The American and The Race Question

The natural right to prefer the better to the worse, and one's own to the other.

Editor’s note: Socrates examined the most controversial moral opinions of his day. There are many today who admire Socrates, carefully study his words, but who then never undertake the careful examination of the most controversial moral opinions of today. My friend Phocaean is not afraid to do this and though many might be outraged by it, this is one of the most reasonable, dispassionate, and carefully thought through essays on the topic that you can find. Enjoy!

In the previous essay, “What Comes Next,” I set for myself the task of establishing the identity of the American, necessarily providing a satisfactory answer to the racial question in the process. – Defining the American necessarily raises the question of race, because every American believes in his heart that he has correct notions about race. Americans can agree to disagree about religious questions and economic questions, but Americans cannot agree to disagree about race. In fact, a great many disagreements in religion and economics stem from racial sensitivities. Furthermore, the racial question is perhaps the greatest barrier to there being an “American” identity: there may be no “American race,” but the “American” is required to satisfy racial concerns.

The racial question is, “how can I treat individuals of other races justly?” or “how can the American satisfy these countless racial concerns so that he can be an American?”

From The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump.

The two popular answers are that everyone should be treated the same regardless of their race (the “color blind” answer) or that historically marginalized peoples deserve deference and reparations from the historically privileged. That these are the two popular answers today is proof that sensible men lost the battle over the question of racial equality. The racial reparations approach is unacceptable, and the colorblind approach always leads to the racial reparations approach.

Colorblind Approach Becomes Affirmative Action & Reparations

The antiracists have captured academia with the argument that racial neutrality (color-blindness) is impossible and, when tried, perpetuates injustice.

THE COMMON IDEA of claiming “color blindness” is akin to the notion of being “not racist”—as with the “not racist,” the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity. The language of color blindness—like the language of “not racist”—is a mask to hide racism. (Kendi, Antiracist)

That is Kendi’s convoluted way of saying you can’t treat unequal people the same and call it equal treatment. Everyone is familiar with the “baseball game” antiracist meme, where true racial equality is symbolized by giving extra help to the disadvantaged. True racial equality requires affirmative action and reparations.

Are Kendi and the antiracists right? Conservatives have bent every nerve to asserting that they are wrong, that color-blindness is the correct answer.

I believe Kendi and the antiracists have a stronger argument than the “colorblind conservatives.” If you do everything in your power to ignore all traits outside of “merit” you incidentally “discriminate” against those groups of people who are “historically marginalized.” The right to prefer the better to the worse has to overcome the argument that the worse were made worse by society or history, in an unjust way. Otherwise, the attempt to avoid “discrimination” has always ended up in a preference for those “discriminated against,” i.e., at least practically speaking, “color-blindness” has always ended in an anti-white preference.

Leo Strauss used to say “to make everyone equal means you must give the unequal a boost.”

Either way, whether “affirmative action” follows from “colorblindness” as a necessary or merely probable outcome, affirmative action is intolerable because it includes a thousand unacceptable things in its wake. We cannot celebrate George Washington. Our schools have to excise Aristotle and replace “dead white men” with “diverse authors.” We can’t teach math like we used to teach it. We must continually pretend that all the favors being done, all the statues taken down, all the speech censorship that takes place, all the affirmative actions being taken, and so on: we have to pretend that all of this was owed, otherwise it would mean that blacks should be grateful for equality. (“Blacks can’t be grateful for being made equal, because they deserved equality in the first place.”) In sum: a commitment to colorblindness ends in a need to re-write history and jettison genuine education to assuage egalitarian sensibilities. Perhaps worst of all, in the name of racial equality, we must encourage ingratitude, which is to say, encourage lawlessness, because ingratitude and lawlessness are two names for the same passion in man.

The racial question is: how do we avoid these awful things without being wicked racists? Not so easy!

