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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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I've noticed the alt-right (specifically the Richard Spencer wing) is blaming Christianity for cucking Whites and making them accept non-whites in their country. To me this isn't even close to being true and can be dismissed outright as nonsense.

We know from genetics that modern Europeans separated from sub saharan African 30 to 40 thousand years ago. We also know that Western Europeans didn't have any meaningful contact with Blacks until the 15th century when Portugal "discovered" West Africa during the Age of Exploration. By accepting this, we can see that Western Europe has had over 500 years of contact with Blacks.

I've specifically been looking into England, but the same is true for other nations. The highest count of non-whites I can find on Google Scholar recently is 2.6% in 1951. Interestingly, 2.2% of those 2.6% were first generation immigrants. This is by far the highest I've seen with other estimates putting it close to 99%.

So at this point, we have pretty clear data that when Europe was Christian (and America), there was almost 0 non-white immigration to Europe. We also know places like France put in racist laws like Code Noir that explicitly put Whites at the top of the social hierarchy.

When we look at when this changed, it was really the 1960's. But at this point, Christianity was starting to decline due to science and especially Darwin (and in my opinion became obviously not true). The increased immigration and anti-racist views correlates with Christianity's decline, so the idea that Christianity having everyone's soul being equal can be equally dismissed. In fact, I would argue the pro non-white immigration came from the secular left or if you want to argue it's the right neoliberalism. I see zero evidence of this that Richard Spencer and his allies argue to be true. In fact, the evidence shows the complete opposite.

we have pretty clear data that when Europe was Christian (and America), there was almost 0 non-white immigration to Europe.

I assume Mongols, Magyars, Turks, and so on don't count?

Anyway, the New Testament does speak against racial divisions.

Anyway, the New Testament does speak against racial divisions.

I am not so sure about this, except in very abstract and non-practical senses. Would you care to say more?

It pushes Christianity as a multi-ethnic and cross-ethnic community. This can be seen from the speaking in tongues in Acts 2, to the salvation of the gentiles, to some more specific quotes speaking against divisions for being Jew or Greek, barbarian or Scythian. (And, as it was pointed out, male or female, which should indicate that there's a limit to this: it's not like distinctions should be ignored, just that they shouldn't divide, I think) Do I think that means anything like modern leftism? Certainly not. But I do think that it means that our primary unit of identity should not be with our ethnic group, and that there should be cross-group community, at the very least in religious settings.

This would at least make me reluctant to adopt any explicitly or intentionally racist policies.

This would at least make me reluctant to adopt any explicitly or intentionally racist policies.

The trouble is that 'racist' is such an overloaded operator that it's perhaps worse than useless at this point.

Of course, hence the reference to "intentionally or explicitly racist."

Hence, things like Jim Crow or Apartheid, where laws are being passed for the explicit purpose of maintaining racial division and hierarchy isn't great.

I don't really care about disparate impact, unless that's the intent.

I'm often a bit confused by people's understanding of segregation.

Suppose you have two populations living in the same area. Population A is clean, efficient, industrious, honest, largely non-aggressive, respectful, intelligent, and so on. Population B is the opposite of all of those things. But, both populations are Christians.

Pop A notices that when they let people from Pop B roam around their neighborhoods, things get damaged, things go missing, people get attacked, garbage is left everywhere, people get creeped out by weird and threatening behavior, etc.

Over time instead of living near each other they start to live side-by-side. In places where Pop B shows up in any significant numbers, everything falls apart very quickly. Schools become dangerous and dysfunctional because Pop B kids hit puberty sooner, are much more violent, much less intelligent, and generally vastly more disruptive. So Pop A families have to pull their kids out of school. Ugly and inconvenient security measures are suddenly installed in stores where Pop B types tend to shop. Suddenly none of the bathrooms have mirrors in them any more (because they get broken) and graffiti is everywhere. Litter is everywhere. Stores start shutting down. Rates of violent crime skyrocket. Home invasions, once nearly unheard of, become all too commonplace. Little boys are beaten to death for fun. Little girls are raped, sometimes to death. Elderly women tortured to death for sport inside their own homes in once-safe neighborhoods. Social safety nets become overburdened and then collapse because it turns out that, on average, Pop B people extract vastly more resources from the system than they ever put in, such that it takes several Pop A people's excess wealth to support them. Pop B people destroy the housing Pop A gave them out of generosity. They begin to strip and dismantle the local infrastructure to sell off for money for status symbols and cheap thrills. Pretty soon the only choice Pop A people have for the sake of their very lives and the futures of their children and community is to pack up and leave and try to settle somewhere new without as many Pop B people around. This is maybe okay for the wealthy, since they can afford to. The poor are now stuck in a dystopian hellscape which was once a beautiful, thriving, cohesive community, and rapidly find themselves outnumbered. I could go on in this vein for quite some time; there is much we have not touched upon.

Or.

Or Pop A can look at Pop B, say "We love you and we're happy to worship together, but our kinds are not configured to live together. We'll still help when we can -- but at a distance." (In this scenario, both are Christian, remember, and even act like it inasmuch as any of us can.)

The key thing here is that segregation was not set up to maintain racial hierarchy; it was set up in recognition of existing and immutable racial hierarchy.

Pop A could step in and manage Pop B's reproduction, of course, so as to bring them up to approximate parity within a few generations. But this would mean preventing the overwhelming majority of them from reproducing, which is going to entail all kinds of hideous particulars which I hardly think will be more popular than the clean, simple, humane solution of just living apart.

Look at what integration did to integrated communities and cities. Look at the good things that were lost. Look at the lives and livelihoods destroyed. Look at the collapse of politics into a racial spoils system. Look at what happened.

So, three options:

  1. Segregation -- tried and true, works pretty well, allows Pop A to thrive and Pop B to benefit from their largesse to a degree unimaginable in Pop B's homeland without Pop A intervention. Pop B is healthier, better-educated, better-fed, and safer than they ever could have managed on their own.

  2. Get rid of Pop B by deportation or forced selective breeding. Sucks for almost all of Pop B but at least some of them will go on to join society as equals.

  3. Watch as the entire system goes to pieces, there are fewer and fewer places for Pop A to run, integration ruins everything insidiously through innumerable subtle channels until Pop A's forgotten that things ever even used to be any better. Welcome to South Africa, and more and more Western countries all the time.

None of these options is good. But option 1 stands out to me as a clear winner. I can sympathize with people who prefer option 2 even if I'd rather do it more softly and gradually through market forces. I have zero respect for those who champion option 3 and treat anyone who disagrees with them as irredeemably evil or somehow non-Christian. As though anything else were unthinkable.