Jared Taylor Quotes

When Loughner himself speaks and we find out his real influences are Spiderman, 'Gnome Chomsky,' Taylor Swift, and Dr. Bronner, then what?

Most whites do not have a racial identity, but they would do well to understand what race means for others. They should also ponder the consequences of being the only group for whom such an identity is forbidden and who are permitted no aspirations as a group.

Discrimination against nonwhites will not be tolerated. Discrimination against whites is fine-as long as the discrimination is done in the name of nondiscrimination.

race is a proxy for politics: Blacks are liberal and whites are conservative. It found that overwhelmingly white Provo, Utah, is the most conservative city in America. The most liberal city, Detroit, is overwhelmingly black.

We have a bubbling successful melting pot in this country so long as the ingredients are essentially European.

If non-white groups continue to advance race-based interests, is it wise for whites to continue to act as if they have none?

Though they are only 12 percent of the population, blacks commit more than half of all rapes and robberies and 60 percent of the murders in America.6

We insist that “diversity” is a great strength, but for most Americans this is mere lip service. They rarely seek diversity in their personal lives, living instead in homogeneous islands that look nothing like the racial and cultural mix this country has become.

For many Americans—probably most Americans—race remains an unspoken consideration in decisions about where to live, what schools to attend, what clubs to join, whom to marry, and what parts of town to avoid at night. The closer we look at how Americans live, the more clearly we see how much race continues to matter.

What we're fighting against isn't an out-and-out vice. It's an overgrown, perverted virtue.

Nietzsche: “I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it prefers what is injurious to it.

In 1948, a married couple with the median income and two children paid only 2 percent of its income in state, federal, and social security taxes. In 1991 they paid 30 percent.

If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why do whites move out of those very parts of the country that are being “enriched”?

The alleged benefits of diversity seem illusory to the people who actually experience it.

Although immigration is likely to reduce whites to a minority in just a few decades, racial etiquette requires that whites must not think of this as anything but an exciting prospect.

Speech codes may well increase tension and edginess rather than relieve them. A student at the State University of New York at Binghamton complains that “If you look at someone funny, it’s a bias incident.”137

I recall a podcast featuring American white nationalist Jared Taylor. He claims that every important decision in their lives - where to live, whom to marry, where to send their children to school - 'liberals are not different from members of the Ku Klux Klan'. And, if you believe the Age article, in the only federal electorate held by the Greens, families are making their schooling decision as if they're in the UPF.

While most black voters have consistently supported Democrats since the 1960s, it is the white liberals that have slowly withered away over the decades, leaving African Americans as the sole standard bearers for the left.”8

People from every political perspective agree that race relations are a horrible wound crying out for healing. But there can be no cure without correct diagnosis. Correct diagnosis is impossible without honest, even fearless investigation. At the very least, Americans must be able to talk about race without fear of retribution. If the notion of free speech has any meaning at all, it must apply to the oldest, greatest, most dangerous problem our nation faces. We must say in public what we think in private; we must throw off the shackles of orthodoxy.

Across the political spectrum, Americans assert that any form of white racial consciousness or solidarity is despicable. Whites, therefore, have tried to keep their end of the civil rights bargain. They have dismantled and condemned their own racial identity in the expectation that others will do the same.

Now If diversity were inherently good, inherently valuable, inherently wonderful, why would we have to have the highly-paid profession know as 'diversity consultant' to manage it? Things that are inherently good, to enjoy them, or to make the most of them, you don't need a consultant. You don't need a consultant to make the most out of good-tasting food, beautiful weather, the affection of your friends. Those are inherently good things. Diversity required consultants because diversity is hard. Diversity is difficult. It's because it's difficult for people to try to work, to act, and live together with people are are unlike themselves.

Now If diversity were inherently good, inherently valuable, inherently wonderful, why would we have to have the highly-paid profession know as 'diversity consultant' to manage it? Things that are inherently good, to enjoy them, or to make the most of them, you don't need a consultant. You don't need a consultant to make the most out of good-tasting food, beautiful weather, the affection of your friends. Those are inherently good things. Diversity required consultants because diversity is hard. Diversity is difficult. It's because it's difficult for people to try to work, to act, and live together with people who are unlike themselves.

Now, just to understand better what's going on, let's imagine the shoe on the other foot. Let's imagine that hundreds of thousands of badly-educated Americans, white Americans, were pouring across the boarder into Mexico. And let's imagine that they were insisting on instruction in school in English rather than Spanish. Let's imagine they were asking for ballot papers in English rather than Spanish, they were celebrating Fourth of July rather than Sinco de Mayo, buying up newspapers, publishing in English, television stations, radios, all publishing and broadcasting in English ,and that there were so many of them coming in that they threatened to reduce Mexicans to minority. Do you think the Mexicans could possibly be tricked into thinking that this was enrichment, this was diversity, that this was great? No. No. They wouldn’t stand for it for a moment. This would be to them an impossible unacceptable invasion of their country. And you would find the same reaction in any non-white country anywhere in the world. Can you imagine say, the Japanese or the Nigerians, the Pakistanis, the Costa Ricans accepting this kind of wholesale demographic change that would change their country, transform their country, and reduce them to a minority? No. These things are impossible to imagine.

[I]t's not enough to be right. I think you have to be generous. It's not enough to be logical. You have to be virtuous...[Y]our demeanor will carry your message, perhaps, even further than your words will...[P]eople don't just disagree with us. Many of them genuinely think that we are evil, and when people think you're evil, I don't think they listen very carefully to your words. They search your manner. They look for the slightest excuse to ignore all your impregnable arguments, all of your carefully-marshaled facts, and that's why we must never be mean-spirited or angry or petulant, or dismissive of the interest of others. I believe rudeness and arrogance, they would drive people away, that would only confirm their own prejudices. It's the excuse they're desperate for to walk away smug and happy and say 'these people are just small-minded angry bigots.' Our opponents don't recognize our good faith, but -and this is a hard thing- I think we must try our best to recognize their good faith...You can't expect them to recognize our good intentions unless we are willing to recognize theirs.

The great pity of school integration is that in spite of court orders, busing, and terrible dislocations, it has done very little to improve classroom performances of black children. In 1983, the research arm of the Department of Education could not find a single study that showed black children were learning appreciably better after the switch to integrated Schools.

This hostility has not stopped Mr. Sowell. He has shown that in 1969, while American-born blacks were making only 62 percent of the average income for all Americans, blacks from the West Indies made 94 percent. Second-generation immigrants from the West Indies made 15 percent more than the average American.46 Although they are only 10 percent of the city’s black population, foreign-born blacks—mostly from the West Indies—own half of the black-owned businesses in New York City.47 Their unemployment rate is lower than the national average, and many times lower than that of American-born blacks.48 West Indian blacks look no different from American blacks; white racists are not likely suddenly to set aside their prejudices when they meet one.

