Category Archives: Race & Reason

Golden Oldie … Nationalism & Christianity

The Ancient Christian Countries - Xenivoyage

By Enos Powell

Originally posted on Iron Ink.

“When evangelicals embrace an America-first nationalism, the gospel is co-opted and betrayed.”

“… Nationalism gives pride of place to ourselves, to regional or national assertions of primacy and the quest for power and success, control and dominance, legitimizing violence and pressing for victory. Nationalism reveals that we have mis-ordered worship. Religiously motivated nationalism simply turns God into our “godling,” a deity subject to our bidding.” read more

A Few Rejoinders to Doug Wilson’s Trending Vid ‘Racism and Slavery in the West’

By C. Merle Davidson

If you can stomach it, watch the apologetic here.

Problem #1 — Race is reduced solely to “skin color” as if differing melanin levels is the only thing that constitutes “race.”

Problem #2 — He says his hero in this subject matter is Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell is a Libertarian and as a Libertarian Sowell is thus going to edge towards humans as a blank slate and therefore deny real genetic differences.

Problem #3 — Wilson characterizes those who disagree with him as being beholden to Darwin and evolutionary theories of race. Though doubtless this may sometimes be true, it certainly isn’t always true. I don’t need to believe in Darwin and can still conclude that genetics matter and that some inferiorities and superiorities run through all races in differing fashions. read more

Everything You Are is ‘Racist’: Then they Came For The Farmer

By Ehud Would

Joel Salatin is a farmer and prominent Agrarian writer. The ostensible tip of the spear in the return-to-the-land movement, the man has mentored a new generation of budding Agrarians in how to make traditional Agrarian life sustainable in and out of a money-based economy.

Enter Chris Newman, the (solitary?) Black (okay, Mulatto) who identifies as an Agrarian. No sooner had this freedman entered the farmers’ market milieu than he condemned the movement’s leading light as — you guessed it — a “racist”, and began leaning on Salatin’s publishers and customers to blacklist the leader of their own movement.

*sigh*

We are told this pronouncement against Salatin comes in response to Salatin’s unprovoked ‘racist’ screed against Newman. At least, that’s how the latter describes it.

But look at Newman’s initial article to which Salatin was responding, Small Family Farms Aren’t the Answer . The propositions there leveled are that the Agrarian movement is fatally flawed because:

1- It isn’t as lucrative as corporate farming, and needs therefore to be communized.

2- It’s based on the sovereign family structure of White Christian colonists rather than the communistic-herd model of BIPOC hunter-gatherers.

3- It’s too straight, patriarchal, and White.

So we see ‘twas Newman, not Salatin, who fired the opening salvo on matters racial. Yes, this Commie breezes into Agrarian circles condemning all the morals and objectives thereof on the grounds that it’s all too, well, … traditionally Agrarian. The sheer audacity.

Independent Patriarchal Christian clans serving in their own communities — the lifeway handed down from our Christian European ancestors, and undergirt by Holy Writ — Newman denounces as inherent White Supremacy and ‘Racism’.

Not only are the Police racist, Law and Order, itself, is racist.

Having a racial preference is racist.

Having no racial preference is also racist.

Correct English Grammar is racist.

The English language, itself, is racist.

Classic Literature is racist; so is talking about the racism thereof.

Classical music is racist; big time; so is Rock;

Country too. read more

There’s Just No Reasoning with John Andrew Reasnor

By Davis Carlton

John Andrew Reasnor of The Kids Are All Blight fame has written an article on Lamb’s Reign suggesting that Christians ought to become thoroughly conformed to the image of this world and support the Black Lives Matter movement. I’m sure that Reasnor has a really good and well-articulated argument that is sure to convince skeptics. Actually no; he doesn’t. The sole reason that Reasnor gives for supporting Black Lives Matter is “It’s true.” In other words: Reasnor argues that Christians should support Black Lives Matter because black lives really do matter. If that doesn’t convince you I don’t know what possibly could. You must be an incorrigible bigot who simply hates black people. If you are one of those people and you have a few possible rejoinders in mind when you read Reasnor’s “argument,” don’t worry. Reasnor has already thought of your objections and provides very thorough explanations of why you’re wrong. The whole of Reasnor’s article is a response to potential counter-arguments to the BLM movement. read more

The Dread and Sacred N-Word

By Ehud Would

I’d like to bend your ear a moment on a matter which needs addressing something fierce, I think: in recent years it has become a signal taboo in American society to speak many old and entirely wholesome Anglo-Saxon words on account of some aggrieved minority or another having declared one word or another offensive. And that, irrespective of definition or intent behind the words in question. This is so now even in the churches.

