{"id":1379,"date":"2014-10-31T23:01:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T23:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/?p=1379"},"modified":"2014-11-02T09:34:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-02T09:34:48","slug":"racial-nationalism-its-an-american-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/2014\/10\/31\/racial-nationalism-its-an-american-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Racial nationalism: it’s an American thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWe are constantly told that racial diversity is a great source of strength.\u00a0 This is not true.\u00a0 Racial diversity is a source of conflict.\u00a0 When different groups inhabit the same land, what you have is, at best, a constant drain on limited resources to manage the conflict and, at worst, open war.\u00a0 People want to remain with people like themselves, and can only really extend the concept of common humanity, with the equivalent ethical obligations, to those like themselves.\u00a0 This means that human beings have real trouble extending the feelings of decency and kindness to those from another racial group \u2013 witness the appalling record of colonialism, of Apartheid, of American slavery and segregation.\u00a0 Who will seriously say that both white America and the black African would not have been far better if slavery had never happened, if black Africans had been left in their native lands?\u00a0 What is truly horrifying about these crimes is that they were committed by otherwise morally normal people.\u00a0 It is just human nature that different groups have trouble identifying with others in a morally sane way.\u00a0 And while you, dear reader, may have that ability, you are most likely in the top tenth of human intelligence.\u00a0 Try selling that to the remaining nine tenths.<\/p>\n

Thus it is completely normal to find black and Hispanic attitudes on race that are parallel to those that whites held not so long ago.\u00a0 Racial groups organize for their own interests.\u00a0 There is a natural feeling of kinship among people of the same race, since race is ultimately the extended family to which people belong.\u00a0 Racial groups frown on intermixing, prefer the company of others like them, and want to run their own systems.\u00a0 The only thing that has changed is that whites feel ashamed a expressing views that all races hold.\u00a0 Black Americans are quite happy to be outraged at black women dating white men, white Americans feels the same way, they just do not dare say so.<\/p>\n

If there is any hope for harmony it can only be if different races have their own societies which means different nations.\u00a0 Representative democracy can only work when people all discus different ideas and ways of approaching common problems; it cannot work work with different groups all clawing at each other with the motto of \u2018My race, right or wrong\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 And that means that all whites should stop repressing their racial identity, and organize for their own interest, pushing for a racially homogeneous society in the same way as literally all other groups on the planet organize for such a society.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

If I had Jared Taylor\u2019s job, the above is the case that I would make.\u00a0 Expanded somewhat, it is an summary of his interesting little book White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st<\/sup> Century <\/em>(though the man has a certain blind spot – reading the entire book, you would never know that white racial feeling has ever caused any problems for non-whites).\u00a0 The argument has a lot of surface strength, but falls apart when you look a little deeper.<\/p>\n

It has to be acknowledged, he amasses an impressive amount of evidence in his book.\u00a0 Here we find the Cherokee tribe voting en mass to expel all of its black members.\u00a0 Here are blacks announcing that the worst black candidate as better than any white.\u00a0 Here are Los Angels textbooks, by and for Hispanics, that refer to the American flag as \u2018the enemy flag\u2019.\u00a0 Here are even American Asians forcing apologies from CNN when its anchors describe the Chinese autocracy as \u2018thugs\u2019.<\/p>\n

All of these are case studies drawn from the United States, and are only relevant there.\u00a0 If Taylor really thinks that there is a natural bond between all whites, I invite him to move to a continental European country and see how well he fits in.\u00a0 As a bonus, I invite him to go and tell Vladimir Putin that he should lay off his fellow whites in the Ukraine.\u00a0 I\u2019d be interested to see how that goes.<\/p>\n

For that matter, I should very much like to see some of the black American racialists try the same experiment.\u00a0 Heather Green, a black Canadian, is quoted as follows \u201cIf I do anything short of vigilantly embracing my African identity \u2026 then I may be swept away\u201d.\u00a0 I wonder what exactly she thinks the word \u2018African\u2019 means, and, again, would love to see her try to explain to the Sudanese government that, since they are all \u2018Africans\u2019, they should really knock it off with the whole slavery thing.<\/p>\n

