Make America Ethnic Again

2,303 words

I attended a small (about 160 students per grade) Midwestern high school only ten minutes from a metropolis, but the neighborhood had large houses with high property taxes and the district had gerrymandered the auto-enrollment zone to keep the school about 90 percent white with a smattering of Asians (several boys named Tenzin). This is why it’s considered to be a top-10 public school in the state, which is sort of like excelling at the Special Olympics.

There were also a handful of bused-in blacks from the inner-city; I’d see these youths roaming the halls, but they were never actually in any of my classes. However, rumor has it that they indeed attended and graduated from the institution.

I then attended a small college not far away, but a staggering amount of the studentry was non-white. There I played an integral role as one of three white guys on the basketball team; a role that chose me because I chose tall parents. One can play hockey only as long as he can stand answering “no” when strangers ask if he plays basketball.

During this time, I discovered two things about race: it is simple and complicated.

The basketball courts had daily open hours during which many pick-up games were played. Seemingly every man in the school tested his mettle against the guys who had made the team; they all wanted to prove to us that they could be a member if they really wanted. They couldn’t, of course, and most were terribly unskilled. However, I was flabbergasted by the number of 5’9” black guys who couldn’t walk while chewing gum, but performed windmill dunks without so much as a warm-up. I had played with a few black kids in high school and our conference had some talented youths, but it’s difficult to show off how athletic one is during intense competition unless one is leagues ahead of the opposition. I had discovered why the NBA is 82 percent non-white, and the only white guys who could dunk picked tall parents.

To the point: Race exists in a simple sense because our colloquial understanding of it is correct. These are not century-old superstitions forced upon us by monocle-wearing, caliper-wielding quacks, but intuitions baked into the deep recesses of the brain. [1] Where this understanding stems is from an area of the brain not easily programmable, if at all. My understanding of how race can be complicated originates from my experience as a white basketball player.

Prior to college, I was not cognizant of race on a daily basis — a fact that will make the leftist reader hoot and holler, “see, that’s white privilege!” It is an obvious byproduct of homogeneity. My only regular exposure was through my dad, who worked in a part of town that had been flooded with African migrants. I learned about slavery in school, so I’d scoff at his racial sentiments. But, as Mark Twain said: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

The blacks on the college team were all African-Americans from various inner cities around the United States save one Muslim whose parents emigrated from The Gambia — a country so important it needs a The. He was the best student of all the blacks and mostly kept to himself, or at least did not appear to have any friendships with other players. He and I offered math tutoring to the other players. It might shock the reader, but none of them accepted the offer.

One day in the locker room, after the Muslim-who-was-so-dark-he-was-almost-blue had gone, the blacks got on discussing guys named Muhammad and how quickly they’d get “stomped out” in African-American neighborhoods — implying some sort of division between Afro-Muslim immigrants and the African-Americans who had their own, essentially walled-off, neighborhoods in the city.

While thinking about this on my drive home, I was reminded of the time a black teammate in high school said he couldn’t stand being around Somalis because they “stink like shit.” I had instinctively looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was in earshot, but even then, I knew blacks could say what they please without consequence. Several years later, hearing these African-Americans say Africans can’t go into their neighborhoods, despite both groups being black, left me with some sort of foundational perspective on race relations in America. Race clearly existed, as I was constantly reminded by my teammates and the trash talk from opposing black players, but I witnessed a clear demonstration of ethnic nuance within the broad scope of race.

It is also worth noting that the sole Hispanic man on the team was hardly acknowledged by the black players, despite being far and away the best shooter on the team, and only spent time around the three stooges. So, while it’s possible that there might be a religious aspect to the rejection of Afro-Muslim immigration by American blacks, they rejected the Hispanic player who wore a large crucifix tattoo on his shoulder just as thoroughly. Moreover, my black teammates were Christian in the same sense that a painted horse is a zebra.

Back to the point. Race has an undergirding ethnic component that can, at first glance, give some credence to the charge that it is an arbitrary system of classification. This point is made by egalitarians across the political spectrum and even by some dissidents such as E. Michael Jones. Jones puts his tongue in his cheek before saying he is half-Irish and half-German, which makes him bi-racial. However, waiting for the laugh after this statement must imply the absurdity. Would it be funny if anybody actually thought he is not white? One can imagine a similar joke coming from a guy claiming he is not Asian because he’s half-Korean and half-Japanese. [2] If E. Michael Jones were half-German and half-Senegalese, his joke would lose its irony and the crickets would roar like Senegalese lions.

This epiphany I had while playing basketball was not my first exposure to ethnic rivalries, but, as are all things African-American, this experience was far more visceral than the European ones I had growing up. If America ever had a tangible culture, not merely propositions written on a piece of paper, it was in the collective of ethnic enclaves. America’s identity was in its unity of differentiation, as oxymoronic as that sounds. Everyone was an American, but they enjoyed practicing and living their European roots and fostering this in their children. These strong ties to their respective homelands and cultures led to many us/them conflicts; we all know that Italians and Irish mixed as if they were oil and water.

