White Like Us

May 22, 2009

For a webzine attempting to carve out an “Alternative Right,” and one dedicated to a fearless assault on PC in all its varieties, the topics of “race” and “white identity” are bound to come up”along with some questions that make most modern-minded Americans squirm in their chairs: Is race real? (Genetically speaking, that is, and not just as a cultural gloss or a wicked construct of bourgeois economic domination). If so, should race play a part in politics, especially with regard to immigration and the culture wars? No one here much likes Al Sharpton, but should us white folks consider rallying behind a paler-skinned version? Is “Western Civilization” all about white people?

It should be obvious to any regular reader of Taki’s Magazine what our answers to the second question (white identity politics, a white Al) are. Takimag is not a “white nationalist” website. And a few of our contributors have argued that discussions of race or whiteness are entirely unhelpful (or even immoral) and should be avoided.

On this last contention, I disagree. In our increasingly globalized world (it’s not just a clichÃ©), race hasn”t been obscured or overcome, as many had hoped, but heightened and magnified”and contemporary white consciousness, if we”re to use this term, is so complicated and bizarre (more on that below) that no serious cultural publication should refrain from discussing it. And for the record, I don”t have any problem with asking Jared Taylor, probably the most prominent “white nationalist” in America, to offer a contribution on the subject. Though I was a bit surprised that after I asked him to write something on “white consciousness: a state of confusion,” he delivered an essay that seems to be warning against the dangers of miscegenation (even though less than five percent of marriages in America are mixed.) Though to be fair, I sense that Taylor’s main objection is not so much to miscegenation itself as to white leaders” treating it as righteous, transcendent, and necessary, which, I agree, is quite odd.

But back to the point. Why should we delve into these inconvenient, career-ending topics?

Well, first off, glimpsed in a host of different activities, from Whole Foods shopping to NASCAR, heterogeneous white consciousness is fascinating. Most American whites aren”t like the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie depicted in Stuff White People Like; however, the website does get at the irony and ambivalence, and no small amount of self-deception and self-loathing, that composes contemporary white consciousness. Take for instance these five Stuffs:

“¢ #14 Having Black Friends
“¢ #116 Black Music That Black People Don”t Listen To Anymore
“¢ #107 Self-Aware Hip Hop References
“¢ #7 Diversity (“but only as it relates to restaurants”)
“¢ #8 Barack Obama (“Because white people are afraid that if they don”t like him that they will be called racist.”)

The faux anthropological tone of SWPL is subversive, and has right-wing implications, in that it reveals the PC charade of so many whites” public behavior. As Steve Sailer has written on numerous occasions, for elites, PC is a workplace battle royal in which whites (and Asians) compete for status and jobs fighting over who’s more tolerant, diversity-embracing, and generally Obamawonderful. As I”ve learned from some friends who work at large law firms at New York, the entry fee for the game is an abiding respect for diversity and the institution of gay marriage and a intuitive knowledge of when and when not Asians and Jews are considered protected classes and when and when not to mention in a hiring session that a gay applicant might “add to diversity.” (I”ve even noted that megafirms like Kirkland and Ellis have taken to holding outreach hiring fares for potential “GLBT” associates”which, no doubt, have inspired many straight white guys to do a Tootsie routines, camp it up a bit and hope to land a super job as a diversity hire.) And as Sailer points out in his Takimag essay, the elites that take part in all this are aware that it’s blue collars whites and those bereft of perfect rÃ©sumÃ©s and 1400 SAT scores who are actually getting screwed over by affirmative action, and not them.

Some play the game cynically; some simply don”t think about it; some actively believe in it all and think that embracing diversity is an act of great virtue. What’s most important is that whites have instituted the PC regime on themselves (and rigorously enforce and maintain it). No alien power or coalition of disgruntled minorities have forced whites to act is such stupid ways and believe such stupid things; it’s all been the fault WASPs, Jews, and other shades of blanche. Ending state-enforced PC (anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, quotas etc.) is certainly a laudable goal (and at the moment commands majority support); however, I doubt, this would mark an end to the self-enforced PC that one finds in levels of private organizations. Recognizing this fact is more helpful in understanding contemporary white consciousness than thinking about traditional folkways.

Moreover, while a great many blacks might enjoy the benefits of affirmative action, and might even support Al Sharpton in one of his Public Shamings, very, very few of them genuinely believe in Diversity Dogma quite like whites do. Indeed, most blacks I”ve known are refreshingly heretical when it comes to PC (that is to say, honest-er.)

And it’s also wrong to pretend that PC is simply an elite phenomenon (even if, granted, a great deal of PC legislation has been instituted from above and kept from public view.) Movement conservatives and the paleos have often thought of themselves as waging war on the “Cultural Marxists” in the universities, who are out to destroy Western culture and America’s traditions. And it’s well and good to go after things like the Frankfurt School, ThugNiggaIntellectual, and the U.C. Department of the History of Consciousness, which have all been destructive. It’s more difficult, and painful, of course, to come to terms with the fact that every major Christian congregation, from the Roman Church to the Southern Baptist Convention to Bob Jones U. (which once forbid interracial dating), has embraced something in the line of the Psychic Unity of Mankind“that is, not so much a respect for “the other” but a saccharine one-world altruism. Pope Benedict, for example, who many tell me is a staunch conservative, has openly advocated, along with something that sounds a lot like socialism, the need for whites to achieve solidarity with all non-whites by letting them all into their countries. (One is reminded of Spengler’s line about “Christian theology [being] the grandmother of Bolshevism.”) And there doesn”t seem to be much evidence that a sizeable majority of believers, including many who identify as “conservative,” don”t generally adhere to the Pope’s worldview, if not all of his policy proscriptions.

Jared Taylor might want whites to unite as a group, and, perhaps, from a purely utilitarian point of view, it might be in their best interest to do so. However, white consciousness remains (hypocritically) egalitarian”and this “state of confusion” is a product not simply of cultural Marxist brainwashing but Christianity itself. An activist white consciousness is probably not possible, regardless of whether it’s desirable.

This being said, there remains a pressing need for the people of the West to develop dignified and rational ways of relating to peoples of other races and cultures”and without resorting to the nauseating “anti-racism” and one-world-ism we”ve all been hooked on since the “60s. For this, real honesty about ourselves is a good place to start.