My article ... MacDonald's response

I recently used the work of evolutionary psychologist professor Kevin MacDonald in a piece on Dissident Voice arguing for a Darwinian approach to the concepts of ethnicity and nation - in place of the notion, dominant in academia, that races and nations are "imagined", "invented" and "constructed".

Kevin has replied.

I accept his point that I didn't deal with the full argument of his book The Culture of Critique. He does a good job summarizing its analysis of the complex relationship between culture and genetics in his article.

But I disagree that "Evolution is a game that, if one decides not to play, one automatically loses." The truth is, if one decides not to play, one's genes lose. I am not my genes.

It is maladaptive to be like a Swedish woman, choosing if and when to have children. It is adaptive to be like an illiterate Guatemalan peasant, believing that if you use contraceptives, you go to hell. Intelligence, self-respect, gender equality, education and wealth are maladaptive.

The reason I don't join Kevin's call to defend my race is that I don't feel like it. Like most white Europeans, and contra the "anti-racists", who allege white gentiles are particularly prone to it, I have a weak sense of ethnic identity. Even if this were as maladaptive as being gay, there's nothing I can do about it, and nothing I want to do about it. If Europeans are genetically less prone to ethnic solidarity than anyone else, the percentage of homo sapiens genes of European origin on the planet will gradually diminish. That's evolution.

Kevin's argument that multiculturalism and the decline of whiteness is leading to more ethnic conflict is poorly backed up. He claims more white working-class people vote Republican than before, but so what? - the difference between the two parties is trivial. He cites a black activist who supports immigration because he thinks it will boost "black power", but this example is hardly representative. The truth is that most white people don't give two hoots about race any more, and, as a result, most members of minorities feel less of what Kevin calls "historical grudges", so they are less likely to aggressively advance their own ethnic agendas.

There is, of course, one exception to this rule, and we should be grateful to Kevin MacDonald for pointing it out.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/10/invention-imagination-race-and-nation

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/10/race-as-a-biological-realitty-and-social-construct