A prime example of this is the dread and now sacrosanct word Nigger. read more

Joel McDurmon vs. Reality

By Davis Carlton

Joel McDurmon has recently decided to address crime statistics in the wake of the George Floyd race riots. Joel is disappointed that so many conservatives have used crime statistics as a means of discrediting the Black Lives Matter movement or to possibly assuage their obvious and undeniable guilt as privileged whites. On June 3 McDurmon posted an article attempting to address an infographic that is making the rounds on social media. McDurmon essentially gives away the farm at the very beginning of his response. He writes: “It’s all damaging propaganda. On the surface of it, in the simplistic, abstract way they are the presented, the stats are real. Overall, blacks do commit more crimes against whites than whites commit against blacks; and given that they are a smaller proportion of the population, the crime rate is even higher for blacks against whites.”

Okay, game over right? By acknowledging that the actual crime statistics are true McDurmon has to also acknowledge that they undermine the narrative of rampant black victimization and “systemic racism” and the like, doesn’t he? Turns out he doesn’t, because as Joel explains, sometimes even reality itself can be racist! Besides, these statistics, while admittedly true don’t take into account poverty. Let Joel educate you!

“To begin with, one single variable changes everything: poverty, or disadvantage. When you control for poverty rates, these numbers even out (indeed, less disadvantaged black neighborhoods have less crime that extremely disadvantaged white neighborhoods). Disadvantaged whites commit the same rates of crime as blacks. It just so happens that blacks are in general far more affected by poverty and disadvantage than whites in general. That is where the issue gets real. We are left asking the underlying question: why are blacks in poverty or extreme disadvantage disproportionately?”

Hold on a second; do you suppose Joel has any evidence for the assertion that “disadvantaged whites commit the same rates of crime as blacks” or that poverty is the primary determinant of criminality? Of course he doesn’t, and this is a textbook example of ipse dixit in which McDurmon expects his readers take his word for his baseless assertions. The correlation between poverty and criminality has actually been studied extensively, and they don’t look good for McDurmon’s position. Contrary to McDurmon’s unsubstantiated opinion crime rates have little to do with poverty. Appalachia provides an excellent case study because the region shows high poverty rates among the white “hillbillies” but crime rates are half the national average, exactly the opposite of what we would expect if McDurmon was telling the truth. Various metrics can be used to measure criminality like population density and economic status, but race is and remains the best predictor of crime rates.

McDurmon continues by offering statistics from John Reasnor, which he states will later be published in greater detail which suggests that blacks are treated unjustly by police and the criminal justice system. These statistics are flawed because they do not take into account the racial disparity in crime rates that McDurmon is supposed to be addressing; a glaring omission indeed. It should be obvious to anyone without bias or agenda that it’s necessary to consider crime rates against arrest rates before determining if blacks are unjustly discriminated against. Jared Taylor has recently provided helpful analysis on this question, and Heather MacDonald has thoroughly debunked the idea that the criminal justice system is biased against blacks or that higher rates of black imprisonment are the result of anti-black bigotry. If Reasnor and McDurmon want to contest these conclusions they are welcome to do so, but ignoring relevant data and making unsubstantiated assertions will not convince anyone who actually cares about the truth.

Joel attempts to dismiss purveyors of reality as simply motivated by racism and bigotry – a Leftist tactic if there ever was one. McDurmon writes: “But of course, the details that are not related in memes like this are the most important part. Likewise, the people who compiled such memes and the reasons some organizations perpetuate them is also a huge part of the story. In short, they are bona fide racists.”

Gasp! What more evidence do you need to see that those posting crime statistics are wrong! McDurmon makes a meager attempt to claim that higher black crime rates are the results of the history of oppression by posting a treatise courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center without the slightest hint of irony. If McDurmon can simply reject the validity of crime statistics because of their “racist” sources why can’t anyone else simply dismiss the SPLC for the communist bastards they are? The fact that a professed Christian, not to mention a theonomist would take a cultural Marxist scam like the SPLC seriously on any issue simply boggles the mind!

