I lived in Indonesian for 15.5 years, and I noticed a passive resistance by many employees, young and old, in different companies, and I even heard about this from both foreign and local employers. It was most often attributed to a poor work ethic, but I believe there's a different reason. They were subjugated by, primarily, the Dutch for over 350 years, plus a short and very violent period by the Japanese during World War 2. I came to the conclusion that the Dutch were so vicious in suppressing uprisings - if they couldn't quell them through brute force, they would use their favorite tactic of divide and conquer and THEN brutalize the freedom fighters - that the Indonesian ethnicities fighting against the yoke of their subjugators chose passive resistance as a way to avoid violence while frustrating the Dutch on a continual basis, making their labor less difficult and less productive, reducing Dutch profits, and so on. To the Dutch, who were characteristically arrogant about European superiority, it undoubtedly looked as if the various ethnicities of the Spice Islands were lazy and stupid - a brilliant tactic!
I recently finished reading T.J. English's "Paddy-whacked", which detailed the rise of the Irish mob in the US from before the Great Potato Famine up until a few years ago. In this novel, I noticed that the Irish seemed to be at war with themselves and had a definite problem with loyalty, despite the centuries-long resistance to the British overlords who treated them so reprehensibly, and who blamed the Irish "moral turpitude" for the Famine instead of blaming themselves for the repressive laws and negative view of the Irish. The Irish spent centuries secretly fighting the British because outright uprisings were dealt with in a very bloody, punitive manner by their English subjugators. When the Irish fled en masse to other countries because of the famine, they were met by discrimination by the existing American, primarily Protestant, population, so they employed similar tactics to pull themselves up through society, calling on the tried-and-true Tammany Hall tactic (politicians, lawmakers and the freedom fighters working together to improve their lot). Unfortunately, they also predated on themselves, the existing Irish often taking advantage of the newly arrived immigrants, some of whom fell into crime just to survive in cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago, while those in New Orleans died by the boatload digging the canals because black slaves were considered too valuable (blacks cost far more than free Irish, so that was a blessing in disguise for the black slaves) for the work that claimed so many lives due to accidents and diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Over time, the Irish ended up digging their own criminal mass grave, some of them siding with the rising Mafia presence, while others went out in a blaze of gunfire, or were assassinated in order to increase the Mafia's power. In essence, the tactics they'd used in Ireland to help their own, once there was no significant reason to do so, were turned against each other (at least in part).
In the past few decades, I've noticed an upsurge in a negative attitude amongst Blacks in the US, one that seems to be holding them back. I've heard blacks comment on this phenomenon. This ghetto culture seems to have gained power through its presentation in media, initially gang rap and similar, and has spread. What would Dr. King say if he could see the situation now? I'm quite sure he'd be crying! I know it makes me immensely sad! :( There are numerous false stories being bandied about, such as black prisoners being killed and their melanin being extracted because it's more valuable than gold due to the (false) fact that melanin can't be extracted from any other source (when, in fact, melanin can be extracted from any number of animals and plants - even garbage - and there are companies doing just that) because of a historical precedent in which blacks were murdered and their melanin extracted by evil racists who viewed them as subhuman (or less). I have met many wonderful black people in my life, so to hear stories about ghetto daddies who seek out young black girls to get pregnant in order to get welfare money sickens me. It seems that, as with some Indonesians and some Irish, blacks are in much the same position as the Irish of the past and Indonesians now. An insidious sub-culture has sprung up of gangs and ghetto-daddies (I'm not implying that this is the predominant culture, or that it is unique to blacks, only that it does great damage), combined with blaming everyone else for their woes.
It is sad, really, to see groups of people that strived so long and so hard for freedom and, after achieving it, seem to have lost direction to a large degree and gone into decline!
My conclusion is that subjugated groups, when freed but not given appropriate guidance and help to recover, are generally unable to remove the resistance that they embedded into their culture to fight their subjugators. This resistance mentality becomes self-defeating because, lacking a clear target, they either blame it on ghost targets (e.g. all whites, some blacks say, are racist), or they continue to resist when there is nothing to resist (such as the poor work ethic of many Indonesians), resulting in undoing their own futures via self-destructive behavior. The lack of a program to guide the freed (from slavery, inferior rights, segregation, subjugation, etc.) puts any freed group at a serious disadvantage that may take decades or longer to recover from, if at all.
Thus, I submit, that if you, my reader, are from one such group and you hope that they will rise above it - you and others will have to create such programs to help people. You'll be fighting against corrupt, psychopathic politicians, Machiavellian, bloodthirsty criminals, and other types who will seek to undue your efforts. Dr. King didn't give up, nor did Gandhi, Mandella, X, the American and Indonesian founding fathers, and many more, so you shouldn't give up, either! Persevere for the future of people whom you will never even know and make a brighter future not just for them but for the world at large.
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