America Must Have Race Realism

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It is folly to try to build a multiracial society like that of the United States on the assumption that people of all races have the same average intelligence and temperament. This assumption leads to expectations that cannot be met. Over the past 50 years, repeated disappointments have not led to a reconsideration of the assumption of equality, but instead to distortions of the moral basis of American society, a complete rewriting of American history, and growing numbers of embittered whites. Unless there is a change of direction, many whites will turn their backs on their country and its institutions. This will mean psychological and social secession for many, less healthy reactions for some.

The assumption of racial equality requires that all races be proportionately represented at all levels of society. If blacks are 12 percent of the population, they must be roughly 12 percent of doctors and lawyers, and no more than 12 percent of prisoners. In fact, blacks are underrepresented in desirable professions and overrepresented in prisons. Egalitarian dogma permits only one explanation for this: white racism, past and present.

The theory of the Civil Rights Movement was that blacks were held back by law, custom, and malevolent whites. The country made enormous efforts to change laws and customs, and the overwhelming majority of whites was persuaded to believe that any form of public or private discrimination against blacks or other non-whites was immoral. The goal was for all Americans to set aside racial loyalties and build a colorblind America.

Most whites tried to do this. They tried — as hard as I believe any group of people can — to accept and be fair to people of all races. It wasn’t enough. The lives of blacks, which had been improving since the 1920s, did not dramatically get better.

The next stage, beginning in the 1970s, went beyond equal treatment to racial preferences, flattering depictions of blacks in media, promotion of “role models,” suppression of information about black crime, and constant reminders to whites that they were responsible for black failure. This didn’t lead to equal results either, but egalitarian dogma remained unshaken.

Explanations for black failure therefore became more intricate: Whites were “colorblind” racists, unconsciously racist, even inherently racist. Racism was not, as was once thought, bad white people doing bad things. Even well-intentioned whites were unwitting partners in “systemic” racism, “institutional” racism, and “structural white supremacy.” Everything from math education to music theory to employment standards to proper grammar to obeying the law became suspect parts of a colossal system designed from the beginning to oppress non-whites and benefit whites. (Left unexplained was how East Asians defeated systemic white supremacy and did better than everyone else.) Whites who claimed not to be racist were suffering from “white fragility.”

This is magical thinking — voodoo. It requires no causal mechanisms. Every racial difference, whether in incarceration or welfare rates, life-expectancy, average net worth, test scores, obesity, or asthma, can be blamed — by assertion alone — on whites. This is the thinking behind calculations of the amount America owes blacks as reparations for slavery. Simply compare the present economic status of whites and blacks, assert that the difference is due only to racism, and tell the government pay blacks the difference.

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Some whites are trying to fight back against the worst excesses of “wokeness,” but they cannot win if they accept egalitarian dogma. If they agree that blacks and Hispanics and Arabs and American Indians and Haitians and Guatemalans are just as smart and hard working as whites, how can they explain the low levels of achievement of these groups? In the case of blacks, the best they can offer is clichés about “dysfunctional cultures,” “absent fathers” or, if they are brave, the perverse incentives of welfare and the perverse policies of Soros-backed prosecutors.

That’s not enough. Who made black culture dysfunctional? Who set up the welfare state? Who forced black fathers to be absent? Who keeps blacks poor and forces them to “turn to crime?” Who fills the “school to prison pipeline?” “Whitey,” of course.

There is only one way out for whites and for the country: accept race differences the way we accept (at least some) sex differences. Virtually everyone understands that women can’t play professional football, and we don’t turn American society inside out fighting the “sex-blind sexism” and “male fragility” that keep them out. In like manner, we must accept that if the rules are fair, there will be very few blacks (and not many of some other groups) in the top schools or best jobs. And — this is crucial — this isn’t white society’s fault. Races are not equal in ability, and we know of no way to make them so.

Even Wikipedia, riddled with left-wing biases, in its article on Race and IQ concedes that “a 2001 meta-analysis of the results of 6,246,729 participants tested for cognitive ability or aptitude found a difference in average scores between black people and white people of 1.1 standard deviations,” which means a difference of about 15 IQ points.

It is not necessary to take a position on what causes the difference: genes, environment, or both. I think the evidence is overwhelming — and has been for half a century — that the difference is 50 to 80 percent genetic, but whatever its cause, the difference is stable, and no one has found a way to eliminate it.

It is not plausible that our species evolved into races as different as Eskimos and Australian Aborigines but that our brains and temperaments turned out to be identical. Average differences in ability are a far more parsimonious explanation than “systemic racism” or “white privilege” for differences in outcome not just in the United States but everywhere. And yet, there is fanatical resistance to this simple — and I believe scientifically valid — explanation.

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Why such fierce opposition? I suspect people fear two consequences: (1) Blacks would feel insulted and would riot. (2) Whites would despise blacks and mistreat them.

Would blacks riot if it were widely accepted that they have an average IQ of 85? Don’t they already do a fair amount of rioting? Why is that? I believe it is because American society unwittingly teaches blacks to hate whites. How can blacks help but hate whites when every voice in the county tells them that whites everywhere and always are scheming to hold them down, that the country was built on their backs, that every institution was deliberately designed to crush them?

The mainstream media promote this, preachers preach it, and politicians recite it. The $9 billion DEI industry — expected to grow to $30 billion by 2033 — teaches blacks and other non-whites that the majority population grinds them down.

This justifies black riots and even anti-white violence. The spark may be an ambiguous or even outright criminal police action, but the fuel is years of being told whitey hates and oppresses them.

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In a different argument, some say that race differences may be substantial, but we should keep quiet about them because the truth would plunge blacks into despair. This insults blacks. All of us must grow up and learn that we are not the smartest, most musical, best-looking, most athletic person in the world — or even on the block. This doesn’t plunge us into despair; it makes life bearable. It means that if we lose a race — or any other competition — chances are, it was because the better guy won.

Egalitarians refuse to let blacks grow up. They tell them that both individually and as a group, they are always being cheated. It isn’t healthy to think you are always being cheated. It is much better to accept limitations, develop strengths, and get on with life.

The idea that blacks must be shielded from the truth is similar to “woke” fears that “microaggressions” or “unconscious bias” wreck their lives. During the 2020 “racial reckoning”-BLM riots, some white liberals carried signs that said, “White silence is violence.” The idea was that unless whites were actively speaking out against racism, they were committing “violence” against non-whites, especially blacks. This either ascribes superpowers to whites, who can torment non-whites by doing nothing, or reduces non-whites to helpless puppets.

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Whites think they are doing blacks a favor by denying or excusing their failures or incompetence. Instead, they are telling them not to grow up.

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And blacks would benefit enormously from race realism. They would stop going through life convinced they were cheated. They would lose much of their resentment of whites. They would learn the invaluable lesson that success or failure depends overwhelmingly on their own talents, not what whites think of them.

How would race realism affect whites? Would it unleash hatred and violence? It is true that the United States had slavery, lynching, Jim Crow and segregation. However — and this is crucial — it did not take anything like today’s obligatory belief in perfect biological equality to abolish those things. Whites who did not think blacks, on average, were their intellectual equals still agreed that slavery and second-class citizenship were wrong.

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Black/white relations — and no one claims they are good — would benefit enormously from race realism. If many blacks did not obviously resent whites, race relations would be much less fraught with tension. If whites didn’t have to worry constantly about “privilege” and “microaggressions” and “unconscious bias,” they would have less reason to avoid blacks and better relations with the ones they know.

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Real peace may come only when different groups are free to go their separate ways, but if we are to live together, we will be less unsuccessful if we build a society on a realistic understanding of race rather than on fantasy.