RACE, Ethnic Gap

Ethnic Gap

The Ethnic GapA Rejoinder to Torriani & Rienzi 
by Richard McCulloch (From The Occidental Quarterly, Summer, 2002; Vol. 2, No.2)

Messrs. Rienzi and Torriani make some specific criticisms of my article “The Ethnic Gap” in the Fall 2001 issue of The Occidental Quarterly and some broad criticisms of my work in general as found on my website (http://www.racialcompact.com). Before addressing the specific criticisms, I think I should address the fundamental issue that underlies their general criticism and disagreement with my work.

I am an American of Northern European ancestry and race. I love my race and I want it to continue to exist. In normal times this would not need to be said. But these are not normal times. After over 5,000 years of existing without any danger to their existence the peoples of Northern Europe, and the populations of Northern European ancestry and race in America and Australia, are being destroyed. I do not want them to be destroyed, so my efforts have been directed toward their preservation.

Racial preservation has to be based on racial reality. It has to face the facts, ask the right questions and provide the right answers, however difficult they may be. What is destroying the Northern European peoples? How can they be saved from destruction? How can they be preserved? What is required for their preservation and what needs to be done to achieve it?

The Northern European peoples are being destroyed by multiracialism, the condition of different races existing together in the same territory and society. Their destruction is an unavoidable consequence of multiracialism. They simply cannot continue to exist in a multiracial society. This is a fact of racial reality, a reality of race, of what a race is.

The traits by which we define and identify race are not just individual traits but the traits of a population. A race is a stabilized breeding population, consisting in each of its generations of different individuals who are the passing components in the continuum of its potentially immortal existence. So long as each generation passes on its genes proportionately to its next generation the gene pool, and thus the race as a whole, does not change, but remains the same in each generation, although the individuals composing its population will vary. So long as the genes remain the same and other genes are not introduced from outside the population to change it — either by changing the proportions of the existing elements or, more drastically, by adding entirely different elements — the race will remain the same and be preserved in its entirety.

The concept of racial environment is critical to the understanding of racial reality. The racial environment consists of the types and proportions of racial elements within a stabilized breeding population. It is presumed that the different racial elements in a given society, sharing the same space, will eventually intermix, forming a single breeding population and gene pool. A race is created and preserved in a certain racial environment, a range of certain racial types in certain proportions, and this is the environment required for its preservation or continued existence. If the racial environment is changed the gene pool is also changed and the race cannot continue to exist in the same form, but will be transformed or shifted in the direction of the new racial environment. A change in the racial environment eventually causes a corresponding change in the racial gene pool, and this in turn causes a corresponding change in the race, a racial shift toward the traits of the new elements.

As my critics note, I use the term “Nordish” to refer to Northern Europeans, which I will begin to do at this point, for stylistic reasons that should be obvious. (I do not, however, use Mr. Rienzi’s term “Nordishist.”)

The Northern European or Nordish racial types evolved and have existed for over 5,000 years in a particular racial environment in which certain proportions of a certain range of racial types have maintained a stable balance or equilibrium. This is the racial environment in which the Nordish racial types evolved, and it is the racial environment that is required for their continued existence or preservation. If the racial environment is changed by the introduction of outside elements the racial proportions within the population will be changed, upsetting and destabilizing the racial balance. The introduction of less distinct Nordish types will cause a decrease in the proportions of the more distinct types and — if the change is great enough — their eventual extinction. The introduction of totally new and incompatible non-Nordish, or even non-European, racial types upsets the balance in the population even more drastically, destroying the racial environment that is required for Nordish racial preservation. This results in the extinction of the more distinct Nordish types first and eventually the general extinction of the entire Nordish population. This is what is now happening to the Nordish peoples of Western Europe, America, Canada and Australia. Their racial environments, which they require for their continued existence, are being destroyed — or have already been destroyed — by the introduction of different racial elements. They have been changed into multiracial environments in which the Nordish racial types cannot continue to exist. The destruction of the Nordish racial environment by multiracialism eventually means the destruction of the Nordish race.