In fact, Taylor\u2019s white nationalism, as well as the black and Hispanic nationalism he quotes, is wearily familiar to anyone from the old world.\u00a0 It\u2019s why my Irish friends return from visting the US, completely baffled about the fuss made over St Patrick\u2019s day, which dwarfs anything equivalent in Ireland.\u00a0 It is why I\u2019ve heard German Americans saying how, on visiting Germany, they wanted to knock on the doors of people with similar surnames to them.\u00a0 It\u2019s why V.S. Naipaul quotes the following reaction to black Americans from Harlem by citizens of Cote d\u2019Ivoire:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get so many people like them from the United States.\u00a0 Black people who come here to convert the Africans.\u00a0 They are like everybody else who comes to do that.\u00a0 They bring their own psychic sickness to Africa.\u00a0 They should instead come to be converted by Africa.\u00a0 They are mad.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A significant chunk of Americans, be they white Americans, black Americans, Hispanic Americans or whatever, seem prone to the delusion that just because their ancestors hailed from a certain place at some point in the past they have an intrinsic connection to that place in modern times.\u00a0 They do this without knowing the first thing about those places.\u00a0 Taylor mentions various black movements that have chosen to name themselves after Swahili words.\u00a0 Why Swahili?\u00a0 Why not Sesotho, Shank, Meru, Khoisan or Fur?\u00a0 Well, why do you think?<\/p>\n

I shouldn\u2019t be too hard on Taylor\u2019s white nationalism, since I belong to a white nationalist organisation myself.\u00a0 It\u2019s called the European Union.\u00a0 If you ask any European who supports the EU, they will always give the same reason why they do\u00a0 – that there has not been a continental war in seventy years.<\/p>\n

Similarly, there is no such thing as an \u2018African\u2019 unity, much less a black unity.\u00a0 Taylor quotes the black American writer Anthony Williams: \u201cBlackness \u2026 is a state of common spiritual idealism that serves to unite the group for the purpose of survival \u2026 [T]here is not one person of colour who can separate himself or herself from the rest of the people of colour.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the kind of drivel that you need many years of elite education to believe (Williams is an alumnus of Harvard and Yale).\u00a0\u00a0 Back in the real world, both Europe and Africa have been torn with the most terrible wars for almost all of their history. The conquests of Shaka and Dingane are still remembered by those who were on the receiving end, and not only were African slaves captured and sold by African slavers, the British Empire found fierce opposition to abolitionism from these African slavers.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, because these slavers did not see themselves as enslaving fellow Africans, but as enslaving members of rival tribes.<\/p>\n

Taylor tries to argue that racial nationalism is innate.\u00a0 That is, that human beings will automatically feel an identity based on which racial group they belong to.\u00a0 This is simply not so.\u00a0 All human beings are inherently tribal, it is true, but any sense of identity beyond that of the small tribe is a matter of artificial construct.\u00a0 In Before the Dawn<\/em>, Nicholas Wade discusses the original people, the first human populations that were founded on pure kinship.\u00a0 These had a functional limit of a hundred and fifty people \u2013 once the tribe grew beyond that, it would split, and the new tribes would face each other with animosity.<\/p>\n

The book even contains evidence on the artificial nature of these identities.\u00a0 Taylor mentions tribal conflict within Kenya.\u00a0 But why should such conflict appear under his reading, when Kenya is a monoracial society?\u00a0 Likewise he includes Indians with Chinese and Phillipinos under the heading of \u2018Asian\u2019.\u00a0 In fact, these are three distinct racial groups: the Caucasians, the Pacific Islanders, and the East Asians.<\/p>\n