Sigmund Freud founded virtually all of psychotherapy on introspection, so one would expect him to be able to explain his own feelings, no matter how primitive. In one area, however, he baffled himself: He could not explain group loyalty. He wrote that he was “irresistibly” bonded to Jews and Jewishness, by “many obscure and emotional forces, which were the more powerful the less they could be expressed in words, as well as by a clear consciousness of inner identity, a deep realization of sharing the same psychic structure.” Freud was writing about powerful feelings of kinship to an entire people. These are the feelings of nationalists and fanatics—and of ordinary people—and do not lend themselves to precise analysis. By refusing to take seriously that which they cannot analyze, social scientists misunderstand how real societies work.

Nothing is more demoralizing than to be wronged and then to be told that one’s injury is an illusion. To be betrayed by the central pillars of society—government, employer, university—leaves a lasting bitterness and alienation. Furthermore, unlike nonwhites, who have well-funded organizations that spring to the defense of alleged victims, the disappearance of white solidarity means that a white man is entirely on his own.870*

But no matter how strenuously everyone denies it, race-based hiring inevitably means lower standards. As Americans begin to wake up to the poor quality of their schools, a few states have begun to test teachers to see if they are up to snuff. Teachers’ unions resist this for obvious reasons, as do “civil rights” organizations. In the California teachers’ examination in 1983, 76 percent of the white teachers passed, but only 26 percent of the black teachers did. In a Florida exam the same year, 90 percent of whites but only 35 percent of blacks passed.772* In the case of the National Teachers’ Examination, 84 percent of whites passed it but only 33 percent of blacks.773 Are lower standards a legitimate price to pay for “role models”? Even if black children were somehow helped by this, it is difficult to see what good such role models can do for white children.

Carolyn Pitts, a black, was the affirmative action officer of the State Insurance Fund of New York. In 1987 she wrote a training manual on affirmative action that explained how racism works: “In the United States at present, only whites can be racists since whites dominate and control the institutions that create and enforce American cultural values.” She went on to conclude that “all white individuals in our society are racist,” whether or not they are conscious of it.1002

The fact is that while individual blacks’ incomes were actually rising more quickly than those of individual whites, blacks were splintering into new households at a much more rapid rate. According to one study, if black family composition had held steady during the decade, median black household income would have risen 5 percent. If white household composition had held steady, the white median household income would have risen by 3 percent (instead of its actual rise of 0.8 percent). People of both races were actually making more money, but they were spreading it out over more households. In fact, the actual incomes of black husband-and-wife families rose four times as quickly as those of white families. In families in which both the husband and wife worked, the family income of blacks increased five times as quickly as that of whites.60 Black family income fell during the 1970s, not because of “racist” employers but because of disintegrating families.

Contact often has the effect of hardening hostilities, not dissolving barriers. This effect is common in politics. When Jesse Jackson was running for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, his percentage of the white vote was consistently highest in those states with the fewest blacks. Whites with the most actual contact with blacks were least likely to vote for him. The same was true in 2008 during Barack Obama’s Democratic primary campaigns. He won the highest percentages of the white vote in states such as Iowa, which has few blacks, and the lowest percentages in states with large black populations. Bernard N. Grofman of the University of California, Irvine has found a reliable political correlation: As the number of blacks rises, more whites vote Republican—and the less likely they are to vote for black candidates. It is whites whose knowledge about blacks is filtered by the media rather than gained first-hand who have the most favorable impression of them. The alleged benefits of diversity seem illusory to the people who actually experience it.

People of all races generally prefer the company of people like themselves. Racial diversity is a source of conflict, not strength. Non-whites, especially blacks and Hispanics, nurture a strong sense of racial pride and solidarity. Whites have little sense of racial solidarity, and most whites strongly condemn any signs of it. Immigration from non-European countries is changing the United States in profound ways, many of which whites find disagreeable. To the extent that these statements are true, they have serious implications both for the country as a whole and for whites as a group.

What is America to do about the rising tide of horror? Visitors from Europe or Japan shake their heads in wonder at the squalor and barbarity of America’s cities. They could be forgiven for thinking that the country had viciously and deliberately neglected its poor and its blacks. Of course, it has not. Since the 1960s, the United States has poured a staggering amount of money into education, housing, welfare, Medicaid, and uplift programs of every kind. Government now spends $240 billion a year to fight poverty,1278 and despite the widespread notion that spending was curtailed during Republican administrations, it has actually gone up steadily, at a rate that would have astonished the architects of the Great Society. Federal spending on the poor, in real 1989 dollars, quadrupled from 1965 to 1975, and has nearly doubled since then.1279 As the economist Walter Williams has pointed out, with all the money spent on poverty since the 1960s, the government could have bought every company on the Fortune 500 list and nearly all the farmland in America.1280 What do we have to show for three decades and $2.5 trillion worth of war on poverty? The truth is that these programs have not worked. The truth that America refuses to see is that these programs have made things worse.

What are these conventions? Although there are many, and much of this book is devoted to refuting them, there is one central doctrine on which they all depend: Whites are responsible for the problems blacks face. Black crime, black poverty, black illegitimacy, black difficulties of all kinds can be traced to a heritage of slavery and to inveterate white racism. In other words, it is the malevolence of whites that causes blacks to fail. Although the doctrine is not often stated as sweepingly or as bluntly as this, it underlies virtually every public pronouncement on race relations and virtually every public program designed to improve them.

Although it would be difficult to prove, the pervading view of wealth—that it should be forcibly taken from those who have it—probably has an effect on crime. If, as they are told over and over, the poor are entitled to money earned by others, why should they not simply take it themselves and cut out the middleman? Crime is, in fact, a much more efficient way to spread wealth. Of every dollar spent by Congress for welfare, only thirty cents actually reach recipients. Administration and bureaucrat salaries eat up the rest.1318 New York City spends an incredible $18,000 a year per person to accommodate drifters on cots laid out by the hundreds on the floors of armories.

Another reason why racism is so readily accepted as the explanation for black failure is that there appears to be no acceptable alternative. If whites are not forcing blacks into misery, they must be bringing it upon themselves. If whites are not holding blacks down, it might mean that they have risen as far as their inherent limitations permit. The possibility of black inferiority is the unacknowledged goblin that lurks in the background of every attempt to explain black failure. Part of the shrillness with which white racism is denounced stems from the belief that any letup in the struggle against it might leave room for a theory that is too dangerous to be contemplated.

In the fall of 1988, a white senior at Temple University founded the first White Student Union, because he was frankly angry at the racial privileges that were accorded to blacks. Temple put up every possible resistance but could find no way to deny whites their own student union when other races had theirs. Michael Spletzer, the union’s president, rejected the inevitable charges of white supremacy. “White people are being discriminated against by affirmative action,” he said. “We feel that giving scholarships, jobs, or anything else because of race is wrong and they should be given on merit alone.” In January 1989, when the union tried to recruit members, clusters of black students shouted obscenities and threatened violence.871 Any whites who so disrupted a black organization would, of course, be immediately disciplined.

