A READER writes:

Kind greetings!  I was an avid reader of View from the Right and appreciated the many insightful posts and essays by the late Lawrence Auster regarding Western civilization, Christianity, and race.  However, the racial issues bothered me so that I occasionally inquired him concerning his ability to reconcile Christianity with race realism (or human biodiversity, as I like to call it).  To his credit, Mr. Auster posted some of my questions on VFR and thoughtfully responded to them.  Please see the email below for an example of my inquiries. 

My regret is that I never identified my race to him as I wanted to keep our exchanges as objective and impersonal as possible. In truth, I am a black man who has avidly studied race realism for at least ten years.  The topic daily occupies my mind from the moment I awake until night falls.

Every day for over a decade.  No exaggeration.

For instance, in your post entitled “What Destroyed Detroit?,” a reader mentioned that “…blacks are not self-conscious at all about the notion of white intellectual superiority. They acknowledge it readily and it doesn’t bother them at all.”

Would that it were so with me!  I deem it mightily harrowing and nightmarish that a particular race can be inherently so far behind others in civilizational, organizational, and intellectual matters, especially a race of which I am a member.  With the black race, regarding important matters that form functioning societies, the issue cannot be reduced to terms such as “less functioning” and “less capable.”  Rather, blacks as a group are largely incapable of the markers of normal civilization and healthy societies, as exemplified by the likes of Haiti, Detroit, East St. Louis, south-side Chicago, and much of the African sub-continent (unless one deems wretched villages and slums teeming with bastardy, absentee fathers, polyandry, crime at peerlessly high levels, disease, and ignorance as functioning).  In other words, the black race does not seem to fall within a clear behavioral continuum with the rest of humanity, but inhabit its own unique area that has little overlap with those of other races.  For instance, does any other place on Earth, during peacetimes, fall to such ruination and seeming hopelessness as black-occupied lands?  One might proffer the Muslim world as an example.  Indeed, Islam has corrupted Middle Eastern peoples to staggering obscenities, but their problems are mostly religious.  The problems of blacks chiefly lie with themselves.  Ask Paul Kersey.

I struggle with the juxtaposition of a just, loving God who holds all men by the same moral standards and the stark reality of a group that, when left to its own devices, appears so dispossessed of (or heavily disinclined towards) normal social conduct.  Is not my race generally doomed to failure, immorality, and ignorance?  Notice that black areas, especially in America, are replete with steepled and storefront Christian churches, yet to a large degree, exhibit similar dysfunctions as voodoo-believing or animistic West Indians and Africans.  Such realizations even make me question the very purpose of my race (and therefore myself).  I am haunted by and almost obsessed with these dark, uncomfortable queries.  They predominate my daily thoughts.

I write these things not to impute any wrongdoing on God or to question the veracity of Christianity.  I am a believer of Jesus Christ, regardless of the general inabilities of my race.  As Job declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”  Believing in God is the easier part.  Believing that He would have allowed such a benighted race to be created (or to evolve) and expect it to overcome its entrenched incapacities and live as morally and competently as others (and divinely judge them accordingly) is the more difficult part.  I see, God forbid, no bright light at the end of their tunnel.  Given this race’s intellectual and behavioral deficiencies, how can I?

Why do you think most Westerners, even Christians, deny or ignore race realism?  The acceptance of this reality is simply too hard to swallow and leads to endlessly more perplexing questions.

In summary, I cannot find peace in this area by pretending to make race un-important like today’s liberals, multiculturalists, and globalists.  Nor can I—a student of Thomas Sowell, Steve Sailer, and Lawrence Auster—explain away my race’s glaring deficits by deflecting them upon the long exorcised specters of white racism, slavery, and colonialism (like most blacks).  My knowledge of history is too deep for me to fall for the sloppy, blatant lies of scholastic Afrocentrism (e.g., that Negroes built ancient Egypt and Carthage and derived geometric equations).  I most definitely cannot and shall not become angry with or accusatory towards God.

Therefore, no outlet exists at present that will defuse my deep angst and enable me to cope with the pitiable lot of my race.

I trust, from your writings, that you are a God-fearing, charitable, and highly intelligent lady.  Can you please offer me some advice regarding how I, as a black American, can better deal with the aforesaid issues and have peace?  Were you black, how would you feel about the situation and what would your coping mechanisms be?

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing.

You ask, “Why do you think most Westerners, even Christians, deny or ignore race realism?” Utopian universalism is a comforting god. Vanity, laziness, selfishness and stupidity, something of which your race is not alone guilty by any means, all play a role. If blacks are capable of everything that whites are capable of, then the past is evil because blacks didn’t demonstrate these abilities in the past. And if the past is evil then we can reject all the truths and customs by which our ancestors lived. It’s as simple as that. It’s metaphysically essential to deny racial truths to live a life that would have shocked your grandfather. If your grandfather, who believed in racial distinctions, was wrong on one major issue, he could have been wrong about everything. Hip! Hip! Hooray! No need to think anymore. Forget all those old racist books and their racist authors. Get on with the revolution.

