Racialism Versus Racism

Repost from the old site.

There is a difference between racism and racialism. Racism is what most folks think it is. To me, it means to dislike or not wish to associate with a given individual based on their race or ethnic group. I don’t agree that disliking or wishing to avoid certain groups in their aggregate is racism.

For instance, it is certainly possible to look at US Blacks and say that, globally, they seem to have lower morals, high rates of sociopathy, lower IQ, less civilized behavior, much higher crime rates, higher rates of dishonesty and a tendency to break the rules, etc.

All of these things are more or less proven by empirical research, or, if not, based on my life experience, they are true anyway. I really don’t need science to prove that; I can see it with my very eyes. These differences appear most common at lower income levels. At greater income levels, I see less and less difference between Blacks and other races.

Where racism goes wrong, in my opinion, and where it is irrational, stupid and just plain immoral, sinful and wrong, is that it lumps all individuals of a given group into the average of the whole group. For instance, racists apply the negative portrayal above of the Black group to each and every individual Black that they meet. This is madness.

Despite the fact that I believe that the Black group does have greater rates of the negatives above, it’s clear to me that any given individual Black may be just as good and decent of a person, if not better, than any White friend I have or have ever had.

And there are many, many Blacks that do not have any of the qualities listed above. Therefore, it seems wrong for me to decide to have White friends and not to have friends of other races. That’s just a personal decision on my part.

I would also say that it is possible to have racist feelings while realizing that they are wrong and struggling against them. This is the essence of Christian morality. Obviously, it’s best if we limit our sins to the minimum. But many of us sin nevertheless. Regardless of the sin, one must recognize it’s immorality and strive to reduce or end the immoral behavior.

Now, I happen to think that the overwhelming majority of racists do not feel the tiniest bit guilty at all, but there are some that really do feel bad about their racism and work on ending it.

In fact, there is an entire field called Whiteness Studies, which, in spite of being ridiculous race-deniers, takes this as a given in its theory. Whiteness Studies authors, usually White, often write about how they battle against their own internalized racism against non-Whites. Some say it will be a lifelong journey and they do not expect to ever completely overcome it.

Although this entire field is mocked by White racists, I applaud these honest individuals and their efforts.

Racists are usually trying to give intellectual or moral cover to their feelings. For instance, it is quite common for White racists to just say that they are cutting their losses as far as other races. Sure, they may be a few good Blacks out there, but why bother trying to winnow through the good from the bad in trying to figure out who is worth associating with? Why not just be done with the entire group and avoid them?

I really do not believe that most White racists are just cutting their losses (they just use that as a phony excuse for their racism), though do I feel that there are a few like this, and I sympathize with them. I’m not even sure if they are really racists.

Racialism is actually a completely different term with a different meaning. The Wikipedia article gives a pretty good picture of the formal meaning of the term. Unfortunately, the term racialism has been taken over by White racists in an effort to cover up their racism with fake and nice-sounding words.

Even the Wikipedia article talk page shows that both anti-racist boneheads and White nationalist liars have taken over the article and tried to mangle it to serve there ridiculous or dishonest agendas.

Strictly speaking, racialism simply means that one accepts the existence of various races of mankind. I doubt if it really means anything more than that. Many racialists feel that there are real and objective genetic differences between the races, but I do not think that that is a requirement to be a racialist.

A racialist would look at things like IQ scores, the makeup of 100-yard dash winners in the Olympics and the NBA, crime rates, etc. and would say that race is a common factor behind these scores. The race-denier would say that, first, there is no such thing as race, and second, that race has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with these discrepancies.

So a non-racialist is, strictly speaking, a race-denier. This position, that there is no such thing as race, has become quite popular lately, but I think it is complete nonsense. A non-racialist would also argue that because race does not exist, all differential racial attributes on various performance, membership and incidence variables is strictly coincidental.

Yes, I do believe that there are races and there are average differences between them on various variables. I do not believe that race does not exist.

Nowadays, most folks who call themselves racialists are just racists, almost always White racists. I’m going to step out of the closet and become one of the first anti-racist racialists to publicly identify oneself.

The objective of the race-deniers is clear. Once one cuts past the nonsense and crap, it seems there is a laudable agenda here. The race-deniers believe that the more people focus on race, the more racist they become. Unfortunately, it is probably true. So, by saying that race does not exist, they hope to strike a blow against racism. This is a noble goal and I sympathize.

