Once again we are reminded that in the matter of fighting immigrant-driven population growth, culture matters. An article in The Washington Post by Patrick Welsh on December 12/2008 entitled “They’re Having Babies. Are We Helping?---revealed that Hispanic teens are inviting and embracing their pregnancies.1 Welsh quotes a school nurse: “There’s a myth that these pregnancies are accidental, but many of them aren’t. I’ve known girls who’ve made ‘I’ll get pregnant if you get pregnant’ pacts. It’s a status thing. These girls go around school telling each other how beautiful they look pregnant.”
It is no coincidence that after an acceleration in illegal immigration during the Bush era that the teen birthrate went up for the first time in 15 years after dropping 36% since 1990. As Welsh noted, “Hispanics now have the highest rate of teen pregnancy and births of any racial or ethnic group in the country…double the number of black girls.” A report in the Chicago Tribune by Sue Ellen Christian and Teresa Puente in January of 2001 stated that “While the number of births to African-American and white teenagers fell in Illinois from 1997 to 1999, the number of births to Hispanic teens increased. In fact, Hispanic girls lead the nation in the teen birthrate, with about 93 births per 1000 Hispanic teens per year compared to the overall national teen birth rate of about 50 births per 1000….Newer immigrants are more likely to avoid pregnancy than second or third generation Hispanics.” In other words, young Hispanic females are not becoming “Americanized” according to the classic pattern of integration to the host culture. Why?
Welsh cites the fact that schools bend over backwards to jump to the aid of pregnant girls, implying that this serves as a birth incentive (as do child care benefits in general). But an American of my acquaintance who was well immersed in Latino culture went beyond such enticements to observe “…unwed teenage motherhood is by far highest among Latinas, who in this area, are all first or second generation immigrants. And these are NOT unwanted pregnancies. Having lived in Latin America and seen first hand that 19 year olds without babies already felt like old maids, why am I not surprised? And now we are allowing these traditional, environmentally inappropriate attitudes in support of early motherhood and high fertility to take root here. And those PC environmentalists who said we can’t talk about immigration rates or differential birthrates among different ethnic groups are partly to blame."
“This article poses the question of the conflicting messages girls get from pop (Latin) culture on the one hand (have fun; go for it: babies are beautiful!?) And sex and reproductive health education on the other (be cautious; wait). And the author, an English teacher, rightly wonders whether we aren’t contributing to this growing epidemic by making it so easy on them and utterly eliminating any sense of shame. No one ever talks about ‘illegitimate’ children anymore. That is so harsh and mean-spirited!”
It has been convenient for the population stabilization movement to ignore cultural realities, to focus purely on containing and reducing the numbers of consumers in their societies and to pretend that the ethnic, cultural or religious composition of those numbers is immaterial to their ecological impact. It is a stance however that is only justified by political strategy, not by reason. Open-borders advocates and human rights activists are anxious to discredit the movement with allegations of racism and have enjoyed some success in their smear campaigns. Cultural mudslinging offers them a fat target.
Criticism of the Hispanic fertility boom has met with a predictable backlash. Latino spokesmen claim that teen pregnancy is a function of poverty, not of immigration or culture and that education is the cure. Robert Rivera of the National Hispanic Environmental Council stated that “ those who argue that high birthrates are an environmental problem are essentially saying that Latinos are an environmental problem. Believe me that is so deeply insulting…” that it invites a retaliatory boycott of white mainstream environmental organizations, a “pushback” to use his terminology. Odd, because a survey of mainstream environmental NGOs would reveal little concern about North American birthrates. In Canada the media recently celebrated the birth of a Romanian couple’s 18th child in a province intent on cutting its carbon emissions, but no environmental group seized the opportunity to educate the public about the connection between climate change and the number of climate changers.
Mr. Rivera is among the vast legions of North Americans who apparently make a full time job out of being insulted and “offended” by what they read or hear. But in fact they were never “offended.” They chose to take offence, and have been counseled by the Assertive Training and anger management industry to begin their sentences with “I feel” as if I should care what they feel, because feeling doesn’t enhance their logic. I don’t want to hear people emote. I want to hear what they think. The secular theocracy that is multicultural “democracy” has come to resemble one big Group Therapy session where I am somehow your emotional caretaker who must blunt the truth because I supposedly bear responsibility for how you react to it. In this sense political correctness is nothing but the imposition of a feminine communication style upon the entire body politic. The quest to avoid causing offense at all costs-- tact at the cost of candour, diplomacy at the cost of truth--- fashions a discursive Newspeak which assumes that harmony among people is more important than the harmony between people and nature. But alas, just as Christ said that his mission was to sow discord, to pit husband against wife and son against father, to tear down a rotten structure so that it may be soundly rebuilt, my mission is to save precious time by telling identity groups that they have bad breath. All of them. Without mercy. No free passes for race, gender or ethnicity based on the curriculum vitae of victimhood that you wear like a billboard to get to the front of the line or gain exemption from responsibility. Sorry, help yourself to my box of Kleenex. I’ll save my tears for the unfolding Wildlife holocaust that your procreative binge and greed is responsible for. And in case you folks of colour feel picked on, let me take this opportunity to say this to white Mormons: Get fucked. No, wait, that is exactly what I don’t want you to do. Get fixed. Leave some space for the rest of us, OK? You are nice people, but you can have too much of a good thing.
What is needed is a population stabilization-reduction organization infused with the spirit of Paul Watson, who plays no favourites by fearlessly “offending” the leaders of every cultural and ethnic group he confronts. From Newfoundlanders to the Macaw natives to the Japanese and Icelandic whalers, and lately, Inuit hunters whom he described as “ruthless killers” who “laughed barbarously” as they shot narwhals. That charge brought the standard reaction of outrage and politically correct catechism when the eco-vandalism or socially irresponsible actions of an ethnic group is exposed. Canadian Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, in a joint statement with the fisheries minister2, complained that Watson’s remarks demonized her peoples culture and traditions, asserting that “Inuits strongly believe animals should be respected and should never suffer…” No doubt the Inuit who chased down polar bears with power boats and shot them down with rifles last year were imposters. Green Party leader Elizabeth May must have thought so because her conditioned reflex was to launch into a defensive riposte about how it was our (white) man-made global warming that was killing those bears. The Inuit are genetically or culturally invested with an ancient and superior ecological custodial wisdom (and the business acumen to realize the financial benefit of $1.5 million from visiting hunters, some of who will pay a guide $25,000 for a bear.)
In Canada, blatantly ethnocentric and even racist assertions of this nature are politically correct because in this case it is those of European origin whose culture is being denigrated. Fair game. But it is so curious that cultural relativists don’t realize that they too are judgmental, and as such, are absolutists. Xenophiliacs who attribute superior qualities to exotic cultures found wanting in their own, a greener pastures syndrome born of an ignorance and self-loathing which is the obverse of the xenophobe’s ignorance and other-loathing. Attitudes that form two sides of the same coin, both rooted in surrealism, unlike TFR statistics, which shout out objective reality, from which no culture can hide its shame.
I have come to believe that if I have not been threatened with a defamation suit at least once a year by one human rights champion or another in whatever ethnic guise, then I am simply not getting my message across. And that message is, that while there are far too many people on stage of every description, some of them are really bad actors and should be given bad reviews. Culture matters, for culture can be either an impediment or a catalyst to growth.
1. Washington Post article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/12/AR2008121203507.html?referrer=emailarticle
2. Dec.08/08 statement http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/media/statement-declarations/2008/20081208-eng.htm
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