An assertive cultural faction must deal with the major issues in the culture that it operates. To that end, we must deal with the issue of race. More than “deal with it,” we must make a conclusive statement and enforce it.
The concept of race in America (and in fact the world) is an absolute mess. I don’t intend to solve all or even any of those problems here. Rather, I intend to lay out how I believe we ought to go about solving them and why. I don’t imagine that my presentation is comprehensive but I hope it at least illuminates the issue a little. We can use all the progress we can get on this.
The first issue with race is the modern claim of a social construct. Regardless of what information that phrase was intended to convey, today it roughly means “made up” or is a fiction of no relevant meaning. Is race “made up?” In a word, partly. A more academic claim is that race has no biological foundation. What does mean? In short, that race is purely socially constructed. The more formal definition is that a social construct is something that doesn’t exist outside of agreement between people. Socially constructed applies largely to meaning.
What is race? It’s a categorization. Any group of individual anything can be categorized in a seemingly endless number of ways. If those categorizations are based on some attribute or feature of the individuals within the group that can separate them, we have a “real” category. If not, we have an arbitrary one. If we then impose a meaning onto it, we have the socially constructed element.
So, if we have groups of people that can be categorized… let’s say by genetic similarity or skin color or literally anything, then we have a category of potential utility. If we then apply meaning to that category that is independent of reality then we have a socially constructed element.
Again, is race socially constructed? A little, yes. More so, race isn’t a static category… a concept that I will return to at the end.
Racial categorization today can be broken down most crudely as: Caucasian (white), Sub-Saharan African (black), Natives of the Americas, and Asian (east Asian)… but these three categories are obviously insufficient, failing to cover Polynesians, and Mediterranean and central Asians. But then even those categories are insufficient. Whites, for example, can encompass Nordic and Celtic people and so on. Sub-Saharan Africans have a a minimum of five (and really 12-14) very distinct groups that can be considered “racial.”
Consequently, race is just a very, very rough categorization that covers the three largest groupings of people with some generally reliable aesthetic characteristics.
If one measures those groups, will they find differences? Yes, obviously.
It basically doesn’t matter how you categorize people. If you separate over 4 billion people into a mere three groups, there is little doubt that group differences will emerge. You could do it by height, age, preference in food, and so on. It won’t matter. Group differences will emerge.
Are some of those measurable differences genetic in nature? Sure. All of them? Doubtful.
What is the meaning of race? It has, through history, had many different meanings to different people but what does it mean today? Depends on who you ask. To today’s radical leftists and yesterday’s racial supremacists, they agree that race is core to one’s identity. Is it though?
One problem with any categorizations (though categorization is critical to making the world comprehensible. It is the foundation of cognition) is that what’s true for the group may not necessarily be true for any individual in the group. Consider a group of people who average 5’ 6" with glasses. One might imagine a bell curve distribution where the majority roughly fit that profile but there’s no reason for that be true. The group could just as easily be 50% people who are 5’ with glasses and 50% 6’ people without and thus no one in the group fits the group profile at all.
With that in mind, is race a useful category? Well, depends…
Race, covering largely aesthetic qualities, is relevant in assessing those. It matters in fashion, for example. It matters.
But does race include any other factors? Yes. What? Unclear. It is here that things get dicey. Questions of IQ and personality attributed to racial groups are common. Are these reliable? In short, not really. There are striking IQ differences, for example, between ethnicities within races… the Nordic and Ashkenazi Jews for example besting the Celts and Slavs. The same is true within every racial category (consider the Igbo in Nigeria).
This leads us to the critical remaining issue of race: does race correspond to culture? A little. If you went back in time and switched out the Japanese for the British, would their cultures have been identical? No. How different? Impossible to say.
And so we’re left with a hard reality: questions of race are fundamentally aesthetic and cultural. The former is clear and obvious and the latter is opaque and muddled. The latter I will return to because it ultimately proves critical.
So what do we do?
Is it appropriate to have racial preferences? I would assume it depends. Aesthetic preferences appear reasonably hard-wired (not entirely). What of a racial preference in employment? Well, that seems highly suspect unless of course your business caters to a particular demographic. A handful of clothing companies some years ago had preferences for white models and employees and got in trouble for it. Of course, many companies that cater to non-whites have comparable preferences but are allowed. It kind of makes sense that brands that specialize in aesthetics would ultimately fracture along racial lines. This is most obvious in makeup and haircare products. Is this a bad thing though? Is it necessary to object to this? Having a preference for a black accountant is bizarre. A preference for a black model if you’re making makeup for black skin… well that just makes sense. Companies can’t make products for everyone… it’s just not possible.
And so we’re forced to return to the question of culture. No matter what categorization you use, differences will emerge, but there are clear ones along the broadest of racial categorization. White people are the wealthiest and their nations the most advanced, followed by Asians, and then black Africans. The attempt to explain this is at the crux of the issue.
Today’s radical leftists explain it, predictably, with explicit racism, making the claim that white achievement is entirely the product of exploitation, oppression, and their unique malice. This theory is obvious nonsense when one observes the achievements of different groups through history and today. Explain Botswana, for example (a Protestant, conservative, capitalist nation that went from poorest of the poor to increasingly prosperous in a mere fifty years).
Some take the crude intuitive explanation: they look different and their cultures are different, thus the former entirely explains the latter. This explanation is so crude and insufficient that the only explanation I can come up with for why it endures is that it’s easy and thus doesn’t demand further thought.
What if racial categories do produce cultural differences? Well, ethnic subgroups do. In fact any category of humans would produce cultural differences. Racial groups probably will as well. So what? Isn’t there value in that?
