While I share the Corner consensus that the frequent invocation of African proverbs by Democratic politicians is kind of annoying, I think Matt Feeney's critique of right-wing Africa-bashing scores some significant points as well.
« Is Larry Craig Heterosexual? | Main | Political Theater » Conservatives vs. Africa05 Sep 2007 05:29 pm Comments (21)
I had the same reaction. The whole New-Age tendency on the left of appealing to the wisdom of foreign cultures is quite abnoxious, frankly. The worst example of it, in my view, are those who believe that any medicine endorsed by a guru or some Chinese or Indian spiritual leader must be superior to Western variants. (Interesting: While those in (say) San Francisco yearn for Eastern Medicine, believing it to possess secret magical powers, those actually from the "East" may attach the same quality to Western medicine) But the tone of Goldberg did betray something rather like "anger" - and an excessive sort at that.. Hillary was making an innocent quote during a stump speech. She was not building her campaign platform on "Lets imitate Africa". And then theres this sneer - "Africaphiles". You cant say that does not remind you of an old phrase white people would say against liberal white people who liked blacks. 
I think Feeney misunderstand's Goldberg's hatred for 1) pseudo-pithy proverbs (e.g. "Better one thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison") and 2) the left's deification of African "it takes a village" proverbs.
She was not building her campaign platform on "Lets imitate Africa". She wrote a whole book, the purpose of which was to promote socialized healthcare, with the putative African saying "It Takes a Village" as the title. So it's not like this is some random thing that she's never tried before. And Spruiell's point is right on - if you take out the reference to the "old African saying", Clinton's point is completely banal. But we're supposed to think that dressing it up as an African proverb makes it somehow wise or meaningful, or distinctive. Whatever. Feeney's post is ridiculous. Hillary was obviously implying that "Africans" somehow care more for their children than Americans do. Which is ridiculous. but that doesn’t mean that there’s anything so patently mockable in the occasional act of political imagination by which we give the norms, even the imagined norms, of traditional societies their due, We're supposed to give the "imagined" norms of traditional societies their due? in recognition of the normatively unmooring effects of the world system we, for the most part, benefit from (but which some of those traditional societies are rather gruesomely deformed by). Umm, OK. There's a new one: globalization is disruptive to traditional societies. And here I thought the Islamic world was adapting so smoothly to the modern world. Or, to answer Spruiell’s incredulity that we in the West might have something to learn about the care of children from people whose traditions are rooted elsewhere Instead of vague generalities, how about some specific ways in which "Africans" in fact care for their children in ways that are better than it is done in the West.
I'll start condemning Democrats for appropriation of tribal proverbs the day AFTER the right wing gives up its faux folksy love for the trashy and tacky cultural artifacts of the Southern white working class, like NASCAR and anything played on country station since 1979. (We actually produced some really good stuff, like Hank Williams and Elvis, but notice how the R's never use those?) Clinton's proverb wasn't any worse that Bush I's love of pork rinds or Bush II's fondness for hacking at innocent shrubbery in his suburban Waco hobby farm. Oh, and to give myself bipartisan cred, it drove me insane when Molly Ivins, product of prep schools, Smith College, and the Sorbonne, adopted lower-class spelling in her columns, like 'bidness' or 'fixin' to.' I am an actual product of the rural Southern white working class and I both write and pronounce the terminal "g" in present participles. Please, win me over with your ideas, not by attempting to be sympathetic by faking 'authenticity.'
You missed the point: Hillary has long quoted traditional African child-rearing "wisdom" to support liberal policies (e.g., "It takes a village to raise a child"), but traditional Africans are traditionally lousy at raising children. That's why it takes a village to raise a child in Africa -- because mom and, especially, dad aren't trying as hard on average as in other parts of the world. Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy of UC Davis wrote in "Mother Nature:" "Many fathers are only sporadically in residence with the mothers of their children; and fathers, when they are on the scene, may be unpredictable regarding which children they invest in, and how much. A substantial number of women conceive at a young age, often prior to marriage or formation of any stable relationship… relatively few fathers provide a great deal of care." While this may sound like inner city black neighborhoods in the U.S., she's actually describing "large areas of sub-Saharan Africa."
