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Radical thoughts on race
Ben W. writes:
There have been quite a number of posts in the past few weeks concerning the antagonistic behavior and negative culture of the black race in America, such as this one posted earlier today. To my mind it is inadequate to suggest, as Mr. Auster does, that we can refashion America in the image of what it was concerning race 20 or 30 or 50 years ago.
Perhaps it is time to reconceptualize the American model psychologically, culturally, and theologically by factoring out the black race.
Anthropologically speaking there is a model for this in the social structure built in the Old Testament by God through Israel. Israel was not to commingle with other races; it was to derive its own identity through the selfhood forged by being called out of another society (Egypt) and clearing the land before it of any non-Hebraic influences.
In some respects—historically speaking—the Civil War and the ensuing civil rights movement have been a calamity for America. The black race will not improve—in fact it has been one of the primary vehicles for the rise of destructive liberalism on this continent.
Just as some have called for a renewed, re-energized conservative apologetic, it may be time to take the radical and revolutionary step of reconceptualizing an America that both predates slavery and postdates the black race—in effect factoring the black race out of America. The details of this would have to be worked out since this would be only a social re-imagineering of America as a mental, conceptual exercise.
Just as it is impossible to integrate Muslims into Western society, it has been impossible to integrate the black race as well. The psychological, social, legal and economic costs of “containing” the black race have been staggering to America and not worth the effort. In fact it is not an accident that the black race has been becoming itself more Muslim in America!
This 4th of July, it is time to re-imagine and reconceptualize America in terms of its origins minus the historical accident of race.
LA replies:
Nothing this radical on the black issue has ever been posted at VFR. Many will say that Ben’s ideas are racist, evil, and totally out of the question, both morally and practically. But can anyone gainsay his premises? Is it not the case that a very large percentage of black Americans, perhaps a majority, are hostile to America and whites, and, as far as we can tell, will always be so? More importantly, is it not the case that black America, as an organized community, is endemically hostile to America and whites, and, as far as we can tell, will always be so? How then are we supposed to deal with blacks? How are we to get along with them in the same society, who are our declared enemies? The more advantages they receive from the larger society, the more resentful and vengeful they become. And this is because, as I’ve written before, blacks as human beings cannot feel good about getting benefits from their historic oppressors who are both racially Other from themselves and civilizationally far more talented than themselves. Blacks’ own group pride understandably makes it impossible for them to be friendly to a white America that is constantly exerting efforts to raise them up.
However, don’t the foregoing thoughts suggest that it is liberalism that has made blacks so hostile—or, rather, far more hostile than they were in, say, 1960? And does that not point to a possible solution, which is to end special accommodations to blacks? We should dismantle all special racial privileges, go back to the individualist model, and let people find their own level in life, and if blacks end up doing worse collectively than whites, everyone accepts that and doesn’t complain about it.
In fact, the above idea, which I’ve laid out in this article, may not be as different from Ben’s idea as it initially appears. Ben wants an America reconceptualized so as not to include blacks. I want an America reconceptualized so as not to recognize any collective black claim on America or any separate black identity in America, because such a claim and such an identity are intrinsically hostile to America. And no country is required to respect or include that which is hostile to itself. Therefore black organizations and public cultural expressions would only be recognized and allowed to the extent that they showed loyalty to America. To put it bluntly, blacks would be expected to defer to the white majority in terms of laws, standards, and national identity, as it was up to 1960. Blacks could live in America and have their rights as individuals protected in America, but they would not be allowed to express themselves in a collective way that was inimical to America.
Ben may think that my idea is both unachievable and not radical enough, since he wants to conceptualize an America without blacks at all. But I repeat that there is significant overlap between our positions. And my position is in conformity with a historically recognizable America that consists legally of individuals with rights, but consists culturally of a common majority culture that sets standards for the whole and leads. In any case, Ben and I believe at least this much in common—that the white majority should stop giving blacks any sanction to tear down this country or build up a separate and hostile black culture among us. But for the white Ameircan majority to take that leadership role, it must once again exist and assert itself as the white American majority.
- end of initial entry -
Adela G. writes:
Frankly, I always hoped that your position on race would lead to Ben W.’s. I’m only sorry that I never thought to say that. I guess I just presumed we all realized that if white America stopped encouraging and subsidizing black America’s sense of grievance, the numbers of blacks present in America would inevitably decline and eventually be statistically insignificant. I further presumed that this outcome was what we all here at VFR wanted.
You’ve made the distinction between the black community in America that is hostile to white America and black individuals who lack that sense of grievance and want only to take legitimate advantage of the opportunities for personal advancement that American affords. I think that’s an important distinction. My wanting an America with far fewer blacks in it has nothing to do with my personal history with black individuals, which has been overall only slightly more negative than my history with whites. (And in fairness, I must add that I know several black people of whom I am very fond and I believe that fondness is mutual.) It’s blacks as a group that I find too chaotic to live with or interact with. It is this group that I don’t want in American in any significant number. They don’t get along with white America, they don’t want to and as things currently stand, they have no incentive to do so. Why would any rational person want a statistically significant group antagonistic to his country residing within it?
LA replies:
Blacks are not immigrants, and I can’t conceive of any means by which we make them leave, or where we would send them.
Adela G. replies:
You write: “Blacks are not immigrants, and I can’t conceive of any means by which we make them leave, or where we would send them.”
True enough, black Americans aren’t immigrants, unless they leave America.
I don’t really understand the rest of your comment. I wrote in my first entry, “…if white America stopped encouraging and subsidizing black America’s sense of grievance, the numbers of blacks present in America would inevitably decline and eventually be statistically insignificant.” I didn’t mention “making” them leave and, except for dismantling those government programs that promote and subsidize a sense of entitlement based on race, I wasn’t alluding to any governmental or official action, certainly not a policy of forced deportation. Surely you didn’t infer I was hoping white militias would drive blacks into the sea!
I think fewer blacks from other countries would to emigrate to an America that did not encourage and subsidize a black sense of grievance. Some politicized leftist blacks might well leave for Europe or elsewhere. And I think some middle-class blacks who remain would have fewer children. More whites from other countries would come here if black racialism were contained and marginalized. All these changes over time would result in a larger white majority.
So it’s not a question of making blacks leave. It’s a question of creating and maintaining a cultural climate that makes it clear any sense of racial grievance is unwelcome. I think it would be a profound change that would trigger profound changes.
LA replies:
But you said you hoped my position would be the same as Ben’s. Ben is advocating the conceptual, and thus implicitly or at least theoretically the actual, removal of blacks from America.
Clem writes:
Glad to see you post this train of thought. I don’t have the answer but I do realize that we must pursue something in this direction. Unless we miscegenate (unfortunately many people see this as the panacea) to the point of all being Borg, what we are currently doing will not and is not working. The only thing our current path in this country will do is lead to the destruction of the U.S. and of us. Truly for the sake of our posterity we must be strong enough to do whatever it takes. Otherwise accept our plight, mumble some platitude about “what could we do?”, sit down, shut up, and take our beating.
LA writes:
A funny thought just occurred to me. We’re all aware of how, despite white America’s good will toward blacks, and staggering efforts to help advance them, and systematic punishment of the slightest supposedly anti-black speech, the core of the black community continues to see whites as evil oppressors who are conspiring to commit genocide against blacks. Indeed, the presumptive Democratic nominee, the (half-white) cream of black America, devotedly attended for 20 years a black church where such accusations against whites were the core of the church’s message, and he never expressed the slightest reservation about that message until he emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee a couple of months ago. What could be a clearer indication that a profoundly hostile and paranoid view of whites is the taken-for-granted norm in the black community?
That being the case, if white America really began to take away blacks’ privileges and reduce their power and influence, as proposed above, what could the blacks say about whites, that they’re not already saying? The blacks ALREADY believe that we’re trying to harm them in all kinds of horrible ways.
Therefore, if whites stopped all race-preference policies for blacks, dropped all symbolical glorification of blacks in media and education, and took away the unearned race privileges that blacks enjoy in America, race relations would not be harmed. To the contrary, with the return of white confidence and leadership and the rejection of white guilt, as I wrote here, race relations would be greatly improved.
Ben W. writes:
You are right when you say that my idea is not far from yours. The difference I think is that I would prefer a more explicit approach encoded in law rather than just a set of acknowledged attitudes. I don’t have a clear and distinct idea (as Descartes would it) of what “factoring the black race out of America” means.
It might have psychological elements (i.e. no more Hollywood films with black protagonists). It might have economic components (such as no affirmative action or extended welfare programs). It might have legal consequences such as restricting race-based churches from issuing from the pulpit hateful statements against the U.S. It might have political restrictions such as prohibiting an elected official from swearing by the Koran. These are all practical and incremental steps towards factoring out the racial presence of an antagonistic group.
On a broader scale, it would mean the dismantling of ghetto neighborhoods and dispersal. Where that would lead, I do not know. But these small, incremental steps would make it quite uncomfortable for a large social group to maintain itself in juxtaposition and opposition to our society as a racial and cultural block. It is this block of people that has to be psychologically “dismantled” and fragmented within our society so that it is no longer a monolithic presence in our country.
