Belonging (race)

From Metapedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Belonging is a concept noticed by Johann Gottfried Herder to describe the fundamental human need of "belonging" to a particular ethnic/national/racial group. It is at the core of nationalism or cultural identity. Herder described this as a basic human need, as fundamental as the need for food and shelter.1

A concomitmant of belonging is volkenhass. Belonging and volkenhass work in tandem; they are essential to maintianing a healthy race and racial cohesion.

The Bible teaches that God created races in a particular time in human history in Septuagint, Genesis ch 11; the story is called the Tower of Babel. There, God saw that all men were one and that this was evil. He seperated the races by confusing their tongue. To keep them seperated, God implanted within man the sense of belonging. A verse in the Septuagint, Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 13.15 teaches this very concept:

"Every beast loveth his like and every man loveth his neighbor. All flesh consorteth according to kind, and a man will cleave to his like."

Aristotle in one of his most quoted statements defines the centrality of man as belonging when he says:

"Man is by nature a political animal".2

The word "political" in the Greek is not of the modern understanding but for the ancient Greeks meant society or social. Metaphorically, it should read "Man is by nature a social animal" for this is the meaning of the phrase. Aristotle sees that man naturally forms groups and seeks to belong to a group. Man not only is parts of a group, he forms groups as well. He refers to Homer who derides those that are "clanless, lawless, hearthless" as low in the scale of humanity. Being not a part of a group was seen as abnormal and freakish to the Greek mind. Further, Aristotle declares that man is more of a social animal than either the bee (which lived in hives {in a herd or society}) or any gregarious animal (such as cattle and sheep). His reason is the human trait of speech. 3

Aristotle concludes that "the impulse to form partnership of this kind is present in all men by nature". 4 It is in the nature of man to cleave to his like and also to form political unions of his liking.

Contents

[edit] Psychological impact on Adoptees and mixed race children

This human trait of belonging is evident in crises felt by adopted children. They seem to have an innate sense for belonging and more often than not seek their natural parents. Sometimes, adoptees have a feeling of rootlessness.

Mixed race children go through turmoil because they are faced with a disharmony. This can be seen most explicity in mixed race progeny of mixed white and Negro parents. In 1903, Du Bois, the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a pioneer in sociology and one of the founders of the NAACP, wrote about what it meant to be of mixed lineage:

"One ever feels his twoness ... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body ...,"6


[edit] Quotes

  • "Blood is thicker than water".
  • "Birds of a feather flock together."—Socrates,5 also a common agrarian saying.

[edit] Miscellania

  • The U.S. Bill of Rights includes a plank of the original ten that of the right of association.


[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. Charles H. Cosgrove, "Did Paul Value Ethnicity", The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 68,2006. pg 269
  2. Aristotle, Politics, Bk I i 9; 1253a 1-5; Loeb pg 9.
  3. Aristotle, Politics, Bk I i 9-10; 1253a 5-18; Loeb, pg 9-11.
  4. Aristotle, Politics, Bk I i 12; 1253a 30; Loeb, pg 13.
  5. By his time it was already an 'old' proverb. Plato, The Republic, trans. by B. Jowett, M.A., Vintage Books (a div. of Random House), NY. pg 6
  6. Star-Telegram article: "Reweaving history, A Fort Worth African-American family dives into the mysteries of its ancestry, tracing legends of a white ancestor." Marcia Melton, Star-Telegram news researcher, and Mary Rogers, Star-Telegram staff writer, Sun, Nov. 19, 2006

[edit] Bibliography

  • Isiah Berlin, Three critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamman, Herder, ed. Henry Hardy, (Princeton University Press, 2000) pgs 168-242

[edit] Attribution

Retrieved from "http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Belonging_%28race%29"
Personal tools