After reading my last few posts, a skeptic might claim that I'm naive about race. I'm advocating that Americans of all colors put their Americanness first and their racial loyalty last. I've also argued that there is some truth to the idea that race is socially constructed.
Let's begin with the idea of socially constructed race. You haven't been reading this blog if you think I deny the biological reality of race. What I deny is that it must be at the center of how you define yourself. The phrase "You are born with your uniform on" is poetic, but misleading.
My brown eyes are a biological reality. Must I then define myself as a Brown and organize with the rest of the dark-eyed world against the Blue and the Green? Handedness is a biological reality. Should I march with my fellow left-handed brothers against our right-handed Oppressors? (I should contact our sinistral President. I hear he's got experience as an organizer). Baldness is basically genetic. Should Larry David and I form an army and drive the Hairy-Headed into the sea?
I certainly don't believe we should pretend that race doesn't exist and doesn't explain anything--much of this blog marshals evidence against that--but I'm not sure it has to be at the center of who you are.
Irishness was important when the Irish first arrived. Now, not so much. Polishness was important when they were new. Now, not really. For most now, we're just white folks.
You might respond that ethnicity is flexible, but not race. Blacks and American Indians have been here for centuries, but race is still central to who they are. Well, for a long time it was unrealistic for a black man to minimize his blackness. When you are made a slave because of it, it's important whether you want it to be or not.
Liberals like to pretend the circumstances really haven't changed much, but they are responsible for much of the race-clinging, and the truth is that the importance of race for a black person is now a choice. You probably know blacks who are culturally pretty much like whites. I do, and I don't see why more blacks can't move in that direction. In prior posts, I could find no predictors of voting Republican among blacks, so it's not simply a function of something like IQ or social class.
The move to American first-hood should be easier for Hispanics and especially Asians. The problem is that the country doesn't shame them for their backward particularism. In fact, it encourages them. People need to be challenged: Are you a tribalist, or are you an American?
Don't get me wrong--I'm not saying we can make the correlates of race disappear. A person can't choose, for example, to have an IQ of 115 just because he wants one. I'm talking about how you define yourself. You can choose to be an American first.
Showing posts with label Racialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Racialism. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
"We were here first"
In the immigration debate, a common argument made by Hispanics goes something like this: "We've been in this country for generations. We were here before you were."
To borrow a term from our postmodernist friends, let's deconstruct that a bit. "We" clearly means Hispanics, or perhaps some narrower group like Mexicans. "You" refers to whites. The meaning of the argument is that the America is just a piece of land claimed by two racial groups--whites and Latinos--and Hispanics have dibs since they arrived first.
Set aside the question of who showed up first. In this scenario, there is no United States of America and no American citizens. There are two racial groups fighting over land. This is the worldview of a thoroughgoing racialist. How is the logic of the argument different from the white nationalist who argues that North America belongs to the white race because it was developed by them?
The outlook of a true American citizen is that only Americans can decide who can move here, and that decision should be based only on what is in the long-term interests of the nation. We Americans have all been here the same length of time--since the birth of the country. Arguments advancing the interests of one racial group against another are illegitimate to the citizen.
This "we got here first" argument betrays the mind of a tribalist: "I am a cell in a racial body that is in conflict with the racial body of which you are a cell. I operate on this understanding, and so do you, white guy. Your kind believes the same way and always has. Nationhood and citizenship have nothing to do with it. We're not on the same team."
Liberal delusions to the contrary, very few whites think like that. When whites criticize illegal immigration for its lawlessness and cost to the country, they mean just that. Of course, "illegal immigration hurts me" is a common underlying sentiment, but "it hurts my race" is rare indeed.
Whites, even savvy whites, let minorities pull this crap all the time. Activists start talking like brown Nazis, and whites think it's a perfectly legitimate argument.
Critics are right when they claim that whites think they are superior to others, but they're looking at the wrong attitudes. White superiority goes like this: Enlightened humans are not tribalists. Non-whites are naturally (and properly) tribalists. Therefore, non-whites are not enlightened humans like us. (The last step is usually not thought through, but it's the logical conclusion). White tribalists are especially low because, while such behavior is normal for people of color, it is beneath a white person.
