In a review of three books on the construction of races and nations, Jay Knott accepts that there is a biological basis for racial identity and ethnocentrism, but nevertheless views them as immoral: dissidentvoice.org/2013/1...gination-race-and-nation/
I would like to challenge this view, and state that the opposite is, in fact, true: racial identity and ethnocentrism are moral, and condemning them is immoral.
We must first of all distinguish between racial identity / ethnocentrism and bigotry or supremacism. The state, media, academic, and institutional focus on racism has caused the public to think of ethnocentrism in such terms, but, while the latter may be expressions of racial identity / ethnocentrism, they are, in fact, merely a negative ones and not the only ones. There are also positive ways of affirming racial identity or engaging in ethnocentric behaviour. In France, a policy of exception culturelle, for example, which is designed to give home-grown talent and cultural products special dispensation and state support (particularly in the face of Americanisation) is a positive and—even in our times—a legitimate form of ethnocentrism. South Korea also applies such a policy. In turn, a person can recognise his membership to a racial category without necessarily this involving hatred or contempt for members of other categories; it can even coexist with xenophilia. Politically committed White liberals and Leftists today are the best example: they recognise their Whiteness and yet they campaign on behalf of coloured peoples they view as disadvantaged. This, obviously, is not normal, because Whiteness in these cases is given a negative evaluation. However, this suggests that a spectrum of attitudes is possible, and that racial identity is not inextricably linked to hatred of the Other. More importantly, since White xenophilia of the type described is today considered a highly moral, the above shows that the position that racial identity is necessarily immoral is myopic.
With that clarification made, we can move on to the argument.
Even animals have culture, but the ability consciously to develop distinct cultures and to distinguish ourselves culturally is uniquely human. It therefore follows that the conscious effort to stifle attitudes and behaviours conducive to the preservation and continuity of cultural uniqueness is an anti-humanist project. This can only be classed as immoral. From this perspective racial identity and ethnocentrism are perfectly moral, while opposition to them is immoral. This includes classing them as immoral—that in itself is immoral.
So is, under this logic, the attempt to redefine any given people’s traditional homelands as universal proposition nations. In the case of Western peoples, it may be argued that the proposition nation is a uniquely Western creation, and that, therefore, redefining Western nations as proposition nations is not a negation, but an assertion of Western cultural values. In a sense this is correct, because one of the distinguishing features of Western civilisation is moral universalism. Yet, this same universalism is also a negation of the West, since the propositions of proposition nations are abstractions intended to be universally applicable, valid everywhere for all time, and not exclusively Western. Inevitably, the choice of propositions reflects Western values, and serve as a matrix under which any newcomer must assimilate. And yet again, while the one-size-fits-all ethos of the proposition nation is Western in conception and sensibility, it is still a mechanism through which the West eventually ceases to be the West: the sheer number of exogenous newcomers eventually grows so great that they end up displacing the indigenous peoples, following which the propositions of proposition nations will likely be abolished or altered to reflect the values and priorities of the new dominant ethnic group. Thus, even if the wound is self-inflicted, it is still a wound; harm is still caused. And it is reasonable not to see the exogenous newcomers as interchangeable with any indigenous Westerner, since immigrants come to the West primarily for economic reasons, and only submit to the established authority as a means to obtain the legal status they need to be economically active with the minimum of interference. They do not necessarily accept Western values: on the contrary, often they reject them, create parallel infrastructure and institutions, and even campaign for concessions and exceptional treatment. What is more, polls have persistently shown that the majority of citizens in the West would like it there to be fewer immigrants, and for immigration to be stopped or reversed. The ones pushing for more immigration constitute a self-interested minority, which is motivated by ideology, a desire for political advantage, or economic interests. Worse still: the frequently engage in covert or deceptive methods. And when the wound is inflicted on the majority by an ideologically, politically, or economically motivated minority using covert or deceptive means, we can then speak of an immoral act.
Knott’s assertion only makes sense if we accept that equality is an absolute moral good. And even then, it only makes sense in relation to ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism privileges the ethnic ingroup over all other outgroups, and this means treating members of the latter unequally. For inegalitarianism to apply to racial identity we would need also to accept that racial identity leads necessarily to treating members of outgroups unequally, and this does not follow unless racial identity operates in conjunction with ethnocentrism. But there is, of course, a contradiction, which I will not even attempt to resolve: for, even under egalitarian principles, are not all peoples equally entitled to their own culture? And does not culture depend on some form of distinct identity and ethnocentrism? And would this mean that all peoples can enjoy equal rights through ethnocentrism? Quibbles aside, the question becomes whether equality is a good.