The underlying reason for the general objection of Messrs. Rienzi and Torriani to my work, if we cut to the chase, is that I make a racial distinction between Northern and Southern Europeans. If not for that I suspect they would find little to disagree with in my work, but for that they broaden their criticism to include almost the entirety of my work.

My reason for making this distinction is basic Nordish racial preservationism, as plain and simple as it gets. Racial reality is either-or. You cannot have it both ways. It is one or the other. You can either preserve the Nordish race or mix it with other races, but you cannot have both. Extensive intermixture with Mediterraneans will have consequences that cannot be responsibly evaded or denied. The consequence is a racial shift away from the Nordish types and toward the Mediterranean types. The greater the extent of intermixture the greater will be this shift. The most distinct Nordish phenotypes would be the first lost as a result of this shift, followed by the less distinct types. Eventually, if the extent of intermixture and the resulting racial shift is great enough, only the more generalized Nordish types might survive in any significant numbers. There are no studies detailing the specifics of this process (at least not in humans), and no figures are maintained on the Nordish phenotypes in the population. Thus there are no means to rigorously track, document or study any racial shift, including the shift that has already occurred due to the blending of Northern and Central Europeans, and to a lesser extent Southern Europeans. But any person with a modicum of racial sense and sensibility must be sensible to the fact that it would occur.

My own racial sense and sensibilities inform my belief that a general intermixture of Northern and Southern Europeans would be sufficient to make the more distinct Nordish types effectively extinct, and the less distinct types much less common. As a Nordish racial preservationist I therefore want to prevent a general intermixture of Northern and Southern Europeans, and as a racial realist I know that the only effective way to prevent intermixture is separation. And that is the rub, the heart of the matter, the general point of disagreement between Messrs. Rienzi and Torriani and myself. And it is one that I cannot change consistent with racial reality, and cannot yield on without surrendering the very essence of the Nordish race, and defeating the very purpose of Nordish preservation.

Admittedly, the racial differences between Northern and Southern Europeans seem minor, some would say even trivial, compared to the differences between Europeans and the races of sub-Saharan Africa or East Asia. Certainly they are only a fraction of these differences, and certainly there is even a degree of racial overlap between the native populations of Northern and Southern Europe. But the racial reality is that the differences are great enough, even more than enough, to cause the extinction of the more distinct Nordish types if there is sufficient intermixture between them. The denial of those differences, and their effects, would prove fatal for the distinct Nordish types.

What is the extent of the racial differences between Northern and Southern Europeans? Would anyone have difficulty distinguishing the native population of Stockholm from that of Naples, of Copenhagen from Madrid, of London from Seville? As indicated above, there are varying degrees of racial overlap or similarity in the individual members of the different populations of Europe. Some members of the Austrian and Italian populations — for example — resemble each other, yet the populations as a whole do not overlap, but are clearly distinct. If you took a group of 100 individuals from each European country, with each group being representative — in types and proportions — of their respective populations, the average person would have no difficulty distinguishing between the Italian group and the Austrian group, as each group would have a large proportion of individuals of racial types that are either completely absent or very rare in the other group.

However, if the two groups were mixed together the average person, or even an expert, would be less than 100% accurate in sorting the 200 individuals into their respective population groupings. This is because there is an overlap in the racial composition of the two populations. There is also an overlap between the Italian and British populations, only the differences are greater and the extent of overlap smaller. There is even less overlap between the native Scandinavian and Italian populations, so that a mixed group of representative individuals could probably be sorted with well over 90% accuracy. Each population forms a breeding group in which the proportions of the different types are stabilized in a balance that can continue indefinitely, maintaining the racial continuity of the population, so long as the proportions are not changed by the introduction of elements from outside the stabilized population.

The chart below is my attempt to provide an admittedly rough estimate of the phenotypic composition of the native European populations. The reader may disagree with my estimates, and I assume they are not precisely accurate, but I believe the concept is valid, and I assume the estimates are sufficiently accurate to give a valid illustration of the concept.

Phenotypic group A consists of the most distinct Northern European phenotypes found only in Northern Europe (represented on this chart by Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, and northern and central Germany).

