Kind greetings! I was an avid reader of View from the Right and appreciated the many insightful posts and essays by the late Lawrence Auster regarding Western civilization, Christianity, and race. However, the racial issues bothered me so that I occasionally inquired him concerning his ability to reconcile Christianity with race realism (or human biodiversity, as I like to call it). To his credit, Mr. Auster posted some of my questions on VFR and thoughtfully responded to them. Please see the email below for an example of my inquiries.
My regret is that I never identified my race to him as I wanted to keep our exchanges as objective and impersonal as possible. In truth, I am a black man who has avidly studied race realism for at least ten years. The topic daily occupies my mind from the moment I awake until night falls.
Every day for over a decade. No exaggeration.
For instance, in your post entitled “What Destroyed Detroit?,” a reader mentioned that “—blacks are not self-conscious at all about the notion of white intellectual superiority. They acknowledge it readily and it doesn’t bother them at all.”
Would that it were so with me! I deem it mightily harrowing and nightmarish that a particular race can be inherently so far behind others in civilizational, organizational, and intellectual matters, especially a race of which I am a member. With the black race, regarding important matters that form functioning societies, the issue cannot be reduced to terms such as “less functioning” and “less capable.” Rather, blacks as a group are largely incapable of the markers of normal civilization and healthy societies, as exemplified by the likes of Haiti, Detroit, East St. Louis, south-side Chicago, and much of the African sub-continent (unless one deems wretched villages and slums teeming with bastardy, absentee fathers, polyandry, crime at peerlessly high levels, disease, and ignorance as functioning). In other words, the black race does not seem to fall within a clear behavioral continuum with the rest of humanity, but inhabit its own unique area that has little overlap with those of other races. For instance, does any other place on Earth, during peacetimes, fall to such ruination and seeming hopelessness as black-occupied lands? One might proffer the Muslim world as an example. Indeed, Islam has corrupted Middle Eastern peoples to staggering obscenities, but their problems are mostly religious. The problems of blacks chiefly lie with themselves. Ask Paul Kersey.
I struggle with the juxtaposition of a just, loving God who holds all men by the same moral standards and the stark reality of a group that, when left to its own devices, appears so dispossessed of (or heavily disinclined towards) normal social conduct. Is not my race generally doomed to failure, immorality, and ignorance? Notice that black areas, especially in America, are replete with steepled and storefront Christian churches, yet to a large degree, exhibit similar dysfunctions as voodoo-believing or animistic West Indians and Africans. Such realizations even make me question the very purpose of my race (and therefore myself). I am haunted by and almost obsessed with these dark, uncomfortable queries. They predominate my daily thoughts.
I write these things not to impute any wrongdoing on God or to question the veracity of Christianity. I am a believer of Jesus Christ, regardless of the general inabilities of my race. As Job declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” Believing in God is the easier part. Believing that He would have allowed such a benighted race to be created (or to evolve) and expect it to overcome its entrenched incapacities and live as morally and competently as others (and divinely judge them accordingly) is the more difficult part. I see, God forbid, no bright light at the end of their tunnel. Given this race’s intellectual and behavioral deficiencies, how can I?
Why do you think most Westerners, even Christians, deny or ignore race realism? The acceptance of this reality is simply too hard to swallow and leads to endlessly more perplexing questions.
In summary, I cannot find peace in this area by pretending to make race un-important like today’s liberals, multiculturalists, and globalists. Nor can I—a student of Thomas Sowell, Steve Sailer, and Lawrence Auster—explain away my race’s glaring deficits by deflecting them upon the long exorcised specters of white racism, slavery, and colonialism (like most blacks). My knowledge of history is too deep for me to fall for the sloppy, blatant lies of scholastic Afrocentrism (e.g., that Negroes built ancient Egypt and Carthage and derived geometric equations). I most definitely cannot and shall not become angry with or accusatory towards God.
Therefore, no outlet exists at present that will defuse my deep angst and enable me to cope with the pitiable lot of my race.
I trust, from your writings, that you are a God-fearing, charitable, and highly intelligent lady. Can you please offer me some advice regarding how I, as a black American, can better deal with the aforesaid issues and have peace? Were you black, how would you feel about the situation and what would your coping mechanisms be?