Nevertheless, because I’m apparently a masochist I perused the SPLC post that McDurmon recommended to see if any valid points were made. There simply isn’t much there of any actual substance. Like McDurmon, the SPLC makes numerous unsubstantiated assertions and takes black activists like W.E.B. DuBois and Ida Wells at their word while gratuitously labeling their ideological opponents “racists.” The assertions of white nationalists and/or race realists are casually dismissed in typical liberal, “wow, just wow” fashion. For example, we are told that race isn’t a valid biological concept, and we know this because these certain luminaries who you should definitely trust tell us so. Any actual evidence for the reality of race is simply swept away as the legacy of hatred and bigotry.¹

Joel McDurmon isn’t merely wrong about questions of statistical analysis. McDurmon’s fundamentally dishonest rhetoric has the goal of blame-shifting by ascribing the problems among blacks to white oppression and system injustice. Look at what he has to say about those who dare to draw politically incorrect conclusions from looking at the relevant statistics: “[M]any people are tempted to make the same assumptions they do when they first see the bare stats-meme. There must be something inherently or even genetically wrong with blacks. They are inferior. They are violent, hyper-criminal, and hyper-sexual by nature, somehow. ‘I mean, I am not a racist, but look at these stats!’ Likewise, blacks are assumed, and often stated, to be shiftless, thieving, addicted, lazy, grifters and pilferers, fatherless, etc. That is why they in poverty and disadvantage—it is entirely their fault. So it is said—sometimes openly.”

How could anyone draw such hideous conclusions unless they were “racists” who simply hate black people? I don’t suppose that it’s possible to quantify rates of theft, welfare dependency, or illegitimacy, is it Joel? Perhaps these aren’t mere assumptions at all, but also based in reality every bit as much as the crime statistics that McDurmon casually dismisses. In a follow up article McDurmon argues that those who draw “racist” conclusions from crime statistics are seeking to “demonize” blacks in a manner commensurate with Nazi propaganda! McDurmon provides stats that are supposed to be about blacks, but later reveals that they are actually stats about Jews from the propaganda film, The Eternal Jew! This is a pathetic reduction ad Hitlerum argument in which McDurmon seeks to undermine any politically incorrect usage of statistics by associating them with Hitler. I suppose that the Apostle Paul’s generalizations about the Cretans in Titus 1:10-13 would have crossed over into full-blown Nazism if he had only cited some specific statistics to confirm his point.

McDurmon concludes that it is never appropriate to use even accurate statistics in order to cast generalized judgments. “Even if the stats were accurate, it would not justify either the spirit of fear and derision, or the castigation of any given individual as if those stats pertained to them—despite their appearance or race. Yet the use of crime statistics, specifically, was a prime piece of evidence used to turn the hearts of an entire nation against a race. It’s a powerful force, and it has had undeniably powerful effects.”

Hopefully that clears everything up. The statistics being passed around aren’t so much inaccurate as they are irrelevant because those who compiled them are guilty of the sin of noticing. So are you for reposting them, you racist! In fact, you’re probably just like Dylann Roof who used race realism as a pretext to commit mass murder! McDurmon concludes: “If we don’t love the Samaritan, we don’t love our neighbor. It’s that simple. The moment we start down the other road, we start to imbibe this demonizing spirit of the Nazi. You need to assess whether you’ve started down that road or not, and if so, how far.”

McDurmon’s problem isn’t that he dismisses relevant statistics or doesn’t believe that it’s appropriate to make generalized judgments. This is certainly problematic, but the root of the problem is far more foundational. The issue of black criminality and violence certainly is a problem; no one is denying that, but McDurmon is more than just a bit reticent to assign blame to blacks for their own behavior. McDurmon’s approach is to tacitly blame white people and American society in general for the problems and misdeeds of blacks. Why else would he post statistics that indicate higher arrest rates for blacks if not to argue that this represents unjust oppression? For Marxists like McDurmon, the problems of any particular underclass must be ascribed to some ubiquitous albeit almost immeasurable “privilege” which is enforced through systemic injustices. This is fundamentally a rejection of Christian justice at its very core.

McDurmon expresses concern that blacks are unjustly demonized when people point out the disproportionate crime rates among blacks but this isn’t what’s happening at all. Those citing these statistics are doing so in order to debunk the Leftist/Marxist narrative that blacks are unjustly oppressed and have a legitimate complaint about being targeted by police. How these problems are to be solved is another question entirely. Some non-Christian white nationalists may indeed see the problem as entirely material or genetic.