I'm not a supremacist because I think non-whites are equal to me and therefore should be held to the standards I impose on myself (non-tribalism). They are not inferiors like children who cannot reach the lofty heights where I reside.
The only problem with my expectations of non-whites is that I look like Pollyanna in a pink dress.
Begging us to become white racialists
Here's a compelling case made by Lawrence Auster that the reaction of organized Hispanics to the new immigration enforcement law in Arizona demonstrates that they are Latino racialists first and Americans second. These people are begging us 200 million white folks to become white racialists first and Americans second.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
The country's choice: individualism or racialism
This graph shows that support among whites for laws against black-white marriages has dropped from 40% in the early 70s to around 10% in this decade (N = 24,739).
If we focus on young adults (ages 19-29) you can see that the number has dropped to 3% (N = 5,511).
The notion that whites can organize and get laws passed that explicitly advance their collective interests seems completely unrealistic. Over the past four decades, whites have become more libertarian in a non-economic sense, and they have become less racial.
Whites have interests just like everyone else, but the strategy that makes sense is to make use of historical trends. Two imporant trends for whites have been individualism over racialism and a keener sense of fairness. Fine, but these principles should be expected of non-whites too. If white organizations are illegitimate, then so are black and Hispanic organizations. If laws that favor whites are unacceptable, then so are laws that favor non-whites--affirmative action, enhanced penalties for hate crimes, etc.
If liberals push the idea that white racism justifies a double standard, we demonstrate that NAMs do poorly because of factors internal to their communities, and we demonstrate that poor non-whites benefit from our presence while we suffer from theirs.
This same line of argument can be used against mass immigration, legal and illegal. The country has two options: if it aims for minimal racialism and maximal individualism, then it needs to maintain a large white majority, and the borders need to be shut. The second option is a country with no majority group, which is a recipe for a racialist system. The country has to decide what kind of white people it wants. You can't get rid of them. The choice is a between a country with nice white people or a country with not nice white people.
Elites are clearly not historians. They look an ordinary white man and see some squishy wuss in Dockers who is only too happy to give his child's spot in college to some stranger just off the boat; who welcomes the daily trashing of his friends, relatives, and ancestors; who applauds while his town is turned into the New Guadalajara. For forty years, regular white guys have been treated as the playground pussy who will take anything that bullies care to dish out. "Want my lunch money? Fine. Here's my allowance too." But history shows what kids and grown-ups do when they get pushed around.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Disappearing white racialism
The top graph shows a four decade decline in the share of whites who favor a law against black-white marriages (GSS data).
The bottom graph shows how much white attitudes have changed just since I finished high school. In 1990 almost 70 percent of whites would oppose a close relative marrying a black person. (I'm sure if we had data from two decades before, the number against it would be even higher). The number dropped dramatically in the 90s, and even in the past two years fewer whites have a problem with it. In fact, in 2008, more than a quarter of whites can't wait for a family member to cross the racial line. Such enthusiasm! We can consider this question a measure of white racial consciousness; it has gone from the norm to something uncommon.
This has been a self-imposed change in the hearts of white Americans. They've given up their racialism. Most are willing to walk their daughters down the aisle and leave her with a man from a different race.
Whites didn't have to do this, but they did. And what have they gotten for their efforts? The Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the NAACP, La Raza, LULAC, the National Association of Black Journalists, BET, Univision, Georgetown professors calling on all black jurors to send guilty black defendants home, large percentages of NAMs who think of themselves as racialists first and Americans second--need I go on?
As for myself, in the abstract I would answer this question "neutral"--it wouldn't matter to me one way or the other. My ideal is neither racial consciousness or SWPL posturing. My son would be fortunate indeed to marry Sasha Obama. (I would be the unlucky one who would have to put up with all the in-laws' liberal and racialist bullshit).
But I'm not going to close my eyes to the statistics either. I dated a black women who was a fine girl, but there would have been a good chance that our kids would have gotten sucked into her lower-class family's culture and the wider dysfunctional black culture as well. Even middle-class black guys from the suburbs get sucked into black street life. And the thought of my kids or grandkids adopting all that victimhood, fight the power stuff would make me lose me mind.
