Race Suicide and Status Competition

At View from the Right, Lawrence Auster disputes Steve Sailer’s theory that white racial suicide is driven primarily by status competition. Instead, Auster argues that humans do and seek things because they are motivated by what they believe to be true and good. Thus, white liberals practice non-discrimination not to acquire status points in the eyes of their peers, but to feel morally self-righteous.

I incline more to the Sailer view. The typical white liberal doesn’t just feel morally or factually correct when denouncing the “racism” of White Nationalists, which would leave room for rational debate, but morally superior to his/her non-liberal Other, which is immediately associated with pavlovian stereotypes, so much so that nine times out of ten he will entertain no argument from the other side, since doing so is obviously beneath him. While the liberal truly does believe in racial equality, I find that this is almost always less of a consideration that the perception that “racists” are just unseemly, indecent people afflicted with a nasty form of moral leprosy.

Eight years of experience debating the issue has left me convinced that the average American almost never gives much thought to his racial beliefs. He is not really motivated by or interested in truth. As far as he is concerned, “racism” is immoral and that is the end of the matter, which is why the debate rarely progresses beyond epithets. He believes this is a self-evident moral truth that doesn’t require rational justification. The typical American was never taught even how to reason. Instead, he was taught and disciplined how to obey.

Where did Americans get these strange ideas? From their elites and authority figures: their friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, preachers and priests, teachers and professors, entertainers and reporters, favorite authors and rulers. Every institution around them is broadcasting the anti-racist message. Few Americans believed in racial equality until their elites started to expect them to. This is clearly seen in the seventy years worth of polling data on white racial attitudes. Public opinion followed elite opinion in every region of the country after about twenty or thirty years of socialization.

Why then do racialists still exist at all? It is mostly because of differences in intelligence and personality types. The extremely introverted dismiss status concerns as irrational/irrelevant and enjoy testing their ideas. They ask critical questions which simply do not occur to other people . . .

- Why am I supposed to believe ‘racism’ is immoral?

- Why did Americans once believe otherwise?

- Is the evidence for racial equality convincing?

- Who benefits from the widespread belief that ‘racism’ is immoral? Who doesn’t?

… and so on.

On the other hand, you have the gutter racist types who dismiss public opinion either out of sociopathy or lower intelligence.

The anti-racism of the masses is best explained by patterns of dominance/submission, status seeking, and brainwashing, but that doesn’t explain why the prevelance of anti-racism amongst the American elite. The big capitalists and Jews are motivated by self-interest. Historical flukes and coincidences, the sheer drift of time explains much of the rest.

From Occidental Dissent, November 14, 2008