Kyle Rowland writes: Reactionary thinkers often note the importance of differences. That is to say, they note that different races, different genders, different classes, different individuals have different traits, and to some extent must be treated differently. If someone is violently inclined, they must be treated differently from someone who is peaceful. If a community is violently inclined, they must be treated differently from a community that is distinctly well-behaved. A crime-ridden neighborhood needs different policing strategies than a calm neighborhood.
Reactionaries note that this is not only necessary, but inevitable. No matter how loudly one protests against this principle, reality inexorably forces you to act in accordance with it. White Northerners decried how Blacks in the South were treated — and when those Blacks came north en-masse, similar behavior emerged from Northern Whites. When liberal whites are faced with similar incentives and dangers from crime, their hand is forced, and they deploy de-facto segregation and mass incarceration to make their neighborhoods safe.
The attitude towards these measures can change radically and quickly through politics, but the fact of this disparate treatment and impact is hard if not impossible to eradicate. Reactionaries note that the refusal to face reality has bizarre and perverse downstream effects — liberal elites self-flagellate with ever more vigor, spiraling into despair and fury in the face of an ‘unacceptable’ reality.
But just as liberals writhe in agony before a reality they have declared unacceptable, the alt-right declares the same reality unacceptable from a different angle. They say – we cannot bear this conflict that arises from differences between races, it is unbearable, it is unsustainable, it has to collapse, it is an abomination!
So it is that erudite scholars who are investigating and quantifying racial differences have the mic seized from them by hyperventilating alt-right morons who append: “YES, ALL OF THIS IS TRUE, AND THIS IS WHY AMERICA WILL COLLAPSE, THIS IS WHY EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART! 1488! THE JOOOOOOOOS!”
The reality is that the problems that arise from racial differences are evidently bounded and bearable. They have been borne for the entire history of the United States. With the burden of racial conflict weighing it down, the US became the most powerful nation in the world by every major metric.
That means there is a limit to how heavy a burden racial conflict must be. Moreover, it points to one of the biggest sources of confusion and noise in politics – histrionic morons with no sense of perspective, acting like their pet issue is what the world revolves around, drawing the attention from rational people with realistic perspectives and solutions.
America has always been multiracial, but racial tensions hurt the country primarily through a second-order effect. When political factions declare an unsolvable problem “UNACCEPTABLE” and devote inordinate amounts of resources and attention towards it, this leads to a crescendo of conflict. When the nation was at its most peaceful and united, all of the first-order problems inherent to multiracial countries were still present, ineradicable. There were still vast asymmetries in violence and life outcomes, as there had been long before the nation was a twinkle in anyone’s eye. They did not threaten the nation, as they amounted to pinpricks on a giant.
What has threatened the nation multiple times is conflict over what these differences in outcome signify, and how they may or may not be solved. This is where brother turns against brother, where recriminations and resentment festers. HBD provides a way to defuse this powder keg — the differences are inherent and, at least for now, ineradicable. They are also evidently bearable, as they have been borne while the most powerful nation on earth blossomed from a forsaken scattering of colonies. The solution is to learn that you can choose whether to accept reality or not – not whether reality will continue to present itself to you.
