective, but the only allowable target hasn't changed since the early years of Earth Day: white people. 

Yet, the Hispanic population now numbers over 50 million and represents a major source of littering, but it's difficult to find any acknowledgment in the media of the fact that Hispanics today contribute disproportionately to littering. 

How about: If you want amnesty, you've got to stop littering first? Maybe if somebody ever dared to ask Latinos to stop littering so much, they'd feel embarrassed and knock it off. Who knows? Nobody has tried.

Race pretty much overrules everything else these days on who? whom? grounds, even petty nonsense like trashing a natural wonder. 

------
* William Conrad was the portly star of the detective show "Cannon" (1971-1976). I went to  elementary school with his kid (who liked to unexpectedly knock people down from behind during recess). I called him Cannonball.

56 comments:

Ex Submarine Officer said...

Well, I don't know about the litter, but it might be nice to have the thriving factories (sans pollution) back.

Tartar said...

Steve, we're about the same age. When I think back, I don't think aluminum cans were in wide use until the early '70's-- Remember those commercials touting the superiority of aluminum over steel? My recollection is that aluminum was still fairly expensive at the time.

Anyhow, I don't think it was racial guilt back then, it was an appeal to the personal responsibility of the WWI generation along with the ethos of America as one happy family, and the Indians, as part of the patrimony, left us this one big beautiful country that we had better not despoil. And I think letter did abate until the mid-80s with the influx of illegals, the dying away of the WWII generation, and a general reduction in neighborliness.
Don't forget too that the Europeans were cleaning up their litter around the same time. eve to this day-- go hiking around in the Rockies or anywhere out West-- lots of SWPLs, Europeans, and cleanliness.

Anonymous said...

Where's the underlying facts or stats that Latinos litter disproportionately?

Whiskey said...

Steve --

OT, why not do a Mickey Kaus and run for the nomination of the GOP Governor's race? Kaus's run against Boxer got a lot of ink and boosted his blog traffic.

Why not?

Callowman said...

How about: Stop littering, and no amnesty? Seems like more of a fair deal. Or: Stop littering, amnesty, but only heads of households who are net taxpayers get the franchise. That seems fair, too.

Steve Johnson said...

This post is insanely optimistic.

There aren't 50 million Mexicans in the United States by accident - they're here specifically because have out of wedlock children, end up on welfare, drive drunk, are generally bad citizens, and yes, litter.

There are no leftist values that are more important than making more clients for the progressive class.

You'll never shame the progressives into caring about some other pretend progressive value (the environment, the working class) - they all know by instinct what the party line is.

They have to be defeated - then worrying about maybe getting a bunch of invaders to stop littering so much won't even be on the radar...

...getting all of them out of the country will be*.

* I suggest using buses.

OSS said...

You racists. It's obvious that Latinos litter because the signs telling them not to are in English. Redo the signs in Spanish and they'll stop.

Anonymous said...

Maybe shame and honor can only be experienced by the ruling class.

Littering may also be an act of rebellion on the part of the lower classes. They may also be hoping for work cleaning it up.

Misophile said...

>Where's the underlying facts or stats that Latinos litter disproportionately?

You could try visiting the bluest regions of this map, or anywhere south of the border.

Anonymous said...

My uncle once struck up a conservation with his Mexican neighbor while he was taking the recycling bin down to the curb. The neighbor asked him what he was doing. When my uncle told him, his response was "Oh. I'm Mexican. We don't recycle."

Matthew said...

"But it's difficult to find any acknowledgment in the media of the fact that Hispanics today contribute disproportionately to littering."

I never really noticed that Hispanics litter more, but what I have noticed is that the amount of trash on the freeway which winds up there due to unsecured payloads seems to have increased over the last decade or two, and it seems especially common in Hispanic areas.

peterike said...

Really, if we can't even complain about Latino gangs and crime, who will dare complain about littering? Even drunk driving shaming, so beloved of the Shaming Class as a cause, can't be focused on Mexicans though they contribute mightily to it.

