NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DISCOVERS THE JQ

The founders of National Geographic

by Hewitt E. Moore

Most of us are familiar with National Geographic. It's the official magazine of the National Geographic society, and has been published continuously since 1888. The society was formed by an elite group of 33 explorers, scholars and scientists, who were all (White men) interested in travel and exploration. Their mission was to organize “a society for the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge.”

The society's first president was Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Hubbard was an American lawyer who became the first president of Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T). He is widely regarded as the entrepreneur who distributed the telephone to the world. Hubbard was also the father-in-law of Alexander Graham Bell. Bell succeeded Hubbard as president of National Geographic in 1898. And although he wasn't one of the 33 founding fathers, he was very influential during his tenure as the magazine's second president.

By all accounts, Bell was a genius. At age 12 he invented a wheat husker. He mastered the piano at a young age without any formal training. And, most notably, he invented the telephone in 1876. Bell was also a proponent of eugenics. To the extent that he was honorary president of the Second International Eugenics Congress, which was held at the American Museum of Natural History in 1921.

The majority of the 33 National Geographic founders were avid explorers. Men who had observed cultural variances throughout their worldly travels. Such as primitive tribes in the Amazonian jungles, monks in Tibetan monasteries and Eskimos in the Arctic. These men wanted to share their knowledge and experiences with the rest of the world. And for the better part of the last 130 years, their vision has been vividly portrayed within the pages of the magazine that's universally recognized by its iconic yellow border.

NatGeo vicariously displayed culture through imagery, with a focus on capturing the essence of human diversity. They epitomized the concept of “a picture tells 1000 words.” The magazine was a scientific, cultural and geographical search engine long before the internet was even an idea. How an individual cognitively processed the data was both relative, and irrelevant. One might consider a photo of an African woman with a large lip plate as strange. Another may see it as fascinating. Tomayto, tomahto.

Now that we've established a basic understanding of National Geographic's history, let's address the premise of this critique. 

In a bizarre claim, the magazine recently published an article that revealed a shocking confession: for decades their coverage was racist. Oddly, the racism was so covert that nobody was keen enough to spot it. But that changed in 2014 with the hiring of Susan Goldberg as editor-in-chief. As she states in the article, she's not only the first female editor in the magazine's history. But she's also the first Jew:

I’m the tenth editor of National Geographic since its founding in 1888. I’m the first woman and the first Jewish person—a member of two groups that also once faced discrimination here. It hurts to share the appalling stories from the magazine’s past. But when we decided to devote our April magazine to the topic of race, we thought we should examine our own history before turning our reportorial gaze to others. 

First of all, why would a writer deem it necessary to mention her sense of persecuted Jewish identity in an article that has nothing to do with either Jews, nor her as an individual? Could it have something to do with her Jewish nature? Or is it just coincidental that when Jews with a strong sense of Jewish identity ascend into positions of power that they often pursue interests that don't align with those of Whites (i.e. the Jewish Question)?

Nonetheless, no matter how much it “hurts,” the gallant Goldberg is willing “to share the appalling stories of the magazine's past.” And why is she willing to be so heroic? Because not only does she get to demonize the privileged patriarchal White men who came before her, but she gets to devote an entire issue to the propagation of her Marxist “race isn't real” agenda:

Race is not a biological construct, as writer Elizabeth Kolbert explains in this issue, but a social one that can have devastating effects. “So many of the horrors of the past few centuries can be traced to the idea that one race is inferior to another,” she writes. “Racial distinctions continue to shape our politics, our neighborhoods, and our sense of self.”

The reality of race transcends morality. Race is an observable phenomenon that defines humanity, which is why “racial distinctions continue to shape our politics, our neighborhoods, and our sense of self.” To imply anything else is delusional rhetoric.

Goldberg and Kolbert (why is it always Jews who say this stuff?) want you to believe that race is just a social construct. In other words, that Norwegians, Nigerians and Nicaraguans are all exactly the same. The only difference is magic dirt and preconceived ideas.

Chateau Heartiste provides his essential truths on the subject:

-Society is a racial construct. 

-There is no magic dirt that will transform, say, Somalis and Syrians into lovers, defenders, and disciples of Constitutional republicanism.

-Race matters.

-Once more…..RACE MATTERS.

-In fact, race is the primary source pool of civilization and culture; all other variables are commentary in comparison.

-Culture isn’t a costume. It can’t be worn like a Turinic shroud with the expectation that it will reverse-imbue the intrinsic character of any people who happen to hop the border and adopt its most superficial trappings.