There are, in fact, some people who do not appear to have a built-in preference for their own race. They suffer from something called Williams Syndrome, and lack the usual fear of strangers and the unknown. Researchers at the Central Institute of Mental health in Mannheim, Germany, found that normal white children, aged five to seven, matched good characteristics with photographs of people of their own race and negative characteristics with people of other races. Twenty children with Williams Syndrome did not, matching characteristics without regard to race. The syndrome appears to change the way the amygdalae communicate with the pre-frontal cortex, and it eliminates social inhibition. People with Williams Syndrome are “hypersocial,” and do not see danger in the faces of people who may be threats. They also tend to be mildly retarded and to suffer from other physical complications.

A 1987 front-page article in The Wall Street Journal quotes a black spokesman who claims, “If you wiped out racism, 90 percent of black people’s problems would disappear.”24 The white author of a recent well-received book on race relations agrees. His concluding view is that whites are responsible for the woes of blacks, even for the fact that so many young black men are killing each other that it “amounts to a self-inflicted genocide.”25 Americans are so accustomed to hearing—and repeating—this view that they scarcely bother to think about what it means. It means essentially, that white people, not blacks, are responsible for black behavior. It implies that blacks are helpless and cannot make progress unless whites transform themselves. This inverted version of the doctrine, with its unpleasant odor of paternalism, is almost never heard, but it finds expression in a host of race-based explanations that have sprung up to explain the failures of underclass blacks:

One in four black men in their twenties is either in jail, on parole, or on probation.4 This is approximately ten times the rate for whites of the same age.5 Though they are only 12 percent of the population, blacks commit more than half of all rapes and robberies and 60 percent of the murders in America.6 Other measures are just as grim. From 1985 to 1990, while syphilis rates for whites continued their long-running decline, they rose 126 percent for black men and 231 percent for black women. Blacks are now fifty times more likely to have syphilis than whites.7 Blacks have the highest infant mortality rates for any American racial group and are twice as likely as whites to die in their first year.8 Black children are four times as likely as whites to be living in poverty,9 and less than half as likely to be living with two parents.10 Illegitimacy rates for blacks have climbed steadily, and now more than 66 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock. The rate for whites is 19 percent.11 Young

Adults can distinguish race from very minimal clues. Stanford researchers showed subjects just the front slices of plain, black profiles—the face from forehead to chin, without the hair. Subjects could tell the race of the profile (80 percent of the time) more often than they could tell the sex (70 percent), or the age within 10 years (68 percent). Race is commonly equated with skin color, but all the profiles were black. It is obviously important for adults to tell the sexes apart, but they were even better at telling races apart. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to determine that what is called the fusiform region of the brain may be associated with the other-race effect. The fusiform region is involved in expert appraisal. In a bird-watcher’s brain, for example, the region lights up at the sight of a bird. All people have considerable expertise in recognizing human faces, but MRI scans show greater fusiform activity—expert appraisal activity—when they are looking at faces of their own race.

Among the Founders, Thomas Jefferson wrote about race at greatest length. He thought blacks were mentally inferior to whites and biologically distinct: “[They] secrete less by the kidnies [sic], and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a strong and disagreeable odor.” He hoped slavery would be abolished, but he did not want free blacks to remain in America: “When freed, [the Negro] is to be removed from beyond the reach of mixture.” Jefferson was one of the first and most influential advocates of “colonization,” or returning blacks to Africa. He also believed in the destiny of whites as a racially distinct people. In 1786 he wrote, “Our Confederacy [the United States] must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled.” In 1801 he looked forward to the day “when our rapid multiplication will expand itself . . . over the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface.

Most whites in America have a consciousness of race that is very different from that of minorities. They do not attach much importance to the fact that they are white, and they view race as an illegitimate reason for decision-making of any kind. Many whites have made a genuine effort to transcend race and to see people as individuals. They often fail, but their professed goal is color-blindness. Some whites have gone well beyond color-blindness and see their race as uniquely guilty and without moral standing. Neither the goal of color-blindness nor a negative view of their own race has any parallel in the thinking of non-whites. Most whites also believe that racial equality, integration, and “diversity” flow naturally from the republican, anti-monarchical principles of the American Revolution. They may know that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves but they believe that the man who wrote “all men are created equal” had a vision of the egalitarian, heterogeneous society in which we now live. They are wrong. Earlier generations of white Americans had a strong racial consciousness. Current assumptions about race are a dramatic reversal of the views not only of the Founding Fathers but of the great majority of Americans up until the 1950s and 1960s. Change on this scale is rare in any society, and the past views of whites are worth investigating for the perspective they provide on current views. It is possible to summarize the racial views that prevailed in this country until a few decades ago as follows: White Americans believed race was a fundamental aspect of individual and group identity. They believed people of different races differed in temperament, ability, and the kind of societies they built. They wanted America to be peopled by Europeans, and thought only people of European stock could maintain the civilization they valued. They therefore considered immigration of non-whites a threat to whites and to their civilization. It was common to regard the presence of non-whites as a burden, and to argue that if they could not be removed from the country they should be separated from whites socially and politically. Whites were strongly opposed to miscegenation, which they called “amalgamation.” Many injustices were committed in defense of these views, and many of the things prominent Americans of the past said ring harshly on contemporary ears. And yet the sentiment behind them—a sense of racial solidarity—is not very different from the sentiments we find among many non-whites today.

[L]et us imagine a mirror image of what is happening today. What if millions of white Americans were pouring across the border into Mexico, taking over parts of cities, speaking English rather than Spanish, celebrating the Fourth of July rather than Cinco de Mayo, sleeping 20 to a house, demanding bilingual instruction and welfare for immigrants, opposing border control, and demanding ballots in English? What if, besides this, they had high rates of crime, poverty, and illegitimacy? Can we imagine the Mexicans rejoicing in their newfound diversity? And yet, that is what Americans are asked to do. For whites to celebrate diversity is to celebrate their own declining numbers and influence, and the transformation of their society. For every other group, to celebrate diversity is to celebrate increasing numbers and influence. Which is a real celebration and which is self-deception? Whites—but only whites—must never take pride in their own people. Only whites must pretend they do not prefer to associate with people like themselves. Only whites must pretend to be happy to give up their neighborhoods, their institutions, and their country to people unlike themselves. Only whites must always act as individuals and never as members of a group that promotes shared interests. Racial identity comes naturally to all non-white groups. It comes naturally because it is good, normal, and healthy to feel kinship for people like oneself. Despite the fashionable view that race is a socially created illusion, race is a biological reality. All people of the same race are more closely related genetically than they are to anyone of a different race, and this helps explain racial solidarity. Families are close for the same reason. Parents love their children, not because they are the smartest, best-looking, most talented children on earth. They love them because they are genetically close to them. They love them because they are a family. Most people have similar feelings about race. Their race is the largest extended family to which they feel an instinctive kinship. Like members of a family, members of a race do not need objective reasons to prefer their own group; they prefer it because it is theirs (though they may well imagine themselves as having many fine, partly imaginary qualities). These mystic preferences need not imply hostility towards others. Parents may have great affection for the children of others, but their own children come first. Likewise, affection often crosses racial lines, but the deeper loyalties of most people are to their own group—their extended family.