To borrow a construction from the feminists, verboten means verboten.

Anonymous said...

very slowly rusting aluminum cans proliferated.

Uh, aluminum doesn't rust.

ryan said...

The irony is that if you visit any Indian reservation (and I've been on many from Florida to Alaska) you will find that Indians only hold onto a pop can or sugary treat package long enough to drink/eat it, then they just let go of it.


They just let gravity take it from there.

Even if they DID have garbage cans, they would not understand the concept of putting trash in them.

Anonymous said...

The Latinos I know would react very, very badly to any suggestion that they stop littering. It's doubtful they even understand the concept, but nag them about it and they'll act like a typical angry child and show you how much worse they can litter.

It sounds like you're lying. How would you even come to "know" Latinos and be acquaintances with them? Do you run a landscaping business?

Nick Diaz said...

They need to be deported by force, legal or illegal. No hearings.

Maybe people like you need to be macheted. No hearings.

Djs said...

I live in Southern California and I can actually live with most of their littering, but could they at least PLEASE stop tossing used diapers out their car windows? Am I being so unreasonable here?

Anonymous said...

I visited the four corners region ( Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona) area about ten years ago or so. This was on route 160 and you could not believe the amount of trash, mostly glass littered along the road. I think the four corners belong to the Indian Nations. I hope those weren't broken liquor bottles. Someone's drinking a lotta liquor.

Anonymous said...

The shaming may have helped some, but it's also true that some national characteristics are more orderly and disciplined than others. My mother worked and traveled around Europe in the early 70s, and she said she was impressed by how clean and orderly Germany was. But she found much of Spain, Portugal, and Italy disorderly, dirty, and inefficient.

Northern Europeans have always been a more hygienic people culturally, racially, ideologically, morally, spiritually, etc.
If Northern Europeans used to be spiritually, racially, and culturally hygienic in the past, in more recent times they lost the old religion, grew bored of their own cultures, and came to see racial hygiene as eeeeeevil. So, their need for hygiene-ism is now ideological, and paradoxically, this is making their nations less hygienic in many ways.

For instance, Swedes are very hygienic ideologically about multi-culturalism and diversity. They are ideologically puritanistic about creating a culturally diverse society, but as Sweden fills up with more Africans and Muslims, it's became physically less hygienic as Muslims and Africans tend to be less orderly and less conscientious about maintaining an orderly society.

So, the purist-hygienic mind-set is still very much alive among Northern Europeans but the focus is no longer racial, cultural, or spiritual but ideological, and this ideological purism for cultural impurism is killing Northern Europeans as a culture, race, and people. It's like multiple sclerosis, where the body's system turns against itself. Multi-cultural Sclerosis is killing the West.

Anonymous said...

Actually, aluminum rusts very quickly. In a fine powder, it rusts quickly enough to be used as part of an explosive.

David said...

>Calling them on their thoughtless, rude behavior would merely be the equivalent of knocking off one of [the chips on their shoulders]. Tantrums ensue. They're as bad as Blacks in this respect.<

3...2...1...

Nikki D:

>Maybe people like you need to be macheted.<

Getting rear-ended in San Fran by one of the legion of license-less latino drunkards wouldn't bother Nikki D one little bit. But "bind with briars (his) joys and desires," and he gets out the machete (title of a movie).

Frankly, Nikki D sounds Anglo. A twentysomething "anti-racist" as white as purest snow is my guess.

I was in Mexico City recently and, believe me, you don't want to be within 100 yards of any storm drain for days after it rains, unless you want to smell all the poop of Mexico in its freshest glory. Mexicans don't care, except for one German-looking guy I saw pouring Clorox (to no avail) down one storm drain in front of his little convenience store.

Mexico City-ians scrub the sidewalks in front of their buildings all day long, though. And I didn't see excessive littering, but then again I was staying in a very nice neighborhood that is admittedly (common knowledge) run by Jews. Dirty dogs were everywhere, including in many of the cafes, where they jump on the tables as a regular, accepted practice. Eat, Love, and Pray you don't get ill.

