Why is this category here?
What does racism have to do with USA version 2? The answer, I hope, is “nothing.” Sadly, however, it may well be the case that racism is the hammer used by progressive nihilists to destroy USA version 1. The fact that the founding of the US was roughly coeval with the rise of race-based slavery and scientific racism (which are both historical anomalies) is not causal either direction (see here for substantial evidence) but that coincidence of timing and the fact that slavery and racism persisted for far too long into our history is being used to falsely assert that racism is somehow fundamental to USA version 1.
Those wishing to destroy the USA version 1 (and Western civilization, for that matter) are using racism in an intellectually dishonest way to usher in “anti-racism” (or Kendiangelonianism) – by which is meant either totalitarian (Kendi) or White-hostile (DiAngelo) policies. Pluckrose and Lindsay have described this as “ending racism by seeing it everywhere.”
Even the discussion of these policies is making relations among various racial groups significantly worse. If USA version 1 is to survive the next couple of decades without some sort of civil war, we must move back to our prior trajectory toward nonracism and away from “anti-racism” which is itself racist, using any of the well-established definitions of the term. This sounds weird (and it is!) – that it is so important that we embrace “nonracism” instead of “anti-racism” – but our discourse has been seriously damaged by activists redefining language to suit their own purposes.
My hope is that if and when USA version 2 is needed, racism will no longer be an issue (so that this whole category can be ignored). But if it is, then our descendants need to know how to deal with it correctly to avoid the snares in which we seem to be entangled at the moment.
History (racism and slavery)
Humans are tribal. I am aware of no version of history that indicates anything other than this. As long as we lived mostly in small tribal groups, this characteristic actually increased local societal stability and cohesion, albeit at the expense of exacerbating conflict with the outside. For much of human history, only mutually beneficial trade has been a strong enough incentive to encourage cooperation among otherwise mutually hostile small groups.
Tribalism, though, is not racism – tribalism often has little to do with actual biological group differences. A small contemporary example: we Texans normally view our neighbors in Oklahoma and Arkansas with a mixture of pity and mild scorn. Objectively, I admit, one would be hard pressed to discern any significant difference biologically (or culturally, for that matter) between the population of, say, Cook County, Texas and Love County, Oklahoma (right across the border). And yet, when a Texan crosses the Red River southward on I-35 – ah, what relief! As the garish and tawdry WinStar Casino recedes in the rear-view mirror and the first welcoming Whataburger looms into view – indescribable! I suspect that my Sooner friends feel the same way when headed the opposite direction on the same route, though I have no idea why: my best guess is that they were raised wrong. This tribalism, though, is mostly of a good-natured variety that rarely produces violence, except when alcohol and/or football are involved. But, I digress…
As nation-states developed, they mostly did so via the aggregation of tribes into larger units – tribalism continued, just with bigger tribes. Even larger aggregations (empires) arose, and they differed as to how they treated their constituent nations – some forced integration into the “home” nation, others allowed the provinces autonomy, so long as rebellions were suppressed and appropriate tribute flowed. Even here, though, the concept of “race” was largely absent. Slavery certainly existed, but enslavement was the result of some misfortune – economic calamity, defeat in war, etc. There was really no notion of inherent inferiority or superiority of large groups based on biology or appearance. Everyone knew that the descendants of the group that we defeated and enslaved this time may, in fact, defeat and enslave our descendants next time. There were numerous reasons to prefer one’s own culture and proclaim it as superior to others, but biological group markers were typically not among them.
The eminent classicist Frank Snowden, Jr. studied ancient interactions between Mediterranean and African peoples, and concluded (principally in his magna opera, Blacks in Antiquity and Before Color Prejudice) that there was no significant prejudice related to skin color at that time. Victor Davis Hanson discusses similar evidence regarding interactions between Mediterranean and Nordic peoples to show that the ancient Greeks and Romans certainly weren’t biased in favor of “whiteness” – indeed, it’s clear that they would likely be confused by the current “black/white” dichotomy, regardless of which side of the line moderns think they should fall (as near as I can tell, they’re considered “white” now, though there was a time in the US when Italians and Greeks were definitely not “white”).