Supremacism

Thoughtful Americans have tried many times to avoid what is called “racial equality” because they knew it for what it was, namely, a racial communism that would lead Americans to renounce the history of the West and regret their nation. Demands for equality mean that the unequal must be preferred. Unfortunately, the thoughtful Americans who tried to excise the cancer of racial communism all adopted, to varying degrees, the “supremacist approach” to the question. Here is a quotation from Calhoun that exemplifies the supremacist approach.

Instead, then, of all men having the same right to liberty and equality, as is claimed by those who hold that they are all born free and equal, liberty is the noble and highest reward bestowed on mental and moral development, combined with favorable circumstances. Instead, then, of liberty and equality being born with man; instead of all men and all classes and descriptions being equally entitled to them, they are high prizes to be won, and are in their most perfect state, not only the highest reward that can be bestowed on our race, but the most difficult to be won—and when won, the most difficult to be preserved. (Speech on the Oregon Bill, 1848)

I contend that Calhoun’s aim is good, but that his argument is flawed. Indeed, the early 1900s Progressives tended to agree with Calhoun that only the advanced races deserve (can handle) freedom. The Progressives thought, “Calhoun is right, but the education and freedom of the lower races is the White Man’s Burden.” That is, even if some races were not prepared for freedom, they deserve it. The races capable of freedom should help those not yet capable.

Calhoun’s plantation would eventually be donated to SC for the establishment of a college. Clemson University, embarrassed by its origin, has indulged in the renaming frenzy.

Saying that some races are superior to other races is not materially different than saying some people are richer than other people; the communist-egalitarian can happily admit both facts, but he adds “and this should not be the case.”

I am not saying there is anything wrong with noticing racial disparities and wondering about the causes of those disparities. I don’t think there is anything immoral about biologists noticing biological differences between racial groups. The people who forced James Watson into retirement, who heap abuse on him and other scientists for their “racist views,” are not operating from the moral high-ground and will not win in the end.

All that I am saying is that even if blacks were found to be absolutely genetically inferior than other races, it would be no different than finding that some people are definitely richer than other people:

“Genetic poverty is as unjust as economic poverty; genetic privilege is as unjustly clung to as economic privilege. The privileged classes, whether they be genetically or financially privileged, have a duty to help the underprivileged. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Natural Right

There is a universal natural right to two things: to prefer the better to the worse, and one’s own to the other.

I cite Lincoln on the issue, not because he was the clearest thinker on this subject, but because no one can say he held this view of natural right as a mere pretext to perpetuate slavery.

Inasmuch as they [whites and blacks] cannot so live [on terms of social and political equality], I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. (Lincoln, 4^th Lincoln-Douglas Debate)

Now, when he says “I as much as any other man,” that indicates it is a statement of natural right. He certainly thinks that a black man would prefer, if there had to be a superior position, that the superior position be enjoyed by his own. That is what “I as much as any other man” means. It’s a universal principle guiding choice and action, i.e., it is a principle of natural right.

Taking natural right as our principle rather than supremacism helps us avoid the evils of racial communism without being irrational.

For example, it actually is embarrassing and foolish to need to prove that the people you prefer are superior to the people you don’t prefer. “It’s a bit much.” A white grocer who prefers white applicants to non-white applicants would sound like an ass if he said, “I only seek out superior specimens for my grocery store.” However, he would speak sense if he said “I want to avoid racial politics in the workplace, so I seek a homogeneous workforce. It helps everyone cooperate better.”

There are so many jobs out there that simply are not that difficult, and a “concern for superiority” is silly when thinking about them. However, it’s not silly to prefer employees and colleagues that aren’t likely to harbor racial resentment or have the power to attack your reputation (or worse) with accusations of racism.

You have a right to what is yours because it is yours. To claim a right to what is yours based on some inner-superiority looks petty or insecure.