Many kinds of animal behavior can be explained by genetic similarity theory. Animals have a preference for close kin, and study after study has shown that they have a remarkable ability to tell kin from strangers. Frogs lay eggs in bunches, but they can be separated and left to hatch individually. When tadpoles are then put into a tank, brothers and sisters somehow recognize each other and cluster together rather than mix with tadpoles from different mothers. Female Belding’s ground squirrels may mate with more than one male before they give birth, so a litter can be a mix of full siblings and half siblings. Like tadpoles, they can tell each other apart. Full siblings cooperate more with each other than with half-siblings, fight less, and are less likely to run each other out of the territory when they grow up. Even bees know who their relatives are. In one experiment, bees were bred for 14 different degrees of relatedness—sisters, cousins, second cousins, etc.—to bees in a particular hive. When the bees were then released near the hive, guard bees had to decide which ones to let in. They distinguished between degrees of kinship with almost perfect accuracy, letting in the closest relatives and chasing away more distant kin. The correlation between relatedness and likelihood of being admitted was a remarkable 0.93. Ants are famous for cooperation and willingness to sacrifice for the colony. This is due to a quirk in ant reproduction that means worker ants are 70 percent genetically identical to each other. But even among ants, there can be greater or less genetic diversity, and the most closely related groups of ants appear to cooperate best. Linepithema humile is a tiny ant that originated in Argentina but migrated to the United States. Many ants died during the trip, and the species lost much of its genetic diversity. This made the northern branch of Linepithema humile more cooperative than the one left in Argentina, where different colonies quarrel and compete with each other. This new level of cooperation has helped the invaders link nests into supercolonies and overwhelm local species of ants. American entomologists want to protect American ants by introducing genetic diversity so as to make the newcomers more quarrelsome. Even plants cooperate with close kin and compete with strangers. Normally, when two plants are put in the same pot, they grow bigger root systems, trying to crowd each other out and get the most nutrients. A wild flower called the Sea Rocket, which grows on beaches, does not do that if the two plants come from the same “mother” plant. They recognize each others’ root secretions and avoid wasteful competition.

Perhaps it is time to question goals that run counter to near-universal behavior. There may be lessons for us in the failure of Soviet-style Communism. It is our era's foremost example of a system that made mesmerizing promises of an earthly paradise but betrayed those promises. Millions of people were inspired by an ideology that would do away with capitalist exploitation. Marxists believed that the working class would seize the means of production, the state would wither away, selfishness would disappear, and man would live 'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.' In the name of this ideology millions gave their lives and took the lives of millions of others. Communism failed. It failed for many reasons, not least because it was a misreading of human nature. Selfishness cannot be abolished. People do not work just as hard on collective farms as they do on their own land. The almost universal rejection of Communism today marks the acceptance of people as they are, not as Communism wished them to be. Is it possible that our racial ideals assume that people should become something they cannot? If most people prefer the company of people like themselves, what do we achieve by insisting that they deny that preference? If diversity is a weakness rather than a strength, why work to increase diversity?

Even if there is no connection between diversity and international influence, some people would argue that immigration brings cultural enrichment. This may seem to be an attractive argument, but the culture of Americans remains almost completely untouched by millions of Hispanic and Asian immigrants. They may have heard of Cinco de Mayo or Chinese New Year, but unless they have lived abroad or have studied foreign affairs, the white inhabitants of Los Angeles are likely to have only the most superficial knowledge of Mexico or China despite the presence of many foreigners. Nor is it immigrants who introduce us to Cervantes, Puccini, Alexander Dumas, or Octavio Paz. Real high culture crosses borders by itself, not in the back pockets of tomato pickers, refugees, or even the most accomplished immigrants. What has Yo-Yo Ma taught Americans about China? What have we learned from Seiji Ozawa or Ichiro about Japan? Immigration and the transmission of culture are hardly the same thing. Nearly every good-sized American city has an opera company, but that does not require Italian immigrants. Miami is now nearly 70 percent Hispanic, but what, in the way of authentic culture enrichment, has this brought the city? Are the art galleries, concerts, museums, and literature of Los Angeles improved by diversity? Has the culture of Detroit benefited from a majority-black population? If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why do whites move out of those very parts of the country that are being “enriched”? It is true that Latin American immigration has inspired more American school children to study Spanish, but fewer now study French, German, or Latin. If anything, Hispanic immigration reduces what little linguistic diversity is to be found among native-born Americans. [...] [M]any people study Spanish, not because they love Hispanic culture or Spanish literature but for fear they may not be able to work in America unless they speak the language of Mexico. Another argument in favor of diversity is that it is good for people—especially young people —to come into contact with people unlike themselves because they will come to understand and appreciate each other. Stereotyped and uncomplimentary views about other races or cultures are supposed to crumble upon contact. This, of course, is just another version of the “contact theory” that was supposed to justify school integration. Do ex-cons and the graduates—and numerous dropouts—of Los Angeles high schools come away with a deep appreciation of people of other races? More than half a century ago, George Orwell noted that: 'During the war of 1914-18 the English working class were in contact with foreigners to an extent that is rarely possible. The sole result was that they brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the Germans, whose courage they admired.

Now that Mexicans can retain their nationality, activist groups encourage them to naturalize and become active in Hispanic causes. There was a huge push in 2007 to naturalize in time for the 2008 elections. Newspapers and television joined church groups and Hispanic activists in a campaign called Ya Es Hora. ¡Ciudadanía! (It’s time. Citizenship!). La Opinión, a Los Angeles newspaper, published full-page advertisements explaining how to apply for citizenship, and the Spanish-language network Univision’s KMEX television station in Los Angeles promoted citizenship workshops on the air. A popular radio personality named Eddie Sotelo ran a call-in contest called “Who Wants to be a Citizen?” in which listeners could win prizes by answering questions from the citizenship exam. In 2008, Janet Murguia, president of La Raza, was frank about why she was part of a widespread effort to register Hispanics to vote: She wanted them to “help shape the political landscape.” In California, where 300,000 people—overwhelmingly Hispanic—were naturalized in 2008, whites were expected to be a minority of the electorate in 2026. Joanuen Llamas, who immigrated legally in 1998, naturalized in 2008 after attending the massive 2006 demonstrations in support of illegal aliens. She said she was inspired by one of the pro-amnesty slogans she had heard: “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.” Hispanics like her are not naturalizing because they love America but because they want to change it.