Errors like this infest the book, and this manifests in Taylor\u2019s cavalier handling of his sources.\u00a0 Discussing America\u2019s founders and heroes, he dwells much on their explicitly racist and white supremacist statements.\u00a0 Yet always, this picture is incomplete.\u00a0 Lincoln did indeed begin with views that blacks could never be republican citizens.\u00a0 He later abandoned this view when presented with the courage and decency of freed black slave troops.\u00a0 Similarly, Taylor claims Kipling as a white racial supremacist.\u00a0 Yet Kipling’s \u2018lesser breeds without the law\u2019 were in fact the Germans, whose complete lack of restraint and cruelty towards the Herero people appalled a man who called on his fellow Britons to treat with Indians \u2018not by looking on \u2018em as \u2018excitable masses of barbarism\u2019[\u2026] or the \u2018down trodden millions of Ind groaning under the heel of an alien and unsympathetic despotism,\u2019 but as men with a language of their own which it is your business to understand\u2019.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t resist another Kipling point.\u00a0 As one would expect, The White Man\u2019s Burden<\/em> is cited.\u00a0 Except that Taylor misses the real point of that poem.\u00a0 Craig Raine points out that the real sting of the poem is is in the in the final lines.\u00a0 First comes the repetitive exhortation:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBy all ye cry and whisper<\/p>\n

By all ye leave or do<\/p>\n

The silent, sullen peoples<\/p>\n

Shall weigh your Gods and you.<\/p>\n

Take up the White Man\u2019s burden,<\/p>\n

Have done with childish days \u2013<\/p>\n

The lightly proffered laurel,<\/p>\n

The easy, ungrudged praise.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

And then comes the real sting<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Comes now to, search your manhood<\/p>\n

Through all the thankless years<\/p>\n

Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,<\/p>\n

The judgement of your peers!\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kipling\u2019s capacity for irony is oft missed.\u00a0 The \u2018peers\u2019 at the end of the poem can only refer to the native, colonized peoples \u2013 and what appears as a paen to racial supremacism is rather a warning to the colonizers, that the judgement they will face from the colonized will be the judgement of equals.<\/p>\n

This sort of cavalier handling of his source material makes Taylor\u2019s work suspect.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t to say that he doesn\u2019t make some good points, in particular about the spread of racialism among black America.\u00a0 One whistles at some of the quotes he has marshaled \u2013 LeRoi Jones\u2019 poetry advocating the rape of white girls, James Baldwin saying that \u2018no Negro [\u2026] has not wanted to smash any white face he may encounter in a day\u2019, Leonard Jeffries wanting \u2018a world in which there aren\u2019t any white people\u2019.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly chiling stuff, or is at least intended to be.<\/p>\n

For where Taylor goes wrong is that rather than menace, these quotes project a cringing, pitiable weakness.\u00a0 Let me make a basic observation: genuine anti-system dissidents aren\u2019t usually tenured Professors at mainstream institutions (Jeffries), nor widely celebrated authors (Baldwin).\u00a0 You don\u2019t usually exalt people who promise to kill you \u2013 unless you are absolutely sure that they pose no threat whatsoever.<\/p>\n

I think that this is what underlies white America\u2019s indulgence of black racists.\u00a0 The attitude isn\u2019t one of conciliation but condescension.\u00a0 When Spike Lee speaks about how he sends \u2018hate looks\u2019 at all mixed race couples and despises them, the attitude is seems to be closer to \u2018So cute!\u00a0 Toss him a few treats and see what trick he comes up with next\u2019.\u00a0 Its worth remembering that when Warner Brothers gave Mr Lee forty million dollars to do a biopic about Malcolm X, Lee duly cut out all the hard political questions, and earned glowing reviews from such organs as The National Review<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019m reasonably fond of the National Review but it is not where I expect an anti-system dissident to show up.<\/p>\n

Does racial solidarity lead to anything good in black America?\u00a0 The evidence seems rather to the contrary.\u00a0 Seventy-two percent of black Americans are born out of wedlock.\u00a0 The murder rate of the black community is eight times that of the white, and the overwhelming majority of victims are other blacks.\u00a0 A lot of noise aside, the single most dangerous thing to the average young black man in America is another young black man with a gun.<\/p>\n

The important thing about the pathologies of black America isn\u2019t that they are a disgrace compared with white America, but that they would disgrace just about all of black Africa.\u00a0 Not just places like Nairobi or Cape Town; American towns like Detroit and New Orleans have been found to be more violent than Mogadishu.<\/p>\n