If you are running a grocery store and do not want racial, ethnic, national, or other big differences to get in the way of running a grocery store, you might seek out very similar people so that they are less likely to fight with you or with each other over race. That is reasonable and we are allowed to be reasonable. It is a known fact that WholeFoods actually tries to diversify staff at stores along racial and ethnic lines, because it believes such diversity will lead to division between the employees, such that unionization will be more difficult.

The point is that it is reasonable to consider race – to move past colorblindness – in the pursuit of your goals. Your goal as a grocer might be furthered homogeneity. It is not evil to seek harmony between employees by maintaining a homogeneous workplace.

Reasons of this kind are seemingly forgotten today; maybe they are illegal.[1] If you are an employer, can you avoid hiring someone because you think it is more likely they will sue you? It seems sensible to do so! It is sensible to seek homogeneity because heterogeneity brings with it many evils. Now—of course—I am not denying there are some instances where heterogeneity or diversity might be goods. But there is no denying that a reasonable man might prefer homogeneity in many instances. Colorblindness, in either case, is silly because the workplace will be affected by homogeneity or heterogeneity and it is irresponsible and irrational to blind yourself to this fact.

Other Reasons to Drop Colorblindness

First, our bad political situation makes it evidently rational to avoid colorblindness. Americans should be allowed to avoid professionals they reasonably believe could be falsely credentialed. No sensible man wants a DEI hire for his doctor or pilot.

Second, Americans have the right to notice that some groups of people are thoroughly leftwing in their politics. If an American cannot say the “it’s not good that blacks and others vote so overwhelmingly leftwing,” then he cannot even assess the political situation of his own nation. All self-respecting Americans grant to themselves the right to notice that races, ethnicities, and other groups have character traits. It is especially important to note virtues and vices of political import.

Aren’t We All Americans Though?

Natural right is evident and therefore potent. No one can deny the right to “see race” and act sensibly. However, the question of legal or national identity complicates things—though, I claim, the complication is superficial. The complication is this: while individual citizens should obviously be allowed to prefer people like them over people not like them, it is harder to say that the government has a right to prefer any type of citizen over any other type of citizen.

A grocer can prefer employees of his own “racial identity.” Can the government prefer white or black, if both white and black are equally “American”? Colorblindness is irrational for the grocer, but it seems like simple fairness when thinking about the government; the grocer “owns” his store, whereas all the citizens “own” the government. The grocery store exists for the grocer; the government exists for the citizens.

Hyphenated Americans

The real question of American identity has to do with white and black, but permit me a moment to do the easy but apparently necessary work of distinguishing between Americans and hyphenated-Americans.

Our government, and Western governments generally, have detached citizenship from genuine identity. We get absurd news headlines like “British man plans attack” and the “British man” is “Mohammad Farooq.”

In America there are some clear cases like this Mohammed Farooq; there are large immigrant communities that are not American, do not seem American, are not on the way to becoming anything like American, don’t like American things, and will always be identified in a hyphenated manner. Such hyphenated-Americans are less American than Americans. That is easy, evident, a good start. Our laws should reflect this.

There isn’t going to be exact precision in these matters, but there are obvious things. For example, J.E.B. Stuart VI just announced the birth of his son J.E.B. Stuart VII. This boy, supposing he grows to be a sensible and industrious man, will necessarily be more “American” than hyphenated-Americans who have “homelands” elsewhere. Without deciding exactly where the line is, it is possible to tell there is a line and there is a difference: moving to America doesn’t make one American; a newly arrived man cannot become “as American” as an American family that has persisted through the generations.

It is hard for a family to stick it out generation after generation. How few families from early America are still intact today? One bad war can wipe out the hopes of generations. A thousand accidents conspire against generations of stable transmission. One foolish father can lose everything and watch his children disperse, fail to form families of their own, and so on. Economic catastrophes consign many families to oblivion. Old families are accomplishments, and either that is respected and hyphenated-Americans are made to feel a little funny, or it isn’t respected and the socio-political support for family life is undermined.

