CAROLINE writes:

Josaphine’s story brought me to tears. Liberalism is indeed the sea we swim in, but how much heartbreak its delusions bring about. Her story is a testament to the words “the truth will set you free.” May God bless her and her family.

Gwen writes:

It’s a shame this writer and her husband got married for ideological reasons and not for love. They, apparently, did not have stable homes from which to draw examples of a happy marriage. She’s most certainly been influenced by her mother (a radical feminist), which has skewed her worldview. My point being that, she does not know who she is – she’s spent all these years trying to prove something to someone (progressive marriage? Really?) and now she’s discovering reality.

It strikes me that she’s falling into the same black/white (pardon the pun) thinking that got her into this mental pretzel to begin with by trying to plant a stake into some extreme attitude again. By that I do not mean growing into a more conservative attitude but trying to blanket an entire people (using her words, “how much anger black people have to white people”). Could it be that she’s that annoying white liberal who moves into a primarily black neighborhood, which is likely to have quite a lot of poverty, under-educated residents and all the problems that go along with that, because she wants to show how “progressive” she is. Those people stand out like a sore thumb. I’ve known them.

I am 50 years old and white. My husband is 54 and black. We have a blessing of a son who is now 6 years old. We were married for 10 years before I became pregnant (we had assumed after all that time that we were going to spend the rest of our lives childless). We, too, homeschool our son. I dearly love my black in-laws and they love me and have shown it from day one. They are thrilled to have this grandson. My parents have treated my husband with respect and love since we were married. My husband is well respected and well liked at his work. Our neighbors are quite open, warm and welcoming to us and especially to our son.

Maybe our experience is different from your writer’s because my husband and I were more mentally mature before we married. We certainly never described or even thought of our marriage as being “progressive.” We married because we loved and respected each other. Maybe it’s because neither of us had some idealized vision of how we should be to attract the approval of a certain group of people (her progressive friends). Nor did we plant ourselves in a particular neighborhood to make a statement.

I’m not naive – I surely know there are no shortage of people who are made uncomfortable or angry by the make-up of her marriage and mine. The difference between her attitude and mine (and not the only difference) is that I don’t care what those types of people think about my marriage. Those types of people are ugly to me. My husband is a true man and a gentleman. He has been the catalyst for my own intellectual and spiritual growth and it has made me genuinely happy to be his wife and mother of our child.

Laura writes:

It’s a shame this writer and her husband got married for ideological reasons and not for love.

I disagree. It seems that she and her husband did marry for love, as is clear from her comments about how compatible they are. Ideology, however, gave them unrealistic expectations.

My point being that, she does not know who she is – she’s spent all these years trying to prove something to someone (progressive marriage? Really?) and now she’s discovering reality.

She does not speak of her marriage as “progressive” approvingly. The theme was her discovery of reality.

It strikes me that she’s falling into the same black/white (pardon the pun) thinking that got her into this mental pretzel to begin with by trying to plant a stake into some extreme attitude again. By that I do not mean growing into a more conservative attitude but trying to blanket an entire people (using her words, “how much anger black people have to white people”).

Obviously, she did not mean that all black people have anger toward white people. But having been a liberal, and having been raised to believe that harmony was possible if whites did everything to make blacks like them and if whites accepted all responsibility for any lack of harmony, this is the glaring fact  – the fact that a fair number of blacks remain angry – that stands out before her and that she wants to articulate here because it is forbidden. I agree that it is dangerous to go overboard with this fact as there are many blacks who are not angry. But obviously, she did not want blacks to be angry at whites like her and it was shattering to see that so many of them were. She does not tar an entire people. Her husband is black. Her children are part black.

Could it be that she’s that annoying white liberal who moves into a primarily black neighborhood, which is likely to have quite a lot of poverty, under-educated residents and all the problems that go along with that, because she wants to show how “progressive” she is. Those people stand out like a sore thumb. I’ve known them.

She moved into the neighborhood because she and her husband liked the old and affordable houses and they believed living in a predominantly black neighborhood would pose no overwhelming problems. She admits to having been an “annoying white liberal” in her obliviousness.