Prices are good, and there is a lot of work to do, so I encourage all Anglos to go down there and take over. We can clean up that dump.

Anonymous said...

The Jackie Robinson movie sounds like another one of those nostalgia movies for the 'good ole bad ole' days. Bad ole because of the discrimination but good ole because the reality and issues were simpler/clearer. In our current age of violent narcissistic thug athletes and street violence run amok, there is a longing for the 'good ole bad ole days' movies like 42, Hep, and Far from Heaven.

candid_observer said...

Speaking of not being able to speak about certain things, I had heard a report on NBC News yesterday evening that the Louvre had shut down because it was a favorite target for gangs of children who were pickpockets.

I was simply baffled by this weird report. Children? What group of children would engage in this sort of thing? Then it was mentioned that the children were "Romanian".

The dots then connected of course, but only because I had enough dots in my own head to fill in the spaces.

Anonymous said...

They need to be deported by force, legal or illegal. No hearings.

Maybe people like you need to be macheted. No hearings


Let's see. The first comment calls for the extrajudicial removal of illegal aliens from our nation.

Nick's retort calls for the extrajudicial murder of fellow citizens of our nation.

If Nick Diaz's views are reflected in any way by some portion of the the Latin American population, then I'd say the first commenter is probably correct in advocating their extrajudicial removal.

Anonymous said...

I've a friend from Louisiana-- yes, its significant that I'm speaking of Louisianans -- who told me about his family's road trips. After the drive-in burgers, fries and Cokes were consumed he'd tell the kids to put all the trash in a bag and pass it up to him. Then, with the proclamation "Time to make the Indian cry!" he would throw the bag out the window.

The father was Parish Attorney.

God bless garbage-strewn Louisiana.

Anonymous said...

Now I live in the non-Louisiana LA and as fond as I am of my Latino/a hermanos and hermanas they do throw a lot of garbage on the ground or simply don't clean up well after their parties/barbeques in public parks. Of course, there are exceptions.

Anonymous said...

"Nick Diaz said...
They need to be deported by force, legal or illegal. No hearings.

Maybe people like you need to be macheted. No hearings.

4/11/13, 8:50 AM"

You can be sure that Nick is a big proponent of gun restrictions. Ah the left...

Pat Boyle said...

William Conrad was from the the Golden Age of Defective Detectives. Conrad was fat, Barnaby Jones was old, Ironsides was a paraplegic, Hugo Wolfe was a recluse. More recently Monk is both agoraphobic and mysophobic.

Odd profession detecting. It seems to require odd practitioners.

Albertosaurus

Holby said...

Not sure I would call the ad 'racial shaming'.

Steve sees the racial aspect when others ignore it, but sometimes he sees it when it isn't there.

I could imagine an ad in Britain featuring a few druids around stonehenge, crying when they come upon a bit of litter.

It's just that in the US, the majority are not 'of the land', so Native Americans have to provide that part of the American conscience.

peterike said...

Maybe people like you need to be macheted. No hearings.

Somebody has a moral equivalence problem.

Anonymous said...

Nice, Senor Diaz. So American citizens who argue that illegal aliens ought to be deported should just be butchered? Very revealing. Is this a common sentiment among amnesty seekers?

Matt said...

Uh, aluminum doesn't rust.

It does oxidize over long time scales. This is why there's no naturally occurring free aluminum, it has to be extracted from the compounds in bauxite by chemical means.

Anonymous said...

If you ever go to a reservation in Canada you will see trash everywhere. Worse then a trailer park. The Indians really were not enviromentalists at all, its just that there were so few of them they couldn't do much damage to the environment. Common sense suggests the best way to preserve the environment and ecology is to restrict and if possible, reduce the population. Of course this logic would spell the end of immigration. And we can't have that now, can we?

Anonymous said...

Nick Diaz said...

"Many people like you need to be macheted."