James Q. Wilson's book "The Marriage Problem" explains what "It takes a village" really means in Africa: "Children in West Africa are often raised by people who are not their parents. In some communities, more than half of all of the children spend much of their young lives away from their parents, often living with close kin but sometimes with adults who are not related to them at all. This practice is called fostering. So far as we can tell, fostering in West Africa is a centuries-old tradition…" "If the husband is dead, the mother may find it difficult to remarry, especially if she brings another man's child into the new household… Whatever the motives, many West Africans regard fosterage as a perfectly acceptable means of raising children. Families there approve of delegating parental roles to other people, often beginning at a quite early age, especially if the mother is unmarried or is part of a polygamous family. But even when they remain at home, children in much of Africa, especially south of the Sahara, grow up pretty much on their own… The father is usually absent."
Mike S... Steve Sailer: I take your points well. It's just that I attributed Hillary's quote less as a serious intellectual case and more as a cynical attempt to: 1) Appear more liberal/multi-cultural in her demeanor. 2) Similarly, to fortify support among blacks who might be considering Obama. It still deserves refutation, though. Everything politicians say generally does. P.S I spelled obnoxious "abnoxious". That's a really depressing but somewhat amusing mistake, imo.
I think Matt Feeney's critique of right-wing Africa-bashing scores some significant points as well. I think all Matt Feeney's critique does is show that Matt Feeney doesn't know what he is talking about.
Is no one here familiar with how European family structures changed from the preindustrial era?
What Karen said. And "traditional Africans are traditionally lousy at raising children"? Goodgodalmighty.
The references to African family patterns are true as far as they go, but miss some important points. -Polygamy is widely practiced in much of Africa, even among Christians, but is nowhere practiced by a majority of men (for obvious reasons of demographics). I seem to recall reading that no society anywhere in the world, however tolerant of polygamy, has much over 10-15% of men in polygamous marriages. -African patterns of child raising are quite different from those in the West. The important question is, do they work or not? One thing that weak family structures may contribute to in the West, is higher rates of violent crime. Why don't you check out the violent-crime statistics for the more 'traditional' societies in Africa sometime? They are actually quite low (the most traditional societies in the Sahelian countries have some of the lowest in the world.) The ones where violent crime rates are high tend to be the moe westernized, modernized ones- South Africa being the prime example. (This meshes pretty well with what I have heard from people who have lived and worked in the Sahel, about crime rates there.) -I don't know how you would quantify how much fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles/aunts, neighbors, or the community at large, love their children. My subjective impression from having lived in an African village for three years, is that children get a lot of love and attention from everyone around them, including from their fathers. (I've also heard, however, that my country was something of an exception to the rule in Africa, so take it for what its worth). - Why is it intrinsically better for the mother and father to have a greater role, and the community to have a lesser role, in the raising of children, rather than the other way around? There are several examples of societies where the community and/or the State take a large role in the raising of children, which manage to produce young people arguable better adjusted and integrated than those in modern USA. These range from many hunter-gatherer societies (in places like SE Asia and the Amazon), to Israeli kibbutzes, to the modern Cuban state. (To forestall any argument, while you may have other reasons for disaproving of the Cuban regime, they do succeed in integrating their young people fairly well- viz. their high education, low crime and low unemployment rates.) To forestall another argument, I'm not encouraging that the US abandon the traditional nuclear family and adopt the child rearing patterns of Israel, Cuba, West Africa or the Penan. They are too different for us, what works for them would not work here, we should stick, with our own culture, etc. But we should also acknowledge that different societies solve the question of child rearing in different ways, and some of them work as well in those societies as our families do for us.
And then theres this sneer - "Africaphiles". You cant say that does not remind you of an old phrase white people would say against liberal white people who liked blacks. Wha? Did it include either "Africa" or "philes?" If "nigger-lover" is what you're referring to, then I can say it does not remind name of it? Is this now the standard for accusations of racism? If someone uses a term that if one squints his eyes and looks at crosswise might remind him of an old slur?
