sci-fi author, beatmaker

How To Be Less Racist


In the United States and Europe, racists are coming out of the woodwork, freely expressing views that were considered taboo only a year ago. Concerns about terrorism and economic security (some valid, some exaggerated) are amplified and directed broadly at people of color, most of whom have nothing to do with terrorism or the availability of jobs. This racism was always there, but it’s more dangerous now that it’s moving into the mainstream (including aspects of our federal government). Some of the dangers, specifically, are harassment and violence against non-whites (including police violence), voter disenfranchisement, and deportation of immigrants (some legal, some undocumented, many if not most vital to our national economy).

Other problems with open racism include social discord and a divisive sense of “us vs. them” pervading our national consciousness. More severe, dystopian outcomes of open racism might include internment camps for Muslims, reversals of civil rights protections, harassment or murder of civil rights activists (including journalists), use of lethal force against peaceful protestors, or even “ethnic cleansing” scenarios (genocide). Big problems, in other words.

I guess one potential benefit of racist attitudes being openly expressed is that it opens the door to conversation, debate, and the potential for attitudes to shift. That’s the purpose of this post: to influence those who might feel racist but are open to non-racist perspectives.

I’ve been reading some Alt-Right blogs and trying to better understand where this racism comes from (I won’t say which ones, because attention and web traffic fuels these hate blogs). From what I’ve read so far, the Alt-Right openly-racist/white-supremacist perspective looks something like this:

  • On the nature vs. nurture debate, a strong bias towards nature. Human qualities are “in the blood” and to create a good society you need a “good stock” of people (predominantly Anglo-Saxon, with maybe some Germans and Scandinavians, but definitely no Jews or anybody with brown skin).
  • Cultural assimilation is a myth. The openly racist Alt-Right perspective would be more likely to characterize cultural evolution via immigration and other forms of culture mixing/mashing as “dilution” or even “infection.”
  • A powerful nostalgia for the past, when things were better (better being defined as more patriarchal, more Anglo-Saxon, more Christian). It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly this U.S. Golden Era occurred, but I get the sense many Alt-Righters believe our country started to go downhill with the 1820’s influx of Irish and Germans, and has been going down ever since.
  • A sense of being persecuted, censored, and/or attacked for being white, and/or Christian, and/or conservative, by SJWs (social just warriors), especially in the liberal/Left-leaning fields of academia and the arts (Leftist ideologues and hardcore SJWs do sometimes unfairly attack people, as demonstrated by incidents like this one, but those attacks are more frequently directly at other liberals, such as Bernie Bros vs. Hillary supporters).
  • A sense that “heroic masculinity” is somehow fading, and that this is the fault of liberals, SJWs, and feminism.

Those aren’t the only Alt-Right perspectives, but I think that captures at least part of what’s going on in the heads of the openly racist factions.

I don’t expect to convince any hardcore racists to change their minds. To them I’m a naive liberal fool, or even a “white quisling” (race traitor). But sometimes someone will comment on this blog who I suspect might identify with some of the views above, maybe a Trump or Leave voter, but who doesn’t want to be racist. On some level that person might want to get behind the idea of one big human family, but they can’t quite reconcile that concept with their own sense of ethnic or cultural pride, persecution, or identity. I suspect there are a lot of people like that out there.

So if you want to be less racist, how do you go about it?

What Is Racism?

Part of racism can be defined by belief. My ethnic group is better than your ethnic group. In the extreme, your ethnic group is less-than-human, and thereby less deserving of human rights, respect, and compassion.

But the greater part of racism is an emotional decision, a heart choice. Choosing hatred and contempt over love and compassion. This is why brilliant people can still be racist. If you make an emotional choice to see an entire group as lesser, your mind will find reasons to validate that choice. You’ll focus on differences instead of similarities. If you have a brilliant and dextrous mind, you might even find brilliant and dextrous reasons to validate your contempt.

I think that choice is always available. It’s a spiritual decision. It’s a cliche, to say choose love over fear, but in terms of perceptions of people outside of your identity group, that’s what it comes down to. And perceptions are important; ultimately they determine actions, policy, and the character of a society.

How To Be Less Racist

So that’s the crux of it; choose compassion over contempt for those that you perceive as outside of your tribe.