However, I do not believe in abusing science and truth to achieve societal objectives. The existence of race is an objective fact to me, and I am not interested in denying it to further some anti-racist objective. Perhaps I’m contributing to racism by doing this. I doubt it, but even if I am, I don’t really care. There are no truths that are so horrible that they should not be discussed or revealed.

There has also been a lot of confusion about me supporting White Pride. Well, I think that most every other race or ethnic group out there seems to have quite a bit of ethnic pride. Except Whites. This is denied to us.

The reason is that White Pride has led to some pretty nasty and horrible outcomes in the past 70 years or so. In wishing to avoid the recrudescence of such movements, people just want to do away with the sentiment altogether.

In other words, your average White who gets into the White Pride thing turns into, at worst, a raving Nazi or racist fascist fuck, or, at best, into some sort of genteel white bread polite racist type. So we have the strange scenario in which Whites all over the world deny that there is anything good about being White, deny any pride in their heritage, or even apologize for being White.

I think that that is a bit silly. I look in the mirror and see my White features and I like them and feel good about them. I’m comfortable with White folks, White behavior and White features because that’s what I’m used to, and also what I believe in and am attracted to. I don’t agree that we are bad or evil or need to apologize for ourselves. I do not think we need to be bred off the face of the Earth to protect the planet.

That’s all I am talking about. If the above really bothers you so much and you think I’m a racist jerk, well, fine, you really don’t have to come around here. We are not dying for readers; we get ~3,200 readers a day and can easily lose some.

I hope that that clears things up.

Please follow and like us:
error3
fb-share-icon20
Tweet 20
fb-share-icon20

21 thoughts on “Racialism Versus Racism”

  1. Robert–after spending the last couple of hours perusing your site I have this reaction: you have a pronounced tendency to JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS on the basis of a suspect use of evidence and/or questionable logic.What you call “racial realism” appears to be a hodge-podge of studies and various data points combined with what I think even you would admit is often your own decidedly non-scientific reaction to certain groups (i.e., your low opinion of poor Hispanics and admitted fear of Black males).

    1. I don’t agree. Trust me when I say that as a Leftist, this is the last thing in the world that I want to believe. Nevertheless, it is by now quite obvious to me that race is real whether I want to believe it or not. You’ve got the wrong idea altogether. This is not want I want to believe, but I feel that sadly the evidence is overwhelming, so I am forced to agree with this notion.

  2. I don’t doubt that you believe that statement and I’ve read it in several of your posts. Belief, however, does not make up for flaws in logic or lack of evidence.

    “I really don’t need science to prove that; I can see it with my very eyes.”

    This statement sums up the problem with many of your conclusions. You start out building a case with a few relevant facts but instead of following through you resort to “gut” feelings based on your anecdotal experience. That’s not true objectivity. When I have more time I will come back and point out specific examples. Not to be entirely critical though, because I think you do make numerous valid points and are certainly thought provoking.

    1. You don’t understand. I was a race denier for most of my life. I kept throwing my race denial theories up before the evidence and one by one I watched them come crashing back down. It’s got to be true. Race has to be real. You say that this is what I want to believe, but it’s not true. I was a race denier for decades until I finally could not keep on telling the lies anymore. The only conclusion I started out with in search of evidence was the conclusion that there was no such thing as race. I simply was not able to uphold my hypothesis anymore, and I finally gave in and concluded that race must be real. There can’t be any other explanation for the evidence.

  3. Robert, you are unique, I think — a leftist who actually thinks about stuff rather than repeating slogans. I can and do disagree with a lot of your conclusions, but your thinking is always worth following. Race denial is indeed the Zeitgeist, and you find it all across the spectrum, from libertarians to leftists to neocons, and it makes any kind of sensible social policy impossible. Regarding people as malleable units leads to social disaster. A post on the subject of stupid people vs. smart people:
    http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2011/04/stupid-vs-smart.html

  4. Dear Robert

    You made many good points. We should carefully distinguish between racism, racial feeling and racial theory.
    Racial feeling is a feeling of kinship with people of own’s race. If a black feels more kinship with another black than with a white, other things being equal, than this perfectly natural. Affinity is based on commonalities, and one commonality can be race. Racial feeling becomes problematic when it becomes very strong and starts to supersede all other loyalties. If a black American feels more affinity with a black Brazilian than with a white American, then he is no longer a black American but an American black.
    As to race theory, it is simply the attempt to explain part of human reality through race differences. A race theorists can be totally free from race feeling or racism.
    Racism is something else. Racists tend to show the following charateristics:
    1- A tendency to judge some other people solely by their race and not by their individual merits.
    2 – A tendency to completely overlook differences within races and to magnify differences between races. They are often unable to see that there is always overlap between races and that the differences within races are much larger than the differences between them.
    3 – A tendency to advocate fewer rights for some people solely because they belong to a certain race.
    4 – Frequent aversion to social and sexual intercourse between races.
    5 – Frequent concern about maintainning racial purity.
    6 – Tendency to exaggerate the virtues and accomplishments of one’s race and denigrate other races.
    7 – Tendency to feel hostility toward some people simply because belong to a certain race.

