On seeing the inherent falsity of the “racism” charge

Paul Nachman writes:

It’s been a long time since I (re)read The Path to National Suicide. So it was rewarding, just now, to reread the chapter on racism, which you recently linked.

I’m not sure I could ever have written that chapter. I doubt if I would, on my own, have had the insights you did. (I can, and have, thought quite hard about physics in particular cases, and I’m good at that.) So the question is: How do you come to these things? Do you stare at the wall for hours on end? Do you write partial thoughts on scraps of paper and then synthesize from them later. I guess I should give you an example from your chapter. Here’s the one that struck me most:

The very idea of racism implies a human norm that is not racist, and from which racism, by definition, would be a departure. But in what does this norm consist? Where in the world are there families and communities that are not based on this mutual preference for people who are similar? The answer is that, outside of marginal and cosmopolitan exceptions, the preference for one’s own is the universal tendency. Since, then, there is no “non-racist” norm, from which racism would be a deviation, is it not clear that “racism,” in its contemporary inflated sense, has no meaning at all? It has no more meaning than calling people with noses “nosists.”

LA replies:

The very idea of racism implies a human norm that is not racist, and from which racism, by definition, would be a departure. But in what does this norm consist?

As I remember, that idea just came to me and I wrote it down in more or less the form in which you’ve quoted it from PNS, though the passage was refined over time. If “racism” is bad, what is the good compared to which racism is bad? If that good doesn’t exist, then what makes racism bad? The problem is built into the indefinite and sweeping meaning of the word “racism” as currently used. If you’re telling me that I’m bad, what is the standard by which you’re telling me I’m bad? If I’m told that I’m lazy, the standard by which I’m being judged is clear: I’m not working hard enough. If I’m criticized for being dishonest, I’m being told that I need to tell the truth. When normal language is used to speak of normal moral standards, as in the above examples, for every bad behavior for which a person is criticized, its good opposite that he is being called upon to perform is evident. But this is not the case with “racism.” How can I stop being racist, if the good opposite of racism doesn’t exist?

It’s the same with “discrimination” and “intolerance.” We are told by modern liberalism that discrimination per se and intolerance per se are evil and must be eliminated from the world. In reality, discrimination and intolerance in various forms are intrinsic to human life and human society, since no normal society or institution tolerates that which is incompatible with its own existence. Since the good opposite of evil discrimination and of evil intolerance, i.e., a human condition in which there is no discrimination or intolerance, doesn’t exist and can’t exist, therefore there is no standard of good by which discrimination per se or intolerance per se can be evil. To demand that a society eliminate all discrimination is to tell it to go out of existence.

To me, this insight into the falsity of the “racism” charge does not seem difficult. It’s an insight that ought to occur to any thoughtful person when he’s being told that his entire society is bad and guilty. The wonder is not that I had that insight into the falsity of “racism,” but that no one else had it. And even now, after 19 more years of escalating attacks on the “racism” of white Western societies, hardly anyone has grasped it. How can people be so passive and insensible as to allow themselves to be cast as permanently guilty and as not morally deserving to exist, and never ask, by what standard are we being made guilty and not deserving to exist? That’s the remarkable thing.

* * *

At the same time, as I’ve said before, I do think that, in addition to the unlimited and therefore false meaning of “racism” that is dominant today, there is a limited and valid meaning of racism. However, I also recognize that the environment of thought has been so distorted by the false meaning of racism that it’s problematic whether the word should be used at all, even in its true meaning.

For example, I referred several times to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church, which Obama attended for 20 years, as a “racist” church, since its teaching and preaching specifically associates blacks with good and whites with evil. If there is such a thing as racism in the world, Trinity Church is racist. But in using the word “racist” where it was truly deserved, was I not at least indirectly feeding into and legitimizing the ubiquitous and wrongful use of the word against whites? So I starting calling Trinity a “white-hating” church or something like that, rather than “racist.” This is a question I have not resolved.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 15, 2009 01:10 PM | Send