VFR’s solution to the race problem in America
(Note: since posting this last night, I’ve revised the opening of my reply.)
Edward K. writes:
I have been perusing your website VFR for the past few weeks. I agree with you on a lot of things, as well as with many of VFR’s posters.
There has been a lot written about Obama at VFR the past few weeks. Obviously there is a race problem in the U.S. on many levels. However I do not see that VFR posits a solution. This intrigues me because VFR addresses the Muslim problem in Western civilization with a ready solution in hand—deport Muslims and close the doors to any further Muslim immigration. A concrete proposal.
Yet I see no concrete VFR solution offered to the race problem in America. There is a lot of posting concerning the black problem of crime, IQ, hatred of the US. But I do not see a concrete solution offered by VFR as is given for the Muslim problem.
Is it that VFR cannot resolve the status of blacks in America due to the historically intertwined nature of races in America? What prevents VFR from offering a concrete and detailed solution as specific as the one it offers for the Muslim problem? Is there a fundamental ambiguity as to the role of blacks in America that VFR cannot resolve? Are Muslims “external” enough from the American experience that a solution can be scoped out regarding them whereas blacks are too “internal?”
If and once the Muslim dilemma is solved (whatever the solution), the black problem will remain a thorn in America’s side.
Thank you for any consideration concerning this topic.
LA replies:
True, I have never offered a concrete and detailed solution as specific as the one I offer for the Muslim problem. But I have laid out basic principles. Let me restate them here.
Given the significant differences between blacks and whites in intelligence, law-abidingness, and cultural identity, as well as blacks’ enduring and unappeasable resentment of whites (chillingly predicted by Jefferson 220 years ago and confirmed today by Barack Obama when he justifies Jeremiah Wright’s anti-white hate as a permanent feature in American life), it seems to me that blacks represent an intractable problem for America. Yet, probably because blacks are also historically so much a part of America, I have never had the thought that “they don’t belong here,” as I think about Muslims and other unassimilable immigrant groups. At the same time, it is clear that in the absence of any group solidarity on the part of the white majority, which has been the case since the 1960s, the anti-white group solidarity of blacks, facilitated by the anti-white liberal elite, grows more and more aggressive. We thus have the phenomenon of organized and socially accepted anti-white racism in this country, seen in Obama’s church and how many other black churches, as well as in the liberal news and entertainment media and in the schools and universities, with no force in American life that can effectively oppose it. The moral surrender of the white majority to blacks has provided the paradigm for white surrender to all nonwhite and “oppressed” groups in the world, setting in place a pattern that cannot end but in the destruction of America and the West.
Therefore I believe that a key to saving our civilization is a renewed sense of collective identity on the part of the white majority. If the majority re-asserted itself as the majority and once again set the tone and standards for our culture; if the majority let blacks know that they are the minority, and that all white racial guilt is over; if the majority let blacks know that we (the majority) far from being guilty, recognize that the minority is very fortunate to be in this country, that we know that the races are different in abilities and that equality of outcome is not in the cards and that we are not going to stand for any more anti-white double standards; if we let them know that we know that blacks are far more violent and specifically dangerous to whites and that we are not going to apologize for knowing this and dealing appropriately with it; if we told blacks that any kind of anti-American black nationalism of the Farrakhan-Wright type is totally unacceptable in this country and will not be tolerated, and that any black persons adhering to that view will be encouraged to leave America and move to Africa; if, further, we dismantled most of the civil rights legislation, leaving in place the 14th Amendment in its original meaning of protecting people’s basic human rights and such acceptable parts of the civil rights laws as the public accommodations provisions of the 1964 Civil Right Act; if we allowed local segregation including school segregation to occur naturally again, while still leaving doors of opportunity open to blacks strictly on the same standards as whites, with whites relating to individual blacks on a basis of common humanity and common American citizenship; if, further, the white majority reformed itself morally, eliminating the moral libertarianism of post-1960s America which has been so devastating to blacks, and whites returned to bourgeois-Christian self-restraint and traditional morality, meaning most of all the centrality of marriage, and requiring the same of blacks; if all these things were done, we could have a society with a moral and confident white majority co-existing in peace with a moral and well-behaved—or at least not catastrophically badly behaved—black minority, a society in which the dominant culture would remain predominantly white, and individual blacks could be a part of that culture on the condition that they were good Americans and good citizens.
