The Alt-Right and Race Ideology
Introduction
In my conversations with individuals who claim to agree with the ideas promoted by the alt-right, I usually get into a reoccurring argument. This reoccurring argument is the race-based IQ hierarchy. This hypothesis is promoted by the alt-right to promote a particular agenda which is to promote a collective identity which I'll label "whiteness". White and black "races" have not been proven to exist genetically and at best according to all evidence I've found are merely social constructs. What this means is that they are an ideology, and this ideology gains power as more people believe in it. In this brief essay I will confront the ideology of the alt-right not from a moral argument, but from a practical consequentialist perspective.
The function of alt-right ideology
From what I can see, the function of alt-right ideology is to promote "white racial identity". In other more simple terms, it's a means of promoting whiteness and the white way of life. Racial identities are collective identities and collective identities all have the same flaw in that in order to adopt this collective identity you must as an individual give up some of your individualism, some of your individual identity, to grow the collective identity. Race is unique in identity in that unlike almost all other identities, we do not get to choose it. Race is imposed on all of us through violence, and at this time people do not have the option to choose their race, which puts racial identity in the control of external others who look at you and tell you what you are, rather than giving you the ability of self definition.
In virtual space you have the power of self definition where you can define exactly who you are. Because of this power of self definition, it can be said that many people may feel they are their true self only in the virtual space. It is the one place in society where a person at least in theory can truly be who they really are by having complete morphological freedom and self defining capabilities. In addition to this, in many spaces within cyberspace there is true free speech. This true free speech is the result of pseudo-anonymity but again this ability to truly have free speech gives a sense of freedom, honesty, potential transparency, which does not exist anywhere else. It is true that in cyberspace we don't have to be politically correct to get our point across and this at least in my opinion has it's benefits.
Alt-right ideology is focused on promoting collectivism through collective racial identity. The white collective identity is the original racial identity from which all other racial identities spawned, as it was a situation where the concept of race itself was created by people who had a focus on promoting white collective identity. Not everybody on the alt-right is going to claim that white racial identity is the function of the alt-right and there may be those on the alt-right who really wish to promote European cultural identity and who believe European culture is superior to all others, or they may just believe multi-culturalism is a failure. The point here is that the function of the alt-right is to promote collective identity politics whether we want to call it racial or cultural.
The pseudo-science of race realism
I will make myself clear so it is known where I stand, I am not a race realist. I am a race anti-realist. This means I do not believe race itself is a scientific concept nor a biological concept. Race realists tend to believe race is biological, and to these individuals I challenge those who have this perspective to find peer reviewed literate to cite which proves that race is a biological fact. And if that can be proven then the functional differences I also ask for proof that these exists. In my discussions with race realists I often receive the "like breeds of dogs" analogy where the racist will say race is real, just as breeds of dogs are real.
To those who promote this argument, I say breeds of dogs are just different appearances of dogs, but that there are no inherent character differences or temperament differences between breeds. This means pitbulls are not more violent, as the data on dog attacks does not suggest that pitbulls are more likely to bite or attack humans than any other dogs. The reason pitbulls even exist is because human beings bred dogs together, and so the concept of "breeds" is really man made, as a way for humans to categorize different kinds of dogs by how they look. This doesn't stop human beings from banning pitbulls because they look scary, even though human beings created the scary look of the pitbull by selectively breeding for those properties:
Race has always been a concept based on pseudoscience to promote pseudo-science. For example, criminal anthropology is a pseudo-science which used the concept of race to promote the idea that certain skull shapes are more likely to be the skulls of criminals. To be specific, phrenology is based on the study of the skull to determine the propensity for criminality, basically judging the book (the brain) by it's cover (the skull). An example we can use of what I classify as pseudo-science is Satoshi Kanazawa's article which states that criminals look different from non-criminals and which cites some flawed statistics to prove that case.
So, contrary to popular belief, you can assess people's character and personality by simply looking at them. Nice people look nice, and nasty people look nasty, and it appears that humans have innate psychological mechanisms to tell them apart. Now, in a truly groundbreaking study, recently published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, Jeffrey M. Valla, Stephen J. Ceci, and Wendy M. Williams of Cornell University show that people can tell criminals and noncriminals apart simply by looking at their still photos. Criminals, it appears, look different from noncriminals.
This quote is based on a study which is being taken completely out of context. The study in question may be a legitimate result, but it does not necessarily mean that people should look at others and infer criminality. It simply means sometimes judging by appearances can produce an accurate result. This could very well be judging anything from fruit, to cars, to anything, but as we know if you can judge based on more information than just appearances then the accuracy will increase. So there is a difference between being able to get away with something and that method being good policy. The study also uses a small sample size of only 44 photos, and the study would have to be replicated multiple times, with a much larger sample.
Should you decide who to trust by the shape of someone's face?