However, MLK was not marching to D.C. in protest against the tyrannical Brits — he wanted his reparations check to be signed by The White Man. The effort to dispel the reality of race, as either Jewish subversion by some right-wingers (EMJ to Milo Yiannopoulos) or conditioned defensiveness against imperial Europeans by the egalitarian types, does not explain why South African blacks —  in a country that is 90 percent black and 80 percent Christian — are torturing whites to death while the government reports them as mere robberies, to give just one example.

It is of course true that most Europeans didn’t call themselves white in the vacuum of the continent, but why would they? This is, again, an obvious byproduct of racial homogeneity. In a similar vein, America, prior to 1965, was a home for Europeans of all flavors. The polity did not concern themselves with the term white just as they did not bother calling grass green. However, the founders of the country and those in charge of representing the polity made it explicit that the United States was to be a home for whites, i.e. descendants of European peoples. [3]

Is it simply impossible that Europeans have ethnic and racial identities? Is it possible that the European mind is, dare I ask, nuanced? In America and Europe, at least off-campus, it is taken for granted that there is a Self — cogito, ergo sum — and human beings are real. It is also accepted that the family — husband, wife, and children — is the foundation of society. Branching out, we have the extended family and, not long ago, one’s greater community was a close addition to their extended family – with similar European roots, norms, food, etc. From here we begin to see a hierarchy of identities, one of which becomes race — people who look like me and come from that region on the globe (picture yourself pointing at a globe for full effect). One would also assume that the hierarchy extends laterally, e.g. one’s occupation, member of a bowling team, etc. The identity furthest from one’s Self would be that of “human being”. Now that I write it out, this is probably why humanism always seemed to me too vague to mean anything. Regardless, the distance between one’s immediate family and one’s continental ancestry within their set of identities does not render race an absurd notion.

Furthermore, because it is a bit distant from one’s immediate identities, race doesn’t play a primary role until it must. As Europe and her offshoots increasingly see themselves standing alone — now surrounded and infiltrated by 85 percent of the world’s population, watching African-Americans loot and destroy American cities because they dindu nuffin wrong — which has been happening since the Civil Rights Movement — being smothered to death by Kenyan nurses, and having their children thrown off balconies by disgruntled blacks because they are just “looking for someone to kill” — their racial identity moves closer to the Self. With race now at the forefront, petty ethnic squabbles slide to the back burner, if not vanish outright.

However, not all are awakened. There is a smooth-brained boomer archetype who believes multi-racialism is mentioned in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, but incessantly asks where the Good Ol’ Days have gone, and they are seemingly incapable of putting two and two together. On the opposite end of the spectrum, with those willing to entertain the Jewish Question, many acknowledge the long history of Jewish instigation of blacks against whites in order to exacerbate the differences between the two. To say that this is the sole reason for racial conflict is patently absurd — South Africa works here, too — and it’s just as silly as the boomer deception. Canadians can’t even assimilate the French, yet we are to take as an article of faith that Angolans will be proper citizens as soon as they step on our magic soil. Lastly, there is the egalitarian crowd who denies race outright, as if the existence of the color spectrum implies that red and blue are the same color.

I will not protest. Life was much better when the polity could concern themselves only with ethnic divisions, but that is in the rearview mirror. Racial schism is paramount now. Until we are once again granted the pleasure of arguing about lefse and bratwurst, we are one people staring down the barrel of a gun.

Greg Johnson recently noted in a podcast that Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland are three distinct nationalities with unique cultures who see themselves as comrades in arms, fighting off globalization, Jewish subversion, and mass migration from the third world. Picture the epic handshake meme from Predator but with two white guys. What if? Austria might be a part of that group as well, since people are protesting Sebastian Kurz and his Nazism — usually a glaring sign that one is doing good politics.

We in the West would love to return to the quaint, shire-like living we either vaguely remember or have only heard about in tales. It’s great to argue the subtleties of German and Russian literature. It’s important to criticize smoked herring and tree bark, or whatever it is that Icelandic people eat. This is no longer our reality. From the Pre-Socratics to Heidegger, Mariusz Pudzianowski and GK Chesterton, Farnese Hercules and Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, lutefisk and pierogies — we are white and many people want us dead. To deny this is to pull the enemy’s trigger.

Until our politicians agree with this sentiment, we are in a war. What used to seem so terrible now fills us with nostalgia. We are no longer afforded the privilege of European diversity. I’ll end this with a fond memory I have of our subtle differences.

When I was 21, my closest friend and his family took me to a town near Trondheim, Norway, where my friend’s father was born. Being a young man in Trondheim for the first time, I had to ice my neck at night from having my head on a swivel all day — I was vastly outnumbered by 5’8” blonde women. One night, we met with one of my buddy’s friends from his year at Folkehøgskole (an intermediary between high school and college, basically) in Molde.

After some hours of drinking, making it easier to fork over piles of cash for one pint, and the Norwegian’s English coming back to him more and more, we eventually got on to discussing the women. I was smitten. But the Norwegian looked off longingly, and sighed: “Swedish girls are so hot.”

Notes

[1] They weren’t quacks, see J. Philippe Rushton.

[2] We all know what is meant when a person is Asian – they are of East Asian ancestry. That is why Arabs or Pakistanis are never called Asians unless the media is trying to obscure their East Asian race in criminal behavior.

[3] Until 1952, the Walter-McCarran Act, all immigration policy was designed to keep the new country white, or at least as a supermajority since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was followed by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. More on that here.