I notice that you mention various writers on race, but you do not mention the actual world in which you live. It as if you are judging blacks solely through these impersonal generalizations, which are emphasized to combat the idolatry of blacks and multiculturalism. But you must have much personal experience of blacks too. You must love your parents or your aunts and uncles, no? You must love your siblings or your cousins or your black friends? All blacks have good qualities, and many have very obvious decency and goodness. I say this from my own personal experience of blacks, which has included many positive encounters and passing friendships.

I came across a statement in an old Catholic magazine recently that I think is largely true. It said that blacks more readily absorb the good and the evil around them. Blacks have an elemental nature that lacks the higher organizational skills and abstraction you mention but also tends toward certain characteristic virtues, particularly an earthy warmth and affection. We see this warmth in gospel music, which is something unique and beautiful. Blacks have a way of being and a quality of soul that we can’t exactly pinpoint or define. We know it when we see it. God differentiated creation —  plants, people, personality, race and all else — out of creative joy and, in the case of blacks, he gave them a lavish measure of inherent good. Original sin made all of it corruptible. At the opposite pole from this effusive glow that blacks possess is hatred and malice that also have an elemental simplicity.

The races are like the siblings in a family. The family is only completely itself with all of the siblings, and the siblings are partly the way they are in reaction to each other. Often in a family there may be a sibling who “acts out” and another sibling who is well-behaved. But it may be that the well-behaved sibling is freed from acting upon inherent tensions because the misbehaving sibling expresses them for everyone. There are limits to this analogy but in some ways blacks are like that bad sibling. They express more dramatically than any other group the destruction of social bonds and the rootlessness of modernity. The black reaction to social decay is more immediate, obvious and noticeable. Lower class whites (and many middle class whites too) imitate the style and mannerisms of blacks because blacks express the demonic nihilism that is all around us.

You have no more cause to be discouraged than I do. You cannot impute to your people the deliberate destruction of Western culture, which is something they could neither create nor destroy. It was not blacks who formulated the pernicious ideologies that have led to the deaths of millions in modern times. All parts of the human being are corruptible. So where there is advanced thinking and advanced civilization, there is advanced evil too.

In the beatitudes, there is not a single word about “civilizational ability.” There are many words about purity of heart, humility, justice and love. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.” This life is a vale of tears for all the races. Be glad that these facts make you humble. It is natural and good, if you love your own people, to feel ashamed of their wrongs. Trust in God, defend his truths, protect the Mystical Body of Christ. And then someday you will understand his mysterious purposes at last.

— Comments —

Joe A. writes:

Your reader is a most courageous man. The answer to his two questions are hiding in plain sight.

“Why do most Westerners, even Christians, deny or ignore race realism?” (1) They deny it because they are cowards who are  afraid to risk insulting people who could easily defeat them in personal combat; and (2) they infantilize blacks rather than openly admit their manhood, which would require guilty whites to acknowledge blacks as genuine competitors for scarce resources inherently worthy of respect, even fear, which leads back to (1).

“Were you black, how would you feel about the situation and what would your coping mechanisms be?” is also a matter of an open secret. Whites excel at modern civilization because whites invented it for their own purposes. It simply does not suit blacks and they would be better served by developing their own civilization in which they too would thrive as it would be a natural outgrowth of their own inner selves.

Laura writes:

“They infantilize blacks rather than openly admit their manhood…”

That’s true. The denial of blacks as moral agents, capable of free choice, is a way of making blacks perpetual children. Whites don’t want to oppose real grown-ups. And blacks accept this garbage.

Earl writes:

I would like to say some things to your black reader. I’ll keep it short, since he’s probably not a black reader, but a white agent provocateur from something like American Renaissance.

I love Lawrence Auster’s writing. It was an honor when he published things I wrote to him. I am not 100% white. I am Hispanic, and I live in lily white Oregon where people can’t figure out if I’m Arab, or what? Whites are not intellectually superior. Jews are. Whites have no problem, as far as I can tell, recognizing Jewish or Asian supremacy where due. They generally accept that blacks are athletically superior. Blacks should not feel so bad. Someone has to be at the left end of the curve. I could go on all day making fun of how stupid and suicidal whites are. Or blacks. Of course I married a white woman and settled in a white place on purpose. There are things I miss about blacks in South Chicago, where I grew up as a sometimes minority, ducking black and Mexican gangs going after me for looking too white. People in Oregon can be so stiff and boring. Nobody laughs at you and makes fun of you in public for acting like a fool. One Christmas I was traveling through Sacramento when I threw a fit in the street over a pile of toys cascading out the rear hatch of my van very noisily into the street. I kicked and cussed, and a group of black bus drivers were there to openly mock me. It felt so good! I needed to be reminded that I was acting like a little b*tch. I miss that about blacks. Their presence made me sharper; more self aware.

