The Alt-left's most controversial issue: To Race Realist or not to Race Realist?

The alt-left is becoming less race realist, and veteran alt-left blogger Rabbit is not happy about it:

"The AltLeft seems to be attracting a new faction of people who want to be “neutral” on the issue of race. A lot of them are “left libertarian” gamergate types who are critical of third wave feminism but reject the AltRight because of racism. People like Sargon of Akkad and Shoe0nhead come to mind. They think any identity politics is bad and that people who defend white identity are just “the mirror image of SJWs ” In fact, this is becoming the dominant faction. They’re basically people who just think this social justice warrior craze has gone too far, and they want to turn the clock back to like 1995 when it was just slightly less prevalent. As I’ve stated a million times before, this will never work."

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, race realism refers to what was once called scientific racism: the belief that there are demonstrable genetic and biological differences between humans based on race, and that these differences are significant enough to influence individual and social outcomes.  This kind of thinking fell out of favor after WWII - the Nazis were major proponents of scientific racism, as we should all know.  Race realist theories were seen as mere pseudoscience and rationalizations for the ugliest episodes from the darker epochs in human history; from the European conquest of the Americas and the slave trade to fascism and the holocaust.

Despite this, "race realism" is far from dead, though it continues to be hounded by allegations of being mere pseudoscience and driven by ignorance and bigotry.  The 1994 publication of The Bell Curve by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray argued that measurable differences in intelligence existed between the races, that these differences were largely, though not completely determined by heredity and that these differences had significant impact on economic and social outcomes.  The controversy was, for lack of a better term, a full-on shit storm.  Since then, the idea has been gaining adherents on the alt-right, of which the early alt-left was a part.

Rabbit's warning of what could happen should we fail to accept certain racial realities is dire:

When a city or a country becomes 70-80% non-white, it will most certainly not retain any “race neutrality” toward white people. Imagine being the white guy in an 80% black country who says “Guys, we’re all just one race, the human race. Here’s what I think we all should do about problem XYZ which would help everyone rather than focus on awarding reparations.”  They will basically just laugh and be like “Whitey, sit your ass down and shut up. We’re in charge now.” Only it won’t actually be you of course. It will be your children and their future that you sold out for nothing but a bit of virtue signaling. Do you want your kids to live in a city that looks like Baltimore or Detroit or the shitty parts of Oakland? Do you want them to go to a high school where they get taunted by mobs of low IQ mestizos, because the school is 95% Mexican? Have you ever felt while walking through a ghetto neighborhood late at night that you had nothing to worry about because this was a “race neutral” environment? In South Africa, whites are running for their lives. Perhaps that wouldn’t happen here, but at the very least don’t expect going to the movies to be a quiet and pleasant experience.

I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers by saying this, but I think that the question of whether or not biological and genetic differences between the races exist is of lesser concern than social and cultural compatibility.

And where that is concerned, it turns out Rabbit just might have a point.

Robert D. Putnam (of Bowling Alone legendry) in a 2007 paper entitled E Pluribis Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty‐First Century, immigration and ethnic diversity does, at least in the short term, "reduces social solidarity and social capital.  New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, residents of all races tend to 'hunker down', trust (even within one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer."

The fear I have of the concept of race realism is the potential for abuse: "Science shows we have higher IQs on average, so the good jobs are ours!"  Are color bars; rationalized rent-seeking for whites - something we'd really like to go back to?  Higher IQs or no, America's historical treatment of its black population is not something to be proud of.

But over fifty years have passed since the passage of the 1964 civil rights act and Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream speech.  We are 7 years into our first black POTUS.  And racial peace and reconciliation are, if anything, further away now than they were in the days of the Rodney King riots or even the Watts riots.  Liberals blame right wing racism.  Conservatives blame the welfare state.  One look at so called "social justice" blogs on tumblr and elsewhere make it quite clear that "judging a man by the content of his character rather than by the color of his skin" is resonating less and less with minority communities preoccupied with knapsacks of privilege and cultural appropriation.  Another quick glance at 4chan's politically incorrect forums and reddit forums point to growing numbers of whites who are losing their fear of being smeared "racist" and are unapologetic in their advocacy for racial in-group preference.

And then there's Europe, where years of mass immigration and failure to effectively assimilate migrant populations, culumnating with the dreadful mishandling of the refugee crisis and sloppy attempts at covering up a resulting rape crisis have brought previously marginal far right parties into the political mainstream.  Few places seem to not be dealing with a racial crisis or issue of some kind or another, although some fare better than others.  My home town of Calgary - indeed most of Canada as a whole seems to be relatively (and I must emphasize that term) free of racial tensions.  Which isn't to say that it's not there.  But in most people's day to day lives, multiculturalism and diversity are not working out too badly.  Individual mileage may vary, of course.

This level of cordiality is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule, sadly.  Truth is, I rather liked Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream.  I still think it's a worthy vision.  But something just isn't working here.  Is it time to throw in the towel?

I can not and will not advocate racial supremacy nor for the forced segregation of the races in any way.  I cannot associate myself with any ideological rationalization for racial oppression and genocide.  And it is for precisely that reason that I have to wonder if forced diversity and multiculturalism really needs to be a hill that western political elites are hell bent on digging in their heels and dying on.  If a polity can make multiculturalism work, more power to them.  But this religious fanatic level of devotion to diversity that the hegemony of western liberalism has been doubling down on increasingly just seems silly and misguided to me.  You can't force people to like each other when they don't want to.  Keep trying, and something really, really ugly is going to happen somewhere sooner or later.

If people, even people of European descent or, dare I say, white skin, want to live in more culturally or even racially homogenous communities, who am I to tell them they can't?  Now, dramatically curtailing immigration will most certainly cause as many problems as it will solve, if indeed it will solve any, but that's a matter for another time.

It would well behoove the political and cultural elites of the western world to get off their high horses and listen to their populations when they say they're fed up with mass immigration and multiculturalism.  Keep trying to force a round peg into a square hole, and you'll just end up breaking the hole, the peg or the hammer.