As history continued, the practice of slavery likewise waxed and waned, still largely based along tribal lines (in the case of slavery as an outcome of war) or economic lines (in the case of slavery as economic last resort). In fact, apart from a few odd Biblical interpretations (such as the theory, put forth in the Babylonian Talmud, that the three sons of Noah were the progenitors of the Asiatic, African and European peoples) most philosophers seemed to follow the reasoning of Hippocrates that “the forms and dispositions of mankind correspond with the nature of the country.” That is, that geography and climate (not biology) were the major driver of the customs and appearance of the inhabitants of a land.
In the late 16th century and into the 17th, however, early anthropologists decided to apply zoological taxonomic techniques to humans. They thus regarded appearance as primary, and grouped humanity into large, vaguely-similar-in-appearance aggregations they called (in some cases) “races.” These ideas continued to develop until Blumenbach’s “five races” in roughly 1779 (beginning here, though this first installment only mentions four of the eventual five races). Blumenbach himself seems to have been convinced that the groups were simply different without any sort of hierarchy (though he did believe, inexplicably, that Adam and Eve were Caucasians and all the other races “degraded” from there in response to environmental conditions). In particular, he was always careful to note that the wide variability within each of his groups was greater than the average difference between any of his groups. His students (who were many) however, were not necessarily so careful.
The unfortunate fact is that the beginnings of this scientific examination of the variety of humanity (and, like all embryonic scientific disciplines, they got a LOT of things wrong) coincided with arguably the first time in history when slavery could be reasonably viewed through a racial lens (at least by Europeans). The enslaved at that time were largely West Africans (who were mostly enslaved by other West Africans, but Europeans were generally unaware of that reality) and indigenous Americans (though these were less relevant to the European public perception of slavery, since they were typically enslaved in-place). From the perspective of the average European, then, the enslaved were all dark-skinned Africans (or, again, relatively dark-skinned Native Americans, if they were directly aware of those) and the slaveholders were all Europeans (though it’s unclear just how “white” those Europeans were, especially the largely-Mediterranean conquistadores). At the same time, a notion of global race division was being put forward among some scientists. This, then, appears to be the point at which innate human tribalism became something that most of us would now recognize as racism.*
As mentioned earlier, America is the only nation based not on blood or soil, but on an idea. This means that we had unique challenges in our formation and subsequent history, since the innate tribalism of our citizens pulls against national unity, not in favor of it. What should have happened is that “tribe” in tribalism should have been replaced by nationality (and in many cases, it was – this is the essence of “E pluribus unum“). Unfortunately, in many other cases, “tribe” was replaced by “race.”
This is undeniable, and, sadly, continues as a source of conflict through to the present day (as a child, I observed the Jim Crow South firsthand, and I’m not THAT old). What is also undeniable, though, is that we are working toward actually claiming our American birthright of “All men are created equal” and “E pluribus unum.” We have outlawed de jure disparate treatment based on race. “Racist” is now nearly universally regarded in America as one of the most derogatory epithets available. Decade over decade improvements in the participation level of members of ethnic minorities in every sector of American life are routine. Perhaps most tellingly, the fastest growing racial category in America is “multiracial.” Racism is being pushed out of every part of society. We are certainly not moving in that direction as fast as I would like, but I will say that we are moving faster than I once thought – in particular, I once believed that the generations earlier than mine would need to largely die out before any significant progress could be made in the struggle against racism. I now believe that I greatly underestimated the salutary effect of mixed-race grandchildren.
Even if we wish it were happening faster, though, we are arguably on track to consign racism to the same category as phrenology: a weird but once-widespread idea that arose from poor science and is now only present on the fringes of society.
And yet:
Kendiangelonianism
“Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’” – Thomas Sowell
In the 21st century, a movement rose to prominence which claims that America (and indeed all of Western civilization) is inherently, systemically racist. I prefer to denote this movement using McWhorter’s portmanteau of its two most currently prominent adherents (Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo): Kendiangelonianism. There are certainly significant differences between the work of these two, but there are enough similarities that they may be largely opposed monolithically.
