Why Whites Can’t Stop ‘Helping’

Joseph Kay outlines the problem.

It has been said that no good deed goes unpunished, and this folk wisdom applies to the American “civil rights” movement. For over 75 years, white America has spent trillions and tolerated draconian government intrusion in our private lives to promote racial equality. Not only has this failed, but black animus toward whites has increased. There is no prospect that blacks will lessen their anti-white hostility regardless of white generosity. This has been an ongoing catastrophe of Biblical proportions.

Two factors help explain this paradox. First, a subtle shift in this “help” has occurred, namely going from bestowing material benefits such as anti-discrimination laws, to trying to change the psychology of blacks to transform them into whites.

This typically calls for imparting “bourgeois values.” Blacks must get married before having children, stay wedded and monogamous, be good parents, eschew drugs and crime, avoid coarse language and be patriotic. Other prescribed “white” values include thrift, deferred gratification, industriousness, prioritizing education, and being on time. Most blacks accurately see this being told to “act white.” The insurmountable practical problem is that most blacks don’t want to be “white,” even if it came with all the material benefits.

At the same time, the benefits of anti-crime policies, and the alleged benefits of gentrification and even greater personal safety hold little allure for blacks. It is my view that whatever they may say, blacks prefer to live in a world where criminality is commonplace, illegitimacy is the norm, family responsibilities are minimal and no stigma is attached to chronic idleness. Of all American ethnic or religious groups, with the possible exceptions of Muslims, blacks are the only ones stigmatized as needing cultural remediation.

Most blacks dislike being hectored to be more “white.” They deeply resent this kind of sermonizing as a clear message that their behavior is inferior. Imagine how the Chinese would take it if they were told that obsessing over education is pathological because it only brings personal unhappiness and resentment from non-Chinese.

The other way whites attempt to “help” blacks also makes them angry. It is the belief that if only blacks got the right opportunities, they would thrive and thus, eventually, become more like whites. For well-meaning whites, this is the purpose of affirmative action and DEI. These whites believe blacks want opportunities, not handouts, and how can any well-meaning person oppose “opportunity”?

These measures almost always guarantee failure, because they put blacks into positions for which they are not qualified. Blacks who then fail, believe they were set up for failure, and it is not unreasonable to think whites set them up to fail. Well-intentioned whites admitted them into demanding majors that require difficult science courses, so whites are to blame when blacks fail. This is especially galling for blacks, who have famously high levels of self-esteem.

The greater the unearned opportunity, the greater the failure and, predictably, the greater the resentment. For decades, we have been digging ever deeper into the pool of blacks applying for top jobs, and these failures must number in the millions. In their misguided quest to advance racial equity, benevolent whites have created an entire class of resentful ingrates — at no cost to themselves. What Harvard Dean of Admissions worries about all those angry black dropouts?

Why do so many goodhearted whites persist in these two failed cures for black failure? Surely even clueless racial do-gooders should be able to anticipate disasters. Part of this allure rests on false beliefs regarding human malleability and the irrelevance of biology. For fans of environmental determinism, it must be easy to re-educate irresponsible parents into dutiful caregivers. We just need the right government programs. Colleges have great power to transform struggling blacks with the right mix of tutoring, mentoring, and respecting their cultural needs.

This racial engineering, despite repeated disasters, also reflects the paucity of alternatives. Dozens of past “guaranteed” solutions have failed, so let’s try nostrums that sound good. Who could oppose imparting middle-class family values or offering “opportunity”? Moreover, those proposing these remedies seldom suffer any direct costs from failure. They are not giving up their own jobs to underqualified blacks.

These solutions are also ideologically safe because they avoid racial taboos about genetic contribution to differences in intelligence. No conservative think-tank expert loses her job by suggesting that the “cure” for black teenage violence is encouraging black men to be better fathers. This offends no one, even if the odds of their actually becoming better fathers are zero. Meanwhile, liberals can demand yet more social spending to strengthen black families.

Can this anger-inducing madness be stopped? Unlikely. Even if all the DEI measures were legally eliminated, do-gooders refuse to recognize the costs of their foolishness. There will always be plenty of people who will celebrate “trying to help.” Many whites are, no doubt, incapable of resisting the urge to “help,” even when it harms.

Racial animosity will grow, especially among blacks getting the most “help.” It is no accident that so much hatred of whites emanates from universities, where thousands of struggling blacks enjoy generous opportunities to fail or are awarded degrees in bogus fields such as Black Studies. Only a few whites will conclude that blacks should just be left alone to be “black.” Most cannot resist this misguided effort at racial engineering. It is a compulsive disorder.

In a 1970 internal memo not meant for publication, Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the progress that blacks had made, and suggested a change in emphasis:

The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of “benign neglect.” The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over by hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers [grifters] on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.

Moynihan thought the government should continue to monitor progress and give helpful nudges here and there, but that the race problem was getting too much attention. The memo was leaked to the New York Times and, of course, was interpreted as a call to stop enforcing civil rights and ignore problems in black communities. In that respect, nothing has changed. Race relations will continue to be an area in which no good deed goes unpunished.