What comes next? I’m not an expert on race relations, but I’ve learned a few things from being an immigrant myself (an American living in Europe for four years), living in a number of different countries, growing up in the Bay Area, attending ethnically diverse public schools in Oakland and Berkeley, having an ethnically diverse social circle, and sending my daughter to a minority-white Oakland public school. I think the “next level” of being non-racist includes finding ways to loosen and soften the mental boundaries that separate you from other human beings, while also learning more about the history and culture of other groups. You can do this via education, exposure, and self-examination. Specifically:

1. Understand immigration and cultural change as permanent features of the human condition.

Human beings always have, and probably always will, move around the planet in search of opportunity and novelty (and often fleeing disaster and war). This results in cross-cultural influence. An acute stressful phase (Hey, you people who just moved here aren’t doing it right!) is followed by either voluntary displacement (We’d rather go somewhere else than live next to you) or some level of cultural mixing (You guys talk funny but I like that song or that food you have), and finally some level of integration (Sure, we’re different in some ways, but we live together, have mixed families, and choose to focus on our similarities and shared goals). It’s worked this way for at least 30,000 years (though back then there was a bit more free space, making voluntary displacement a more realistic option).

The fact that nations modulate immigration rates and policy isn’t necessarily racist, but harassing immigrants who live in your country legally is. Why not just order from the taco truck instead of protesting it? You might like it.

Every culture on the planet is in a state of perpetual change, and always will be as long as there are human beings. Americans who visit London for the first time might be surprised by the large Indian and Arab presence. They come expecting crumpets and jam and tea served by white people, but in addition to that they get curry and kebabs served by brown people (and also tea served by brown people and curry served by white people). British tea, of course, has always been Indian. British culture is an amalgamation of every nation they have ever colonized or invaded, which is pretty much all of them.

The cultural change happening right now has a lot to do with the immigrants in your immediate community, and how you treat them (or, if you’re the one emigrating, how you adapt and attempt to integrate). It doesn’t always go smoothly, and the acute stressful phase (high immigrant unemployment, crime, and culture clashes) can last for decades (the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels being one example). But racist attitudes towards the vast majority of law-abiding immigrants in these communities doesn’t help anyone.

It’s confusing and stressful to emigrate. You don’t speak the language, traditions and etiquette are unfamiliar, and not everyone is forgiving if you get it wrong. I’ve been there. Children, especially, have no choice in the matter. Adults who emigrate often do so out of economic or political desperation.

My point is that immigration is a reality as much as any other aspect of human existence, and that it’s the primary driver of cultural change. Usually, in the long-term, this works out for the best, with a society being stronger for it. And it’s easier, less stressful, and more profitable to welcome immigrants into your community, and to help them succeed socially and economically.

2. Accept that human goodness and greatness isn’t only genetic, but also comes from education, parenting, practice, role models and mentors, literature, and exposure to great works.

Racists are obsessed with genetic differences between ethnic groups. For them it’s a way to validate their belief that “greatness is in the blood” and that to have a great society you need “good stock” (preferably Anglo-Saxons).

People who actually study genetics understand that genetic differences come down to very specific things, like how much of a particular enzyme a body produces, or how quickly a particular neurotransmitter degrades. Multigenic traits like intelligence or IQ are attributable to both heredity and environment, probably in about equal measure. Are there statistical differences between ethnic groups? For specific traits, yes. Some East Asians have a flush reaction when metabolizing alcohol, and this trait is rare among other ethnic groups. For general traits, it’s notoriously hard to research for the following reasons:

  • difficulties in separating genetic from environmental factors
  • the bias and expectations of the researchers
  • small sample sizes
  • unknown/mixed ethnic backgrounds of the subjects (genetic testing often presents ancestry surprises)
  • the controversial nature of the research

We just don’t know much about genetic differences between ethnic groups outside of very specific traits, and one has to wonder about the intentions and biases of those that are looking for such differences. What we do know is that variation among individuals outweighs differences between groups. We also know that there is a large environmental factor. Very large, if you consider that learning to read, learning mathematics and science, and learning to think critically do not happen at all without environmental influence.

The policy choice is simple: do we try to maximize everyone’s potential with great education, or do we keep the least privileged children down with race-influenced tracking policies, wild disparities in public school funding, and lower expectations?

3. Get to know as many individuals as possible from ethnic groups other than your own, from a variety of demographics.

If you can, meet and get to know children, adults, old people, working class people, middle class people, and well-off people from outside of your own ethnic group. People in a variety of occupations, with a variety of interests. Ideally, find people in your interest tribe (professional sports, RPG games, beekeeping, etc.) but outside of your own ethnic group. Nothing puts racial stereotypes in the background more quickly than getting into the details (of a hobby, sport, craft, or another person’s life).

The racially mixed public elementary school my daughter attends is a good example. The pre-K and Kindergarten parents tend to socialize more within their own ethnic group. Parents from different ethnic backgrounds and/or social classes greet each other politely, but a little stiffly. But by 3rd grade everything is much looser and more friendly. We’ve seen each more mornings and afternoons than not. The kids have made strong friendships across racial, religious, and class lines. The parents get to know each other, find they have a lot in common (parenting, if nothing else) and relax, make their own friendships. White kids learn about African-American history, African-American kids learn Irish folk songs. All the kids get to meet and interact with a wide variety of adults.

