In Search of Identity

Jared Taylor and the Prospects for Racial Nationalism

Jared Taylor at the NPI Conference, 2011

The publication earlier this year of Jared Taylor’s White Identity was quite a milestone. In essence, it was the sequel to his Paved With Good Intentions, which was, as National Review remarked upon its publication in 1992, “the most important book to be published on the subject [of race relations] in many years.”

White Identity has already been ably reviewed in AltRight by Derek Turner, and there is no need to rehash the book's arguments. What I will do instead is reflect on what has happened the to pro-White movement in the almost two decades that separate the publication of these works—and how this history portends for the growth of a White racial identity in the United States.

The main difference between Taylor's two books is that while Paved focused almost exclusively on Black-White relations, Identity has separate chapters for Hispanic and Asian racial consciousness, in addition to ones on Blacks and Whites. Multiracial America is here, and while Asians and Hispanics will not be forming a rainbow coalition with Blacks, they are also not going to integrate like the Italians, Irish,and Jews of last century either. Indeed, with the reality of affirmative action, changing demographics and the racial spoils system, it is of no benefit for non-Whites to integrate into the existing White society. (One important point in Identity is that Asians, once the “model minority,” are increasingly shunning assimilation for an identity of their own.)

Reading Identity, it is hard to avoid the feeling that things look bleak for White Americans. Taylor sums up the situation as follows:

The demographic forces we have set in motion have created conditions that are inherently unstable and potentially violent. All other groups are growing in number and have a vivid racial identity. Only whites have no racial identity, are constantly on the defensive, and constantly in retreat. They have a choice: regain a sense of identity and the resolve to maintain their numbers, their traditions and their way of life – or face oblivion.

The fate of the two books tells a negative tale of the last two decades. Paved was published by a respected, mainstream publisher (Carroll & Graf) and sold roughly 45,000 copies. It was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Washington Times and many other mainstream publications. White Identity was self published after getting numerous rejections from mainstream publishers. As Taylor notes, “this book is unfit for commercial publication in the United States.” It was reviewed in no mainstream publications.

The 1990s actually saw a litany of groundbreaking books published on race, including The Bell Curve, Alien Nation, Not Out of Africa, Hating Whitey, and several others. Even Dinesh d'Souza's liberal universalist tome, The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society, included many key ideas borrowed from Jared Taylor (whom, ironically, D'Souza would later denounce as a racist.) It's hard to imagine most of these titles finding mainline publishing houses today.

The 1990s also witnessed examples of Whites fighting back politically, with ballot initiatives such as Propositions 187, 209, and 227 in California, which ended public benefits for illegal immigrants, racial preferences, and bilingual education, respectively. These initiatives helped inspire similar efforts in other states, and Ward Connerley lead a nationwide battle against affirmative action for much of the decade and beyond.

Whites even had a national politician—Pat Buchanan—articulating White interests on issues like immigration policy, crime, and affirmative action. He was rewarded with strong primary showings in both 1992 and 1996. While Buchanan lost, his insurgency in 1996 forced Bob Dole to pretend he was against affirmative action.

Two decades on, similar initiatives in California would be non-starters, as Whites have quietly slipped into minority status in the floundering Golden State. Gov. Jerry Brown has called 209 “unconstitutional,” and admissions officers have had little troubling giving Blacks advantages over a shrinking number of White students without using explicit quotas. It seems only a matter of time before 209 is overturned just like 187. Racial conflict in California will increasingly mean Blacks against Hispanics or Asians, with Whites on the sidelines.

Politically, no one has replaced Buchanan since he retired from politics in 2000. Affirmative action—once a winning issue for Reagan and Bush I—now is not even mentioned in GOP debates. The last two Republican presidential nominees were firm supporters of amnesty for illegals, and John McCain forbid his campaign from even mentioning Barack Obama’s 20-year relationship with White-hating lunatic Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Another bad omen is that Taylor’s biannual American Renaissance conference—a popular event that drew 350 attendees and used to be covered by C-SPAN—was shut down in both 2010 and 2011, due to threats of violence and political pressure respectively. Few protests were raised against such thuggishness. (AmRen will host a 2012 conference, this time in a public venue.)

AmRen 2002 Sam Francis, Sam Dickson, James Russell, and Jared Taylor at the 2002 American Renaissance conference

Underscoring all this is changing demographics. In 1990, Whites were still over 75 percent of the population. In 2010, they were down to 63.7 precent. White babies are already a minority of births, and by 2023, they are projected to be a minority of the under-18 population. They will be a minority of the workforce soon after that and an overall minority by 2042 (though this date keeps getting moved up by demographers). Given an increasingly Black and Hispanic America, Taylor predicts the nation we leave to our children and grandchildren will be less productive, more violent and crime prone, more corrupt, less intelligent and poorer.

In all of this gloom there are some bright spots, however. The Tea Party is well over 90 percent White. While their focus is on stopping big government and reducing spending, they could potentially wake up to the fact that smaller government and less taxes is anathema to almost all Blacks and many other non-Whites. Should President Obama squeak by to reelection in 2012 despite the GOP getting more than 60 percent of the white vote, it will undoubtedly wake many Tea Partiers up to the racial reality of American politics.

Another positive sign is that the current generation of younger rightist intellectuals are far more racially conscious. Many of the leading pro-White blogs and websites are run by 20 and early 30-somethings: Stuff Black People Don’t Like, Occidental Dissent, Unamusement Park, Mangan’s and Alternative Right are among this growing group that turns out high quality daily content, despite the difficulties of securing funding.

They join with established outlets such as American Renaissance, VDARE, and others to form a solid “Alt-Right blogosphere” that is starting to strongly overlap with Human Biodiversity (HBD) blogs and websites that are not afraid to discuss taboo issues of genetics and demographics. Even the infamous “Pick Up Artist” blog Chateau Heartiste (formerly and more commonly known as "Roissy in DC") calls the 1965 immigration law “the beginning of the end of the historic United States,” and links to Steve Sailer.

This Alt-Right blogosphere has helped move non-PC discussion of race in a different, perhaps more open direction than the 1990s. Sam Francis (Washington Times), Peter Brimelow (National Review) and Jared Taylor (through numerous talk radio appearances) were able to address racial issues in mainstream outlets in the '90s, but all eventually lost these platforms. It is also worth noting that with the death of Francis in 2005, the self-styled “Old Right” or "paleoconservatives" (to the extent paleoconservatism still exists) halted any improper talk of race.

The younger generation of bloggers knows that honest consideration of race has been censored in polite society, so they are under no pressure to soften their messages for the mainstream.

Perhaps the most surprisingly positive development has been the sheer amount of pro-White sentiments in the comments section of online mainstream news stories. The summer of 2011 was marked by literally hundreds of Black flash mob attacks on Whites. While the media and police did their usual to deny a racial motive, a majority—often a strong majority—of online commenters were not fooled and left words that could have come from American Renaissance readers. Some of these sentiments come from people’s Facebook accounts—meaning their friends and co-workers can see these comments.

Whites are becoming less afraid to talk back and are clearly fed up with their second-class status in the U.S. They sense something has slipped away and worry for their children and grandchildren.

“Only for so long will whites watch blacks use race as a weapon before they forge racial weapons of their own,” predicted Taylor in Paved With Good Intentions. Despite some fits and starts, White have yet to form any racial weaponry.

That could well change over the next 20 years, as the U.S. heads for some interesting times.