Why anti-racism is wrong

I really like what Jim Kalb has to say, even when I disagree with him. I have no quarrel with this piece he wrote.

Anti-racism
Jim Kalb (Check his site at Turnabout)

"Anti-racism is part of a whole order (or disorder) with which it stands or falls. It is native to a world created by the attempt to abolish universals and essences. The attempt undermines substanti-ve personal identity -- the things other than present will and sensation that make a man what he is -- and the ties and obligations that flow from it. To the extent it succeeds it destroys not only ethnicity but the family, which becomes a sentimental or contractual arrangement too unstable for serious reliance, and society as a whole, which becomes an abstract order of world markets and transnational bureaucracies incapable of inspiring loyalty. In such a world a tolerable way of life becomes all but impossible, and a principle of disorder is set loose that no combination of force, bribery and therapy can restrain. It will not last, and when it goes anti-racism will go as well."

He make sense and it seems plausible.

"To the extent anti-racism rests on rejection of the transcendent and therefore of stable classification it is part of a denial of the way things are, a denial that cannot attain even its own purposes and leads to personal and social catastrophe.[26] The modern frame of mind makes fruitful diversity impossible. Diversity that makes the world larger and more satisfying is diversity of things that truly differ from each other. It requires distinctiveness and stability, not constant change and blurring of lines. Those who reject the transcendent are not satisfied with the featureless everyday simply as such, and demand something else -- intoxication, violence, insanity -- anything to escape the here and now. Such substitutes lead only to stupor or despair."

This touches the thing that ticks me off so much about political correctness. It isn't rational and consistently fails to consider truths, both good and bad, about human nature.

"Ethnic culture cannot survive without preference for one's own people and their ways, or without settings in which a particular ethnic people sets the tone. French culture could not exist if there were no setting anywhere dominated by Frenchmen. The relation between culture and power, like that between culture and race, is not simple, but it cannot be abolished altogether. Culture exists by being authoritative; men share a common culture who can rely on common values and habits and hold one another to shared standards. When reduced to private taste it is not culture at all. It requires at least local, cultural, and therefore ethnic, dominance."

Here, I have to point out that there is, most certainly, a unique American culture that must be preserved; our culture, its symbols, values and idiosyncrasies are at the core of who we are and why we became a great nation. The rest of the world knows next to nothing about our true culture. They may think they do, but they know only a false "pop culture" that really does not exist. Pop culture has no soul, no permanance, no concreteness; it is ultimately ephemeral. It is too easily morphed by the next passing phase or fad created for profit.

That is what America shows to the rest of the world and, I think, much of the anti-Americanism in the world today is caused by the natural aversion all humans have for things that are fake. Pop culture may, in a sense, be of us, but it does not define us.

Real culture defines.

"Things that knit society together are therefore difficult to disentangle from implicit racial distinctions. Ethnic habits, loyalties and ideals order social life whether we like it or not. To forbid discrimination with respect to such things is to demand that things that are crucial to social life be ignored, a demand that cannot be satisfied. It is impossible to prevent the habits and loyalties of the majority from deeply affecting social life, putting some minorities at a disadvantage, without opposing to them other loyalties of equal strength backed by the power of the state -- in effect, without continuous revolution from above backed by troops drawn from subordinate parts of society, rather in the manner of the Cultural Revolution in China.

If we do not kill political correctness, we will eventually cede our freedom to the whims, hatred and anger of myriad minorities demanding that diversity be enforced.

"Anti-racism is thus at odds with basic principles of human life. In practice, eradication of racial differentials requires destroying all cultures and thus all possibility of a tolerable way of life. Anti-racism is therefore blatantly unrealistic. Its lack of realism explains a great deal: as in other cases, refusal to face obvious features of human life leads to hysterical irrationality and the tendency to see profound evil everywhere, especially in the faces of one's opponents."

Kalbs article is a long read, but it is well worth it.