It’s not a perfect rainbow utopia. Many of the African-American boys, especially, will go on to face huge challenges. If they slip up and make bad decisions, it probably won’t get written off as “youthful indiscretion” or “boys being boys” — more likely they’ll face legal consequences. It will be harder for them to get jobs, even if they are fully qualified.

But I think we’re all better off going to school together, getting to know people outside of our tight identity groups, dealing with that stress and awkwardness of communicating across cultural lines until it just dissolves. Eventually your brain changes, and when you see someone that triggers “other” (different skin/dress/speech/food), curiosity and a desire to learn more about the individual trumps any generalized preconceptions.

4. Read authors of color.

Reading some types of fiction may be associated with increased empathy, especially if reading from a variety of cultural perspectives. It’s one way to get inside of head of the other, whoever other might be for you (person of a different ethnicity, gender, religion, belief system, nationality, etc.).

In terms of African-American authors, two books that influenced me greatly at a young age were Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and The Autobiography of Malcom X with Alex Haley. The science fiction of Octavia Butler was equally influential.

While it’s too early to say definitively that reading across ethnic lines can mitigate racism, it makes sense that it could. If nothing else, reading great fiction and non-fiction by non-white authors is exciting and mind-expanding.

5. Understand and reconcile your own ethnic/ancestral trauma.

All ethnic groups have residual trauma from historical events. Some from current events, some from events a generation or two back, some from centuries in the past. This trauma is carried forward and passed down to future generations by way of values, beliefs, fears, and even epigenetic markers. African-Americans carry the legacy of slavery. Japanese-Americans were interred in camps. Jews, Slavs, and Romani people faced genocide at the hands of the Nazis. Armenians were murdered or expelled from Turkey en masse. Italian-Americans faced poverty and discrimination. Irish-Americans are still scarred by the Great Famine of 1845-52, which resulted not only in starvation but also the wrenching apart of families. Poles and many others were interred or murdered by Stalin. Much of Europe was occupied and/or bombed during World War II. Those of us with mixed ethnic backgrounds (almost all Americans, if you consider European subgroups) carry combined legacies. In addition to these ethnic histories, we all carry the scars of our personal family history.

Do these events really influence us if we didn’t directly experience them? How can they influence us if we’ve never even met they people who experienced them directly?

Fear, caution, and conservatism can sometimes be adaptive traits. A person who is too trusting, careless, or open can get easily get conned, bamboozled, or worse. But when our world is mostly safe and secure and we still carry these attitudes, we should examine our deep past. Are our culturally-inherited values and perceptions optimized for our current reality, or are we tuned to a different era, when life was harsher and less forgiving?

Of course it can work the other way too. Sometimes our world becomes more dangerous and harsh, but our attitudes and values are stuck in a bucolic past. That doesn’t mean we should resort to xenophobia and hatred. It’s possible (and more important than ever) to remain loving and kind when life gets tough and the world goes crazy.

6. Understand your own ethnic and class benefits, and help level the playing field.

Most white people resist the idea that we “should feel guilty” for slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, and other morally repugnant deeds inflicted upon other ethnic groups by our ancestors. After all, we personally did not own slaves, or give smallpox-infected blankets to Indian tribes. So it’s not our problem, right?

Feeling guilty doesn’t really help anybody anyway. What helps all of us is for white people (and other ethnic groups that may have an upper hand in certain situations) to understand that what we perceive as “normal” involves some degree of benefit or privilege due to our ethnicity (and also our age, gender, etc.). A youngish middle-or-upper-class white man expects to receive a response to a job application, be treated respectfully when dealing with public institutions, to be able to interact with police officers without being abused or killed, and so forth. People with brown skin don’t necessarily take these things for granted.

Discrimination against whites also occurs, but in my experience it’s rare. Once I had a hard time getting a lane at a particular bowling alley in Honolulu. After a long wait and a number of native Hawaiian families getting lanes ahead of us, it was suggested to our group that another nearby bowling alley might have more availability. Subtle racism? Maybe. But my overwhelming experience is that when I’ve been in the minority, I’ve been welcomed by communities of color (in churches, at parties, at restaurants, etc.).

So what can you do about the uneven playing field? For American Caucasians, hiring qualified candidates outside of your demographic group is a big step. This doesn’t necessarily need to involve quotas. As this article says, just look around the room, and see who was invited to the party, and try to mix it up.

Doing Something About It

So those are my thoughts. Basic stuff, for anyone who has been thinking about these topics for a long time. But hopefully helpful for some readers.

