The Limits of Science

When I encourage people to visit the American Renaissance website, people often complaint that its obsession with “race realism” and “human biodiversity” is, well, dry. Perhaps this is because the company I keep tends to be more interested in the humanities than STEM, but people keep telling me that they go to AmRen just for the crime stories, and get their commentary from Taki’s Magazine, Counter-Currents, etc. They have a point.

It seems unlikely to me that anyone has become interested in preserving white interests, white culture, or the white race as a whole because they read up on the science of race. I have never met anyone who told me that is how he developed a racial consciousness. It also seems significant that many of race realism/HBD’s biggest supporters do not quite fit into the AmRen crowd. For example: Steve Sailer strongly advocates the color-blind concept of “citizenism,” and Charles Murray, like Arthur Jensen, has never shown any racial consciousness. Many people who pour over the IQ data reach strictly materialistic conclusions about race.

Occasionally in the comments of an article that is heavy on the science of race I find people arguing against the very investigation of it, claiming that “whiteness needs no justification.” Although I would not go that far, they have a point, too. Regardless of how any race performs on this or that test, I prefer the company of my own race: whites. I see no need to justify this with any kind of quantitative data about skull size.

Sometimes, it seems as though the focus on science is an attempt to impress or perhaps gain credibility with the other side. That won’t work. I have a very hard time envisioning a posthumous championing of J. Philippe Rushton any time soon. And if his work were to be suddenly accepted, it seems to me that Cultural Marxists would simply use it to promote yet more Affirmative Action and other anti-white programs. In fact, I have met some lefties who do just that. It seems that race realism/HBD will convince next to no one on the left to see the light, and for those who already consider themselves to be with us, r/K selection theory is superfluous.

Having said all of that, there are certain advantages to regularly addressing the science of race. For one, given how censored it is, AmRen must get some traffic because it is one of few websites that discusses it — and all traffic is good traffic. Second, despite the fact that scientists and professors who are willing to associate with AmRen are smeared and defamed, their presence lends the site a certain professional and academic sheen that is often lacking in other alternative/dissident right websites. Finally, I see the logic to having “solidarity with the damned.” The fact that so many careers are either destroyed or held back because of a person’s willingness to study race should bother anyone’s conscience. We oppose a culture that damns those who investigate genes, and that means we align ourselves with people like Jason Richwine.

However, as time goes on and whites steadily shrink and lose power, I think fewer and fewer AmRen readers will be interested in questions of IQ. Much more attention will be focused on matters like building white communities. Some proof of this can be found in the steadily increasing interest and writing on the prospect of a white ethno-state, or even in the fact that no one is trying to fill Sam Francis’s shoes in defending a “retake-the-nation” plan.

No knowledge of genetics could have saved Frank Borzellieri, and an ethno-state needs only so many experts in heredity. Aside from practical skills (see your local survivalist group for those), we need to be investigating how to organize ourselves effectively, to debate the bigger questions of morality and child rearing.