My solution is a combination of traditional liberal individualism and race-conscious cultural majoritarianism. It expresses the moderate traditionalist principle that if a society based on individual rights and freedom is to endure, it must be held together by a moral/cultural authority that puts restraints on individualism. It requires that whites maintain continually a sense of themselves as the majority that leads and sets the standards. That is very demanding. But the alternatives are all worse.
Of course all mainstream conservatives and liberals would see my ideas as a hideous manifestation of extreme racial backwardness. But what is their program? What future do they hold out for America, other than continued mass immigration, enforced equality, mandated diversity (remember the mainstream conservatives’ almost total silence after the Grutter v. Bollinger decision that implanted race preferences in the Constitution?), racial intermarriage (their default “solution” for the catastrophic diversity their policies have brought about), and the end of America’s white majority, which means the end of a cultural dominant population that identifies with America as a historic country, and thus the dissolution of America as a historic country?
Why should people whose ideals require them to destroy America and the white West—why should people whose ultimate solution to the unmanageable racial diversity that their liberal ideals have unleashed is a global social engineering program of racial intermarriage aimed at eliminating all the races of mankind—be treated with any intellectual respect?
At the same time, even many right-wingers and race-conscious conservatives will say that my ideas are off the planet, and that the very impossibility of what I’m proposing leads to the conclusion that we must simply keep muddling through as we are or else split up the United States into racially segregated regions.
My answer is, first, that what I have described is, in most respects, the way America was prior to the mid 20th century. The society I’m describing has already existed, so it’s not utopian. But it lacked one thing; the race realism that is required to see the necessity and rightness of such a social order, and to have the will and vision to maintain it.
Second, racial separation, meaning whites giving up on the United States and withdrawing into all-white regions, would be just as difficult to achieve as the restoration of Anglo-European majority America that I propose. So why not go for the restoration of our country, instead of accepting the end of our country?
Third, what I am doing here is laying out principles of social order that stand as a critique of what we have now. Even if we fail to bring about what I propose, grasping these principles would give us a moral and intellectual basis for resisting the current liberal anti-white orthodoxy, whatever form that resistance may take. At present we lack any solid ground on which to fight that orthodoxy.
Here are a few of my articles touching on these themes.
My Views on Race and Intelligence
What is European America?
How the 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial group entitlements inevitable
Guilty Whites
Also, my 1994 speech/article:
Multiculturalism and the War against White America
- end of initial entry -
Karen writes from England:
Your solution to the black problem seems hopelessly naive. Blacks, due to their inherent characteristics and capacity for extreme barbarism, all of which you have accurately defined and described, pose an intractable problem for white America. Blacks, although a minority, have higher birth rates than whites and their percentage of the popuation will rise over time. The racial differences are too great for whites and blacks or Asians and blacks ever to live in the same country under the same conditions without provoking intense hostilities.
I can see only two viable long term solutions to the black problem—apartheid or deportation. Black societies are so highly dysfunctional and so backward in terms of education, culture, society and economics that blacks should be completely separated from white society allowing them to develop (or just maintain) their own societies at their own pace.
Removal of blacks from white society would reduce their capacity to act violently towards whites. However apartheid could be just a temporary solution as burgeoning black populations living in enclaves would soon erupt into South African style riots and violence against the white “oppressors.” Thus eventually blacks would have to be deported to Africa. The expulsion of blacks from America would allow blacks to return to their roots and cultural homeland and relieve America of an exploding economic and social burden.
The imposition of standards and culture on primitive peoples by soft methods never works. The America of the past is gone. The USA is a changed place and blacks are more numerous and geographically dispersed. They are also more dysfunctional than in the past with higher rates of crime, drug abuse and family breakdown. The end of segregation and rising equality with whites, however that has been achieved, has fostered greater racial resentment. Tough measures are needed and their is no place for blacks in a white European society.
LA replies:
The black population is not exploding relative to that of whites. It has remained at 12 or 13 percent of the U.S. population for a long time. Blacks have been bypassed in numbers by Hispanics. Blacks do not represent the same kind of threat to America as Hispanicization and Islamization.
I do not have as negative a view of blacks as you do. Many many blacks are fully capable of functioning in our society. With the restored cultural majoritarianism that I speak of, combined with a return of normal segregation at the residential and community level, I think that the worst of black behavior and anti-white attitudes would subside or be contained.
