America must have race realism

Without it, legitimate white interests will be undermined and racial tensions will roil the country.

Written by Jared Taylor.

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 to pay blacks the difference.

On this basis, a government-appointed commission in California wrote a 500-page report that calculated a state debt of about half a million dollars to each black resident descended from slaves. The total payout would amount to more than five times the annual state budget. The state will never make those payments, but the assumption that it is only oppression that makes blacks fail has led to many other injustices and inefficiencies. Blacks and other non-whites are pushed into jobs they can’t handle while whites are held back and blamed for the failures of others. Standards — some of them basic rules for maintaining livable cities — may be abolished if non-whites cannot meet them.

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.

Nathan Cofnas reports that Noam Chomsky, for example, says studying group differences in IQ could have dangerous consequences and that only “racists, sexists, and the like” could have any interest in the subject. Howard Gardner — known for his theory of “multiple intelligences” — thinks the subject should not be studied because the results “are likely to be incendiary.” Distinguished intelligence scholar Robert Sternberg says that there are rules of “good taste” in research, and to study group differences would be “bad taste.”

In another paper, Dr. Cofnas cites Tufts University Professor Emeritus Daniel Dennett: “If I encountered people conveying a [group-hereditarian] message I thought was so dangerous that I could not risk giving it a fair hearing, I would be at least strongly tempted to misrepresent it, to caricature it for the public good.” He would deceive people for the public good.

James Flynn of the “Flynn Effect” writes that “If universities have their way, the necessary research [on race and IQ] will never be done … It is always just far more important to establish whether squirrels enjoy The Magic Flute.”

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.

As Amiri Baraka, former Poet Laureate of New Jersey, explained, the white man has it coming to him:

You can’t steal nothing from a white man, he’s already stole it. He owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open up if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall mother fucker this is a stick up!

This is why blacks talk about “uprisings” rather than riots. Murder, robbery, looting, and arson are an understandable, even healthy response to centuries of oppression. Black hatred and violence are the worst and most obvious consequence of suppressing the truth about race.  

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.

Most people don’t get angry on account of averages. Many whites assume that East Asians are better than whites at math and science. White college students often look around the room on the first day of class and if there are too many Asians, they take a different course. Does this plunge them into despair?

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.

Blacks may not be as resistant to race realism as most people think. Anecdote is not science, but it can illuminate. In the 1990s, I spoke on several college campuses about the latest findings on race and intelligence. I will never forget my first talk. It was at Temple University Law School. My heart sank as I looked out over the audience, which was at least one-third black. I suddenly felt a terrible dread of the talk I was about to give. Could I really say these things to black people? However, I had studied the subject carefully, was convinced I understood the data, and believed that truth is always better than ignorance.

I forced myself to the podium and gave the talk I had prepared. No one interrupted me, but when I offered to take questions, a black man stood up, called me a racist and stormed out. The other black students then kept me on my feet for 45 minutes with questions about historical trends, research methods, international comparisons, etc.

Afterwards, several blacks walked up to me, shook my hand, and told me how interesting my talk had been. To my surprise, they were not just polite; they were cordial. I had similar experiences every time I gave that talk. White students said practically nothing, but black students were keenly interested, asked questions and were friendly.

I thought a lot about this, and I think I understand those students. Race and intelligence is an interesting subject. It explains what we see with our own eyes. Blacks must wonder about this themselves. The ones who attended my talks were smart, college- or graduate-level men and women who probably knew many blacks who were not successful. They knew that people have different talents; why not races? Those students were clearly curious about a subject that everyone tells them is taboo. I have since come to know a dozen thoughtful blacks who are race realists and hold no grudge against whites.

But why were those students so cordial? I think it was because they had had an honest conversation with a white man about race. I didn’t talk down to them. I explained the facts as I understood them, answered questions as best I could, and I evaded and sugar-coated nothing. This was an intellectual intimacy that they probably didn’t expect — I certainly didn’t expect it — and they appreciated it.

How typical were those students? I don’t know, but I think blacks are more open to heresy than people believe. They often see through the evasiveness and hypocrisy of white liberals. They want to be treated like adults, not children.

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.

For all of American history, up until the 1950s or ’60s, most Americans took it for granted that blacks were not, on average, as smart as whites. National Review opposed integration and civil rights laws. It supported South African apartheid. This cartoon from its June 13, 1957, issue mocked racial egalitarianism:

Source: June 13, 1957 issue of NR.

But National Review was never nostalgic for slavery, never approved of violence, and vehemently denounced whites who were violent. Race realists are not monsters.

Does this mean whites are spotless, that they love black people? No. Most of them, including most liberals, quietly arrange their personal lives not to include many blacks. They show by where they live, where they send their children to school, whom they marry, and whom they socialize with, that they prefer whites. However, in their public and professional lives, they treat fellow citizens as individuals. If IQ differences were broadly acknowledged, they would not suddenly start burning crosses. The huge majority would continue to give blacks a fair shake. Genuine, race-based animus or violence would be no more acceptable than it is today.

There may always be a few whites who burn crosses. Whatever their motives may be, it’s not because they read The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein.

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.

Finally, if society were honest about race, the forces that created Dylann Roof, Patrick Crusius, and Payton Gendron would be much weaker. Is it surprising that some young whites get angry when they are taught that they are oppressors, have no history to be proud of, and that their eventual replacement by non-whites will be a triumph of diversity? Violent, sickening acts are even more likely when dissident views are suppressed and called “hate” or “white supremacy.”

People who have a voice speak; people who are silenced express themselves in other ways. Brenton Tarrant is an Australian who shot up two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was opposed to mass, non-white immigration, which he thought threatened the white majority. I feel certain that if there had been a full, public debate on the pros and cons of Muslim immigration, and on the pros and cons of reducing the white percentage of the population through immigration, he would not have killed anyone.

First, if there had been such a debate, the majority would probably have opposed mass immigration, and there would have been no mosques to shoot up. Or, if after a thorough debate, the people of New Zealand had decided to welcome Muslims and Asians in such large numbers that whites could become a minority, Mr. Tarrant would have had no motive. He hoped to spark a mass movement of other angry whites, but it would have been absurd to murder immigrants whom the people of New Zealand had publicly and warmly accepted.

Suppressing debate on these important questions will produce more Brenton Tarrants; New Zealand has made it a crime to possess or distribute the “manifesto” in which Mr. Tarrant explained his deplorable actions.

What are the chances of ending the dogma of across-the-board racial equality? I have been working to end it for more than 30 years, and have therefore been branded a hate-monger by the SPLC and ADL, banned from virtually every social media platform, and have even been forbidden to travel to Europe. The dogma still has a terrible power to exact obedience and punish dissent — and yet, more and more people of all races realize that egalitarianism is wrong and destructive.

If the dogma reigns for another 30 years, many white Americans will give up on their country. They will not remain loyal to a society that blames them for being white and glorifies non-whites because they bring “diversity.” Many whites have already psychologically ceased to be Americans and are building white communities insulated from current racial norms.

Human beings have probably evolved to seek homogeneity, not diversity. Multiracialism may never be anything but a fight against the odds. None of the different forms of American race relations — slavery, emancipation, Jim Crow, segregation, court-ordered integration, legal equality, affirmative action, celebration of “diversity,” the current era of contempt for whites — has been a success. All can be seen as stumbling, sometimes immoral, sometimes well-meaning ways of trying to organize a society composed of people who would not naturally want to live together. The starkest divides have historically been between blacks and whites, but all color lines are fault lines, and in the best of times we have nothing better than uneasy cohabitation.

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.

Jared Taylor is the editor of American Renaissance and the author of If We Do Nothing.

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