All this would be done actively through political, cultural, economic and legal means. It would be a type of psychological reverse warfare on the black intifada itself. This I surmise would lead to a demoralization within the black community and eventually its fragmentation. It’s psychological disappearance would be the first step. What that would lead to eventually is another thing.
Phillip M. writes from England:
“Perhaps it is time to reconceptualize the American model psychologically, culturally, and theologically by factoring out the black race.”
“I don’t have a clear and distinct idea (as Descartes would it) of what ‘factoring the black race out of America’ means.”
You cannot say something this controversial and then say you don’t know what you mean by it!
P.S. I have often found that people who use long lists of adverbs are literally, metaphorically, spiritually, and emotionally not sure what they are about to say…
LA replies:
I intellectually, emotionally, instinctivelly, intuitively, consciously, and subconsciously know what you mean … I think.
Mark J. (who is not Mark Jaws) writes:
The present situation with regard to blacks (and Mestizos, Muslims, and other alien peoples in our nation) is unsustainable, but I respectfully argue that the time when whites could maintain the existing system of government while implementing the kinds of changes you’re proposing has passed. All race-based preference programs need to disappear, and it has to become legal once again to discriminate in employment, housing, and accommodations based on race. But the prohibitions against that kind of discrimination are so deeply embedded now in our laws and established interpretations of the Constitution that it would almost certainly require a series of constitutional amendments to make it legal to discriminate again. And because an amendment requires a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress, as well as ratification by 3/4 of the states, and because the white population is now only 65 percent of the entire population, and because even in the best of scenarios there is a significant proportion of whites who would rather die than support such a change, and because only whites would vote for such a change (no other minority group—Mestizos, Asians, Jews, Muslims, etc—would vote for a change that could be used against them as well as blacks), there is no conceivable way that I can see that the laws of the country as it exists now will be changed to enable the kind of social changes you propose.
Even were such changes possible, we would need to take away the right of blacks and other minorities to vote, because as long as they could vote, we would eternally be at risk of losing control of our nation if they reproduce faster than we do. So what you are essentially proposing is the establishment of apartheid here in the U.S. The South African experience cast serious doubt on the long-term workability of an apartheid scheme.
The lesson I have taken from our experience and that of the South Africans is this: a people must hold their national territory for themselves and themselves only. No other peoples can be allowed to establish themselves within our peoples’ territory. To allow them to do so, even in small numbers, is to allow the establishment of a colony which sooner or later may threaten us. And there’s simply nothing we gain by allowing it that makes it worth the risk. The fatal mistakes made by our people in the past were, first, to bring an alien people here as slaves; second, not to send them back to their homeland when we freed them; and third, to allow other alien peoples to emigrate here or come here to work cheaply. The South Africans made the mistake of allowing blacks into the territory they’d seized because they wanted cheap labor. Eventually they were dramatically outnumbered and their country taken away from them.
I reiterate: a people must hold their territory only for themselves. If they do that, they can have peace and can afford democracy and even a degree of socialism. (As in the Scandinavian countries, for example.) They can welcome foreign tourists and businessmen for visits; they can be friendly to people of all nations; they can have rich cultural exchanges with other peoples. But they cannot allow alien people to set up homes, get jobs, intermarry, or otherwise establish a life within their people’s territory. Any exception to this either leads to future conflict when the descendants of the alien people want more political power, or sets a precedent that makes it difficult to exclude more incompatible alien people. And again, your proposal that whites reassert themselves while allowing non-whites to continue to live in the same country would require legal changes that are just not possible given the population demographics.
I agree with you that it is difficult to conceive of whites pushing blacks entirely out of the country. But the choices are either a definite geographic and political separation or a Brazil-like nation of mixed races and all the corruption, squalor, and friction that comes with it. I see no peaceful, legal way of going back to a pre-Civil War apartheid-like arrangement where whites are the dominant group and live in peace and safety with a non-white population that is already 35 percent of the nation and is growing faster than the white population. I think the only alternatives are a civil war or the devolution of the U.S. into another Brazil and the end of the white race as a significant civilizational force. My bet is on a civil war, when the majority of whites have finally had enough of the corruption, violence, and poverty that comes with sharing a nation with alien people and when the impossibility of any legal separation within the framework of our existing government becomes evident. I am thankful that the peoples giving us the most trouble (blacks, Mestizos, Muslims) are, relatively, so very incompetent.