Reply by Jared Taylor

There is no doubt that ever since the “civil rights” era, the official and obligatory position on blacks has been that they have all the same sentiments and capacities as whites, and that if we stopped mistreating them, they would become just like us. This was, of course, a radical departure from centuries during which whites assumed the opposite: that blacks and whites had different natures and that blacks would therefore behave differently — and disagreeably — no matter how they were treated. This was why the vast majority of even the most ardent abolitionists certainly wanted to free the slaves but also colonize them or remove them from the country.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famously influential abolitionist novel, published in 1852, that provoked intense anti-slavery sentiment in the North. However, once they are freed, all the main black characters emigrate to Liberia; this is the happy ending. Harriet’s influential preacher brother, Henry Ward Beecher expressed the majority view: “Do your duty first to the colored people here; educate them, Christianize them, and then colonize them.”

Today’s liberals do not use the same terms as Mr. Kay. They don’t talk openly about trying to get blacks to behave like whites, but that is what uplift boils down to. Liberals used to harrumph about the cultural imperialism of expecting black men to get married before they fathered children and to stick around and help rear them. That was the “it takes a village to raise a child” fad that insisted grandmothers and neighbors were just as good as fathers; maybe better. That has faded. I no longer hear even the wildest lefties pretending that fatherlessness is a good thing.

But, as Mr. Kay notes, many blacks don’t want to be like whites and couldn’t even if they tried. (There is a stratum of whites of whom you could say the same thing.) But the liberal persistence in thinking that black/white parity is just a few more programs away is like the mercifully waning conservative belief that Afghans and Iraqis can be turned into bikini-wearing Jeffersonian democrats if we shoot enough of them and teach the rest of them feminism and civics and gay rights.

So, yes, I agree with Mr. Kay. Blacks can’t be made to be whites with black skins, and we should stop trying. African societies muddle through, with typically African approximations of honesty, courtesy, self-restraint, and time. The solution may be to let American blacks work out their own approximations, except that for as long as we live with them, we can’t entirely avoid the consequences of their approximations.

Where I disagree with Mr. Kay is his assumption that blacks are perfectly willing to live with lots of violence as part of not having to try to be white. The baby-mommas and layabouts and drug-takers may be happy not to marry, get jobs, or be on time, but they don’t want to be shot. There are black neighborhood groups devoted to “violence interruption” and “safe spaces.”

They will certainly take your donations, and I suspect the net effect of these fellows on the violent crime rate is probably zero, but I don’t think they are all made up of frauds and con men. Even if Circle of Brotherhood ends up being a club for black men, my guess is that they are genuinely distressed by young blacks blazing away at each other.

I also disagree with Mr. Kay in that I don’t think many blacks elevated beyond their abilities fail and then blame whites for setting them up to fail. First, obvious failure isn’t all that common. A report on a recent cohort of Harvard undergraduates admitted before the US Supreme Court banned race preferences did, indeed, find that blacks were the most likely group to drop out — but only 3 percent, as opposed to 2 percent for whites and 1 percent for Asians. International students at 6 percent dropped out the most. Fancy colleges are desperate to graduate everyone, and with enough scholarship money, hand-holding, and easy-A classes, even the least qualified can scrape through with a toy major of some kind.

Furthermore, blacks need never know they were elevated beyond their capabilities. Black women ages 25-54 are twice as likely as whites of both sexes (4.1 percent v. 2.1 percent) to work for the federal government. Before the DOGE cuts, blacks were concentrated in Housing and Urban Development (36.2 percent), Department of Education (36 percent), and Veterans Affairs (25.2 percent). My guess is that many of them were essentially useless, but either didn’t know it or, even if they did, didn’t care. Undemanding paper-pushing with regular time-in-grade pay raises probably suits them (and a lot of whites) just fine. If there really are blacks at high levels, grinding their teeth in humiliation and angry at whites because they know they have been promoted way beyond their abilities, they don’t seem to make much of a stink about it. I would guess most of them settle in and believe they are worth every cent they are paid.

As for whites, I think many hire and coddle blacks because it makes them feel good. University administrators are ashamed not to have visible clumps of blacks and Hispanics and at least a few American Indians on campus. I can’t prove it, but soothing their DEI compulsion is a more plausible motive to me than genuine, impassioned care for non-whites.

The Jason Arday case confirms this. Cambridge gurgled with happiness when it hired an unqualified liar, and clung to him desperately, despite blunt warnings he was a fraud. It had a black man in a prominent job, complete with dreadlocks so long he could sit on them, so it didn’t matter if he was a miserable teacher and did fake “research.” Had it not been for a blizzard of mocking articles, Cambridge would surely have pampered and spoiled him all the way to retirement. Feeling virtuous was more important than inspiration and guidance for graduate students or protecting the reputation of an 800-year-old institution.

