Are Whites Pathological? Yes and No: Part 2
Part one of this writing examined the status of White people from an individualistic, in contrast to an aggregate, perspective. Part two explores the implications of that analysis and depends on the reader’s familiarity with the material in part one.
White analysis, advocacy, and action need to be grounded in the multiple realities that comprise total reality. In this writing, aggregate- and individual-based analyses yielded different, and, seemingly at least, contradictory, truths about the White circumstance. Yet another frame of reference to bring to bear on this concern is the moment-to-moment experienced existence of actual White people — you, me, and every other White person alive now, as well as those who have already completed their journeys through life and those not yet born. From that, call it, existential perspective, there are as many White realities and there are, or have been or will be, White people. Living, breathing, mortal White people don’t live their lives in the collective or in the abstract. They fashion particular lives within their particular circumstances, and that undertaking turns out well for them or it doesn’t. Whether it is immoral or shortsighted, it is understandable that individuals will do what they can, including with respect to racial matters, to ensure that they and their loved ones do well — gain status and power and material wealth and all that can provide — both now and in the future.
Even as we deal with White concerns from a favored orientation rooted in certain values and truths and leading to certain insights and actions, we need to keep in mind other orientations and values and truths and where they may lead. The ideal, it seems to me, is to be guided by multiple perspectives, each informing and completing the other, with the hope that the result will be a closer approximation of the great truths Niels Bohr, referred to in part one, talked about.
Back to our hypothetical (though I believe typical) John Jones from Part One: with regard to race, what does he need that those concerned about White people might be able to provide?
He needs understanding and acceptance. It’s tempting to point a finger at our Mister Jones for not being more racially conscious and active. But if you look at the mind control he has undergone since his earliest years and what he feels pressed to get done in his life and the circumstance prevailing in his world, it really isn’t fair to pathologize him for equating being on the side of Whites with signing up to be a practice dummy for bayonet training.
He needs a positive racial identity. It’s been beaten into John Jones all of his life, especially in the university he has attended, that to be White is something to feel guilt and shame about. That view of Whiteness is absurd — nothing warrants greater self-affirmation and pride than being White. Those who lead Whites to see themselves and their people in such a self-demeaning way are despicable; what they are doing is unconscionable. To denigrate and disparage any young person’s racial or ethnic identity and heritage — not just Whites’, anyone’s — deserves disgust and contempt. Why don’t Whites, me included, manifest more disgust and contempt? Why are we so polite and nice while people are relieving themselves on us?
John Jones needs to expel his poisonous and debilitative racial self-definition and replace it with one that is healthy and generative. How to help him see the need to do that, and then actually do it, is a major challenge confronting the White racial movement.
In the description of John Jones that started off this discussion in part one, I referred to him as a White gentile, not simply as White. White would have been OK, but it seemed to me that White gentile is more precise. I think of myself as a White gentile, and I’m beginning, with some trepidation I might add, to refer to myself as that publicly. That I shake and tremble when saying what I am underscores the tyrannical and threatening circumstance prevalent in our time. White gentiles are the only group I can think of that can’t call themselves what they are. Jews can proudly announce that they are Jews, and I applaud that fact. But if Jews can be Jews to the world why can’t I, and John Jones, be gentiles to the world?
Anyway, while I don’t want to make a big case of it — White is good enough for me — I do think that one alternative to the racist and dehumanizing “white male” epithet that has been drilled into John Jones and pinned on his shirt for all to see is a self-concept as a proud and honorable White gentile.
For that to take hold . . .
He needs a positive narrative of his race and culture. John has had a damning story of his race and heritage drummed into him. I’m deeply saddened and dismayed to hear White university students sincerely recite the sins committed by people of their kind. I would be equally brought down listening to anything comparable from blacks or Hispanics or Jews or Asians, or anybody — gays, Muslims, low income people, rural people, anybody. I don’t want to hear blacks putting themselves and their people down, or feeling obliged to step aside in favor of Whites, or serving other groups’ interests while paying no attention to their own, or staying silent while others express themselves freely. I don’t want to see blacks, or anyone else, unorganized and passive while other groups are organized and active to the hilt. I don’t want anyone afraid around matters of race. I don’t care only about White people. I care about all people that inhabit this planet.
I’m trying to think of an easier task to take on than creating a positive narrative for Whites. In every area of human existence, Whites have at the very least held their own when compared to other races, other heritages. Philosophy, science, mathematics, the arts, education, business, technology, you name it: I’d be happy to let you make the case for some other race and I’ll make the case for Whites (two books I’ll draw on: Ricardo Duchesne, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, and Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B. C. to 1950). I’m willing to argue the livability of White communities — safety, cleanliness, care for children, political honesty, whatever criteria you want to use — compared to communities made up of any other group, anywhere in the world. Yes, the history of White people has had its dirty linen, but so has every other race had its dirty linen. But I’m ready to defend the efforts of Whites to wash their dirty linen, remedy the wrongs some of their brethren have committed, against the efforts of any other race to wash its dirty linen.
It is disingenuous, unfair, cruel, and hurtful to cherry pick the least positive attributes and actions of some White people and sell the notion to White children that that is who they are. John Jones needs to hear a story of his kind other than the one hammered into him by those harboring barely suppressed seething resentment and hostility toward him and his. That White people should feel bad about their race is a preposterous idea that has to be blown out of the water. And more, we have to get our children out of the clutches of people who bring them down. Enough.
He needs strategies and tactics. There John is with his Facebook account and the girlfriend he’s either trying to get or hold on to, and he has job interviews coming up. Or let’s say he’s older. There’s the job working for Microsoft and the wife and two kids and a mortgage and visiting his aging parents on Sundays after the church services. The grass needs cutting and his son is on a Little League team he’s coaching and his daughter is in a ballet recital coming up and he’s concerned about her getting bullied in school and through the Internet. His wife is staying late at work a lot and he’s starting to get suspicious. And he’s wondering if he has diabetes; anyway, he’s tired all the time. It’s Tuesday night at 7:30 and he has just finished putting away the dishes after the dinner he cooked (his wife had to work late) and his kids are in their rooms doing homework or something. His race is ceding political and cultural hegemony and that’s really bad, and let’s say he’s up on what’s going on.
OK, what exactly is John supposed to do about what’s happening to his race? Name it. If he can’t think of something to do that he is capable of doing and that suits who he is and fits in with his circumstances in life he’ll be left doing nothing and feeling he has let his people down. John needs a list of action possibilities to choose from, and there isn’t one at his disposal at the moment, and truth be told, I’m not sitting here with such a list ready to hand out to him. I’ve come up with the idea of writing this piece, but that’s me; what do other people do, John Jones or anybody else? The best I can do at this point is point out the lack of a White racial technology, let’s call it that — practical, effective ways of dealing with White racial issues. I wish I were able to do more in this area.
He needs all of the above in easily digestible form. John Jones’ life is full. He doesn’t have a lot of time. He’s not a big reader. John moves from this to that to the other; he’s a moving target, as it were. The challenge is to get the White racial message through to John Jones clearly and quickly given all that’s going on with him. Other interest groups’ messages can be transmitted via conventional modes of public discourse — the mass media (book publishers, television, film, the music industry, magazines, newspapers), politicians, journalists, and schools at all levels –but those trying to get across a positive White racial identity and narrative and strategies can’t count on using those vehicles. Social media is a possibility. Another, a book that can be read in a sitting available through the Internet or self-published in print form. Another, a web site directed at these concerns. Though while we’re doing things like this, let’s not give up on the possibility of finding ways to communicate through mainstream public exchange. Speaking of ceding to our adversaries, let’s not cede for all time the right to speak in the public square.
It seems best to keep the White racial message positive. To be for Whites is not at the same time to be against any other race or ethnicity. It is not to believe in racial superiority or domination. The message can, and I believe should, be rooted in core American values and ideals: freedom, equality, fairness, justice, self-determination. Whites want what every other group wants, to be conscious of itself and appreciated for the best of its heritage, to have its voice heard, to choose leaders and spokespeople, to organize and pursue its interests within the political system, and to live its way and shape its own destiny. If doing all that is good for blacks and if it’s their right to do that, why in the United States of America isn’t it good, and within their rights, for Whites to do that?
The approach I just outlined is a way to go forward, but that is not to say that I think it should be the only way to approach White racial issues. Good lessons on how to proceed can be found in the examples of successful movements in recent decades: namely, the black civil rights movement, the modern women’s movement, and the gay rights movement. They each included individuals and groups that operated out of very different conceptions of how to deal with the issues confronting them. There was Martin Luther King, but there was also Malcolm X. There was Gloria Steinem and the radical feminists. There was Harvey Milk and ACT UP. I’m offering ideas here congenial to me, but in the larger scheme of things I believe that the best way forward for Whites is many ways forward. I favor every racially conscious and committed White person doing what he or she believes in doing and able to do, with nothing out of bounds and nothing too big or too small. Perhaps in John’s case, he does something a bit — or a lot — different when raising his children. That’s fine. He, and you and I, do something that helps. What that might be is our call.
He needs support and protection. John Jones lives with fear around race, and with good reason. And if he becomes racially aware and committed and active he will feel alone with that, and with good reason. There are individuals and organizations that will nail him good if he makes one false move racially: he’s a racist, anti-Semite, bigot, hater, stone him. And when they start to work John over — marginalize or isolate him, smear or demonize him, harass him and his children, fire him from his job, whatever it is — he’ll be on his own. There’ll be no one to come to his aid. No one will have his back. No individuals, no organizations. Unfortunately, I can speak to that reality from experience.
Here again, I can do little more than point out the problem. However it happens, whenever it happens, when one of us is attacked, a whole bunch of us needs to counterattack. And that counterattack can include scorn, contempt, ridicule, and mockery. Politically correct Whites especially take themselves oh-so-seriously and feel assured that whatever they do will be met with fawning approval and respect. We could shake that up. Make them look like ignorant fools, laugh at them, make them into jokes. But that said, here too we all do what we do. Lawyers bring suit, reasonable people reason, organizers organize, speakers speak, those given to outrage rage, protesters protest, and, yes, satirists sneer and make fun. John won’t have to do battle alone. Nor will any of the rest of us.
Robert S. Griffin’s writings on race include the book, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce.