Phenotypic group B consists of the most common Northern European phenotypes which can still be regarded as distinctly Northern European although they are also found as minority elements in Central Europe (represented by southern Germany, Austria and northern France).

Phenotypic group C consists of generalized phenotypes that are common throughout Northern and Central Europe and are also present as a minor element in Southern Europe (represented by Italy, Spain and southern France).

Phenotypic group D consists of more generalized phenotypes that are found throughout Western Europe but are most common in Central Europe.

Phenotypic group E consists of phenotypes that are common throughout Southern and Central Europe but are absent or very rare in the native populations of Northern Europe.

Phenotypic group F consists of phenotypes that are common in Southern Europe, present in small numbers in Central Europe, but absent from Northern Europe.

Phenotypic group G consists of distinct “Mediterranean” phenotypes that are common in Southern Europe, present as a minority element in North Africa, but absent from the native populations of Northern and Central Europe.

Phenotypic group H consists of more distinct “Mediterranean” phenotypes that are common in both Southern Europe and North Africa.

Phenotypic group I consists of the most distinct “Mediterranean” phenotypes found among the native populations of Southern Europe, but more common in North Africa and the Middle East.

In my partition proposal phenotypes not normally found in the native populations of Northern and Central Europe would be separated from the Nordish population. This racial dividing line would run through the F group of phenotypes in the above chart. Yet even in this proposal the long-term survival of the more distinct Nordish types in the Nordish-American population would be far from certain, and if they did survive they would certainly be much less common. The resulting racial environment would represent a considerable racial shift away from the one in which they existed for the last 5,000 years. There are always racial costs involved in any significant racial shift, and those costs have their greatest effect on the most distinct side of the racial range.

In Northern Europe itself, the racial dividing line should be based on the native populations themselves, and be stricter than the standard applied in the U.S. The immigration of additional generalized C or D phenotypes from Central or Southern Europe into Northern Europe would upset the balance of the racial environment, lowering the proportions of the more distinct Northern European types and, if sufficient, threatening their continued existence. This is true even though the native populations already contain those phenotypes, as a change in the proportions of phenotypes causes a change in the racial environment and gene pool, and thus a racial shift away from the more distinct types. Also, it should be noted that the generalized C and D phenotypes of Central and Southern Europe are not genotypically equivalent to the C and D phenotypes of Northern Europe. The native C and D phenotypes in Northern Europe usually carry recessive A and B genes in their genotypes, whereas this is usually not the case with C and D phenotypes in Central or Southern Europe.

Unfortunately, there are political costs incurred by racial separation, just as there are racial costs incurred by the lack of separation. The groups selected for separation from the Nordish population can generally be expected to oppose the separation. That is why I separated Northern and Central Europeans (NCEs) from other ethno-racial groups in my discussion of the prospects for building a pro-Nordish political movement in “The Ethnic Gap,” as it could not be assumed that the non-NCEs would support the ultimate Nordish interest in separation. And that is why Messrs. Rienzi and Torriani oppose my proposal, and the reason for their general criticism of my work.

Both political and racial costs should be minimized to what is absolutely necessary, but if costs there must be, as a racial preservationist I am much more willing to incur political costs than racial costs, which involve a racial shift away from what I wish to preserve. Racial costs involve our being, what we are, and once incurred the political costs of reversing them (if it is still possible to reverse them) are usually prohibitive, and certainly far greater than the costs of preventing them. Should we sacrifice part of ourselves, lose the most distinct parts of our race, for political reasons? For me there is no political interest so compelling as to justify the extinction of the most distinct Nordish types, and no political cost so great as to compel me to accept racial policies that would have that result.

Is there anything we could offer the groups selected for separation that would significantly lessen their opposition to it? What could be done to accommodate those groups, to lessen their opposition to separation, and possibly even gain some measure of support? Certainly whatever could be done within reason, that does not defeat the purpose of Nordish racial preservation or sacrifice the legitimate interests of the Nordish-American population, that would be worthwhile and not in vain, that addresses legitimate concerns without catering to obstructionism, should be done.

