10 Percent Is Not Enough

For over 150 years the white elites of the United States have been conducting an experiment. The subjects of the experiment: black people and working class white people. The question to be tested: could a group of people, taken from the jungles of Africa and forced into slavery on southern plantations, be fully integrated as citizens amongst the majority white populace?

The white citizens of America were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization, one girded by achievements in science, technology, medicine, art, architecture, music, philosophy, literature, governance, economics, and jurisprudence that were unparalleled in the world. In contrast, the slaves were sub-Saharan Africans, a tribal people with no written language and virtually no intellectual achievements. In a move that wasn’t fair to either group, the elites released newly freed black people into a white society that saw them as, at best, inferiors. America has struggled with racial discord ever since. 

Decade after decade the problems persisted but the experimenters never relented. They insisted that if they could just find the right formula the experiment would work. With a single-minded determination the elites concocted program after program to try and get the result they wanted. They created the Freedman’s Bureau, the Great Society, the War on Poverty, Affirmative Action, housing projects, and midnight basketball. They created new laws that intruded into people’s lives in ways that would have been otherwise unthinkable in America. They called in National Guard troops to enforce racial integration of schools. They made anti-discrimination sacrosanct while outlawing freedom of association. Despite protesting parents, they put white kids on buses and sent them to black schools and vice versa. They employed money, special programs, relaxed standards, and endless handwringing to close the “achievement gap” between blacks and whites in academics. To keep white backlash in check they began punishing public and even private statements on race with a ruthlessness that makes the Spanish Inquisition seem reasonable. They hung Orwellian public banners that commanded whites to “Celebrate Diversity!” and “Say No To Racism.” Nothing was off the table if the experiment could be salvaged. 

Some thought the Talented Tenth would lead the way for black people. A group of elite, highly educated blacks that would knock down doors of opportunity and show the world what black people were capable of.  We’ve learned that this Talented Tenth does exist. There are black Americans who have excelled at academics and become great entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors and scientists. But ten percent is not enough. For the experiment to work that ten percent has to be followed closely by a critical mass of people who can hold middle class jobs and behave in ways that provide social stability, and that is what is missing. Through the years a majority of black people continue to demonstrate an inability to function and prosper in a culture unsuited to them. 

Detroit is bankrupt and broken, the south side of Chicago is a war zone and cities all over America that have majority black populations are equally beset by dysfunction and violence and a general inability to maintain a functioning civil society. And they continue to respond to their failures with anger and resentment. Across the generations and across the country, rioting and looting are always just one racial incident away as evidenced in Detroit, Watts, Newark, LA, Cincinnati, Ferguson and Minneapolis. 

That doesn’t mean the experiment has failed, the white elites would scold. We just have to try harder.   We just need more money, more time, more understanding, more programs, more opportunities…  But things are not getting better. There hasn’t been any “healing.” Nothing changes no matter how much money is allocated, no matter how many laws are passed, no matter how many black geniuses are portrayed on TV, and no matter who is elected President. 

Some argue it’s a problem of “culture”, as if culture creates people’s behaviors instead of the other way around.  Others blame “white privilege.” But since 1965, when the elites opened America’s doors to the Third World, immigrants from Asia and India, people who are not white, not rich, and not “connected” have quietly attained substantial academic success in America. While the children of these people are winning spelling bees and acing the SAT, black “youths” are committing half the country’s violent crimes.  (Including crimes that have nothing to do with poverty, like viciously punching random white people on the street for the sheer thrill of it.) 

The experiment has failed. Not because of culture, or white privilege or racism. The fundamental problem is that white people and black people are different. Their genetic profiles are meaningfully distinct. As a direct result, they differ intellectually, and, more importantly, temperamentally. These differences are relentless and unforgiving and result in permanent social incompatibility.

The looming problem is that the elites don’t seem to comprehend just how tired the white subjects have grown with this experiment. They don’t appreciate that white people aren’t out to get black people, they are just exhausted with them. They are exhausted by the social pathologies, exhausted by the violence, exhausted by the aggressive hegemony in public places, exhausted by the complaints, the blind racial solidarity, the bottomless pit of grievances, the excuses, the reflexive animosity...  The elites assume all of this is “racism” and are blind to the fact that white frustration will soon reach the boiling point. And so they will be the only ones surprised that when real revolution comes to the United States, white people will be the ones doing the revolting.