What we have here by some people is the rather common mistake of confusing patriotism with racism. Apparently, in some people's thinking, once one is done with duties to one's immediate family, the only other group of people one can have loyalty to is humanity at large. There is no preference to be given to one's town, or neighborhood, or country, or religious community.
Nonsense! The truth of the matter is that we all have many loyalties to many groups, groups which -- if our loyalty is worth anything -- means they have some right to make demands on us. It is right to go clean up one's town's streets on a weekend because it is your town, or cheer the local hockey team. It is good to chip in to care of a relative who fell upon hard times before one gives to a stranger because he is our relative.
Racism is not to think that one has loyalty to one's nation. It is to think that one's loyalty must be exclusively to one's nation -- to the exclusion of all other wider loyalties. Similarly, the "humanity-only" people claim here, not that one has duties to humanity as well as to one's nation or town, but that the only type of loyalty that matters is to humanity at large (except perhaps for one's family).
Both the "only humanity at large matters" and the "only my race matters" are asking us to be inhuman: one is asking us to treat someone of a different race as if he does not exist. The other asks us to treat with equanimity people who are close to us as if they are strangers. In both cases they are asking us to curtail and deny our moral duties to help others, because those others, in the racist's or the "humanist"'s view, "don't deserve" it.
This sort of racism is better in some ways than 'regular' racism. If worse comes to worse, it concedes that at least our relatives and townspeople and nation deserve as much as strangers. Racists and jingoists often think people of other races or nations count for nothing at all.
However, it is also worse in some ways, namely, in its hypocritical attitude. At least it is possible to love one's nation fanatically to the exclusion of all other loyalties. But humanity is so large, diverse, and vague a thing nobody can truly love it in general. I am quite sure the people who claim to "love humanity" are simply lying: it is just a fashionable thing they say, which really means, "look at me! I am smarter and more rational than you, I have no irrational feelings of pride or community towards anything so random and imperfect as my local home town or my in-laws!"
Nonsense! The truth of the matter is that we all have many loyalties to many groups, groups which -- if our loyalty is worth anything -- means they have some right to make demands on us. It is right to go clean up one's town's streets on a weekend because it is your town, or cheer the local hockey team. It is good to chip in to care of a relative who fell upon hard times before one gives to a stranger because he is our relative.
Racism is not to think that one has loyalty to one's nation. It is to think that one's loyalty must be exclusively to one's nation -- to the exclusion of all other wider loyalties. Similarly, the "humanity-only" people claim here, not that one has duties to humanity as well as to one's nation or town, but that the only type of loyalty that matters is to humanity at large (except perhaps for one's family).
Both the "only humanity at large matters" and the "only my race matters" are asking us to be inhuman: one is asking us to treat someone of a different race as if he does not exist. The other asks us to treat with equanimity people who are close to us as if they are strangers. In both cases they are asking us to curtail and deny our moral duties to help others, because those others, in the racist's or the "humanist"'s view, "don't deserve" it.
This sort of racism is better in some ways than 'regular' racism. If worse comes to worse, it concedes that at least our relatives and townspeople and nation deserve as much as strangers. Racists and jingoists often think people of other races or nations count for nothing at all.
However, it is also worse in some ways, namely, in its hypocritical attitude. At least it is possible to love one's nation fanatically to the exclusion of all other loyalties. But humanity is so large, diverse, and vague a thing nobody can truly love it in general. I am quite sure the people who claim to "love humanity" are simply lying: it is just a fashionable thing they say, which really means, "look at me! I am smarter and more rational than you, I have no irrational feelings of pride or community towards anything so random and imperfect as my local home town or my in-laws!"