Also, if you think my proposal for a renewed majoritarianism is unworkable, how much more unworkable is your proposal to deport all blacks from America! Think of what would have to be done to set them up and maintain them elsewhere. Your idea is vastly more utopian than mine.
Karen replies:
Please do the math. If blacks have maintained their percentage of the population at 12-13 percent of the total despite the mass immigration of Asians and Hispanics, and a rapidly declining white population percentage, then their absolute numbers must have increased substantially. Whilst they don’t present the immediate threat that Hispanics and Muslims present, this is because they are more dysfunctional and less well organised. The percentage of blacks who can function normally in white society is less than 50 percent. Thus they represent a considerable economic and social burden. Having sampled the idea of equality, they will not readily abandon it in favour of a dominant majority culture and segregation.
Mark Jaws writes:
I agree with Karen. Even those “many many” blacks who can function in our society will fight your majoritarian approach tooth and nail. I do not advocate deportation, but separatism is the only answer.
Randy G. writes:
You wrote in response to Karen that, “How much more unworkable is your proposal to deport all blacks from America!” I wouldn’t consider it to be any less workable than deporting all illegal immigrants and Muslims.
You also wrote that, “Many many blacks are fully capable of functioning in our society.” “Many” is a relative term. However if one looks realistically at statistics, one in two black high school students will not graduate. One in ten black males has spent time in prison. 80% of murders in any city are committed by blacks. The majority of black babies are now born out of wedlock. Don’t these statistics negate the term “many” as functional, especially since you repeated the word twice (“many many blacks”)?
Do a few functional blacks make up for the overwhelming dysfunctional nature of most blacks? How much money has America in fact spent on the black race that could have been spent better elsewhere? If they are here as a result of our importation, we can easily reverse this by deportation. If we did the first, we can do the second.
LA replies:
This is unthinking and morally obtuse. How can you equate deporting illegal aliens back to their country with kicking out blacks whose ancestors have lived here for almost 400 years? And where would we send them? We would literally have to create an entire country for them and maintain them there. It would be like Liberia to the nth power.
Bill in Maryland writes:
Karen admonishes Mr. Auster: “Please do the math. If blacks have maintained their percentage of the population at 12-13 percent of the total despite the mass immigration of Asians and Hispanics, and a rapidly declining white population percentage, then their absolute numbers must have increased substantially.”
This is from CDC National Vital Statistics Report, Volume 56, Number 6:
Table 5. Live births, birth rates, and fertility rates by Hispanic origin of mother and by race for mothers of non-Hispanic origin: United States, 1989-2005 Fertility rates are live births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years in specified group. For year 2005, the Fertility Rates are:
Mexican 107.7 Puerto Rican 72.1 Cuban 50.4 Non-Hispanic White 58.3 Non-Hispanic Black 67.2
The black rate is higher than the white, but not by much; once one factors in the higher mortality rate of black babies and the higher death rates of young blacks from violent crime and AIDS, there will probably be rough parity between the two. The scary Mexican number is in part a result of the younger overall age of Mexicans. That does not make it less scary.
Mr. Auster writes:
”..if the majority let blacks know that we (the majority) far from being guilty, recognize that the minority is very fortunate to be in this country, that we know that the races are different in abilities and that equality of outcome is not in the cards and that we are not going to stand for any more anti-white double standards; if we let them know that we know that blacks are far more violent and specifically dangerous to whites and that we are not going to apologize for knowing this and dealing appropriately with it;”
This will paradoxically benefit blacks, because if their nonsense is openly ridiculed by whites they will be compelled to prove themselves through actual achievement; blaming their failures on somebody else will no longer be an option. Blacks are exquisitely attuned to the way whites regard them, despite what they may imply to the contrary. This, I think, explains why black pathology has *worsened* since the 60’s. When blacks ceased to be regarded openly by whites as second class citizens, the impulse to prove their worth in white terms evaporated. Media liberals who think they are helping blacks by minimizing their failures and ignoring their self-serving lies are a major part of the problem.
LA replies:
Well put. Assimilation says: “You are not at present a full member of this society. In order to become one, you’ve got to adopt our ways and behave like us. If you don’t adopt our ways and behave like us, then you will remain on the margins.”