Equal treatment may be a sensible measure in some contexts: it makes sense, for example, to give equal treatment to raw recruits in basic military training because that helps to sort those who are suited for a military career from those who are not. Equality before the law may also be sensible, and egalitarians tend to think of it as egalitarianism. However, this is not the case, for equality before the law grants responsibilities as well as privileges, and the responsibilities set a minimum floor of acceptable behaviour, below which the citizen is treated differently, and far below which the citizen is not even admissible into society.
Equality becomes problematic once it is treated as a moral demand. In this context I have argued that equality is not a good. Firstly, it leads to fundamentally unfair outcomes, whereby privileges are withheld from individuals who deserve them in order so that they may be granted to individuals who do not deserve them. The admissions policies of American universities provide an example: students have points added to their SAT scores by fiat on the basis of the colour of their skin, which means mediocre students may deprive good students of a place at a university of their choice, even though the latter deserve it more than the former. This does not eliminate privilege, but simply transfers it from a better group to a worse one. It has been argued that such policies exist because of the need to correct historical injustices, since it is thought that equality of opportunity is insufficient to overcome a legacy of poverty. However, the criterion is not socioeconomic status, but skin colour, which means a legacy of poverty is not being addressed in cases where a given skin colour is not made eligible by the ‘corrective’ policies. Also, since the policies are formulated on the assumption that all students have the same potential given the same opportunities, and that, therefore, equal conditions can produce equal outcomes (assuming students work equally hard), any empirical refutation of this assumption results in such policies remaining in place even after the privileged group has reached its maximum potential (in other words, indefinitely), making the policies unfair and harmful to everyone, since those who obtain a place without deserving it end up lagging behind and frustrated—holding back and frustrating other students—while those who do not obtain a place even though they deserved it are held back for no good reason. It would seem fairer simply to offer financial help to bright students who are poor and have strictly meritocratic admissions policies. Some groups will do better than others, without a doubt, but those who perform below the minimum threshold are not university material anyway and are better employed—not to mention more likely to find fulfilment—in vocational training.
Secondly, as a moral demand equality causes harm to the innocent by misallocating resources. The outcomes of admissions policies favouring some groups on the basis of skin colour has already provided an example. Another is one I pointed out last year: universities have been scaling down or altogether closing down medical research centres in order to pay for equality and diversity officers, one of which would be enough to pay for two cancer researchers. There is no way to quantify the effect of this at present, but it stands to reason that if vital medical research is delayed because of a perceived need for political correctness, the result will be an increase in suffering and deaths. A counter-argument would be that equality and diversity policies will enable universities to identify more talent, which would otherwise be wasted through hypothetical discrimination. Yet, a strictly meritocratic system would identify talent just as well, and if talent has nowhere to go because research departments have been closed or scaled down, what good does it to identify more talent? Talent without opportunity and means amounts to nothing. You need all three.
Thirdly, it bears pointing out that the most radically egalitarian movements—Jacobinism, Bolshevism, Maoism—have proven also the most murderous and destructive in history. And that suicide rates Communist and post-Communist countries, where equality was instituted by force, is higher than anywhere else. Such outcomes can hardly result from an absolute moral good.
Therefore, though egalitarianism as an ethics remains dominant, to the point that most people today cannot conceive justice without equality, and equality as other than justice, the fact is that equality can hardly be considered a good when its consequences are analysed. Equality is only a good when it is stripped of its moral dimension and is deployed context-specifically as a practical measure. When Thomas Hobbes first postulated equality as a necessary condition for the social contract, he did so because he thought no one would be willing to enter into such a contract unless it applied to everyone equally. In other words, he conceived it as a necessary practical measure, not as a moral imperative.
Perhaps more importantly, when the aim is equality, the result is a loss of meaning, because what gives life meaning, and direction, is the presence of hierarchies and the possibility of moving or down. Factions that in our society demand equality do so because they want to move up in status, but this is only so that the possibility exists to continue moving upwards if they so desire. When equality is the only possible reality, as was in Communist countries, the result is despair and contempt for life; hence, the higher suicide rates.
Knott’s assertion, then, does not make sense and cannot be accepted.
This is not to disacknowledge that racial identity and ethnocentrism, like most things, can have a dark side. This is simply to point out that the possibility of a dark side does not mean it is necessarily the only side nor that it excludes the existence of a positive side. The source of darkness is evidently non-intrinsic and must be found elsewhere. Racial identity and ethnocentrism have acquired a bad reputation at the hands of egalitarians, who, convinced of their superior moral stature, have sought to denigrate anything they regarded in violation of the central tenet of their ethical system. The fact is, however, that egalitarianism is not intrinsically moral and, indeed, is in many ways immoral because unfair, unjust, meaningless, and anti-human. We need a new moral theory: it is the twenty-first century, after all, not the eighteenth.