We married because we loved and respected each other.

I believe that is the case here too.

I dearly love my black in-laws and they love me and have shown it from day one. They are thrilled to have this grandson. My parents have treated my husband with respect and love since we were married. My husband is well respected and well liked at his work.

Do you mean to say that because you have had this experience of welcoming in-laws, Josaphine is imagining hostility towards her? Given that it is disappointing to experience this hostility, why would she imagine it? It is not unusual, by the way, for black women to feel negative about black men marrying white women. Black women are the losers when interracial marriage is not stigmatized, as Steve Sailer points out here. It is hard enough for them to find a black man who will marry them. They do not applaud when white women marry black men.

If I were Josaphine’s friend, I would cheer her up by saying she could have had white in-laws who didn’t welcome her. But she seems to have adjusted anyway.

The difference between her attitude and mine (and not the only difference) is that I don’t care what those types of people think about my marriage.

But you said that your in-laws are kind. Don’t you think that makes it easier to not care what others think?

Our neighbors are quite open, warm and welcoming to us and especially to our son.

I wonder whether you live in a neigborhood that is 70 percent or more black as Josaphine does. She said she has not experienced any antipathy from whites because of her marriage. Her own mother approves of it.

Greg J. writes:

Thank you for posting Josaphine’s courageous essay about her change of heart and mind about the issues of marriage and tradition. I found her story to be a painful one that she told with intelligence and compassion. To make such a profound pivot in her thinking at the age of 42 is remarkable, but it is absolutely possible and I applaud her for having the guts to state the truth, as difficult as it surely has been for her. It is never easy to swim against the current of liberal assumptions, and I would imagine that it would be even more challenging for someone like Josaphine, who has been for so long so steeped in the communal realities of liberal values. I applaud her for deciding to make a stand for her nuclear family, for standing loyally beside her husband and children even as she and her family are evidently being abandoned or criticized by many of their friends and in-laws. Hers is a thought-provoking testimony of how it is never too late to stand up for tradition and truth, and my hope is that she and her family will experience the comfort of the permanent things even as they leave behind the fleeting appeal of what this sick culture is selling.

John P. writes:

This post raises wider questions for me. I think it might be interesting to start a thread on what causes people to switch from liberalism to conservatism. Readers could submit a (hopefully) short account of their conversions. This might have the beneficial effect of improving our ability to promote such conversions as well as having a certain human interest aspect to it.

In my case, my conversion began when I was 19. For reasons I can’t fully explain, I had an extremely strong desire to be efficient, effective and productive. I was also very strongly opposed to propaganda. I began to change my mind when it began to dawn on me that my instructors, (and, regrettably, my parents) were not efficient or productive people and that the teaching they offered was clearly propaganda. For many years I was what traditionalists would describe as a “right liberal,” more concerned with the many economic distortions created by the interventionist state than with moral concerns per se. Over a period of decades I found myself moving further and further to the right and while I still consider efficiency and productivity to be important it has become secondary to matters of morality and cultural continuity.

Do you think this might be an interesting topic of conversation?

Laura writes:

Yes, I do. It’s a good idea.

Josaphine writes:

Gwen writes, “It’s a shame this writer and her husband got married for ideological reasons and not for love. “

My husband and I dated for six years in college  and graduate school before marrying. We knew each other as friends beforehand. We had everything in common: we were happy, had fun, enjoyed each other’s company, and planned our future together. I did not pick him because he was black, and he did not pick me because I was white. Our liberal upbringing allowed us to lower these racial barriers that SHOULD have been put into place by our parents and our respective cultures.

Our wedding ceremony was beautiful and was shared with close friends and family. I am sorry Gwen made this false assumption about our relationship, but she is incorrect. I don’t know many young newlywed mothers who “know” themselves well at 28. I am just starting to find myself in my early 40’s. I am not sure why Gwen thinks this is so abnormal. If she were more mentally mature than I was when she married, then good! She is fortunate. I was still growing and trying to shed many years of liberal brainwashing.