As to the other aspect of your concerns: If people have a problem with my dark complexion and my jihadist-looking beard, well then, they can feel free to confront me about it. I am a Marine and carry a concealed handgun daily. Ooh-rah. Want to deport me for being the grandchild of a (possibly illegal) immigrant? Molon Labe. (I support total deportation as far as the current immigration debate goes.)

Be proud of your race, and be fond of others who are proud of their races and philosophies. Even if they are your enemies. Would Christian crusaders have been worth their salt without the Mohammedans to oppose them? God bless the crusaders, God bless Saladin! Treat it all in a masculine, competitive, honorable, and lively spirit. Don’t be a sore loser. May the best man win. Be the best man, and better those around you. That’s my attitude. Hope it helps.

Theologically, perhaps there is a problem coming from the belief that your race’s sins are greater than another’s. Struggling with condemnation? You are only eternally responsible for your own sins. And your sins can be forgiven, no matter how horrendous. Just repent. God bless you, if you’re real.

Roger G. writes:

Man, poor man!! From the moment you’re awake until night falls? How can you be thinking that it’s your duty to carry the weight of the whole race on your shoulders? As a Christian, you of all people should understand Who is and who isn’t capable of of bearing such a burden. And if my reading is correct, even He balked at the task. Cut it out!!

Donald writes:

I doubt that the writer is actually a negro. I am in my 60’s and grew up around colored people, and I have never heard such thoughts and feelings coming from them. No not even once. That kind of deep and critical self-reflection is so very rare among blacks that I suspect hoaxcraft.

Laura writes:

Your observation that blacks are not generally self-critical has been confirmed by psychological tests. On the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a widely used personality test, blacks score significantly higher than whites in self esteem, according to Michael Levin in Why Race Matters. A study in 1991 of adolescent girls by the American Association of University Women also showed significant discrepancies, with black girls having a greater sense of personal worth than white girls.

Of course, it occurred to me that the reader is not genuinely black. It is not something I can verify, although his email was accompanied by his picture.

Sheila C. writes:

Whether or not your black correspondent is truly black is not a question I’m in a position to judge. However, I can confidently label the response to him, by Earl, as what I call “concern trolling.” Earl earnestly instructs your correspondent to “Be proud of your race, and be fond of others who are proud of their races and philosophies.” He then proceeds to explain that whites are not athletically nor “intellectually superior,” reserving those positions for Jews and blacks. He complains that whites are “stiff and boring.” He boasts that anyone who has a problem with his belligerence or beliefs or possible status as a less-than authentic American citizen to “Molon labe.” He admits to having deliberately married a white woman and settled in a white area, however, and concludes with a purportedly sincere “God bless you.”

My, my, how helpful and concerned “Earl” is.’ Of course, according to his iteration, Whites have nothing to be proud of. The Crusaders, rather than responding to deliberate provocation and massacres by Arabs, were praiseworthy for their “masculine, competitive, honorable, and lively spirit.” I suppose that’s a slight improvement over the usual theme, fostered by most non-Christian academics, that they were either ignorant and bigoted zealots or misguided peasants led by power-hungry churchmen, but who am I to quibble with a self-proclaimed Hispanic marine? After all, what have I to boast of? I wonder how his white wife feels, considering his bold advice to be proud of one’s race, after he finishes denigrating whites as essentially colorless and bland – similar to the DWL’s (disingenuous white liberal) flippant characterization of anything other than “diverse,” “vibrant,” or “multicultural” as boring and culturally worthless “white bread” (i.e. soft and nutritionally empty).

I’m so glad to learn that Earl prefers to be around blacks who will remind him to be “sharper.” I, on the other hand, will continue to avoid the necessity to be constantly on my guard (both physically and intellectually) when around self-identified “people of color,” and will continue to instill in my children pride in the white, Christian, Western civilization they are heirs to. Molon labe, indeed.

Laura writes:

Earl’s point that whites are not intellectually superior is obviously wrong. Also, the Muslim provocations that led to the Crusades were not a good thing overall, however much they might have brought out the fighting spirit of Europeans.

I disagree, however, with Sheila’s characterization of Earl’s comments on a few points. He did not say he prefers to live among blacks. He said he purposely chose not to live among them. He made a couple of positive remarks about whites, stating that they are not above recognizing the superiority of others when it exists and that they have displayed honorable behavior in the past. I sympathize with his point that he misses some things about blacks. I would feel the same way if I did not live near them (while there would also be things I would definitely not miss). In some ways, whites are relatively boring and stiff. Earl’s statement, “Be proud of your race, and be fond of others who are proud of their races and philosophies,” is generally good advice. However, the majority of blacks possess an over-abundance of racial pride.