This movement (or, more precisely, the power that this movement has been able to accrue) is harmful to members of all races and poisonous to their ability to usefully interact. It is beyond the scope of my essays here to fully explicate the scope and variety of the harm this toxin is causing to society – I will simply mention a few of their rhetorical techniques (which, as we will see, are similar to some of the “Long March” techniques of cultural Marxism), and describe a few allied ideologies (sometimes collectively referred to as Critical Race Theory), as well as providing extensive resources for further reading, and a few suggestions for USA version 2 in avoiding this pitfall in the future.
I also reiterate here that, while many of my other categories are listed as “anti”-something-or-other, this one is not. The reason for this anomaly is that Kendi in particular has co-opted the word “anti-racism” to mean something that is actually racist (using the pre-existent definition of racism). This redefinition of terms is a widespread tactic of many on the political left** (consider also the current redefinition of “gender” and the proponents of “antifascism” who seem to be unaware that fascism has an actual definition that differs from “stuff I really don’t like”).
* Left unanswered here is the question of “what is race?” or maybe more precisely, “what races are there?” Are we going with Blumenbach’s 5 races (Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, American) or the more recent 2 races (White and POC)? Where do the Holocaust and the Slavic persecution fit into this (the Nazis certainly thought they were race-based)? What about the Hutu-Tutsi conflict (again, its participants thought of it as racial, not tribal, with the marker largely being height rather than skin color – truly, though, the conflict was largely economic and remarkably similar to the farmer/rancher conflict in the American West) or the Han-Uyghur conflict (again seen as largely racial by its participants, but there are religious, economic and political reasons for the conflict as well)? The answer, unfortunately, seems to be that the definition of race is generally set by the racists – a group (or individual) bent on dominating another group will often begin by setting the parameters of the discussion so that the group to be dominated is a “different race,” so fundamentally “other” that the difference can’t be reconciled by compromise or cooperation. Definitions can then change as needed to suit various narratives. So, Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrants can be thought of as racially “other” by predominantly Anglo-Americans around the turn of the 20th century, but all of those are solidly “White” today.
Given that the definition of “race” seems historically to be set by those intending to harm or dominate the “out group,” it’s worth considering who is setting the current definition of “race” – we will see in subsequent essays that the definition of “racism” is being reworked so as to inherently, by definition, pit the “White race” against everyone else. Where do people of Latino, Asian, Jewish and Indian ethnicity fit in this dichotomy (to say nothing of recent African immigrants)? The answer, largely, seems to be that they are “White” if they are successful (or support vaguely conservative policies) and “People of Color” if not (see Brodkin’s How Jews Became White Folks for a discussion of this). Asian-Americans are currently discriminated against in college admissions with enthusiastic support from the Left**; as Latino citizens in the US become more successful and more conservative, I expect them to join the ranks of “honorary whites” in this regard. These definitions are all being (re-)set by people on the political Left. They claim that their (re-)definitions just reflect historical and current reality, but are they really “battlespace prep” for their next intended wave of race-based oppression?
Addendum: after writing this essay, a minor flap erupted in the news in which the entertainer Whoopi Goldberg (née Caryn Johnson, ironically) described the Holocaust as being “not about race” but rather about “two groups of white people.” She was suspended from her television show for two weeks for this, but her statement was in line with the then-current definition of “racism” on the website of the Anti-Defamation League (founded to combat anti-semitism). The ADL had recently changed their website definition of racism to fit the currently fashionable one preferred by the Left. But, the Goldberg brouhaha put an uncomfortable spotlight on this, so they changed it to an “interim” definition while they figure out what they really want to say (apparently, trying to figure out how to appease the Left while keeping the Holocaust as a textbook example of racism – FAIR has an excellent summary here). I couldn’t have invented a better example of what I was describing in the preceding two paragraphs!
** See here for what I mean by the political “left.”
Postscript: long after writing this post, I was gratified to see Glenn Reynolds produce a similar outline of an imaginary (but reasonable) law school course on the Historical Origins of White Supremacy.