Gwen makes apologies for poor blacks. I wonder about her experience with REAL black people is? I hear time and again from other blacks that my husband is not a REAL black man, but a sellout and an “Uncle Tom.” He has never received such racist comments from white people. My black mother-in-law has openly stated that she does not approve of me because I am white, and she is very racially conscious. I said I don’t blame her, and now I understand why she feels this way. We all have a right to associate with whom we choose, and to segregate ourselves racially. She cannot relate to my children because they are mixed. As Laura stated and I have found through my own experience, many black women have a big problem with interracial marriage.

I live where I live not to make a statement, but because I thought that it would be an inexpensive place to raise my family in an urban environment, and expose them to both black and white cultures. Half of this has been true, but the money savings is not worth it. I assumed that black culture and white culture were the same, but this is far from true. I do not feel comfortable living outside of our means financially, and I have a responsibility to spend my husband’s money efficiently. My house cost very little in this neighborhood, and I have been a good steward of our money. That has been my objective all along.

So I was wrong about wanting to expose my children to black culture. The pathology of my black neighbors has been a wake-up call for me, and now I know that I have made a mistake. So far, my children have learned about Child Services, dirty heroin needles, prostitutes, robbery, blight, crimewatch, domestic violence, and random gunfire. I have seen the most atrocious behavior, neglect and abuse by blacks since living here. I DO blame black culture for this, and feel no white guilt for it. I do not want my children to learn any parts of black culture. I know many upper middle class professional blacks too, and they are ALL sympathetic to the black ghetto, and believe that racism is what keeps blacks living in poverty. You must be in denial, Gwen. If you want to learn more about black culture, I recommend the blog at Occidental Dissent. He writes about things I see daily.

I wonder how long Gwen has lived near poor blacks? Most whites I know have not. If she is educated, most likely she lives in a nice suburb with a few educated blacks who fit in well. This is not the reality that most of us face. I bought into the “diversity is our strength” idea while growing up, and found out the hard way that it is a dangerous lie. And finally, I DO care what people think about my marriage. I can’t believe that any new bride would so willingly accept her mother-in-law’s disapproval of her. What people think determines where I choose to live, and who my friends are. I try not to have delusions about this. And by the way, my husband and I feel the same way about our relationship and we have traveled together on this journey. I have the most healthy marriage I know! I receive many compliments on my marriage and family. While many of our friends are divorced with small children, we are still in love, laughing, living, raising healthy children, and enjoying our lives to the fullest.

Van Wijk writes:

Josaphine’s letter reminds me of a similar discussion we had around two years ago. It seems to me that if Josaphine and Gwen were true conservatives, they would have taken past, present, and future generations into account when choosing a mate. In choosing to marry black men, both have sundered themselves from their forebears and their descendents, permanently. They have in all probability damned their own children to live with the splintered identities so common to mixed-race people.

Because of their choices, these ladies’ conservatism can only go so far before it hits the wall of race. They will not be able to convincingly argue for the survival of Caucasian peoples when they themselves have produced nonwhite children. They are not likely to admit that black criminality and dysfunction is caused in large part by a mean IQ of 85 and the low impulse control that goes with it (the argument that crime is caused by poverty and lack of education is long since discredited). They will never be able to fully accept that whenever blacks are in charge of anything in this country, you almost always find corruption, fraud and graft, nor will they accept the blatant lower civilizational ability of the African race. In the words of Lawrence Auster: How does it fit in God’s scheme that a major race is manifestly less endowed with civilizational abilities than the other races? This would not be a terribly acute problem if we were still in a simpler world. But once the world has become modernized and globalized, and a certain amount of IQ is needed in any society for it to function at the modern, technical level, then it becomes a big problem.

Laura writes:

There are many posts at this site on interracial marriage, in additon to the one Van Wijk mentions. Discussions on this subject can be found here, here, here, here, here and here. Those posts include many excellent comments.

Van Wijk writes:

It seems to me that if Josaphine and Gwen were true conservatives, they would have taken past, present, and future generations into account when choosing a mate.