In other words, assimilation implies discrimination. A society that prohibits discrimination eliminates the very possibility of assimilation.
Once again we see how reality is the exact opposite of what liberalism says it is.
Steven K. writes:
Terrific and well thought out essay on the seemingly intractable race problem in our country. At the recent Amren conference Sam Dickson suggested that eventually repatriation will have to be attempted. As utopian as it sounds, that will never happen. If it does it would only be as the consequence of a bloody racial war which would be a disaster. Breaking up the country into separate enclaves is also unworkable. Your suggestion of the majority white European population reestablishing it’s moral and cultural hegemony is the only workable solution. However, observing the cow-like and placid expression and undisciplined overfed bodies of the majority of white people leave little room for optimism.
LA replies:
Thank you.
“…the cow-like and placid expression and undisciplined overfed bodies of the majority of white people…”
You said it.
Ryder writes:
I would argue that Karen’s view is closer to reality.
You accurately note that your solution is largely a return to America as it was for most of its history. The problem, of course, is that this history took us precisely to the disastrous results that we are experiencing today. Multiracial societies don’t work, at least not very well. Multiracial America certainly isn’t working for whites, who are facing rapid displacement and marginalization in the country their forefathers created. Frankly, possible extinction looms on the horizon. Why reaffirm multiracial America? Why seek to maintain it, albeit under new rules (even if it were possible to do so)?
There is no point in simply trying to turn the clock back by fifty years, only to begin again down the road to conflict and destruction. We’ve fought a cataclysmic war at least in part over this issue, we’ve endured Reconstruction, we’ve endured the rape and murder of huge numbers of our people. Some were raped and killed today, more will join them tomorrow. This is not to mention other problems and costs far too numerous to catalogue. If the best we can do is turn the clock back fifty years, just to start the whole ugly process over again, it’s just not worth it. We must learn from our mistakes, and multiracial America is assuredly a mistake.
The history of world civilizations show us that, in the long run, segregation fails. It can be a short term solution, but not a long term one. The historical record clearly demonstrates that ethnostates work far better than internal segregation. That’s the reality, and them’s the breaks. Blacks and other races have every right to control their own destiny and enjoy self-determination. They do not have the right to control the destiny of whites. Again, history shows that the ethnostate is the only realistic way to achieve the goal of a people controlling their own destiny. Whites must have this no less than other peoples.
As to feasibility, your solution would be every bit as hard to accomplish as the creation of the ethnostate on American territory or some form of gradual deportation (as advocated by Jefferson and some other Founders, by the way). There is no way in the world that blacks are going to let the clock be turned back fifty years without a fight, and I don’t blame them.
So there is going to be a hard conflict no matter what, or America will simply become Third World and all will be lost. Anyone who thinks we can get out of this current situation without considerable strife is dreaming. Again, them’s the breaks. Nobody said the choices will be easy or the road smooth. But if there is a conflict (in whatever form that may take), and if whites win it, the solution must be something that will work long term, not just turning the clock back a bit. To go back to 1950 would be much akin to a fireman risking his life by entering a burning building to rescue a damsel, and then dropping her off just barely outside the burning building. Sure, he helped her, but she is still so close to the flames as to be endangered. Why not carry the victim a little further away, so she will really be safe? As long as he took the risk, why not get the job done properly?
In other words, it would take so much conflict and effort to achieve your vision, that you might as well consider Karen’s view (or some variant thereof). On this issue, in for a penny, might as well be in for a pound. Might as well get a real solution out of it that can work for all peoples, as opposed to returning to a paradigm that history shows us simply will not work over the long haul.
LA replies:
I don’t dismiss any of your concerns, though I disagree with your solution.
Also, in one key respect, the most important respect, my idea is not turning back the clock. Americans did not have explicit consciousness of the importance of race back then.
Hannon writes (April 4):
Just wanted to say thanks for posting the piece in response to the person who asked after your position on a concrete approach to the dilemma of blacks in the US. I agree with your response and have felt the same—that, in spite of all the animosity (and much worse) between whites and blacks, there can be no question they are a part of America. They have been increasingly assertive in expressing their worst and best tendencies while we have stood by and watched, eager to see them or help them do whatever it takes to succeed. Giving up our own social success and identity along the way has done nothing to improve the lot of either party.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 01, 2008 10:16 PM | Send