Another reason for our passivity is the fact that Hispanics are now 16 percent of the population, and their numbers are growing. Politicians from both parties say they cannot afford to alienate Hispanics because of their increasing power at the ballot box. But what do Hispanics want? Amnesty for illegal immigrants and yet more Hispanic immigration. It is folly for white politicians to think they will win the loyalty of Hispanic voters by endorsing policies that increase Hispanic power. As Hispanics gain in numbers and influence, they will replace non-Hispanic politicians with Hispanics. Foolish whites will be shoved out just as blacks shoved out Chris Bell, the white Democratic congressman from Texas [...] who was left sputtering that blacks forgot all about his career of “fighting for diversity” once they had a chance to vote for a black. It is already nearly impossible to discuss immigration rationally, or even enforce laws that are on the books. If we are afraid to take measures that might upset 16 percent of the population, what are our chances of defending larger interests if Hispanics are 20, 30, or even 40 percent of the country? We already have tens of millions of citizens whose primary loyalty is not to the United States but to Mexico. If there were a crisis with Mexico is there any doubt which side they would take? The United States already finds it difficult to advance its own interests against Mexican opposition. As the Mexican-American population grows, it could become impossible.

Trust in the familiar seems to be matched by wariness of the unfamiliar. Jennifer Richeson of Northwestern University has conducted experiments in which white subjects had to interact in some way with a white or a black man before taking a mental test. Those who dealt with the black man got lower scores on the test, and their brain scans showed what Prof. Richeson called “heightened activity in areas of the brain associated with regulating our thoughts and emotions.” She interpreted this to mean that white subjects were struggling with the “awkwardness” or “exhaustion” of dealing with a black man, and that this interfered with their ability to take the mental test. Researchers at Harvard and New York University had white and black subjects look repeatedly at a series of photographs of black and white faces, all with neutral expressions. Every time the subjects looked at one particular black face and one particular white face they got a mild electric shock. Lie detector-type devices showed that subjects would sweat—a typical stress reaction—when they saw the two faces they associated with the shocks. The researchers showed the photo series several times again, but without the shocks. White subjects quickly stopped sweating when they saw the white face formerly associated with the shock, but continued to sweat when they saw the black face. Black subjects had the opposite reaction, continuing to sweat when they saw the white but not the black face. Mahzarin Banaji, the study’s leader, concluded that this was a sign of natural human wariness of unfamiliar groups.

It should be clear by now that whatever Americans say about diversity, it is not a strength. If it were a strength, Americans would practice it spontaneously. It would not require “diversity management” or anti-discrimination laws. Nor would it require constant reminders of how wonderful it is. It takes no exhortations for us to appreciate things that are truly desirable: indoor plumbing, vacations, modern medicine, friendship, or cheaper gasoline. [W]hen they are free to do so, most people avoid diversity. The scientific evidence suggests why: Human beings appear to have deeply-rooted tribal instincts. They seem to prefer to live in homogeneous communities rather than endure the tension and conflict that arise from differences. If the goal of building a diverse society conflicts with some aspect of our nature, it will be very difficult to achieve. As Horace wrote in the Epistles, “Though you drive Nature out with a pitchfork, she will ever find her way back.” Some intellectuals and bohemians profess to enjoy diversity, but they appear to be a minority. Why do we insist that diversity is a strength when it is not? In the 1950s and 1960s, when segregation was being dismantled, many people believed full integration would be achieved within a generation. At that time, there were few Hispanics or Asians but with a population of blacks and whites, the United States could be described as “diverse.” It seemed vastly more forward-looking to think of this as an advantage to be cultivated rather than a weakness to be endured. Our country also seemed to be embarking on a morally superior course. Human history is the history of warfare—between nations, tribes, and religions —and many Americans believed that reconciliation between blacks and whites would lead to a new era of inclusiveness for all peoples of the world. After the immigration reforms of 1965 opened the United States to large numbers of non- Europeans, our country became more diverse than anyone in the 1950s would have imagined. Diversity often led to conflict, but it would have been a repudiation of the civil rights movement to conclude that diversity was a weakness. Americans are proud of their country and do not like to think it may have made a serious mistake. As examples of ethnic and racial tension continued to accumulate, and as the civil rights vision of effortless integration faded, there were strong ideological and even patriotic reasons to downplay or deny what was happening, or at least to hope that exhortations to “celebrate diversity” would turn what was proving to be a problem into an advantage. To criticize diversity raises the intolerable possibility that the United States has been acting on mistaken assumptions for half a century. To talk glowingly about diversity therefore became a form of cheerleading for America. It even became common to say that diversity was our greatest strength—something that would have astonished any American from the colonial era through the 1950s. There is so much emotional capital invested in the civil-rights-era goals of racial equality and harmony that virtually any critique of its assumptions is intolerable. To point out the obvious— that diversity brings conflict—is to question sacred assumptions about the ultimate insignificance of race. Nations are at their most sensitive and irrational where they are weakest. It is precisely because it is so easy to point out the weaknesses of diversity that any attempt to do so must be countered, not by specifying diversity’s strengths—which no one can do—but with accusations of racism.

It is common to assume that multi-racialism is inevitable, and that racial identity will disappear as races mix. Americans prefer to think that the “tragic mulatto,” welcome in neither community, was either a myth or a reflection of outmoded racist thinking. Research suggests things may not be so simple. A 2003 study of 90,000 middle-school and high-school students found that black/white mixed-race children had more health and psychological problems than children who were either black or white. They were more likely to be depressed, sleep badly, skip school, smoke, drink, consider suicide, and have sex. White/Asian children showed similar symptoms. The principal author concluded that the cause was “the struggle with identity formation, leading to lack of self-esteem, social isolation and problems of family dynamics in biracial households.” The authors of a 2008 study reached the same conclusion: “When it comes to engaging in risky/anti-social adolescent behavior, however, mixed race adolescents are stark outliers compared to both blacks and whites. . . . Mixed race adolescents—not having a natural peer group—need to engage in more risky behaviors to be accepted.” A study of white/Asian children found that they were twice as likely as mono-racial children—34 percent vs. 17 percent—to suffer from psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression or drug abuse. Yoonsun Choi of the University of Chicago found that in Seattle middle schools, a clear racial identity seemed to protect against certain problems. Bi-racial children were the group most likely to smoke, take drugs, have been in fights, hurt someone badly, or carry a gun. Prof. Choi believes mixed-race children suffer because no racial group accepts them. “There is some indication that a strong ethnic identity helps protect kids from these [undesirable] behaviors,” she said.

