Posted on December 16, 2011

Who Speaks For Us?

Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, November 1990

In the fall of this year, we wrote a modest, one-sentence advertisement for American Renaissance, which we called a “literate, undeceived journal of race, immigration, and the decline of civility.” A well-known conservative publication called the ad “controversial,” and refused to accept it. In so doing, that publication once more confirmed how thoroughly silenced are the voices that will speak through American Renaissance.

Merely to put the words “race, immigration, and the decline of civility” in the same sentence is to step across the line that separates what may be said publicly from what may not. Despite the American tradition of free speech and the fervor with which we claim to defend it, nearly every American takes the greatest care not to cross that line. There are subjects on which debate has ended, the book has been closed, and this is to be so no matter how much the reality of our daily lives clashes with conclusions that have been declared as final.

Today it is foreigners who have not learned the limits of what may be said in America who are most likely to step across that strongly defended line. In 1986, then-Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan provoked a torrent of outrage when he said that because large numbers of blacks and Hispanics live in the United States, it cannot compete as effectively with other nations as it might otherwise.

In fact, blacks and Hispanics are, compared to whites, far more likely to be poor, illiterate, on welfare, or in jail; they are far more likely to have illegitimate children, be addicted to drugs, or have AIDS. By no definition of international competitiveness can the presence of these populations be anything but a disadvantage. How many Americans must have thought to themselves, “Mr. Nakasone is right” — and said nothing? Americans of European heritage, the cultural heirs of the people who founded and built this nation, were silent.

The United States is unquestionably less competitive because so many blacks and Hispanics are in jail or on welfare, but none dares say so. America is an increasingly dangerous and disagreeable place because of growing numbers of blacks and Hispanics (see following story), but none dares say this either. It is our actions that speak for us rather than our words. When we choose our neighborhoods or our schools, when we mentally demarcate entire sections of our cities as places to be avoided, we are saying something important about race, but we say it silently. White people have all but lost their public voice.

Today in America, there are hundreds of organizations that speak for blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians, but virtually no one speaks for us. While other racial and ethnic groups work tirelessly to advance their group interests — often at our expense — we alone are not to think of ourselves as a people with our own ideals and aspirations.

Some of us have become afraid to say openly what we know to be true. Others — sincere, thoughtful, concerned Americans — have been convinced that it is improper, even immoral, for white people to think of themselves as a group or to speak out as white people. We believe that in the pages of American Renaissance these people will find reasons to think that it is not only moral but necessary.

For though we are still three-fourths of the population, this society speaks and acts as if it were devoted to the interests of everyone but us. In the name of “equal opportunity,” America practices systematic, legal discrimination against whites. In the name of “diversity,” it sponsors massive non-white immigration. In the name of “multiculturalism,” its schools belittle the heritage that gave our nation its name, identity, laws, and moral foundation. In the name of “tolerance” it encourages groups who seek our dispossession.

Is dispossession too strong a word? Fifty years ago this nation was more than 90 percent white. In another fifty years, we are cheerfully told, it will be less than half white. Fifty years ago, the United States had an unmistakable national and cultural core. In another half century, if whites continue to cooperate in their own dispossession, this nation will have no core and no identity.

We at American Renaissance believe that for a nation to be a nation — and not just a crowd — it must consist of people that share the same culture, language, history and aspirations. It is in this sense that Norway, France and Japan are nations, and that the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia are not. If we continue to permit the erosion of the essential conditions of nationhood and, indeed, of any healthy sense of neighborhood or community, the frictions that torment us today will be as nothing compared to the chaos that will come. The squalor of Detroit, the violence of Washington (DC), and the savagery of New York City must not mark the way to the future.

If the American people loses coherence, our culture will weaken and our history will fade. We cannot expect Mexican immigrants, Vietnamese refugees, or militant blacks to care if Shakespeare disappears from our schools or if the Jefferson Memorial falls into decay. We cannot expect people who have nothing in common with each other but the legal abstraction of citizenship to work or sacrifice for the the common good. A nation can be nothing more than its people, and if its people changes, so must its character.

We at American Renaissance love our nation and cherish its heritage. We will not be silent accomplices to dispossession. Ours is the culture of Galileo, Newton, Beethoven, Jefferson, and Edison. We are heirs to the spirit of Valley Forge, and the Alamo. It is our duty and privilege to carry forward as best we can the greatness of this legacy.

American Renaissance will speak for our people. It will speak with the confidence that is born of a conviction of what is right. For we bear malice towards none, and have no wish to trample the rights of others. We wish happiness and cultural integrity for all peoples, just as we pursue them for ourselves.

More than two centuries ago, the men who built this nation pledged to their cause their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Today, the crisis may not seem so sharp, nor the path of honor so clear, but what is at stake is no less important: the future of a nation.