Americans, white and black

The rightwing comedian Sam Hyde recently took Elon Musk to task for his cosmopolitan support for H1B visas—and when he did, he gave a statement about “what the American is.”

We can’t simply move the goalposts of what an American is. It would be a lot easier if an “American” was just an Indian with an Ivy League degree. It would make this whole problem go away if that worked, if you could just wave your hand and say that an American is a Guatemalan who was born here. We wouldn’t have to have this painful conversation; it would be so easy if you could do that, if it were a computer simulation. That’s Marvel movie shit, the American is whoever Dr. Strange brings through the portal to beat Thanos. The new Spider-Man is an American, it’s a lesbian from Sri Lanka who just came here to start up a cupcake business, but she listens to coldwave and she just came here to start up her hair-dye business. She’s an American, she’s here for the American dream. That’s not reality. People aren’t mathematical units, that’s Marxism, that’s computer programmer simulation bullshit. We all know what an American is and all these paragraph long definitions and high-minded ideas, it’s just propaganda, we know what an American is.

We can speak clearly with Sam Hyde and say that real Americans are defined by America being the land of their ancestors, of being men essentially unattached to any identity other than American. But since the American identity includes whites and blacks we are at an impasse.

That is, the racial question can only be solved when affirmative action is a thing of the past; when we are allowed to have statues of our nation’s founders even though they owned slaves and said “racist” things; when we are allowed read Aristotle and other philosophers, even though they didn’t teach “racial equality” or that slavery was a moral evil; when we don’t have to dilute our school curriculum with “authors that represent the students’ racial profile”; when, in sum, the American identity is able to embrace American history and excellence.

Black Americans are in a difficult bind. On the one hand, they can’t really embrace being hyphenated Americans, because they’ve been here so long.

[M]y heritage is mostly here in the United States with -- the country went through slavery. We went through the civil rights movement. So I prefer the term black American rather than African-American. That's going back too far.” (Herman Cain in an interview with Piers Morgan, 2011)

A successful businesman, Cain led the 2012 GOP primary for about 2 weeks. Cain ran for President twice and the Senate once. He never made it out of the primaries.

On the other hand, a black man looks at American history and the American identity, and he sees that people like him did not participate (significantly) in America’s greatest successes, from the Revolution to WWII. People like him were typically enslaved and then, once freed, typically excluded. People like him are still treated oddly today: antiracist whites are overly solicitous and it’s weird, distorting.

The American black has a much harder time embracing the American identity, which is why American blacks often identify as hyphenated Americans and almost always vote Democrat. When the pundits crowed over Trump’s success with blacks in the last election, they were crowing over him getting ~20% of the black vote. About ~20% of American blacks are open to Trump’s big tent, Vivek is an American, political party.

Could it be that Americans simply have no right to an identity? If the obstacles facing American blacks will keep them from ever, as a group, embracing the American identity and becoming Americans, even though they cannot be something other than American, are Americans required to explode their identity? In other words, if blacks cannot be American, is anyone allowed to be? Are we morally required to free blacks by fully renouncing and erasing the American identity in which they seem trapped?

Americans Can Have an Identity

If the American founders can be taken as a guide, they did not believe the existence of slavery among Americans constituted a crime, or a crime grave enough to warrant the great punishment of identity suicide.[2] Neither the slave-owning founders nor the anti-slavery founders thought this.

As you probably know, both Jefferson and Adams wanted the end of slavery. Jefferson’s own motivations are questionable because he owned slaves—but, I think, his reasoning is clear enough on the issue. Adams opposed slavery and never owned any slaves and essentially agreed with Jefferson. The other founders, you will find if you look, are all largely of the same mind. Slavery was an evil for which there was no “practicable” solution, i.e., no solution commensurate with the natural rights of the American citizens.

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable. (Jefferson to Lafayette, 1817)

I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. (to Holmes, 1820)[3]

Slavery was a political evil like many others, and it wasn’t even the worst of the time. John Adams, the slave-less second president, ranked slavery as a relatively minor evil. In a letter to two abolitionists, George Churchman and Warner Mifflin, Adams argued along lines almost identical to Jefferson. Adams argued that the abolition of slavery was desirable, so long as it did not endanger the liberties of the Americans.