MRI testing again shows what may be the underlying brain mechanism. The amygdalae are two small lobes in the brain associated with fear, arousal, and emotions. When they are active, it is thought to be a sign of vigilance, meaning that the brain is wary and wants more information. A study at Massachusetts General Hospital found that when subjects looked at photographs of faces—half were white, half were black—MRI scans found high amygdala activity. This was considered to be a normal reaction to unfamiliar faces. When the subjects looked at the photographs a second time the faces were more familiar; only the other-race faces continued to provoke high amygdala activity. This was true for both blacks and whites, suggesting that encounters with people of different races keep the brain at a higher level of watchfulness. Amygdalae notice race even when a person does not. William A. Cunningham of Ohio State University showed white subjects pictures of faces for only 30 milliseconds—not long enough for the subjects to be conscious of them—but black faces triggered greater amygdala activity than white faces. When he showed faces for a half a second—long enough for people to notice race—he found that black faces prompted greater activity in the pre-frontal areas, a part of the brain associated with detecting internal conflicts and controlling conscious behavior. This suggested the subjects were trying to suppress certain feelings about blacks. Steven Neuberg of Arizona State University attributes instinctive bias to evolution during our hunter-gatherer past. “By nature, people are group-living animals—a strategy that enhances individual survival and leads to what we might call a ‘tribal psychology’, ” he says. “It was adaptive for our ancestors to be attuned to those outside the group who posed threats such as to physical security, health or economic resources.

Inmates would overwhelmingly welcome segregation. As Lexy Good, a white prisoner in San Quentin State Prison explained, “I’d rather hang out with white people, and blacks would rather hang out with people of their own race.” He said it was the same outside of prison: “Look at suburbia. . . . People in society self-segregate.” Another white man, using the pen name John Doe, wrote that jail time in Texas had turned him against blacks: '[B]ecause of my prison experiences, I cannot stand being in the presence of blacks. I can’t even listen to my old, favorite Motown music anymore. The barbarous and/or retarded blacks in prison have ruined it for me. The black prison guards who comprise half the staff and who flaunt the dominance of African-American culture in prison and give favored treatment to their “brothers” have ruined it for me.' He went on: '[I]n the aftermath of the Byrd murder [the 1998 dragging death in Jasper, Texas] I read one commentator’s opinion in which he expressed disappointment that ex-cons could come out of prison with unresolved racial problems “despite the racial integration of the prisons.” Despite? Buddy, do I have news for you! How about because of racial integration?' (emphasis in the original) A man who served four years in a California prison wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times called “Why Prisons Can’t Integrate.” “California prisons separate blacks, whites, Latinos and ‘others’ because the truth is that mixing races and ethnic groups in cells would be extremely dangerous for inmates,” he wrote. He added that segregation “is looked on by no one—of any race—as oppressive or as a way of promoting racism.” He offered “Rule No. 1” for survival: “The various races and ethnic groups stick together.” There were no other rules. He added that racial taboos are so complex that only a person of the same race can be an effective guide.

Needless to say, Mexico carefully controls its own borders. In 2005, it caught and deported nearly a quarter million illegals, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Mexico thinks so little of our border, however, that its soldiers have made hundreds of incursions. In 2008, Edward Tuffy, head of the Border Patrol’s largest union called on President Bush to stop illegal crossings in which Mexican soldiers have threatened and even fired on US agents. On August 3 of that year, four Mexican soldiers crossed the clearly marked border and held a Border Patrol agent at gunpoint. “Time after time they have gotten away with these incursions,” said Mr. Tuffy, “and time after time our government has not taken a forceful stand against them.” All political factions in Mexico are united in the view that the United States has no right to control its southern border. Felipe Calderon, who succeeded Mr. Fox, unswervingly maintained this policy. During his first state-of-the-nation address in 2007, he won a standing ovation by repeating the traditional government position: “Mexico does not end at its borders,” and, “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.” The view that Mexicans have a natural right to enter the United States explains the vitriol that met American discussions in 2006 about ways to stop illegal crossings, and an eventual congressional vote to build a wall along certain parts of the border. President Vicente Fox called the plan for a wall “disgraceful and shameful,” and promised that if it were ever built it would be torn down like the Berlin Wall. Interior Minister Santiago Creel boasted that “there is no wall that can stop” Mexicans from crossing into the US. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez warned that “Mexico is not going to bear, it is not going to permit, and it will not allow a stupid thing like this wall.” He even said he would ask the United Nations to declare the American plan illegal.

[I]t is now common to describe racial and ethnic diversity as one of America’s greatest strengths. It is therefore easy to forget that this is a change in thinking that dates back only to perhaps the 1970s. For most of their history Americans preferred sameness to diversity. In 1787, in the second of The Federalist Papers, John Jay gave thanks that “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs . . . .” Thomas Jefferson was suspicious of the diversity that even white immigrants would bring: 'In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. . . . Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom? It would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong. We believe that the addition of half a million foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here.' Alexander Hamilton shared his suspicions: 'The opinion is . . . correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners . . . . The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities.' The United States nevertheless did permit immigration, but only of Europeans, and they were to turn their backs on past loyalties. As John Quincy Adams explained to a German nobleman: “They must cast off the European skin, never to resume it.

Even what are considered the accomplishments of diversity are admissions of its failure. All across America, public organizations such as fire departments and police forces congratulate themselves when they manage to hire more than a token number of blacks or Hispanics. They promise that this will greatly improve service. And yet, is this not an admission of how difficult the multi-racial enterprise really is? If all across America it has been shown that whites cannot provide effective police protection for blacks or Hispanics, it only proves that diversity is an insoluble problem. If blacks want black officers and Hispanics want Hispanic officers, they are certainly not expressing support for diversity. A mixed-race force—touted as an example of the benefits of diversity—becomes necessary only because of the tensions that arise between officers of one race and citizens of another. The diversity we celebrate is necessary only because of the intractable problems of diversity. Likewise, if Hispanic judges and prosecutors must be recruited for the justice system, does this mean whites cannot dispense dispassionate justice? If non-white teachers are necessary role models for non-white children, does this mean inspiration cannot cross racial lines? If newspapers must hire non-white reporters in order to satisfy non-white readers, does this mean whites cannot write acceptable news for non-whites? If blacks demand black newscasters and weathermen on television, does it mean they prefer to get their information from people of their own race? If majority-minority voting districts must be established so that non-whites can elect representatives of their own race, does this mean democracy itself divides Americans along racial lines? All such efforts at diversity are not expressions of the strength of multi-racialism; they are desperate efforts to counteract its weaknesses. They do not bridge gaps; they institutionalize them.

