Conservatives’ Kinder, Gentler KKK

People from civilizations more advanced than Deepswamp, Georgia might be surprised, as I was, by the attitude of many local black folks toward the KKK, which might be summed up as: “They are what they are.”

As a Yankee import, I was shocked and horrified that racism was still alive and well in America. For awhile I looked askance at those who belonged to the KKK. Now I think of them as junkyard dogs, which also inhabit these climes. “They are what they are.”

While studying history and philosophy in search of the essence of human nature, I repeatedly encounter prejudice and I often encounter racism. I did not expect to find it in an article which was a philosophical critique of neo-conservatism by Paul Gottfried, who thinks the problem with today’s conservatives is that are too dang liberal!

The context for his article is that Gottfried has been thrown out of the National Humanities Institute by a priest who objects to members who “address the IQ question.” Gottfried is offended by this censorship and proudly affirms that he does, indeed “believe that individuals and ethnic groups have differing cognitive abilities.” Did you smell that? Did you smell the kinder, gentler KKK?

Gottfried, who proudly claims he is a Jew, believes individuals and ethnic groups have differing cognitive abilities. Would you care to place a wager on which ethnic group, in Gottfried’s opinion, has the greatest cognitive ability? Please note, you will NEVER find a racist who fails to put his own group on top of the pyramid he so laboriously constructs.

But wait, you say, individuals do differ in cognitive abilities! Is Gottfried not correct? Of course individuals differ in cognitive abilities, but do “ethnic groups?” What exactly is an ethnic group? Is an IQ test even a true indicator of intelligence? Or does it just test the tasks at which the test-maker excels?

Gottfried started the H.L. Mencken Club to shelter his fellow-rejects from the National Humanities Institute. There is little danger that my local KKK members will be invited to join the H.L. Menken Club (or, for that matter, that they have ever heard of H.L. Menken.) But they might be fans of the VDare website, for which Gottfried writes and they might quote Steve Sailer, VDare columnist, who is just fascinated with “human biodiversity” as he calls it.

Human biodiversity means that ethnic groups differ due to hard-wired genetics. Sailer dresses up his position with “scientific studies,” just like eugenicists did in the early 1900s. Look, Sailer says, all the Olympic running champions are African. Africans are marvelous runners! That sounds positive-that doesn’t sound like racism, does it?

But the flip side of Sailer’s position is that Africans, like all brown people, are stupid. Strong backs, weak minds, hmm…these are the “facts” our social policies should reflect. These facts should inform our immigration, education and employment policies.

Now do you smell it? Now do you smell the sulfur rising from the pit?

The kinder, gentler KKK says all races have their good points, and they should stay within their race and its genetic imperatives. If pressed they will let slip that their race is the superior one, the very definition of racism. Like all racists they have a horror of “race-mixing” lest the superior one become degraded.

Photo below is from an old newspaper clip of Zedrick, a boy I knew well when I worked in the ghetto. His life was very hard, but he was a straight-A student who finished college and is now a grown man with a fine family.