Consider the seemingly distinctly Japanese trait of of obsessive commitment to a singular thing. More than any culture on Earth, the Japanese produce people who commit to sometimes shockingly narrow endeavors in pursuit of perfection: the perfect rice, the perfect dance, the perfect pen stroke, and so on. This has produced a country with a truly distinct culture, one that has contributed much to the world. Does that not have value?
Let me reframe the question: if people are different, won’t they engage in conflict? I don’t think so. It doesn’t appear that it is our differences that produce conflict as often as our similarities. Consider, if you have two kids who both want mom’s attention, there is conflict, but if one one wants the father’s then no conflict emerges. The more people’s similarities approach, the more conflict will emerge.
Nations exist to serve those differences, and trade between nations enables those countries to exist peacefully and share the aspects of their cultures.
But what happens if we mix the people in one place as we have done in the United States? Conflict. Everyone can’t have the culture they want in the same place. As much as those cultural preferences are tied to race, we have conflict. It is a problem of socio-cultural scarcity.
Scarcity is a feature of reality. There isn’t infinite beachfront property, for example. If everyone wanted to live by the water, we’d be murdering each other over it. Luckily, some people prefer the mountains and others the plains. There is no avoiding conflict over scarcity but healthy political institutions can mitigate it as much as possible.
In the U.S., race is a problem simply because everyone wants their aesthetic and cultural preferences to be dominant because obviously they do. Black people generally prefer black faces and the same with everyone else. They want to see people who look like them on TV, on bus stop ads, and in the White House. Is that preference overwhelming? No. In some places, most infamously Brazil, that can be inverted, with racial groups striving to genetically aspire.
This is very common in countries like India and Brazil where it is very common to show a preference for skin tone, hair, and so on. It’s often discussed openly. In countries like Japan, it is made clear that no matter how long your family might have been in Japan, if they aren’t ethnically Japanese, they’re not really Japanese (common among old Korean families).
How is this to be resolved? Unclear. Admitting it might be helpful though. Should the Japanese be comfortable saying “you can be here but it is our racial identity that will dominate and you simply must deal with that without complaint?”
America was once primarily Anglo-Saxon (British) with Germans and Dutch as notable minorities. By the 20th century, the Celtic Irish (and Scots) along with the Mediterranean Italians had settled the East Coast and Appalachia with Nordic people settling in the Great Lakes region and Slavs just South. By the middle of the century, America was no longer “English.” It’s culture had shifted accordingly as well. The limited government advocates rarely, when discussing immigration for example, admit to how much those “white” European immigrants moved us away from what the Founders established. Should the dominant WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) have asserted ethnic dominance? They tried and failed but should they have? Should the more generically “white” majority do so today?
Someone has to assert itself or there is no country. Today, the left wants anyone BUT white people (and non-whites who are culturally sympathetic) to assert themselves culturally. They don’t merely want white people to retreat into the background but they want the culture associated with them to do so as well. This has naturally produced tension.
English America is dead and has been since somewhere between the Civil War and the Progressive era. Its experiment of a Republic that supports an environment in which individuals can develop sufficient moral character to govern themselves, is gone. Should it be resurrected? Can it be without the genetic identity associated with its creation? Well, if the latter is true then good luck because those people are gone as well.
Now what happens if one group asserts a culture that is an optimal fit for them but not for another group? The second group will underperform, not necessarily out of defect but simply due to being a poor fit for the culture. This was concern that many 19th century American leaders had about black Americans, considering mass emigration as a solution. Given the enduring racial antipathy in this country, one can be forgiven for having sympathy for that position.
What if the dominant (not necessarily majority) group is simply hostile? This can also produce poor outcomes but doesn’t always (see Ashkenazi Jews again, who thrived for centuries in Europe under universally hostile regimes).
Regardless of what produces poor outcomes, resentment is likely to emerge. What duty does the majority have? Even a non-hostile majority must consider their duty to a poor performing minority group, just as the minority group must similarly consider their duty to the majority (this latter is a question that almost no one openly discusses in America).
Finally, we have the problem that race (ethnicity and similar) is static for individuals but NOT for groups over time. After all, what race are Tiger Wood’s children? Consider, if every white person started favoring short people, the average height would rapidly decline across generations. So too with any genetic attributes (whether we know that they’re genetically determined or not) associated with race and/or ethnicity.
This is a very touchy conversation in the U.S. and Europe but fairly common in the rest of the world. People want to have kids with people who possess culturally favored traits. To what extent is that proper? Should people select to favor the preferences of the dominant (not majority) culture? In the U.S., this reeks of Eugenics, which of course it technically is, and that causes us to deny it even when everyone engages in the practice in some form or another.
Ultimately, the problem is that we refuse to discuss race properly. We don’t have the answers but in America we refuse to even have the conversation, particularly among white people.
Can we admit that race is a crude category but not an arbitrary arrangement? Can we admit that some indeterminate part of culture corresponds to the genetic endowments of the people who created it? Can we acknowledge that race isn’t a static category across generations and that this is and should be considered? And finally, we have malice. Can we simply agree that malice is undesirable?
People on the right need to start having proper discussions about race among themselves and a consensus needs to emerge. We need to draw the lines and say “this is the new standard on how we consider and contend with questions of race.” The left has already done this but there’s is the most poisonous and destructive standard possible, rife with resentment, double-standards, and malice. This is, of course, by design, aiming at using race to destroy this nation. Are we really going to allow that? If America is to die, it strikes me as tragic to die over something so fundamentally idiotic.