    It should be clear to any objective analyst that one can be a convinced race realist without having any of the above 7 characteristics.

    Regards. James

    1. Well summarized, James. I think the popular definition has changed, though. A White racist used to be someone who hated nonWhites. Now it’s somebody who realizes that nonWhites hate him.

    2. James, thank you so much for this distinction between racialism and racism. It is what I believe but so far most of the literature I have read list the two as being synonymous or interchangeable. Now I know there’s someone out there who share the same belief I can go on using this distinction between the two. Thanks again!

  5. RE: Definitions

    I’m not sure why this is so hard.

    Racism is 1) the belief in the inequality of races (i.e. certain races are inferior or superior in certain areas) or 2) hatred toward another race.

    People have a problem with the first definition. I would like to remind them that “elitism” (the belief in the inequality of man i.e. the belief that certain individuals are superior or inferior in certain areas) is defined the same way. Sexism (belief in the inequality of sexes) is the same (Misogyny, on the other hand, is hatred toward women, something altogether seperate).

    Even without those words, just think about it – you are calling AN ENTIRE RACE OF PEOPLE INFERIOR in comparison to another lol. How is this not racism?

    Anyway, IMO, the only “races” that are important are weak men and strong men, both of which are necessary.

    1. I don’t know about the inherent business. But it’s clear that on average there are differences between males and females and between different races. It’s obvious that some of these differences are due to genes. So this is racism and sexism? Fine.

      1. Oh, no, don’t get me wrong. Of course it’s fine. I’m probably the biggest elitist here (if you follow the logic, being elitist makes one a sexist, a racist, a classist, a specist etc. all in one). But when minorites direct cries of “Racism!” toward any sort of racialism or race-realism, do realize that they are 100% correct and that it is not offensive or insulting in the slightest.

  6. I don’t think these distinctions are going to get you a hood pass. But the worst thing about about blacks is not their race, but their racial consciousness and solidarity, which are what really poison things. Since you’re amenable to empirical arguments, look at all-white and all-black societies and pick one for yourself. I don’t go for the idea that a few blacks spice things up- their food, music and religion are nothing special, and their childish bravado gets tiring pretty quick.

  7. Robert … what kind of leftist is a racist cunt? There is no science behind race – none. It is a social construction not a scientific fact. The kind of essentialism that I have come across on this site has been thoroughly and routinely debunked since the beginings of the Frankfurt School. By the way I am a Trini living in Canada … and your analysis of my country and the caribbean in general is complete and total shit. Just because you have enough money to do a couple weeks of vacation per year doesn’t mean you are an expert. It means you a a typical middle class asshole. Holiday in Cambodia for you!

  8. Well Well what a topic. tempers flaring. I have a lot of black friends and I treat them just like anyone else. I will say this we have black history month if we had white history month the producers would be called racists and would be drummed out of Hollywood. because of this politically correct crap. The black community would go off. What I have learned in my 44yrs on this earth is that black people are more predigest than most white people I know. I have worked in the city’s and in towns all over the US. They always use the excuse that they are imprisoned and look down on. Well doing drugs killing each other they bring all this on themselves but it is always easier to blame others. If they want to change the way people see them finish school go to college get a job and get that chip off your shoulder. I am not saying I am better than anyone else but if you aren’t going to take responsibility for your own actions and stand on your own 2 feet there is nothing me or anyone else can do to help you. There are people who will say I am a racist for what I wrote here. I don’t believe in inter racial marriage and my black friends they know it. Not just black all races but who you choose to spend your life with is your business and none of mine. My dad always said respect is earned not given and if you are not willing to work for what you have you don’t deserve it anyways. If I give you my word it is as good as gold because I will keep it. I treat you the way you treat me. Racism is generally learned from a young age and how you act and behave and the things you say about others and names you call each other and the way you treat each other that is racism. I don’t need a scientific study to tell me what RACISM is. I have seen it my entire life from all races. Have a nice day!

  9. Blacks are not on average dumber than others. We have yet seen their true genetic potential. So stop it. Blacks have iqs of 1000000….black power lol

  10. Just saw this thread…

    Kids of my generation were taught about race through the lesson to avoid prejudice, which means pre-judgement; like Robert’s point about assuming negative characteristics about a single black person based on their race. Somehow the concept of prejudice turned into the dictum that we’re not supposed to believe in differential abilities among groups of people, even if there is strong evidence of them.

    Diversitarians still talk about racialists as showing prejudice and ignorance. But it’s THEY who are expounding a purely ideological position not based on evidence. So who’s being prejudiced and ignorant?

  11. If I’m not mistaken, “racialism” and “racism” are synonyms at their origins. And there’s no much basis for such a semantic distinction. The bit of the word that differ has no real semantic significance, as if it meant “non prejudiced consideration”, making “sexism” sexist, and having a non-bigoted version, “sexualism”. It’s just the use of the entire word “racial” rather than just the morphological radical. The meaning of both would technically be neutral, just have “racial considerations” about something. But as it turns out, many “racial considerations” commonly done by many people in the daily life turned out being highly unfair and harmful, so this meaning became attached, as opposed to just considerations not more dramatic than those one would make when collecting beetles, choosing clothes

    IMO I think that “racialism” was either invented or co-opted by racists in the bigot sense as a way to make racist/racialist considerations seem PC in a way. I have vague memories of reading texts where people spoke about “racism” and “racialism” in a way that the terms would interchangeable; both people saying that there’s no big deal with racism, and people just using racialism as a synonym.

    But I think I’m being just a “vocabulary nazi” without all the needed information here. My actual point is almost in the opposite direction. In effect, “racism” came to mean “bad” racial considerations, whereas “racialism” somehow managed to not be as affected. However, it’s perhaps ~98% of the time used by actual racists anyway, as a stealth strategy, so perhaps there’s not much need of such distinction. Usually non-racists have no trouble managing to make whatever racial considerations there might be valid/”non-racist” without having much need to contrast their position with some straw-man-esque “racial blind” one, labeling it “racialist”. Defending this distinction is somewhat useless I guess, and always somewhat risky, somewhat as someone defending “national socialism” and distinguishing it from nazism – which is totally possible, can be totally coherent and morally defensible, without all the final solution type of stuff, but hardly one can’t help to wonder on why have the trouble, instead of emphasizing on “socialism” (which is perhaps the term with less bad baggage these days, albeit it might vary from where in the world you are), while still having whatever non-nazi-like nationalistic considerations, making no secret about, but neither a fuss. Even actual nazis/followers of nazi-like philosophies (in a broad sense, allowing for people outright against “final solutions”, but, say, just a bit too much emphatic on deporting people and restricting migration, but also those who, well, we suspect wouldn’t think final solutions are all that bad) do this sort of thing as a stealth strategy as well. By “reclaiming” terms like “racialism” or “national socialism” we end just unintentionally making PR work for them, for free.

    PS.: not calling you a racist, if it sounded like at some point.

  12. There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
    The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
    “Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.
    Controversy ahead
    The findings combine three hot-button topics.
    “They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics,” said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. “When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.”
    Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]
    “The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this,” Nosek said, referring to the new study. “It’s not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists.”
    Brains and bias
    Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life’s Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]
    In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.
    Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as “Family life suffers if mum is working full-time,” and “Schools should teach children to obey authority.” Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as “I wouldn’t mind working with people from other races.” (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson’s work can’t speak to this “underground” racism.)
    As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.
    People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.
    “This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice,” said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.
    A study of averages
    Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren’t implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.
    “There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals,” Hodson said.
    Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.
    “We can say definitively men are taller than women on average,” he said. “But you can’t say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There’s plenty of overlap.”
    Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.
    “Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order,” Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. “Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice.”
    In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]
    Simple viewpoints
    Hodson and Busseri’s explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn’t conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you’d have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren’t possible.
    The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like “every kid is a genius in his or her own way,” might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.
    “My speculation is that it’s not as simple as their model presents it,” Nosek said. “I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where ‘People I don’t know are threats’ and ‘The world is a dangerous place’. … Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful.”
    Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group’s point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.
    “There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners,” Hodson said. “Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups,” rather than thoughts.

Leave a Reply to WMarkW Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)