White rivalry in America

Steve Sailer:

Lots of prominent white people dishonestly smeared Bennett with the charge of racism because they want to be seen as more virtuous than the author of The Book of Virtues.

For example, Slate.com's national correspondent William Saletan, who is not generally a fool or charlatan, wrote a demagogic screed implying that Bennett got the idea that the popular abortion-cuts-crime theory had a racial aspect (blacks have three times more abortions and commit seven times more murders than whites) from me rather than from its author, Steven D. Levitt.

Yet in his personal life, Saletan has notably failed to put his money where his mouth is and invest in the possibility that, as he claims, "the next generation of blacks might differ" in having a lower relative crime rate.

The Washington D.C. area where Saletan works has no shortage of predominantly black neighborhoods—such as Prince George's County, where the late Dr. Sam Francis lived happily, despite his white nationalism. Yet in 2000 Saletan chose to move to a D.C. suburb that is only 2.7% black!

In fact, Saletan's suburb has 18 times more residents who possess graduate or professional degrees than are black.

The American 200,000,000 whites are too numerous, too wealthy, too talented, and too self-absorbed to feel much solidarity with each other.

White Americans would rather strive against each other for prestige than against nonwhites because (although they will denounce anyone who suggests this), they generally don't see many nonwhites as credible rivals.

It would be like NBA stars Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant deciding to patch up their feud so they can fight off the threat to the NBA's domination of American basketball from the ladies of the WNBA.

Let me point out an analogy from international relations. Americans spend a lot of time hating the French. Objectively, the French are not our enemies. As the mordant scientist Gregory Cochran has pointed out, if the French were out to get us, they would have told us to occupy Iraq.

Lots of Americans hate Arabs, but only a limited number spend much time thinking up more reasons to hate Arabs, because, well, Arabs are mostly backward and boring, and thus not terribly interesting to hate.

No, Americans like to hate the French because, deep down, we see them as worthy rivals.

Is France Really Our Enemy?

White Plight: Sam Francis On Ethnopolitics

Slate: It's Sailer's Fault

Levitt finds time to deal with a truly pressing issue

Levitt complains he's not getting enough love from the NYT

Calm down: Bennett's comments on abortion have been taken way out of context