If you’ve done the “inner work” (making the emotional choice not to be racist, coming to terms with both the baggage and benefits of your own ethnic heritage, learning about perspectives from outside your own ethnic group), what’s next? What can do you to make society more fair and just, and to encourage ethnic harmony?

Maybe that’s a topic that deserves its own post. Some top-level thoughts: expand economic opportunities for young people, protect voting rights, fully fund public education, fight against racial bias in law enforcement and sentencing. Here are some more ideas from a variety of perspectives.

Feel free to share your thoughts and own experiences, and please be polite and respectful as always.

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35 Comments

  1. Hmmmm...

    This thread should be interesting.

    I live in the UK. After Brexit, there was a big rise in overt racism. I think a lot of people are fed up of immigration. I’d put my politics as centre-right. I’m for big controls on numbers of people moving here. The here won’t even assign a maximum number to how many they’d let in. That is insane.

    I grew up without even a racist thought. Having seen the sheer amount of immigrants coming here, living in houses built decades ago for British people to live in, taking jobs we’re told British people won’t do (well stop paying them unemployment benefit and then they will), I’ve got rather fed up with the soft attitude that says it’s racist to not accept this. Unfortunately my idealism has given way to intolerance but is it intolerance or a weariness of an elite that wants to create a low-wage serfdom, where there are a few very wealthy and an awful lot earning beans trying to pay get through life?

    I think people have been duped about immigration. It’s not about “integration” or “diversity”. These are bullshit terms. Now they have no choice. It’s on their doorstep, whether they wanted it there or not.

    So Trump, UKIP, AFD. Front National, etc. are a reaction. The left need to wake the hell up to what ordinary people really want.

    • Thanks for your comment. Immigration is stressful and produces conflict in exactly the way you’re describing. My Italian great-grandparents faced the exact same challenges. My great-grandfather worked in a coal mine, then came to Northern California where he worked as a laborer and mason. I’m sure he was considered neither American nor white. I’m sure he acted more Italian than American until the day he died. But I wouldn’t be here without him.

      My main point about immigration is that it HAPPENS, and most nations choose to have somewhat open borders because there are many benefits. It’s also a compassionate attitude. If your country was being bombed to hell, or there was no food, or very little economic opportunity, wouldn’t you want the option to go somewhere else?

      You advocate for dismantling the safety net to encourage white British people to take low-wage jobs, but at the same time you’re suspicious of wealthy elites keep working folks down. How are these attitudes compatible?

      I understand that immigration creates stress, but there’s a choice between the high road (welcome fellow humans, identify and solve problems, deal with it) and the low road (us vs. them, harass non-natives who are residing in your country legally, create economic chaos with drastic policy changes).

      Let’s see how the Brexit situation works out, and if the Leave voters still think it’s a good idea in five or ten years time.

      • Hmmmm...

        I didn’t put “white British”, I just put “British”. That’s an important point and you’ve added that word.

        Secondly, I’m not against immigration. I’m against uncontrolled immigration. Every sane person should be. We had to endure in the early part of the millennium, uncontrolled immigration brought to us by that friend of US neo-conservatives, Tony Blair. The leaked reason was that the then Labour government wanted to rub the noses of the Conservative party in it and change society forever. And this is the important thing… none of this was decided by the British people. We’ve always had immigration. Most of my family is Irish not British. We’ve never had uncontrolled, seemingly unregulated immigration.

        Is it so unreasonable to want strict controls on the amount of people wanting to live on our small island?

        Brexit is a mess until we sign Article 50, which should have been done by now. Things will improve and as for the 5-10 years, what do you think will happen to the EU in that time?

        The elections elsewhere in Europe (yes I am a European, I just cannot abide the EU) will be interesting.

        Thirdly, I like your blog and my hair is looking better thanks to you and Rob!

        🙂

        • Did not mean to put words in your mouth. And I should say that I do think the majority who voted Leave or Trump voted their conscience, and not out of hatred for other groups. I disagree with both positions, but I’m only knowledgable in terms of U.S. politics — I don’t claim any deep understanding of all the Brexit issues. Open borders between all countries are a humanist’s dream, but we’re not there yet in the U.S. or anywhere. I do think that free movement for E.U. citizens is an economic plus.

          Glad the hear the good hair news!

  2. Sheila

    JD,

    “Many if not most vital to our economy”

    You have GOT to be kidding me? You’re a smart guy so show me you’re stats on that one. I’m curious how you could get to that statement.

  3. shari

    I was raised in a racist family in the California Central Valley. Fear was the driving force, and my relatives had no experience with different cultures. As an adult, I escaped and changed my views while attending college in Long Beach, a peacefully diverse urban community in Southern California. Without this environmental pressure to accept and enjoy diversity, I may not have been able to cut my racist roots. Friends and co-workers dramatically shifted my world view and I am forever grateful.