What a great contribution to this blog! He's back and crazier then ever! It must really grate at you senor Diaz that us shmucks don't feel it is just great to have you among us, huh?

Power Child said...

...he paddles his canoe down a pristine river to booming drumbeats.

My Aspergery comment of the day:

The ethnicity of the actor wasn't the only European-posing-as-American-Indian feature of the PSA. The "booming drumbeats" are those of concert timpani and a snare drum.

Most orchestral percussion sections include the more authentically-American-Indian-sounding tom-toms, but this composer for whatever reason chose not to use them.

tairos said...

"Maybe people like you need to be macheted. No hearings."

And you you people wonder why white people can be apprehensive about demographic disenfranchisement. Truly a mystery for the ages.

Mr Lomez said...

I don't know. I get the sense that the littering impulse is more a prole thing than a race thing. Or in any case, isn't particular to Latinos. 1st generation Asians--Japanese notwithstanding--are notoriously unsanitary (go to just about any Chinatown in the country to see for yourself). Of course, China's major cities themselves are heaping piles of trash. The difference is, Asian proles are city dwellers and don't recreate in the outdoors. Latinos are sprawlers and like to drink beer at the park.

There also seems to be some correlation between smoking and littering. Cigarette butts tend to beget other kinds of garbage. Groups of people who smoke more, litter more, it seems to me.

Nick Diaz said...

Righ. So literring is a Latino characteristic, huh? I guess all those Irish and Italian immigrants who came to América in the late 19th and early 20th centuries didn't litter, huh? I have seen plenty of pasty-white people spitting chewed bubble gums and throwing used palstic cups in the streets of NYC.
Not littering is an issue of EDUCATION. Anyone can litter, and anyone can stop littering. The Helvetian and Germanic tribes at the time of Cicero threw their garbage in plain sight and defecated publicly. And guess what? With education, they stopped doing that.

But of course you know that. You just don't like Latinos on a VISCERAL level, and will use any argument, no matter how idiotic, to justify stopping their immigration to America. You are striking me as more and more contemptible by the minute

Anonymous said...

Littering is pretty common in any heavily immigrant area. When one group (Chinese, Mexicans, etc.) comes to dominate an area, they treat it like their homeland.

It's not so much a question of being sanitary. It's more about civic mindedness. Outside of NW European nations, the Anglosphere, and Japan, nobody is civic minded. Not Mexicans, not Chinese, not Indians, not Russians, not Arabs, not Africans.

So who gives a damn if the mountain gets trashed? Aint my mountain.

This mentality of f*** everyone other than my family is why a lot of the world sucks to live in.

The NW European mentality of general benovelence makes their societies nice to live in, but susceptible to guilt and self-projecting themselves onto everyone else.

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

[Nate Diaz's older brother said] I have seen plenty of pasty-white people spitting chewed bubble gums and throwing used palstic cups in the streets of NYC.
Not littering is an issue of EDUCATION. Anyone can litter, and anyone can stop littering.


Right. In fact, I grew up in a farmhouse that had an old dump in the woods behind the house. That's where the previous occupants (or their predecessors) threw their trash.

The entire point is that NO ONE IS EDUCATING LATINOS (my yelling louder than yours?) There is zero effort to promote the idea, much less demand, that even the existing immigrants should assimilate.

And the more cynical among us think this lack of effort is not just out of laziness, or politeness, but a purposeful attempt at destroying the existing culture. You know, the one that has learned not to litter.

Anonymous said...

In America, if Muslims blow stuff up, old white ladies have to be searched at the airport.

If Wall Street gambles and loses, the middle class has to be patted down for what money it has.

Frank Wong said...

The historical ignorance of visitors to this site is just staggering.

"Northern Europeans have always been a more hygienic people culturally, racially, ideologically, morally, spiritually, etc."

To quote an Arab chronicler during the Crusades - there is nothing more disgusting than a Frankish knight.

For the urbane Muslims of the high Middle Ages NW Europeans were the indescribably unhygienic they had ever encountered.