-Culture is an emergent property of the people that comprise it, who themselves are properties of their genes and of the predispositions and beliefs and behaviors and temperaments and aptitudes with which they are endowed by their genes.

-America is not a nation of immigrants. America is a nation of colonists who, along with their descendants, created, built, and nourished America into a great nation, perhaps the greatest the world has ever known. Immigrants came later, and they were for a long while chosen from stock populations that were not too dissimilar from the founding stock of America (African slaves stand as a glaring exception). It was not until relatively recently (1965 onward) that immigrants significantly deviated in numbers and racial congeniality from the historical norm of immigration into America.

-Quite simply, the myth of American exceptionalism is just that. American ideals aren’t spread by osmosis into the deep psyches of different races of people; rather, a very specific race of people — White Europeans of primarily Anglo-Celtic-Germanic descent — breathed life into the American ideals, and without them their ideals wither from neglect and misuse in the care of their usurpers.

-We are not created equal under Nature, and this truism applies to races as it does to individuals. Memorable exceptions only prove the wisdom of pragmatic generalizations.

-The Constitution, or any stirring stanza of words written by Whites for White sensibilities, will not change a Chinaman into a heartland Chad. Racial foreigners can mouth the words, but if they don’t feel it in their bones they’ll have no trouble betraying those words when its personally advantageous or when the Law isn’t hovering closely to motivate their observance.

-A civilization is the sum total of the people that inhabit it. Change the people, change the civilization.

-Some cultures really are superior to other cultures. If it were not so, millions of those from the lesser cultures would not be escaping into the homelands of the better cultures.

-Finally, the character of a nation is not established by a founding document; instead, the founding document chronicles the character of a nation. PEOPLE MAKE THE NATION, THE NATION DOES NOT MAKE THE PEOPLE. If the people change, so does the nation, into whatever form the replacement people find most familiar, which usually means a facsimile of their native homelands they left behind.

Now that we've added some clarity on race realism, let's get back to how NatGeo critically examined their “racism” without inserting bias. Goldberg came up with a clever idea. She decided to ask the “preeminent” authority on the matter, John Edwin Mason, a black professor who teaches African history at the University of Virginia, to conduct an independent examination of their archives (Is there anybody actually naive enough to believe that Mr Mason would rule in favor of the White team?):

We asked a preeminent historian to investigate our coverage of people of color in the U.S. and abroad. Here’s what he found.

What Mason found in short was that until the 1970s National Geographical all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers. Meanwhile it pictured “natives” elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché. 

Up until the 1970s, the United States was roughly 90% White. We are talking about an era when segregated society in the south wasn't a demonized period of history – it was the status quo. It's important that people logically accept events as they were, and not be emotionally triggered by how things “should” have been.

I know this might be a tough pill for people like Mason and Goldberg to swallow, but the idolization and emulation of American Blacks is a fairly recent phenomenon (post-1970s). The proper photographic representation of American society pre-1970s wouldn't have included very many Blacks.

Black culture has definitely become more influential in today's American society (inorganically, mind you), but Blacks still represent a relatively low percentage of the population (12%). And in my humble opinion, portraying Blacks as hard working laborers is anything but racist. I imagine Mason would have screamed “racist” much louder if the photographs mostly depicted Blacks entertaining Whitey, or in some other stereotypical fashion:

"Americans got ideas about the world from Tarzan movies and crude racist caricatures,” he said. “Segregation was the way it was. National Geographic wasn’t teaching as much as reinforcing messages they already received and doing so in a magazine that had tremendous authority. National Geographic comes into existence at the height of colonialism, and the world was divided into the colonizers and the colonized. That was a color line, and National Geographic was reflecting that view of the world."

The Tarzan analogy is ridiculous. Maybe Mr Mason got his “ideas about the world” from Tarzan movies, but people with any degree of common sense viewed Tarzan the same way they viewed Gilligan's Island or Star Trek. These programs weren't educational, they were entertainment (although there is an interesting conspiracy theory that suggests each of the characters on Gilligan's Island represents one of the seven deadly sins).

Then Mason ironically insinuates that the entire world was racist, and National Geographic was racist for reflecting a racist world. It's almost as if he's holding NatGeo to a divine standard of moral foresight. As if the photographer's vintage lens should have instinctively distorted reality in favor of a persuasive picture of futuristic political correctness. It seems like Mr Mason developed his ideas about the world while watching The Time Machine.