Earl responds to Sheila:

Thank you for sharing your most confident suppositions, ma’am. God bless you too.

Earl adds:

As to Laura’s points:

I’ll admit that I have not personally done the IQ research myself, so you’ll have to take the matter up with Murray’s The Bell Curve, which stated that the average IQ of African Americans was 85, Latinos 89, whites 103, East Asians 106, and Jews 113.

I did not state my own opinion on the superiority of black athletes, I simply stated the white attitude that generally accepts athletic (and other kinetic forms of) inferiority without feeling the need to go on The Thinking Housewife and “Lament His People.”

Regarding my personality and the orthodoxy of my theodicy: As a bit of a Calvinist, and an ex-Catholic, I see sin and suffering as ultimately an indication of God’s glory. Even the Crusades. Total sovereignty, ‘n’ all that.

Laura writes:

When you said, “Whites are not intellectually superior,” it seemed as if you were saying they are not intellectually superior to blacks. That’s how I read it and apparently Sheila did also. I see now that you were saying that whites do not have the highest IQ of all racial groups.” I don’t dispute that.

The Black Reader writes:

Thanks for posting our exchange.  It will take me a while to digest your thoughts.

As an aside, your readers can rest assured that I am indeed black.  To them, I ask:  Is self-critique the exclusive province of the non-black races?  It amazes me that some people (not you, of course) seem to lack the notion of a distribution.  If the average black is not very self-critical, then naturally some will fall far from the mean (i.e., abundance or absence of self-critique).  Obviously, those who do engage in self-reflection will likely question the popular ideas of their day, such as racial egalitarianism, pervasive white racism, and Afrocentrism.  A few will even entertain race realism.  Of course, if a black is reading blogs such as View from the Right, The Thinking Housewife, and iSteve, he or she ipso facto is very likely to represent the self-critical side of this distribution.

The doubts regarding my racial identity are the very reason that I post in a racially neutral fashion on VFR, iSteve, and Half Sigma.  I wanted to contribute to the topic without my having to prove my race to people.  If a non-white, Ethiopian-born Canadian named Kidist Paulos Asrat can herald the greatness of white Western civilization, surely an American-born black can receive and understand the realities and ramifications of human biodiversity.

Mrs. Wood, do you have a Facebook or Linkedin account?  I can “friend” you and then you will see my information, pictures, background, etc.

Again, I kindly thank you and your readers for offering me advice.

Laura writes:

You are welcome.

I am not using Facebook or Linkedin now. I am satisfied that you are being honest. I looked up your comments at VFR when you initially wrote to me. Besides, it is entirely plausible that a black person would make the observations you have made.

Bill R. writes:

Laura writes:

You write:

Surely a man of your black reader’s intelligence knows that the world has been filled since its beginning with suffering piled upon suffering of all types and shapes and colors that people of good will and faith struggle over every day to reconcile with a just, loving God.

But if other people struggle with these things every day and have trouble reconciling them with a just and loving God, then why is it unseemly for him to struggle with them too? I agree that he was being somewhat accusatory toward God, but many human beings have these conflicts and we truly can’t fully understand. As St. Paul said, “We see in part.” I don’t think a psychotherapist would address the theological question at  issue.

Also, I don’t think anyone was “supposed to be touched” by his letter. If the same question had come from a white person, written in a similar spirit, it would not have been condemned here. Truthfully, I am not particularly concerned with his motives, and I wouldn’t be concerned even if he was an impostor, which I do not believe he is, because the question he asked was a good one and worth pursuing.

AUGUST 3, 2013

Anonymous writes:

I am also black. My advice for the lamenter is to trust in God. We can’t fathom His plan. Why waste precious time worrying about it?

Blacks have an average lower IQ? Okay. Aren’t we charged by God to make the most of ourselves, despite our shortcomings? I seem to remember being told that in a service, when I was a kid.

The writings of Booker T. Washington are most applicable to us blacks, in my opinion. I was exposed to W.E.B. Dubois in college as a callow youth. Didn’t learn til I was older that he was a socialist shill, which explains why I didn’t like his message. I later found a lot of comfort in Washington, because a century ago he proposed an actual way for blacks to raise ourselves in the U.S. and also described people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Nothing new under the sun.

Lastly, Western civilization didn’t just pop into existence, like Athena out of Zeus’ head. It took a long time before, and the sacrifice of Christ after, to develop. Likely, if waiting on sub-Saharan Africa to reach the same condition of civilization, it will, at minimum, take the same amount of time.

Bill R. continues:

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