Mark Jaws (who is not Mark J.) writes:
How could you possibly say about Ben W’s excellent posting that “nothing this radical on the black issue has ever been posted at VFR,” when I have long advocated a white enclave nation within the lower 48? Since others in this thread have more eloquently expressed the symptoms of the black-white divide, in a word, I will say the key to black intransigence and unassimilablity is inherently low IQ. We cannot make them good and productive citizens any more than we can make Vietnamese immigrants NFL material. As I stated a few weeks ago, we need to incrementally move the train of thought further to the right one step at a time.
LA replies:
The thing that struck me as uniquely radical about Ben’s comment was that in advocating a reconceptualization of America without blacks he seemed to be implying the removal of blacks from the United States. While Mr. Jaws has often advocated the withdrawal of whites into all-white enclaves, I was not aware that he had ever spoken of removing blacks from America. To the contrary, his whole point seemed to be that whites must give up much of America to nonwhites, while seeking to preserve themselves in all-white areas. I’ve always disagreed with that and have held out for a return of majority control over the whole United States.
Ben W. writes:
LA wrote: “The thing that struck me as uniquely radical about Ben’s comment was that in advocating a reconceptualization of America without blacks he seemed to be implying the removal of blacks from the United States.”
Yes, what I’ve arrived at in my own mind is a two step approach.
First, the psychological removal of the black race done through an intellectual reconceptualization of America. A paradigm shift supported through incremental steps.
Second, once the black block is isolated, minimized and fragmented, a physical dispersion and\or division will follow.
This is no more spiteful or hateful than a divorce proceeding between a man and a woman. At a certain point, a marital relationship fails—a physical separation follows because a mental division has already occurred.
Rachael S. writes:
Ben W. writes:
“All this would be done actively through political, cultural, economic and legal means. It would be a type of psychological reverse warfare on the black intifada itself. This I surmise would lead to a demoralization within the black community and eventually its fragmentation. It’s psychological disappearance would be the first step. What that would lead to eventually is another thing.”
What we need to get this ball rolling is to make it acceptable for whites to talk about race in public. It could start with one little law, driven by a catalyst event like the woman singing the “Black National Anthem.” Make it illegal (which it probably already is) to sing anything but the National Anthem as an anthem in a national forum, for instance. Or make the singing of the “Black National Anthem” illegal as a substitute for the actual anthem, which would give the whole issue a racial context.
But if such a law were passed (which seems a lot like an amendment against flag burning), the opposition would be looking around for any deviation by our side from the gentleman’s rules conservatives are supposed to play by. When some bigot was videotaped going over the top in a racial context, the media would play up the bigot and the backlash against the nascent nationalism would occur.
At that point our side would need unapologetic, respected voices as reinforcements to keep our burgeoning movement from being killed. Where are those voices? Where is the media to disseminate them in the same volume? We need slogans and imagery as well; built on a foundation philosophy, culture, arts; this movement will take decades to get going if it is to be done correctly. Each aspect of the fight could use a separate organization that was tied to the whole. We need the thinkers, the people who help them do the administrative work, the go-betweens who translate the ideas into graspable concepts for those “average” people who sense there is something wrong with America, but will be turned off by anything that seems extreme. AND we need to think about how any growing racial consciousness by whites will be seized upon by the neo-Nazi movement, and how we would nullify that “guilt by association” effect that would occur when the uninformed see an out of context media clip of David Duke championing this-and-that law as a victory for his side. I am reminded of an article you linked to awhile back about the need for a new conservative apologetics.
Mark Jaws writes:
I believe that it is only in white enclaves in which our people can freely discuss the race problem and reassert our racial consciousness. Once that occurs, I would be surprised if we were to remain content to dwell in such reservations. I would hope that regalvanized whites would then retake America and implement the Ben W solution. As someone in this thread earlier mentioned, our hope lies in the ineptitude of the Moslem, Mestizo, and black populations.
LA replies:
Reculer pour mieux sauter. Stepping back in order to jump better.
I like this much better than Mark Jaws’s previous idea (or at least what seemed like his idea) of simply giving up major parts of America.
Mark Jaws replies:
You did not really think I have been meaning that whites were to stay in their enclaves once they regained their sense of racial consciousness, did you? It is only in a pro-white environment in which people can express their true feelings. We bear so many legitimate grievances against black America that I cannot fathom our being silent much longer on this topic, especially with a black president just itching for an honest and open conversation on race. I say let’s give it to him. It will be the first step towards the incrementalist approach I advocate.