Dylann Roof seems to have adopted this thinking himself, but Roof’s own crime doesn’t de-legitimize the proper usage of statistical probabilities when assessing reality. We can

analyze Roof’s complaints read more

King Raz of Chaz and All That Jazz

By Colby Malsbury

As America’s seemingly perpetual double whammy of Covid Communism and Floyd Fanaticism causes life to resemble deleted footage from The Purge: Election Year, one can hardly expect the old established polities we have come to know and loathe to escape unscathed.

Of course, as Christians, we yearn and pray for societal regeneration in His image, but we aren’t quite there yet, to put it mildly.

So, in a rather perverse parody of the tenets of Kinism, we first must witness the hyper-atomization of society into a zillion demonic component parts, every man, woman, or genderfluid for itself, purportedly fighting under the umbrella of ‘racial justice’. Don’t look for Mary Poppins to come sailing in ebulliently under that canopy. However, you can look to every white libtard desperately trying to protect his/her/its precious career sinecure to proclaim this chaos progressively ducky. read more

A Practical Case For Segregation

By Davis Carlton

David Platt contemplates his next sermon at next year’s T4G Conference.

America is burning! The COVID-19 “plandemic” has been replaced in the mainstream media headlines as race riots have been set off by the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer in what certainly appears to be an obvious case of police brutality…or then again maybe not. The official autopsy report concluded that Floyd didn’t die of asphyxiation or strangulation so the case against Chauvin isn’t air-tight. There are legitimate questions about how these riots were started and the role of the media and deep state in stoking the flames, but what is clear is that the riots are primarily an expression of deep-seated racial animosity of blacks towards whites for perceived historical and contemporary injustices. The media along with celebrities and politicians have managed to tacitly provoke a violent reaction that only manages to burn out intermittently until the flames of hatred are reignited again. My aim is to determine a workable solution for the mutual benefit for the whole of society.

Different proposals could be made. Marcus Pittman, member of Apologia Church offers the utterly brilliant suggestion that the rioting could be averted if we recruited legit rap “artist” Lecrae to come and put on a free concert and talk about Jesus. Pittman literally believes that riots resulting in the destruction of millions of dollars of property as well as physical violence done to innocent bystanders; riots that in some cases have resulted in death could have been avoided if we all just sat down and listened to Lecrae rap about Black Lives Matter, er…I mean…Jesus! The fact that he thinks that what he wrote is true is scary. The fact that he then decided to publish said thoughts in a public forum like Facebook is even scarier. There are other options which don’t rely upon pure pie-in-the-sky optimism. My proposal to white Christians is that the simplest solution to the constant upheaval is racial segregation and eventual geographic separation.

I understand that many Christians will react with disgust that a white man could even think such a thing in the current year, but bear with me. It’s obvious that we are at an impasse as far as race relations are concerned, and the rioting and looting across America bears this out. The narrative pushed by the mainstream media, mainstream Christianity, along with local, state, and federal government officials is that the protests are a manifestation of righteous indignation at the unjust murder of innocent blacks at the hands of racist white cops. The narrative is flawed in its central premise; that cops are “racists” who disproportionately harm innocent blacks, and Heather MacDonald and Jared Taylor have done an excellent job deconstructing it. The mythology of rampant black victimhood is pervasive in society and largely shapes how many blacks and whites understand race relations.

Many respond that the solution to the problems caused by racially-motivated mass violence is “dialogue” and “understanding.” Some Christians translate this into pious-sounding platitudes about the need to “spread the Gospel” and encourage repentance for “systemic injustice.” None of this has worked because their understanding of the Gospel and injustice isn’t rooted in actual Christian teaching. Ostensibly conservative denominations have been profusely apologizing for the legacy of “racism” and “oppression” within their denominations and within America in general for at least the last half century. It hasn’t worked.

Every time a black person is killed by a white person, rare as these cases are in comparison with the reverse, it is treated as an obvious case of “white supremacy” in action. To deny this is to simply confirm to the establishment that you harbor “white supremacist” views yourself. Black homicides of other blacks, which account for the overwhelming majority of black homicide deaths, are entirely ignored. Black lives don’t matter when they are taken by other blacks and apparently only matter when they are taken by whites. The fact that race relations have dramatically worsened since the collapse of the basic segregationist order that prevailed from the time of emancipation to the modern “Civil Rights Era” demonstrates that the segregationists were right all along.