I suggest Van Wijk read Josaphine’s story again. The point was that she was a liberal and that this was the account of her transformation. I entirely disagree that she cannot convincingly argue for the preservation of white culture and identity. Indeed, she is in a position to speak very effectively on this issue. She can speak from experience and she does not appear to deny the natural distinctions Van Wijk mentions.

They will never be able to fully accept that whenever blacks are in charge of anything in this country, you almost always find corruption, fraud and graft, nor will they accept the blatant lower civilizational ability of the African race.

But Josaphine wrote: “American black culture today is nothing to be proud of and we should all denounce it and demand assimilation.”

Hurricane Betsy writes:

It’s not good enough for Josaphine to describe the behaviour of blacks in the poor areas, for example,

“So far, my children have learned about Child Services, dirty heroin needles, prostitutes, robbery, blight, crimewatch, domestic violence, and random gunfire. I have seen the most atrocious behavior, neglect and abuse by blacks since living here. I DO blame black culture for this, and feel no white guilt for it.”

Not so fast. The biggest mistake made by white people in their entire history is their continued attempts to force nonwhites, such as Negroes in this case, to live successfully in Western civilization and be “just like us.” It is like trying to raise chickens in a fish tank full of water, or a bunch of cows stuffed into a little hen house; there’s going to be bad effects because it’s not biologically correct to do these things. My own particular ethnic group had nothing to do with exploration of the nonwhite countries, colonizing them or making slaves of anyone, ever. But because all whites are lumped together, I do feel a bit of responsibility for the continued efforts by white people to make another race into something God never intended them to be.

Laura writes:

Josaphine is saying she feels no liberal white guilt, the guilt that because whites have not given blacks enough freedom or enough resources, blacks have experienced failure.

I agree with Hurricane that whites should feel another kind of guilt, the guilt of having abandoned their authority and their position as leaders of nonwhites, a position which would entail denying nonwhites certain privileges. Whites should also feel guilt for having introduced a level of sexual freedom that has decimated American black culture.

Jane writes:

Here is a very short account of my conversion from a liberal to a conservative. I believe if you’re not a liberal in your twenties you don’t have a heart and if you’re not a conservative in your forties you don’t have a brain.

Laura writes:

It’s possible to safely be a liberal in young adulthood when one doesn’t live in a liberal culture such as ours. Otherwise, one may spend the rest of life undoing mistakes.

Alissa writes:

Since both Gwen and Josaphine married outside their races, I’d advise for them to pick one child to marry a full European only and another child to marry a full African only. That way their grandchildren would either be 75% African or European. I think parents can advise and decide the children’s future in some circumstances, no? I’m praying that either my older brother or my younger sister marry a full African or European Christian and I marry the race that was left out, preserving religion and preserving race simultaneously.

A reader writes:

Would you please consider asking Gwen and Josaphine where each of them lives, at least what part of the country? I have a hunch, and I’m curious to see if it’s right.

Laura writes:

Josaphine said that she is from a midwestern city. I am not sure about Gwen. I prefer to let readers volunteer that information if they wish, instead of asking.

The reader responds:

Fair enough. I understand that. My hunch, in any event, was that Josaphine probably didn’t live in certain parts of the South, while it wouldn’t surprise me if Gwen were in, for example, Texas or Louisiana. I grew up in the South and was never really exposed to racism by blacks until I lived in other parts of the country, particularly the East Coast. Even rather little things are quite different: in the South, I could smile at blacks on the street just as at whites, and they’d return a smile. On the East Coast, I can count on one hand the number of smiles I’ve received from black strangers in the last year, and the number of scowls and stares are beyond counting. Sad to say, I’ve finally given up on smiling at black strangers myself.

Laura writes:

When I have been to Georgia and South Carolina, I have been pleasantly surprised by the warmth and friendliness of blacks in casual interactions. It is very nice. This is much less common in the Northeast.

It’s very ironic – isn’t it? – that blacks seem happier, and to like whites more, in the land of slavery.