    As you mentioned, the fear emotion underlies racism. In traditional Chinese medicine, fear is an expression of imbalance in the kidney and bladder organ systems. Chronic stress and environmental toxins can deplete the kidney energy and affect our emotions, willpower, and intellect. It is no surprise that a paper published last year revealed that schizophrenia patients showed a 25% increase in developing chronic kidney disease within three years. http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/1/e006777.full

    Understanding related health conditions and their environmental factors may help explain surges in collective emotions in communities and populations. The obesity and diabetes epidemics and correlated risk in kidney disease are interesting suspects to consider! We MUST clean up our physical and environmental health before we can expect people to demonstrate compassion for themselves and others.

    • Thanks for the comment Shari, and for sharing your personal experience.

      While it’s a not a stretch to consider the relationship between health and emotions, I’d like to think we all have instantaneous access to love and compassion regardless of the state of our health. I think it’s emotional choice than can be made even under duress, even with less-than-ideal conditions.

      And there are plenty of bigots in top health with great kidneys living squeaky clean lifestyles!

    • Genius_Incarnate

      And oh-so-ironically Chinese people and culture is in general strongly xenophobic and nationalistic.

      But right, fearing the massive influx of people who vote for a political platform antagonistic to one’s own views is totally just ignorance, right? Give me a break. Mexicans themselves don’t want large amounts of non-Mexicans in Mexico. Ethnic loyalty is the norm.

      The only ethnic groups on planet earth that are strongly pressured to drop their ethnic bias are so called “White” ethnic groups. The fact is that non-whites are no less “racist” towards White people than Whites are to non-whites.

      [removed by JD]

      It’s also a supreme irony that rates of diabetes and obesity among non-European American groups are higher than those among “White” Americans. The ironies will never end.

      • I would disagree that ethnic loyalty is the norm. Ethnic loyalty is easily outweighed by blood ties/familial kinship (which often crosses ethnic “lines”), nationality, and cultural interests.

        I’ve removed the part of your comment that appears to be a personal attack on another commenter. Please help keep my comment section polite, respectful, and not mean.

        • Genius_Incarnate

          How is ethnic loyalty not the norm? Ethnicicty is a blood tie. In general, in most cases, ethnic ties/blood ties/kinship ties are practically identical.

          Nationality is generally ethnic, as well. When it is not, like in Africa, it causes civil strife. Loyalty to the nation state is generally an ethnic thing, all over the world. Name me a single ethnic group that does not advocate on behalf of itself.

          • For example the tie between a white grandparent and a mixed-race grandchild.

            In the United States most citizens are mixed ethnicity, either mixed European, mixed Afro-European, etc.

            Obviously within any ethnic group there are different opinions, no monolithic “ethnic beliefs.” All ethnic groups have individuals who would rather identify with humanity as a whole rather than any subgroup.

          • Genius_Incarnate

            The mixed race grandchild will likely identify as Black or Hispanic or whatever and support the identity politics of that group. Also, mixed racial groups exist. Mexicans, a mix of indigenous Indios and Spanish Europeans, are still an interest group. The person who is “mixed race” doesn’t cease to have an ethnicity, they are merely “a new breed”, so to speak, a breed nonetheless.

            Also that White grandparent will have been conditioned and trained, as all White people have, to view his or her own ethnic interests and loyalty as shameful, or ignorant. The unique state of White people in Western Europe and America (generally being opposed to ethnocentrism) is far from the norm. Around the world, national and tribal and ethnic loyalties (all boiling down to the same thing) rule the day. Cosmopolitans exist in all groups, but they deviate from the obvious natural norm. Added to that, the vast majority of cosmopolitan people in the present world are White/European/pick your terminology.

            Nationalism/xenophobia/clannishness is the absolute norm around the world outside of Western Europe, the U.S.A., Canada and Australia. And yet who is labelled and abused for being “racist” by and large? Well, “racist” is a term of abuse hurled at White people and practically White people alone who object to the mass migration of non-Europeans (who very often retain their clannishness) into their societies.

          • I am not sure mixed race people would agree with you.

            Yes, people of European ancestry have a unique relationship with racism. Not as the only racists in the world, but as the overwhelming leaders, historically, in colonization, slavery, and the exploitation of indigenous peoples (at least in the modern era–the Mongols had a good run in the 13th century).

            If you are interested in learning more about this topic, I would recommend Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

        • Genius_Incarnate

          The only ethnic groups on planet earth that are strongly pressured to drop their ethnic bias are so called “White” ethnic groups. The fact is that non-whites are no less “racist” towards White people than Whites are to non-whites.

          • My post didn’t argue that only whites can be racist. Instead I offered suggestions for how to be less racist, if that interests you.