Segregation has acquired nasty connotations in political and social discourse due to decades of propaganda and false witness about the nature of America under segregation. The truth is that America was a dramatically safer and friendlier society prior to integration, and this also pertains to relations between whites and blacks. Many blacks such as Elizabeth Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Malcolm X, who were sincere in their desire to see black communities thrive and flourish have defended the principle of segregation. Booker T. Washington famously commented about how whites and blacks could achieve peaceful unity by maintaining social distinctions; “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

Segregation helped blacks develop many social institutions independent of white financing. These included schools, churches, civic organizations, and sporting leagues. Since integration the percentage of blacks who owned businesses has declined from 40% to 7%. Integration hasn’t made things better for blacks either socially or economically. The emergence of the welfare state has only exacerbated these problems by encouraging black dependence on government aid as well as the victim narrative that views all black failure as the fault of white people and the “legacy of slavery.” Jason Riley, author of Please Stop Helping Us, notes the many ways in which the well-intentioned programs designed by white liberals have substantially worsened the problems plaguing blacks.

I understand that many Christians see this as a kind of defeat. Many white Christians have come to believe that if racial integration isn’t working that it must be our fault in some way. Our clergy constantly lecture their congregations on how Christ is supposed to transcend race with the end result being the possibility of a fully racially integrated society. Al Mohler lectures his listeners on the breakdown of social trust in society, while failing to note that racial integration is a major contributor to the kind of breakdown that brings about this kind of civil unrest.

Racial and ethnic similarity contributes to social trust read more

Rebutting Gary North’s Abolitionist Argument

By Davis Carlton

Reading Joel McDurmon’s Lamb’s Reign blog gives the impression that the most pressing issue in the world that Christians ought to address is antebellum slavery and white racism. Virtually any problem of real importance is utterly ignored in favor of Joel’s persistent complaining about slavery. To this end Joel has re-posted his father-in-law Gary North’s essay about The Jubilee Year and Abolitionism which was originally published in Biblical Economics Today in 1988. The subject of this essay is to argue for the abolition of slavery on the grounds that the permanent servitude that was allowed in Lev. 25:44-46 has been abolished along with the entire Jubilee law in which this passage is found. read more

Joel McDurmon’s Bizarre Take on Arabic Enslavement of Africans

By Davis Carlton

Joel McDurmon has taken umbrage at Larry Elder’s comments about the way that slavery is taught as a component of black history. Larry Elder complains that the role of Arabic Muslim slave trading is often ignored in the discussion of slavery during “Black History Month.” Elder is an articulate and intelligent black man who simply points out the oft-ignored reality of Arabic Muslim enslavement of black Africans to put slavery as it was practiced in America into some historical context. One would think that Elder’s comments would be pretty non-controversial. Even mainstream leftists could feign at least token appreciation for Elder’s point without surrendering their disapproval of white America over the question of slavery. But Joel McDurmon is no mainstream leftist. Joel’s anarcho-Marxist tendencies won’t allow him to pass up the opportunity to virtue signal against the “racism” of American slavery in comparison to the rest of the world.

McDurmon states that he’s “honestly…surprised the objection is so popular, for it is quite easy to lay to rest.” We’ll see about that. McDurmon argues that it is only natural that American slavery be given a point of emphasis in the teaching of history in American schools. McDurmon even goes so far as to deny a liberal bias in mainstream teaching on the Civil War since it is only now that slavery is being taught as a central cause of the war. McDurmon continues by stating his admiration for black libertarian Thomas Sowell, who is often quoted by conservatives for his very salient point about slavery:

“Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every race and color were enslaved – and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.” This quote is from Twisted History, featured in the Thomas Sowell Reader.

McDurmon responds, “Sowell was narrowly criticizing those who wish to defame men like Washington and Jefferson on the sole criterion that “they had lots of slaves,” without any qualification or context. Sowell’s point is good enough to dispense with that handily; but it not designed to do much more heavy lifting than that.” McDurmon then posts several quotes from Sowell about the particularly “racist” nature of American slavery. In response I would simply point out that while I believe that Sowell’s positions on a number of subjects is certainly commendable, he has a far from perfect worldview that influences how he sees various issues. Calling American slavery “racist” suffers from the same problems that the concept of “racism” carries in any other context. What exactly is “racism” and what makes it wrong?

The “racist” nature of American slavery is based upon the fact that only blacks were allowed to be held in perpetual servitude. The problem with simply condemning this as “racist” is that it is no different in principle from what is taught in Lev. 25:44-46: “Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. read more