Goldberg follows up the “preeminent historian's” enlightening worldview with a caption from a 1916 photograph that left her speechless:

Some of what you find in our archives leaves you speechless, like a

1916 story about Australia. Underneath photos of two Aboriginal people, the caption reads: “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.”

Which part of the caption is supposed to leave me “speechless”? The part that NatGeo referred to Australian aborigines as “Blackfellows” and “savages”? Or the part that even 100 years ago it was known that Australian aborigines ranked among the lowest intelligence of all humans beings (mean IQ of 62)?

The caption underneath a 1916 photo certainly isn't enough evidence to warrant a “racist” indictment. Neither is projecting the reflection of the world in the way that it was. So the duo directed their attention towards South Africa in an attempt to solidify their claim. They cited differences between a story published in 1962 versus one they published 15 years later in 1977:

Questions arise not just from what’s in the magazine, but what isn’t. Mason compared two stories we did about South Africa, one in 1962, the other in 1977. The 1962 story was printed two and a half years after the massacre of 69 black South Africans by police in Sharpeville, many shot in the back as they fled. The brutality of the killings shocked the world.

“National Geographic’s story barely mentions any problems,” Mason said. “There are no voices of black South Africans. That absence is as important as what is in there. The only black people are doing exotic dances … servants or workers. It’s bizarre, actually, to consider what the editors, writers, and photographers had to consciously not see.”

Contrast that with the piece in 1977, in the wake of the U.S. civil rights era: “It’s not a perfect article, but it acknowledges the oppression,” Mason said. “Black people are pictured. Opposition leaders are pictured. It’s a very different article.”

One thing is perfectly clear: Goldberg badly wants to prove that NatGeo is “racist.” How anybody of sane mind could read this article and conclude, “OMG, NatGeo is totally racist!” is beyond me. I don't know if it's some kind of marketing ploy directed at SJW-minded Millennials in hopes of resurrecting plummeting sales (sales are down from 12 million in the 80s to 6.7 million today). Or if it's just Goldberg doing what Goldbergs do. Regardless, she's desperately grasping at straws here.

The prevailing attitude regarding race was completely different in 1962 then it was in 1977. That's obvious. Social norms aren't stagnant. They evolve. And with social evolution comes conformity. As people conform to social norms, the narrative changes. It's preposterous to expect a magazine to be ahead of that curve.

But since she and her cohort want to analyze the Sharpeville massacre, let's address it:

Police reports in 1960 claimed that young and inexperienced police officers panicked and opened fire spontaneously, setting off a chain reaction that lasted about forty seconds. It is likely that the police were nervous as two months before the massacre, nine constables had been assaulted and killed during a raid at Cato Manor. In addition, few of the policemen present had received public order training. Some of them had been on duty for over twenty-four hours without respite. Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar, the commanding officer of the police reinforcements at Sharpeville, said in his revealing statement that "the native mentality does not allow them to gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to gather means violence."

And while we're on the subject of South Africa, does Goldberg plan to provide any coverage of the recent parliament ruling to remove White South African farmers from their land without compensation?

White South African farmers will be removed from their land after a landslide vote in parliament.

The country's constitution is now likely to be amended to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation, following a motion brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema.

Mr Malema said the time for 'reconciliation is over'. 'Now is the time for justice,' News24 reported.

'We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.'

Mr Malema has a long-standing commitment to land confiscation without compensation. In 2016 he told his supporters he was 'not calling for the slaughter of white people - at least for now'.

Or perhaps an issue devoted to the White South African diaspora, which has not only been instigated by the recent land confiscation ruling, but also by the slaughter of White South African farmers:

Farming in South Africa is the most dangerous occupation in the world. Farmers there suffer more murders per-capita than any other community on earth outside a war zone. Since the dawn of democracy in the country, farming South Africa has been slaughtered by black South Africans in ways that would do Shaka Zulu proud.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union’s numbers (purported to be the most reliable) are bolstered by Genocide Watch. By this assessment, South African farmers were being exterminated at the annual rate of 313 per 100,000 inhabitants, 3,000 since the election of the sainted Nelson Mandela (1994), two a week, seven in March of 2010, “four times as high as is for the rest of the [South African] population,” in the words of Genocide Watch’s Dr. Gregory H. Stanton.

The modern day genocide of White South Africans is a legitimate humanitarian concern. But National Geographic and Susan Goldberg prefer promoting polarizing social issues like driving while Black and race is just a made-up label. Because to them, race only matters when White people can be labeled “racist.”