Nor did Adams believe that slavery was the most pressing evil of the time. More pressing concerns were the loss of religion, declining standards in education, the growth of debauchery and Epicurean philosophy.

Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known, and my practice has been so conformable to my Sentiment that I have always employd freemen both as Domisticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave. The Abolition of Slavery must be gradual and accomplished with much caution and Circumspection. Violent means and measures would produce greater violations of Justice and Humanity, than the continuance of the practice. Neither Mr Mifflin nor yourselves, I presume would be willing to venture on Exertions which would probably excite Insurrections among the Blacks to rise against their Masters and imbue their hands in innocent blood.

There are many other Evils in our Country which are growing, (whereas the practice of Slavery is fast diminishing,) and threaten to bring Punishment in our Land, more immediately than the oppression of the blacks. That sacred regard to Truth in which you and I were educated, and which is certainly taught and enjoined from on high, Seems to be vanishing from among Us. A general Relaxation of Education and Government. A general Debauchery as well as dissipation, produced by pestilential phylosophical Principles of Epicures infinitely more than by Shews and theatrical Entertainment. These are in my opinion more Serious and threatening Evils, than even the Slavery of the Blacks, hatefull as that is. I might even Add that I have been informed, that the condition, of the common Sort of White People in Some of the Southern States particularly Viginia, is more oppressed, degraded and miserable that that of the Negroes. (Adams to the abolitionists Churchman and Mifflin, 1801)

Slavery, for the founders, was a minor evil that they, with horror, saw the next generation take much more seriously. Consider another passage from Adams, where he describes what “progress” looks like to an American.

The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Studies Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

Compare Adams’ notion of progress, which is a sensible one, with our modern egalitarian notion of progress. Adams is concerned with the improvement of America and Americans, not with the liberation of the world. He doesn’t study politics and war so that later men can “fulfill the promise of the Declaration” by abolishing slavery. For Adams, progress means Americans—his family and his people—growing in wisdom, power, and accomplishments. This progress is commensurate with natural right: no man or nation can be required to prefer the worse to the better, or others to his own.

For modern antiracists and egalitarians, progress means erasing one’s own identity, of dissolving every identifiable people into the mass of mankind. Egalitarian progress is based on a denial of natural right: no one has a right to prefer the better to the worse, or their own to the other. For the egalitarian, the world is held in common and no man or group of men have a right to separate themselves from mankind or claim a part of the common property of mankind as their own. Therefore, progress is intermarriage to the greatest extent possible, erasing borders, eliminating property, and disarming the world. The communist ideal is a universal autonomous herd; but their practical achievement is the world state.

I won’t elaborate on this too much here, but the American is an identity and every identity must possess an inner resistance to assimilation to mankind. The “mankind identity” of communists is an anti-identity. In the United States, the citizenship of blacks and hyphenated-Americans has been used to make having an identity increasingly impossible. If we embrace natural right, we can reject this trend and work against it.

The American’s Task Today

I have accomplished in this essay what needs to be accomplished theoretically. The task for Americans today is now to recover fully this correct understanding of natural right, found in Ancient and Modern philosophy, American history, and the Bible.

Americans need to do all the arguing and researching needed to finally put this racial question to rest. If Americans are guided by natural right, they can succeed. I believe I have given a clear enough indication of what natural right is in this essay for the task, but of course much good could come from a more methodical treatment. We need to see the right of nature brought to bear on the problems of our age.

On top of this basic justification of our identity, there is the continued development of that identity.