Patrick H. writes:
Ask yourself: is black America dependent on white America? The answer, of course, is yes. Massively, utterly, abjectly. Consider the opposite: is white America dependent on black America? The answer is, of course, no. Not at all. Not for anything. Black America needs white America in order to have any chance of achieving any civilized values at all. White America’s civilizational achievements have never required anything from blacks, who are a distraction from and an impediment to those achievements.
Blacks in America have been the decades-long objects of the greatest charitable campaign in human history. (Blacks outside America are the candidates for being the objects of the second greatest charitable campaign in human history.) This charitable campaign has consisted of the transfer from whites to blacks of trillions of dollars, of the gift of undeserved jobs, housing, access to higher education, basic social services (medical, sanitary, electrical, sewage, protection and many, many others), and in general, the time, energy and attention of white people. None of it deserved, all of it freely given. Whites, on the other hand, do not and have never needed any money, social services, housing, education, protection, time, energy, attention, or anything else at all from blacks. Nothing. We have wanted (not needed), and received, much in the way of entertainment and the leavening (and coarsening) of our popular culture by a certain kind of dynamism. That is all.
What would happen to black America if white America were to withdraw its charity? Black America would collapse within hours into a state of complete anarchy, eventually into a countrywide blight of post-Katrina New Orleans degradation, disease and death.
Everyone knows this. Blacks know this. Whites know this. To reconceptualize an America without blacks, all you have to do is imagine an America without white charity to blacks. That reconceptualized America is one in which Adela G.’s “statistically insignificant” black population would occur with considerable speed, although by means rather different than those she mentioned. This America is also one that white America simply could not tolerate allowing to come into existence. The genius of whites involves charitable concern for the less fortunate. It’s part of who we are. This spirit is particularly highly evolved in white Americans, one of the most generous peoples who have ever lived. (This spirit is almost entirely absent from black Americans.)
Whites, I am sad to say, will have to live with the burden of looking after blacks. It is depressing to contemplate having to finance, school, police and otherwise care for and control, an entire segment of your population. And an ungrateful, uncomprehending one at that. But that’s what comes from being talented, civilized and generous. As whites are in general, and white Americans are in particular.
Ben’s reconceptualization would be enormously beneficial if it produced no other change than white Americans realizing the nature of their relationship with their eternal dependents, their black children who will never grow up, never leave home, never stop blaming us for their problems, and never, ever stop demanding our money. That change alone, however, would be seismic, and would be a necessary step toward the revitalization of a genuinely traditionalist white culture. So sign me up for the reconceptualization! It’s just not going to lead to us abandoning anyone. We won’t do it because we’re white. It’s not our way.
LA replies:
Patrick seems to be saying that the reconceptualization would liberate whites from the racial lies and guilt that now dominate them, and this would be beneficial and vitalizing to whites in some way, but that blacks’ parasitical resentful relationship with whites would nevertheless continue. How, then, would the reconceptualization express itself in the real world, if at all?
Josefina writes (sent July 5, posted July 8):
My name is Josefina, I’m a history student here in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I have been reading your blog for a while (eight months by now) and find it really interesting. You are the first person that has make me think of the United States as a country in the present day.
It may sound ridiculous, but I used to think Americans considered America not a country (maybe because it lacks of an official language and anti-American organization are allowed within its borders and that kind of things), but some kind of ideal that anyone could join to. The mere name of the USA make think of this also: United States of America, meaning that other states of the continent could join if they wish. And nothing the U.S. governments I’ve seen in my lifetime have make me think I was wrong in my ideas. I just wanted to thank you for making me walk out of that mistake.
As for the present thread, I absolutely agree with Ben W.
I never knew why the U.S. was so insistent in sustaining a population that don’t even like their own country and do not consider themselves to be part of it, and whose identity consists mainly in hating the “white America,” as if there was not one America, but a white one, a black one, a Hispanic one, an Asian one, etc.
But I’ve been noticing a crisis within the African American population (this term would exclude black immigrant groups that don’t share the same cultural background of American blacks). They are leaving the big cities, in the case of New York they are leaving the state to go south. They are going through a crisis in terms of family. And they are approaching that issue in a way I consider hilarious. They feel uncomfortable about interracial dating and marriage (the fact that more successful black go to other races in search of a couple). Also they are having problems with Hispanics in some areas. Hispanics don’t really trust the police or they do not speak English, so they trust their security to Latino gangs who begin with ethnic cleansing of blacks. It has happened in L.A. but I’ve only been able to find any article about that, just this one related, and is from Pennsylvania.
Thanks for reading
Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 02, 2008 11:55 PM | Send
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