Three-and-a-half-month-old infants already seem to exhibit the other-race effect. In a study at the University of Kentucky, white babies were very good at distinguishing faces with 100 percent Caucasian features from faces that had been graphically morphed to include features that were 70 percent white and 30 percent Asian. They couldn’t do the reverse: They could not tell 100 percent Asian faces from those that were morphed to include 30 percent white features. In other words, they could detect small differences between white and not-quite-white faces, but not the same kinds of differences between Asian and not-quite-Asian faces. Lawrence A. Hirschfeld of the University of Michigan did some of the pioneering work on how early in life children begin to understand race. He showed children of ages three, four, and seven, a picture of “Johnny:” a chubby black boy in a police uniform, complete with whistle and toy gun. He then showed them pictures of adults who shared two of Johnny’s three main traits of race, body build, and uniform. Prof. Hirschfeld prepared all combinations—policemen who were fat but were white, thin black policemen, etc.—and asked the children which was Johnny’s daddy or which was Johnny all grown up. Even the three-year-olds were significantly more likely to choose the black man rather than the fat man or the policeman. They knew that weight and occupation can change but race is permanent. In 1996, after 15 years of studying children and race, Prof. Hirschfeld concluded: “Our minds seem to be organized in a way that makes thinking racially—thinking that the human world can be segmented into discrete racial populations—an almost automatic part of our mental repertoire.” When white preschoolers are shown racially ambiguous faces that look angry, they tend to say they are faces of blacks, but categorize happy faces as white. “These filters through which people see the world are present very early,” explained Andrew Baron of Harvard. Phyllis Katz, then a professor at the University of Colorado, studied young children for their first six years. At age three, she showed them photographs of other children and asked them whom they would like to have as friends. Eighty-six percent of white children chose photographs of white children. At age five and six, she gave children pictures of people and told them to sort them into two piles by any criteria they liked. Sixty-eight percent sorted by race and only 16 by sex. Of her entire six-year study Prof. Katz said, “I think it is fair to say that at no point in the study did the children exhibit the Rousseau type of color-blindness that many adults expect.

Benjamin Franklin wrote little about race, but had a sense of racial loyalty. “[T]he Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably [sic] very small,” he observed. “ . . . I could wish their Numbers were increased.” James Madison, like Jefferson, believed the only solution to the problem of racial friction was to free the slaves and send them away. He proposed that the federal government sell off public lands in order to raise the money to buy the entire slave population and transport it overseas. He favored a Constitutional amendment to establish a colonization society to be run by the President. After two terms in office, Madison served as chief executive of the American Colonization Society, to which he devoted much time and energy. At the inaugural meeting of the society in 1816, Henry Clay described its purpose: to “rid our country of a useless and pernicious, if not dangerous portion of the population.” The following prominent Americans were not merely members but served as officers of the society: Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, Stephen Douglas, William Seward, Francis Scott Key, Winfield Scott, and two Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, John Marshall and Roger Taney. All opposed the presence of blacks in the United States and thought expatriation was the only long-term solution. James Monroe was such an ardent champion of colonization that the capital of Liberia is named Monrovia in gratitude for his efforts. As for Roger Taney, as chief justice he wrote in the Dred Scott decision of 1857 what may be the harshest federal government pronouncement on blacks ever written: Negroes were “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the White race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they have no rights which a White man is bound to respect.” Abraham Lincoln considered blacks to be—in his words—“a troublesome presence” in the United States. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates he expressed himself unambiguously: “I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.” His opponent, Stephen Douglas, was even more outspoken, and made his position clear in the very first debate: “For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any form. I believe that this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining the citizenship to white men—men of European birth and European descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes and Indians, and other inferior races.

What are the implications of ethnic identity for multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies? Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Tampere, Finland, has probably researched the effects of ethnic diversity more systematically than anyone else. In a massive, book-length study, he measured ethnic diversity and levels of conflict in 148 countries, and found correlations in the 0.5 to 0.9 range for the two variables, depending on how the variables were defined and measured. Homogeneous countries like Japan and Iceland show very low levels of conflict, while highly diverse countries like Lebanon and Sudan are wracked with strife. Prof. Vanhanen found tension in all multi-ethnic societies: “Interest conflicts between ethnic groups are inevitable because ethnic groups are genetic kinship groups and because the struggle for existence concerns the survival of our own genes through our own and our relatives’ descendants.” Prof. Vanhanen also found that economic and political institutions make no difference; wealthy, democratic countries suffer from sectarian strife as much as poor, authoritarian ones: “Ethnic nepotism belongs to human nature and . . . it is independent from the level of socioeconomic development (modernization) and also from the degree of democratization.” Others have argued that democracy is particularly vulnerable to ethnic tensions while authoritarian regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Tito’s Yugoslavia can give the impression of holding it in check. One expert writing in Foreign Affairs explained that for democracy to work “the party or group that loses has to trust the new majority and believe that its basic interests will still be protected and that there is nothing to fear from a change in power.” He wrote that this was much less likely when opposing parties represent different races or ethnicities. The United Nations found that from 1989 to 1992 there were 82 conflicts that had resulted in at least 1,000 deaths each. Of these, no fewer than 79, or 96 percent, were ethnic or religious conflicts that took place within the borders of recognized states. Only three were cross-border conflicts. Wars between nations are usually ethnic conflicts as well. Internal ethnic conflict has very serious consequences. As J. Philippe Rushton has argued, “The politics of ethnic identity are increasingly replacing the politics of class as the major threat to the stability of nations.” One must question the wisdom of then-president Bill Clinton’s explanation for the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia: “[T]he principle we and our allies have been fighting for in the Balkans is the principle of multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive democracy. We have been fighting against the idea that statehood must be based entirely on ethnicity.” That same year, the American supreme commander of NATO, Wesley Clark, was even more direct: “There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.

