The alt-Right: am I White? What does that mean? (2/3)

Last updated on: August 31, 2016 at 8:30 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

The alt-Right: am I White? What does that mean? (2/3) 2016-08-30T23:45:59-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Reading-jester-q75-760x753_opt If the alt-Right (the Ku Klux Klan with Twitter and irony) is to be believed, my race is dying out. I am, by American standards, perhaps the whitest person alive. My family came to the Jamestown area sometime in the seventeenth century . . . so genetics says and unlike the alt-Right genetics, does not lie.

Because we kept moving west, the family ended up almost in heaven in what was then western Virginia. We saw Yorktown and then when Virginia seceded from the Union, we seceded from Virginia. When we moved to Rochester, New York, I attended a school where you were supposed to draw the flags of the countries your family (both sides!) came from and I was stuck with the Union Jack.

I am White, Anglo-Saxon, and born Protestant. That did not make me establishment: West Virginians are not well regarded by the New England and Tidewater Establishment. If I talk as I did as a boy, I can always raise a laugh from those not blessed to be “hillbillies.” It isn’t really persecution, but when I moved to New York, I got the lead in a class play because (as the teacher said), “with my accent it will be much funnier.”

I also married a Dutch and English girl who gets sunburned when walking too near a street light. We had four children, well above the national average, so if there is “white genocide” as the alt-Right claims, I have done my part. Of course, the notion that we face “white genocide” is . . . stupid? I am unsure how to describe so foolish an idea.

Armenians faced genocide. The Turks decided to wipe out this Christian people . . .that they failed was not their fault. The Nazi regime in Germany tried to kill every Jew in the world. They failed due to the courage of all the free peoples of the world. We know genocide and “white people” do not face it.

Nobody is herding Norwegians into cattle cars. No government is killing Swedes.

We should not use powerful terms like “genocide” loosely. If the “white” population of the world is in decline (yawn), then it is not because anybody is killing us. We have chosen to have fewer children, because we can. The ability to make that choice is a sign of power and not of weakness. We have the wealth and social status to have fewer children. I don’t require a large family for social security, I have the USA for that, or many children to work the family farm.

The decline in our numbers is voluntary and a result of wealth and power. To compare this decline to genocide is to compare a hipster billionaire using a typewriter to a person in poverty using a typewriter scrounged from the dump.

I am clear that being considered “white” has long given my family a certain status in America. The United States has long been (and is) racist in practice. Try a Google on “Anglo-Saxon” and “America.” You will find horrific quotations from leftists (Jack London!) and right wingers (Howard Taft). We favor “light skin” over “dark skin” and in a family that has to view freckles as a tan, this has helped us.

I have no idea who my children will marry. Given that we are in Houston, one of the most diverse cities in the United States, I have to assume they will enrich the gene pool. Why is this bad?

The alt-Right will give us dubious discussions of “genetic” differences between the races. Assume (for the moment) that they are true. What of it? They would not apply to an individual! Generalizations about millions of people (generalizations that are false) applied to particular people are useless. The overlap between groups is too great. . .

If racism were true, then it would be worse than useless applied to particular people created in God’s image.

We would be tempted to judge this person by the generalization that “group a is generally less intelligent than group b” when this person may be much more intelligent than the rest of his peers. Is racism true?

No. But when an idea doesn’t do what proponents think it would do if it were true, then it useless.

There is (obviously) no genocide against white folk (whoever we are) and (obviously) no problem with interracial marriage.

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