It is my hope that we could be partners rather than adversaries in this enterprise, and that the interests of all could be adequately served and protected. But to the extent that interests do conflict, the primacy of the Nordish peoples in North America should be an established principle. Their interests should have priority and be given precedence. They have a much greater interest in North America, having committed a far greater part of their existence and being to the continent, than any other people. Until a little over a century ago it was clearly their country, and in spite of the ongoing process of their dispossession since that time they still have far more at stake in it than do any others. As a Nordish-American, my ancestors’ vision and realization of a transcontinental nation is still my vision of what Nordish America should be, and what I want a post-partition Nordish America to be.

Turning to some of the specific criticisms, the term “Nordish” simply means “Northern European” when used in the racial sense. The racial term “Northern European” in general usage refers to all the native peoples of Northern Europe, not distinguishing between Nordics, Borrebys and Brünns, but, in Mr. Rienzi’s terms, lumping them all together as I do with the term “Nordish.” That said, I have found that the people who object to the term “Nordish” are those who object to any distinction being made between Northern and Southern Europeans, or to any semantic tool that makes it easier to make that distinction. The same people also tend to object to the use of the racial term “Mediterranean,” in general usage referring to all the native peoples of the Mediterranean region, as it also makes a distinction between Northern and Southern Europeans.

Regarding the contention that modern Nordics are more closely related to Mediterraneans than to their Brünn and Borreby countrymen, general usage — including anthropology and genetics — does distinguish between Northern and Southern Europeans, but does not distinguish between the Nordic, Borreby and Brünn types of Northern Europe. There is a very simple reason for this. Most people, including most scientists, have never heard of the Brünn and Borreby types, are unaware of their existence, and do not know how to distinguish them from each other or from Nordics. Some who are aware of them do not believe they represent different racial types but only normal individual and regional variation within the Northern European population.

Certainly John Baker was aware of them, yet he makes no mention of them in his 1974 workRace (pp. 217-220), referring only to “Nordids” in Scandinavia and northern Germany, although he does clearly differentiate between “Nordids” and “Mediterranids.” And there is good reason for this, for whatever the prehistoric origin and derivation of these types might be, the overriding fact is that for the last 5,000 years they have been part of the same populations, blending together to the extent that few people can distinguish them either by phenotype or genotype. I think almost everyone, including Mr. Rienzi, would be able to distinguish the predominantly Nordic populations of Oslo and Stockholm from the Mediterranean populations of Naples and Madrid very easily, but would have considerable difficulty distinguishing them from the predominantly Borreby populations of Stavanger, Malmö and Copenhagen.

In my opinion Carleton Coon’s classic 1939 work The Races of Europe presents the most accurate and detailed description and classification of the modern races of Europe that I have seen, but I have never thought of it as the last word on European prehistory and racial origins. This area of study is still very open and the subject of considerable debate. In the past few years several genetic studies have contributed some insights. For example, a genetic study reported in the May 10, 2001 issue of Nature, “Linkage disequilibrium in the human genome” (p.199) had findings suggesting “that the long-range LD pattern is general in northern Europeans,” and asked, “What was the nature of the population event that created the long-range LD? The event could be specific to northern Europe, which was substantially depopulated during the Last Glacial Maximum (30,000-15,000 years ago), and subsequently re-colonized by a small number of founders.” This report received considerable publicity in the popular press, often distorted and falsified with a multiracialist bias. The National Post Online release dated May 10, 2001 was perhaps the most accurate and included the following relevant passages:

All humans of northern European ancestry are descended from a tiny group of cave men — perhaps only 10 people, and no more than 50 — researchers have discovered. The result is that hundreds of millions of their descendants now carry vast amounts of identical DNA. The small group formed a bottleneck, squeezing all the genes of northern Europe through a few individuals 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, long after humans left their first home in Africa.”

This genetic study clearly does not differentiate between Nordics and other Northern Europeans, but assumes a common ancestry for all Northern Europeans going back 15,000 years or more. It also indicates a much earlier date of divergence, and more distant relationship, between Northern and Southern Europeans than is often supposed.