Finally, I am more optimistic than Mr. Kay that whites will eventually stop trying to turn blacks into whites. Conservatives won’t have the courage to say it’s not possible; they will just quietly give up because they never had the same faith in “programs” that liberals do, and will eventually see the latest uplift fad as just another name for the much ballyhooed plan that failed under the last administration.

Liberals will give up on them too, as the Democrat party becomes more foreign and non-white. Hispanics and other Third-Worlders, who live and work and go to school with blacks, will have no patience for them. Yelping about slavery and “institutional racism” bamboozles whites and no one else. Besides, even Muslims and Subcontinentals fresh off the plane have their own sob stories and will close their ears to black wailing.

The real question is what a modern version of “benign neglect” would look like. What will happen if the country really does give up on blacks? In the September 1988 issue of Commentary, Charles Murray predicted an era of “custodial democracy.” He noted, as Mr. Kay does, that every “program” that was supposed to “change the behavior of a clientele that is not already socialized into norms of working-class and middle-class society” has “failed conspicuously.” He added [emphasis in the original], “We do not know how . . . to change the behavior of significant proportions of the urban underclass through social engineering.” He foresaw a time when it would be generally accepted that “inner-city blacks are really quite different from you and me, and the rules that apply to us cannot be applied to them.” The only humane solution would be to make them wards of the state, like Indians on reservations. Mr. Murray didn’t say so, but as the costs of maintaining millions of unproductive people grew, custody might have to be combined with fertility controls.

You can imagine how that idea was received, but it is remarkable that it even saw the light of the day. Now, nearly 40 years later, there might be a better reception for it. For me, the only real solution is large-scale racial disengagement, which would require blacks to fend for themselves, not live forever on charity.

Would we end up with Haiti on our hands? Maybe, maybe not. The Nation of Islam has a disciplined internal security force called The Fruit of Islam. It was originally to be the black shock troops to defend the Nation from white attack, but now keeps order and secures Nation events. The Fruit follow strict rules: no alcohol, tobacco, or narcotics; no gambling, and sex only within marriage. The Fruit are supposed to be self-supporting, humble, courteous, neat, honest, punctual, and dependable.

If the Nation of Islam were running things, blacks might make something of themselves and, ironically, they would do so by requiring blacks to do exactly what we have failed to persuade them to do: act like white people.

A reply to Mr. Taylor

I will briefly respond to the points Mr. Taylor raises regarding my pessimistic analysis of American race relations. Regarding my contention that blacks resist white efforts to curb crime given that black culture is crime-friendly, he argues that blacks often speak out and even organize (along with whites) in support of crime-reduction measures.

Mr. Taylor is, of course, right — no blacks will publicly endorse “more crime.” Alas, hypocrisy is rampant. It is no accident that nearly all destructive, deadly black riots began with routine police interactions over such “minor” offenses as shoplifting or DUI, especially if the arresting officer is white. The George Floyd incident is only one of thousands.

Perhaps even more important, for most blacks, cracking down on crime has personal consequences, even if they are not themselves the culprits. The apprehended shoplifter has friends and relatives, and these folk will hardly demand justice from the white-controlled judicial system. The shoplifter may also have appreciative clients for his stolen loot, and they will miss the bargains. It is hard to support broken-windows policing when likely miscreants are friends and family. Let us not conflate abstract support for law and order with what happens when white-defined law and order personally arrives.

Second, though there is scant hard evidence on how blacks react to patronizing efforts by whites to “help” them and the resulting psychological consequences of this failed intervention, I still insist — contrary to what Mr. Taylor alleges — that the psychological harm is genuine. It would be a miracle for any human being to survive psychologically unharmed from repeated condescension and patronizing “help.” After all, no other group on campus is singled out for this intervention and everybody knows it. Eventually, even the most oblivious black student (and faculty member, too) must recognize that even their staunch academic defenders hold them in contempt.

Finally, I share Mr. Taylor interest in “custodial democracy,” and I would add some personal observations. Some of this accommodation to reality has already arrived, at least here in New York City, though nobody dares openly acknowledge it.

Specifically, blacks are increasingly performing low-level, largely “make work” jobs. Many museums, for example, hire small armies of black “guards” to do little but mill about and chat with each other during their eight-hour shifts. Many busy street intersections now have school-like crossing guards to confirm “walk” and “don’t walk” messages. Meanwhile, countless retail outlets employ blacks as “security,” though legal restrictions make it nearly impossible for them to act like police officers.

Other examples abound, but the bottom line is that taxpayers and private firms, no doubt without formally agreeing, have hired a workforce that does little else but stand around. This is a strategy comparable to what occurs in many universities and corporations. Would American higher education suffer if deprived of every black student and professor? Conceivably, this “wastefulness” may be a good deal for everyone — much cheaper than dealing with endless violence.

My final point is that while Mr. Taylor and I may occasionally disagree, we both agree that current race relations are troubling. Trillions have been squandered, and even more important, the seemingly irrepressible urge to achieve statistical equality has pushed American towards ever greater totalitarian measures. There must be a solution, but that first requires confronting awkward taboos that have long remained unspeakable.