Even in the 19th century - prior to the Germ theory of the disease and the realization that cholera, for example, is waterborne, the denizens of major cities lived in utter squalor.

Even a member of the upper-middle classes like Degas, for example, would only wash his extremities every few weeks during boarding schools, and his entire body with even less frequency.

"Outside of NW European nations, the Anglosphere, and Japan, nobody is civic minded. Not Mexicans, not Chinese, not Indians, not Russians, not Arabs, not Africans. "

Singaporeans, Taiwanese and HK Chinese are very civic-minded. I think mainland China will catch up a generation's time - at least I hope it will.

"Of course, China's major cities themselves are heaping piles of trash. "

I find the provincial capitals like Nanning and Hangzhou very clean actually, while Shanghai and Beijing aren't too bad given their immense population size. You speak from a position of expertise then?

Bob Loblaw said...

Actually, aluminum rusts very quickly. In a fine powder, it rusts quickly enough to be used as part of an explosive.

Yes, aluminum rusts faster than iron by quite a bit. The difference is aluminum oxide doesn't flake the way iron oxide does, so you tend to get a thin layer of oxide that protects the underlying aluminum from further corrosion.

Anonymous said...

To quote an Arab chronicler during the Crusades - there is nothing more disgusting than a Frankish knight.

For the urbane Muslims of the high Middle Ages NW Europeans were the indescribably unhygienic they had ever encountered.


Then why do Asians and Arabs wish to come to live among the descendants of such dirty people?

Anonymous said...

Frank Wong writes: The historical ignorance of visitors to this site is just staggering.
"Northern Europeans have always been a more hygienic people culturally, racially, ideologically, morally, spiritually, etc."
To quote an Arab chronicler during the Crusades - there is nothing more disgusting than a Frankish knight.
For the urbane Muslims of the high Middle Ages NW Europeans were the indescribably unhygienic they had ever encountered.
Even in the 19th century - prior to the Germ theory of the disease and the realization that cholera, for example, is waterborne, the denizens of major cities lived in utter squalor.
Even a member of the upper-middle classes like Degas, for example, would only wash his extremities every few weeks during boarding schools, and his entire body with even less frequency.


Yours is actually a counter myth, and equally untrue. The former western aversion to regular bathing is a product of Renaissance times, not Medieval. In the Middle Ages most NW European cities and towns still had well-used public baths. If Saracens though Frankish knights were dirty, well, you'd probably seem pretty ripe to a city-dweller if you arrived from months in the field.

Frank Wong said...

"Then why do Asians and Arabs wish to come to live among the descendants of such dirty people?"

Because it's no longer the Middle Ages and the West/Anglosphere is now on top. Human societies undergo inexorable change and cultures/gene pools are highly mutable.

Amazing to me that such an obvious answer would elude you.

This actually provides an opportune moment to point out the primary defect in the thinking of many habitual visitors to this site.

On the one hand, they subscribe to the concept of human biodiversity, as engendered by variable evolutionary pressures, and consider it the most obvious means of accounting for differences in the culture, behaviour and economic performance of disparate ethnic groups.

That's fair enough.

On the other hand, however, they also subscribe to the notion that certain traits - both beneficial and deleterious - are eternally and immutably characteristic of certain ethnic groups.

Which directly contradicts their convictions with respect to human biodiversity and the process by which it arose.

Anonymous said...

The maddening thing is that it would be relatively easy to get the Hispanic community to stop littering, if a concerted effort was made. This problem is entirely cultural, which is refreshing for a change. No one believes that any particular race or ethnicity is genetically predisposed to littering, after all.

Anonymous said...

