Caring about race differences is not a fetish

Critics accuse race realists of obsessing over race. But refuting widespread lies about race is not an intellectual failure or a fetish. It is a duty.

Written by Bo Winegard.

Those who talk openly and honestly about race differences in intelligence and crime (among other traits) are often castigated for having a bizarre or even sinister obsession with race. Critics even accuse them of fetishizing race, suggesting that their interest is like a degenerate paraphilia, a cognitive perversion that requires treatment not engagement.

I confess that I have been the target of such an accusation more than once, and the charge has always puzzled me. People study and discuss many things, from the popular to the obscure, from the normal to the bizarre, from the elevated to the mundane, and they are seldom accused of fetishizing their topic of inquiry. In social psychology, to take one example, scholars spend many years and resources studying multifarious forms of bias, many of which likely do not exist outside of a carefully controlled lab (or even in it).

Nevertheless, however much one may protest or lament this situation, the peculiar skepticism directed at those who discuss race differences is not limited to progressive ideologues or polemicists. It is widespread and sincere. Therefore, one must provide a satisfactory answer to the question, “Why obsess over race?”

I can think of at least two. The first is that race is an interesting feature of the human world. We are naturally curious about human differences, whether between sexes, races, or individuals, and we are inclined to discuss and study things about which we are curious. This requires no apology. In fact, it is a laudable manifestation of mankind’s most noble and elevated passion: The desire to know.

The importance of understanding race is augmented by its importance for understanding human evolution. Variation is one of the basic principles of natural selection. And human populations, like individuals, vary. Striving to understand and categorize this variation is not some niche hobby like wood working or stamp collecting (both perfectly respectable activities of course), nor is it some pedantic act of classification. Rather, it is integral to the study of human evolution.

To anticipate a retort: Of course, some people who are interested in race and human variation are motivated by malice. They want to support prior prejudices, to promote invidious distinctions, to derogate other races. But the same holds mutatis mutandis for almost any topic with political relevance. Many Marxists or equalitarians, for example, are interested in prejudice research so that they can advocate against whites and European civilization. Often, they are not even motivated by a sincere desire for justice, but by envy, bitterness, resentment. This unpleasant fact does not defile the study of prejudice in general. And the truth value of the empirical claims of the scholars is not affected by their underlying motives. A Marxist’s contention about the causes of the last recession might be true even if her motivates are anything but disinterested.

Furthermore, this does not change the basic fact that understanding human variation is essential for understanding human evolution. Writing about the evolutionary history of humans without discussing race (or some euphemism such as “population”) is like writing about physics without discussing gravity. It can be done, but not without a significant loss of knowledge.

The second answer, an answer that is likely more persuasive to those who are not scholars, is that racial progressivism (wokeism) is founded on a myth about racial sameness, and deference to this myth allows its poison to circulate through the arteries of important Western institutions, from the media to elite universities. Perhaps the intellectual death of these once hallowed institutions is now a fait accompli. But if we do not combat their superstitions and mendacities, their pestiferous influence will spread more widely before they perish.

As noted, the main tenet of racial progressivism is that races are roughly the same, with no reliable differences in psychological predispositions and aptitudes. Because of this, racial progressives contend that any disparity that favors whites and disfavors blacks—e.g., those in income, education, incarceration—is compelling evidence of racism. After all, if races are the same, then racial inequalities cannot be the result of inherent differences; they must be caused by some environmental force or another.

Anti-black racism is a plausible candidate since other possibilities such as an insalubrious or stultifying black culture seem to blame the victim and merely push the question back another step. For if the culture leads to bad outcomes, then why do black people celebrate it? Why do they spread it to their children? Why don’t they copy the vastly more successful culture that surrounds them instead?

Thus, progressives often busy themselves by searching for instances of racial disparities, writing poignant articles that bemoan the tragedy of being black in America or angry articles that rail against the iniquity of the racist status quo. And that raises an important challenge to those who understand the literature on race differences.

For although some high-minded people refrain from talking about race, other people do not. Especially progressives. They talk and write about race incessantly and zealously push their erroneous narrative about racial sameness and widespread racism. They deplore the West and foment hatred of its laws, norms, and institutions, using racial inequalities as their primary evidence of the its irredeemable wickedness. Disparities in lethal force against blacks are used to indict the criminal justice system; disparities in rates of expulsion are used to indict the K-12 educational system; disparities in earnings are used to indict the market system, and so on.

To refuse to talk honestly about race differences is voluntarily to relinquish the most powerful rebuttal to racial progressivism. For most people have been propagandized by our elite. They have been told repeatedly that they inhabit a racist society. They have been shown figures and tables full of racial disparities. They have been told that any attempt to explain these disparities that does not blame whites is racist. In fact, they have been told that race itself is a social fiction, an illusion that persists only because racism persists. They defer to this narrative not because they are inherently predisposed to believe it, but because it is the predominant narrative about race and other narratives are denounced, often with vehemence.

To battle this pervasive propaganda requires candor—it requires challenging racial progressivism’s fundamental assumptions directly. And that means studying and talking about race differences. Few people are aware that there is a large and incontrovertible IQ gap between blacks and whites. (No expert seriously disputes this gap, though they do debate its exact size—likely about 15 points). Similarly, few people are aware of just how large the disparity in homicide rates between blacks and whites is—and they would be shocked to encounter it on a mainstream news program. In major cities, the black homicide rate is often 20 times larger than the white homicide rate.

These and other race differences are crucial to know because they cast immediate doubt upon the regnant narrative about racism in the West. But mainstream sources almost never discuss them. In fact, they work assiduously to ignore and suppress them. And in the absence of accurate information, the progressive narrative spreads like a bizarre species of animal on an island without predators.

Contending that those who argue against this narrative and who point to undeniable race differences in IQ and criminal offense as the primary causes of many widely lamented disparities are “obsessed” with or “fetishize” race is like contending that Soviet dissidents were “obsessed” with or “fetishized” freedom. The appropriate response to widespread bunkum is resistance. And if that bunkum is used to promote unjust policies and anti-white sentiments, then the appropriate response is angry resistance.

Caring about race is not a mental perversion, an unhealthy cognitive quirk, or a symptom of underlying bigotry; it is a healthy, even courageous, response to an oppressive and dishonest regime whose authority is supported by codswallop. In my view, the more appropriate target for concern and censure is those who know that races are different, know that anti-black racism can’t explain current racial disparities, know that the West is threatened by progressive mendacities, and yet remain silent for fear that they may appear boorish or be excluded from mainstream outlets. While their intellectual courage and candor yield to other desires, we should be thankful that some people are “obsessed” enough with race to challenge the lies that currently dominate mainstream discourse. Of course, their honesty does not guarantee that the truth will prevail, but it is vastly preferable to the silent submission of their critics.

Bo Winegard is the Executive Editor of Aporia.

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