The southern cultural artifacts are at least American. They might not be your favorite part of America, but they are. HRC's invocation of African proverbs is an impication that American wisdom is wanting and we need to look elsewhere, which I find a bit insulting -- that it would never occur to Americans to ask about each other's children, and we need to look across the ocean for a reminder. It reeks of condescension in a way that the Bush's souther affectations are not.
The southern cultural artifacts are at least American. More importantly, is anybody really citing these to guide their policies? You could cite "family values" as an example, but that's not cited as strictly a Southern/regional/American thing. You might not like pork rinds, you might not like NASCAR, but nobody on the right argues that these should guide their policies on health care, welfare benefits, etc. and they'd be laughed off stage if they did.
Wha? Did it include either "Africa" or "philes?" If "nigger-lover" is what you're referring to, then I can say it does not remind name of it? Is this now the standard for accusations of racism? If someone uses a term that if one squints his eyes and looks at crosswise might remind him of an old slur? It was a witless thing to say, I admit. I regretted it afterwards. I don't believe Jonah is a racist.
- Why is it intrinsically better for the mother and father to have a greater role, and the community to have a lesser role, in the raising of children, rather than the other way around? Because it is necessary for a free society - i.e. for Western Civilization.
Re: Because it is necessary for a free society - i.e. for Western Civilization. I thought you were going to say something like that. I don't particularly have a dog in this fight, as I'm not trying to change American child rearing practices. I'm neither particularly wedded to any particular ideal of liberal political freedom, nor to any idea of how Americans should raise their children (though my personal preference is probably for the traditional nuclear family.) But would you acknowledge that you are here defending an ideal of the free society, not necessarily of the Christian one? Christianity predated liberalism, 'free societies' and what we know of as Western civilization, and it will still be around when freedom, liberalism and Western civilization are no more. Many a traditionalist and anti-liberal Christian in the Slavic world, in South America, or elswhere has argued through the years that what we know of as a 'free society' is in fact antithetical to Christianity, and an insult to God, and that it was no accident that 'freedom' and liberalism arose in England and Holland, the two most secular nations in Europe. I'm also not sure where the idea of a free society slipped into this discussion, I thought we were evaluating child rearing practices by how well they contribute to a well-adjusted and integrated younger generation, not necessarily how well they comported with liberal political values. Do you think that the children raised communally on Israeli kibbutzes were less than politically free? (You can make a case to that effect, that they were socialized into a form of extreme Zionist nationalism, which would be true, but it's a case that is usually made by the anti-Zionist Left, not by conservatives.) How exactly do you think that as the traditional family weakens in Sweden, political freedom is going to decline? When are we going to see widespread crime, illiteracy, anomie and maladjusted youth in Sweden? if you are going to defend the ideal of Christian monogamy (which i believe in for the most part) i would rather defend it on its own merits, rather than raising consequentialist arguments about childrearing.
JohnMcG, my point wasn't that pork rinds weren't an actual Southern snack food, or that they aren't tasty. It's that Bush the First adopted them as a way to make himself look more Texan than he, having been born in Connecticut, actually was. I AM in fact a fourth-generation Texan, whose grandfathers were a dairy farmer and an auto mechanic and neither of whom completed the ninth grade. I have no problem with people who aren't from my background learning to like Johnny Cash or black-eyed peas because they recognize merit in them; I resent the Hell, however, of people who have no connection whatsoever to the Southern working class adopting food or music because they think I'll overlook their regressive policies or believe they're more "authentic."
Everybody has the right to their own quackery. Your allowed to believe that our country is the intricate handiwork of a astral entity who caused Katrina and struck down Ariel Sharon. And I'm allowed to believe in bland, empty proverbs from "Hallmarkia." Sounds fair to me.
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Very even-handed of you. I don't imagine Feeney's invocation of pre-modern traditions is going to convince Goldberg, though. For him, there is the suburban mall and there is fascism, and there is nothing else.
Posted by Pithlord | September 5, 2007 6:55 PM