The centrality of race

Ryder writes:

You make some excellent points concerning why we should prohibit immigration from incompatible cultures, yet I would submit that there is a more basic and essential reason for such a prohibition: they aren’t us. They aren’t of our race, our blood. They are foreign in the most basic and physical sense. Even if it were possible for them to assimilate in terms of ideology and culture, they should still be denied entry. We should wish them well in their own lands, but they cannot colonize ours. The West isn’t merely an idea or a set of customs, it is a people related by blood.

Race is not everything, but it is the central thing. For once we abandon race as our bedrock, the left has largely won. Once we accept the central liberal premise that race doesn’t matter, then liberal conclusions will likely follow. If we are going to “assimilate” non-whites, then liberalism begins to make a lot of sense. Why not integrate? Why not make some adjustments, adaptations and compromises in order to make that integration and assimilation process easier? Why not institute affirmative action and set asides when some groups don’t perform as well as others? Why not cover up crimes against whites? After all, anything that raises the ire of whites is going to make this whole integration and assimilation process that much harder. So cover up the murders and the rapes of white women.

Cut off from our physical roots, we become flies of a summer. Traditionalism is cut off at the legs. Hey, your descendants are likely to be Afro-Chinese anyway, so why fight the left? Everything is just a matter of abstract principles and beliefs—so why bother? Why not just enjoy yourself, and get a piece of the pie? To flies of a summer, traditionalism has no relevance. Just eat and be merry. Appetite—where we are today.

None of this is to say that ideas, culture and customs are not important. These things are obviously important, vitally so. They are crucial components of what we mean by the West. But they should not cause us to lose sight of the importance of our actual people, in real flesh and bone. The importance of culture and custom, vital as they may be, should not trick us into playing the game on the left’s terms. If we play on their terms, by their rules, we will surely lose—as we have been losing for decades.

In short: leftism, crazy as it is and horrible though its results may be, makes sense once we abandon the corner stone of race. That’s why the left will not compromise on race. They know where the battle must be fought, and they will go absolutely insane with rage, gnashing teeth and rending garments, if anyone suggests that whites should be preserved as a people. They may disagree with the conservative on many, many issues. But race is the one no go, the real taboo. As long as the left can keep the opposition to its project focused on culture and customs, it is in no real danger. After all, people can change their minds. They can learn new ways. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but certainly they can. And because they can, the left can continue its project of destruction with at least some plausibility (however strained). Until conservatism is willing to challenge the left on this central issue, it will fail. It will forever be “liberalism lite,” never effectively challenging the destruction of the West. It’s something of a paradox: in order to protect the sublime beauty of the West, the land of Mozart and Newton, we must not forget to protect the primitive and the physical: real flesh and blood people.

LA replies:

I agree with your main point that race is part of the bedrock of what we civilizationally are, as well as with your corollary, which is that liberals of all persuasions (including “conservatives”) are driven to deny the reality and importance of race. The threat to the white race and white Western civilization has been my central political and cultural concern since I first became aware of the immigration problem 26 years ago and began writing about immigration 20 years ago.

At the same time, to quibble, I would not emphasize certain terms that I see as too narrow and reductive, such as “our blood.” “Our blood” can be seen as implying a small, closely related tribe, rather than a large historical nation such as the English or the French, let alone the European peoples as a whole, or a multiethnic, European-based nation such as the United States prior to 1965. Are, say, Irish-Americans and German Americans related through “blood”? Are Scots-Irish and Italians related through “blood”? Not in the way the word is normally used. So I would say that what joins white Westerners or European-Americans together and makes them feel a common identity, while it often involves “blood,” is something broader than “blood.”

The phrase, “our blood,” may also be seen as implying that the physical, racial aspect of the white race is all that’s needed. I’m not saying that you’re saying that, since you emphasized the importance of culture and ideas in addition to race. As Samuel Francis put it in his speech at the 1994 American Renaissance conference, the white race is an indispensable condition of our civilization, but not a sufficient condition. It is qualities of culture, organization, religion, morality, that make a physical race into a people and a civilization.

An analogous case is the development of modern humanity. According to current theories, anatomically modern humans existed for 50,000 years before they developed the mental qualities and skills that made culture possible, thus becoming human beings as we would recognize them. The anatomical form of humanity was indispensable to humanity and human culture, but not sufficient.

Further, the fact that race is not the sufficient condition of what we are also implies that small numbers of individuals of different race can be a part of the West without threatening or changing its identity. But anything like the large-scale non-Western immigration that began in the 1950s in Britain and in the 1960s in the U.S. is suicidal.

In order to reverse the suicidal process, the white majority in each of the Western countries must rediscover and assert itself again as the majority, so that each country begins to represent itself as it did prior to the mid-20th century, i.e., as a white or white-majority country, rather than as a universal or multicultural country. Once that crucial change in mind and identity occurs, the salvation of the West becomes a practical possibility. If it does not occur, the West is doomed.

Steve D. writes:

There is an additional problem in Ryder’s focus on race as the single, pivotal issue in the preservation of Western civilization: there are a lot of people who qualify under commonly accepted definitions of “Caucasian” who are not Western.

Bosnian Moslems are white. Chechens are white. Turks are white; as are Semitic Arabs and Jews, Persians, and many of the racial groups of India. None of these are originally Western, though the Jews resident in the West have not only adapted but become indispensable. The other groups show little to no inclination to adapt.

These people are all Caucasian, and so qualify to be “of one blood” with Europeans and European-Americans. Yet with the exception of the Jews, their presence in the West is corrosive to Western values. I would far rather share my community with Christianized Asians or African Jews, for instance, than with European Moslems.

LA replies:

Any vast category such as “white people” is going to present unnumerable exceptions, variations, and grey areas, so qualifications always need to be made. Such qualifications do not eliminate the basic reality of the category. We need to look at things whole, not by a one-dimensional logic. The fact that we wouldn’t consider a white Muslim group as part of “us,” does not mean that we should consider Christian Koreans as part of “us.” You can be sure that the Koreans do not consider us as a part of them. They are a distinct people, and they know it. We should not reduce our identity to race, or to religion. We need to look at things whole.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 28, 2008 10:34 AM | Send