A defense of ethnic identity

Ethnic identity is natural and healthy so long as it is constrained by universal human rights and moral decency.

Written by Simon Maass

Our society has grown contemptuous of ethnic identity. It has become old-fashioned, even abhorrent, to insist that one’s children marry someone of their own ethnicity. The Pew Research Center highlights “a steady increase in U.S. intermarriage” since 1967. While certain minority groups in the United States have become more averse to outmarriage during the twenty-first century, the mainstream outlet National Public Radio (NPR) could hardly hide its discomfort when reporting on that trend.

Wanting to live in an ethnically homogenous society is perhaps even more politically incorrect than opposing interethnic marriage. Yet the desire to preserve ethnicity is rooted in our nature as a species, and to dismiss it is dangerous, even if many of us ultimately decide to transcend it.

Ethnic identity is important for human thriving, though many modern thinkers denounce it. “We may ignore our ethnicity or deny it,” contended family therapists Monica McGoldrick and Joe Giordano, “but we do so to the detriment of our well-being.”¹In The Jewish Phenomenon, business executive Steven Silbiger explained what members of all ethnic groups can learn from the success of his (Jewish) ethnic group. Silbiger urged readers to acquaint their children with their “ancestral homeland.”² “Having a background and a heritage,” he advised, “helps immunize children from negative influences.”³ Solidarity with those who share one’s heritage is another ingredient: Chapter 2 is entitled Take Care of Your Own and They Will Take Care of You.

Jewish history also potently illustrates the value of marrying within one’s own ethnicity, since Jews and other minority groups would be extinct had they not rejected widespread intermarriage. If one celebrates diversity, then the extinction of ethnic groups should be cause for lament since it decreases the diversity in the world. And ethnic groups can only be preserved by eschewing intermarriage (or by assimilating other groups). Again, this may offend the modern sensibility, but real diversity requires boundaries and can only be preserved by promoting and protecting ethnic identity.

The importance of ethnic identity is also evidenced by so-called “middleman minorities,” homogenous trading groups which provide considerable economic benefits to the societies where they operate. As Barak Richman explained, close community ties are especially effective at providing the trust needed to close deals in high-risk industries. Hence, the diamond trade in certain cities is dominated by tight-knit minority communities, specifically Orthodox Jews and Jains. While it is not logically necessary for middleman minorities to be ethnically defined, it is so common that economist Janet Landa instead used the term “ethnically homogeneous middleman group.”

It is not yet politically incorrect to want to pass one’s culture on to one’s descendants. Yet culture cannot simply be divorced from ethnicity, as recent theorists have shown. For instance, evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success is all about culture, the “secret” of humanity’s unrivaled flourishing. Henrich noted that there are biases in how culture is transmitted. Thus, humans “preferentially learn from co-ethnics,” likely for evolutionary reasons.⁴ So genetic descent matters for the transmission of culture. Genetic descent also matters because people use visual cues to identify themselves and others as members of a group. Landa remarked that members of middleman groups have historically identified one another by “immutable physical characteristics.”

Ethnicity also has major effects on family dynamics. “Intermarriage,” McGoldrick and Giordano averred, “greatly complicates those issues that partners from a single ethnic group face.”⁵ The more different the partners’ cultures are, “the more trouble they will have in adjusting to marriage.”⁶ Yet as their edited anthology constantly illustrates, large differences exist even between ethnic groups which fall within the same conventional racial category. Separate chapters are dedicated to Amish, Anglo, Dutch, French Canadian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Scandinavian households. Eight more chapters concern various Jewish and Slavic groups. Accordingly, the authors stress that it is crucial for therapists to recognise “the ethnic differences even among European [i.e., white American] groups.”⁷

Other research has yielded similar findings. One team of authors summarised existing literature thus: “investigators find that intermarriages are less stable than intramarriages.” In line with McGoldrick and Giordano’s thesis, these scholars cited findings indicating that marriages are more vulnerable to divorce the more dissimilar spouses’ cultural backgrounds are. Their own study of over six million married persons in Sweden revealed that in marriages between Swedes and immigrants, “both partners” are in greater danger of suicide than when husband and wife are native Swedes. Couples composed of immigrants from different countries show elevated rates of suicide, whereas immigrant couples from the same country of origin are at less risk than non-immigrant Swedish pairings.

In short, inter-ethnic marriage can be costly not only for the ethnic group but also for the husband and wife. This was once common sense, and in media from before the latter part of the twentieth century, it was treated as such. For instance, a section of reporter Grace Ellison’s book Turkey To-Day covers the sisters Zeyneb and Melek, Turkish granddaughters of a Frenchman. In an escapade famous thanks to Pierre Lotti’s novel Les Désenchantées, they fled the Ottoman Empire in large part because their ethnic background made Turkish customs intolerable to them. Ellison describes Zeyneb as “an interesting and unhappy personality,” typical of “the super-sensitive offspring of these mixed unions.” The journalist then chides the women’s French grandfather, who moved to Turkey to wed a local woman: “he doubtless gave little thought, as few people do when they make these terrible decisions, to the Western blood he would bequeath to his grandchildren and make their lives unhappy.” Zeyneb’s own comment that her French and Turkish identities are “always at war” within her supports Ellison’s criticism.