          • Genius_Incarnate

            The problem here is that “racism” so called is practiced everywhere. Ironically, non-European immigration is bringing it in droves to the Western world. You’ll have better luck eroding love of fattening foods than you’ll have of weakening “racism”.

            If one group of people ceases truly to be racist, they will simply be replaced by people who are racist. Loyalty to one’s kin is hardwired, so good luck unless you want to do mass gene therapy on the population.

            See here
            http://time.com/2982660/study-friends-dna/
            https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140519160716.htm

          • If we’re citing dating preferences studies now, here’s one showing that “opposites attract”:
            https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/24/genes-human-attraction

            And with that, comments closed. I’m weary of this discussion and I’m giving myself the last word because it’s my blog. I wish this post had attracted more people interested in becoming less racist, but unfortunately it seems to have attracted more people wanting to defend their own racism and prejudice against immigrants (at least among those wanting to comment).

            Perhaps the post title triggers defensiveness. It does imply that we’re all somewhat racist. I think the best we can do is strive to become more open minded, and deconstruct our own racism, even though racism will still exist in the world.

  4. On perhaps a lighter note (or perhaps not)……..as a graphic artist and photographer, I am completely enamored with light/dark, color/no-color, light/shadow, line/shape/form/texture. It would never occur to me to use those fascinations as a tool to assess someone’s character. Racism befuddles me, leaves me shaking my head and saying things like, “But…….”. This is completely learned behavior, just like religion. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that we are a deeply flawed species and I say that even in the face of so many obviously good and thoughtful people like those who frequent this page. The fact that this issue is such a tough choice for so many leaves me with little hope…..and yet I greet each day with a smile and a scratch on the head for each of my kitties and I go out and just try to lead by example. Perhaps that’s all each of us can do.

    • Thanks for your comment Hollis. I think there are TONS of things we can do. We all have real agency and power in regards to fighting racism.

  5. John

    I love your blog to death JD, but if you do a simple Google search on how much it costs the US taxpayer to offer food, shelter, healthcare, childbirth, school lunches and supplemented rent to all of the illegal immigrants you would puke. It would be awesome if we could take in every illegal that needed help, but we don’t have the money… California, for example, is going broke. There simply isn’t any more money for the bleeding hearts to give away

    • If we accept the labor of Mexican immigrants (and in California we do, and it keeps our farms afloat, and food in the stores) then school lunches and healthcare for their children is a small price to pay. You say bleeding heart, I say basic human decency towards a workforce we completely depend on.

      Another thing to consider — what is the social cost down the road if we don’t feed children and provide healthcare?

      • What is the cost if we don’t all somehow find the value in learning to live together….as I’ve said before: If we don’t all learn to live together, we will surely all die together.

    • Hmmmm...

      I think JD seems a great guy but I think he’s rather naive concerning immigration and more importantly, integration.

      It would be great if we all got along, buried our differences here on Earth but it’s not Star Trek. It’s a fact that some people immigrate but simply don’t want to integrate. I’m all for immigration for refugees (I remember the Vietnamese boat people of the late 1970s). I’m not for all and sundry moving to my country simply because we have a higher minimum wage.

      Yesterday we had the horrific terrorist attack in Berlin. Merkel said it would be difficult to bear if the attacker had been one of the MILLION Syrian migrants that she let in in the past year or so.

      Or how about the women that were attacked by migrants on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and in other German cities? They were NOT isolated incidents. Over 1,500 incidents were reported.

      Do you see what I’m saying? It’s not racist to be concerned about immigration. For information, in the UK, we let in 330,000 people last year. 330,000 is more than the population of the city I live in… in one year… Someone please agree with me and say that is INSANE.

      Where are all these people going to live?
      Who’s going to pay for the services they’re going to use?
      Why should we even have to put up with it?

      I’m “Hmmmm…” from the first comment, by the way so my bias is towards the UK and Europe.

      • Not racist to be concerned about behavioral norms, respectable behavior, or the rule of law in your country. It is racist to hold an entire ethnic group accountable for the behavior of a few. “Those types are problematic” is a racist attitude. Some individuals are, some aren’t.

        So in terms of immigration, what are the criteria, if not “Muslim” or “Syrian”? What’s wrong with individual background checks? (And ethnicity, religion, and nationality are not the same thing, but there are overlapping issues).

        Yes, obviously, terrorism perpetuated by Muslims is a real problem in Europe. I don’t want to gloss over that. And if you want to vote to reduce or stop immigration into your country, that’s your right as a citizen in most democracies.

        What I am advocating for is a dismantling of racist attitudes. This post is for people who want to be less racist.

        Racism is not the solution to terrorism.

  6. And why are we still making so many people? Therein lies the real problem.

    • Hmmmm...