Some freshman orientation worker will no doubt ask, "Don't you want your kids to be white to save them from all the discrimination they'll face in life?" My answer is, "Ha!! That God would curse us with the burden of black skin!"
The bottom graph shows how much white attitudes have changed just since I finished high school. In 1990 almost 70 percent of whites would oppose a close relative marrying a black person. (I'm sure if we had data from two decades before, the number against it would be even higher). The number dropped dramatically in the 90s, and even in the past two years fewer whites have a problem with it. In fact, in 2008, more than a quarter of whites can't wait for a family member to cross the racial line. Such enthusiasm! We can consider this question a measure of white racial consciousness; it has gone from the norm to something uncommon.
This has been a self-imposed change in the hearts of white Americans. They've given up their racialism. Most are willing to walk their daughters down the aisle and leave her with a man from a different race.
Whites didn't have to do this, but they did. And what have they gotten for their efforts? The Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the NAACP, La Raza, LULAC, the National Association of Black Journalists, BET, Univision, Georgetown professors calling on all black jurors to send guilty black defendants home, large percentages of NAMs who think of themselves as racialists first and Americans second--need I go on?
As for myself, in the abstract I would answer this question "neutral"--it wouldn't matter to me one way or the other. My ideal is neither racial consciousness or SWPL posturing. My son would be fortunate indeed to marry Sasha Obama. (I would be the unlucky one who would have to put up with all the in-laws' liberal and racialist bullshit).
But I'm not going to close my eyes to the statistics either. I dated a black women who was a fine girl, but there would have been a good chance that our kids would have gotten sucked into her lower-class family's culture and the wider dysfunctional black culture as well. Even middle-class black guys from the suburbs get sucked into black street life. And the thought of my kids or grandkids adopting all that victimhood, fight the power stuff would make me lose me mind.
Some freshman orientation worker will no doubt ask, "Don't you want your kids to be white to save them from all the discrimination they'll face in life?" My answer is, "Ha!! That God would curse us with the burden of black skin!"
Friday, February 27, 2009
Hereditarianism and racialism
More than 1,000 white GSS-ers were asked if they felt that having better genes is important for how your life turns out. Look at the graph: those who believe there should be a law prohibiting marriage between blacks and whites are much more likely to think that genes are important.
I wonder if more whites will adopt hardcore racial attitudes as science makes it increasingly obvious that genes matter. Of course, this type of analysis cannot tell us what is causing what. It could easily be: law against marriage <-- racialism --> genes matter. There is no logical necessity that hereditarianism lead to racialism, but I think one could make the case for a historical connection. Many academics believe the two go hand-in-hand and fear the research for this reason.
I wonder if more whites will adopt hardcore racial attitudes as science makes it increasingly obvious that genes matter. Of course, this type of analysis cannot tell us what is causing what. It could easily be: law against marriage <-- racialism --> genes matter. There is no logical necessity that hereditarianism lead to racialism, but I think one could make the case for a historical connection. Many academics believe the two go hand-in-hand and fear the research for this reason.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The last bastion of white racialism: Wandering around in General Social Survey data, I found a number that was surprisingly large. It seems that an impressive 61.5% of white high school dropouts in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky are in favor of a law banning interracial marriages.
Now, I wouldn't have been surprised at such a high number 40 years ago--the actual number averaging responses given in the 70s is 81.6%--but the revolution in racial attitudes evidently passed these folks by.
UPDATE: I'm going to have to amend this post some. I looked at the same group and was surprised again to find that 77.8% would vote for a black for president. The corresponding number for the 1970s is 57.6%.
So, these people are more comfortable, and have been more comfortable, with a black man running the country than one marrying their daughter. Perhaps many of them think a black man would help all lower-class folks.
Now, I wouldn't have been surprised at such a high number 40 years ago--the actual number averaging responses given in the 70s is 81.6%--but the revolution in racial attitudes evidently passed these folks by.
UPDATE: I'm going to have to amend this post some. I looked at the same group and was surprised again to find that 77.8% would vote for a black for president. The corresponding number for the 1970s is 57.6%.
So, these people are more comfortable, and have been more comfortable, with a black man running the country than one marrying their daughter. Perhaps many of them think a black man would help all lower-class folks.
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