But surely racial solidarity among black Americans lets them stand up to oppression from other racial groups?\u00a0 I would not be so sure.\u00a0 Have either President Obama or his attorney general Eric Holder said a word about the death penalty that predominantly strikes the poor and dark skinned?\u00a0 Have either said anything about the case of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown \u2013 two African Americans railroaded to jail and only released through DNA evidence after spending more time incarcerated than Nelson Mandela?\u00a0 Or anything about the numerous similar cases?\u00a0 But they are capable of finding some hapless sod of a Latino Obama voter and making him the face of white American racism.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t always the case.\u00a0 Dr King transformed American society, while being able to simultaneously oppose America\u2019s war in Vietnam at the same time.\u00a0 Like them or loathe them, men like Malcolm X commanded seriousness and respect.\u00a0 Their modern successors can barely rouse a velleity of interest without the help of a dedicated white racialist like Jared Taylor.<\/p>\n

I suspect white American racism didn\u2019t merely oppress blacks, but succeeded in transmitting its poison to them.\u00a0 As with all such prejudices, an important question to ask is: Qui bono<\/em>?\u00a0 Who really stands to benefit from black racism?\u00a0 The answer is easy: the black American ruling class.\u00a0 If one considers the hopelessly venal Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, under whose eye the levees failed and the evacuaton was botched and the police stole and looted, he must find it awfully convenient to direct blame elsewhere.\u00a0 I imagine his successor will do so the next time the levees fail, and impotent hatred will do exactly nothing to stop the floods.<\/p>\n

Yet it isn\u2019t even black American leaders who cash in on this.\u00a0 If one considers the Clintons, Bill began his political campaign with racist pandering of the lowest kind, ably seconded by his wife, who insisted on the hiring of Dick Morris, author of racist political ads for Jesse Helms.\u00a0 Then, finding himself in danger of impeachment, he reversed course and found able support from men like Jesse Jackson and those like Toni Morrison who insisted Clinton was America\u2019s \u2018first black president\u2019 since he was sexually rapacious, unsure who his father was and had a severe taste for drink.\u00a0 When Hillary was running against the genuine first black President (a man who, whatever his foibles, is miles above such squalor), the race card was flipped around again, and the most poisonous whispering, carefully \u2018deniable\u2019 no doubt, resulted.\u00a0 When Mrs Clinton makes her bid for the Oval Office, you may bet your last penny that the card will be reversed one more time and she will explain how she is the lone, stalwart defender of the black and the brown against tyranny.\u00a0 Black America will be the chumps of the planet if they let her get away with it.<\/p>\n

On the other hand\u2026 if there is hope, it lies in the proles.\u00a0 My red roots start to show when I write like this, but I have a suspicion that most black Americans are not complete fools and are increasingly tired of being treated as such.\u00a0 If one considers the \u2018Tea Party\u2019 protests in America –\u00a0 despite a lot of misrepresentation,these\u00a0 are essentially populist working class revolt<\/a>s.\u00a0 They also happen to be 6% black American (compared with 11% in the general society) and two of the Tea Party\u2019s favorite politicians are Herman McCain, and Allen West, both African Americans.\u00a0 There are also an increasing number of black American intellectuals who are fed to the teeth with the current status quo.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best known is Bill Cosby\u2019s furious denunciation of the failures and flaws of black American leadership.\u00a0 That speech in turn inspired Juan Williams\u2019 book Enough<\/em>, in which he draws on a powerful tradition in black America \u2013 a tradition of social conservatism, hard work, community values and individual initiative.\u00a0\u00a0 The most famous example is Malcolm X who understood that such virtues were not a matter of taste, but an essential precondition for power, the power of an oppressed community to assert itself.<\/p>\n

That is a peculiar virtue of Williams\u2019 book \u2013 he doesn\u2019t pretend that white American racism has completely vanished.\u00a0 Rather, he argues that, if black Americans want to wait until a completely non-racial America has arrived before improving their circumstances, then they will be waiting a long time indeed.<\/p>\n

Instead, the path to self improvement lies along a way that racial racketeers of all colors, whether they be credentialed and overpaid frauds like Eric Dyson, or for that matter Jared Taylor, say that they are incapable of.\u00a0 I very much look forward to that success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWe are constantly told that racial diversity is a great source of strength.\u00a0 This is not true.\u00a0 Racial diversity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-and-reason","category-race-and-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1381,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}