Why Whites are an Easy Touch

... Tribal loyalties are part of human nature. History is the story of contending tribes that care more about their survival than about anything else. Humans are so tribal, we even build strong attachments to groups that have no meaning. The students at the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky are essentially indistinguishable from each other, and yet there is a ferocious athletic rivalry between the two schools. At game time, people who could easily have gone to either school become warring tribes.

In Britain, soccer fans are famous for physically attacking supporters of the other team/tribe...

But when it comes to race, whites are the perfect example of the poet Robert Frost's definition of a liberal: someone who can't take his own side in an argument...

Ten years ago, I read an eye-opening book called Pathological Altruism. It is full of insights, but one of the most memorable was about righteous indignation. Apparently, the feelings of moral superiority and ecstatic self-righteousness stimulate the same part of the brain as addictive drugs: the nucleus accumbens within the basal ganglia. It seems that people can become addicted to the feeling of moral superiority to the point that their brains are hijacked and rewired, just as with drugs. The craving for righteousness becomes so powerful that it short-circuits the reality-testing mechanism of the prefrontal cortex, making addicts impervious to facts. That sounds like today's quot;wokequot; fanatics, doesn't it?...

I wonder if white people aren't, by nature, more susceptible to this kind of addiction. Please recall Frost's definition of a liberal. Not to take one's own side in an argument can seem like an exquisite form of generosity - of noble fair-mindedness - so long as the personal costs aren't high...

And within their own societies, whites make every excuse for non-whites, accommodate them to the point of absurdity, and are prepared to give away their birthright to strangers who often despise them...

All these aspects of Western Civilization reflect a kind of generosity, a realization that life is not always quot;me first.quot; These practices are the result of centuries of conflict and trial and error. They are by no means universal even among us, but they began with us and are part of our nature...

Unlike societies based on clans and tribes, we could assume that most people played by the same rules of reciprocal honorable behavior...

I remember attending a conference with the great psychologist Richard Lynn, in which there was a discussion of the unwillingness of whites to defend themselves. quot;We may be,quot; he said, quot;the first people to be defeated because we were just too nice.quot;...

... if I am right about white people - if we are a uniquely fair-minded and generous race that can easily be tricked into pathological altruism - how does that change our message?...