Jesse Powell writes:

Van Wijk wrote: 

“They are not likely to admit that black criminality and dysfunction is caused in large part by a mean IQ of 85 and the low impulse control that goes with it (the argument that crime is caused by poverty and lack of education is long since discredited). They will never be able to fully accept that whenever blacks are in charge of anything in this country, you almost always find corruption, fraud and graft, nor will they accept the blatant lower civilizational ability of the African race.” 

I object to these comments as they seem to imply that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, that the many problems that blacks suffer in America and in Africa as well are due to low intelligence that is presumably inherited and genetic. 

I am curious where the figure of blacks having a mean IQ of 85 comes from; it surely has to come from an IQ test of some sort. I don’t doubt that blacks in America likely score lower on a test on average than whites but many things might explain this other than racially determined inherited intelligence. Some claim that IQ tests are culturally biased; that the questions on the IQ test contain cultural references that whites are more familiar with than blacks. Furthermore, the child’s environment growing up could affect brain development and intelligence; the presence of a father in the home likely improves the home environment making the child more disciplined and able to perform better on a test. Before one can assert that racial differences are the cause of blacks scoring lower on IQ tests other factors need to be held constant or otherwise taken into account. 

The problem with claiming that inherit racial differences are the source of the different outcomes experienced by the races is that many other factors could also explain the differences that are in play. It is worth pointing out that in terms of number of genetic differences the different peoples on the African continent, all black in skin color, have more variation between them than those of one skin color differ from those of another skin color. There are more genetic differences within the black race on the continent of Africa than there are between the different races globally. This is because humans have lived on the African continent for the longest duration of time allowing for more genetic differences to accumulate. 

Lastly, I view the assertion of the superiority of ones own race to be a dangerous and destructive indulgence. Claims of racial superiority have led to many abuses against races that were weaker and unable to defend themselves against attack by a stronger outside group. In addition, there is no guarantee that claims of racial superiority will not be used against you in the future. Hitler claimed that Germans were the master race and on this basis waged war against his racial inferiors, all of them white. The story of World War II shows that one white tribe can claim superiority over another white tribe just as easily as whites can claim superiority over blacks.

 Laura writes:

You write:

I object to these comments as they seem to imply that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, that the many problems that blacks suffer in America and in Africa as well are due to low intelligence that is presumably inherited and genetic.

If Van Wijk had pointed to the superior athletic ability of blacks and stated that it has a genetic component, would you have objected?

Van Wijk did not say whites were morally superior or superior in all aspects. He said they have higher “civilizational ability.”  That means the white race creates higher functioning civilizations, more advanced in technology, government, family formation and general stability.  

IQ tests are very reliable means of measuring intelligence and are not skewed by cultural factors. The science of psychometrics is a proven science and has demonstrated marked differences among the races in intelligence and temperament. IQ test results correlate with life outcomes and performance. This is evidence that they do indeed measure something real. IQ tests measure cognitive power or learning ability, not the grasp of learned information. For instance, an IQ test might ask a subject to recite a list of numbers and then repeat the same numbers again backward or to select the pieces missing from patterns. Mean intelligence for whites as measured by a range of IQ tests is 100 and that of blacks in America, 85. (In continental Africa, the mean IQ of blacks is lower.) I recommend The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray and Why Race Matters by Michael Levin for a full exploration of this issue and replies to all of your objections.

In his book , Levin make this important statement about race differences:

There is no cosmic scale by which differences in intelligence and motivation make one race superior to another…. [T]he claim that blacks are less intelligent than whites is regularly misdescribed as a belief in black “inferiority,” and hereditarians are said to hold whites higher than blacks.

Take two brothers, one who is especially intelligent, and the other significantly less so. Let’s say the first brother grows up and starts his own financial consulting business and is spectacularly successful at it. This is something the second brother could never do because he lacks the intelligence. But let’s say the the first brother defrauds his clients of millions of dollars. This is something the younger brother also never could have done.   Black culture has never produced a man whose ideas were as powerful and destructive as those of Karl Marx. The races have inherent strengths and weaknesses.

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