Needless to say, what whites now think and say about race has undergone a revolution. In fact, it would be hard to find other opinions broadly held by Americans that have changed so radically. What whites are now expected to think about race can be summarized as follows: Race is an insignificant matter and not a valid criterion for any purpose—except perhaps for redressing wrongs done to non-whites. The races are equal in every respect and are therefore interchangeable. It thus makes no difference if a neighborhood or nation becomes non-white or if white children marry outside their race. Whites have no valid group interests, so it is illegitimate for them to attempt to organize as whites. Given the past crimes of whites, any expression of racial pride is wrong. The displacement of whites by non-whites through immigration will strengthen the United States. These are matters on which there is little ground for disagreement; anyone who holds differing views is not merely mistaken but morally suspect. By these standards, of course, most of the great men of America’s past are morally suspect, and many Americans are embarrassed to discover what our traditional heroes actually said. Some people deliberately conceal this part of our history. For example, the Jefferson Memorial has the following quotation from the third president inscribed on the marble interior: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [the Negroes] shall be free.” Jefferson did not end those words with a period, but with a semicolon, after which he wrote: “nor is it less certain that the two races equally free, cannot live under the same government.” The Jefferson Memorial was completed in 1942. A more contemporary approach to the past is to bring out all the facts and then repudiate historical figures. This is what author Conor Cruise O’Brien did in a 1996 cover story for The Atlantic Monthly. After detailing Jefferson’s views, he concluded: “It follows that there can be no room for a cult of Thomas Jefferson in the civil religion of an effectively multiracial America . . . . Once the facts are known, Jefferson is of necessity abhorrent to people who would not be in America at all if he could have had his way.” Columnist Richard Grenier likened Jefferson to Nazi SS and Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler, and called for the demolition of the Jefferson Memorial “stone by stone.” It is all very well to wax indignant over Jefferson’s views 170 years after his death, but if we expel Jefferson from the pantheon where do we stop? Clearly Lincoln must go, so his memorial must come down too. Washington owned slaves, so his monument is next. If we repudiate Jefferson, we do not just change the skyline of the nation’s capital, we repudiate practically our entire history. This, in effect, is what some people wish to do. American colonists and Victorian Englishmen saw the expansion of their race as an inspiring triumph. Now it is cause for shame. “The white race is the cancer of human history,” wrote Susan Sontag. The wealth of America used to be attributed to courage, hard work, and even divine providence. Now, it is common to describe it as stolen property. Robin Morgan, a former child actor and feminist, has written, “My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony.

This is only the beginning of a huge “Copernican revolution” (to borrow a phrase from Matthew Taylor, one of Tony Blair’s advisers) that is putting the user at the center of the public-sector universe. The current centralized state has been shaped by the idea that information is in short supply: It derives its power from the fact that it knows lots of things that ordinary people do not. But information is now one of the world’s most abundant resources: available in huge quantities and accessible to anyone with a computer or a smart phone. As Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, and Jared Cohen, who worked for Hillary Clinton, point out in The New Digital Age, this changes the nature of the relationship between individuals and authority. The top-down state may become more like a network that can mobilize the energies and abilities of thousands or even millions of well-informed citizens—or “prosumers,” as one cyberguru, Don Tapscott, has called them.

Racial identity can be condemned, fought, ignored, or cultivated, but it is unrealistic for a society to pretend it does not exist.

The United States has poured more moral energy into improving race relations than into anything else in its history. And yet, in November 2008, race was still the American dilemma. The fact that it was still a dilemma despite so much effort fostered something like a yearning for miracles.

When they are beyond the reach of the law, Americans revert to the patterns of segregation the law forbids. Why is this?

Charges of racism are not a form of debate; they are meant to silence debate. Accusations of racism are often transparent attempts to choke off honest discussion.

This book is about racial identity, something most people who are not white take for granted. They come to it early, feel it strongly, and make no apologies for it.

Americans still say integration is important, but very few do anything to bring it about.

Another Harvard research project concluded bluntly that by 2004, American schools were just as segregated as they were in 1969, the year after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

By 1997, when Kansas City finally gave up, it had the most extravagant schools in the country, but the percentage of whites was lower than ever and blacks’ test scores had not budged.

An unwillingness to associate with blacks has long been considered a sign of lower-class closed-mindedness, but a 2006 study by Michael Emerson and David Sikkink of Rice University found that the more education white parents had, the more likely they were to rule out schools for their children simply because of the number of blacks.

The larger purpose of school integration was to solve the American dilemma, but integration had three specific goals of its own: Lift black academic achievement, raise black self-esteem, and give black and white children better impressions of each other. There have now been hundreds of studies of the effects of school integration, and none of these goals has been achieved.

As Rebecca Bigler of the University of Texas points out, “Going to integrated schools gives you just as many chances to learn stereotypes as to unlearn them.

As the researchers noted, single people are more willing to live in mixed neighborhoods, but people with children seek homogeneity.84

[A]s I stepped over the curb, I became excruciatingly aware of my skin color, and my heart pounded with social anxiety. In going around a single block, I got stares. Mine was the only white face around, and for five minutes, five blocks from my home, I was a stranger in a strange land. . . .

Peter Brown of the Orlando Sentinel looked up the zip codes of 3,400 journalists, and found that they cluster in upscale neighborhoods, far from inner cities. More than one-third of Washington Post reporters live in just four fancy D.C. suburbs.

Scholars are beginning to understand that segregation does not reflect the preferences of whites alone.

researchers should realize that many people—not just whites—prefer segregation.

Race is not a barrier; it is a choice.

This is a historically black community,” said Lynn Hendy, president of the property owners association. “I’d like it to stay that way.”127

Let’s be honest about the fact that many of us from all races are racist. . . . We’ve lied about progress.”132

Blacks are particularly loyal to funeral homes, and the rumor that a black home has been bought by white interests can wreck the business.

The degree of cooperation between organisms can be expected to be a direct function of the proportion of the genes they share; conversely, the degree of conflict between them is an inverse function of the proportion of shared genes.

The study, entitled Lashes—Back, Front and Sideways, warned that as populations becomes older and more diverse people become more pessimistic about race relations.93

She interpreted this to mean that white subjects were struggling with the “awkwardness” or “exhaustion” of dealing with a black man, and that this interfered with their ability to take the mental test.

People with Williams Syndrome are “hypersocial,” and do not see danger in the faces of people who may be threats.43 They also tend to be mildly retarded and to suffer from other physical complications.

It is difficult to think of diversity as a strength when Old Glory is treated as gang colors.

Whites impose these rules on themselves because they know blacks, in particular, are so quick to take offense.

whites called in from around the country to say they were afraid to disagree with a black person for fear of being thought racist.

The effort whites put into observing racial etiquette has been demonstrated in the laboratory.

This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,

Nor is there the same pressure on blacks when they talk insultingly about whites.

In 2009, after more than 20 years of legal wrangling, 75 white Chicago firefighters shared a $6 million discrimination award. They had scored higher than blacks on a 1986 lieutenants’ exam but the city cooked the scores and promoted blacks. The city fought the case all the way to the US Supreme Court.43

The county had reduced high-school transportation, eliminated all middle school sports, and was seeking $77 million more from the state for the year’s English Language Learners instruction.

the Pew Hispanic Center found that the closer blacks lived to Hispanics and the more contact they had with them, the more they favored cutting immigration.

of us want to acknowledge,” he wrote. His conclusion? “[T]o all the friends—most but not all of them white—whom I’ve chastised over the years for abandoning the District once their children reached school age: I’m sorry. You were right. I was wrong.”20

The study therefore concluded that if illegal immigrants were legalized, their increased welfare use would nearly triple the net federal outflow per family from $2,700 a year to $7,700 a year.

By 12th grade, the average black or Hispanic is reading and doing math at the level of the average white 8th-grader. 38

The only occasion on which it is acceptable for whites to speak collectively as whites is to apologize.