      I don’t think we can have a thread about racism that isn’t also about immigration. If there wasn’t any immigration racism wouldn’t really happen!

      That’s what concerns me about JD’s ideas here. He seems to be inferring that even reducing immigration is wrong:

      “And if you want to vote to reduce or stop immigration into your country, that’s your right as a citizen in most democracies.” As if to say, “you’re bonkers but it’s your constitutional right to be bonkers”

      Well how many countries do you know that actually allow their citizens to reduce or stop immigration? If you’re a country in the EU, forget it. How about the US? Nope. Well you’ve got Trump. Let’s see how he does. Whatever you think of him, it was a kick in the teeth to the elite.

      You can be against racism AND be for controlled immigration.

      • I agree you can be against racism and for controlled immigration.

        Yes, I think Brexit is bonkers. If I were British I would consider the economic cost (plunging currency value, trade barriers) to be way too high.

        Trump is a kick in the teeth to liberals, but not to the financial elite. He is appointing Wall St. royalty and CEOs to cabinet positions. In that regard he has already betrayed those that voted for him.
        http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/politics/donald-trump-administration.html

        “If there wasn’t any immigration racism wouldn’t really happen!”

        You are forgetting African Americans in the U.S. They’ve been here since the beginning of our nation. Not to mention the racism faced by indigenous people all over the world (Native Americans, Maori, etc.).

        • Hmmmm...

          You’re quite right about African Americans and the racism they suffer as well indigenous people all over the world. It’s appalling.

          Regarding Donald, I doubt he will serve more than one term, so there is that consolation. It’s democracy I suppose.

          Everyone here is fed up of Brexit. The sooner we sign Article 50 the better.

  7. WHAT NO FREE SPEECH HERE? there is no racism ,there are those who wish to stifle free speech by whipping free speech as racist racebaiting because of their past like for instance hillary one of the worst racebaitors of all time,her early start in politics was from a grand wizard and psychlops of the kkk late senator byrd that mixed with her attending a witch’s church monthly in california and her thesis ties in 1969, Hillary Rodham wrote a 92-page senior thesis for Wellesley College about community organizer Saul Alinsky entitled “There Is Only the Fight . . . : An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.” The thesis is now available.[1]alinsky was a devout communist ,alinsky hated and thwarted free speech with racebaiting stupidity. when you throw away the constitution and christianity all you have left is confusion this is why people can’t wait to migrate to the usa. usa was founded on a reasonable loving protective of the individual freedom not the collective based in christian theology.. alinsky was a radical/luceferian and wrote a book called rules for radicals which is nothing more than hate speech and racebaiting. this is why hillary was rejected as president.

  8. It’s an instinct to react to perceived scarcity by shrinking down the pool of access. Fine in a loving home, where all you have to do is find a hiding spot for the last Twinkie. Disastrous on a national or global scale, where we all have to pull together, lest their be no Twinkies for anyone.

    In my cat advice blog, I call this the Environment of Abundance. If we create this for our cats, they react with less hostility, and more social feeling.

    As so much with cats: it applies to people, too.

  9. Genius_Incarnate

    You have completely and utterly misunderstood and misrepresented the views of the Alt Right here. I’ll go point by point.

    Quick disclaimer: I absolutely do not speak for everyone claiming the now very loose label of “Alt Right”.
    ~~~~
    You wrote:
    “On the nature vs. nurture debate, a strong bias towards nature. Human qualities are “in the blood” and to create a good society you need a “good stock” of people (predominantly Anglo-Saxon, with maybe some Germans and Scandinavians, but definitely no Jews or anybody with brown skin).”

    My reply:
    Human qualities, to a large extent, are in the blood. Any highly successful painter, philosopher, artist or writer will have some genetics behind their ability. Abilities do not come from nowhere. Human beings are genetic entities, and while experience shapes and molds the direction that the genetics grow in, that does not mean that there is not a genetic basis for nearly everything. Any skills that have been (pre-Darwin) described as “native, inherent” are almost certainly genetic in origin. The reason why Jews tend to be disliked within the Alt Right is that Jews have pioneered anti-White ideologies for decades, successfully, and have been part of the move to shift immigration laws to allowing massive, non-white immigration, which has resulted in the soon-to-be shift of Whites into a minority in the U.S.A.

    Now, before you stand atop your moral high horse and scorn me for caring, let me just ask: Is it good to be a minority? The obvious answer is ‘no’. It is not. So why should I not oppose policy measures that would lead to myself and my future descendants becoming minorities in the nation that their ancestors built for them? The only possible reason for vilifying such a natural sentiment as this is anti-white bigotry. The natural desire of a group to maintain itself and rule over its space on earth is understood, it is human. I understand it for every non-European group and European one. Only it seems that anti-whites don’t understand it for European ones.