Almost a century later, many children of multi-ethnic families suffer similar difficulties. One American study found that multiracial teenagers are far more prone to “risky/anti-social adolescent behavior” than both white and black juveniles. The authors chalk this disparity up to the mixed-race minors’ lack of “a natural peer group.” The last decade has furnished more studies showing that being multi-ethnic increases problems with mental health compared to people of one ethnicity. A 2024 review of previous research found that articles published on this subject from 2016 to 2022 generally showed such an association.

It is not just in marriage that Western societies today suffer from a dearth of ethnic particularism. Ethnic diversity in settings of all sorts is often claimed to be a “strength.” And perhaps it is, to a point, but past that point it is not. Economist Trung Vu calculates that excessive genetic homogeneity within a country increases political instability. In places with too much homogeneity, therefore, a bit of ethnic mixture can render social life more harmonious. However, once a certain measure of diversity is exceeded, higher heterogeneity increases rather than decreases instability. Vu plots a number of countries on a spectrum of genetic diversity, with the sweet spot somewhere between New Zealand and Japan. According to the 2018 Census, people of European descent constitute just over 70% of New Zealand’s population – not very diverse at all by current American standards. This, of course, provides a potent argument for limiting immigration. Interestingly, one study of Western European countries suggests that even when states do accept immigrants, those states which have “a more ethnic tradition of citizenship” are better at integrating them.

Diversity creates problems at countless sub-state levels, too. “For most countries,” begins one backgrounder by a major military think tank, “managing national and ethnic diversity in their military structures [entails] major challenges.” Likewise, the presence of ethnic diversity in a given locality reduces “social cohesion” and diminishes neighbourhood trust. Similar problems arise in commerce. As political scientist Murat Bayar discusses, “individuals of different races are more likely to cheat” in their dealings with one another, including “in business transactions.”

Why does ethnicity so pervasively affect behavior? One convincing explanation appears in sociologist Pierre van den Berghe’s The Ethnic Phenomenon.⁸ He argued that “ethnic nepotism” is an extension of humans’ – and other animals’ – evolved predisposition to favour their own kin. Ethnic attachments, in this view, are natural and likely ineradicable.

Van den Berghe does not, however, advocate for ethnic nepotism. Rather, he sees it as a problem to be understood and “confront[ed].”⁹ Dreading environmental catastrophe, he warned: “Unless we stop behaving naturally – that is, being our selfish, nepotistic, ethnocentric selves – we court collective extinction.”¹⁰That may sound appealing to utopians, but to conservatives who are sceptical of policies which depend on overcoming human nature, it is alarming. Of course, this does not mean that every natural behaviour is good or laudable. But it does mean that politics must confront human nature as it is, not as we want it to be.

Drawing on van den Berghe among other scholars, political scientist Frank Salter advocates for “universal nationalism.”¹¹ Salter maintains that people’s “genetic interests” in their groups’ continuity, being a matter of their own “genetic survival,” deserve to be taken seriously. Consequently, ethnic autonomy and territorial sequestration should be considered universal rights.

Despite the evidence we have surveyed, exhortations about the importance of ethnicity often provoke hostile responses: people are understandably wary of strong ethnic, especially racial, identification. They see skinheads and others who loudly assert they are proud to be white,¹² and conclude that ethnic hatred is an inevitable sequela of ethnic pride. The truth is more complicated. Racists are motivated by hatred, not by pride. This point emerges over and over in the testimonies of ex-skinhead Frank Meeink. In a statement from 2017, Meeink describes the recruitment tactics he witnessed while part of the subculture, recounting that outsiders were fed lines like “Come be proud of your heritage.” Yet the pitch, he says, was built on deception. “[N]ot once did these guys talk about their heritage in meetings,” he notes, adding, “we never talked about what our culture did, it was what they’re doing.”

Such testimonies are consistent with systematic data. Thus, political scientist Eric Kaufmann referred to psychological research showing “that an attachment to one’s own group is not correlated with hostility to an out-group” absent “direct political competition or war.” In the United States, for instance, white people’s degree of affection for fellow white people appears “uncorrelated with” their attitudes towards their black compatriots.

People are strangely wary of ethnic identity and cohesion. Especially given the identity politics of recent years, there is a common assumption that ethnic divisions can easily be fatal for a racially diverse democracy. There is, of course, a grain of truth to this. Yet, modern America can tolerate, even thrive, with plenty of explicit (and implicit) ethnic identification, as Thomas Sowell’s fascinating Ethnic America shows.