Americans must, if they can, reestablish the Constitution. If they cannot reestablish the Constitution, they must admit this to themselves, frankly distinguish between the form of the Constitution and its inner intention, as found in both the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Our Constitution established, as legal facts, many things that can be reestablished and many that cannot. One that could be reestablished would be the Constitution’s requirement that the legislature declares war, or that tax bills must genuinely originate in the House of Representatives. If I am wrong and things of this kind cannot be reestablished, then it is not too hard to understand what the founders aimed at through these constitutional provisions and seek those good things by other means. For example, if our Congress is too feckless and corrupt to distinguish between war time and peace time, to open and close the proverbial Gates of Janus, then a statesman ought to establish this power somewhere answerable to genuine American citizens. (This would be twofold work of establishing the power in a responsible position on the one hand, and enfranchising genuinely independent Electors, i.e., genuine Americans, rather than this easily manipulable rabble that is incapable, on its own, of installing or removing anyone from Congress.)

Americans must take seriously the promise of the Preamble to the Constitution.

Americans must re-capture the Bill of Rights from the Court’s near century long misinterpretation and perversion. Americans must seek to become men worthy of the Bill or Rights rather than improvident subjects praying the Supreme Court recognizes them among the protected classes.

The kinds of men capable of the First Amendment are civilized, independent, and do not put their trust in a judicial safety mechanism against tyranny and political decline. That is, the Bill of Rights is an assertion of the Quality of the American, who did not ask and did not allow a Great Power to be erected to protect them from naughty religious opinions, racist speeches, political debate, and similar things.

Lastly, Americans must seek the favor of God, without falling into the miserable situation American Liberalism overcame.

“Washington Must Stay Here!”

Conclusion

The main purpose of this essay was to introduce (or reintroduce) my readers to the correct idea of natural right and show how this applied to the racial question. Since all men have the right to prefer the better to the worse and their own to the other we are free from the anti-natural demands of “racial color blindness” and racial reparations.

The great difficulty of this essay, theoretically, was to set down the position of American blacks. There is no resolution to the American identity without acknowledging the bind in which blacks find themselves. Something must be done to help blacks embrace the American identity or extricate themselves entirely. Allowing American blacks to mistake themselves for a hyphenated population in the USA is an error. It is also an error to think they can embrace the American identity as easily as American whites. Americans must claim their identity in the face of this predicament while doing what is practicable for the resolution of the difficulties blacks face. The important thing is for the American to be able to assert and claim his identity in spite of this problem.

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[1] Although I believe this is what Justice Powell was trying to aim at in Bakke (1978). In his plurality opinion, he denied the legality of affirmative action as a corrective to past evils, but said that if a school thinks its aims can be furthered by preferring brown applicants for a more diverse student body, then that isn’t an unreasonable goal.

Courts would be asked to evaluate the extent of the prejudice and consequent harm suffered by various minority groups. Those whose societal injury is thought to exceed some arbitrary level of tolerability then would be entitled to preferential classifications at the expense of individuals belonging to other groups. Those classifications would be free from exacting judicial scrutiny. As these preferences began to have their desired effect, and the consequences of past discrimination were undone, new judicial rankings would be necessary. The kind of variable sociological and political analysis necessary to produce such rankings simply does not lie within the judicial competence -- even if they otherwise were politically feasible and socially desirable. … [However,] the State has a substantial interest that legitimately may be served by a properly devised admissions program involving the competitive consideration of race and ethnic origin.

[2] There will be some objection “the American founders didn’t believe in ‘identity’; they believed all men had the same rights.” All men do have the same rights: all men can form identities if they can. Furthermore, it can be shown that almost every single founder distinguished between “true Americans” and lesser Americans, which is the meaning of ‘identity.’

[3] Here Jefferson is talking about Hispanics recently independent from Spain—he doubted they would be successful. Nevertheless, this word “practicable” played a role in his thought on the abolition question. He repeated his concern about the “practicability” of abolition to Holmes, Cooper, Pinckney, Rush, and others over a period—as far as I can tell—of 7 years, both leading up to (starting in 1814) and following the Missouri Compromise, which he considered a grave error.