    Now, you may bring up the colonization of America to say that White Americans have no moral right to complain. Fine, I’d say. What about England? What about France? What about Ireland? They too are being massively flooded with immigration from the non-European world and are being demographically shifted. What about those? Are the people who oppose immigration there racist bigots too? Well, then fuck you. By siding with the so called “left” on this issue in Europe, you are siding with bigotry, with hate, with an inhumane anti-European bias.

    ~~~~

    You wrote:
    Cultural assimilation is a myth. The openly racist Alt-Right perspective would be more likely to characterize cultural evolution via immigration and other forms of culture mixing/mashing as “dilution” or even “infection.”

    My reply:
    Cultural evolution via immigration….throughout most of human history, that has been known as colonization. Cultural evolution happens when the group whose culture is evolving is allowed space and time to think and breathe without being swamped by bigoted foreigners.

    Cultural assimilation is often a myth. “American culture” is a highly abstract concept at this point. America is diverse. Are Italian Americans in New Jersey really assimilated into the same singular thing as Scandinavian Montanans? Well, maybe, if you semantically define it like that. Is this line of thinking heresy to you? Also, I am a product of Irish, Eastern European and Anglo mixing. That doesn’t preclude me from seeing the point of the Anglo-Americans who opposed Irish, Italian and German mass migration into their nation in the late 18/early 1900s. In fact, given the way things have gone, it may have been better for America to keep out some of my ancestors. But again, these are hypothetical free-thought exercises. Clearly, this gets in the way of your orthodoxy and dogma on the issue.

    ~~~~

    You wrote:
    A powerful nostalgia for the past, when things were better (better being defined as more patriarchal, more Anglo-Saxon, more Christian). It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly this U.S. Golden Era occurred, but I get the sense many Alt-Righters believe our country started to go downhill with the 1820’s influx of Irish and Germans, and has been going down ever since.

    My reply:
    You’re going hard for the “they naively believe in an unreal golden age” line, which is quite fashionable. Consider that in some ways and in some times some things were in fact better in the past. No one “Alt Right” will say that everything was better, for fuck’s sake. You’re misrepresenting the fuck out of us to make a very cliche driven point.

    Again, there is an argument to be made that the U.S. becoming less Anglo protestant was an ultimately bad thing, all your rigid dogma aside.

    ~~~~

    You wrote:
    A sense of being persecuted, censored, and/or attacked for being white, and/or Christian, and/or conservative, by SJWs (social just warriors), especially in the liberal/Left-leaning fields of academia and the arts (Leftist ideologues and hardcore SJWs do sometimes unfairly attack people, as demonstrated by incidents like this one, but those attacks are more frequently directly at other liberals, such as Bernie Bros vs. Hillary supporters).

    My reply:
    White people are not allowed to express positive things about their respective ethnic groups, or openly worry about the future of their people(s) without a bigot reigning down on them for being “racist”, which is a powerful modern epithet absolutely synonymous to the medieval “heretic”.

    The mainstream institutional power in this country is absolutely in the hands of people who are very pleased to belittle and tear down all things White, Christian and Conservative. Now, I myself am an atheist. No matter. I see the tremendous anti-Christian bias (at least when it’s White Christians being Christian).

    SJW is a catchall term for people with extreme and hateful anti-White, anti-(white)male, and generally anti-western viewpoints. These haters have been getting much more vocal of late, and have been causing a stir, since most people people expect actual equality. The mask has slipped, and what has been revealed is that the next step for the left is open anti-White hatred. The left can’t stop being itself, because the left is driven by hate. One wonders if they can even be called “leftwing” at all anymore.

    ~~~~

    You wrote:
    A sense that “heroic masculinity” is somehow fading, and that this is the fault of liberals, SJWs, and feminism.

    My reply:
    Western culture and men have been emasculated, only for the hateful and foolish left to be scrambling to open the floodgates to patriarchal, far-right Islam. Ironic, really.

    The left just opposes the White right. No, I don’t think that the left in America and Europe can truly be termed “leftwing” anymore, given their support of the far-right, so long as the far-right is not White.

    ~~~~
    ~~~~

    Well, that’s all for now.

    • From your comment, it seems I described the attitudes of the Alt-Right (or at least your own) pretty well. You went through each of my descriptions, and argued the case, attempting to justify your beliefs. But not once did you suggest “that’s not what we believe” (except for my nostalgia/Golden Era description, but even there you backtracked).

      Racism is a choice, and you have chosen to hold racist attitudes. It’s within your power to open your heart and stop regarding entire groups of human beings as inferior. You don’t have to, and I can’t make you, and you probably won’t, but it’s still a choice.

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