The following quotes might help to clarify Coon’s opinion on the relationship between modern Nordics and Mediterraneans. From Coon’s 1951 work, Caravan: the story of the Middle East, (p. 154):

Our area, from Morocco to Afghanistan, is the homeland and cradle of the Mediterranean race. Mediterraneans are found also in Spain, Portugal, most of Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean islands, and in all these places, as in the Middle East, they form the major genetic element in the local populations. In a dark-skinned and finer-boned form they are also found as the major population element in Pakistan and northern India.

(It should be noted that the modern Nordic homelands are not included in this description of the geographic distribution of the Mediterranean race.) From Coon’s 1965 work, The Living Races of Man, (p. 54):

Mediterranean and Nordic populations may be distinguished both in Europe and in West Asia during the span of the Mesolithic. It is a moot point whether the Nordic skeletal type of Neolithic Northern Europe came from the West or the East, or from both.

This indicates that Nordics and Mediterraneans were already distinguishable from each other at least as early as the Mesolithic, and that Nordics were already in Northern Europe at least as early as the Neolithic. And given that, with regard to the racial affinities of the modern Nordics I think that we can join Coon in saying that it is really a moot point where they came from, because they have been Northern Europeans for at least 5,000 years.

One of the most serious problems facing racial preservationism is ignorance of the consequences of multiracialism, and specifically of the effects of racial intermixture. Not only do many people still believe in the fantasy that multiracialism will not result in large-scale racial intermixture, they and many others are unaware of what the results of intermixture would be, and believe in the fantasy that even with large-scale intermixture the different races, including the Nordish race, will still continue to exist without significant change. In this common fantasy, which seems to be the dominant — and politically correct — senseless mindset of the popular culture, racial intermixture would not cause a racial shift and would not result in any racial types being lost or even becoming much less common. This ignorance of the most basic racial reality is so serious that it could prove fatal to the racial preservationist cause, a fatal fantasy that prevents awareness of the racial destruction that is even now taking place in front of our eyes, to which we are all witnesses, by denying its possibility.

I believe that anything that exists in physical reality can be measured and calculated. Real world physical actions have real world physical effects and results that can be accurately described. Acting on this belief, I developed a scale of Nordish racial assimilability to calculate the results of racial intermixture on the Nordish race. (http://www.racialcompact.com/averageisdestiny.html) The scale is much more accurate with population averages than with individuals, and the larger the population the more accurate the average. But after the first generations of interracial crossing have passed, and the blend becomes more stabilized with each generation, with ever less individual variation, the scale would become increasingly accurate in calculating individual results as well. Mr. Rienzi objects to my scale, not on the grounds that my calculations, estimates and predictions are inaccurate, nor that my scale is flawed in design, but on the grounds that the very concept of being able to calculate or predict the genetics of racial intermixture is invalid. In attacking the validity of the concept he basically adopts the obscurantist position that the effects of intermixture are unknowable. This is inconsistent with our long experience with the genetics of animal husbandry and stock breeding, in which the genetic and phenotypic effects of intermixture can be predicted with a very high degree of accuracy. Though there is a normal aversion to admitting it, the same genetic principles that govern the mixture of animals govern the mixture of humans as well, and the results can be calculated with the same degree of accuracy. This too is part of racial reality. The effects of racial intermixture are governed by physical reality, not fantasy.

Messrs. Rienzi and Torriani object to my use of phenotype to define race. Phenotype is the totality of our physical or morphological traits or characteristics. As the definitions of race in most dictionaries show, physical traits are the recognized and customary means of determining, identifying and defining race. As the great anthropologist E.A. Hooton wrote in Up From the Ape, “The classification of organisms has to begin with phenotypes (p. 439).” Phenotype is nature’s method of racial and species identification. It consists of everything we experience with our senses — odor, feel and sound as well as sight. Every living creature, from insects to man, distinguishes and recognizes its own kind based on phenotype, by what they experience with their senses. This is most critical in the selection of mates, and in general nature has been very successful in enabling every species to almost unerringly identify its own kind by phenotype in the selection of mates. It is also the means we all use to identify race.