But there's a strain of this among Southern whites as well. Sometimes, they kneejerkedly reject that 'Yankee' knowledge and stick to their own ways... like Creationism, drool-out-of-side-of-mouth-ism, trailer trash litter park with pit bulls running around gnawing on legs-ism. In some ways, Southern Identitarianism and Wild West identitarianism were the first multi-culti-isms that said 'we have our own ways and values, so east coast yankees better not tell us what is good and right.' For most of American history, it was the northeast coast yankees who were trying to unify the nation with common values and principles and laws--and this wasn't only with southern whites and negroes and western whites and indians and mexicans of SW but with masses of immigrants coming from Europe. It was the NE yankees who did most to create a standard set of Americanism for all. But that is gone, killed not only by leftist multi-culturalism but weakened by white conservatism local-culturalism, which is why the South still has lots of loonies who wanna teach creationism in class rooms(cuz, you see, it's part of their culture and heritage). And the confederate flag thing is also a kind of white southern form of multi-culturalim. It means 'though we are part of America, we are also separate from no good yankee imperialist america, and we do things differently.' In a way, the southern insistence on segregation was a rightwing proto-form of multiculturalism. It said 'we white southerners don't have to follow yankee rules since we have our own culture and tradition down here'.

Ironically, the left that undermined white southern culturalism is now upholding non-white multiculturalism whereby lots of non-whites don't feel that they must conform to white American standards.

But before we bash latinos, we need to bash white americans too. I mean what the hell were they doing handing over this country to the nasty Jewish elites and gays? White American gentiles had most of the power in this country. The pride and prestige. Why did they raise kids who rebelled against all that? Why didn't they maintain a culture that would have upheld white american values? Why didn't they fight more effectively against the radical Jewish challenge? If white Americans so easily abandoned this country to Jews and gays, why be so harsh on Latinos? Latinos may throw some garbage in national parks, but it was the whites who threw away their whole nation to the Jews and gays to own. And whites in Europe are doing the same thing.

Honkers are a strange bunch. Never have a people been so great and then.. so stupid.

Anonymous said...

Singapore has some fairly strict laws against littering, if I recall correctly.

Anonymous said...

Nick Diaz:

"..you don't like Latinos..and will use any argument, however idiotic, to justify stopping their immigration to America".

You actually have it in reverse. We don't have to "justify" anything since there is no Latino "right" to come to the USA. It is only a privilege, and even that only applies to those who had the deceny to respect the law and come here legally. It is YOU who has to "justify" the unwanted and unasked for presence of people like yourself in the USA.

(And being the idiot you are you do so with comments about killing people with machetes!)

You truly are a whacked out individual. Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

I think maybe the problem involves the culture of self-criticismality.

Some cultures are more self-critical whereas others are not.
Self-criticismality can be individualian or groupian.
In Japan, if someone of the clan did something disgraceful, the entire clan took the blame. Or, if the clan failed to meet a certain demand, everyone could be killed.

It's like in SHOGUN at 1:24 in the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbAfP1Yd6ek

So, Japanese developed a powerful sense of groupian self-criticism or groupian responsibility. But not so much in individualian self-criticism since the sense of individual was weak. When a Japanese person apologized, it had less to do with individual conscience than the sense that he'd failed the group.

Anglo/Americans developed a sense of both groupian and individualian self-criticism. Individual conscience was cultivated and there was a sense of group responsibility, which is why a book like Uncle Tom's Cabin resonated with so many white Americans.

This self-criticismality was at the core of American progress and reform, which is why America was socially and morally more progressive than much of the world.

Since it was good for white Anglos, it could also be good for white ethnics who became waspized. So far so good. After all, many idealistic waspized Italian-Americans put tribalism aside and joined the fight against organized crime. They became self-critical of what was rotten about Italian-American culture.

So, non-whites also had something to gain by embracing the culture of self-criticismality. Blacks and Mexicans could have gained much by criticizing not only what was bad about white America but about black america and mexican amrerica.

But paradoxically, white self-criticismality had the effect of preventing the development of the black or hispanic kind. Why? White self-criticismality turned pathological and radical. Instead of saying, "we whites are proud of our history and nation, but we made mistakes, and we need to own up to them", whites came to say, "we whites are shitty and responsible for EVERYTHING wrong with the world", and so naturally, blacks and Mexicans figured that everything wrong with their own communities was the result of white evil.