In the 1930s, the country’s Jews took non-Jewish spouses at rates of just 5-9%, and in “the 1950s and 1960s,” the figure was still a mere 8% for New York City, though higher elsewhere.¹³ Weddings between German and Eastern European Jews in the United States were similarly uncommon well into the twentieth century.¹⁴ However, such practices did not require hostility towards outsiders. Sowell notes that, “low rates of intermarriage” notwithstanding, “Jews have historically had peaceful and even cooperative relations with other ethnic groups.”¹⁵

Even more striking is Sowell’s account of Italian-American history. He noted that, unlike their Irish countrymen, Italians in the USA “peacefully coexisted with highly diverse groups.” They lived in harmony with Chinese-Americans and, in the South, drew the ire of fellow whites through their friendliness to black people. Nevertheless, they remained opposed to “assimilation.”¹⁶ Even second-generation Italian-Americans almost never married out, and initially, couples tended to consist of “people from the same province – or even village – in Italy.” Marital unions between northern and southern Italians were nearly non-existent.¹⁷

Intermarriage was more common for for German-Americans, but remained a minority phenomenon in parts of the country as late as the 1960s. Between 1908 and 1912, less than a third of German-Americans in New York City engaged in it, even though their group did not constitute even a tenth of the city’s population.¹⁸ In any case, most German-Americans still married co-ethnics during the 1920s,¹⁹ so we can safely say that around that time this community, like everyone in the USA, was ethnocentric to an extreme degree by today’s standards. Yet this ethnocentrism did not at all express itself in indifference or hostility for the rest of American society. During the Civil War, thousands of German-Americans volunteered to fight for the Union. “Whole regiments of Germans were created, with their commands being given in the German language.”²⁰ Come World War I, “German Americans evidenced no divided loyalties.”²¹

Thus, it appears that close ethnic ties in a racially diverse democracy need not cause conflict, enmity, or disloyalty. This is not to suggest that an overarching national identity is unimportant, but rather to assert that strong sub-national ethnocentrism does not in itself preclude such an identity. Much more significant than the strength of ethnocentrism, one suspects, is the issue of which groups reside in a country. Bayar proposed the concept of “ethnic distance,” under which groups have less potential for mutual integration the greater the history of conflict between them. Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe, he contended, should thus prove particularly difficult to integrate. Years later, and especially in light of recent events, it is hard to reject his thesis.

Given everything we have seen above, a controversial verdict is justified: governments ought to maximise ethnic homogeneity. This implies restrictive immigration policies, though for an already highly diverse country like the United States this may be insufficient. Limits on migration between US states could present a solution, or unused territories could be converted into ethnically exclusive zones akin to the Indian Reservations. The country’s population density is extremely low, so there is land to spare. Of course, any such policies would be wholly voluntary. Forced displacement is morally repugnant.

We live in an age when ethnic diversity is celebrated at the same time as ethnic identification is regarded with suspicion. Today’s strange and even misanthropic contempt for ethnicity unmasks the ideal of “diversity” as self-defeating. As Doron Kornbluth says, “[i]f universalism indeed demands that smaller groups effectively give up their identities, then it actually fosters homogeneity rather than respect.”²² Amen – though the word “smaller” is superfluous.

Simon Maass holds a degree in International Relations. His writings on politics, art, and history have appeared in Providence, Cultural Revue, Redaction Report, Intellectual Conservative, the Independent Sentinel, the Cleveland Review of Books, and other publications. He also has a collection of poetry, Classic-Romantic: A Pamphlet of Verse, and writes on his own blog Shimmer Analysis.

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1. McGoldrick, Monica, and Joe Giordano. 1996. “Overview: Ethnicity and Family Therapy.” In Ethnicity and Family Therapy, ed. Monica McGoldrick, Joe Giordano, and John K. Pearce. New York: The Guilford Press, pp.1-30. P.1.

2. Silbiger, Steven. 2000. The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People. Atlanta: Longstreet Press. P.34.

3. Ibid..

4. Henrich, Joseph. 2016. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp.44-45 and elsewhere.

5. McGoldrick and Giordano, “Overview,” p.19.

6. Ibid..

7. McGoldrick, Monica, and Joe Giordano. 1996. “European Families: An Overview.” In Ethnicity and Family Therapy, ed. Monica McGoldrick, Joe Giordano, and John K. Pearce. New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 427-441. P.428.

8. Van den Berghe, Pierre L.. 1987 [1981]. The Ethnic Phenomenon. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

9. Ibid., p.xii.

10. Ibid..

11. Salter, Frank. 2017 [2003]. On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration. Germany: Taylor & Francis.

12. Or black, Asian, Hispanic, etc., but the white racists are, naturally, the main object of indignation.

13. Sowell, Thomas. 1981. Ethnic America: A History. New York: Basic Books. P.94.

14. Ibid., p.82.

15. Ibid., p.95.

16. Ibid., p.111.

17. Ibid., p.112.

18. Ibid., p.66.

19. Ibid..

20. Ibid., p.63.

21. Ibid., p.65.

22. Kornbluth, Doron. 2003. Why Marry Jewish?: Surprising Reasons for Jews to Marry Jews. Southfield, MI: Targum Press. P.110.