Race and Love, cont.
September 11, 2012
COMMENTS have been added to two of the recent threads on interracial couples, here and here. In the first, a reader says, in addition to arguing that there are no innate racial differences in behavior or psychology, that it is simply wrong to discourage interracial marriage for the sake of some utopian goal of preserving Western culture. To which I respond:
Again, you are distorting my main points about interracial marriage, points which have as much to do with the happiness and welfare of individuals of all races as with the worthy project of maintaining Western civilization. It’s not a question of maintaining some beautiful abstraction in the form of Western civilization, but of helping people of all races find their identity and foothold in a heartless and impersonal world. You would deny them those bonds — bonds which are real though not all-encompassing and can be seen by all of us — and send individuals forth into the modern Tower of Babel in which identity revolves exclusively around abstractions, competition and material gain.
In the second of those threads, a reader, Aaron S., who is white and married to an Asian woman, makes some excellent points.
—— Comments —–
Buck writes:
First, a blanket generalization; all humans are weak and hypocrites to one degree or another. We can’t socialize without some level of hypocrisy, or without “being polite” and tolerant. We all make unprincipled exceptions nearly every day, if not every day. We have to make our way through days filled with ignorant, stupid and existentially threatening human activities. We have to tolerate and even pretend to embrace some of them, in order to survive. We analyze the arguments and the acts and threats all the time. Miscegenation is clearly a threat to the existence of white Europeans and Americans. Deeming miscegenation a threat is closer to being deemed racism and a hate crime by those who see resistance to it as the greater threat and crime, than the claims by many non-whites that whites are illegitimate, recessive mutations. Whites are a shrinking ten percent of the worlds population that increasingly appears to have no chance of reconstituting. Even when we know that and we want to survive as a the distinct race of which we all have so much to be proud, and to which civilization owes so much, we and our offspring are going to increasingly encounter non-whites with whom we will increasingly begin to pair. Human weakness is what it is. Modern liberalism, unconstrained demographics; the surging waves of growing non-white populations will eventually obliterate white European people who have no other place to be. Our own children and theirs have increasingly less reason to respect anything that the generations of hypocrites before them have to say about what it is that they feel justified in doing with their lives.
Laura writes:
I don’t think you mean to say that white Europeans will be “obliterated.” Perhaps “overwhelmed.”
Chris writes:
I wrote because my aunt is frankly not very bright, and she needs guidance from society to function. (The chief problem with Protestantism is its disastrous effect on the stupid.) One of my aunt’s children is dead from drugs; one other cousin from drink and several have been to jail for various drug related charges. I cannot say miscegenation is an unqualified evil, else I would not exist, but I would say my family experience cautions against it. Like much else in our modern age, it is precisely those least likely to heed good advice that need it the most. Are all black men dangerous, stupid, and feckless? Of course not. But if stupidity, fecklessness, and danger exist at greater rates in the black community, shouldn’t prudent parents steer their children away from relationships with greater potential for disaster? Even today, I still occasionally step on a cultural landmine because I was raised white and I’ve inadvertently offended my Indian relatives. Each different nation, religion and race have different customs, attitudes, aptitudes and culture that they prefer on the whole. If Polish and Irish Catholics have radically different customs that make marriage and family life harder, how much larger would the gap be across racial lines? There are many young white women who would either be alive or in much better circumstances today if they had avoided relationships with unsuitable minority men. To caution your children about who they marry and to acknowledge the differences between the races can make married life more difficult is not racism. It is merely common sense.
I know it’s been talked to death. I have mixed feelings on the subject of interracial marriage. After high school, I was very close to a girl, to the point that we considered marriage. Both of us served as missionaries for our church (the LDS church), and because of our age difference that resulted in a 3-year separation with only letter writing. After we were both home, we went our separate ways and wound up getting married just a few days apart. She chose a black man, which surprised me somewhat. It’s not LDS doctrine to avoid marrying inter-racially, but it has been discouraged. She came from a very traditional family, too. He’s a good man, and at the time, he had better prospects than me; he was done with college and I was goofing off in odd jobs figuring out what I wanted. He was a good LDS man and had served a two-year mission like I had. They’ve got five lovely children, but none of them have their mom’s blue eyes.
That’s the thing that bothers me most, I guess; I dislike the idea that we’ll all eventually breed our way into a dull tan. I like the Nordic blonde and blue as much as I like the exotic dark skin of Ethiopia. I hate the idea of us being a dull, bland, homogeneous unity. But that’s just my comment on the aesthetics of the human form; I like the variety.
I dated a Ukrainian girl around that same time. She was old enough to remember Communist rule, and that influence was enough of a barrier to us. I resolved after breaking up with her to find a normal American girl, which is exactly what I did. I married a farm girl from Ohio.
I guess the point and the reason I thought to write is that culture is as important as anything. There’s a growing black middle class, and many of them share traditional values. In addition, there’s a growing white underclass that is increasingly dependent on welfare and crime. In the end, the worldview from an Appalachian underclass isn’t so different from that of an urban underclass. (Having lived both in Eastern Tennessee and in the slums of New Jersey, I feel I can compare the two). The underclass is always the underclass, and they’ll marry poorly and do a poor job raising their children. The erosion of our traditions hurts them most, because there’s no monetary buffer to hide the impact of broken families (though I suppose bad families fall from the middle to the underclass in not too many generations).
Anyway, I’m sure your tired of the subject, and I’m not adding much to it. Maybe just writing out my thoughts will help me get my opinion nailed down.