If white self-criticismality was a model for Italian-Americans to be self-critical too, its radicalized form encouraged blacks and Mexicans to never be self-critical since pathologically self-loathing 'honkies' or 'gringos' were saying everything wrong with the world is due to white privilege, power, imperialism, and 'racism'.

So, if blacks beat up teachers and fail in school, it's up to whites to fix the problem. So, if Mexico is corrupt and illegals come here and violate laws, it's up to whites to make lives easier for them.

At one time, white self-criticismality had been premised on civilizational pride and confidence. Now, it's premised on suicidal self-loathing.
Whites say WE ARE TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING, so blacks and browns oblige by blaming it all on whites while the culture of self-criticismality never rubs off on themselves.

David said...

>Singapore has some fairly strict laws against littering, if I recall correctly.<

It does, but you can't get caned for throwing a chewing gum wrapper in the street, as some people believe. (You are fined instead.)

David said...

>drool-out-of-side-of-mouth-ism<

?

Somebody really doesn't like Southerners.

RKU said...

Well, let's see. Fifteen years ago the main criticism of Hispanic immigrants was that they planning to start a civil war, establish a Republic of Aztlan, and expel or massacre all the whites of the Southwest.

These days, the main complaints seem to be that they like watching stupid Hollywood movies like Fast and Furious 14 and also tend to litter much more than middle class whites. Hmmm...

hcat said...

I have always tried to avoid littering. I am not the cleanest or most orderly in my own room, but public spaces are something else. I wonder if litterers are people who are fanatical about keeping their own cars, homes, etc. clean of trash so they get rid of it in public space. Tragedy of the commons, and all that. I confess I'd like to see the FDR era Civilian Conservation Corps revived. It would be the best way to get immigrants and urban people interested in nature in the way that white people are.

g said...

Wow, I know I am over 2.5 years late to jump into this topic at the height of its popularity. However as I scanned quickly through the comments; which I have to admit I like doing just to gauge my own opinions with that of the world. I have rarely if ever bothered responding. To point out several comments which reference the point that Latino's liter because the signs are in English. Put them in Spanish and they will stop. SERIOUSLY, can I stress SERIOUSLY enough!!! Are you kidding me? First and foremost I can't say for fact or fiction if Latino's liter more or less than anyone else does. I can say from a personal observation as a whole group not on an individual level. Their standards of cleanliness as a collective whole: yard, house, interior are not up to par with most. I am certain this has more to do with their upbringing than other factor. And as time passes and generations melt together in America's great melting pot this will be an absurd and stupid statement when viewed looking back from the future. BUT; to the real point I wished to make. I view people whom LITER as IGNORANT idiots. Whether they are white, black, brown, albino, negro, red, yellow or somewhere in between. IGNORANT; just as it is ignorant to suggest a sign in Spanish will help. That is just stupid to think that. I does not take a sign. Just as it should not take being told with a commercial. Even more than that why should it have to take a darn law with $ fines. Which when collected sure do not go back to the environment but into the budget or back pocket of a politician or family member. No, it is as simple as..... shoot if I drop this wrapper, can, chicken bones. Whatever it might be then it looks like crap. It is an eyesore. It lowers the natural beauty which in turns lowers a persons value of not only that area but in time of oneself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Regardless of a persons belief or disbelief in God. It is just a statement referencing higher than, better than; to excel above current state of being. Does it really take a sign for someone to not stop and think? To take a moment and realize the effect of garbage flying around and polluting the very place I walk and live in. No I think all the idiots should be put on buses and shipped out; including the idiots that think a sign is the answer. Oh the blind little sheep of the world who believe you have to be told what to do and when to do it and are!!! Yes to this group of the here and now, where factual is NOT actual. So run along and post your quarterly hour Facebook update and tell us all how you are doing and take a picture of yourself to prove it too. Feel safe and comfy knowing there is a sign telling us all what to do these days. I don't feel safe and I now have a tear in my eye as I look at what has become of our world today. But that is another subject is it not???

Greg