All of us, in our everyday lives, beginning in childhood, have racially classified or identified many tens of thousands of persons, most of it automatic, unconscious and involuntary, taking no longer than a split fraction of a second, including people we pass in the mall or on the street, in our schools, in social settings, in every event we attend and everywhere we go. For nearly all of us, every single one of those classifications was by phenotype, using an important ability with which we are equipped by nature. How many people have any of us racially identified by genetic sequences? How many by anthropometric measurements? For nearly all of us, the answer to these two questions, regarding the other recognized methods of racial identification other than phenotype, is zero. Mr. Rienzi disparages phenotype as a method of racial identification. How many thousands of people has he racially identified by phenotype? How many by other methods? Has he ever racially identified anyone by methods other than phenotype? If so, he is one of a very few, as only biologists and physical anthropologists with specialized training and equipment are able to identify race with means other than those with which nature equipped us, and those other means are not necessarily more accurate.

Mr. Torriani suggests cultural artifacts as a means of racial identification, but culture is not race and the two should not be confused. A person of any race could adopt the culture and artifacts of any other race, as many millions of Africans and Asians have adopted the culture of the West, but they are still not of that race.

I do not ignore genetics or ancestry as a means of racial classification, but consider them to be supplemental to phenotype, not a replacement for it. I think my critics create a false dichotomy between phenotype and genetics and ancestry. In my opinion, phenotype is normally consistent with genetics and ancestry, being their physical expression, and indicating them with a high degree of accuracy. Phenotype is adequate for racial classification. There is no need for genetic testing that would impose such huge political costs that suggesting them is likely to be a common obstructionist tactic.

And what would genetic testing and ancestry research reveal? Actresses Kim Bassinger and Farrah Fawcett are reported to be 1/8th Amerindian in ancestry. They are distinctly Nordish in phenotype, so the genes that determine their phenotype have been almost totally inherited from their seven Nordish great-grandparents, although some other genes they inherited from their one Amerindian great-grandparent might be the ones measured by genetic testing, classifying them as Amerindian. There are probably other persons who are 1/8th Amerindian in ancestry whose genes for phenotype are predominantly Amerindian (an example of the individual instability of early generation crosses), but the genes that would be tested would be European, classifying them as European. According to the Nei and Roychoudhury study cited by Mr. Rienzi in note 7 the Finns are essentially the same genetic distance from the Mongoloid Japanese (.054%) as are the Italians (.055%). Yet Mr. Torriani agonizes over the implications of a study that finds a “substantial” (?) portion of Finnish Y chromosomes are of Mongoloid origin. What importance should we give to the origin of Y chromosomes, or any other single genetic sequence that might be measured, as a determinant of racial identification if inconsistent with phenotype? I say none, and thus see no need to develop policies to deal with them, so Mr. Torriani can stop agonizing over hidden genes and their implications and focus on what can be seen, as nature intended.

Phenotype is central to race. It is racial identity. A race is more than phenotype, but it is nothing without its phenotype. A race is not a disembodied thing without face or form. Phenotype is its physical body, its face and form. The devaluation or denigration of phenotype is a devaluation and denigration of race. The delegitimization of phenotype as a matter not worthy of concern is a delegitimization of racial preservation as a matter not worthy of concern. The belittlement of phenotype and the denial of its importance are a central part of the logic and argument of anti-preservationists, and a clear indication of opposition to racial preservation.

We live in a world of phenotypes, of tangible physical being. Phenotype is what we directly experience and perceive with our senses. It is what we are attached to. It is what we love. It is what we want to preserve. And its preservation is consistent with, and necessary for, the preservation of everything else associated with our race and every other part of its being. So as a racial preservationist, seeking to preserve the Nordish race, I will continue to work for the preservation of the Nordish phenotypes and advocate the measures required for their preservation.
References

Baker, John R. Race, Oxford University Press, 1974.

Coon, Carleton Caravan, Henry Holt & Co., 1951.

Coon, Carelton The Races of Europe, MacMillan, 1939.

Hooton, Earnest A. Up From The Ape, MacMillan 1931 (Revised 1946).