On the Connection Between Race and Behavior

By Broadside Contributor Michael Gryboski

As we continue into Black History Month, questions regarding race in modern America boil to the surface. Has the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. been realized? Can we create a racially blind society? Questions like these are oftentimes the bedrock of forums held in schools, churches, and other gatherings.

I would like to propose a question that though seldom mentioned is often implied in our words and even deeds: is there a connection between race and behavior? The answer should obviously be no and yet do we really believe that?

In contemporary conversation, we Americans speak about people having “Jewish sarcasm”, an “Irish temper”, or a “Black attitude.” Entities like American Renaissance, a self-described publication dedicated to charting the significance of race, as well as an advocate for white separatism (which they consider different from white supremacy), believes race and behavior are connected.

Says their website, “Attempts to gloss over the significance of race or even to deny its reality only make problems worse. Progress requires the study of all aspects of race, whether historical, cultural, or biological.”

One of the more outspoken figures of American Renaissance is Jared Taylor. A polyglot brought up by politically liberal missionaries in Japan, Taylor uses both American Renaissance and his organization, the New Century Foundation, to advance the interests of white Americans.

As he said in an interview with Derek Turner, “…if whites alone fail to act as a group, they jeopardize their long-term survival as a distinct people with a distinct culture and way of life.”

Taylor advocates this racial identity under the assumption that race and behavior are connected: “A realistic evaluation of race leads to the conclusion that race and culture are inseparable.

Some individuals can fully embrace a culture established by people of a different race but most cannot.” American Renaissance is by no means the only group out there who believes these things, yet they serve as an example. There are fundamental problems with their assessments on race and behavior.

Regarding the above quote, how does Taylor explain social developments like cultural diffusion, in which various populations incorporate cultural items once alien to their society? Of the many examples that could be used, India serves well. India’s current political system is a democracy, an import from the British.

If race and culture are inseparable, then how can Taylor account for an ethnically non-British population (Indians) successfully incorporating a British cultural import (democracy)?

Taylor’s own epiphanies are also tainted by fundamental attribution error. Taylor explained in his interview with Turner the watershed for the conclusions he arrived at regarding race and culture: “I spent a year travelling in West Africa, where I discovered that my liberal beliefs in racial and cultural equivalence were wrong.”

Given the violent history of modern West Africa, the implication is that black Africans were incapable of democracy and civil society during times of desperation.

This implication is blatantly spelled out in a long article about the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans written by Taylor: “The races are different. Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western Civilization—any kind of civilization—disappears.”

Both of these statements are factually problematic. Regarding the first quotation, there have been plenty of democracies in predominately white nations that have collapsed during times of tumult, lest we forget Weimar Germany or the four republics France had before its present system.

The second quotation is also fallacious because it ignores the many disasters in which an all but white community has resorted to barbaric activity, such as the disturbing stories from the Jamestown colony or European cities when hit by the Bubonic Plague during the 14th century.

Civilization disappears when anarchy ensues, which can come from any population regardless of pigmentation. American Renaissance is built on the assumption of race and behavior being the same. And though we justly criticized men like Taylor for their position, let us also not forget we also will periodically do the same.

There is a reason why terms like “Irish Temper”, “Jewish Sarcasm”, and “Black Attitude” are clichés. This even though there are plenty of people without Irish ancestry who have short tempers, plenty of non-Semitics who are bitingly sarcastic, and many non-blacks who have a personality that could be construed as a “black attitude.”

We as a community should make an effort to remove this from serious consideration and do so through showing that there is no connection between race and behavior, only social construction backed by iffy reasoning.