Why We Need to Tell the Truth About Race

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The reason we need to tell the truth about race is very simple: Without race realism, there is no compelling argument why racial disparities exist.

There is a saying that the woke are more correct than the mainstream. That is certainly true when it comes to race. This is because leftists at least recognize racial disparities, try to come up with plausible-sounding explanations for them, and take their premises to their logical conclusions. Many conservatives do not do this, not least because they have accepted so many of the premises from the so-called Civil Rights movement. The cult of Martin Luther King Jr. may be stronger among conservatives than it is among progressives.

However, what conservatives want is arguably something civil rights leaders never wanted. “Colorblind conservatism” never really existed, and it’s debatable if any civil rights leaders ever really wanted it. Martin Luther King Jr. explicitly favored anti-white racial preferences. When black website TheGrio.com said Martin Luther King was “woke,” it was right. Conservatives who insist otherwise make fools of themselves.

Martin Luther King Jr. meets with President Lyndon Johnson. (Credit Image: © Yoichi Okamoto / White House / MediaDrum via ZUMA Press)

Cambridge philosophy professor Nathan Cofnas writes:

To explain the appeal of leftism — which increasingly takes the form of wokism — you have to explain what wokism is. I argue that wokism is simply what follows from taking the equality thesis of race and sex differences seriously, given a background of Christian morality. Both the mainstream left and right believe that innate cognitive ability and temperament are distributed equally among races, and probably the sexes, too. (Mainstream conservatives acknowledge the existence of physical sex differences, but they rarely chalk up disparities in, for example, mathematical achievement to differences in innate ability—at least not publicly.) As I will explain, wokesters correctly follow the equality thesis to its logical conclusion, whereas conservatives fail to recognize the implications of their own beliefs. Smart people are disproportionately attracted to wokism in large part because it offers a more intellectually coherent explanation for the major issue of our time, which is the persistence of racial disparities.

In her December 28, 2023, interview with Richard Hanania, Amy Wax also called for honesty.

If you ever go to a philosophy seminar, whatever, “it takes a theory to beat a theory,” right? So you can criticize wokeness all you want, but until you have sort of an alternative explanation account of why things are the way they are, you will slide down towards wokeness. And I think, let me just add one point here, and I made this point in my review of Charles Murray’s book, Facing Reality, which actually faces up to these differences, but avoids speculating about where they come from. I actually think that, you know, these sources have to be confronted once you implement race blindness, meritocracy, all of these defaults that the anti-woke crowd wants to see, their ideal universe is going to be colorblind. It’s going to be meritocratic. And I think you would sign on to that from your book. But what will happen when we have a true meritocracy?

What will happen when we have real color blindness? Well, what will happen is there won’t be hardly any blacks in positions demanding very high cognitive ability. And here I’m talking about, you know, 130 IQ plus. So we’re talking about academic medicine, academic law, academia, generally, a lot of business positions, high tech positions, anything kind of technical and scientific, it’s going to be hard to get almost any blacks in those positions on a pure meritocracy. And you could say, nah, that’s not true, but actually the IQ numbers are really stark. They are really, really stark. So how are we going to sell that to the public?

In other words, even if you could somehow achieve “colorblindness,” you would end up at the same place, facing the same issues.

Some conservatives might argue that this means nothing. Just because progressives don’t want “colorblindness” doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be the ideal. However, this is an ideal that none of our Founders ever wanted. Thus, any attempt to reconcile traditional American identity and patriotism with modern ideals about colorblindness is going to be difficult. It’s almost certainly doomed to failure because most non-whites have nothing to gain from “colorblindness.” For whites to push through “colorblind” policies, there would need to be sufficient moral fortitude to tell non-whites “no.” If that already existed, we would have very few problems to begin with. It’s because many people really believe in racial egalitarianism, or feel that they should believe in it, that we are in this mess.

The well-known author and pundit “Bronze Age Pervert” recently argued that race realism is a political loser.

While for the sake of truth I think facts about racial disparities should be discussed, it’s not good at all politically. In fact it’s impossible in the present circumstances. Only a myth of race blindness is workable. You won’t convince some populations that they are inferior by…

— Bronze Age Pervert (@bronzeagemantis) January 2, 2024

That might be true, but it’s questionable. If Donald Trump has shown anything, it’s that people may be more open to the truth than we previously believed. After all, candidate Trump tweeted out crime statistics that showed blacks committed more crime. He said many of the migrants coming across the border were rapists. He proposed a ban on Muslims. These and other things I would have said were political nonstarters. It turns out they were popular, or at least acceptable to many Republican voters.

This doesn’t mean that a political candidate trying to win an election should put race realism at the center of his campaign. However, there are plenty of unpopular niche issues that conservatives prioritize anyway. This is because dedicated activists force politicians to take up their issues. White advocates must eventually do the same if we are to stop losing in slow motion. Race realism may be less offensive to voters than certain standard GOP messages such as cutting Medicare.

There is also an educational element to politics. Sometimes the purpose of a campaign is not to win an election but to introduce an issue. White advocates have, if anything, been too restrained in running for office. We need only to look at the Democratic Party to see the impact once-fringe candidates such as Jesse Jackson have had on it.

For many of us, race realism may seem boring. We are all familiar with the material. We assume others are as well. We don’t want just to keep bringing up the same points on X repeatedly. Yet a 2020 study shows a minority of just 41 percent of American adults are aware of the IQ gap between racial groups. We have a lot of work to do to spread awareness of even the introductory levels of racial reality among the American public.

Human biodiversity simply is. It doesn’t imply “white supremacy” any more than it implies “Asian supremacy.” If facts invalidate a worldview, so much the worse for that worldview. Given media deplatforming and the vast forces arrayed against us, the best weapon we have is the truth. It’s not just a question of moral right, but a question of smart tactics to keep speaking it.

Bronze Age Pervert may claim that I am oversimplifying his position. Perhaps I am, but defending race realism is, after all, my job. I will try to be fair. He is not saying that no one should speak the truth, merely that in a democracy such issues are not winning issues and people are not ready for them. One possible solution, he suggests, is to scrap democracy entirely. That might work, but such a step would require incomparable willpower and boldness from men who are utterly convinced of the moral rightness of their cause. That doesn’t seem to mix with telling comforting lies.

He also argues that race realism, if accepted, might lead to further support for affirmative action because nature is “unfair.” Yet we are already in that position now. Furthermore, does anyone believe acceptance of the Asian IQ advantage over whites would lead to affirmative action for whites? I doubt it.

Certainly, BAP is right that race realism, by itself, will not necessarily lead to positive results. Race realism and white advocacy are not the same thing, and not all race realists are white advocates. (Richard Hanania is in this category, and this isn’t meant as an insult, simply an honest description.) Getting whites to take their own side is a more complicated process than simply distributing some studies — it’s a matter of faith, will, romanticism, energy, and other “irrational” forces. Yet the most effective movements have activists who are convinced that their beliefs are objectively true. Race realism is true, and the evidence continues piling up. We should not shy away from it now. At some point, politicians shouldn’t be able to either. That point is rapidly approaching. We should try to make our case in the most reasonable, objective, and “optics-friendly” way possible. That might be an uphill battle, but we will never get anywhere if we don’t make the case at all.