Race realists believe that race is a biological fact. The typical argument by race realists is that certain races are inherently superior to others because certain races have a higher IQ. To make this point they cite the "bell curve". The first problem with this hypothesis is the idea that IQ is even measurable by a single test which can quantify intelligence as a single score. General intelligence is not so easily measured and the influence of nutrition, culture, and other aspects may also effect test scores even if we accept the idea that general intelligence can be measured. In the case where general intelligence can be measured and IQ is real, we still have people of all races with high IQ and with low IQ and the only thing in my opinion that an IQ test is measuring is the ability to think in a certain way and to do well on a certain kind of test.
Race and IQ if we take it seriously, and if we believe that for example Jews and Asians always have had high IQ scores rather than these scores becoming high more recently, we don't really have long records of IQ testing to go by. We had no such thing as an IQ test until relatively recently, and in many cases these tests are culturally biased. For my counter-argument I'm going to assume everything they say is true. I will assume race is real, I will assume some races have higher IQ, I will assume there is a genetic reason for this, and based on this assumption I propose the question if race and IQ are genetic then what set of genes control intelligence?
The obvious solution to IQ inequality between races is to isolate the genes responsible for high IQ. If apparently Jewish and Asian people have more of these genes or it's somehow more activated, then the answer would be to simply find the gene and switch it on in all fetuses. We could treat low IQ as a disease or mental illness, we can modify the genetics of the human species so that all humans have these genes, and there is no reason why we have to believe in a concept like race to do any of this. If one race of humans for instance were more immune to cancer than another race of humans and we could study that one race to find the gene which makes that one race more immune, then wouldn't we use what we learn from that to cure cancer? The idea that there should be a concept of "race" in a society where genetic engineering exists, where CRISPR, AI, synthetic biology, all exist? Why not simply use our advanced technologies, which the highest IQ humans can be paid to develop, to raise the IQ of the lowest IQ humans?
The problem with alt-right ideology and my conclusion
The problem with alt-right ideology is that it is regressive. Instead of seeking to use our technology to improve the base state of human existence, instead there is a promotion of a concept which in a context of genetic engineering, cyborgization, AI, actually hold back the ability of humans to adapt to technology. Human evolution is now in the hands of scientists and does not require waiting thousands of years for racial "survival of the fittest" to play out. At this point, the genetics of a human being born going into the future will be altered by vaccines, potentially by CRISPR, potentially by other means we haven't even discovered yet. It is a fact today in 2016 that darker skinned people have a slight advantage over lighter skinned people when it comes to protection from skin cancer but this does not mean in the future a vaccine cannot be invented to turn pale skin dark or to switch genes around to make everyone have this same protection. It might soon be possible to create a vaccine to cure the common cold, but the humans who do not get this vaccine will be at a disadvantage. In the future it may also be possible that some humans will change their genes to live an extra 50 or 60 years with slower rates of aging, but will these new "genetically modified" humans be considered a different "race" from the original unmodified humans?
Individual identity and morphological freedom are the solutions. Individuals may choose to change their genetics in any way they wish as long as it's not damaging anyone else. This means instead of just the races we have today, in the future we might have many more races, or we might have individualized gene enhancements, treatments, modifications, etc. Racial identity is a collective identity which we cannot choose while genetic destiny is something which we can choose. In the end, if intelligence is genetic then we will find the genes and raise the IQ of everyone, and if some people aren't as mentally sharp as others there will be AI which will do a lot of the thinking, so even in the case where people cannot afford genetic enhancement or do not want to modify themselves in that way, the technology itself will allow more people to make better decisions. In my opinion what is most important is the ability of humanity to adapt to it's technology, and in my opinion the alt-right ideology does not promote this adaptation because it's not an ideology which I see has staying power in a future where there could be thousands of races, or greater individualism, and worst of all it doesn't seek to promote individual liberty but instead asks for sacrifice of that to promote a traditional identity which may not give any legitimate advantage.
Because my argument is practical, pragmatic, and consequentialist, I would ask anyone who favors the alt-right to make a case for how racial identity will promote the long term survival of the individual and the species? If technology can allow for individualized identity, personalized medicine, morphological freedom, and a transcendent species which can move beyond human as we currently understand it, why keep an anachronistic concept which may in fact reduce the adaptability of the individual and or the species? My argument is in favor of the individual comes first, and any collective identity comes second if they shall choose it. This conclusion I have reached is based on my own preference for individual liberty, what would make me happy, and my own idea that keeping options open and being very adaptable is the key to survivability. I do not see how restricting my identity or the identity of others toward a racial identity is liberating or empowering to the individual. Nor do I see a track record of good consequences in humanity or in nature when compared to for example the track record of science or more importantly the method of iterative improvement, which I might add is the same method of producing good software, where the evolvability is what matters and not adherence to traditionalism.
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropological_criminology
2.https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201103/criminals-look-different-noncriminals - Valla, J. M., Ceci, S. J., & Williams, W. M. (2011). The accuracy of inferences about criminality based on facial appearance. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 5(1), 66.
- http://www.theamateurthinker.com/2011/05/judging-by-appearances-sometimes-it-works/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence