The Reality Gap

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The Reality Gap

A Critique of Richard McCulloch's "The Ethnic Gap"

Michael Rienzi

The major focus of this essay is a critique of Richard McCulloch's "The Ethnic Gap", (TEG) which appeared in the first issue of The Occidental Quarterly. However, since the ideas in TEG are inextricably linked to McCulloch's general ideas on race, and since readers of TEG were invited to visit McCulloch's "Racial Compact" website for more information on his Nordish views (http://www.racialcompact.com) any complete critique of TEG must also include a brief critique of the Racial Compact site and the ideas presented therein.

There are several serious problems with the Nordish argument (in particular) and McCulloch’s views (in general). To start with, there are technical problems. McCulloch focuses on one aspect of phenotypes - physical appearance - as the end all and be all of racialism, ignoring the importance of genes and ancestry. One must consider that it is genes, not phenotypes, which are the ultimate replicators of life. Genes encode phenotypes, not the other way around. Phenotypes may change in the course of a lifetime, but genes remain the same; consider the caterpillar and the butterfly, which it becomes - different phenotypes, but the same genes. If a person has plastic surgery then their phenotype changes, but the genes they possess remain the same, and it is these genes, not the altered phenotype, which are passed down to the next generation.

Neo-Darwinian fitness is defined in terms of genes, not phenotypes; that is, fitness is defined as the success of genes in being replicated, and hence passed down to future generations. Familial and group loyalties focus around a common ancestry (shared genes) rather than shared phenotypes (more on this below), although of course, similar genes and phenotypes are often observed together. To quote van den Berghe: "The genetic propensity is to favor kin, not to favor those who look alike"1. The works of Dawkins - The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, etc.2 - explain many of these concepts in greater detail and are highly recommended. There is no doubt whatsoever that the ultimate biological replicator, the ultimate biological concern, is at the level of the genes. In real-life, this manifests itself, as stated above, in a concern for genetically similar organisms3, related by ancestry (i.e., "kin").

The combination of genes and ancestry is summed up in the ethnic group or “ethnie” (1,3). If you were to stop Euro-Americans in the street, and ask these people to self-identify based on population group, they may say they are "White", "European-American", or more likely, they will identify themselves as "Irish," or "Italian," or "German," or Polish," or "English," etc., or some combination thereof. It is unlikely that any folks - at least those who are not racially conscious - will identify themselves as "Nordics," "Alpinids," "Brunns," "Borrebys,"

"Dinarics," etc. Certainly, people do NOT base their political allegiance and voting patterns based on perceived phenotype, as McCulloch seems to imply. As one example, in TEG (end note 4), McCulloch suggests that the "NCE" (NorthCentral European) category is not limited only to those of "pure" NCE ancestry, but also to those of mixed ancestry (and hence, mixed ethnicity and mixed genes) who have a NCE phenotype. In other words, according to this view, ultimately it is physical appearance, and not ancestry, which determines NCE group membership. 4

Since the whole point of TEG (probably better named as "The Phenotypic Gap") is to equate NCE group membership with a potential "pro-White" voting pattern, then TEG implicitly suggests that folks vote on the basis of phenotype - an absurd proposition. While folks may well vote on their perception of ethnic/racial interests, I have yet to find a person who looks in the mirror on Election Day and says "Hey, I'm a Nordic, so I'm voting for Bush", or "I'm a Dinaric, so I'm voting for Gore", or "I'm an Upper-Paleolithic Brunn, so I support Ross Perot." People vote based on personal, ideological, and/or ethno-racial interests, not based on their cephalic index or hair color.

The same goes for other important issues dealing with populations. During the first and second World Wars, the German and French ethnies went to war against each other as discrete national entities; the war was NOT one between German and French Nordics on one side, and German and French Alpinids on the other side. And if ethnicity trumps phenotype, as is clear from these examples, we must also note that one can find multiple phenotypes within particular ethnies, and yes, even both "Nordish" and non-"Nordish" phenotypes within single ethnies as well. And this fact applies not only to ethnic groups, but to families - one can find siblings of pure single-ethnic descent that cross boundaries of "races", if races are to be defined by the physical anthropology of Carleton Coon and others.5 This similarity between ethnie and family is not surprising, since ethnies can be viewed as extended kin (familial) groups.6 And, just as ethnic loyalty supersedes that of phenotype similarity, so does family loyalty. It should be obvious that ties are closer between two siblings, who may not look much like each other, than between any of these siblings and a more phenotypically similar stranger. People love and care for their own children, rather than for strangers' children to whom they may have a greater physical resemblance. These things are so obvious that it seems almost petty to spend time discussing them, but alas, it is necessary.

Another flaw in McCulloch's views, as evidenced by his website, is his belief that one can assign numerical values to a subjective evaluation of phenotypes, and that the results of hybridization can be discerned by the arithmetic additions and divisions of these assigned numerical values. Thus, McCulloch seems to think that if a group of people that he assigns the "Nordish" value of "1" interbreed with an equal number of people he assigns the value of "9," then the result will be a population of "5s" (1+9/2 = 5). Needless to say, results of ethnic/racial mixes are determined by the complex interplay of genes, not by mathematical manipulation of numerical rankings. While, for example, Swede-Nigerian hybrids will fall somewhere (not exactly halfway!) between the two original populations, to think that combinations of all types of ethnic mixes can be determined in a numerical manner is a bit of a stretch. And to make distinctions between breeding results differing by numerical fractions of these rankings (e.g., "4.5" vs. "4.8") is ridiculous.

A very large flaw in these views is that the Nordishist crowd seems determined to suggest that their racial classification system is based firmly in traditional physical anthropology, particularly in the work of Carleton Coon, whose findings they seem to admire most of all (e.g., http://www.nordish.com ). However, a look at Coon's racial classification system7 shows that it is incompatible with the Nordishist view. The term Nordish - coined by McCulloch and not by any physical anthropologist - is a collection of Northern European types that the Nordishists say go together, e.g, core “Nordish” groups such as Nordics, Borrebys, and Brunns. However, Coon pointedly states, in a number of places, that these groups cannot be lumped together. In Coon's view, Nordics are closest to so-called "Mediterraneans;" in fact Coon considers Nordics to be merely "partially de-pigmented Mediterraneans," and he considers Nordics to be derived from "Mediterranean" racial stock. He considered the "Upper Paleolithic Survivors" (i.e., Borrebys and Brunns) to constitute part of a separate subgroup of the Caucasian stock, together with the Alpinids, which Coon considered a reduced (in size, etc.) derivation of the unreduced Upper Paleolithic Group.

Thus, the racial groupings of the Nordishists are not those of Coon, and are in fact completely different. The Nordishists - who like to lump European "Mediterraneans" with Afro-Asiatic groups - also seemingly ignore the fact that Coon identified what he thought were Afro-Asiatic Nordics, Upper Paleolithic survivors, as well as Alpinids. Should Third World colored peoples then be linked to the Nordish and /or NC European groupings? Note that the foregoing is not meant to imply that Coon's view was right and that of the Nordishists wrong, or vice versa; in actuality, I consider both views of racial classification to be flawed. For example, the genetic data - based on thorough analyses of autosomal alleles - makes clear that the various European groups are genetically more similar to each other than to non-European groups, including non-European Caucasian population groups.8 However, the main point is this: any suggestion - either overt or implied - that the Nordishist racial classification system is based upon that of the well-respected Carleton Coon is incorrect, for the reasons already stated. Suggestions to the contrary do the reader of the material a disservice, particularly since, in most cases, the reader will not have access to Coon's original work, and will assume erroneously that the Nordishist/Coon equation holds.

Specific Issues

Several points made in TEG should be directly addressed. First, where do the numbers - verifiable, independent polling data - come from that justify the "estimates" and assumptions made in TEG? It would certainly be useful to see, for example, how Irish-, Italian-, English-, German-, Polish-, and other White ethnic-Americans voted in the 2000 Presidential election, and in that election compared to previous such elections, as well as other important elections as well. Although general racial polling data is available for most elections, intra-racial ethnic data seems scarce to non-existent. Previous attempts in other venues to obtain this information from third parties have been unsuccessful. Without such exact and substantiated figures, everything said on the topic of TEG cannot be absolutely verified, and we have to instead depend on assumptions, logic, or commentaries by political observers (who in some cases may have seen some private polling data). However, given that Mr. McCulloch's estimates of certain groups' voting patterns seem at odds with the opinions of political experts, the need for hard data becomes ever more important. Do "Northern and Eastern European Catholics" really consistently vote Republican more than do Italian-Americans? Are the Boston Irish or Chicago Poles really more conservative than New York Italians? Furthermore, how is it proven that they determine their favorite candidate based upon a self-identification process determined by phenotypic similarity?

I have already discussed the serious flaw of assuming that people vote on the basis of phenotype rather than on ethnicity, and on the implied assumption that subjective perceptions of phenotype, rather than actual ancestry, should determine group membership and voting patterns. Another serious flaw is Mr. McCulloch's lumping of groups. Based on his racial views, as evident from his website, it is not surprising that he lumps certain Euro-American ethnic groups - (Southern) Italians (does McCulloch really believe that his perception of North/South Italian phenotypic differences influences what voting bloc they belong to?), Greeks, and Balkan ethnies - with groups designated as "Middle Eastern."

What do Italian and Greek-Americans - White European Christian peoples of the west - have to do with, for example, Iranians, a non-European, often brown-skinned, Near Eastern people of Muslim faith with a non-western culture and history? Well, to some, these groups "look alike," a very subjective opinion that others may refute upon actually observing members of these groups. These groups have nothing in common historically and culturally, as stated above in their differing descriptions, and their place in both world history and in the ethno-racial mix of America differs markedly. Genetic evidence suggests a clear distinction between these sets of groups.9 But, if the Nordishist agenda is to divide NorthCentral Europeans (NCEs) from South Europeans (SEs), then this agenda is served by equating South Europeans with non-European, often colored, ethnies.

If the agenda is to de-emphasize the Republican voting pattern of Southern European groups, and hence de-emphasize their shared ethno-political interests with NorthCentral Europeans, then such a lumping scheme may serve that purpose as well. In the absence of absolute verifiable statistics, I shall make a case (see below) that Italian-Americans (the core Southern European group in the USA) have become an important player in conservative Republican politics and strategies. We can also reasonably assume (alas, without hard data) that Third World non-European groups such as Iranians and Turks, who identify outside of the White West, are more likely to vote for liberal Democratic candidates. Thus, lumping such groups with Italian-Americans would skew the SE voting results more in the direction of Democratic voting.

Contrary to the assertions of some that there is a difference in racial political interests between Americans of NorthCentral European descent (postulated to be mainly conservative Republican voters), and gentile Americans of Southern European, mostly Italian, extraction (postulated to be predominantly liberal Democrats), is the political reality of recent decades. William Schneider, in the July 1988 issue of Atlantic Monthly, discusses the new demographic alignment of White ethnic voting patterns, which gives an overview of White ethnic political preferences at the end of the Reagan era.10 Here we read that:

Among white Catholics, however, the trend is clear. 'We've got to watch ourselves,' said John Marino, the executive director of the New York state Democratic Party 'We've lost the Irish and Italian ethnic votes.' Italian voters in particular have become a new and important Republican constituency. They tend to dominate the party in the New York suburbs.11 Also: "Conservative Italian voters have largely displaced old-line WASP liberals in the Republican party [of New York]" according to Timothy Russert: " [it is] becoming more and more true that Italian ethnics are likely to vote Republican."12 And one reason that kept on coming up to explain this voting pattern was the "elephant in the room": RACE.

Of course it can be argued that voting for George Bush - a pro-diversity neo-conservative who played the "Hispanic card" during the election - is no indicator of pro-White racial sympathies. On the other hand, it can be argued that he was viewed as the "lesser of two evils" by the White electorate, and that may be, in part, true. But, do we know what the motivations of Bush voters were? In the case of Ronald Reagan, who talked about issues in a pro-White way (but of course did nothing in this direction while in office), one could certainly make a connection between voting for Reagan and racial views. In the case of the junior Bush, this is unlikely.

It would be interesting to know how much of the racial liberalism from the Bush-Dole-Kemp-Bush, Jr. crowd has destroyed the Reagan coalition, and eaten away at White ethnic Republican voters. There does not seem to be any clear data or opinion on this one way or another. But one thing that the Atlantic Monthly article does make clear: White ethnics, including and especially Italian-Americans, will support political programs and candidates that are pro-Euro-American, and that there is no intrinsic "ethnic gap" within the Euro-American community. Let the Republicans move to the right on race and any (as of yet unsubstantiated) leakage of White ethnic Republican support would be reversed.

The last fundamental flaw in TEG is that it fails to reasonably explain, in any manner consistent with reality, how and why the interests of SEs should differ from those of NCEs. As McCulloch suggests with his use of the word "enclaves," SEs tend to be concentrated in or around urban areas in heavily populated coastal states: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California. These "enclaves" are in proximity to large colored/colored immigrant populations; hence, SEs suffer from racial problems - integration, immigration, affirmative action, crime, destruction of and displacement from living spaces - just as much or more so than any other Euro-American groups. There is no logical reason whatsoever for SEs to ally themselves with a liberal Democrat agenda that supports the above mentioned destructive racial trends. Indeed, as the cited Atlantic Monthly article strongly suggests, it is precisely these issues of race that has caused the shift to the political right of White ethnics, including SEs.

Thus, we can ask: how do the interests of an Italian-American differ from that of his Irish-American neighbor? How do the interests of a German-American "Borreby" differ from that of a Greek-American "Mediterranid?" The answer: they do not; the interests are similar. Indeed, it seems that the only real and substantial difference in group interests is the Nordishist desire to ghettoize SEs, and SE resistance to that desire.

One can see therefore how TEG could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We start with a situation in which SEs, particularly Italian-Americans, are in the position to form a key part of a core racially-conservative Republican bloc. However, if the GOP becomes an exclusively NCE organization, overtly hostile to SEs, then it would be expected that many SEs may be forced, against all their inclinations, to support Democrats. Then the Nordishists can say: "we told you so, the SEs are Democrats." Such a scenario may be desirable from the point of view of those who wish to alienate SEs, but it is disastrous from the viewpoint of building a Euro-American political movement to secure racial rights and racial survival. It should be clear from these arguments that I believe there is room for both NCEs and SEs in a pro-White political activist movement. There may even be room for both Nordishist concerns and SEs, if the Nordishists would stop blatantly disregarding the rights and interests of SEs, and stop misrepresenting SE interests (e.g. TEG) in order to promote intra-Euro-American division.

Summary

Population-based interests form at the level of the (ancestral) ethnic groups (and race), not at the level of phenotype. There are no real differences in socio-political interests between NCEs and SEs (defining SEs as of European descent, not as an amorphous lumping of all non-NCE Caucasians). Real ethnic voting trends point to the possibility of building pan-European pro-Euro-American political programs in America. No Euro-American gentiles need be excluded from this prospective political alignment. The more Euro-Americans we have, the more powerful the new political alignment will be.13

Michael Rienzi, the pseudonym of a biological scientist living in the Northeast, is the author of the December 2000 cover story “Race is a Myth? The left distorts science for political purposes” in American Renaissance.

End Notes

1. Pierre L. van den Berghe The Ethnic Phenomenon, Praeger, NY 1981

2. http://www.world-of-dawkins.com

3. http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/ethnic.htm

4. We may well ask what happens if a non-NCE Caucasian undergoes cosmetic alterations and now exhibits a NCE physical appearance/phenotype. Is this person now considered part of the NCE group, and now part of the NCE "conservative Republican" political block? If the answer is yes (!!!), then this would imply that the "Ethnic Gap" can be dealt with via plastic surgery and the like. In the more likely event that the answer is no, then we see once again the primacy of actual biocultural ancestry (ethnicity) over subjective interpretations of phenotype in the form of physical appearance.

5. For example, a "Borreby father" with a "Nordic son." Or, the idea that a single set of parents could produce siblings who represent "Nordic", "Alpinid", and "Mediterranean" "racial types."

6. Van den Burghe, Ibid.

7. Carleton Stevens Coon The Races of Europe, MacMillan, NY, 1939.

8. See for example, Nei and Roychoudhury, "Evolutionary relationships of human populations on a global scale", Mol. Biol. Evol., 10, pp. 927-943, 1993. Also see the article by the late Dr. Glayde Whitney in the March 1997 issue of American Renaissance, which included a chart of population genetic relatedness, based on the Nei and Roychoudhury data.

9. Van den Burghe, Ibid.

10. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...mp/insider.htm

11. This comment makes clear how reality is quite different than what is proposed in TEG. Apparently, in areas where we find SE "enclaves", Italian-Americans may in fact be more conservative than some NCE groups, or at least they were more conservative at the end of the Reagan era. We should also consider that a string of events, from the Newark riots to the Howard Beach/Bensonhurst conflicts, have shifted focus on Italian-Americans (primarily of Southern Italian descent) as the most "racist" of Euro-American ethnic groups.

12. Indeed, as this article makes clear, even the Italian-American Mario Cuomo had trouble winning election in New York State because of the conservatism of Italian-American voters. Cuomo was a liberal Democrat. We have to consider that for roughly a century after the end of the Civil War, White southerners - overwhelmingly NEs of Anglo-Saxon descent - were a solid Democratic Party bloc vote, no less than the "White ethnics." However, the "Solid South" shifted to the Republicans for the same reasons as did the White ethnics - the perception that their racial interests were not being met by the increasingly hard-left, pro-colored Democrats. Any talk of a "geographical gap" between the North and South of America is nonsensical today and outdated. So it is for an "ethnic gap" between NCEs and SEs.

13. While this essay concentrates on TEG, I find many serious problems with the “Racial Compact” site beyond the scope of this analysis. In general, consistent with the problems of TEG, the “Racial Compact” site, in my opinion, disregards the racial rights of non-Nordish Euro-Americans - and is thus internally incompatible with the racial rights the site ostensibly advocates. Finally, there is more to Western man than narrow biological reductionism - whether this be phenotypic, genetic, or ancestral. Ethnies are bio-cultural entities, and the peoples of the West - Europeans - are defined both by a predominantly West-Caucasian (i.e., European) ancestry as well as historical and cultural connections to Western civilization. We should not get so carried away by cephalic indices and gene frequencies that we forget this reality.


http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol2no2/mr-teg.html